Chapter 7 #2
I processed this for a moment.
‘And you were engaged to someone else before you married Grandpa?’ I’d never met my maternal grandpa; he’d died before I was born. By all accounts he’d been a non-event.
‘Yes, I was engaged to a very handsome man. But then he was posted to England during the war and got a bit distracted by a girl there,’ she said.
‘Distracted?’
‘He married her,’ Grandma said blithely.
‘So you married Grandpa instead?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I was heartbroken and acted impulsively. He had such a nice moustache,’ Grandma said. ‘But with hindsight, that probably wasn’t enough of a foundation for a marriage.’
It hadn’t been. Mum had told me horror stories of the relationship between her parents, fuelled by disdain and whisky, when she’d been growing up.
‘My sister did the same thing – when her fiancé died, she married a fool on the hop. Your mum’s cousin too. It’s the family curse – we’re too passionate and make thoughtless decisions that hurt everyone around us.’ She daintily emptied her glass, then reached for the bottle of gin.
‘I’m a woman in this family. Does that mean I’m cursed?’ I asked, following her logic through to its natural conclusion.
‘No – of course not! You’ll do better than your mum and I did – stay in control of your life and make sensible decisions. Promise me that, darling?’
‘I promise,’ I said with the sincerity of a teenager who’d been invited to the inner sanctum of adult conversation.
‘Or maybe it’s no use and we can’t fight the curse,’ she added.
I must have looked alarmed because she reached out and wrapped her thin arms around me. I snuggled into the powdery nook between her shoulder and neck, which was different from Mum’s but similar enough.
‘Oh, darling, ignore me. You’re much too smart to listen to me,’ she whispered in my ear.
By the time we sat down to eat dinner, I’d had more than a few commemorative G the air was heavy.
I swung back and forth on the swing a few times then stopped – the world was already spinning.
I pulled out my phone and googled ‘Alex Lawson’ again.
Then I did another search, adding ‘Melbourne’.
There were a few stories about the sale of his company to ATG.
I clicked on his profile on their website.
He had a short bio, the type that indicated that he was someone whose reputation preceded him.
I stared at the photo. It was a typical corporate head shot, except Alex managed to defy any attempts at uniformity.
His blond hair sprang up like he was a farm-based golden retriever.
The gaze wasn’t the expected one of quiet, reassuring confidence but rather his sky-blue eyes were piercing, like they could X-ray and were searching for fractures and breaks.
And his face wasn’t centred, as if he’d deliberately resisted the photographer’s explicit instructions.
I clicked back to the search-results page and scanned them. I paused, then pressed on the final link. An ‘Alex Lawson’ in the thirty-five to forty-five age category had completed the Albert Park Parkrun for the last few weeks. I swallowed hard.
He’d been a runner when we’d met. He didn’t enjoy the exercise as much as the impact it had on his brain’s ability to function at its peak.
But running around a lake that was a short walk from my house felt very close to my real life.
Was he living around here? Would I run into him as I dashed to the shops in my tracksuit to buy milk?
Maybe it was coincidence, and it was another Alex Lawson.
Surely life wouldn’t require me to be on guard both at work and at home.
There was an enormous bang and then a crack broke the sky. A chilly breeze swept through the park, picking up leaves and bits of the day’s rubbish. One of the city’s infamous cool changes had arrived. There was another boom of thunder and thick raindrops started to fall.
I stood and held my palms to the sky as the rain splattered on my hair. I woke up thirty minutes earlier than usual twice a week to blast it into submission, so I knew I should run to shelter – to the picnic area or back to the house. Instead, I tipped back my head and let the rain fall on my face.
‘Are you okay?’
I spun around. Matt was standing behind me. ‘Yeah, fine,’ I said. ‘I think everything’s gone straight to my head. Mum was trying to kill me with dinner, so I barely ate. She went to med school... do you think she’s just forgotten about anaphylaxis?’
‘There were heaps of side dishes, but they got stuck at the other end of the table,’ Matt said evenly.
‘I mean, this is the lady who filled out the allergy section of our wedding RSVPs with Mild intolerance to Chanel Number Five .’
‘I know these family things can be full-on for you,’ he said gently. ‘I know it brings up... stuff.’
‘Let’s practise our wedding dance,’ I said. I knew it was a non sequitur, but the words came out before I could stop them. We’d had two classes to learn our first dance, but then the instructor had developed tendonitis. Because, of course.
He took my outstretched hands but didn’t move closer. He searched my face. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he asked again.
‘Yeah, of course,’ I said.
I stared for a moment at the man in front of me – my fiancé. I wasn’t a natural writer and every time I’d sat down to draft my wedding vows, I’d ended up staring at a white screen and a blinking cursor for far too long.
But right then, as I stood opposite Matt, who smelled slightly of damp wool and earthy red wine, his kind eyes crinkled with concern and his strong hands wrapped around my mine, I knew the promises I wanted to make.
I wanted to promise to honour his best qualities: his easy kindness, his ability to revel in small, everyday pleasures, his instinctive creativity.
I’d promise to always be the one to make the microwave popcorn before we curled up together to watch movies.
I’d promise to always buy him a novelty pair of socks on a work trip. I’d promise to be with him forever.
Why had it been so hard to get the words down when these commitments felt so clear?
‘I can’t believe I get to marry you,’ I said.
His shirt collar was turning, one splatter at a time, from pale to dark blue.
The cotton had begun to stick to his abs, like he was Mr Darcy or Anthony Bridgerton emerging from a lake.
Raindrops sat like a spider’s web on the top of his hair and his glasses had begun to fog. Even soaking wet, he was handsome.
He pulled me close and spun me like we’d practised. Suddenly I felt incredibly dizzy and out of breath. But while the park turned into a blur of glistening leaves and half-hidden stars, Matt’s face stayed totally in focus.
A crack of lightning broke through the sky. We stopped moving and, as the rest of the world became clear again, a wave of panic rushed through me.
I pulled away from Matt, and clung to the back of a park bench for balance. Matt said something but was drowned out by another rumble of thunder and my own whirring thoughts.
I knew exactly what needed to happen. I added a new item to my mental to-do list: ‘Negotiate rules of engagement with ex’.