Chapter 27 #2
I paused. Except I held the power to potentially upend his professional life. I needed to tell Lily this to give her the full picture, to ask for her advice. But I couldn’t. This was confidential information. I wasn’t allowed to tell her. Or Alex.
‘... nothing,’ I finished. I had to work out what to do next on my own.
After I ended the call with Lily, I stayed sitting on the banks of the Yarra. The brown river gently flowed a few metres from my feet. Could you stand in the same river twice? I’d written an essay on this question for a philosophy subject at Oxford. What precocious conclusion had I reached?
‘To tell Alex.’ I plucked a yellow petal off an almost-naked dandelion I’d pulled out of the grass. Grandma Evelyn had taught me this game when I was a kid, mainly in the context of trying to work out whether the widowers in her bridge club were madly in love with her.
If I told him what our advice for ATG was going to be, he’d be able to reject the option to keep working for them.
He could take his enormous brain and everything he’d learned to another company.
He wouldn’t lose two years of time being paid a bloated salary to do work he didn’t care about.
This would be a lot of people’s dream, but I knew it would be Alex’s nightmare.
And I didn’t want to hurt him again. I knew how he must have felt after I’d left – heartbroken, bereft, unsure how life was meant to work anymore.
I didn’t want to make a decision. I understood that even the smallest, most random choices had the potential to change the trajectory of a life.
What if I’d done something different during the Trinity term?
What if I hadn’t run away from the Ferris wheel, had let Alex continue to explain his thinking to me? What if I hadn’t had anxiety medication with me at Oxford? What if I hadn’t asked Dad to book me a flight home?
What would, what could, our story have been?
Would we have got married that summer in Oxford, in one of the college chapels or the town hall? I bet we would have decided to elope, so we didn’t have to confront the absence of Alex’s family and the complexity of mine. Then, would we have applied for visas and moved to the US?
Would I have even found a job? Would I have become a consultant?
Would I have celebrated all the days he made a breakthrough?
Would I have picked him up on the days when it seemed like his research would never work out.
Would we have made all the ordinary days count?
Would our conversations have stayed in the realm of ideas or would they have descended into the banalities of running out of milk and having to change the sheets occasionally?
If I’d followed Alex, I wouldn’t have been asleep in the cinema that day. I wouldn’t have been gently woken up and asked to dinner. I wouldn’t have said yes.
If I’d married Alex, I wouldn’t have met Matt.
I felt my throat tighten and my heart clench, as if it had missed a beat. I took a deep breath then pulled the final petal off the flower. ‘To not tell Alex.’ The flower had spoken.
I told myself that firstly, if anyone found out that I’d leaked confidential information, I’d lose my job.
And secondly, Alex had made the decision to sell his company to a giant conglomerate whose only real obligation was to its profit-hungry shareholders.
Surely, as Miranda said, he’d been advised that this exact scenario was one of the possibilities.
And finally, when the executive team met next week, they might totally ignore our recommendation.
In fact, saying anything to Alex about it might aggravate the situation.
I stood up and brushed down my navy linen dress. Doing nothing was the right thing to do.
‘I was sad that we had to cancel our dinner this week,’ Jane said, stretching in a floral tracksuit. We’d had to postpone while Matt had been stuck in Sydney.
I really wished I was wearing something other than a rainbow, eighties-style aerobics one-piece a size too small for me when talking to my future mother-in-law, who thought that mixing navy and black in an outfit was risqué.
I pulled at the fabric as if I might be able to stretch it out into leggings, or at least properly cover my bum.
Outfit aside, so far Lily and Stella had organised a really fun hen’s party. It had begun with a relaxed lunch in the private room of a pub. Mum had sat with Jane and the twins, Holly and Ivy, and whenever I snuck a glance at them, they seemed to be having a good time.
After the lunch finished, I’d been sent to get changed into the multicoloured leotard that cut off circulation to most of my limbs. Then we’d all been shepherded to a nearby park where a bunch of bubbles were inflated, waiting for us to begin playing bubble soccer.
‘I know, we were sad to miss dinner too. Matt’s been dealing with a lot at work,’ I said.
‘Oh, there’s a big wine emergency, is there?’ she asked with a wry laugh.
Yes. A shortage of affordable savvy b! The Boomers will start picketing soon . I knew that’s the self-deprecating answer Matt would give.
‘Actually, it is,’ I said. ‘China’s put another trade embargo on Australian wine.
Matt’s helping to prepare the disclosures and public response.
It’s a pretty big deal.’ I might have slightly invented the details, but I was pretty sure that was the gist of what was happening.
Matt had been so busy that we’d barely had time to talk all week.
His best man had picked him up from the airport the night before to drive him to his buck’s weekend, at a house they’d rented on the coast. I knew he’d be exhausted after a huge week, but if anyone could rally, it was him.
Jane’s smile flickered. There had been a bit more edge to my voice than I’d intended. We were saved by the bell, or in this case, a whistle.
The twins were stretching out each other’s hamstrings, looking like they were warming up for the Olympics. I scanned the edge of the oval until I found Mum. She wasn’t in gym gear – I don’t think she’d ever owned a pair of sneakers. I guessed she planned to watch us.
I was the first one bundled into an inflatable soccer ball and soon we were all oscillating between hysterically laughing – giddy from cocktails – bumping into each other and panting wildly from the exertion.
I’d never been big on organised sports. But the idea of being encased in what was effectively a giant piece of bubble wrap and blowing off some steam was exactly what I needed. It was nice to live in the moment, to not think, to focus only on staying upright and trying to get a ball into a goal.
This was the point of weddings and all the events around them.
To doggedly revel in all the good things in life – the people who loved you and had been there for you, too much food and too many cocktails, to wear outfits you never normally did.
To stop the merry-go-round of daily niggling worries and decisions and irritations, and celebrate your people.
Holly, who even through the plastic casing I could see had the focus of a Matilda, kicked the ball to me. There was no one between me and the goal so I clumsily dribbled it and with a dramatic kick it went straight into the net. I hooted with joy.
My celebratory cheer reverberated around the reinforced plastic. I turned around to find Stella and Lily so they could see how much I was enjoying myself. Except everyone was huddled together in the middle of the pitch. My stomach fell.
I wriggled out of the straps around my shoulders and pulled the ball over my head then jogged over to the group.
‘Is everything okay?’ I panted. Stella, who’d kicked into nurse mode, was kneeling on the ground next to someone who was groaning with pain.
‘It’s your mum,’ she said without turning around. ‘She needs some help.’