Chapter Four
Abbey
Home. The holiday joy had left me by the time I came into the arrivals gate at Sydney Airport.
My tears started at the sight of my daughter and sister.
Ella was ginormous, having somehow grown several inches in two weeks.
There they stood, my little family, holding a handmade, glittery, cardboard ‘Welcome Home’ sign.
Ella, seeing me crying, burst into tears herself and ran to hug me.
I could not remember a hug that huge from her since she was four, and I felt the loss of the little girl she once was, who had been replaced by this teenager.
Kate joined in a second later, throwing her arms around us.
My sister looked at me closely and then took pity on my fragility by bundling us all into my white Toyota Corolla and getting us home to our shared house in the not-quite inner-city suburb of Tempe.
I had an overwhelming joy flare up from being in my house.
Being home. After Peter had left, I became obsessed with making it a place that reflected me.
We’d started outside, ripping out the English cottage garden, which my mother-in-law, Henrietta, had planted.
Neither Peter nor I enjoyed gardening and so the entry always looked like shit.
Kate had sensibly selected some agaves, succulents and plants that could handle the pollution and saltiness of Sydney air, without needing anything from us but a once-a-week water, which was about the only kind of commitment I was prepared to make with a plant.
The garden looked chic now – and, okay, my renovation commitments had eventually stopped, mostly because I could not afford them – but standing outside it, the place really did feel like mine, and not mine and Pete’s.
I walked arm in arm with Ella. Kate carried my bag inside and then topped the list of my favourite people ever by pouring me a massive glass of red wine.
I dumped my suitcase onto my bedroom floor.
The room was exactly as it had been when Pete lived here and, returning to it after a break, I suddenly felt within myself that the time had come to change that, as a massive priority.
Being with Nick these past two weeks had taught me that I wanted someone in my life, eventually. And that meant letting go of the past.
I fished the small presents I’d brought back with me out of my bag.
And when I say small, I mean small – the Maldives had what they had.
I had come home with a seashell bracelet for Ella and a rock painted with a beach scene for Kate.
I remembered my mother bringing little things home from trips away when Kate and I were little.
It was nice to think that your loved one had been thinking of you, even for a minute, when they were away from you.
The holiday was well and truly over, though, as I was headed back to work on Monday.
Before then I had an elaborate ‘catch-up day’ Ella had planned and filled me in on.
I told her I couldn’t wait, but as it was after 9 p.m. I took her to bed, kissing my beautiful golden-haired girl goodnight, and promised to share all the details about my holiday over lunch the next day.
Obviously, I planned on omitting the gorgeous, dark-haired man with whom I had spent the majority of my holiday.
Kate, on the other hand, would want to know everything and I knew there would be no escaping a debrief.
She’d gone to some effort; starting a fire outside and placing our comfiest outdoor chairs in front of it.
The bottle of red was on a small table and there was even a small cheese platter.
I noticed a spare bottle of wine under the table in case it was required, and I thought for the umpteenth time this evening that she was a much better husband than my ex-husband was.
Kate was younger than me by four years, a registered nurse at one of Sydney’s largest hospitals.
She was truly beautiful, with blue eyes and hair that was a deep chocolate, which she had expensively highlighted so it sheened golden under lights.
She was taller than me by a few inches and slimmer than me, well …
by heaps. Kate was competent, bossy and my best friend in the world.
We lost our mum when we were barely grown-ups and we relied on each other.
Grandma Iris was always there, cheering on our growth as we turned into young women.
Gran and Kate had this grab-life-by-the-throat attitude, and they adored each other as kindred spirits.
I was often their shared frustration. My grandmother told me once that I was like water, bending to whatever shape I needed to be for anyone who wanted something from me.
She said she worried for me. She never worried for Kate.
Kate was like a stone, solid and stable, unbendable.
I used to worry about being water, but then in year 9 I learned about erosion, and I realised water had its own power.
Kate had had a string of lovers and boyfriends over the years, but none of them ever met her exacting standards for long enough to survive.
When Peter left me, I was in dire straits financially.
Kate had moved in, mostly to help me cover the mortgage so I could buy him out of the house, but with the added benefit that she could also help with Ella.
Ella adored Aunty Kate. They were soul sisters in directness, a fierceness that harked back to our grandmother that had clearly skipped me.
I sat down, taking a huge sip of my wine, tilting back my head to look at the sky.
I wondered what Nick saw when he looked up at the sky he was under.
Privately, I could admit I was missing him.
Telling yourself not to catch feelings did not mean you wouldn’t.
We’d exchanged numbers, but I knew how he felt about attachment, and I was determined not to call him.
Well, other than forwarding him ‘Kate’s Pearls of Wisdom’, as he had deemed my sister’s messages after reading one over my shoulder one day.
It had read:
Abbey, I packed your vibrator. Don’t be afraid to use this while having sex. He’ll enjoy it and so will you.
Delighted, he had insisted on reading them all out loud, giving me one of his rare laughs while calling them ‘sibling gold’ and floating the idea of turning them into a self-help book.
I cried with embarrassed laughter which sobered the minute he insisted on me fetching the said item out of my suitcase and getting naked immediately.
A smile came to my face as I thought about the particular activity that followed that.
‘So are you going to tell me about him?’ Kate raised an eyebrow at me.
I sighed, shaking my head. ‘How do you know there was a “him”?’
She met my eyes with an expression that read, ‘Do not even attempt to leave out details’.
So I told her everything. Absolutely everything.
We had told each other everything since forever, and this was no different.
As we made our way through the bottle of wine, I started from the top, the rescue, the boat, the suite, the dinners, the drunk times dancing and singing, the nights. Oh, my goodness, the nights.
I told Kate about how hard it had been to make him laugh, truly laugh, how difficult it had been to extract the little details of his life.
I told Kate how he didn’t believe he could love or fall in love, but the way he looked at me and the way he clung to me at night – with the desperation of a man who needed love above anything else – had told me that maybe he wasn’t being honest with himself.
I told her about realising I had lost Grandma Iris’s necklace on another trip back to the private island, and how he had spent a whole day looking for it.
And I told Kate about the goodbye. How it was heart-wrenching, and that I had shed tears that he wiped away with his thumb while kissing me.
‘He sounds hot. Maybe he has a brother?’ Kate said, making me laugh. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ She handed me a biscuit loaded with brie.
‘Nothing.’ I shrugged, shoving the biscuit in my mouth.
It was creamy and delicious, and I waited until I finished it before adding, ‘There is nothing to do about it. He lives in London and, even if he didn’t, he made it pretty clear what his parameters were in terms of what we were doing.
He made himself very clear. It would be disrespectful.
Like I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain. ’
‘Well, cheers to Nick fucking Northby then, hey?’
Cheers indeed. I clinked my glass against hers.
We moved on, Kate filling me in on the two weeks I was away, including that Ella had started hanging out with a girl called Bella (sweet Jesus) and that Grandma Iris had finished the novel Bonds of Sin Broken, Again and rated it 5 stars on the spice-o-meter.
Cracking into the second bottle of wine, we put on a playlist of angst and sang at the top of our lungs. I worried briefly about the neighbours, but the thought was gone as Heart’s ‘These Dreams’ came on. Kate and I excelled at a duet.
When I almost fell asleep into my glass, she hopped up and started packing things away.
‘I fucking love you, Kate Cavendish.’ I was suddenly filled with fierce family love, and I hugged her with Ella’s airport-hug ferocity.
‘I love you too, Abs. Hey, remember there’s a hot doctor at work. I’m going to set you guys up.’ She kissed me on the forehead as if she was our mum. ‘I’m glad you had sex, hon.’
Me too.
***
On Monday morning, I very reluctantly swung back into work mode. Getting Ella ready for school, preparing breakfast, lunches and dressing before making the twenty-minute train ride into the city. Feelings of pressure and stress had stolen any remaining holiday joy from my system.