Chapter 6 Kim
Chapter Six
Kim
“How was today?” Kim makes eye contact with Bella in the rearview mirror.
Bella chomps her muesli bar and grins through a mouthful of oats and cranberries. “Good. Cami and I were the best at dribbling.”
“Cami?” Kim asks, although she knows.
“My friend. Can I have another muesli bar?”
“Sure. There’s another in the outside pocket of my bag.” Bella’s inherited Chris’s endless energy and appetite, along with his lean build.
Bella fishes another bar from Kim’s bag. “Tomorrow we’re gonna learn how to head the ball.”
“And tonight, you’re going to put all your soccer kit in the washing machine instead of leaving it on the bathroom floor, else you won’t have clean kit for tomorrow.”
“Can Jorie come over? I want to show her what we learned today.”
“Call her and see if she wants to come eat with us. We’re having nachos. Ask Suze if she wants to stay too.”
“Cool.” Bella picks Kim’s mobile phone from her bag and pushes Suze’s number. After a quick conversation, she says, “They’ll come around in an hour. Suze is staying too.”
“Good.” Kim changes down for the roundabout. “So you’ll have twenty minutes to put your kit in the machine. You can wear your school shorts to play with Jorie.”
The kids are running soccer drills in the park across the street from Kim’s apartment. Kim and Suze sit on the balcony, where they have an uninterrupted view of the girls. Kim fetches two glasses of wine, sits next to Suze on the wicker lounge, and puts her feet on the low table in front of them.
“Bella’s great to do this,” Suze says. She brushes her thick, black hair from her face. “Jorie was heartbroken she couldn’t attend the clinic.”
Kim nods. It’s hard for Suze as a single parent. She does okay as a phone and internet clairvoyant and from her card readings at the St Kilda Sunday markets, but there’s not enough for expensive soccer clinics.
“Try to stop her,” Kim says. “She just wants an excuse to run around and play more soccer, even though she’s done that for hours today.”
“Maybe next time,” Suze says. “I had a good day today—the phone barely stopped ringing. Many people want to know who’s going to win the election so they can place a bet.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I looked up the polling this morning, so I said that.” She grins. “You don’t have to be a clairvoyant to read the polls.”
“So that’s the new topic of the week? No more questions about whether to default on the mortgage because nuclear war is imminent?”
“No. Although asking if the person they’ve just matched with on a dating app is their true love is still popular. That one will always be.” Suze sighs and turns her head to follow Jorie and Bella as they run up the park chasing the ball.
“True love. Never what anyone thinks.” Kim swallows hard and swirls the wine in her glass before taking a sip.
“I’m sorry.” Suze reaches out a hand. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
The ball of emotion that never leaves her chest swells again.
When Chris first disappeared, her life became a solid knot of anguish and worry.
Not knowing where he was, or if he was all right.
And then the tearing disbelief when no one seemed to know him.
His work, which it turned out wasn’t his work after all.
His British parents were dead. And of course, his friends’ details were stored on his mobile phone, and that disappeared with him.
Then came the slow burn of anger: at the police who said he didn’t exist. At the banks, law offices, insurance agents, and superannuation funds who had no record of him, despite what Chris had said.
At the private investigator who said he doubtless existed under another name and took weeks and thousands of dollars to find him.
And then the cold wash of anger that obliterated everything else once she had the investigator’s report in her hands. That report goes everywhere with her; she dares not leave it at home in case Bella finds it.
Bella. She will have to say something to Bella eventually.
Kim looks out at the park again. She’s only told Suze the bare facts—that Chris wasn’t who he claimed.
She hasn’t told anyone that Chris had another wife and child, and that she knows who they are.
But now, the words beat in her chest, push into her throat, and spill out of her mouth before she can consider the wisdom of telling.
“Chris…He lied to me for nine years. He was married to another woman and had a child with her. Cami’s the same age as Bella.” The words sit between them, and Kim feels an overwhelming relief that finally—finally—she’s said them to someone who’s on her side.
Suze’s mouth forms an O of disbelief. “He what?” She passes a hand over her hair. “Is this real?”
Kim nods. She doesn’t trust her voice anymore.
“The bastard.” Suze’s voice is low, sharp with anger, cutting in its hatred. “The fucking bastard.” She turns to Kim and takes both her hands. “Tell me everything.”
Kim does.
“When are you going to tell Bella?” Suze says sometime later.
Not are you going to tell Bella, but when. Because there is no choice.
“I don’t know,” Kim says. “I still have to tell her he’s dead. She’s so young, and still grieving his disappearance. She keeps his photo under her pillow. Right now, I can’t see my way to understanding or forgiving this, but I don’t want to pass that on to Bella.”
Suze nods. “And then there’s Camille. And Danika.”
“I don’t know what to do.” Kim stares out across the gathering dusk to where the girls are still kicking the ball around. “Now though, I need to cook nachos and keep life as normal as I can for Bella.” She touches Suze’s hand. “Thanks for listening.”
“Come here.” Suze shuffles forward and envelops Kim in a hug.
It’s warm and comforting, and for a moment Kim lets herself pretend that this is just wine with her best friend and everything is normal and Chris is away in South Australia digging up the desert and examining core samples.
She shifts back. “Can you call the girls in, and I’ll get dinner on? It will be ten minutes.”
Suze nods and with a last squeeze of Kim’s shoulder and a kiss on the cheek, she stands and heads for the door.
In the kitchen, Kim shakes corn chips onto an oven tray, adds a tin of beans, salsa, chopped onions, capsicum, and mushrooms and tops it all with extra cheese. Hot sauce on the table for Bella. The nachos are in the oven, and she’s slicing avocado when Suze and the kids arrive back.
“Girls, can you wash your hands and then set the table, please?” Her voice sounds normal. Nearly.
Suze tops up Kim’s wineglass and adds a dribble to her own. “Okay?” she asks in a low voice.
Kim nods. She’s not okay, but that’s the way it is for now.
The next morning, Kim’s at the pitch early, sitting in the same spot on the grandstand. Bella’s already run across to the clubhouse, and Camille and her friend have just arrived.
Danika must be here too.
Kim wraps her hands around the takeaway cup of coffee. A second cup, heatproof lid in place, sits on the bench next to her. She doesn’t know if Danika will come up immediately, or indeed, at all, or how she takes her coffee, but she wants to be prepared.
Slow footsteps echo on the concrete steps.
Kim doesn’t look in that direction, merely takes a sip of her coffee, and watches the pitch.
“Hello.” Danika’s voice is breathy, unsure, as if she expects Kim to tell her to get lost. As if. “May I sit here?”
Kim looks across at her and picks up the second coffee. “I bought you this. I don’t know how you take it. There’s milk in it, and I have sugar if you want it.”
“Thanks. I don’t take sugar.” Danika takes the cup carefully, but their fingers brush even so.
The contact is unexpected, and Kim withdraws her hand quickly. She takes another sip from her own mug and waits for Danika to speak.
After a minute, Danika sets the cup down and turns to face her. “You have photos? I’m sure you do. It’s what partners do, isn’t it?”
Kim pulls her phone from her bag, unlocks it and opens the gallery, then hands it to Danika. “Look in the folder labelled Chris. If you scroll to the bottom, the pictures go back five years—I lost the older ones when my last phone died, but I have them at home.”
Danika takes the phone with a hand that trembles. It takes two stabs with her finger to get the folder to open.
Kim doesn’t move closer or try to editorialise the pictures, but she knows what Danika is seeing.
After all, she’s scrolled through them herself countless times in the last few months, searching for clues she should have picked up on.
The oldest one shows her and Chris and a three-year-old Bella on St Kilda Pier.
It’s a windy day, and the three of them are laughing and huddled together under a blanket.
She remembers asking a fisherperson to take the photo for them.
Danika scrolls through pictures of Bella’s ballet performance, Chris at his laptop on a corner of Kim’s home office desk.
Chris and Kim at a BBQ together, his arm around her.
Chris trying various glasses at the optometrist. She’d taken the photos so he could decide what frames suited him best. One of Chris in the shower, hands slicking back his hair, eyes closed, water streaming over his head.
It’s one of her favourites. Correction—it used to be.
Danika scrolls and stares and scrolls again, wiping moisture from her eyes. What must it be like for her, seeing her husband happy with another woman? Another daughter. The photos would ram home that this was no casual affair.
A few minutes later, she hands the phone back. “I had no idea about you. None. How stupid I was.”
This time Kim doesn’t halt her impulse and takes her hand. “I didn’t know about you either. Please believe me on that.” Danika’s hand is cold and dry, and Kim resists the temptation to run her thumb over the back.
“You said you hired a private investigator,” Danika says. “May I read the report?”
“Are you sure?” Kim studies her face, the short brown hair flattened on her head as if it needs a wash. It frames her drawn face too harshly.
Danika’s lips twist. “Not sure. But I need to know.”
Kim frees her hand, pulls the thick folder from her bag, and holds it out.
“Thanks.” Danika makes no move to take it, staring at it as if it’s an unexploded bomb. To her, it most likely is. “This folder is the end of everything I thought I knew.” She takes it, stands, and walks off. Kim watches her leave, anger twining through her veins.
Fuck Chris and his deception, messing up so many lives.