‘Rose, I think you’re wrong about Julia,’ Dan goes on. ‘Although she says we’re over now, I don’t think she wants us to be apart, or to actually leave me, for good.’
Time to nip that one in the bud.
‘I didn’t say she would,’ Rose points out, ‘just that she could. Julia can choose not to get back with you. We can’t bind people to us. The problem occurs when the relationship becomes one-sided, when one person is co-dependent on the other. Where one person walks on eggshells to avoid hurting the other.’
Dianne snorts loudly.
‘You want to add something, Dianne?’ asks Rose.
Dianne’s eyes narrow. ‘You’re smothering your girlfriend, Dan,’ she says abruptly, her Melbourne accent strong. ‘You do everything for her.What if something happens to you and she’s left there, all alone, not able to do anything because you refused to let her be an ordinary person with needs? Or …’
Dianne looks very fierce now.
‘What if she wants to escape but you won’t let her go? What if you’re caging her like a wild animal?’
‘No!’ says Dan. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. She needs me, I’m the person she turns to when she needs help—’
‘So you’re her all-powerful man, are you?’ Dianne demands. ‘Poor, bewildered Julia’s own personal god. Not that I believe in God,’ she adds as an aside to Rose. ‘I want to know why God is never there when you call for him. I don’t believe in that manifesting rubbish, either. Psychic ordering. Huh.’ She snorts again.
India, who loves psychic ordering, looks appalled.
‘Why do people get a new car or a new job thanks to psychic ordering and people in poor countries still get nothing but war and famine? Answer me that?’
She’s shouting now and Rose, who has let this conversation run on, is pleased that Dianne’s cracking open.
‘Do you feel God has let you down?’ she asks Dianne gently.
‘Don’t believe in him,’ Dianne snaps. ‘It’s all fake. No point waiting for God. It’s up to everyone to fix themselves. All this religion nonsense is to make people feel happy about themselves when they’re really horrible people: they go to church, sing along to the hymns, and let me tell you this …’
She stands up, feet apart in an angry stance. ‘That’s all for show,’ she hisses. ‘Stupid people worrying about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Real people can suffer and nobody cares! Worse, the people closest to them don’t care. It’s all for the audience. Butyouknow that, Rose,’ she snaps nastily.
Dianne pushes past her chair and storms off.
Rose lets her go.
‘She’s wrong about me and Julia.’ Dan is ashen now. ‘I don’t control Julia: I couldn’t. She’s—’ He halts, obviously at a loss for words. ‘She’s a force of nature – I love
her so much. We need time apart because she’s been so stressed …’
Rose lets him catch his breath.
‘Dan, I know this will be difficult but can you tell me what happened the last time Julia tried to commit suicide?’ Rose asks gently.
‘Obviously, I wasn’t there when she did it,’ Dan says brokenly. ‘That rips me apart. That she needed me and I wasn’t there for her.’
Rose simply nods.
‘She phoned me, told me what she’d done, that she was on her own and then hung up. I clicked onto automatic pilot and I called for an ambulance.’
He starts to cry, tears making their way down his lean face. ‘Her cousin Miriam was away, so nobody else would have found Julia in time, nobody else knew what she’d done. Just me. On the phone, she said I’d driven her to it.’
The story is blurted out as if he wants to be sentenced to a hundred lashes for telling it.
Nobody on the sun-filled terrace moves although Rose can see India’s hand reach out as if she’s flattening a desire to pat Dan’s sinewy arm.
Finally, India makes a decision and, for a brief moment, she pats Dan’s arm comfortingly, then whips her hand back.
The women in the group look deeply sad at seeing Dan so distraught.
