I grab my silk dressing gown now, then tread down the hall and downstairs into the kitchen. Sunlight is streaming through the bay window I dreamed up with an architect when we built this place years ago. The house is perfect. A dream house. It’s hard to believe something so beautiful can contain an existence this dismal.
Every morning, I psych myself up to ask for a divorce. Every night, as I close my eyes, I kick myself for chickening out. Fictional triplet babies or not, Oliver still seems fixated on me. Or maybe it’s that a divorce would reflect badly on him. My own life has evaporated. I’m a plus-one in his. Constantly charming his clients, smoothing his path, calming his nerves, boosting his spirits, while my own direction is lost—the path so overgrown underfoot I can’t find it.
I flick on the kettle, and it starts rumbling to life while I check my phone. As I scroll through the same mind-numbing wasteland as always, something catches my eye.
It’s a post from the official school account from St. Ag’s. Notification of the death of an ex-student, after a short illness. I remember her. She was in our year.
She wasthirty. A vet. Always clever. She volunteered at the animal shelter, as I recall. I can picture her so clearly.
“Too young,” I whisper. “So much life ahead. Several decades.”
So much life ahead. DECADES.
My own future crowds in, swamping me with its awfulness until I gulp for breath and feel like I might die too.
I can’t do this anymore. Not for one single day.
I have a sudden, unbelievable need to talk to Bree. Piece by piece of our friendship broke off every time Oliver couldn’t cope with me going out, or thought I was on the phone too long or was sending too many messages. She got sick of me hanging up and canceling plans and not responding to texts. Even then she agreed to be my bridesmaid, but we fought at the wedding when I wouldn’t let her help me call it off. The obvious choice, in retrospect. But Oliver convinced me afterward that she was the bad, unsupportive friend, and I was better off without her.
I open a message to her.Pippa Marsh died, I type. No “Hello.” No “Long time no hear.” No “Sorry I let my husband ruin everything we ever were to each other.”
As I wait for her to respond, I scroll up and read our last few messages. Before the post-wedding silence, it’s nothing but a string of broken promises and apologies from me. I keep scrolling. The further back I go, the longer my messages get. The less apologetic. Warmer. I’m more focused onlife. Talking rubbish about inconsequential but, in retrospect, beautiful things. And I’m grief-stricken for having lost that. Lost Bree.
Not just her. My parents too.
And Drew.
I flick to my messages with him. I have to go a lot further back, but it’s the same pattern. The air that was sucked out of our friendship in the later messages gradually coming to life the further back in time I travel.
Not just the friendship coming to life. Me.
And when the kettle clicks off, steam rising out of the spout, I decide I cannot spend another morning standing here at this bench, watching this kettle boil. Watching my precious life slip through my fingers.
I can’t give another single day to this man.
79
Drew
It’s eight at night and I’m stacking the dishwasher in my apartment in Surry Hills when my phone pings with the email from Sony. I can hardly bring myself to open it. I’d submitted an entry into the World Photography Awards—the most prestigious photo competition—and hadn’t heard anything back, so I assumed it was another rejection.
I collect rejections. It’s part of my strategy for success. Every time I enter something, or bid for an assignment, or take a risk, I write it down. I’m aiming for one hundred rejections in a year, which would theoretically mean a higher rate of success too. If you’ve got a modicum of talent, surely it’s a numbers game? I open the email.
Dear Mr. Kennedy,
We are pleased to let you know …
I have to reread the start of the opening sentence because I’m sure I imagined it.
We are pleased to let you know your photo series, Pictures of You, has been shortlisted from more than 170,000 entriesfrom 171 countries and is a finalist in the documentary project category in this year’s award.
I sit back on the couch in silence.
This is it. The news I’ve imagined receiving ever since I started taking photography seriously in high school. So many photos. So much time spent learning how to improve. So many rejections and failures and setbacks.Somany dreams and so much future career potential, even being placed as a finalist in this very competition.
Without thinking, I reach for my phone.I’ll call Mum …
And then it descends, again. That sinking realization that I can’t do that. That every good thing that happens to me now has this horrible flipside of loss. And she would be so proud of this.
