The suggestion is delivered into charged silence, while the two of us stand on the verandah like chastised schoolboys, all torn shirts and scrapes and bruises, being forced to make up after a fight.
Is she envisaging matching suits and a reception speech?
‘I’ll compose something,’ Josh says. ‘She can walk down the aisle to it.’
If anyone’s writing music for this ceremony, it will be Audrey. Or Parker. Or they’ll co-write.
Mum glares at me and tosses her head at Josh, because it’s my role, apparently, to smooth the way for him. She cannot possibly be insinuating that Josh still cares. Or that he ever cared for Audrey the way that I do. She still doesn’t know he betrayed her—Audrey won’t let me set the record straight. All my parents saw was the way he acted out when she left. As if they’d been in a proper relationship and he’d loved her. Not used her to get ahead.
She pulls me into a corner after he goes inside with Dad. ‘You keep insisting it was only ever professional between the two of them, but, Fraser, when have you known “colleagues” to have that sort of chemistry? This New York job is another important step. We can’t have him falling to pieces at yet another critical moment in his career!’
It’s followed in my head by a familiar echo.You’re like your father, Fraser. Solid. Uncomplicated. Josh is fragile. You know he battles depression …
I didn’t tell her at seventeen and I’m not telling her at thirty-nine.
‘Are you asking me not to marry her, Mum?’ I’m not serious, but the way her eyes light up, I feel compelled to add, ‘That’s rhetorical, by the way. Of course I’m bloody marrying her!’
She recoils. ‘Language, for goodness’ sake! I just want both my boys settled and happy.’
I could educate her with stories from around the time Josh was hanging out with Audrey. All the bars I extracted him from. All the women I had to help get home when he’d had enough of them. Josh doesn’tcare. He isn’t capable of loving anything but his own career. People are dispensable. Audrey particularly.
Music bursts from inside the house. Some modern classical thing I’ve never heard. On he goes, climbing higher, and suddenly I amsickof pandering to my ‘fragile’ brother over this. Audrey’s still worried about the ramifications for me and Parker if Josh gets mixed up in the plagiarism case, while the one thing holding her back from chasing the recognition and success she deserves is offending my family.
I scoop up my keys and wallet.
This suddenly feels urgent. Audrey knows I have her back, but she still doesn’t have her own. The higher the volume on my brother’s music, the clearer it is that my incredible wife-to-be needs to put her demons to bed, take the extraordinary step of putting herself first for once, and unleash those creative fire-works she’s promised.
19
AUDREY
‘It’s been almost three years since those penguin emails,’ I say, arguing with Sara, who’s reeling at the unexpected sight of the diamond ring on my left hand. We bought it from an antique shop the day after Fraser accidentally proposed. She’s shocked by the news that we’re getting married in five weeks.
Sara’s always been hysterical, while I habitually underreact. As teenagers, I’d be cliff-diving and she’d forever swim between flags. Now she chairs boards and intermittently fasts and has a proper retirement fund. Justoncein all her forty-three years has Sara ever been so careless as to fall in love.It could derail me, Audrey!
‘But why the hurry?’ she asks. ‘Is this a shotgun wedding?’
‘It’s not the 1950s!’
‘But are you pregnant?’
‘Is it so hard to grasp that we’re just in love?’
She knows Fraser. Apparently it’s not hard to grasp that part. She can’t get over this idea that I would do something so seemingly spontaneous and hectic. ‘He didn’t even mean to propose, Audrey!’
‘Fraser and I have been living together since before the start—we’re in our late thirties. People get married at first sight on TV!’
‘Hardly something to emulate!’ she says. ‘You’re still in the honeymoon period.’
‘Statistically, we’re beyond that.’
‘Don’t make this level of commitment until the gloss has worn off!’
‘The gloss isn’tgoingto wear off,’ I protest, even though I know it’s almost inevitable that our combustible attraction might dim over time. ‘Grandma Sullivan told me her heart still skipped a beat when she saw Grandpa well into their eighties! And they married afterthree months.’
‘Because he was going off to war! Seriously, Audrey. Remember all those explosive couples at the law firm?’
She’s just scared. Getting accidentally engaged during an ordinary dinner is the complete opposite of the kind of thing she herself would do, and she can’t force the concept into her brain.
