“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.
Notareyou going to tell Bella, butwhen. 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 labelledChris. 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. Christrying 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.
