Kim manages a half smile. Suze is her mate as well as being Bella’s best friend’s mother, and she can usually talk about most things with her. “Not really. But I don’t want to talk about it yet. It’s complicated.”
Suze nods and touches Kim’s arm. “Any time you want to talk, give me a shout. We’ll ship the kids off to Sab’s for a sleepover and have ourselves a night in.”
“Sounds good.” Her smile is more solid now. Suze is a sympathetic soul, and she’s a clam with confidences. She’ll tell her eventually, when it’s all settled in her mind. What happened today. What she’s going to do next.
She wishes she knew the answer to that one.
“Do you need more time to yourself?” Suze’s dark eyes shine with empathy. She was the person Kim called when Chris disappeared, the person she confided in when it seemed Chris wasn’t who he’d said—although she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Suze the details.
“Jorie and I are going to choose a birthday present for Jaylyn’s party next week,” Suze continues. “Bella can come too.”
Relief trickles through Kim’s chest. Not relief that she can shunt off her daughter—Bella is her heart—but relief that she won’t have to pretend she’s okay in front of her. A few more hours to regroup, to slip her reassuring everything-is-okay mummy-mask back into place, is perfect.
“Thank you.” She squeezes Suze’s hand. “You always seem to know what I need.”
“No worries. You’d do the same for me. You have done—often.”
That’s true. Kim was there for Suze when her partner left her—not in a car crash, but for a younger woman with better bodywork, as Suze put it. Kim takes a twenty-dollar note from her purse and hands it to Suze. “I’ll check Bella’s okay with this—I’m sure she’ll be delighted. If she goes, she can pick a present for Jaylyn too. Can you hang on to this for her?”
“Perfect.” Suze tucks the note into the pocket of her jeans.
Kim follows the sound of giggling to the back of the house and asks Bella if she wants to go shopping with Jorie.
“Duh,” says Bella. “Of course.”
And that’s sorted, and Kim suddenly has precious hours to herself to let the events of the morning settle into some sort of place.
With a wave to Suze, she returns to her car and drives off. Where to go? A walk, she thinks, not a run or a swim. The gentler exercise will allow her to process what’s happened. She drives further around Port Phillip Bay, parks by Sandringham Yacht Club, and sets her feet to the Coastal Trail. It runs alongside beaches and clifftops, and there are cafés and places to sit along the way.
As her feet beat an even rhythm along the gravel path, she untethers her thoughts and encourages them to fly free. Kim doesn’t let herself think about Chris, about Danika and Camille, about the shitstorm her life has become these past months. She concentrates on the bay, the water, calm today, and blue, like irises, like her daughter’s eyes.
She thinks about her latest client—an older lady who’s hired her to declutter the family home after her husband’s death. Her children are both in America, and they don’t want heavy furniture, their father’s shirts, or printed photos. The widow, Eleanor, can’t face the cleanout, so she’s hired Kim to do it. It’s what she does—help people sort through the detritus of their homes and decide what to keep, what to sell, and what goes to the op shop or the tip.
It’s ironic that Kim does this so well for others, when Chris’s shirt still hangs on the chair in the bedroom, a pair of his tennis shoes are in the wardrobe, and his favourite breakfast cereal is in the pantry. She and Bella hate the stuff, but Kim still bought another box last week as the old one had expired.
And then, despite her best intentions, her mind is full of Chris again, although he never really left it. Every time she looks at Bella, she sees Chris’s blue eyes and dirty-blond hair. She sees his echo in the way Bella tilts her head when she’s concentrating,and the way she spreads Vegemite so thickly on her toast. Kim sucks a deep breath, and the familiar cycle of emotions cascades through her: sadness for a life lost too early, worry for Bella and how she’s coping, and anger. A deep, dark anger at what Chris did—his deception, his lies—so many lies, so many enormous, unforgivable lies.
It was that anger that drove her to Danika’s door this morning. She’d wanted to see the other woman.
It was the wrong thing to do—she realises that now. Wrong to upend Danika’s life without warning, without preparation. Wrong to appear, throw something so unbelievable at her—and then disappear. Although Danika asked her to leave. Guilt intertwines with acid in Kim’s stomach.
She walks faster, powering along the coastal path like a woman on a mission. And she is, in a way—she’s trying to shed her guilt in the sweat of effort. At Red Bluff Lookout, she stops and sits on a bench. It wasn’t as if she’d just found Danika’s address. She’s known about her and Camille for the last five months, ever since the private investigator she’d hired to find out what happened to Chris requested a face-to-face meeting.
She should have run back then. Refused the meeting, and skipped off into the sunset with Bella, leaving Chris as an unsolved mystery.
But now, she’s come face-to-face with his widow. His legal widow, unlike her, who was his de facto. Not illegal, but definitely very, very unethical.
Even now, that makes her want to spit.
Kim rises and starts walking back the way she came. There is nothing more she can do about Danika. She can’t return there, and Danika is unlikely to contact her, even if she remembers her last name.
So she’ll return the way she came, albeit at a less heart-pounding pace. She’ll find a café where she’ll drink somethingstrong with almond milk, and treat herself to a slice of cake, gooey and decadent, and hope the saying is true—that time heals all things.
And then, she’ll go home and clean the apartment until it’s time to collect Bella.
Because she needs to forget about Danika and Camille, and she might as well have a clean apartment.
Chapter Three
