“Yeah,” said Patrick tiredly. “I know, mate, you’re right, but it’s complicated—”
“Hey, guys.” Patrick’s brother appeared at Jack’s doorway. “I’ve got to get going. Meeting some friends.”
Jack took Simon’s arrival as his opportunity to escape back downstairs. “See ya!” he said, giving his uncle a high five on the way out.
“You two look totally trashed.” Simon shook his head in wonder before heading back downstairs.
“Thanks so much,” Ellen called after him.
Patrick stood up and gave his hand to Ellen to haul her up.
She grunted. “Ooof. I feel trashed.”
Patrick pulled her to him and she rested her head against his chest for a moment. Her head swirled. Poor little Jack thinking it was his fault. Poor Saskia losing her lucky marble. Poor David being dumped by Mum for being boring. Poor me, because Patrick doesn’t really love me and I’m having a teeny-tiny baby and oh my God in heaven my br**sts hurt.
“Everything is going to be fine,” said Patrick quietly in her ear.
“Is it?” she said.
When they got downstairs they found Anne had given up on her halfhearted attempt to help Patrick’s mother and was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a glass of wine while Maureen kept packing the dishwasher.
“Well, I have to dash,” she said when she saw Ellen. “Pip and Mel and I are meeting up for a drink. There’s a new wine bar in the city we’ve been meaning to try.”
“You’re going into the city now?” Maureen looked at the clock on Ellen’s kitchen wall. It was eight p.m. “Goodness.”
“Oh, we three are night owls!” said Anne.
It was like her interlude with Ellen’s father had never happened. His appearance hadn’t been a giant upheaval in Ellen’s life at all, just an odd little ripple.
Anne ended up leaving together with Simon, who coincidentally was meeting friends at a club on the same street as Anne’s wine bar, and was thrilled to save on cab money into the city. “Well, that’s just so nice of you, Anne,” said Maureen unhappily.
After Ellen and Maureen had finished clearing up the kitchen (Ellen’s kitchen cabinets hadn’t been so sparkling clean since before her grandmother had died), Patrick’s father suggested a game of Monopoly. He’d spotted the box sitting on Ellen’s grandmother’s shelf and was rubbing his hands and promising to bankrupt them all within the hour.
While George was setting up the board, carefully stacking banknotes into neat piles, Patrick asked if he and Ellen could be excused from the game.
“We might take a quick walk on the beach,” he said, raising his eyebrows questioningly at Ellen. She nodded. Maybe that would clear her head.
“It’s a cold, windy night in the middle of winter and in the middle of the night!” protested Maureen. “And your wife is pregnant!”
“It’s spring and it’s half past eight,” said Patrick. “It’s quite balmy and I don’t think the baby will mind.”
“And I’m not his wife,” said Ellen.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Yet!” she amended hastily. “I mean, obviously, I will be.”
“Off you go then.” Maureen gave Patrick and Ellen a swift, searching look, a specialist appraising their relationship for hairline cracks that might cause trouble. Then she rearranged her face and said, “After you come back, George and I might duck out for a game of tennis in the moonlight.”
“Ooh, my wife is so sarcastic!” said George. “Here, darling, I’ve got the iron for you.” He held up the miniature iron from the Monopoly set.
“You know perfectly well I always have the battleship.” Maureen sat down at the head of the table and rattled the dice in her cupped hands. “Come on, Jack! Don’t think I’m going easy on you because of one broken bone!”
Patrick was right. The wind had dropped and it felt good to walk out onto the deserted beach in their jackets and scarves. The sand was still orange from the dust, but the salty cold air seemed dust-free, and they both took big, bracing breaths before tramping straight down toward the hard sand close to the water.
They walked side by side without touching. Ellen concentrated on the rhythmic hollow sound of the waves crashing on the beach and her own breathing.
“So,” said Patrick finally.
“So.”
“So that threw me for a six.”
“Jack.”
“Yes. I mean, I thought the fact that he never asked for Saskia was a good thing! It never occurred to me that he blamed himself for her leaving.” His voice cracked. “Poor little tacker.”
Ellen had noticed that in times of stress Patrick spoke more like his father: the language of Australia in the 1950s.
“Children think they’re the center of the universe,” said Ellen. “That’s why they blame themselves.”
“I think,” said Patrick, “that he’s been angry with me about Saskia for years.”
“It’s possible.” Ellen stopped herself from saying anything more. He needed to work this out for himself.
They walked in silence for a few minutes and then Patrick said quietly, “She was a good mother to him. She…”
His words drifted away, and he looked up to the stars as if for inspiration. Then he took a deep breath and began to speak quickly, without looking at her, as if they were secret agents who had met on a beach and he only had limited time to brief her on this urgent information.
“When Colleen died I didn’t cope very well. I’d never felt that sort of pain before, it scared the crap out of me. I thought, What’s this? This hurts! So my brilliant strategy was to resist it. I remember thinking, I’m not going through that seven stages of grieving bullshit. If it hurts to think about her, then don’t. Get busy. That’s why I started the business. I thought if I tried hard enough, if I was mentally strong enough, I could avoid the pain. So that worked out really well, as you can imagine. I was a walking, talking, breathing robot. But people thought I was coping great. They complimented me. And it was sort of true. I was coping. And then I met Saskia at that conference, and you know, I liked her; I probably even loved her, in my weird, robotic way. But she didn’t seem to notice I was a robot! We’d be doing stuff, and she’d be smiling at me, and every now and then I’d think, in a sort of surprised way, she’s really happy, she’s not putting it on, she’s genuinely happy. And I thought, Well, it doesn’t matter, because this is who I am now, and Jack’s happy— Watch your feet there.”