Me Without You (10 page)

‘If anything is going to make an environmentalist out of you, surely this is it.’

‘It’s amazing.’ I’d visited the area before, but couldn’t remember being so awed by the sheer magnitude of it. I took my camera and snagged a few shots, including one of Lilah as she gazed outwards. She caught me and flashed a grin my way, so I snapped an extra shot. When I looked at the photo I’d taken, I was struck by the full force of the wonder I’d felt for photography as a child. I could capture a moment in time, and freeze it forever, and now I’d done it with something really worthy of such magic.

‘Come on then!’ Lilah walked ahead. ‘We have a big day ahead of us!’

S
he wasn’t kidding
.

We walked for hours. From Echo Point we headed down the Giant Stairway, and when we’d finally descended all nine hundred metal and stone stairs, found ourselves beneath the treeline at the bottom of the valley. Signs posted us towards various options to return to the top, including a railway and an overhead carriage, but when I pointed these out, Lilah laughed at me and turned me with some determination towards a longer trek.

‘Where exactly are you taking me?’ I asked her as we left the other tourists and headed deeper into the bushland. There was a well-defined and signposted track, but we were now alone, except for the teeming birdlife I could hear in the canopy above us.

‘Leura Forest. This is the Dardanelles Pass. We’ll return via the Federal Pass and then head back up the stairs.’

‘
Up
the stairs?’ I gasped, ‘No! Up?!’

‘Yep. Up.’

We walked for the next few hours, over blessedly flatter terrain, stopping to snack on the fruit she’d packed and rest very briefly every now and again. As we walked, we talked at first about the area and the wildlife, but then as our footsteps wound into deeper territory, so did our conversation.

‘The first time I came here, I was with my dad,’ Lilah explained. ‘I think Mum might have been teaching back in Katoomba—maybe she was doing a one-off workshop. I don’t think we were here for long. I just remember it took forever to get down the stairs, and some point near the bottom I just flatly refused to go any further, so Dad had to carry me. He scooped me up in his arms and then sat me on his shoulders right on top of the backpack he was carrying. At some point he convinced me to get down and we walked all the way to Leura Forest. On the way back up the stairs he was so positive and so encouraging that I actually made it all the way back up by myself. ‘The smile that had settled on her face was transformative. She glanced at me. ‘My Dad was amazing. He was one of those pure souls, who just loved with his whole heart. I think if anyone else had married my mum, she’d have eaten them alive; she’s always been ninety-nine per cent music. But Dad, he had this way of bringing out the other one per cent in her, and that was the best part of her. He went to the most extraordinary lengths to support her, because making her dreams come true became
his
dream.’ She was quiet for a long moment, then she admitted, ‘I miss him every day.’

‘Do you think you take after him?’ All I knew about him was the simple story she’d just told me, and already I could see the similarities. Lilah laughed and shook her head.

‘Dad was tall and stocky, and he had a broad Scottish accent. He came here when he was a teenager to live with his aunt and uncle. He was a quiet guy until he warmed up to people, and then he was the loudest man in the room. He’d build up to this enormous, booming voice and he seemed to use a burst of laughter to end every sentence. I inherited his hair, and maybe a few other traits, but I actually think I’m just like Mum. She has her music, I have the law—we’re both obsessive, just in different ways. Who are you more like, your mum or your dad?’

I grimaced.

‘I’m not really sure. I look like a lot like Dad, except I’ve still got Mum’s hair. By my age Dad was starting to go bald.’

‘You do seem to appreciate your hair.’

‘It’s my best feature.’

‘No way. Your eyes and your jaw are your best features. Your hair is fine though.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ I laughed. ‘I think.’

‘What did your mum look like?’

‘She was beautiful,’ I said. My throat tightened. ‘Even as she aged, she had this softness… a kindness about her. You could see it in her eyes. I think that was so startling that even if she’d had a wart on the end of her nose, no one would have noticed.’

‘Did she have a career?’

‘Her career was our family. She used to say the three of us boys were each a full-time job. I think she spent about two decades playing referee to the twins.’

‘Not you?’

‘Oh, no,’ I chuckled. ‘I was
not
into rumbling. I was into hobbies: reading or drawing or photography, depending on how old I was. Ed or Will would often try to drag me into their scuffles and I’d get up and walk away.’

‘It really sounds like you had a wonderful upbringing.’

‘I know. And it was, in so many ways. I was lucky. Ed and Will were so close, and Mum and Dad were so close…’

The path curved around to a clearing, alongside which a small creek trickled down a mini waterfall. The gentle sound of the water joined the symphony of life playing around us, and automatically we stopped to watch the flow of water for a moment.

Lilah stepped a little closer to me. She looped her elbow through mine and prompted me, ‘Did you feel left out?’

‘I knew they all loved me. And I knew I wasn’t a bad kid; I was never in trouble, and Mum and Dad were always proud of me. But I still felt like the black sheep. It’s ridiculous because I’m sure it was all in my head. The bond the twins had with each other was just so different to the one they each had with me, and Mum and Dad… well, they were in love—like absolutely besotted, even after decades. I can vividly remember a few times talking away at the dinner table about the things I’d done at school, and looking up to realise that Mum was just staring at Dad and it was like I wasn’t even there.’ It suddenly struck me that here I was complaining about my stable, love-drenched childhood to someone who’d lived in seven countries before she turned twelve. I hastily tried to qualify my comments, ‘Which is, you know, it’s all fine. It’s just the way it was.’

We were deep in the valley now, and hadn’t seen anyone else for quite a while. For all I knew, the universe could have been reduced to just the two of us and a million birds and unidentified animals scuffling near us in the shrubbery. I thought about the things I’d just said, the private fears and insecurities that I’d never given voice to before. Maybe I’d never even admitted them to myself. I had a sudden memory of lying beside the first girl I’d ever slept with. I remembered trying to catch my breath, afraid to open my eyes in case I saw disappointment on her face.

‘I think that everything has a good and a bad side—everything, even though at the time most things that happen in life seem to be entirely good or entirely bad,’ Lilah murmured, and I finally looked at her. Her expression was thoughtful, and there was compassion in her face, instead of contempt. I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Living like a gypsy as a kid was an amazing adventure, even while it totally screwed up my education and my understanding of normality. And it’s the same for your family, Cal. Even though it was beautiful and stable and you adored your folks, it must have been very isolating being the fifth wheel in a family of pairs. You don’t have to pretend it wasn’t.’

‘I like talking to you.’ I blurted, perhaps channelling a little too much of that awkward teenage memory. Lilah’s arm was still looped through mine, and she leant her face into my upper arm for a brief moment. It was a strange gesture, almost reminiscent of that moment earlier in the morning when she’d stood before the valley and inhaled so very deeply.

‘I like talking to you,’ she said after a moment, and then she shifted herself so that she could stand in front of me to lean back into my chest. I wrapped my arms around her waist and rested my chin on her head, and together we watched the waterfall.

I
t was
late afternoon when we finally wound our way back to the stairs. I’d nearly filled the card on my camera, we were just about out of water, and my thighs were burning before we even started the ascent. It had been a full day, but Lilah refused to even entertain the idea of catching the railway back up.

‘That’s cheating!’ she protested when I suggested it. I was exhilarated, but exhausted too, and although I could see she wasn’t going to admit it, she was also tired. She’d stumbled a few times on the return path, and although she was still grinning like a mischievous child, I could see the weariness on her face.

‘If I can make it back up there as a kid, you can surely do it as an adult,’ she teased me. And so we climbed, squeezed in among a throng of tourists heading back up to the lookout. Most of the crowd was silent as we tried to focus all of our energies on the exertion required for the nearly vertical stairway. It was fast becoming cold as the sun left the valley, and there were white puffs of steam visible when people exhaled.

It was as I saw the top before us, and just as a final burst of energy and relief came over me, that Lilah slipped. She didn’t fall far, just a few stairs down, and I reacted quickly enough to catch her and stop her tumbling further. She ended up on her backside against the cliff, and I could see immediately that she’d actually injured herself.

‘Lilah?’

She was wincing, and pointed vaguely towards her left ankle.

‘I think I sprained it.’ There was genuine pain in her voice. The surging crowd was moving around us as if we were a rock in a stream. I shifted her back into a standing position and she tried to put her weight on the foot. She immediately cried out and leant into me.

‘Uh-oh,’ she said. She looked at me with pleading eyes. ‘I don’t think I can walk the rest of the way.’

I lifted her high against my chest and started very slowly walking again. It didn’t matter that Lilah was tiny and thin; the extra weight made my already tired muscles burn, each step demanded a monumental effort. Lilah pressed her face into my neck and wrapped her arms around me.

After a few steps, I said between gasps, ‘You shouldn’t have told me about the time you made your dad carry you down. I know you’re only putting this on to get out of the walk.’

She kissed me on the cheek.

‘And yet… you’re still carrying me.’

‘What can I say? I can’t resist a pretty girl.’

I carried her all the way back to the café in the tourist centre at the lookout, then gently removed her shoe to investigate the damage. Between the swelling and the bruise that was already visible, I could see that Lilah wasn’t going to be walking anywhere for the rest of the day. I propped her foot up onto her daybag on the opposite chair, then went to fetch some warm drinks and supplies.

For the next little while, we stared out into the valley we’d conquered together. Lilah alternated between a cup of tea and a bottle of cold water. I sat beside her, hugging a latte towards my chest as I tried to warm my fingers up. I was thinking about the situation we were in, her foot and the best way to get home without causing her any further pain.

‘We could catch a cab back to the train station? Or even back down to Manly if you want—I’ll get it,’ I suggested. The taxi fare would be hundreds of dollars, but the journey from the mountains to Manly otherwise involved at least a train and a ferry transfer, not to mention the blocks we’d have to walk back to either of our homes.

‘Let’s stay the night,’ she said suddenly. I looked at her blankly.

‘But you’re hurt.’

‘Oh, it’s just a sprain,’ she dismissed my concern with a wave of her hand before she pointed to the east. ‘There are some gorgeous hotels over that way. Let’s go find one and stay.’

‘We didn’t even bring clothes. Or deodorant. Or toothbrushes.’

‘We can re-wear these ones. You
will
survive without deodorant for one day, I promise. And I’m sure we can find toothbrushes.’

‘What about pyjamas?’

‘Callum, I
never
wear pyjamas. You’ll survive one night without them,’ she laughed. ‘You do realise that we’re making a terrible habit of me bullying you into having fun. Come on, go find us a taxi.’

The idea was growing on me and my protests suddenly seemed ridiculous. We could find a romantic nest for the night, and I could nurse her back to health.

‘I suppose it makes sense. The trip back might be a bit easier tomorrow?’

Lilah grinned. She sat her hand over mine on the table.

‘Absolutely. I’m
way
too injured to sit on my backside and travel an hour back to the city, so we best stay here in this magnificent wilderness so I can rest. Taxi, please.’

T
he helpful taxi
driver took us to a heritage-style building on the edge of a cliff, and I left Lilah in the car while I ran in to enquire about a booking for the night. They had several options for rooms, including a deluxe suite with a spa, overlooking the valley.

‘I’ll take the king room—’ I began automatically, but then changed my mind and withdrew my credit card. ‘No, actually, can you give me the suite, please?’

The room had an open fireplace and a king bed, and the receptionist was more than happy to arrange toothbrushes and an icepack and some pain relief for Lilah. Once I had the room key, I returned to help Lilah out of the taxi and to the elevator.

By now, the sun was starting to set and the valley was aglow with late-afternoon light. The fire was only freshly lit, but the underfloor heating had the room toasty anyway. We both sighed as we stepped inside and felt the ambient temperature.

‘That’s better,’ I breathed, walking straight to the fire. Lilah, on the other hand, hobbled awkwardly to the balcony and opened the doors. ‘Lilah, what the hell
are you doing?’

‘Can you get some bubbles from the minibar?’ Lilah stepped outside to survey the valley, and then called back, ‘Was there a restaurant downstairs?’

‘There is, but—’ I’d had visions of room service and her resting her ankle on a pillow while we ate.