Me Without You (15 page)

2
4 October

So, yes, we’re officially together and I’ve let that happen. And rectifying the situation now isn’t as simple as just not seeing him anymore. I was going to sit him down in a café somewhere on a Saturday morning and, over a nice public brunch, I would quietly explain to him that we needed to take a break. I’d use words like that—
take a break
—so that he didn’t realise how final my intentions were. Then I’d delete his number from my phone and stop catching the ferry and just never respond if he tried to make contact again.

When I write it down like that, it really does look perfectly simple. I’d tell myself,
tomorrow’s the day
—and then I’d wake up in his bed and decide to wait
one more day
and the next thing I knew, another week had gone by.

All the while, his presence was spreading like roots across the soil of my life. My staff all know about him, Rupert the ferry attendant asked me where he was one morning when I commuted alone, and Jesse across the hall in my building asked me who he was.

He’s been learning all of my likes, my dislikes, my loves and some of my secrets. Not all of them, of course.

Gosford is like my secret retreat. It’s a world away from my apartment at Manly, which has always felt like a corporate shell for me to hide in when I’m in work mode. But the farm… God, the farm is like my inner sanctuary. I’ve retreated there to rest, to celebrate, to grieve, to lick my wounds and even just to reconnect with myself when life was too much. I’ve never taken anyone there before, not even Haruto, although he asked all of the time. It just never felt right. I guess I had so many reservations about our relationship that I didn’t want to expose that part of myself. He did know everything else about me—absolutely
everything
else—and I just wanted to keep something for me.

But with Cal, I want to be exposed. It’s a delicious game of cat and mouse we are playing, and I want to be caught. I want him to know the real me, or as much of me as he can in the time we have together.

And that’s why I decided to take him home. Whenever this thing winds up, I want him to remember me there, safe within my sanctuary, fully alive and fully myself.

G
osford is
about an hour and a half from our apartments, down beautiful scenic highways that congested like hell of an evening. It took a few weeks for us to organise our weekend away because we’d need to take Friday off so we could drive up early to avoid the peak-hour snarl. Although we took Lilah’s (inevitably hybrid) car, she was keen for me to drive.

‘I can work if you drive,’ she’d insisted, but her iPad and laptop sat untouched at her feet for the entire trip. Instead, Lilah looked out the window and talked about the national park that we passed and the waterways we saw.

Her relationship with nature was intense and her joy as we moved from the city into the greenery of the coast was tangible. She knew names of trees and types of forests and what species inhabited which creeks. She told me about the sand mines as we travelled north, and about the case she’d fought against the expansion of the motorway itself at one point.

Time and time again I knew that in another life Lilah would easily have lived off the land, growing her own food and being at one with the earth or some such nonsense. In that way, we were so different it was hard to imagine how we ever clicked at all. I ate with her so often now that I was fairly familiar with the foods she ate, but every time I bit into something plant-related that pretended to be meat, I felt cheated. I loved convenience meals and technology and television. She used all of those things, but as a way to enable her to work more—which, when it all boiled down, was her way of connecting with the earth in the life and time she’d wound up in.

The ‘farm’, as she called it occasionally, was just out of Gosford. Once we turned off the highway, the roads progressively became narrower and rougher, until we were on a little dirt road which ran parallel to the ocean.

‘There it is,’ she murmured as wrought-iron gates came into view just before a bend. Across the road I could see a small brick home, well-shielded by shrubs and trees. ‘And there’s Leon and Nancy’s house.’

I turned into the gates and we began a cautious journey down a long dirt driveway, lined on both sides by enormous grey gums.

Lilah’s beach home was the quintessential Australian beach house, without any flair or fanfare, right down to the deep blue weatherboard exterior and white trim. The one outstanding feature of the property was, as Lilah had described in painstaking detail, the orchard and market garden that Leon and Nancy tended for her.

‘How old are these caretakers of yours?’ I asked as we stepped from the car. I had vastly underestimated the size of the land and the amount of work involved.

‘They’re in their sixties, but they’re workhorses,’ she grinned. ‘They’re making enough money off the garden to put their grandson through uni.’

‘Wow.’ I took a few steps and looked beyond the small home. ‘That’s another ocean view?’

‘Yep.’

‘Just how much money do you earn?’ I asked, turning back to her suddenly.

‘I inherited this, you goose.’ She flashed me a grin. ‘I do okay, but if I hadn’t changed specialities, I’d be well and truly loaded by now.’

I was well aware that she was a partner at her firm. And I’d seen how hard she worked—Lilah could work for eighteen hours, sleep for three and then go for a run before starting all over again.

‘Come see the house,’ she half-jogged towards me and took my hand, and led me up the steps towards the small porch. After she’d unlocked the security screen and then the heavy front door, we stepped inside.

Just like her home in Manly, the space was uniquely Lilah. I’d seen the photos of her grandparents at her apartment, but here those images were prominent—there was no mistaking that in some way, they lived on here. She showed me the bedroom she’d lived in as a teenager, the master bedroom she used now, and the compact home office she’d set up. The entire house was decorated in a crisp light blue, with nautical-themed items featured prominently, and semi-translucent white blinds on every window that did little more than reduce the glare. It was a sundrenched home, with its own twenty-four-hour soundtrack of waves crashing into cliffs and gum trees rustling in the coastal breeze.

‘I tore up the shagpile carpet after Grandpa and Grandma died, had the floorboards polished, and eventually had the place painted,’ Lilah told me. ‘But beyond that… it’s just as it was when I was growing up. There’s a lot more that I could have done but… this place is just perfect to me.’

We stepped out onto the wide deck that faced the expanse of the ocean. The northern and southern ends were enclosed by walls of glass bricks, but the eastern face was open except for a low rail. One side of the deck sported a long timber table, the other a new cane outdoor couch set. Lilah opened one of the seat bases and withdrew a set of navy and white canvas cushions which she carefully placed over the seats, then a few hurricane lamps which she sat just so on the table. Next, she took my hand and led me down the steps towards the cliff face.

There were a few dozen metres of sparse grass and shrubs leading from the house, and then the rickety fence before a very sharp drop, straight to the tumbling water below. We wandered to the fence and I leant over it warily. A small patch of sand nestled between rocky outcrops, but there was no obvious way down or beach to break a fall, just a view that seemed as big as the earth itself.

‘So… truth be told, Callum, this is home. This is
really
home.’

‘It’s beautiful.’ The house was really nothing special—not compared to her magnificent apartment in Manly. What was extraordinary about this place was the joy she so obviously found here. I felt beyond humbled that she was sharing it with me.

P
eta MacDonald didn’t walk
into a room. She
arrived
.

She had the air of an aging diva about her, minus of course the success or fame. Lilah’s mother was beautiful, in an aged way. She had an elfin crop of hair an artificially deep shade of burgundy, and the same piercing blue eyes as Lilah, framed by subtle lines, and
un
subtle brown eye shadow and heavy blue eyeliner. I couldn’t miss her elaborate artificial talons and I wondered what Lilah would make of the chemical exposure her mother suffered having them applied. When Peta entered the house that night, she was obviously not expecting Lilah to have company, and did not quite manage to hide her shock.

‘What’s for dinner, lovey—oh, shit.’

I rose from the breakfast-bar stool where I’d been shelling fresh peas for the salad and enjoying a glass of red wine. Lilah didn’t miss a beat.

‘Mum, this is Callum—Callum, this is Peta. Let’s eat.’

‘Callum, such a pleasure to meet you at last,’ Peta said. She took the hand I’d extended in anticipation of a shake and pulled me in for a hug. ‘I assume this is an
at last
type situation, although I’ve not heard a single thing about you.’

‘Lovely to meet you, Peta,’ I said. ‘I can see where Lilah gets both her beauty and her subtlety from.’

‘I made stir-fry, Mum. With that satay sauce you like. Callum made you a salad, and I even have black rice and mango for dessert.’ Lilah had already lit large candles beneath the hurricane lanterns and carefully placed an arrangement of foliage between them. I’d wondered at Lilah’s flurry of activity over the afternoon; I realised now it was the beginnings of a burst of nervous energy which was snowballing right before my eyes. She clearly had no intention of dwelling on or even explaining my presence, and even as Peta and I were disentangling our embrace, Lilah had served the stir-fry and was on her way outside.

‘I take it this means I don’t ask if you’re a boyfriend,’ Peta asked me, voice low.

‘I’d suggest you make up your own mind on that topic.’ Peta and I shared a grin.

‘Well, then, Callum, you’d best be getting me some wine; I’m not an easy mother hen to impress.’

I quickly complied and Peta and I followed Lilah out onto the deck, where she was impatiently looking at the bowl of stir-fry and apparently trying not to meet her mother’s gaze. I sat close to her and sat my hand on her knee under the table. Peta sat opposite us and took in the view for a moment.

‘You can relax, Lilah,’ Peta said. ‘I’m not upset that you didn’t tell me you were seeing someone. I’m sure you have your reasons, although I can’t even
begin
to imagine what they would be.’

‘Lilah tells me you sing?’ I offered.

‘Oh yes, I do. Do you like music?’

I had an inkling that Peta would be easily distracted, and I just wasn’t sure what my role was supposed to be if the two women were going to have an awkward argument about why Lilah hadn’t mentioned me. And I was onto something, as for the next hour Peta did something of a non-musical performance about her musical interests and experiences.

Peta on stage would surely be much like Peta at dinner: animated and alive, glowing with a vitality and charisma that drew
all
of the attention to her. She was a fascinating woman, albeit a completely self-absorbed one, and I could easily imagine her dragging her young family around the world in search of a brighter spotlight. I wondered why she’d never hit the big time. She certainly seemed to be a likely candidate for fame.

‘We lived in London for a year, you know, Callum, while I was working in West End productions.’

‘How old were you, Ly?’ I asked.

‘Oh, God, maybe ten. Dad was working for the City of London, so the main thing I remember about those months was wandering London unsupervised while
you
were at the theatre all day and night and Dad was travelling the city tending gardens.’ Lilah laughed then rolled her eyes. ‘Bloody negligent parents you were.’

‘We knew you could handle yourself, Lilah. You’ve always been able to handle yourself, even as a toddler. God help us if you didn’t want to do something—it took me nearly a year to toilet train you.’

‘So you keep telling me.’

‘She was breastfed until she was nearly three, Callum. I tried again and again to wean her; she’d just wait until I was asleep and—’

‘Which musical did you say it was? Did you have a major part?’

‘I was in the chorus of the first production of
Cats
.’ Peta shrugged with what I assumed was feigned nonchalance. I had a feeling she slipped that little titbit into conversations a dozen times a day. ‘I’m sure I would have had a major part but my dancing just wasn’t quite up to scratch.’

‘We went to New York with
Cats
too, after that,’ Lilah told me.

‘And then we went to India.’

‘
Cats
went to India after New York?’

‘Oh no, I left
Cats
. We went to India to stay at an ashram so I could recharge. I was exhausted. It was the same place Lilah was born, so it seemed fitting.’

‘Callum had the same bedroom his whole life until he left home for uni.’ Lilah informed Peta.

‘Yep, dull as a doorknob comparatively,’ I agreed.

‘Jesus. You poor child.’ Peta reached for her wine. ‘And what do you do now?’

It was the first question she’d asked of me all night, other than to enquire about who I was to Lilah. I was caught off guard.

‘I’m in marketing.’

‘I thought about going into advertising at one point—well, I entertained it for a moment. I have fantastic ideas; I think I really could have made it.’

The dynamic between Lilah and her mother was fascinating. It seemed to me that with every story, Lilah had more than enough reasons to resent her mother for the crazy, unsettled life they’d led. Instead, she was totally at peace with it, and the fondness in her gaze towards Peta was genuine.

As the breeze off the ocean became cool, we moved back inside. Peta and I sat on the lounge while Lilah prepared dessert and coffees.

‘So, it is serious?’ Peta asked me, as soon as Lilah was out of the room. Her voice was low again, but the tone was urgent and serious. I hesitated.

‘I think you and Lilah should talk about that, Peta.’

‘Lilah would have talked to me about it already if she intended to. I’m not sure how to read this
keeping you a secret
bullshit. ‘

‘We’re very new to each other. Maybe she was worried that you’d get ahead of us.’

Peta thought about this for a moment and her smile was almost grateful.

‘Thanks, Callum. I’ll back off.’ Before I even had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, she pinned me to the chair with an icy scowl. ‘Just know that if you hurt her, I will find you, and I will make you wish you were dead.’

‘Lilah, do you need a hand in there?’ I half rose, and Peta grabbed my hand and pulled me back down, her expression instantly soft and warm again.

‘No need to run away. Just consider yourself warned.’