Me Without You (7 page)

Her home was beautiful, although there was a slight discord in the mix of modernity and comfort items from her past. There were glossy white tiles and bright red leather couches, mingled with rainbow-speckled Peruvian throws and pillows. Modern wallpaper adorned one wall in the living area, a black-and-white chevron print, but this surface was then cluttered with randomly framed photos of Lilah and idyllic scenes across the world in a completely disorganised fashion. I suppose the artist in me cringed a little at the chaos of it all, but the rest of me was delighted. I was right there, in her home—and that meant that I knew where she lived.

‘When someone comes home with you, do you ever feel like the dynamic changes?’ She went straight to the kitchen and retrieved two glasses and a half-empty bottle of wine. ‘I mean, you’re
here
now. Am I host, or am I lover? Do I offer you a snack, or rip your clothes off?’

‘You should definitely go with whatever impulse overtakes you,’ I said, as calmly as I could given the mental image she’d just generously provided. Lilah walked past me, towards the bright red couches, and I noticed her feet.

‘Your shoes are already off.’

‘Of course,’ she sat the bottle on a glass tabletop and curled up in the corner of the L-shaped lounge. ‘Don’t you take your shoes off at home?’

‘Yes… but…’ I laughed and shook my head, ‘I didn’t even notice you do it.’

‘I usually do two things when I walk in the front door,’ she informed me. ‘I take my shoes off, and I take my bra off. The only reason I didn’t do the latter is I thought you might want to do it yourself later.’

‘Very kind of you.’

‘I do try.’

‘So, last night was pretty amazing.’ I sat on the couch beside her and reached for my wine.

‘It was,’ she agreed.

‘I was confused when you were gone in the morning.’

‘And I was confused by how you live without a real kitchen.’ I noticed that she’d deflected my question, and for a moment I contemplated trying to steer it back to her early morning disappearing act. I didn’t want the conversation to get awkward though. I was
in
her home—wasn’t that enough for now?

‘I’m going to renovate it.’

‘Like you’re going to go to Paris?’

‘Exactly.’

‘What else are you
going
to do?’

‘Don’t you have a work-in-progress list?’ I shrugged.

‘My work-in-progress at the moment is finishing this wine. That’s about as long as I leave things undone if I want to do them.’ She sipped her wine then glanced at me. ‘Maybe I can understand that you’re too busy with work to go visit your brother. But seriously, that unit? What’s the go with that?’

‘I bought that place because I thought it’d be a fun weekend project. I had visions of spending my weeknights up a ladder and laying floorboards.’

‘But?’

‘But then I bought tiles for the bathroom and got them home and they weren’t right,’ I sighed. ‘The tone was wrong, too warm for the paint I’d bought, so I took them back and was going to get some samples and try again.’

‘And that was it?’

‘No, I got a bunch of sample tiles, but none of them were quite right either. And by then I’d run out of steam for the bathroom and I started ripping out the kitchen. I just want it to be
right
. What’s the point of a project like that if it’s not perfect? Besides which, I still have everything I need there—there’s no real rush.’

‘The thing that amazed me most about your unit was that it’s a total disaster zone; it actually looks like you’re mid-construction on a house build, but yet there’s not a speck of dust in it.’ Lilah laughed. ‘Don’t look too closely here—you’ll be mortified; I only wash up when I run out of clean plates.’

‘Apparently it’s only the big jobs I can’t get around to finishing. I don’t like mess.’

‘When I was a kid, I went through a brief phase when I thought I’d become a cleaner, which is hilarious now that I can’t even keep this place clean,’ she said. ‘I was probably seven or eight, we were living in New York at the time and the lady Dad was working for had a live-in housekeeper. I used to go with him to work and while he tended the garden I’d sit in that great, big house and watch the housekeeper potter around. She was always dusting… she’d dust from front door to back over the week and then start at it all over again. The house was like a mansion compared to the little bedsits we were living in and it was full of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. I couldn’t ever imagine having enough money to buy those things myself, so I thought… “Well, if I can score myself a domestic job, I can still at least
see
the beautiful things.”’

‘Your apartment is amazing,’ I said. ‘Do you wish you could travel back in time and bring seven-year-old Lilah here for a visit? She’d surely be impressed.’

‘No fucking way. I’d leave her there.’ Lilah shook her head fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t want seven-year-old Lilah to realise how fragile life is, or how unsatisfying those beautiful things would be, or even how tumultuous the next few decades would be for her. Can you imagine being innocent enough to think that being an underpaid live-in housekeeper would be the most amazing job in the world? Not a chance that I want to lose those moments or the simplicity of those thoughts, not for anything. Those years were some of the best.’

She turned her gaze on me, and it was suddenly probing.

‘Did you dream of being a marketing guru when you were that age?’

‘No,’ I grimaced. ‘You know when you’re a kid, and everyone asks you what you want to do when you grow up? I used to hate that question. I always felt like adults were mocking me when they asked it. I
knew
I wouldn’t be an astronaut, or a fireman, or a racing car driver. ‘

‘Well, what did you want?’

‘Honestly?’ I looked into the plum depths of the wine, then back to the focus of her blue gaze. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, but I wanted to be a photographer. Dad worked at the newspaper and I’d visit with him sometimes and the photographers would let me look at their cameras. I thought they were the most mysterious technology—to be able to take a moment, and lock it in time forever.’

‘Jesus, you scared me,’ she grimaced. ‘I thought you were going to say you wanted to be a serial killer or a circus clown. Photography isn’t embarrassing. Why didn’t you do it?’

‘I kind of did. I did a minor in photography and visual arts at uni. I just… it’s not a very practical career, is it? Most people dream of some kind of art, but day-to-day… being an adult is more about paying the bills… making a life for yourself.’

‘Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive,’ Lilah frowned. ‘You can make a life for yourself and skip town every time the electricity bill arrives. And you can pay your bills and miss life altogether. My parents flitted about like they were carefree butterflies most of their marriage but I’ll tell you one thing: they had a bloody fantastic life.’

‘Was it
really
that fantastic? Surely you all missed the stability of home?’

‘There was
no
home,’ she laughed and shifted, so that she could lean against me and stretch her legs out on the lounge, her long red hair splayed over my arm and my lap like a blanket. ‘I was born on the road, so to speak. I didn’t understand what it was like to put roots down, or to feel settled. Every now and again we visited Grandma and Pa back in Gosford, but even so, I barely knew them at that point.’

‘I just can’t imagine it.’ I shook my head. ‘When my parents died, and when my brothers and I sold that house… I felt like I’d lost a part of myself, like it—like it had been my anchor, and then I was adrift.’

‘There is something really, truly beautiful about having a place to call home,’ Lilah agreed softly. ‘But surely it’s got to be a base to return to, rather than an anchor. Ships only use their anchors between journeys, don’t they?’

‘You can’t always be on a journey.’

‘Of course you can,’ Lilah murmured. ‘Life is a journey. You don’t have to travel, but you always have to be going somewhere or you stagnate.’

A silence fell, and my thoughts turned towards the moment we were sharing. Both of our wine glasses were empty, and we’d shared plenty of wine at the restaurant too, but in the strangest way I felt like I was more drunk on the chat than I was on the wine. I couldn’t remember ever talking like this, relaxing into a conversation with a woman and just letting the words run free. But even if the words ran out, I’d have been equally content just to sit there with her and watch for her next move.

‘Do you have this effect on everyone?’

‘What effect?’

‘I feel like you’re this teeny, tiny whirlwind, and in two dinners you’ve managed to jumble up every single thing I thought about my own life.’

‘In a good way?’

‘I think so.’ I ran my fingers through the lengths of her hair for a moment, until she sat slowly and lowered her glass onto the floor beside us. She turned to me and rested her hand on my shoulder. Staring into her eyes, and with her staring right back into mine, a sudden sense of my own smallness escaped me. ‘Aren’t I boring to you?’

Lilah leant forward and swept her mouth ever so gently over mine.

‘No, you’re not boring,’ she smiled as she whispered. ‘Maybe you’re a little maddening.’ Another kiss, longer this time, soothing any offence her words might have caused. ‘And maybe just a wee bit judgemental when it comes to people who don’t like shoes.’ The next kiss was longer still, and deeper, and when she broke away from my mouth she leant her forehead against mine and closed her eyes as she whispered, ‘But I barely know you, and even I can see that there’s so much more to you than all that. How could I find you boring?’

I
woke before her
, and as soon as I did, I realised that the very best part about waking up at Lilah’s apartment was that she had absolutely nowhere to run to escape me. When she stirred in my arms and I saw her eyelids flutter open, I could imagine waking this way every day for the rest of my life.

I love you, I’d whisper, and she’d whisper it back and we’d share a stinky-morning-breath kiss. There’d be extraordinary beauty in the ordinary intimacy of our life together, and I’d never feel disconnected again.

The thought was startling and I wondered where it had come from. Lilah was a beautiful, fascinating woman. I’d known plenty of those before and never even considered that I should settle down with one of them, let alone after a single night. The thought was uncomfortable, and I shifted to give her a brief good-morning kiss and asked, ‘How did you sleep?’

‘Like a fucking log,’ she stretched and smiled at me again. ‘Even though you snored.’

‘I’m pretty sure that was you.’ I was stark naked; there was no way I could hide my blush. I
had
slept deeply, much deeper than I could remember sleeping in a long time.

‘Don’t be embarrassed. Unless my neighbours complain, then you can be embarrassed—and they might; you snore
loud
.’

She was teasing me again. I kissed her forehead.

‘What do vegans eat for breakfast?’

‘You do realise vegans are not a whole other species. We eat food too, not just at night, but at all times of the day. Let me have a shower and I’ll whip you up some fakin’ bacon.’

W
e sat
out on the balcony. In the darkness the night before, I hadn’t realised that it contained a veritable forest of herbs and pot plants in various states of health. Some were not just dead, they were starting to compost. There were random-sized and coloured pots in every available space, including two long grey rectangles fixed to the top of the balcony edge.

‘I didn’t inherit Dad’s green thumb and there’s no Leon and Nancy here to tend these ones,’ she sighed when I asked her about the skeletal plants.

‘Leon and Nancy?’

‘The caretakers at my Gosford house. They’re amazing. I could take these dead plants up there and they’d be harvesting them in days.’

‘What’s your real name?’

It genuinely slipped out; I suppose there was a great deal of curiosity dammed up behind the question by then and the pressure just grew too great, but I had planned to raise the issue with at least some subtlety.

She stirred her coffee. I don’t know why she was stirring it—there was no sugar, just a splash of almond milk. The stirring seemed to take a very long time. Eventually she looked at up me.

‘Saoirse Delilah MacDonald.’

‘Seer-sha?’ I tried to repeat the word the way she’d said it, but it was completely new to me. She gave me a knowing look.

‘My point exactly. It’s Gaelic—spelt S-a-o-i-r-s-e. Which is fine if you’re in Dublin and it’s a normal name, but we’re not in Dublin and in spite of us moving every five minutes, we never so much as passed through the place. So I spent the first two decades of my life being called
Sao Iris
which isn’t even close. ‘

‘Sao Iris,’ I laughed. ‘Where did the name come from?’

‘Dad was Irish; his mother was Saoirse. She died just before I was born so they seemed to think it was fitting, but I suspect Mum regretted it pretty quickly. For as long as I can remember, she just called me Lilah.’

‘Saoirse,’ I repeated correctly this time. ‘It’s actually a beautiful name.’

‘It is, and it means liberty or something along those lines. I don’t dislike it—I still use it professionally.’

‘You told me your surname was Owens?’

‘Mum’s maiden name, my grandparents’ surname. I was worried you’d track me down and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be tracked down. Actually, I was pretty sure I
didn’t
want to be tracked down.’

‘So why the change of heart?’

‘Who says I’ve had a change of heart?’ It was Lilah’s turn to laugh. She was wearing only sunglasses and a dressing gown but appeared totally at ease. ‘I don’t know, Callum.
This
is great—these last few nights have been amazing—but nothing has changed. I’m just not looking for a boyfriend.’

I thought about this for a moment. Below us, the waves rolled into the beach, and the sound filled the silence, which meant I felt comfortable to contemplate her words a lot longer than I probably would have otherwise.