READY THE JETSAM
Out of nowhere came one of those rare cool days when the sun didn’t bother to furnace the world and people could comfortably walk the streets of Honiara without circular sweat patches spreading across their shirts. Alison sat in the office jotting notes, preparing herself for the meeting they’d scheduled the next day to discuss their proposal with the NGO. The door swung open and Sera waddled in, her stomach announcing her presence. Alison watched her and suppressed a grin. At almost seven months, Sera looked like a bobbing tent.
Sera sat down heavily and let out a sigh.
‘Do I still have feet? I can’t tell.’
Alison checked under the table. ‘Yes. Two of them. How are we doing?’
‘Restless. I think they stay up at night fighting each other.’
‘And how is . . .’ Alison paused and realised what was bothering her. ‘Is that your curtains you’re wearing?’
Sera made a face and gave a guilty smile. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t notice. Nothing fits anymore and I haven’t done washing for a few days. Does it look like a dress to you?’
Alison studied her. ‘A dress made from the curtains of your sitting room, but it works.’
‘I don’t care,’ Sera shrugged. ‘I’m pregnant. Wori blo oloketa.’
Alison laughed. ‘Yeah, let ’em stare.’
Sera made a defiant face and looked around the room as if challenging anyone to say something. As the only person in the room, Alison felt obliged to raise her hands in theatrical apology. Sera pulled her woven bag towards her and fished around in it. She pulled out an entire cake wrapped tightly in plastic wrap.
‘Because I’m pregnant,’ she told Alison, who nodded conspiratorially.
‘What will you say once they’re born?’
Sera shrugged as she searched for the edge of the plastic wrap. ‘Because I’m breastfeeding? We’ll see.’
Alison eyed her giant belly. ‘I can’t believe there are two little people in there.’
‘I know. And soon they are going to be out here,’ Sera said.
Alison’s eyes widened in panic. ‘What are we going to do? Two babies! What if we break one?’
‘It’s okay, because there is another,’ Sera said matter-of-factly.
Alison laughed. ‘I am honestly terrified I will break one of your babies. I would make a terrible mother. I’ll probably leave my baby on the train or forget where I put it or something.’
Sera nodded. ‘Yes. But you can practise with mine. Don’t forget I have two.’
Alison smiled, but then grew serious. ‘Are you scared you’ll lose your identity?’
Sera frowned. ‘I don’t understand the question.’
‘What I mean is –’
‘No, I know what you mean, but to me it doesn’t make sense. For me, for us, babies are a part of our identity. It’s not a choice but a gift. The gift to create a new life. To be part of the cycle of nature. It is a blessing. I know in your country people think differently, that babies change who you are and make life difficult, but maybe that’s because in your country you raise your baby alone. Here the community raises the baby. I’m not doing it on my own. It is not just my love that will raise my babies. It’s not just my responsibility. I will raise these babies, but so will my family and my friends. So will you. Maybe that is the difference.’
She succeeded in unwrapping the cake and handed Alison a piece.
Alison chewed each mouthful carefully, deep in thought.
‘So I’ve been working on the proposal outline and I think we really need to emphasise all the different ways our centre will empower women. Ultimately the office will be run by Solomon women for Solomon women, so we need to get incorporated, register as a business so you guys can get paid, set up a board so we’ve got oversight by other women, and at some point do consultations so that we actually ask women what they want first . . .’
‘Don’t forget we need to register for donations,’ Sera added and Alison made a note.
‘Then there’s training, and sourcing more equipment, and I think we need a constitution and a strategic plan, and I read something about needing policies and procedures for everything . . .’ Alison started leafing through her notes and Sera put out a hand to stop her.
‘First things first,’ she said, drawing Alison’s notebook towards her. ‘What is the problem and what is the solution?’ She raised a pen in anticipation.
Alison made a face. ‘I’m so nervous about this. What if we don’t get it?’
Sera scrunched up her nose. ‘You’re asking the wrong question.’ She looked at the pile of documents beside Alison. ‘What if we do get it!’
When Alison arrived home she found Oliver lying on his back on the floor with his head under the couch. His chest was rising rhythmically up and down as if he were meditating or sleeping. His left foot twitched involuntarily. Alison sat gingerly at the other end of the couch and Oliver jerked awake.
‘Do I need to ask what you’re doing?’ Alison said gently.
Oliver wiggled along the floor slightly and peered out at her.
‘I think I’m having a quarter-life crisis.’
Alison nodded. ‘What’s the mid-twenties equivalent of piercing your ear and buying a convertible?’
‘I don’t know, but I have this incredible urge to close my Facebook account and take up a minimal rule religion. Something with a guru, maybe.’
Oliver shuffled himself out from under the couch and hoisted himself up beside her. She smiled and stretched out, laying her legs across his lap. The joints in her ankle cracked in a way they’d never use to. She’d found a grey hair the other day. Alone and unguarded. She’d pulled it out and flushed it down the toilet. This was new. She had always expected the changes of age but she hadn’t realised they would start at twenty-five. Every so often, when they were out at a party or at the bar, she would secretly wish she was back home in bed, watching a DVD with a cup of tea. She’d never told Oliver this, which was a pity, as he felt like this most of the time too.
‘Good day writing?’
‘I’m stuck again. Good day at the office?’
‘I’m terrified we’ll get it and I’m terrified we won’t. I feel like I’m standing at this door and it could lead to all these different worlds, and I want so much for it to be the right one.’
‘Which one is the right one?’
‘I don’t know. And while it kills me not knowing, it’s also . . .’
She waved her hands in a vague abstract pattern that came nowhere near capturing the indescribable, incredible things she was attempting to convey.
The next morning Alison and Sera borrowed Aunty Patti’s car to drive across Honiara for their meeting on the outskirts of town. Because Sera was too big to fit behind the wheel, Alison was entrusted with the keys and she clunked her way through the gears of this unfamiliar car. It was her first time driving in the Solomons and she tried not to panic at the seeming lack of order or regulation on the roads. Sera seemed oblivious, chattering away happily as Alison flinched and swerved and cursed her way through the crowded streets.
‘Do you think they’ll be lawyers? Or prime ministers? The babies, I mean.’
Alison’s eyes remained glued to the road. ‘I don’t see why not – omigod . . .’
‘Or teachers? Teachers are so important. Or ambassadors.’
‘Sure – is he turning? fuck fuck fuck . . .’
‘But I don’t care. As long as they are good people. Do you think they’ll be good people?’
‘Of course they will – shit! we’re going to die!’
They made their way out past the Burns Creek settlement and finally traffic eased off. They turned up a side road and soon they were alone with the gravel. Alison loosened her grip on the steering wheel and turned to give Sera an embarrassed grin.
‘That wasn’t so bad.’
There was a soft clunk beneath them and the car shuddered. Alison knew straightaway that they had a flat tyre. They pulled over and she surveyed the damage.
‘It’s definitely flat,’ she said, giving it an experimental kick because that’s what she had seen people do in movies. She stepped back and turned to Sera who was sitting in the passenger seat, her hands calmly clasped across her belly. Alison glanced up and down the road. There was no one about. She went and sat back in the driver’s seat. They waited. Eventually Alison let out a dramatic sigh.
‘No one’s coming. We can either change it ourselves or stay here and die.’
‘Why don’t we call a taxi?’
That made sense. Alison checked her mobile.
‘No reception. You?’
‘No reception.’
Alison glanced out the window. ‘Do you know how to change a tyre?’
Sera shook her head.
‘Me either. But how hard can it be?’
Alison got out of the car and crouched down to examine the wheel. She had no idea where to begin. She scratched her chin, then poked a round metal thingy that seemed to be connected to the big metal disc thing. After thinking for a while, she stood up.
‘I have no idea,’ she said, climbing back into the car. ‘Maybe we should just wait a bit longer?’
Sera nodded. They sat and watched the road, both convinced the grant was drifting steadily out of their reach. After a while Alison could bear the silence no longer.
‘This waiting is unbearable. Please distract me. Tell me a story.’
‘A real story?’
‘It doesn’t have to be.’
Sera thought for a moment. Her hands played unconsciously with her belly, patting and stroking it as if it were a cat.
‘Okay. When I was a small girl, I went with my family for a picnic on a small island near the big island where our family came from. My cousins and brothers were playing a game where they hid from each other all over the island. They didn’t want me to play, but I went and hid anyway so they would have to come find me. I was hiding a long time, and no one came for me. After a while I stopped hiding but couldn’t find anyone. My family had gone back to the big island. There were so many people they forgot me and left. It was getting dark and I was scared, because our kastom says at night ghosts of the unhappy dead come out. I was so scared I hid in the space of a big tree. What is that in English?’
‘The trunk.’
‘The trunk. I start to fall asleep, but then I hear a sound behind me. Nothing. I start to fall asleep again and then I feel something pull on my feet. I know it is a ghost because this is how they wake you when you are sleeping. It is dark, but from the moonlight I can see it is a little girl about my age. She is wearing old clothes like the mission school children wore when my mother was a girl. Her eyes are so sad. She speaks our home language. She tells me that she is lost and she can’t find her class. She says she was hiding and fell asleep and now the boat is gone. She asks if I have any food or water, because she is thirsty and there are no fruit trees on this island, only some berries which made her feel sick. I tell her I don’t have anything to eat or drink. Then she starts crying and says she wishes she hadn’t fallen asleep because she wants to go home. I don’t know what to do because she is so sad. She is still holding my feet and her hands are so cold. Then I hear another sound. I turn and see a light. It is my father and uncle coming back to find me. When I turn back the girl is gone.’
Sera paused. ‘That’s it. That’s my story.’
Alison was quiet. ‘Is it true? That story? Did it happen?’
Sera shrugged and rubbed her eyes. ‘I don’t remember. I know we went for a picnic and I was left behind, but the other part I don’t remember. I think so.’
Alison watched her for a moment and then looked away. ‘We need to try to fix this ourselves.’
She got out of the car. ‘Okay. I’m going to try to remember what my dad taught me. You make sure I don’t . . . I don’t know . . . get crushed. Actually, maybe you should get out of the car.’
Sera pulled herself out. ‘Do you want this?’
‘What is it?’
‘A car manual. It was in the glove box.’
Alison glared at it. She hadn’t thought to check for a manual. ‘Yes. That would be useful. What does it say to do?’
Sera consulted the instructions. ‘Remove the hub cap.’
Alison glanced down. ‘There isn’t one. Next?’
‘Loosen nuts with wrench.’
Alison remembered the special compartment in the back of her dad’s car. She checked the jeep’s boot and found the tools.
‘Okay. Found the wrench. Loosening the nuts.’
It took a while, but was much easier when she worked out which direction to turn the wrench.
‘Next?’
They worked their way through the steps, Sera providing useful tips and encouragement. They had the car jacked up and the flat tyre off when another car finally pulled up beside them. A couple of young men got out and said something to Sera in rapid Pijin.
‘They want to know if we need help,’ she said.
Alison looked at the tools in front of her. She felt a burst of satisfaction course through her veins.
‘Tell them not to worry, we’re almost done.’
She smiled to herself and started wheeling the spare tyre over. The two young men waved goodbye and drove off. Sera looked back down at the manual, and ten minutes later the car was ready to go. Alison stepped back and admired their work.
‘You know, the Spice Girls told me I could do anything. I assume that means changing a tyre.’
‘Do you think the posh one could change a tyre?’ Sera asked.
Alison considered this. ‘No, but she’s made enough money that she could pay someone to do it for her. Or just buy a whole new car.’
She checked out her workmanship again. For the first time in a long time she felt herself capable of anything.
‘Now let’s hit the road. We’ve got a grant to win.’
Alison and Sera arrived back at Aunty Patti’s house just as the sun was starting set. Sera waddled in, excited to tell everyone how well the meeting had gone. Alison followed her, hoping that the retelling would be comparatively short by Solomon Island standards and that she could organise a lift.
They found Aunty Patti in the middle of a meeting. She was a member of a group of local and expat businesswomen who met to mentor and support each other in their individual professional pursuits, usually assisted by a bottle or two of wine. They all stopped what they were doing so Sera could relay her story, including the bit about the flat tyre. Everyone oohed and aahed and complimented Alison on her cleverness and she blushed and batted away the compliments.
She arrived at the little blue house excited to share her adventure with Oliver, only to find that the door was locked. Oliver was out. At Rick’s, she assumed. She let herself in, slipped off her sandals and lay down on the couch. She was exhausted – her eyes felt like they were being dragged down with weights. She nestled into the cushions, hoping to drift off to sleep for a while, but then felt something press into her spine. It was Oliver’s notebook. Moving it to one side, her eyes skimmed the page then froze. Oliver had written a note reminding himself to include a brief paragraph about Geraldine’s successful interview with the grants panel for the women’s centre she and Mary hoped to establish. According to Oliver’s notes, the panel were so impressed they’d already made their decision, and the submission of a written proposal was now a mere formality. She threw the notebook onto the coffee table in front of her. She felt tears pricking her eyes. It wasn’t that she believed any of this nonsense about him making things happen, she told herself – but he did. And this was hers. The grant was meant to be hers, but now, even if they got it, it would somehow feel . . . less. Flustered and annoyed, she wandered outside to wait for him. She sat on the porch of the little blue house and suddenly her head was between her knees and she was gasping for breath as the whole world spun. There were no happy endings. Everything cracked, and it was cracking now. She was so angry with him. He needed to explain himself. If he could explain himself, he could maybe make things better. And he would stop what he was doing. And she would stop whatever she was doing. And they would make things all one hundred per cent okay again. Where was Oliver? Why wasn’t he here?
She pulled her mobile from her pocket and dialled his number. When Oliver answered she heard laughter in the background. He was having fun with Rick and this irritated her immensely.
‘Where are you?’ she demanded, though she knew.
‘I’m at Rick’s,’ Oliver said. ‘Are you okay?’
‘When are you coming home?’ she barked, ignoring his question.
‘Um, soon. Now. Do you want me to come home?’
‘Whenever. Whatever. Shouldn’t you be writing? You’re so lazy.’
Alison hung up and felt instantly ashamed of herself. She was angry about a line in a notebook that her boyfriend thought might have magical powers to change the future. On a list of irrational things to argue about, that was definitely near the top. She shouldn’t have mentioned his writing, shouldn’t have called him lazy. It wasn’t true and she knew exactly how it would make him feel, but it was too late to take it back. A tiny part of her felt good about this. Maybe she should call to apologise.
Her phone buzzed and she glanced down, wondering what Oliver had to say. But it wasn’t Oliver, it was Ed.
I’m back. Come see me, Coops.
She stared at the message. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew she should just delete it and pretend it had never been there. She definitely shouldn’t reply. The phone buzzed again in her hand and she jumped. This time it was Oliver.
On my way. See you soon.
Alison watched her phone until she was sure the messages had stopped. She didn’t respond to Ed’s message but she didn’t delete it. And when Oliver returned home, consumed by a guilt she couldn’t identify, Alison didn’t mention anything to him about the message or the notebook. Instead, she lay on her side of the bed, listening to him fumble around the bathroom, pretending to be asleep.
Alison left the house early the next morning before Oliver awoke, leaving him to spend the day alone with his manuscript. She had an early appointment with Sera and they’d planned to spend the day sourcing secondhand computers. Inside the office, she opened the curtains to let in the light and waited for Sera to arrive. Time passed. Alison checked her phone, stretching out in an office chair and continued to wait. More time passed and she began to worry. Eventually, her mobile rang.
The sun was sinking low on the horizon when Alison stormed into the little blue house and grabbed Oliver’s laptop from him, holding it threateningly over her head.
‘What are you doing?’ he yelped.
She shook with rage and grief as the afternoon flashed before her eyes. The missed appointment. The dreadful feeling in the pit of her stomach. The frantic unanswered phone calls and the trip to the hospital.
‘Did you do it?’ Alison cried.
‘What?’
‘Did you do it?’ she yelled.
‘Did I do what?’
‘Did you take her babies from her? Did you write it?’
She lowered her arms and started scanning the laptop screen, jabbing at the down arrow again and again. Oliver went pale and carefully took it from her trembling hands.
‘Did you write it?’ she demanded, desperately searching his face. When he didn’t answer, she staggered off towards the bedroom, clutching at her stomach. She couldn’t even make it to the bed and instead fell to her knees in the doorway. The world felt like it was shaking with a million-point earthquake and she felt the simultaneous urge to scream, throw up, lash out and run. Instead she lay on the dusty floorboards trembling wordlessly. Eventually she realised her hands were clasped around her middle, cradling her abdomen, which felt inexplicably empty. She curled up into a ball and sobbed – big, muted, gasping sobs that made her whole body shudder. Oliver knelt beside her and tried to take her in his arms, but she pushed him away.
‘If you did this I will hate you until I am dead in the ground,’ she whispered.
Oliver’s face collapsed. ‘I didn’t. I swear. But . . .’
‘But what?’
‘I . . . I felt like I should. I didn’t do it, but it felt like what needed to come next. I didn’t write it, but everything in me was telling me that’s how the story needed to go. But I couldn’t.’
‘Stop this!’ she said. ‘Stop doing this.’
‘I didn’t, Alison. I promise. Do you believe me?’
She refused to look at him. She refused to look at him for a very long time.
After Sera’s babies died, Alison spent three days in bed, not crying, not eating, just staring at the blank wall with vacant eyes. She rose only to make her daily trips to the hospital to visit Sera, who had the same vacant eyes. No words passed between them as they sat side by side, Alison stroking her friend’s arm and drying her tears. Sometimes Peter sat on the opposite side, his body slouched defeated in the wooden chair, as he lightly touched his wife’s skin. His life was repeating itself, snatching away his unborn children a second time, and Alison was flooded with a horrid relief that this time at least his wife had been spared. When she was at home, Oliver came and went, bringing her cups of tea and toast with jam, and other things that turned cold waiting unwanted on the floor beside the bed. Sometimes he sat in the room with her and tried to make conversation, and other times he just sat.
On the third morning, Oliver found Alison standing in the living room. Something small and green dangled from her limp hand.
‘What’s the point?’ She looked at the half-finished bonnet in her hand. ‘If we live in a world where babies don’t even get the chance to be born, what’s the point of any of us trying?’
He stared at the small scrap of wool abandoned mid-stitch.
‘I suppose it just wasn’t meant to be . . .’
She looked at him with a coldness he had never seen before in another human being.
‘That is the most unsatisfying fucking answer I have ever heard in my life and I will never forgive you for saying that.’
‘I didn’t write it, I promise,’ he said quietly.
‘But you thought it,’ she said. ‘And you’re going to write it, aren’t you? Later. Because you think it’s what the story needs.’
Alison went back to the bedroom and fell back into the groove in the mattress she had occupied for the last few days. She blinked back tears, surprised that there were any left. She saw their faces, Sera and Peter, exhausted and lost as they sought to comfort one another. She saw this and she saw all the unfairness in the world. It wasn’t fair that babies should die here from things they wouldn’t die from in other countries. It wasn’t fair that bad things should happen to kind people, that these tragedies should be so common and so constant. She wasn’t sure how she could help or if she could help or where she belonged in any of this, so she just kept turning up every day to sit with her friend in grief.
Time passed. Not a lot of time, but enough time to slowly, slowly start to mend some of the wounds that would never truly heal. Enough time for Sera’s traumatised body to heal and for Alison to answer when Oliver spoke to her.
One day Alison received a call from Sera asking if she would drive her out past the airport for an appointment. Of course she said yes. Sera sat delicately in the passenger seat of Aunty Patti’s car as Alison negotiated their way out of town and along the road that led beyond the airport. Sera was quieter these days, with a slowness that spoke of the incredible distress she had suffered when she was forced to deliver not one but two dead babies. They had talked about it now, and Alison had wept more tears than Sera, probably because Sera had done so much crying already.
Sera shifted carefully in the car seat, then reached out and touched Alison’s arm.
‘I’m okay. I’ll be okay. He has a reason for everything and one day maybe we might know what this one was.’
A lifetime of atheism howled inside Alison. ‘Do you believe that?’ she asked quietly.
Sera didn’t reply.
‘You don’t want answers?’
Sera’s eyes remained on the window watching the world pass by.
‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I want to blame everyone. The doctors, this country, myself. But that still doesn’t give me any answers. Maybe God will.’
‘Will you try again?’ Alison asked gently, but Sera didn’t answer her.
After she dropped Sera at her appointment, Alison drove back along the road passing time. She drove without thinking and found herself pulling up at the international terminal of Henderson Airport. As if in a dream, she watched herself stop the car, turn off the ignition and then wander into the terminal. A flight had just arrived and the airport was full of excited, sweaty people embracing each other and commenting on the day’s heat. She pushed past them and sat down on a bench beneath a TV screen that showed a short tourism film on repeat. Alison realised that in recent times she had done an incredible amount of thinking in airports, en route to China, Malaysia, Australia and the Solomon Islands. And now here she was at Henderson Airport, another airport and another chance to escape.
One day in China, not long before she’d left, she had wandered down to a Nanning park and sat amidst the flowering almond trees. The park was full of young children zipping around on brightly coloured tricycles and old men crowded around Chinese chess boards. Every so often a triumphant cry erupted as a cannon took out an elephant or a general surrendered his kingdom. Alison watched as a hunched old man approached her carrying a tiny bird in a wicker cage. He eased himself down on the bench beside her and gently placed the cage between them. The bird chirped and Alison couldn’t tell if it was singing in sorrow or joy. The old man turned to Alison and gave her a smile that caused the wrinkles of his face to form a complex new pattern.
‘Can I practise my English on you?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ she responded.
They conversed for a while about the usual things – what their names were, where they came from, what they did for a living. Then the little man gazed at her intently.
‘Who are you today?’
Alison grinned. ‘You mean how are you today.’
He shook his head. ‘No, I mean what I say. Who are you today?’
She had thought about this but didn’t have an answer.
Now, so many moons later, she still didn’t have an answer. For a moment she was one hundred per cent certain that the very next thing she would do would be to stand up, walk to the ticket counter and buy a seat on the next plane to Australia, which was leaving in an hour or so. There were always spare seats and she had her passport in her bag. She could leave. She could have a fresh start. She could pretend the whole thing – the entire Solomon Islands experience – had never happened. If she tried hard enough she might even be able to convince herself that Oliver had never existed. Or Sera. Or the office.
She stared across the tarmac and into the hills of Guadalcanal. It was a bright day but the horizon was lined with ominous clouds. Alison was mesmerised. She had always been transfixed by the colours of travel: by green mountains against blue skies speckled with white cloud, the yellow sun shining high above, like a scene from a child’s colouring book; by the thousand shades of grey that storm clouds came in; and by sunsets that never once repeated themselves, with their reds and pinks and crimson and orange and colours she had no names for. She loved the shades people came in, rich and dark and pale and bronzed, all unique and beautiful. She loved the way the sun wore a different outfit, behaved differently, had different mannerisms, breathed differently, in different parts of the world, as if trying to speak the local dialect; and the way night-time stole the colours from the world, cloaking all life in many-hued darkness. But what she loved most was the utter impermanency of colour, its ebb and flow. Each colour was unique to a specific moment, changing with time, temperature and taste, and could never be seen again. Everything was transient. Alison blinked and for the briefest of seconds her tears fractured the world into rainbows and in those rainbows she saw that all her reasons to run were really reasons for staying. Everything was transient but some things were worth staying for. She stood up briskly and dusted herself off. There was Sera to pick up and then Oliver to go home to. This she could manage for now.
More time passed. It would have been, for the record, the last month of Sera’s pregnancy. It was Saturday afternoon and the boys were at a bar, as had become their habit. Oliver was perched on a stool fiddling with the label on his SolBrew waiting for Rick to finish in the men’s room. He was beginning to suspect that Rick was a high-functioning alcoholic.
‘What up!’
Rick burst out through the men’s room door with his Hawaiian shirt on back to front. He grinned at Oliver, spun around, overbalanced, tripped over an empty beer crate and then steadied himself on the bar. His eyes bulged for a moment, he gulped, then grinned.
‘Man, I totally just re-swallowed some vomit.’
A functioning alcoholic . . .
Rick leant over the bar and held up three fingers. ‘Threefala brewskis.’
Oliver frowned. ‘Three?’
‘Three,’ Rick nodded. ‘Look who I met when I accidentally wandered into the girls’ toilets.’
He indicated an expressionless young blond who Oliver hadn’t noticed hovering in the background. She had striking blue eyes and was wearing the worn T-shirt and board shorts of a long-time traveller.
‘This is Ingrid. From Sweden. Show Oliver your tattoo.’
Ingrid shot Oliver a look, then sighed and pulled down the neck of her scooped T-shirt. There was a sprawling geometric shape reaching across her collarbone and down her shoulder. It looked like a dolphin.
‘It’s Polynesian. From Tahiti,’ Rick beamed.
Oliver looked up at Ingrid. ‘Are you Polynesian?’
‘I feel I am.’
The look on her face dared Oliver to challenge her, so he just took another sip of beer and looked away. Her face softened and she crossed the room towards the exit.
‘Are you okay on your own?’ Rick prodded Oliver. ‘I’m going to take Ingrid back to her hostel.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Oliver replied.
‘No, I’m not,’ Rick agreed and turned to leave.
‘You’re going to leave me here at the bar by myself?’
‘Solidarity, brother,’ Rick replied and offered a fist bump.
He grabbed two of the beers from the bar, saluted Oliver and then marched towards the door where Ingrid was waiting for him. Oliver stared at the fresh beer in front of him. The one in his hand was practically full. He sat for a moment trying to work out if he should give up on the warmer one and start on the cool one. This problem was solved when a short, sunburnt man swung onto the stool next to him and grabbed the new beer.
‘I’ll get the next one.’ He nodded to Oliver and took a huge gulp.
Oliver stared at him. He had seen this man playing darts with some of the other regulars earlier and he had looked drunk then. Now he looked positively effervescent.
The man extracted himself from his bottle and turned to Oliver. ‘Gotta love it,’ he smiled joyfully. ‘Drinking, I mean. Almost as good as flying. That’s what I do. I’m a pilot.’
He stuck out his hand and Oliver shook it.
‘What’s it like?’ Oliver asked, impressed despite himself.
‘What?’
‘Flying?’
The man thought for a moment, sucking back his beer.
‘It’s the most magical feeling in the world. Knowing you’re doing something we’re not born to do. That you’re up in the realm of birds and angels.’
He paused for another sip and then carefully placed the bottle back on the bar as if it were made from expensive crystal.
‘Bloody scary, though. Knowing you’re responsible for all those people’s lives. That if you make a mistake – and they’re easy to make – all those people are going to die a horrible painful death. I tell ya, now I know how planes work I’m way more terrified than before.’
Oliver stared at him with wide eyes. ‘But that rarely happens, right? You guys have autopilot and fancy remote equipment now, don’t you?’
The pilot let out a low whistle. ‘Yeah, but . . . some of the clowns flying these days. Taxidrivers with wings. And the number of near misses . . .’ He shook his head and took another big sip. ‘Unless I’m the one doing the flying, I’m never one hundred per cent comfortable. And even then . . .’ He gave a small shake of his head and then drained the bottle.
‘Anyway, I better get back to my hotel room and sober up. Early flight tomorrow.’
He eased himself off the stool and staggered unsteadily towards the door. Oliver sat picking at the label on his beer bottle, watching him go. He struggled with the door, pushing instead of pulling, muttering curses to himself. As the pilot finally managed to make his way out of the bar, Oliver blinked then took a giant swig from his beer. In his mind, planes dropped from the sky, exploding in searing thousand-degree fireballs, ripping apart lives and shattering families. He thought of his manuscript and the plane crash he’d promised at the end. The one he was so insistent on. The one that would tear apart Colonel Drakeford and Geraldine, destroying the life they’d planned together. He felt sick. He knew this was how the book should end, but the thought of what this would do to his characters unsettled him – firstly because he had grown to love them, but also because their lives had become so entwined with his own. It seemed like they were going to be okay, Colonel Drakeford and Geraldine, that they’d actually get their happily ever after. That he and Alison would have theirs. Didn’t they deserve a chance – all of them?
‘Ollie, you okay?’
He looked up. Sam the bar guy was staring at him with his deep brown eyes. Oliver gave a small smile.
‘Yeah, I’m okay.’
‘You heading home now?’
Oliver considered this. ‘Nah. I’ll have another beer. Play it again, Sam.’
Sam frowned. ‘Huh?’
‘Oh, nothing. It’s from a movie.’
‘Okay. SolBrew?’
‘Yeah.’
Sam prised off the bottle top and then handed the bottle to Oliver, who accepted it and took a big long gulp. Sam watched him carefully.
‘You sure you okay, Oliver?’
‘Yeah, why do you ask?’
‘You’re drinking by yourself. People who drink by themselves usually aren’t okay.’
Oliver gave him a tired smile. ‘Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just . . .’
‘It’s your missus,’ Sam said.
Oliver nodded reluctantly. ‘How’d you guess?’
‘The only man in the world who don’t got no trouble with his missus is the one who don’t got no missus,’ Sam grinned.
Oliver nodded mournfully.
‘What trouble?’
‘I’ll tell you, but don’t think I’m crazy. You know how I’m writing a book?’
Sam didn’t, but he knew better than to stop a drunk man’s flow, so he just nodded.
‘Well, I’m not crazy, but when I write, sometimes – and I know this sounds crazy – sometimes what I write comes true. Like magic. I swear I’m not crazy. But it’s like I’m kind of controlling the world.’
Sam didn’t drop his gaze.
‘Mmhmm,’ he nodded, and Oliver knew he thought him crazy.
‘I don’t know if Alison believes it or not,’ Oliver said, ‘but she doesn’t like it. And she thinks I did something I didn’t. Something bad. I didn’t. But I thought about it. I felt it. I felt it should be written, because there’s no other way for the story to go. It has to happen this way. This is what needs to happen. But I also want my happy ending. I don’t want the misery. It feels like it’s coming, but I can’t let it happen, even though it wants to and needs to . . . Does that make sense?’
Sam nodded slowly. He gazed at Oliver then placed his hands flat on the bar in front of him, as if preparing to deliver a speech.
‘Do you love her?’
This caught Oliver by surprise. He looked blankly at Sam.
‘Huh?’
Sam stuck to his script.
‘Do you love her?’
‘Um, yes. I do.’
‘And do you trust her?’
Oliver looked at his beer bottle and picked at the frayed label again. ‘Yes, I think so. I do.’
Sam leant forward and eased the beer bottle from Oliver’s hand. He put it out of Oliver’s reach, then set his hands on the bar again and gave Oliver a big smile.
‘Go to her, my brother.’
Oliver paused for a moment and his alcohol-sodden brain thought back to earlier that day when he had received a parcel from his mother containing breath mints, a beanie and a photo frame that still had a stock photo of a smiling blond-haired blue-eyed family and their dog. And sitting there at the bar with Sam’s big brown eyes staring meaningfully back at him, Oliver knew that it was Alison’s face he wanted to see instead of the pearly-toothed female model, with himself in place of the granite-jawed male. And kids who looked fifty per cent like him and fifty per cent like her, and definitely not blond and pale. The dog could stay the same. He wanted the same for Drakeford and Geraldine. For all of them.
‘I’m going home to my missus,’ he announced loudly, then swivelled off his seat and lurched towards the door.
‘Take a taxi,’ Sam yelled after him. ‘Don’t you try and walk!’
As Oliver offered a final emphatic wave, Sam went back to wiping down the bar and waiting for the last drunks to leave so he could go home to his family.