Rachel

Dinner was at a small Thai place in Surry Hills. It was heaving with people, many wearing Coldplay T-shirts, but the service was fast, and the food fresh and delicious. Pity that Rachel didn’t seem capable of appreciating it.

She picked at her red curry, trying to contain an undeniable, horribly familiar wave of nausea. Was her body trying to tell her something? Maybe it knew what those abnormal pathology results signified and was preparing her for what lay ahead. She was booked in for more tests next week. She’d tell Rory and the kids then, if there was anything to tell. Please God let there not be.

She turned her gaze from her plate to her children. Emmet and Bridie startled her these days. Who were these grown-up people? What had happened to her babies? Emmet was a young version of his father, with the same unruly hair and lanky physique. It sounded overly dramatic, but she’d worried about her son from the moment he was born, ten days after his due date, a squalling newborn seemingly resentful of entering the world. Bridie had been placid and content, a completely different baby.

‘Little Miss Happy,’ Rory nicknamed her when she was a few months old and obsessed with clapping her hands, cackling with delight every time her pudgy palms connected.

Bridie’s sunniness had been dimmed by teenage hormones, but she remained much more communicative than her brother; for this reason, Rachel never felt the need to worry about her the way she did about Emmet. Until the last few months, that is, when forced to confront the terrifying possibility of her daughter being left motherless.

Rachel stared at Bridie across the table, seeing her anew. The skimpy top, soft white cleavage, dramatic make-up. The fluttering eyelashes at Cronulla Station! Did Bridie have feelings for Fitz or Alex? It was common for girls to practise their flirtation skills with their brothers’ friends. And with their friends’ brothers, for that matter: Rachel’s crush on Amy’s brother had spanned the full three years of their university degree.

A man in his thirties squeezed past their table on his way out of the restaurant. Rachel witnessed firsthand how his gaze doubled back on Bridie, homing in on her barely concealed breasts. Drawing a sharp breath, she glanced at her husband, to see if he had noticed: luckily Rory was too absorbed in his food.

Should Rachel have said something to Bridie before they left the house? Insisted that she change into another top? She wanted her daughter to be able to wear whatever she chose to wear … but not at the expense of being perved at by men twice her age. Men who didn’t know that the outwardly grown-up young woman was still essentially a kid, a kid who loved books, puppies and plaiting her hair. Being the mother of a teenage girl was so complicated.

Rachel’s gaze veered back to her son; being Emmet’s mother was complicated, too, but in a completely different way. While Bridie was a little too innocent and trusting for her age, her brother was too cynical and withdrawn. All Rachel knew was that she loved them both so very much. Sometimes it felt that her love was too potent, too extreme; sometimes it felt like it wasn’t nearly enough.

Once they reached the stadium, she and Rory would be taking up their platinum seats in the stands, and the kids would be joining the swarms on the field. Emmet and Bridie were old enough to be on their own, weren’t they? This was a new phase in their family life, a phase where they did things differently, more adventurously. Because there were too many reasons to say no to things, too many reasons to let life pass you by. When something like cancer rattled your whole existence, it made you realise that those reasons were nothing more than lame excuses.

‘Anyone want the rest of my curry?’ she asked.

Rory and Emmet divvied it up between them, and Emmet also inhaled the remains of Bridie’s fried rice. The more food he consumed, the better: soakage for the alcohol.

‘You alright, Bridie?’ Rachel asked. Her daughter was looking slightly glassy-eyed, presumably due to the packed, airless restaurant.

‘Yeah. Just excited.’ She smiled sweetly.

‘Are we all done? Does anyone need the bathroom?’

Both kids burst into hysterical laughter, Bridie choking on her water, spraying it in Rory’s face, which made everyone laugh all the harder.

‘Mum, we’re teens, not toddlers,’ Emmet pointed out while Bridie and Rory used napkins to dab away the water. ‘Let’s go.’

As they stepped into the fresh air and filtered evening light, Rachel was reminded of her other worries, which had somewhat receded. She had to trust that Sean would respect their home and not exploit their absence. And she had to hope that today had been a bad day for Nico, a humiliating experience that he would have no desire to repeat. Neither man represented the worst-case scenario right now.

The worst case was cancer cells reproducing in her breast or some other part of her body. By extension, the devastating possibility of leaving her beautiful, unique, complicated children without a mother.

Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes. She loved her family, the four of them together like this, laughing, making memories. What she couldn’t fathom was that she’d risked everything, and might still lose everything, as a result of her own unforgiveable actions.