Rachel

Her eyes swept the restaurant, searching for familiar faces who could bring her life crashing down. Rory thought she was at a work event, but this intimate French restaurant was too small and too far out of the city to attract the corporate crowd.

Nico put his hand over hers. ‘Relax. There is nobody you know.’

She laughed, removed her hand. ‘I know a lot of people.’

This was their first meal together: sandwiches in a city park didn’t count, nor drinks and a shared bowl of chips.

What are you doing, Rachel? This is not friends having dinner.

When she got home from the conference, Rory had been brimming with questions about the hotel, the food, if she’d found it tiring, interesting, worth the effort. She told him the truth: the conference had been excellent, absolutely worth the trip down to Melbourne. Brilliant speakers, gourmet food, a five-star facility: Rachel had lapped it up, feeling more like a young graduate than someone who’d been in the industry twenty years. She had networked as zealously as everyone else but her eyes had constantly tracked Nico. How he held himself as he talked to other delegates. His good manners, standing back at doorways, pulling out chairs. His serious resting expression, the authenticity of his smile, how his eyes sought her out too.

Nico had called it on the first night, when they’d had a few drinks and temptation was thick in the air. ‘I feel like I know you from another life. There is something unique between us.’

She had appreciated the sentiment, but, from her perspective, Nico was new and thrilling rather than old and familiar.

‘I don’t want to break up my marriage,’ she’d said, the firmness of her tone impressive given her recent doubts and restlessness. ‘We can be friends.’

So that’s what they were calling the secret meetings, the almost daily phone calls, the intense closeness: a friendship. It was more, much more, and Rachel held that knowledge deep inside, in a holding place reserved for truths that she wasn’t ready to act upon.

The waitress poured their wine, a cabernet sauvignon from the Bordeaux region. The wine, the food and Nico’s attentiveness took effect and she stopped worrying about being spotted. She laughed with him, leaned in close to share confidences, basked in the warmth of his smile and gaze. She permitted him to squeeze her hand, touch her knee, give a long hug as they said goodbye.

To sum up the evening: she felt alive in a way she hadn’t for a long, long time.

~

She told nobody. Not her sister, Tanya, who would give her the telling-off required to stop this going any further. Not the women from Cancer Fight, her cancer support group, who were on the same roller-coaster ride, trying to figure out life in remission. Not even Amy, her oldest friend. Amy, more than anyone, understood the pull of the forbidden.

When Rachel received her cancer diagnosis, Amy had asked, ‘Does it make you want to do something wild? I think it would have that effect on me. No point in being risk-averse, is there? You’ve got to make each day count, live life to the max.’

Tanya’s take on the diagnosis had been very different. ‘I guess things like this make you want to hold your family close, appreciate every moment you have with them.’

Amy and Tanya were both right. Rachel did feel wilder and less inhibited than before. But she also loved her family in a more conscious manner. Appreciating the small things, making more of an effort to connect with the children, hyper-aware that this could be borrowed time. Breast cancer had about a thirty per cent chance of recurrence. Her relatively young age increased the odds, as did the fact that two of her lymph nodes had contained cancer cells. But she had learned not to dwell on statistics because they induced more terror than reassurance.

All she knew was that she no longer took for granted that she would live until her eighties or nineties. And that she could no longer envision a long-term future with Rory.

~

Rachel checked the time on her phone: 6.10 pm. Amy was late. Nothing new there. Her friend was always late but never enough to cause major friction or even necessitate a phone call. Just a standard ten or fifteen minutes. Rachel hid a yawn behind her hand; she’d been tempted to cancel. Her second time out for dinner this week – her social life was both exhausting and expensive.

Her phone beeped. A message from Nico. Can I see you tomorrow?

Oh God. She needed to slow this down. It was one thing having drinks or dinner after work, quite another to see him on weekends. Sorry. I have family
stuff.

The family she was jeopardising every time she met him, every time she allowed herself to be pulled further into a relationship.

She ordered a bottle of prosecco, their usual. A cold breeze whooshed through the restaurant’s alfresco area, negating the outdoor heaters. Barangaroo was buzzing in the dusk, the walkway full of pedestrians pausing to check mounted menus and waiting times.

Amy arrived at the same time as the prosecco.

‘Perfect timing,’ Rachel said dryly. ‘You haven’t lost it.’

Her friend laughed, kissed Rachel on the cheek, and gave the waiter an appreciative once-over. Movie-star good looks and about ten years their junior: exactly her type.

‘Sorry. Last-minute thing at the office. Glad you went ahead and ordered the bubbles.’ Amy clinked her glass against Rachel’s. ‘How are you, hon? What’s it like being back at work?’

‘Great, actually. The stimulation. The people. The chance to come into the city every day.’

‘You look great. Is that a new dress?’

‘Yeah. Everything in my wardrobe is too big. Thought I’d never see the day.’

‘The wig is fabulous too.’ Amy’s green eyes squinted as she scrutinised Rachel’s head from various angles. ‘You’d never know.’

‘Trust me, I know. It’s hot under here even in winter. On the positive, it has “style memory”, how amazing is that?’

Amy looked suitably impressed. ‘Really? Maybe I should invest in one! It’s weird, though. You were always the brunette. You’re kind of stealing my show!’

Rachel laughed as a thousand memories were unleashed. The grungy pubs they hung out in during their university years. The more sophisticated bars and nightclubs of their twenties. The impractical high heels, the indiscriminate hook-ups and horrendous hangovers, repeated weekend after weekend. Sometimes, for a laugh, Amy used to pretend they were part of a reality TV show.

‘The blonde and the brunette are now entering the venue. There is a male on the horizon. He is endeavouring to make eye contact. It is unclear if he fancies the blonde or the brunette at this stage. Stand by! He is making an approach.’

The truth was, the guys invariably went for the blonde. It wasn’t really the hair colour: Amy was more fun, more interesting, more exuberant. Except for Rory. For some reason, he’d looked directly at Rachel, smiled only at Rachel, made it clear from the outset that she was the one he was interested in.

‘You did it,’ Amy slurred on Rachel’s wedding day. ‘You’ve fulfilled my dream of marrying an Irishman.’

Now Rachel was seriously contemplating divorcing that man. What had gone wrong? Nothing specifically. Yes, there was Rory’s bankruptcy and her cancer, both of which were stressful and destabilising. But, more than that, it was the cracks from the drudgery of rearing children, doing chores and keeping the family operational. All the stuff that Amy would kill for.

Her friend had never married, despite a quest to ‘meet a husband’ that had spanned almost twenty years. There had been a five-year relationship, a three-year one, and numerous liaisons that suspiciously terminated just before Christmas or the one-year anniversary mark, whichever came sooner. In her twenties, Amy had been the one doing the dumping; she wasn’t scared to walk away if things weren’t working out. In her thirties, the tables turned, and she found herself being dropped for all sorts of inane reasons: she wasn’t serious enough; she was too serious; she wasn’t independent enough; she was too independent.

‘I’ve deleted my dating apps,’ she said now. ‘All of them.’

‘Wow! That’s dramatic. Why?’

The latest disaster was a ‘player’ who’d pretended to want exclusivity. Preceded by the married father-of-three who’d pretended to be single. Why did Amy have such bad luck with men?

‘I’ve met someone,’ Rachel blurted out, despite her best intentions not to say a word.

‘Excuse me?’

Rachel leaned towards the ice bucket, plucked out the bottle and drained the remainder of the prosecco into their glasses. ‘I met someone at that conference I went to last month. I’ve fallen for him.’

The look on Amy’s face was priceless. Popping eyes, mouth hanging open. Rachel would have laughed if it weren’t so catastrophic. Her children’s happiness was at stake, not to mention the hurt – if she acted on her feelings – it would inflict on Rory. She might not love him anymore, but she still cared about him. Of course she did.

Amy snapped her mouth shut. Silence stretched between them. It wasn’t often her friend was lost for words. Amy was her ‘green light’ friend, the one who invariably advised her to ‘go for it’, the friend who urged her to try things, to take risks, to venture outside her comfort zone.

‘I haven’t slept with him,’ she said, hearing, and hating, the defensive note in her voice.

‘So it’s platonic, then?’ Amy’s eyebrows arched upwards.

‘Not exactly,’ Rachel whispered, seeing herself and Nico at the restaurant, his hand on her knee, the goodbye hug when he’d buried his hands in her hair. ‘I can’t stop thinking about him.’

‘And I can’t fucking believe I’m hearing this,’ Amy hissed.

Rachel wished she had kept her mouth shut. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t going to tell you. It just came out. Pretend I said nothing.’

‘Pretend? For fuck’s sake, Rachel. Are you sure they didn’t kill your brain cells while they were doing the chemo?’

Rachel winced; Amy wasn’t one to hold back when she was angry.

‘Look, I’m no saint, you know that better than anyone, but I can’t stand by and allow you to self-sabotage like this. Guys like Rory are fucking hard to come by. I can tell you right now that this dude – what’s his name?’

‘Nico,’ Rachel croaked.

‘Nico,’ Amy repeated, her lips turning downwards, as if his name was sour in her mouth. ‘Well, I can tell you that this Nico is no match for Rory. Whatever kind of future you’re imagining, don’t imagine it with him, okay? If he’s decent-looking and genuinely single, he’ll be playing the field, like all the other men in this city who think they’re starring in The Bachelor with ten stunning women competing for their attention. You must imagine a future after Nico, a future on your own, with hours every week swallowed up by stupid fucking dating apps that make you feel worthless and disposable.’

They didn’t order a second bottle of bubbles; the mood was ruined. Amy paid the bill, which was nice of her, and Rachel called herself an Uber. They exchanged an awkward hug outside the restaurant and went their separate ways.

Rachel sat in the back seat, feeling chastised and regretful. Her green light friend was flashing red. Stop. Do not proceed. Danger. When Amy had suggested living life to the max after the cancer diagnosis, she’d clearly had other things in mind. Overseas travel, bungee jumping, riding in a hot-air balloon. Not an extramarital affair.

As the Uber sped out of the city in a surprising – and ironic – run of green lights, Rachel knew one thing for certain.

It had been a mistake to tell Amy.