It was about a week after my family left, a week spent finding my brothers’ belongings scattered throughout the house like pieces of flotsam and jetsam—a sock here, a CD there, some boxer shorts under the bed—when Barney’s staccato visitor’s bark rang through the rafters.
I went to my bedroom window to see a figure coming up Avalon Road, knowing instantly from each loping step who was paying me a visit.
Ben.
Barney tore out the front door, careering toward him like a hairy bowling ball heading for the pins, knocking him to his knees on impact. Ben laughed and threw his arms around Barney’s neck, the breeze carrying his voice up to me.
“Barney boy,” he said, “oh, mate, is it good to see you.”
It felt strange to see him, both familiar and unfamiliar at once, and I was torn between running down the stairs myself to bowl him over, and shrinking back behind the curtains and pretending I wasn’t home.
The last time I had seen him was at Duncan’s funeral, a strange, brief moment where we had hugged awkwardly and he had left straight after the service. Before that, we’d met a few times to divvy up the domestic spoils of our previous life together—“Do you want the IKEA wine rack?”—and for me to return my keys to our old apartment.
“I’m so sorry,” I’d said—again—as I handed them over.
“I know,” he’d answered, taking them.
Since then, I’d heard bits and pieces about him from Simone and Stella, who imparted the rather startling information that she sometimes saw him at church. Since he’d never gone when we were together, I could only think he now went to fall on his knees and thank God I wasn’t in his life anymore.
“How did he look?” I’d asked Stella one day when she reported a sighting.
“Pious,” Simone answered for her.
Ben was, I thought, well shot of me, but it didn’t stop my missing him, or our old life together. Sometimes I’d think about our flat, the twenty-seven steps up to its front door, Ben’s bike in the hallway, the newspaper spread out on the kitchen table in the morning, and I would find myself aching for the normality of it. Even though I knew deep down that he was probably not the right man for me, he was a good man, and there were times I had wondered if that could have been enough.
Now he was here, and I could not stand hiding behind the curtains forever, so I ran down the stairs and flung open the door.
“Ben,” I said, “what a nice surprise!”
He smiled, tucking his hair—it had grown, I noticed, and suited him—behind his ears, like he always did when he was nervous, then thrust a package into my hands.
“Here,” he said, “this is for you.”
Then he told me he was getting married.
Monica Golliana wore a size six shoe, had dark brown curly hair that she mostly wore pulled off her face, was a devout Catholic (ah, that explained the church business), and was originally from Napoli but had left when she was a child, her parents starting their own small shoe-importing business in Australia and building it up into “quite the going concern.”
All of this Ben told me after he had blurted out his news at the front door, and we had sat down in the lounge room together, having a glass of wine with Barney happily ensconced between us.
I was glad to hear it—all of it—because once he’d stopped apologizing for the abrupt way he’d delivered his news, he could not stop talking about her, Monica Golliana, whom he had met six months after we broke up, and who did not mind him saying things like “quite the going concern,” whereas I always had.
“Have you got a photo?” I asked, and he took one from his wallet—Monica Golliana, with the curly hair she mostly wore pulled off her face blowing in the wind as she stood looking out from what was once my balcony.
“She’s lovely, Ben,” I said, and she was, dammit.
“Thanks,” he said, adding, “You should open your present.” Then, once again suffering from premature explanation, he said, “It’s those shoes you liked from our autumn collection a couple of years ago, remember the ones with the bows you said were like the ones on a chocolate box?”
I did remember, and was inordinately touched that he had too—Ben who was not right for me, just as I was not right for him; Ben who was not at all vigorous, but very, very nice.
“So,” he said after I had tried them on, “who’s that joker who brought me over here?”
“You mean Will?” I asked.
“Yeah, big boofy bloke, knows a lot about ropes.”
“He’s got the boat service between the mainland and Willow, and he does a few odd jobs around the place,” I answered.
“Bit macho, isn’t he?” Ben asked.
“I hadn’t really noticed,” I replied. “He’s a nice guy actually, Ben.”
“Mmm,” Ben said. “I could tell he was dying to ask me how I knew you—I wouldn’t tell him though, he annoyed me with all that rope tying.”
“Ben, he was on a boat,” I said.
“I know,” he said, “but you know how that sort of bloke intimidates me, with all that ‘Oh, I’m Will, and I fix engines and take fishing charters out to sea.’ ‘Oh, hi, I’m Ben and I’m a shoe salesman.’ ”
We laughed together, and then he asked, “So are you seeing him, this manly Will person?”
“No,” I replied, “I am not seeing ‘this manly Will person,’ but he’s been a good friend to me here on the island, and he was a good friend of Duncan’s.”
Barney’s ears pricked up, as they always did, at Duncan’s name.
“What about Josh?” Ben asked quietly. “Do you hear from him, or them?”
“No.”
He nodded.
“I’ve let it go, you know, Lulu, what happened.”
“That’s good,” I said, my throat tightening.
“Have you?” he asked.
“No,” I answered.
“I’d still like to smash his face in though.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, the way he just came in and ruined everything, and then left you to clean up the mess afterward.”
“I let him in, Ben,” I said.
Ben nodded again, then got to his feet.
“I should go, Lulu,” he said.
I walked him to the door, then all the way to the jetty where I could see Will’s boat slowly making its way toward us to pick Ben up.
“You shouldn’t be too hard on yourself, Lulu,” Ben said, kissing my cheek, “and that manly Will person seems like a pretty nice guy, actually.”
I cried just a little watching him go—Ben Moreton, still keeping Australia on its feet, walking all the way out of my life.