Melissa is having dinner with Henry at the new place on Bronte Beach. The food is fresh and zesty in contrast to the conversation, which is decidedly stale. As she looks across the candlelit table at her husband, she can’t help feeling irritable and dissatisfied with their life together.
‘So what’s been happening at work?’ Henry enquires, adjusting his glasses so they sit higher up his nose.
‘Oh, we’re doing budgets for next year. Some of it is crystal-ball stuff.’
They’re being ultra-polite with each other, cautious with their words and even their facial expressions. They could be distant acquaintances rather than husband and wife. The politeness is to cover up the tension. One wrong word or look and that would be it: an argument of epic proportions. The odd thing is, they don’t argue frequently, and when they do it’s usually over quickly with apologies all round. For some reason, she feels that the argument brewing is nothing like the ones of the past. It won’t be over quickly, and she, for one, won’t be saying sorry. How can they go on like this? Living apart, a few hours of togetherness snatched here and there?
‘Do you think you can reach the targets?’ he asks benignly.
She shrugs. ‘I’m not going to sign off on them unless I think they’re achievable. We’re still in negotiations.’
He laughs. ‘You’re scary when you’re in negotiating mode.’
She laughs too, but without any mirth. She’s been talking about forecasts and budgets all week at work. She and Henry should be talking about something else.
‘I’ve told you about the school reunion coming up? You’ve kept that night free, haven’t you?’
‘The eleventh, isn’t it? It’s in the diary.’
Would he need to rely on his diary so much if they lived together? Why does every aspect of their relationship feel so forced and unnatural? And why does she feel so critical of everything tonight?
She makes another effort. ‘It’ll be interesting to see everyone. Find out where they’ve ended up in life.’
‘Any old boyfriends I should be watching out for?’
Melissa had a couple of boyfriends in high school. Short, intense relationships that were over in a matter of weeks. The one that meant the most, that cut the deepest, never really got off the ground: Jarrod Harris.
‘Dozens,’ she jokes. ‘I was the school slut.’
Henry laughs. ‘Snow White meets School Slut, now there’s a paradox if I ever heard one!’
It wasn’t funny at the time: being dropped by Jarrod and at the same time ostracised by Annabel and Grace. For the first time in her school life, Melissa found herself on the outside, having no one to sit with or talk to. Her self-esteem took a dent, as did her focus on her studies. But it was character building in the end.
Henry is asking a question. ‘How long is it since you’ve all got together?’
‘A proper reunion? This is the first, actually. Someone tried to organise a five-year one but everyone was off travelling. At the ten-year mark they were all in the throes of new parenthood.’
Melissa feels a stab of something when she thinks that most of her old school friends are parents many times over by now. It’s not quite jealousy. A sense of missing out? Or perhaps resentment that the decision has been made for her – by virtue of Henry’s reluctance as well as their bizarre living arrangements. Melissa has always made her own decisions, forged her own path. The logical part of her brain tells her that she may have ended up here anyway: it’s not as though reproducing was high on her list of priorities. But that doesn’t stop it from rankling and contributing to her general irritability of late.
‘Katy Buckley seems to be doing a better job of mustering everyone this time round. Good on Katy!’
‘Is that sarcasm?’
‘Not at all.’ She frowns at him. He can’t seem to get it right tonight. ‘You know I admire a job well done.’
Henry comes back to the apartment after dinner. His children are with their mother, for once, and he can stay the night and most of tomorrow. Melissa feels more daunted than pleased at the thought of all this uninterrupted time together.
‘Want a nightcap?’ she asks. Maybe another drink will make her less brittle.
‘Go on, then.’
She pours two glasses of white wine – Henry doesn’t drink red – and they sit out on the balcony with a rug across their knees. The apartment has an ocean view but all that can be seen at this time of night is blackness. The ocean can be heard, though, waves crashing one after another on to the beach, the rhythm having a massage-like effect on Melissa’s tension. At last she relaxes. Henry does too. His fingers lace through hers. She rests her head on his shoulder. They talk very little. She much prefers this companionable silence to the polite small talk of earlier. It feels more natural. More like what a married couple would do.
Her thoughts revert to those last few months of school, when she ended up learning less about the syllabus and more about life. She learned that female friendship doesn’t have to be hard – another group of girls accepted her into their circle without any sign of reticence or schoolyard politics. She learned that loyalty is something she values above everything else. And she learned to recognise the power and destructiveness of fear. The blood that spurted from her finger that day in food tech could be traced back to her own carelessness, to Grace’s lack of backbone and ultimately back to Annabel: barely eighteen, pregnant, petrified out of her mind.
Henry yawns, so does she, and by mutual agreement they decide to go to bed. Henry rinses the wine glasses while she locks up. They take turns in the en suite, switch off the bedside lamps, and then they have urgent, frantic sex. Strange that the controlled tension over dinner and the restrained truce on the balcony should culminate in this abandoned coupling: ripping their clothes off, fumbling in the dark, panting and grunting and gasping, with undertones of something forbidden and doomed yet deeply thrilling.
Melissa is sad afterwards, strangely vulnerable and unsure of herself as she lies in the dark. It’s like she’s eighteen again and it’s Jarrod Harris who’s in the bed beside her. Jarrod Harris who has blown her mind and senses with what he has just done to her body. Jarrod Harris, with whom she has this insane connection, while at the same time knowing that she can never keep him. Annabel hasn’t yet dropped her bombshell, but Melissa is intuitively aware that there are too many things mounted against them.
Not that different to how things are with Henry today. It must be the sense of doom that’s reminding her of Jarrod, sucking her back in time.
Henry is fast asleep, breathing heavily, oblivious to her turmoil. What is going to happen with them? Has she wasted the last three years of her life? If she was faced with this situation at work – a client who couldn’t or wouldn’t fully commit – she would cut her losses and walk away. It’s always incredibly frustrating when something you’ve been working on dissolves to nothing but there’s no choice but to rally oneself and move on. Right?
Melissa throws back the sheet and slips out of bed. She feels around the floor for her pyjamas, which were discarded during their lovemaking. In the kitchen she pours herself a glass of water and drinks it standing at the sink. Her phone is where she left it on the counter. No, she will not give in to the temptation to check work emails at this hour of night. Yet her hand, of its own volition, reaches for the phone. She quickly checks the news headlines: floods across Europe at the same time as water restrictions are threatened in Sydney; a celebrity chef who’s in trouble for being politically incorrect. Next thing she’s clicking on Facebook. Photos of friends, old and new, scroll in front of her eyes. Like, like, like. Marcus, a colleague on holiday in Vietnam, has posted so many photos over the past week Melissa feels like she’s been in Vietnam too. Like, like, like. Then her breath catches. Jarrod and Annabel and one of their children are staring back at her. The little girl is wearing a white dress; it must be her communion day. Melissa savours Jarrod’s strong features and jaw, his smile for the camera, the muscular shoulders that used to be such an asset in rugby scrums. Still an attractive man, still capable of provoking the same reaction from her: an instant flare of lust. She routinely squashes it, which is what she got used to doing in school, after they broke up. How odd that she should come across this tonight, when he has been so much on her mind. She and Jarrod have been Facebook friends for years but he rarely pops up in her feed. She thinks for a while, then types.
Lovely photo. Hope you are all well. Xx Melissa
Then she shuts down the phone and goes back to bed. Henry is still oblivious.