After seeing the girls, I found myself drawn into a web of sexual possibility. Every attractive man set me thinking: Could I approach you? Could I let you take me home? And worse thoughts: Would Rowan care? I hadn’t mustered the courage to talk to him, beyond sending a text about our arranged dinner with my parents at the weekend – I’d like to go alone, if that’s okay? xx – and he’d replied with a pleading message, the end of which was yes, it was fine for me to go alone. But after every read receipt on WhatsApp, he messaged me again: Babe, look, maybe this has been a terrible mistake? Maybe we should talk more? Could we? I typed back: Maybe I can’t live my life knowing you wanted this. Maybe we have to do this now, then backspaced to delete the message. It already felt like a burden, a messy rockery in my belly that I’d been carrying around since I’d seen him. But I didn’t have answers to his questions yet. One thing I did know was that I wasn’t ready to try and find the answers either. Instead, I let the question marks hang unfulfilled and went back to thinking. Could I approach you, man on the train platform? Would my partner even care if I did?
Gwen – my counsellor – had appointments packed to the rafters, which gave me a sad sort of comfort. At least I wasn’t the only person in the city with a relationship in tatters. The receptionist could offer me an appointment weeks away, although she did promise to call if a cancellation came up. Unlikely, I thought, if anyone else’s partner happens to be half as horny and stupid as my own! I shook the thought away and agreed to the time and date she’d offered. I’d started to have these bursts – flurries of intrusive anger where I thought of Rowan not as my partner, but as the partner of a friend – but they never lasted long enough for me to stick with a decision. So I booked in – ‘Actually, is there any chance I could get like, a double appointment? A two-hour slot?’ – and went to the next best thing: dinner with Mum and Dad.
I didn’t think to forewarn them that Rowan wouldn’t be coming. When I arrived at the restaurant – ‘I think my party might already be here. Parcell?’ – a beautiful woman guided me through the packed dining area to drop me off at my parents’ table. My arse had hardly touched the seat when Mum asked, ‘No Rowan?’
I half-laughed. ‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Hi, Edi, sweetheart.’ Dad stood and leaned over the table to kiss my cheek. ‘Everything okay? You look a little flustered.’
‘Long day,’ I brushed the question off and looked at Mum. ‘No Rowan.’
‘Long day for him, too?’ she asked.
I murmured behind my menu, ‘Something came up.’ I saw them swap a look but neither of them was brave enough to push. ‘What are you both having?’
‘We’re having one of the sharing platters, I think,’ Dad answered. ‘The chicken one.’
My stomach turned over. There’s no one for me to share food with. If Rowan leaves me, there won’t ever be anyone for me to share food with. I jerked as my phone vibrated in the front pocket of my jeans. I wondered whether this was something that developed after years of friendship, or whether it was a unique skill Faith had honed. But, as though sensing my sadness from ten streets away, she messaged: I know they’re a lot. Remember you don’t have to tell them. But you don’t have to protect him either. While I scanned that message, another came through: If you need an emergency then I came on my period today and I’m more than happy to call and cry down the phone. Send any emoji. In the seconds after, she sent through a sequence of smiling faces, flowers and food items. When the string of vibrations had stopped, I stashed my phone away and apologised.
‘Don’t ever apologise for that smile. I remember the days of your father making me smile like that.’ She squeezed his hand on the table. ‘Rowan?’
I cleared my throat. ‘Faith, actually.’
‘Oh.’ She set the menu flat and leaned on the table, arms folded. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘She’s really well, thanks, Mum. Enjoying work and—’
‘Still single?’
I frowned. ‘I have literally no idea. Maybe? She hasn’t mentioned anyone so …’
‘Are you ready to order?’ the same waitress from before asked and I snapped, ‘Yes,’ at such a speed that she looked taken aback. ‘Okay, then. What’ll it be?’ Dad ordered for him and Mum; a sharer with a side of tomato and herb flatbread. Rowan’s favourite flatbread. Never anything with garlic. There was a pull in my stomach. ‘What can I get for you?’
I hadn’t decided. But it needed to be something I wouldn’t have been able to have if Rowan had come with us. I scanned the listings again. ‘Can I get the garlic and tofu bake?’ I shut the menu and handed it back to her. ‘Garlic bread would be great, too, thanks. With cheese.’
‘You got it.’
In the minutes after, Mum and Dad tiptoed around asking whether something had happened. Neither of them said anything outright – it wasn’t their style – but there were questioning intonations and presuppositions scattered in every other comment. I thought back to what Faith had said, about not needing to protect Rowan, and, while in many ways I agreed with her, there was also the nagging fear that if this storm somehow passed with us both intact, I didn’t want other people to carry a judgement – on either of us. Plus, they were my parents. They’d always been the pillar of romance and honesty; the only couple I’d ever known to make it work. Unless there have been times when they haven’t made it work … The intrusive thought appeared while I watched them hold hands on the table still.
‘We’re allowed to touch in public, you know,’ Mum joked, which pulled my eyes up.
‘God, I’m sorry.’ I forced a laugh. ‘I was staring?’ She nodded. ‘Sorry, I – can I talk to you both about something?’
Mum yanked her hand free of Dad’s and stretched across the table to reach for mine. ‘Rowan?’
I felt a prickle of feeling behind my nose and I realised then how close I was to tears. ‘Nothing has happened, like, really nothing. I actually asked him not to come tonight.’ Mum looked surprised, but at least I could tell myself I’d been sort of honest. ‘I’m just having a lot of big worries, and I don’t know how normal they are, and, I don’t know, it might really help to talk to people who have also had the big worries and still somehow made it work.’ I felt myself running out of breath as I spoke, but if I stopped I knew the tears would come. ‘I think I’m just worried that we’re not really thinking straight in getting married so young.’ Dad pushed back from the table and came to sit in the spot next to me; he tucked an arm around my shoulder. ‘What if there are all these things we haven’t done yet that we might like to?’
Mum lowered her voice. ‘Is there someone else, sweetheart?’
I actually laughed. ‘No, Mum, and I don’t know that there ever could be.’
Dad’s face was out of my eyeline. But from Mum’s expression I guessed there was a quizzical look being thrown to her. ‘Edi,’ he spoke over me, ‘I’m a bit lost, love. You’re saying you can’t imagine being with anyone else, but you’re worried that, in getting married so young, what happens if you meet someone in the future?’ He was making it sound ridiculous – which it was in many ways. But I nodded. ‘Edi, you can meet someone else at any age, regardless of how long you’ve been married, or how old you were when you got married. Sometimes people just meet along the way and fall together, no matter how they feel about their spouses. Your age, your experiences – I don’t know they’ve got anything to do with that.’
I sucked in a big mouthful of air to rush through the next question. ‘Mum,’ I knew I could ask her easier than him, ‘was there anyone else, before Dad?’
She looked at Dad, then back at me, before she shrugged and said, ‘Yes.’
‘But there wasn’t for me.’
I pulled away to stare hard at him. ‘Serious?’
He laughed. ‘Seriously, yes.’
‘Do you feel that you’ve missed out?’
And he laughed again. ‘No, love. I don’t. Your mother worries about that more than I do. Not that she’s missed out, I don’t mean that, but that I might have done. But I’ve had a fulfilling relationship with someone who loves me and whom I love.’ He kept his arm around me but reached across to touch the inside of Mum’s forearm; there was something unexpectedly intimate in it. ‘Not many people are lucky enough to say that, especially not these days. Oh, bugger.’ He snapped out of his stupor. ‘That was insensitive, Edi, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ I leaned into him. ‘It’s nice for a girl to hear her parents love each other.’
‘And have good sex,’ Mum added. She winked at Dad then apologised to me. It didn’t sound sincere, but at least it made me smile. ‘But it sounds to me like you’re worried you’re missing out on some big bad world out there, Edi, is that about right?’
No, I don’t think that; he does. ‘Yes, yes, I suppose that’s what I think.’ It occurred to me that they’d judge me less than they’d judge Rowan, though, so I took the hit. ‘I worry we’re not giving ourselves the chance to explore things properly, you know, ourselves, our likes, our – I don’t really know what else. Just … things. I worry for Rowan, too, that he might want to be with other women and end up feeling trapped. You hear about it all the time, don’t you? Especially, like Dad said, our generation and all.’
Before Mum could answer, Dad shifted position so he could set a hand on each shoulder. He looked at me dead on and stared like he was searching for something. ‘Edith Parcell, you’re a beautiful and intelligent woman. You’re giving and loving and brave and hilarious, especially when you don’t mean to be. And don’t let the fact that I’m your old dad undercut any of that, do you hear? Rowan is mighty lucky to have you, and I’m sure if you told him these worries, about not experiencing enough and what have you, I bet he’d tell you exactly the same as I have. Then he’d kiss you, and tell you you’re being daft.’ There was a single tear track running from each duct, en route to my chin, by the time Dad had finished. He pulled me to him, kissed my forehead and said, ‘Now, you’re being daft.’
‘Talk to him, why don’t you?’ Mum added. ‘Rowan that is, not your dad. He’ll be bawling his eyes out when we’re home later; there’ll be no talking to him after this. But talk to Rowan? I’m sure if you told him this business about other people, experiencing more … whatever it is you think you both need to be experiencing, he’ll tell you things are just fine as they are.’ Every strike of reassurance felt like a blow to my belly. He could tell me no such thing, I wanted to say, because this was his bloody suggestion! ‘Oh.’ Something behind me caught her attention. ‘Thank you.’
Mum leaned away from the table to make room for the waitress, who was balancing ridiculous amounts of food on each forearm. When everything was down in front of the right place setting, she turned to me and pulled a napkin out of the small apron that was fixed around her waist.
‘I saw you across the room.’ She handed it to me. ‘Don’t think me rude, honey, but in my line of work I see a lot of girls crying and let me tell you, whoever he is, he’s probably not worth it …’