Suzi’s new book Parricide (subtitled, for the less erudite, Parent Killers) was a nightmare. Dave had rung to give me a token forewarning, ‘It’s not as polished as it usually is. You might need to do a bit of extra development work on it. We’ll pay for the extra hours; just let us know if the budget begins to totally blow out.’
Not as polished as it usually was? It was practically submitted in dot-point form. If I were Dave, there was no way I would have accepted a manuscript like that. I scrolled through two hundred pages of what I felt were just research notes. It traversed centuries, continents, from myths to reality, from Oedipus to Matthew Wales, from Roman Emperor Nero to Nepal’s Crown Prince Dipendra. There was no order and no flow, and her image briefs were scrappy: ‘See society killers article in The Age, November that year, I think, picture of Wales outside court’.
Without consulting with Dave, I arranged to meet her for coffee, so we could talk about the manuscript and how it should be better ordered. Together we figured out different chapter headings and a tighter chronology to follow.
‘I’m sorry it’s such a mess,’ Suzi finally admitted. ‘It’s just that things are rather tricky at the moment. I’m working my other job four days a week, just to pay the bills. I’ve got Brodie most of the time. His dad has him from Friday to Sunday, but after I catch up on all the housework it doesn’t give me much time to work on the book. You must be really frustrated with me.’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘What happened with you and your husband? I’m only interested because I’m going through a rocky patch myself.’
‘Are you?’ she eyed me curiously. ‘Well, we simply fell out of love with each other. We were arguing more than we were talking. It wasn’t a healthy environment for Brodie.’
‘How did you make the leap to breaking up?’
‘It was just a steady decline. It wasn’t just the one conversation, it wasn’t like this is it, this is the moment when we’re breaking up. It went on for years. We were both very practical people, so we eventually acknowledged it.’
‘That sounds civil,’ I said.
‘As civil as it could be. But it’s still not easy.’
‘Are you glad you broke up?’
‘Some days yes, some days no.’
I sighed. ‘Luke is such a great guy, but I feel as though we have no future together. It’s like our relationship has gone to seed and all our good times are in the past. Sometimes I find myself wishing he’d meet another woman. He’d be happy and we could split up and I’d be free to get on with life. Did you ever feel like that?’
She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think I actually wished Anton would meet someone else. I don’t know. I just wished we could break up easily. But there’s no easy way out. What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sort of hoping some beauty will come along and I can quietly exit stage left without him noticing.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I’m serious.’ And I wish that beauty was you, I thought, because although her manuscript was a pile of shit there was something quite charming about her. I liked the sensible nature of her separation from her husband, without the high drama.
I didn’t know whether I’d be able to do that with Luke. Although he was a really calm guy, I suspected he would fire up if I suggested we separated. And the fact that I truly didn’t know how he was going to respond showed me how little I actually knew about him. You might live with someone, share a meal every night, sleep in the same bed, but it’s impossible to know how they are going to react to news like that. I felt as though he was living in this constant state of denial, like he couldn’t even see how I was feeling, although I was always trying to be frank with him. It was as though he thought because we had Max he had me for life. He’d given up trying, because he’d given me an anchor, a chain that bound us together until death. But he didn’t know I was carrying around an industrial-sized bolt-cutter with the name of Jarvis.