Page 20 of Here One Moment

I tried once more to pin my brooch to my blouse, and by now I was feeling extremely tetchy, and once again I couldn’t seem to get a grip on the tiny sharp pin. I felt so frustrated! What was I doing differently? I remember meeting my eyes in my dressing-table mirror and snarling at myself. I remember the strange duality of it: me being so aggressively angry with me.

My reaction was oversized and unexpected. I threw the brooch in a fit of anger, as if it were the brooch’s fault. It’s not behavior you would expect from my personality type. Supposedly, the late Queen Elizabeth and I share the same personality type although I’m sure she wasn’t actually required to take the Myers-Briggs personality test for her position. I assume somebody decided her personality type based on observation.

You can probably guess what happened after I threw that brooch across the room.

Exactly.

I couldn’t find it. It’s a very small, delicate piece of jewelry. I knew logically that it had to be somewhere in the room, but it felt like it had vanished into thin air.

I got systematic. I knelt down on my hands and knees. I started from the far corner of the room and divided the bedroom into imaginary grids of approximately thirty by thirty centimeters, and then I went grid by grid across the room, running my hands across the floorboards and the gray wool blend of my non-slip rug.

It took fourteen grids before I found it.

It was near the bed. Nowhere near where I thought it would be. I stood back up and calmly pinned the brooch to my blouse, no problem at all, just the way I’d always done those eleven thousand times or so before.

I then sat in the armchair in my study, my packed bag at my feet, until it was time for my taxi.

That would have been at least four hours, which is a long time to sit without moving, without thinking a single thought. I didn’t eat breakfast. Or morning tea. Or lunch. I did not have a glass of water or even a cup of tea. I did not eat a Monte Carlo biscuit.

There was something not right with me that day.

But I guess you already knew that.

Chapter 18

Ethan Chang already has death on his mind when the Death Lady approaches his row.

So that’s ironic, or coincidental, or possibly it’s evidence he’s living in a simulation.

He isn’t just casually thinking about death, either. He’s fixated on the topic. He’s been thinking about nothing else all day.

One of the flight attendants on this morning’s flight out of Sydney had asked if he were “off to Hobart for work or pleasure?” with a big friendly smile.

“Funeral,” Ethan had answered, and the poor woman didn’t know where to put her smile.

It was his first-ever funeral. At the age of twenty-nine. His flatmate, Jasmine, talked him through funeral etiquette. She said he should dress like it’s a job interview, don’t be late, don’t chew gum, turn your phone to silent, and open every conversation with “I’m so sorry for your loss.” She said his broken wrist was not an excuse to get out of a funeral. She said funerals weren’t like birthdays. He wouldn’t get another chance next year.

Jasmine has been to extravagant funerals all over the world. She’s been to a memorial service where guests sipped champagne while the deceased’s ashes were scattered by means of a magnificent fireworks display. She said it was touching, but it would have been better if they’d synced the fireworks to the music.

She moves in very different circles to Ethan because she’s an heiress. A frozen-fish heiress. He’s seen her described that way in the social pages: Frozen-fish heiress Jasmine Dumas, arrives in Rome for lavish celebrity wedding.

Frozen fish made Jasmine’s dad rich, “richer than God,” but he’s keen for his children to learn “how the real world works.” He therefore bought Jasmine a Sydney apartment with only stingy ocean glimpses from the master bedroom and made her responsible for all the other expenses like electricity, water, and so on. Jasmine is philosophically opposed to working nine to five (she is an entrepreneur and needs creative space), so she advertised on Flatmate Finders for someone to take the second smaller bedroom, and that’s how she found Ethan.

Jasmine has turned out to be both a good landlord and flatmate.

She even cut up his steak after his rock-climbing accident. She just did it without even asking. She said her brother (who lives full-time in Paris now, his apartment has only stingy glimpses of the Eiffel Tower, once again “keeping it real”) was also into extreme sports and he’d broken seven bones. Ethan didn’t tell Jasmine that he is definitely not into extreme sports. It had been his first time at the rock-climbing center and he didn’t even make it as far as the supposedly easy “bouldering wall” before he tripped over his own backpack while attempting to put on his harness, fracturing his scaphoid bone.

“Mountain biking? Skateboarding? Snowboarding?” guessed the hot flight attendant when he handed over his boarding pass to return home, and for some reason he told her the truth. The surprised, pleased sound of her laugh that followed him down the aisle made him think that maybe he should do the same with Jasmine. He’d noticed that when it came to women you should often do the exact opposite of what you intuitively thought you should do.

“Why do guys like us always fall for girls who are out of our league?” his friend Harvey had said after he met Jasmine for the first time.

Ethan kind of felt like punching Harvey when he said that.

(He thought he was playing it cool.)

(Yes, obviously she’s out of his league.)

Harvey often says things that make Ethan’s head explode. Like, “Guys like us never make it past middle management.” “Guys like us don’t drive cars like that.” “Guys like us are never good at sports.”

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