Page 93 of Here One Moment

When I came back to the office after that field trip I was overcome with shame. I could not believe I’d taken that woman’s hand in mine and behaved as I had. It was like I’d been drunk. Perhaps I got myself drunk on a shot of power. The power of Madame Mae. Seeing the truth I wanted to see and the future I thought was right for her. Perhaps she and her husband just needed better communication! Did she even ask him to please stop shouting? Perhaps he had hearing problems like my grandfather and didn’t realize he shouted. What if she ruined her life because of my reckless meddling?

I never heard if she left, and I didn’t read another palm for many years after that.

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My boss with the musical Scottish accent was Scottish but of Pakistani descent. His name was Baashir and he was the first openly gay person I had ever met, if you don’t count Don, the gorgeous gay character on Number 96. To be honest I do count Don. Gosh, I was fond of Don.

Baashir’s passion was travel. He’d taken two years to reach Australia from Scotland. He’d hitchhiked all over Europe and North Africa, via Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, India, Iran, Nepal, and Thailand. He planned to work in Australia for two years, and then take another two years to make his way back to Scotland.

Before I met Baashir, “travel” wasn’t in my vocabulary except as a way to get places. The only people I knew who had left Australia did so to fight wars. Air travel at the time was impossibly expensive. Nobody took “gap years.”

Baashir had no photos to show me. No slides, either. Thank goodness. If you think your friends post too many photos of their travels on social media, be grateful you won’t ever have to sit in their living room watching those photos projected onto a wall while you eat hard cheese and cocktail onions. Those have been some of the longest nights of my life.

Anyhow, Baashir just told me stories, about visiting the Taj Mahal at sunrise, soaking in the steaming hot springs in Iceland, camping just outside of Cairo, eating crisp perfect Wiener schnitzel in the world’s oldest restaurant in Salzburg. He was like a carpet salesman, unfurling rug after rug, each more exquisite than the last.

The only travel I’d ever done was to see the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour.

Baashir very kindly listened to my detailed description of the Big Banana. Everything interested Baashir. Curiosity is such an attractive quality. He said he would have to check it out. I said I wasn’t sure how it would stack up against the Taj Mahal.

I never overhear a Scottish accent without quickly turning in the irrational hope that it may be Baashir. He gave me my first job, an interest in travel, a taste for red wine, and he invited me to a Swiss fondue party, which supposedly “changed my destiny.”

I consider that phrase to be a logical fallacy.

Don’t try to be funny, Cherry.

Chapter 84

It is Sue’s sixty-fourth birthday and her family seems to be treating it as her wake, even though she is not only alive but apparently in perfect health: Caterina has sent her for still more tests, and nobody can find anything wrong with her. Nothing more can be done. She can’t be treated for an illness she doesn’t have.

“Your psychic has got it wrong,” said Caterina. “I would bet on my life you’re not a candidate for pancreatic cancer. You’re just not. She’s wrong.”

“I agree,” says Sue, and she truly does agree. She feels in excellent health, possibly the best health of her life. When she was bringing up the boys and working full-time she hovered permanently on the edge of exhaustion or possibly a nervous breakdown, and then along came menopause, which put her through the wringer, it really did, but for the last few years she’s felt great. Not a single niggling symptom to worry her, and if she’d been asked that question in her fifties she could have listed a dozen. Honestly, she feels like she might be in better health than a lot of people at this party. Her youngest son, for example, has that run-down, glassy-eyed look he used to get after a sleepover. He’s thirty-five, so she can’t put him to bed, but gosh, she’d love to clap her hands and say, “Early night for you, buddy!”

They are at the family home in Summer Hill, the one that Sue and Max bought forty years ago for a price that everyone now considers inconceivably cheap, but did not feel that way at the time. It was a damp, dark Federation cottage and Sue secretly hated it; it was years before they had the money and the time to turn it into the light-filled “character home” it is today.

Sue looks around her living room, where she and Max sit side by side in the middle of their faux-leather IKEA couch while their family swirls about them. “No! It’s your birthday!” people keep saying when she goes to do something. Her glass is refilled. Platters of food she did not prepare are offered to her.

“You look great, Mum,” said her eldest when he kissed her hello today, with a note of surprise.

“Darling, you know I don’t actually have a terminal illness,” she reminded him.

“And she’s not getting one!” said her son’s wife. “This psychic stuff is ridiculous. I don’t believe a word of it!” Then her eyes filled with tears and she threw her arms around Sue and told her in a choked whisper that she was more of a mother to her than her own mother.

The rule in their family is no presents for adults except on milestone birthdays, but everyone has arrived with an elaborately wrapped gift accompanied by a heartfelt card. Sue is touched but annoyed by the expenditure of hard-earned money.

This is a preview of how her family would respond if she truly was struck by a serious illness, and of course everyone is behaving as themselves, just more so. The positive thinkers think positively, the worriers worry. Her husband, bless him, is the most worried but pretending the hardest not to be. Max is always frenetic with delight when the whole family is over and the house is filled with children running this way and that, while he plays music, tells dad jokes, and presides over the barbecue, but today he vibrates with so much energy it’s like he’s on speed.

The problem is that the boys and their partners have insisted that neither Sue nor Max do anything today, no barbecue, they haven’t even been allowed to bake a cake. Sue knows they are doing this out of love and worry, but it means there is nowhere for Max to put all his pent-up energy.

“You know I’m fine,” Sue keeps telling him.

“Of course you’re fine,” he says. “Why wouldn’t you be?”

Well, he knows why. Like the rest of her family, except for the littler grandchildren, he saw the video of the girl in the car and he read about the elderly doctors.

Her youngest grandchild, a curly-haired toddler, reaches a sticky hand toward Sue’s knee, and she doesn’t try to save her good pants, just lets him grab her and hoists him up onto her lap. He presses the same sticky hand against her cheek and looks romantically into her eyes. A droplet of dribble hovers on his rosebud lips. His teeth are tiny, perfectly spaced pearls.

“Hello, beautiful boy,” she says. She turns to Max so he can join her in shared wonder, but Max is looking at their two oldest sons on the other side of the room, their heads both bent over their phones, their expressions serious.

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