“So you heard from Jasmine?” asks Carter. “Since she’s left the country? She’s blocked me, but I bet she’s still in touch with you, right?”
“She’s my flatmate,” says Ethan. “So…you know, I’m feeding her fish.”
And here it comes. Anger floods Carter’s face. “You’re feeding her fish. I think you did a bit more than that, didn’t ya?!”
The volume and vitriol are enough to still surrounding conversations.
Ethan thinks about the “stealth knife” in his pocket, but at what point is he meant to use it? This point? Or does he wait until he’s attacked? When it’s too late.
The two women stand. They push their chairs back in.
“We’ve really got to go,” says Lila. “It was nice to meet you, Carter.”
Carter stares at her for a moment, distracted, but then a thought crosses his mind.
“You fucking him?” He points at Ethan. “He fucked my girlfriend, you know. Right under my nose.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” says Ethan. “You’re deluded, mate. We’re leaving.”
“Or maybe you didn’t, but you wanted to, didn’t you, you badly wanted to, sitting there in your room—” He uses his fist to make a crude gesture.
Ethan has never felt rage like it. Carter is contaminating this night. This perfect night.
He feels Faith’s hand on his arm, pulling him away. “Let’s go, Ethan.”
“Yeah, nice to see you, Ethan!” Carter calls after them. “Say hi to Jasmine, Ethan!”
“Don’t look back,” says Lila, and it seems like they are free, they are walking away from the bar toward Circular Quay, weaving in and out of the crowd, but then Ethan knows somehow he should turn and time slows right down, and this is it, it’s happening. Carter is coming for him, like he’s wanted to do for so long, fist clenched, elbow back, and Ethan has never been punched, guys like us don’t get into fights, will it hurt? Will he fall and crack his head? It happens, Dad, nice guys sometimes die in fights they don’t start, then white-feathers-flapping-squawking the seagull is flying straight at Carter’s murderous face, as though Carter’s head is a French fry it’s determined to steal, and the guy with the bird patrol dog says, “Oh shit!” and the dog bounds forward as Carter staggers back, thwarted.
“Run!” says Lila.
“Thanks, Harvey!” calls out Faith.
They’re running under the silver moonlight and the city lights reflect off the shimmering harbor and Ethan isn’t dead, he’s alive, he’s so amazingly, gratefully alive, and he doesn’t remember it happening but Faith seems to be holding his hand.
Chapter 117
After we scattered Ned’s ashes, I flew back to my strange lonely new home with no idea that all those passengers were leading lives clouded and complicated by my predictions.
Grieving is hard for a task-focused person. You can never wrap things up.
One day I had a sudden memory of Auntie Pat saying to my mother, in the months after Dad died, “You need to try some kind of new activity, Mae, something you have never done before.”
Mum took up fortune-telling, which is not what Auntie Pat meant at all. She meant a hobby.
So I looked up activities at my local community center. I tried line dancing, a philosophy club, a Knitting for Beginners course. I hated them all. Why did I think I would suddenly become a dancer, a philosophy student, or a knitter? It was like I thought grief had given me a new personality. It had not.
Then I tried aqua aerobics.
I loved it. I liked exercising in water, I liked the music, I liked the energetic young instructor bouncing on the side of the pool. I told her she reminded me of the vibrant rock star Pink and she seemed pleased.
I chatted to other members of my class as we dressed afterward in the change room, and one day a woman called Mira, who I had taken against ever so slightly because the buoyancy of her breasts reminded me of Stella, and she wore high heels to aqua aerobics, which I found ridiculous, mentioned that some people got together for coffee afterward.
I must have looked horrified because she said it wasn’t compulsory, and then I felt embarrassed and explained I’d only recently lost my husband.
“Ah,” she said, and do you know what she did?
She came over and wrapped her arms around me. I hadn’t quite finished dressing. She was fully dressed and in her high heels. (I think she actually can’t walk without heels.)