Page 36 of Here One Moment

“Is that right?” The taxi driver looks over his shoulder and deftly changes lanes. “A clairvoyant told an aunt of mine she’d die on her sixtieth birthday.”

There is a pause, and finally Leo says, “And—ah—did she?”

“She did, mate!” says the driver happily. “Choked to death a minute before midnight on her sixtieth birthday. Eating a leftover party pie from her birthday party. Always a bit greedy, Auntie Carol, may the poor old chook rest in peace.”

“Oh, dear,” says Leo. “Very important to chew your food.”

“Fortunately, the same clairvoyant told me mum she’d live a long, happy life.”

“And she’s still alive?” confirms Ethan.

“Alive and kicking!” says the driver. “Loves her lawn bowls.”

“Well, you know, we’re kind of hoping this clairvoyant does not have special powers,” says Leo. “Because a few of us got earlier deaths than we would have liked.”

“Got it, mate. So if her predictions begin to come true?” A passing streetlight illuminates the car so that Ethan can see his eyes, bright and interested, looking back at them in the rearview mirror. “Then you’ll know.”

Chapter 30

I’ve checked my diary and the first death took place on the same day as my Introduction to Line Dancing class.

I was not aware of it at the time, or for several months after.

I don’t mean to sound flippant.

I’m not flippant about death. You could argue that death has defined my life, both personally and professionally.

The line dancing was not a success. I don’t know why I thought it would be.

Chapter 31

It is the morning after Leo’s pointless day trip to Hobart and the tragedy of the missed Lion King concert.

A thunderstorm has caused flash flooding, power lines to come down, and, to the joy of parents throughout the suburbs, the cancellation of all Saturday morning outdoor sports.

Oli is at a friend’s place down the road.

Bridie lies under a blanket on the couch in the living room, white-faced with purple smudges under her eyes, her earbuds in, the television on. The leftover makeup under her eyes gives the impression that she’s a teenager who has been out clubbing rather than an eleven-year-old hungover from all the adrenaline and excitement of playing Zazu.

Leo used the unexpected gift of time to catch up on work and now he’s having coffee and croissants with Neve, while the rain falls steadily and the wind howls.

He watches Neve putting jam on her croissant. His wife wears pajama pants—she says they are not pajama pants, but they sure look like pajama pants, and she wears them to bed, so it seems conclusive—and an old blue school hoodie that once belonged to Oli but is too small for him, and, of course, her Cartier watch.

He met Neve at a party and it was her watch that first caught his eye. Rectangular face, eighteen-carat white gold, covered in white diamonds.

“That is a really beautiful watch,” he’d said without thinking. Normally he agonized over the appropriate opening line for so long the moment passed.

“Thank you,” said Neve, before she was Neve and when instead she was a moderately drunk pretty girl sitting precariously on a stool at a high table. She wore crooked glasses with smudged lenses, a red slip dress with a fraying neckline, and Birkenstocks. (Leo’s mother loves Neve, but she does not love her shoes.)

She held up her wrist so that Leo could look more closely at the watch and said, “It was a twenty-first birthday present from my mum.”

One strap of her dress had fallen off her shoulder, which was mesmerizing. Now it drives him mad when a bra strap slithers to her elbow. He keeps adjusting her bras. She seems to have no understanding of how the tightening mechanisms work.

After they introduced themselves and determined how they knew the party host, she put her hand on his arm and said, “What’s worrying you?”

He tried to tell her that he wasn’t worried about anything, it wasjust something about his face—he suffers from “resting worried face”—but she insisted, so he admitted he was worried he might have accidentally parked illegally and he couldn’t afford a parking ticket right now; he was worried he couldn’t remember the host’s mother’s name and he’d been introduced to her many times before; he was worried Neve was about to fall off her stool, could she please stop rocking back and forth like that? And finally he was worried that she might not be able to see properly through those glasses and could he please fix them for her?

He cleaned her glasses with his handkerchief and straightened the frame and when she put them back on she said it was a beautiful miracle. She discreetly determined the host’s mother’s name for him, enabling him to smoothly say, “Hello, Irene!” just in the nick of time, and they went for a walk to double-check the parking sign. Basically they laid down a template for the entirety of their future relationship. His role is to straighten and adjust, mitigate risk and worry, hers is to mollify and soothe, to unwind his wound-up self.

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