Page 77 of Here One Moment

Leo’s phone rings.

It says: Sue O’Sullivan (Hobart flight).

“How are you, Leo, can you talk?” She launches straight in, as if they are old friends, not strangers who met once on a plane, and Leo feels the strangest longing for her and Max to actually be his old friends. He’s messed up badly on the issue of friends. He’s left “friends” to Neve, in the same way Neve has left “tax” and “lightbulbs” to him.

“I can talk,” says Leo. “I’m just reading about the Baileys. The doctors in Hobart.”

“Me too,” says Sue. “What a great innings! Sad, but not a tragedy, not like the poor beautiful young girl in the car accident, which I assume you saw. I talked to her at the airport, she was so sweet. It was terrible to see…to see that.”

Leo hears the horror of the video in her words.

“I did,” says Leo. “That video was awful. My daughter found it first.”

“Oh, no, and did Bridie understand the…implications?”

She remembers Bridie’s name. He pauses. He is so touched by that.

“Sorry—it is Bridie, isn’t it, I thought—?”

“Yes,” says Leo. “You have a great memory! Unfortunately Bridie does know—she overheard me talking to my wife about it and got very worked up for a while. We thought she’d gotten over it, but obviously that video of the poor young girl in the car accident was just…”

“Kids are resilient,” says Sue. “Try not to worry.” She sighs. “I don’t really know why I’m calling you, Leo, I guess I just wanted to talk to someone in the same situation. I’ve had all these tests and there is no indication that I’ve got any kind of cancer. I guess I just wondered, are you feeling—”

“Spooked?” says Leo. He looks at the framed photo he keeps on his desk of Neve and the children. It’s nowhere glamorous, just the three of them on the couch, Neve in the middle, a kid tucked under each arm. Oli and Bridie are so much bigger now.

“Yes,” says Sue. “I mean, it could all just be—”

“A terrible coincidence,” says Leo. He needs to stop finishing her sentences. People prefer to finish their own. He pulls the photo closer to him. He can’t die. He’s necessary. Neve leaves flammable items near the hotplates, she never closes cupboard doors, and she’s so happy when he comes home. Sometimes it gives him a kind of teenage boy’s feeling of surprise: Wow, this girl still really likes me!

“Do you really think it’s just a coincidence?” says Sue. She sounds younger on the phone than he remembers from the plane, less grandmotherly, more like someone the same age as him. He imagines inviting Sue and Max over for dinner. Ethan could come too! It’s healthy to have friends from different generations. They could be his friends. Would that be weird? Yes, it’s weird, what’s wrong with him?

“It has to be a coincidence,” says Leo. “But, yes, I’m feeling a little rattled. I shared a taxi with that injured guy and she predicted that he’ll die in a fight when he’s thirty, which is in October, and I’m meant to go in a workplace accident any time after my birthday in November. I feel like we might be next on the chopping block!” Is this dark humor appropriate?

“Well, hopefully you two will prove her wrong!” says Sue robustly.

“I did hear her tell that flight attendant she’d die of ‘self-harm’ when she was twenty-eight,” muses Leo. “But I think she was younger than that.”

“Oh, no, please tell me it wasn’t Allegra,” says Sue. “The beautiful one? It was her twenty-eighth birthday that very day!”

Leo’s phone beeps and he takes it away from his ear and sees Neve’s name. She rarely if ever calls when he’s at work. Has she seen the article? “Sorry, Sue, my wife is just calling—”

“You go, Leo,” says Sue immediately. “Keep in touch.”

Leo accepts Neve’s call. “Hi,” he says to her, and her words are a tumble of panic. The only time he can remember her ever sounding like this was in the final stages of labor with both babies, when both times she begged him to please make it stop, and he felt so terrible that he couldn’t.

“You need to resign, Leo. Type up your letter of resignation right now.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am serious.”

He can’t believe it. Some kind of switch has been flicked. She’d been calm after they watched that terrible car accident video together.

“More people have died,” she says. “Just like she predicted.”

“I know, sweetheart, I just read the article myself, but they were an elderly couple, it wasn’t actually that hard a prediction to make. I can’t possibly give up work based on a random—”

“Why can’t you? Of course you can. It’s easy. Just stop working for a year.”

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