Page 30 of Special Delivery
‘Hurry up, you’re annoying me.’
‘That’s unusual.’
‘Just being honest.’
‘It’s one of your best traits.’
‘Actually it’s not. I’m normally an overly nice people pleaser and avoid confrontation at any cost, even with my best friends and parents. I’m not this honest with anyone else.’
‘Lucky me.’
‘It wasn’t a compliment,’ said Poppy. ‘Stop stalling and spill.’
‘Okay.’ James looked straight ahead and spoke. ‘My greatest fear is … settling.’
‘Like settling down?’
‘Well, kind of. It depends, I guess. I don’t want to wake up one day and realise I’ve wasted years of my life by blindly settling down. I want tochoosemy life.’
They walked in silence for a few moments.
James turned to her. ‘Was that answer acceptable?’
Poppy considered this. ‘It’s passable, I suppose, but it does make you sound like a douchey bachelor.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your greatest fear is commitment? That’s some A-grade douchebag shit.’
James shook his head. ‘That’s not what I meant. I meant I don’t want to settle for just anything. I don’t want to drift along and find myself somehow living a life that’s not whatI want. If I do settle down, it’s going to be my choice, and with someone who is really, properly amazing.’
‘So essentially your greatest fear is not marrying a Victoria’s Secret model?’
‘I think you’re deliberately misunderstanding me.’
‘Whatever,’ shrugged Poppy.
‘What about you then?’ asked James. ‘What’s your greatest fear?’
Poppy gave a bitter laugh. ‘Easy. I’m afraid of being a bad mum.’
‘Poppy—’
‘I’m not fishing for compliments,’ she interrupted. ‘I know I won’t be a bad mum in terms of brushing her teeth with Coca-Cola or anything. I’m just …’ She paused, registering she should probably stop before she revealed her greatest insecurities to the most unempathetic human in the world. But really, if there was anyone whose opinion she couldn’t care less about, it was the man next to her. ‘I’m worried I won’t be enough,’ she sighed. ‘I mean, Maeve only has me. I worry enough about whether I can be a good mum, let alone whether I can be a good dad too. I mean, seriously, I’m shit at sport.’
‘Maeve’s dad isn’t around much?’ James’s voice was quiet.
‘No,’ she said flatly, a vision of the labour ward flashing behind her eyes: James holding her hand, Patrick hundreds of kilometres away in Sydney. ‘You already know he didn’t even come to Orange for the birth. He had tickets to the Test.’
‘He missed the birth of his child for acricket match?’
‘And he hates cricket,’ Poppy said. ‘It was just a convenient excuse. He didn’t want to be at the birth. It would have made it real to him and he’s more of a fantasy-land kind of guy.’
‘Jesus,’ muttered James. ‘He sounds like an arsehole.’ He looked at her quickly. ‘Sorry, he was obviously great if you were with him …’
Poppy laughed darkly. ‘Don’t worry. Heisan arsehole. I just assumed he’d grow out of it. Like, when we were younger, he’d come back from the pub with all these crazy stories and I just thought it was funny. Now, I’d be like, “Dude, you’re thirty-five—go home.”’
James shook his head.
