The Soulmate(15)

My parents were surprised – possibly even concerned – when, six weeks after our first meeting, I told them Gabe and I were engaged. But my mother believed in letting people make their own choices, and my father believed in doing what Mum told him. Besides, I knew that once Mum and Dad got to know Gabe, they would fall in love with him too. How could they not?

We got married in the Botanic Gardens, in the same spot we’d first seen each other. It was a brilliant, blue-skied, happy day. It was a day of joy and contentment. With Gabe by my side, the future was bright.





11


PIPPA

NOW



‘Do the silly voices, Daddy,’ the girls cry. ‘And put on the head!’

I stand in the doorway of their bedroom, watching. Gabe is lying in the middle of Asha’s single bed, with a little girl on either side of him. In his hands is a copy of The Tiger Who Came to Tea.

He looks weary. It’s well after the girls’ bedtime and they are showing no signs of calming down. Even Freya, our good sleeper, is wide-eyed and wriggly. (Asha, our night owl, is practically psychotic with hysteria.) It is, of course, a problem of Gabe’s own making. Just a month ago, while reading The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Gabe had donned the fluffy tiger’s head and peeped around the corner saying he was ‘very hungry’.

When I’m doing story time, the only thing I don is a no-nonsense expression.

Asha thrusts the head into his hands. ‘Put it on! Put it on!’

Gabe looks like he’s going to protest, but that’s all part of the act. Gabe is a father first, everything else second. It’s been an interesting transition this year, handing the primary carer baton to Gabe. It took time, but these days it’s him they go to with the important questions like: ‘Where are the crackers?’ ‘How does that song go – the one about the bird that we sang in the car that day?’ and ‘Where is my purple squishy thing that I won in the lucky dip at Seraphine’s party?’ Now, he is the expert on hair, playing dolls, baking cakes, doing craft. He revels in it. Being a dad is the blood in his veins. If there was a Dad Olympics, Gabe would win gold.

‘Put on the head?’ he says. ‘I don’t put on heads.’ He disappears under the blankets and comes out wearing the head, roaring wildly. ‘This is just what I look like!’

The girls roll about in giggles. Asha wipes away tears.

They look adorable, all clean and fresh in their matching rainbow pyjamas.

‘Are they twins?’ people always ask when we’re out in public, usually after hearing both girls call me Mummy. It is, they must think, the obvious explanation, even if it doesn’t quite fit. Usually by that point I’ve felt the person watching us for a while, trying to make sense of the situation.

‘Irish twins,’ I always say. ‘Born less than a year apart.’

This is typically followed by the unasked-for information that the other person had barely had sex with their partner twelve months after having their first child, let alone birthed another one, and I do my best to deflect their awe with remarks about how ‘it’s had its difficult moments’. (An understatement, I’ll admit.)

I close the bedroom door, leaving Gabe to story time. There’s a half-bottle of red wine on the kitchen counter. I open the bottle and pour myself a glass. It’s the same wine we were drinking when we saw the woman out on the cliff, I realise. Gabe had been so alive that night, dancing around the kitchen, singing to French music. How quickly things can change.

My laptop is on the kitchen counter. I open it and do another search. ‘Woman dies at The Drop.’

It’s the third time I’ve done this today, trying different word combinations, and there’s still nothing. No name. No information about her at all. I’ve no idea if there will ever be information. I have a vague feeling that suicides aren’t reported on. Something to do with not wanting to encourage it. It’s a horrifying thought – that someone might read an article in the paper and think, Ah. Good idea. I’ll go jump off a cliff. It’s also horrifying because it means I may never know anything about this woman.

It shouldn’t matter who she is, of course. Any death is a tragedy. Still, I’ve always found details to be orientating in these sorts of situations. For example, if the woman had a history of depression, that would be information worth knowing. I’d also be curious to know if she’d made earlier attempts at suicide. That’s what I’m looking for, I realise: something to suggest that her death was inevitable. Why am I looking for that? What is wrong with me?

I suppose the woman’s family have been informed by now. They’re probably trying to process the fact that their mother/wife/daughter/sister is gone forever. Will it be a total surprise? Or have they been subconsciously preparing for the news all their life? It’s hard not to imagine what they must be feeling right now, hard not to feel their pain. It makes me think of a conversation I had with Gabe once, when he was at his lowest. It was a weekday and I’d had a call from child care to pick up Freya because she wasn’t feeling well. I’d left the office, collected her, and arrived home to find Gabe lying on the couch, still in his pyjamas.

‘Gabe?’ I said. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’

He gave me the strangest look. He sat up, took my hands in his and gazed at me with a desperation I will never forget.