The Soulmate(18)

Gabe and the girls had bustled out the door just before 9 am, in a whirlwind of bags and lunchboxes and scooters. This morning’s drama centred around Asha’s declaration that she only wanted strawberries in her lunchbox. No sandwich. No yoghurt. Just the strawberries. Gabe had wanted to oblige, but I’d opted to sneak a sandwich into her bag in a separate container to avoid the judgement that would be forthcoming from their teacher. As they disappeared out the door, I noticed Freya was still wearing her pyjama top and Asha was wearing tights without a skirt. ‘Gabe! Asha needs a skirt!’

He’d been so confused. ‘But she’s wearing pants.’ He’d surveyed her for a moment. ‘With feet. Why don’t they make these for men?’

I’d tossed him a skirt and rolled my eyes. The girls were going to be late, but it wouldn’t matter because Gabe was dropping them off. Sarah Punch, the girls’ teacher, loves Gabe. Every time I show my face at school, she goes out of her way to tell me how wonderful it is that Gabe is such an involved parent, how he’s the only dad who volunteers, how he remembers every special day and activity. She appears not to hear when I point out that 1) he really doesn’t do any more than the other mums, and 2) I’m the one who remembers the special days and activities. Most irritatingly, she only answers to Mrs Punch – and that goes for the mums as well as the kids – but laughs giddily when Gabe calls her Sares. Gabe is staying on as the parent helper at preschool this morning, which means Mrs Punch will lose her mind. This is why men rule the world.

‘Have you thought about whether you’d like to be buried or cremated?’ I ask.

‘I’d like to be buried,’ Mr Peterson says definitely.

‘Fantastic!’ I say. ‘Anywhere particular?’

I expect this will be another twenty-minute debate, but Mr Peterson answers immediately. ‘We have a family plot in Sorrento.’

Perfect, I think. We might finish before noon.

But I’ve barely finished formulating that thought when Mrs Peterson’s head snaps up. ‘You want to be buried in the Sorrento plot? With Jilly?’

Jilly, I have ascertained from our discussions, is Mr Peterson’s late first wife.

‘It’s a family plot,’ Mr Peterson says. ‘You can be buried there too if you like.’

‘The three of us?’ Mrs Peterson looks at me beseechingly. ‘Together?’

‘Why not?’ He grins. ‘It’d be the only threesome I’ll ever have.’

Mrs Peterson gasps at the same time as I hear a knock at the door. A moment later, Dad calls out, ‘Hello!’ and lets himself in. I peer down the hallway to see him with a newspaper under his arm and a takeaway coffee cup in his hand. Mum must have sent him. (‘Go check on Pippa. Make an excuse so it doesn’t look overbearing. Take her a coffee and the paper or something!’ Dad was excellent at following directions to the letter.) I wave to him and hold a finger to my lips.

‘I’m not forcing you to be buried there,’ Mr Peterson is saying. ‘I just said that you’d be welcome.’

‘You’re unbelievable!’

‘Calm down, woman – we’ll be dead, for crying out loud. Besides, I already paid for the plot and there’s room for six!’

Dad puts the newspaper and coffee on the table beside me. I nod my thanks and take a giant slurp. Then he goes into the kitchen and starts unloading the dishwasher. (‘And clean up while you’re there,’ Mum must have said. ‘Unload the dishwasher or something.’)

‘We can come back to this,’ I say to the Petersons, ‘when you’ve had some more time to discuss it. In the meantime, I think we should move on to the –’

‘Everything comes down to money with you, you cheap bastard!’

‘And you wonder why I don’t want to be buried with you.’

Dad chuckles as he unloads the water glasses and puts them back in the wrong spot.

‘For all of his foibles,’ Mum always says, ‘at least your father does what he’s told.’ I wonder what my marriage would have been like if I’d married a man like that. Someone dependable. Responsible. I suspect Mrs Peterson is wondering the same thing.

‘What if you get cremated?’ Mr Peterson is saying. He has his reasonable, mansplaining voice on now, which will irritate Mrs Peterson no end. ‘You could be sprinkled somewhere nice. Down at the golf club, perhaps.’

‘The golf club? While you’re getting cosy with Jilly down at Sorrento?’

Dad finishes unloading the dishwasher and looks around. He must have run out of specific jobs that Mum told him to do and has graduated to ‘then look around and see if anything else needs doing’. I wave at him and point to the door, giving him permission to leave, which he does with obvious relief. I look back at the screen.

Mr and Mrs Peterson are now facing each other, hurling insults. They may have forgotten I’m here. Outside the window, a woman slows down at The Drop. Keep walking, I will her. Keep walking! Thankfully, she does. I keep an eye on her until she’s disappeared from sight.

‘Look, I think we might have reached an impasse,’ I say to my bickering clients. ‘We can either move on, or we can pause things here and set up another meeting when we have reached some agreement. I will remind you that we have gone over the ninety minutes now, and while I’m happy to wait for you to work this out, I’m sure you’d rather not pay me to listen to you argue.’