The Soulmate(49)

At home, I enter via the back door. I need to call Gabe; I need to warn him that Max is in town, at the cafe. It wouldn’t be unusual for Gabe to turn up there at this time of day to grab some lunch.

I pull out my phone.

‘Hi, darling.’

I shouldn’t be startled to find Mum in my kitchen. There always seems to be one family member or another here at any given time. For the first time in a long while, I feel a flush of irritation at this. ‘Hi, Mum. What are you doing here?’

‘I was just at the shops, and I picked up some things to make soup for you and the family,’ she says. ‘Then I thought I might as well just make it here.’

She’s already got out a knife and cutting board and is chopping an onion. Groceries are strewn all over the counter and she’s wearing my apron.

‘Great.’

But it’s not great. I can’t call Gabe with Mum here. I look at my phone, wondering if I should send him a text.

‘I’m glad you’re home,’ Mum says, as I sink into an armchair. ‘I’ve been meaning to check in with you.’

I want, more than anything, to hear Gabe’s voice. I want him to tell me that everything is going to be fine. I open a new message. But what do I write? The sound of Mum chopping is an annoying distraction, stopping me from being able to figure it out.

Chop. Chop, chop.

‘Pip?’

Maybe I could text. Something like: Max is here. I saw him at The Pantry.

Chop. Chop, chop.

Maybe I should include the time he was there? I look at my watch.

The chopping stops. ‘Pip!’

Mum’s voice cuts through the noise in my head. I look up from my phone. ‘Yes?’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Fine. Why?’

She puts down the knife, and sighs. ‘Because I spoke to Kat.’ She gives me a motherly, all-knowing look. ‘She said that you seemed a little . . . off.’ She wipes her hands on her apron, then comes and sits on the couch. ‘What’s going on?’

It’s a dangerous question. One that can induce tears in the calmest, most stable of people. Obviously no one would accuse me of being either right now.

‘It’s just the stress of the last few days, I suppose,’ I say. ‘Even the girls haven’t been themselves. Did I tell you Asha was asking about the woman on the cliff? She asked if the woman was in heaven with her mum.’

Mum winces. ‘It’s a tough thing to understand at her age.’ She’s quiet a moment. ‘Is that all it is?’

I look out the window, across the grass. A bit of police tape still clings to the moonah tree at The Drop. ‘No – it’s this house,’ I say, with more fire than I intended. ‘I knew it was a bad idea to move here, with the cliff right there. I wish I’d put my foot down.’

Mum watches me steadily. ‘So, it’s the house that’s bothering you?’

‘Yes.’ Something feels childish about the way I say it, and I can’t meet her eye. ‘I thought when we moved away, we’d have some peace. Thanks to this house, the drama has just moved somewhere new.’

‘Ah,’ she says. It’s a loaded ‘ah’. I can tell that she’s holding something back.

‘What?’

‘It’s just, you and Gabe have lived in a few houses now,’ she says carefully. ‘And you’ve had your fair share of drama at each one.’

‘So?’

‘So . . . are you sure it’s the house?’ She waits a moment. When I don’t respond, she continues. ‘Because if it were me, I’d be asking if it was something else causing your problems.’

I look at her and see something in her gaze. An opinion that she’d never allowed herself to vocalise, lest she be an interfering mother.

‘Like what?’

Mum opens her mouth to respond at the same moment my phone starts to ring. It’s Gabe.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ I say. ‘I have to get this.’

I pick up the phone and Mum returns to the kitchen. She seems to be chopping even more aggressively than before.





49


PIPPA

THEN



‘Gabe, there’s a package for you,’ I called from the front door.

Both girls were at my feet, delighted by the unexpected interruption to our day. Admittedly, it wasn’t so unexpected lately. The UPS man was becoming our new best friend. The packages had started arriving a few months earlier. Bizarre purchases like old bottles of wine and sporting memorabilia arrived on our doorstep daily, some of them eye-wateringly expensive. Gabe always had an explanation – it was going to appreciate in value, or he needed it for some complicated reason I couldn’t quite grasp.

Last week, it was a set of bikes for the family. A nice idea, except he’d ordered six of them and there were four of us (only two of whom could ride bikes). He’d brushed off the mistake, but a few days ago I sat him down and told him I was worried about the amount he was spending on things we didn’t really need. He promised me he’d curb the online shopping. And yet, here we were.

‘Ah,’ Gabe said, when he joined me at the door. ‘That’ll be the new porch light.’

My heart sank. In addition to online shopping, Gabe’s other recent obsession was fixing things around the house: things which, in many cases, were not even broken. First it was an apparently drippy tap. Then there was the hole in the roof that was allowing in the possums (possums that I never saw or heard). Now, it was the light on the front porch – a sensor light, which I found quite helpful, but which for some reason Gabe couldn’t stand.