The Soulmate(54)

We pull up a few doors down from the health centre. The girls are reluctant to get out, so Gabe heaves them both onto his back in a double piggyback. They look like a scene from a movie – the two giggling girls and their handsome father. Passers-by steal looks at them and smile.

‘I had an appointment for my daughters this morning, but unfortunately I can’t find them,’ Gabe says to the woman on reception as we enter.

‘We’re here!’ the girls squeal from his back. ‘We’re here, Daddy!’

We are taken to a room behind a curtain and seated side by side on plastic chairs with the girls on our laps. Gabe has Freya, I have Asha. The receptionist stands nearby, poised to blow bubbles, a distraction technique to take the child’s mind off the sting of the needle.

The nurse flirts shamelessly with Gabe. She’s a young attractive brunette with heavy false eyelashes and pencilled-on eyebrows. ‘Aren’t you lucky having your daddy come with you?’ the nurse says, ostensibly to the girls, but she keeps her gaze on Gabe. It’s like she hasn’t even noticed I’m here. ‘Had the morning off work, did you?’

‘Actually, I am the working parent,’ I say. I hear the tight, defensive note in my voice, and I hate myself for it. ‘Gabe is their primary parent. I took time off work.’

‘You’re the primary parent?’ she says to Gabe. ‘That’s so sweet.’

She removes the syringe from the plastic packet, in full sight of the girls. Asha looks horrified. I’m horrified too. The last time they had shots, the motherly nurse did it surreptitiously; even I hadn’t seen it coming. I feel a pang of yearning, again, for a time before we moved here.

Gabe pulls up Freya’s sleeve.

‘A woman fell off the cliff near our house,’ Asha says. ‘She walked too close to the edge. Normally my daddy stops people, but he didn’t stop this lady.’

The nurse pauses. Now she looks at me.

‘Why didn’t he stop her?’ Freya asks her sister.

‘I think he wasn’t quick enough,’ Asha replies. ‘Or maybe he didn’t like her.’

‘All right, little sting,’ the nurse says and jabs Freya, who lets out an almighty howl.

‘Brave girl,’ the nurse says, putting a cotton bud and then a piece of surgical tape on Freya’s arm.

The receptionist starts blowing bubbles and one floats into my eye. I reach up to rub it and Asha chooses this moment to slip off my lap and bolt.

‘Shit!’ I leap up, still rubbing my eye. I push through the curtain in time to see her disappear through the door onto the street. I run after her, catching up a few doors down, where she has been stopped by a good Samaritan.

‘I don’t want any superheroes,’ she says to the man in chinos, a shirt and a navy jumper who has stooped down to her level.

When he sees me, he stands upright.

‘Hello, Pippa,’ he says.





55


PIPPA

NOW



‘Hello, Pippa.’

Max looks so ordinary, so safe. The kind who would stop to help a woman in a broken-down vehicle, and who would champion women’s rights, while also expecting a home-cooked dinner when he got home from work. Despite this, I feel intimidated. It’s something to do with his presence. His sense of self. The way he is, already, the one in control.

I’m instantly cold – that horrible, clammy feeling you get when you’re about to vomit. There is no running away now, no sneaking off. Asha watches us curiously but silently, perhaps not wanting to draw attention to herself in the hope that I’ll forget she’s meant to be having her shot.

‘Hello, Max,’ I whisper.

I glance back at the health centre. I can’t decide if I want Gabe to come out or stay where he is. I feel stunningly unprepared for this conversation, which I realise is absurd. For all my panicking, my overthinking, my terror, I hadn’t stopped to consider what I might say if I came face to face with Max. How I could even look him in the eye.

As it turns out, I can’t look him in the eye, so instead I focus on his shoulder.

‘I think you know why I’m here, Pippa. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and explain. My wife Amanda passed away this week. Took her own life, I’m told, by jumping off the cliff behind your house.’

I should act surprised to hear this, I know, but I can’t find it in myself to feign shock.

‘A strange coincidence, don’t you think?’ Max continues. ‘That she chose to jump from that particular cliff?’

Max waits now – a good strategy, because I only last a few seconds before I start talking.

‘She said she’d seen a video.’ Now, finally, I look at him. ‘Why was there a video?’

Max sighs. ‘That was unfortunate. We have CCTV of the entire office, for security reasons. I asked them to turn it on the night you came in because I thought Gabe might end up joining us and I didn’t know what to expect. After . . . what happened . . . I asked security to cut the footage. I didn’t mean for them to send it to me. She found the video on an old laptop.’

It’s probably not that important in the scheme of things; still, I’m glad to have an answer to this question.

‘But while the footage explains why she came here,’ Max went on, ‘it doesn’t explain why she jumped.’