The Soulmate(78)

We moved out of the cliff house a few months ago. I couldn’t live there anymore after everything that happened. I bought a cottage a few streets back from the beach and Gabe bought his own cottage around the corner. There is a lot of coming and going between our two houses. Forgotten toys being brought back and forth. Once, when the girls wanted to ride their scooters to Daddy’s without Mummy (there were no roads to cross), we even stood outside our houses on our phones so we could confirm that there were always eyes on them.

In short, Gabe is still a part of our lives. But he’s not my whole life. He’s not me. Not anymore.

I have reached my house. My cottage is small, just two bedrooms, a living room, a galley kitchen and a sunroom, but it is quaint and charming and full of character. I’d planned to spend the afternoon reading a book and drinking coffee, but suddenly I have a better idea.

I hire a board from the surf club and spend the afternoon falling off it. Turns out I don’t need someone holding my board and pushing me onto the wave – I can do it myself. Several times, as I ride the wave, I have that glorious, blissful feeling . . . like I’m flying. It’s even better than the feeling I had the day Gabe took me surfing. Because it taught me that Gabriel Gerard isn’t the only one who can make magic. I can make magic too.





ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS



You know you’re onto a good thing when you tell people your new book idea and they enthusiastically cheer, ‘Yesssss. I’d read that.’

That was the response I got when I announced that I’d decided to write a book about marriage and murder. It was during the protracted 262-day Melbourne lockdown, and my girlfriends and I had started a WhatsApp group to chronicle our daily marital misgivings – Christian’s urgent need to mow the lawn every time there was homeschooling to be done, Sam’s repeated failure to put his undies in the laundry basket instead of beside it, the whisper of the air entering Stew’s lungs as he had the audacity to breathe. Suffice to say that by the time I floated the book idea, there was no dearth of suggestions of how the murder might take place*.

But while The Soulmate started out as an exploration of how we might like to murder our husbands, it quickly morphed into something else. An exploration of the bad and good sides of marriage. What we bring to it. What it brings out in us. I like to think of it as a murderous love story. Unconventional, of course, but that’s what I do.

As always, I owe a debt of gratitude to the people behind the scenes. Let’s start with my beloved editor and publisher, Jen Enderlin, whose belief in me boggles my mind on a daily basis, and the team at St Martin’s – Katie Bassel, Erica Martirano, Brant Janeway, Olga Grlic, Kim Ludlam and Christina Lopez, who, after so many books together, I think I can call my friends. Also to Pan Macmillan Australia, specifically Alex Lloyd, to whom this book is dedicated as thanks for always incorporating my down-to-the-wire changes (and, let’s face it, bribery for always incorporating my FUTURE down-to-the-wire changes!), and the wonderful Clare Keighery for managing my publicity. And enormous thanks to my literary agent, Rob Weisbach, who always has my back (and also my front and my sides).

To my sensitivity readers who helped me form a credible understanding of bipolar and the eroding effects it can have on relationships, this book is infinitely better because of you.

To Amy Lovat, my assistant and soon-to-be fellow author – as sad as I am that you are far too talented to be my assistant forever – I can’t wait to watch you fly.

To my writing gang – Jane Cockram, Kirsty Manning, Lisa Ireland and Kelly Rimmer – one day I’ll write a book about you guys and I legitimately can’t decide who will get murdered. Possibly the man in Big W who came up to our signing table, asked if we were famous and then decided not to buy a book. That poor bugger is going to have a painful literary death.

To Kerryn Mayne, my friend, another soon-to-be author and also police detective, who constantly reminds me that not everything that happens in Line of Duty is real. I respectfully disagree about Line of Duty, and if you keep telling me Steve Arnott isn’t real, we may have a problem on our hands. Still, thank you for everything.

To my friends and family, who provide me with endless book fodder. Keep being the gloriously dysfunctional humans you are. And to my readers, who have embraced my very peculiar brand – funny books about family and murder – because of you, I get to keep writing my very peculiar books. For that, I am forever in your debt.




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* No husbands were harmed in the making of this book. (Fine, Christian did suffer an elbow to the ribs one night while I was ‘asleep’ but no long-term damage was done.)





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