The Wife Before Me(7)

Three





Hi Elena,

I’ve sent you a link to the rental management company I mentioned when we met at KHM. If you decide to rent, I can guarantee their reliability.

I hope you are well and managing to cope with the difficult task of clearing Isabelle’s possessions from Brookside. She loved you very much so use her love to keep you strong. Such memories give us succour and so does friendship. Perhaps it’s too soon to look upon me as a friend but if you feel like responding to this email, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Nicholas





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Hi Nicholas,

Thank you for your email and the link to the rental company. I’m very undecided about my future plans at the moment. Thanks, also, for those kind words about my mother. They come at a good time as I’ve been battling with feelings of guilt and some anger, too. She should have told me the truth. I would have come home immediately if I’d suspected anything was wrong. She was always the same, keeping her feelings to herself yet blaming me for not appreciating them… that was one of the reasons why I moved to Australia.

I always hoped she would move on and find someone new who would give her the happiness she was denied when my father died. He died too young but I never grieved for him. I was five years old, for Christ’s sake… what did I know about sorrow? Sorrow was my very best friend leaving me for another VBF or jeering me because I was the first girl in the class with nits, my mother being too demented to notice me scratching!! She never moved on, even though there were many in work who fancied the pants off her, and I couldn’t cope with her oppressive memories any more. So, I left and met a guy from Sydney called Zac and he certainly wasn’t the solution to my problems. In fact, he thoroughly messed up my life and now I’m struggling with depression, which I’ve probably inherited from my mother, and the only thing that’s lifted my mood was your email because, impossible as it seems, I find myself very attracted to you, even though you’re not my type, too much of a ‘suit’, if you know what I mean, and I generally fall for the more outdoor type. The dangerous ones like Zac who up and leave as soon as the going gets tough…





Elena rests her hands on the keyboard and blinks. What is she doing? Pouring out a stream of consciousness to a man she hardly knows? Crazy… downright crazy. She deletes most of the email and begins again.

Hi Nick,

Thank you for your email and the info about the rental company. I’m undecided about my future plans at the moment. How is New York? I’ve never been there but I believe it’s the most exciting city in the world. All well here. I’m tackling the house and clearing it out. Thanks for your kind words about my mother. I appreciate them. Keep in touch.

Best wishes,

Elena





Nicholas emails regularly. Chatty missives about his life in New York. His apartment has a view over Manhattan. At night, standing on the balcony, he feels as if he is part of a vast, starry constellation. How is Elena? He asks this question and she, afraid she will repeat her first frantic email and press ‘send’ before she comes to her senses, writes about jogging sessions, visits to the gym, painting the house to prepare it for sale, photographing the sun as it rises above Broadmeadow Estuary. Reading over what she has written, she marvels at her ability to lie so easily. Her fingers fly over the keyboard and, as the weeks turn into months, Nicholas’s emails begin to penetrate the fug of confusion that has trapped her.

A parcel arrives from New York. Inside it, she finds a red umbrella and a card with the words, I saw this umbrella in Macy’s. It reminded me of the first time we met, albeit under such sad circumstances. I’ll be home soon. I’d like to meet you again. Is that possible?

Warmest regards,

Nicholas.

Her heart leaps, then it steadies again. It’s too soon. A rebound romance is not the answer to her problems. Nor does she want to be involved with a man who must be carrying his own burdens. As for Zac… she can’t go there, not yet, but something is changing within her. An awareness that she wants to emulate this energetic person she has created through her emails. If that means rising at dawn to capture the sun’s reflection on the estuary, that’s what she’ll do. She joins a gym, jogs in the evenings and bins the pizzas. When the house is clean, she takes Isabelle’s possessions to the local Oxfam shop and moves into her mother’s bedroom. She begins to sleep more soundly and when she awakens in the night it is Nicholas, not Zac, who fills her thoughts.



* * *



Sun-bleached sands and challenging rollers, passionate nights and idle days; these are the memories that have tormented Elena. She and Zac were made for each other, she believed when they first met. When their money ran out, they took part-time work until they had saved enough to return to the beach. Freedom – Elena had fought hard for it. She had had no idea what she would do with her life when she headed for Australia but the lure of the waves decided her. This would be her future; but a time came when she needed something more than dreams to pay the rent. She was offered a permanent job with an advertising agency after temping there for two months and decided to take it. The money was too good to turn down and, as she had graduated from college with a degree in communications, the skills she had acquired could finally be used. Zac was working irregular hours in a bar and his evening shifts allowed him the freedom of the beach during the day. Elena tried not to feel envious when she left their apartment in the mornings, trim skirt and jacket, high heels instead of sandals, her heedless days on the surf behind her.