Lost Without You

by Rachael Johns

  Heat rushed to Paige’s cheeks as the crowd shrieked their applause. Sol winked from the front row where he stood next to her mum and dad, identical smiles on their faces.

  ‘Paige’s publisher, Saxon O’Brady, is sorry he can’t be with us tonight, but he wanted me to tell you that it’s been a long time since an unpublished manuscript has come onto his desk and moved him the way Paige’s words and beautiful illustrations have done. All of us at Red Letter Books are super excited about this book and its message, but the best person to tell you about We All Live Here is the artist and author herself. Please, let’s welcome Paige.’

  As the crowd erupted into applause, Paige smiled her thanks to Louisa, then stepped up to the mic and surveyed the gallery. Her heart filled with pride and joy at the crowded room. She took a deep breath and began.

  ‘Firstly I want to thank you all for coming—every person here tonight has been an important part of my life in some way, and it means so much to have you all here with me to launch my first book. Creating We All Live Here was a celebration of all my passions—I’ve been drawing, painting and creating as long as I can remember and you will all know I’m also hugely passionate about advocating for the rights of those less fortunate than myself.

  ‘One night when I was lamenting the state of the world—the way so many people were hard-hearted and close-minded about the plights of others, especially our refugees—Sol said the only hope we have of changing how people think and live is getting to the younger generations. And a light bulb went off in my head. Picture books are read to little kids by parents and grandparents, so it seemed the perfect medium to reach many hearts and generations.’

  She paused a moment and took a sip of the glass of water Louisa had placed on the podium for her. ‘We All Live Here is a story of six families who live in the same street and the friendships they make with each other despite their different beliefs, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This street and these people portray what I want Australia to become—a place where everyone is accepted and considered “normal” no matter the colour of their skin, where they were born, their religion or who they choose to love.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ shouted one of her colleagues as he pulled his boyfriend into his side.

  Paige gave them the thumbs up and then continued, talking about the research she did and how each word and illustration in the book was a labour of love.

  ‘The families from We All Live Here invite each other into their lives and the end result is that their lives are all richer for knowing and respecting each other. I fell in love with these characters and I hope kids all over Australia will do the same.

  ‘Half of my royalties for this book will be donated to the Refugee Council of Australia and tonight we also invite you to bid in our silent auction for the original illustrations from the book.’ She gestured to the artworks that hung around the gallery. ‘All profits from the sale of these illustrations will be going to our local shelter for the homeless.’

  Once again the crowd applauded. Paige waited for the din to fade, then, slightly aware she sounded like an annoying Oscar winner, she launched into the final part of her speech. She thanked her mum, her dad, her grandparents, Sol’s family, her friends and art colleagues for their support and encouragement, and was almost at the end of her thank-yous, when she heard her mum cough.

  Trying to ignore the twinge of worry that filled her heart at the sound—her mum was probably simply trying to cover her tears—she trained her eyes on Sol and smiled.

  ‘Until I met Solomon, no one had lived up to my fictional heroes, but Rhett and Darcy pale in comparison to him. He puts up with so much—especially when I’m in the middle of a big art project and this has been the biggest yet.’ She had so many more sweet things planned to say (bits she’d left out when reciting her speech earlier to him) but a lump formed in her throat and she found herself suddenly unable to speak as she blinked back tears.

  Solomon moved forward and, due to his height and long legs it only took a couple of steps and he was beside her, enveloping her in his strong, perfectly muscly arms.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered.

  She smiled as she melted beneath his touch but he held her a mere few seconds before he let go and hijacked the microphone.

  ‘Before we get back to celebrating, there’s just one little thing I need to get off my chest.’

  What was going on? It was one thing her gushing about him, but people might get bored if this turned into some kind of soppy lovefest.

  ‘Paige has actually been very modest in her …’

  But his words were lost as Rebecca launched into another coughing fit. Paige’s gaze left Solomon, anxiety curling round her heart again at the sight of her mother trying to control her barking. Hugh looked anxious also as he patted her on the back and held a glass of water she was too agitated to drink. Instead, Rebecca shrugged him off and waved her hand up at the stage, making gestures for everyone to ignore her and continue.

  Paige turned back to Sol—concern that matched her own was etched into his usually smooth forehead.

  Then, ‘Oh my goodness!’ Jeanie shrieked and Paige spun back to face the crowd. The reason for her grandmother’s outburst was obvious. Her beloved mother was no longer simply coughing.

  She was coughing up blood!

  Clara

  The door was open at Siobhan’s place in Rosebery when Clara arrived and, as she walked up the garden path, she heard the noise inside. Not loud, disruptive music that the neighbours might complain about but the sounds of her family trying to talk over the top of each other. She smiled at the cacophony, glad she’d come, and was just about to take the first step onto the front porch, when something (or rather someone) jumped out at her from behind a potted azalea.

  ‘Bang, bang, you’re dead!’

  Her heart slammed against her chest cavity, the bottle of wine almost slipped from her grasp and a word she rarely said fell from her lips as one of her great-nephews aimed a plastic gun at her. Siobhan’s lazy golden retriever raised his head where he was sleeping a few feet away but decided she wasn’t worth barking at and immediately dropped it again.

  ‘Um-mah,’ said four-year-old Dylan. ‘You said a bad word.’

  Clara tightened her grip on the bottle and hit her tiny tormentor with her sternest expression. ‘Of course I said a bad word—you scared me half to death. Does Great Nanna know you have that gun?’

  Terror filled his eyes. Clara’s mother—Eileen—Dylan’s great-grandmother, did not abide toy weapons and as his mother had only been eighteen when she’d given birth to him, both his grandmother and great-grandmother were major influences in his life.

  ‘It’s not real.’ But he looked sheepishly up at her, his bravado gone.

  She dropped down to her haunches so she could address him eye to eye. ‘How about we make a deal? I won’t tell Great Nanna about the gun, if you don’t tell her about my bad word.’

  ‘Okay.’ Dylan shoved the gun in the foliage of the pot plant and held out his hand for her to shake.

  ‘Come on, let’s go inside. I have to give Aunty Aoifa her present.’

  Dylan glanced at the box poking out the top of her handbag as they started into the house, following the hullaballoo down the hallway. ‘What is it?’

  ‘You’ll see when she opens it.’

  Clara waved to some of her teenage nieces and nephews as she passed the theatre room where they were ensconced playing video games. She carried on into the open-plan entertaining area that housed the country-style kitchen, dining and living rooms. Siobhan and Neil’s house was large, but even so it struggled to accommodate the number of people milling about. Dylan let go of her hand and snuck away, no doubt to get up to more mischief, and Clara put the bottle of wine and her handbag on the kitchen bench. Engaged in multiple conversations, her family didn’t immediately notice her standing there on the edges looking in as if she were watching a show.

  Rob, whose family had consisted of himself and hi
s mother, said the Brennans were like some big TV clan, a cast of unique and quirky characters, who always had some drama or other going on. It was true; with four sisters who had all married and bred like rabbits and two parents who embraced their Irish Catholic roots still very much alive, theirs could be a long-running soap opera. They’d had the highs and lows that every such show needed—affairs, teen pregnancy, big weddings, small weddings, a niece who came out of the closet, childhood leukaemia, remission from said leukaemia, divorce … The dramas were endless but what mattered was that through dark and light times, happy and sad ones, her family were there for each other.

  Her mother played the role of matriarch perfectly with her nose always in everybody’s business. Her father was a man of few words—currently dozing in the corner—but his wife spoke more than enough for both of them. Clara smiled fondly at her dear old dad, but was quickly distracted by squeals from the other side of the room where her brother-in-law, Ranaldo, was entertaining three-year-old twins, Zoey and Blake, teaching them how to make farting and burping noises.

  Most large families had a crazy uncle and a spinster aunt and, from the moment her youngest sister, Bridget, had brought Ranaldo home to meet the family, they’d known he’d fit the crazy uncle role perfectly. Clara had just never imagined herself as the spinster aunt. Well, technically she was a divorcee but that was only semantics—she didn’t have any children, and at fifty-three years of age, it would be a miracle of biblical proportions if she ever did.

  ‘Aunty Clara!’

  The squeal of her name snapped Clara out of her silent contemplation and she looked up to see the birthday girl pushing past her other relatives to throw her arms around her.

  ‘Happy birthday, gorgeous girl. How did you grow up so fast?’

  Aoifa laughed as she pulled back. ‘Come meet my new boyfriend, Xavier. Isn’t that a sexy name?’

  Clara agreed that it was and happily let her niece drag her across the room to where a tall, lanky boy with curly dark hair and an eyebrow ring looked to be receiving a grilling from Aoifa’s mother, her grandmother and three other aunties.

  ‘Xav.’ Aoifa took hold of his arm and drew him possessively against her. ‘I want you to meet my Aunty Clara.’

  Xavier’s eyes widened. ‘Another one?’

  The women chuckled.

  ‘This is the last, I promise, and she’s my favourite.’

  Clara smiled—she suspected she was the favourite aunty of all thirteen of her nieces and nephews and her great-ones as well. She had a tendency to spoil them, but when you didn’t have kids of your own, surely you were allowed to indulge your sisters’ children a little. She held out her hand. ‘Hi Xavier, nice to meet you.’

  Despite looking terrified, he had a firm handshake. ‘You too. You all look exactly the same. You could be quintuplets.’

  It wasn’t the first time they’d heard this or something similar. As children, their father had called his five daughters ‘my little Russian dolls’ and the fact their mother had often dressed them in identical hand-sewn outfits hadn’t helped. As adults, they all wore their golden-blonde hair differently but even so, their sea-green eyes and narrow faces made it clear they were related.

  Growing up, Clara had always imagined that one day she’d have her own set of real-life Russian dolls, but whoever held the controls upstairs had other plans and instead all she had was a collection of wooden ones. It wasn’t that she begrudged her sisters their happiness but why out of five children was she the only one who’d failed marriage and motherhood? Had she done something wrong in a past life?

  Stop it! She hadn’t come here to be melancholic and dwell on what she didn’t have.

  ‘There’s strong genes on my side of the family.’ Eileen focused her gaze on Xavier. ‘What are your family genes like?’

  He blinked as she continued, ‘I want to know you come from good stock in case you and Aoifa make babies.’

  Always with the babies.

  ‘Oh, Nanna. Leave poor Xavier alone. I don’t even know if I want to have children. I’m only just twenty-one!’

  ‘Have I told you all about Ranaldo’s mother?’ Bridget asked in an obvious attempt to save the birthday girl and her boyfriend from her mother’s grilling.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Another sister—Fiona—nodded excitedly. ‘You told me but go on, tell them. This is gold.’

  And so Bridget shared a story about how her mother-in-law had just run off with a woman she’d met at her bowling club. Apparently her father-in-law was beside himself because who was going to wash his jocks? Aideen (Clara’s second-youngest sister) said that sometimes she wished she could do the same.

  ‘Oi, I heard that!’ shouted her husband from where he’d been talking footy with his brothers-in-law a few feet away.

  Everybody laughed and Clara felt some of the sadness that had weighed her down all day ebbing away. She was glad she’d chosen her family over a date with the TV. She might not have a husband or children, but she was blessed with wonderful sisters, nieces and nephews.

  Aoifa led Xavier away from her grandmother and the conversation between the sisters changed to Fiona’s angst over her son, Liam, wanting to change from engineering to a drama degree.

  ‘Can you imagine?’ The horror on her face would make anyone think Liam wanted to become a male prostitute.

  ‘He’s only nineteen. Let the poor boy follow his dreams before life crushes them. Now, Clara, can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Clara nodded. As much as she loved all her sisters, when Fiona (the oldest after her) started on about something, she could go on forever. It paid to escape while you could, so she followed Siobhan to the kitchen and gleefully accepted a glass of wine.

  ‘How are you doing today, anyway?’ This wasn’t just your everyday how’s-it-going question.

  ‘I’m okay. I’m glad I’m here with all of you.’ She took a long sip of her wine just as her phone started buzzing

  ‘Is that yours?’ Siobhan glanced towards Clara’s handbag on the bench.

  She nodded but didn’t bother reaching for it.

  Siobhan’s face scrunched up into a scowl. ‘Rob?’

  ‘Probably. I did have to cut him short earlier when he called.’

  ‘It’s been two years since the divorce, when he’s going to get the message?’

  ‘It’s always bad around this time. He doesn’t really have a support crew like I do.’ Clara let out a heavy breath; she couldn’t help making excuses for him.

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  Siobhan was right. Once upon a time he’d had plenty of friends—his band-mates were like brothers—but he’d slowly driven them all away.

  Still, Clara ignored her comment. ‘I don’t know what he wants me to say though. Nothing I’ve done has helped him in the past.’

  ‘That’s why you need to stop trying. Rob will never be able to live a satisfying life until he gets help for his addiction and you’ll never be able to get on with yours while he’s still lingering in it.’

  ‘I know but …’ Breaking free was easier said than done. Clara had always been a helper—it was simply who she was—and there’d never been anyone she wanted to be able to save more than her exhusband.

  ‘No buts. It’s not your responsibility to pay off his bosses, nurse his hangovers, go out searching for him in the early hours of the morning, sign him up to AA and—’

  Clara held up her hand ‘Okay, okay. I get the message.’ She didn’t need her sister recapping her disastrous marriage.

  ‘You need to block his number,’ Siobhan said, undeterred. ‘Take out a restraining order. This has gone on for far too long.’

  ‘A restraining order seems a little drastic—and I’m not sure it would even be possible, he hasn’t actually done anything to harm me.’

  Siobhan scoffed. ‘That’s debatable.’ And then dived for Clara’s handbag.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Clara’s heart squeezed as her sister grabbed her phone.


  Siobhan stared at the screen. ‘What’s your PIN?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m taking control of this situation. You’re always worrying about everyone else. Always making sure we’re okay, Rob is okay, your patients are okay, the women you support are okay, but what about you? It’s my job to worry about you. PIN?’

  Clara knew it would be pointless trying to fight this. ‘Five. Six. Three. Five.’

  Siobhan punched in the numbers as Clara spoke them. ‘Bingo!’ Then she called across the room to her nephew. ‘Liam, how do you block a number on an iPhone?’

  If everyone hadn’t been privy to this conversation before, they all were now. As Liam asked, ‘Why do you want to know?’, all Clara’s other relatives turned to see what was going on.

  Siobhan filled them in and, as usual, Clara’s business became a family affair. Liam pushed a few buttons, apparently both deleting and blocking Rob from her phone—she decided not to mention the fact he still knew where she lived—and everyone weighed in on the situation.

  ‘You need to show Rob you’re moving on,’ Aideen said. ‘And the best way to do that is to meet new men.’

  ‘Yes, start going on dates again.’ Fiona made it sound as simple as making the decision.

  Clara all but snorted. She hadn’t dated in over twenty-seven years. Part of her wanted to tell them she didn’t need a man in her life but the truth was she missed having someone to come home to. Someone to talk to, someone to bring to family gatherings, someone to warm her feet against in bed on those long, cold wintry nights. Not that she’d ever really had that, not since the very early days with Rob.

  After she’d thrown him out the final time, she’d been too raw to contemplate another relationship. Now almost two years on was she finally ready to let someone else into her heart again?

  Even if she knew the answer to that question—and she wasn’t sure she did—wanting to find a partner and actually finding one were two very different things. ‘Where am I going to meet men at my age?’