‘Don’t say that, Danny.’
‘Why not? All that I’ve done is destroy your life. I can’t believe you’re even considering doing this. You can’t, Juliette, you can’t throw your life away.’
‘Danny, I have no life. After you died, I died inside. I was already disappearing from the world, even before you came back to me. This isn’t your fault. This is about more than that. The kind of connection we have – it can’t be broken. It’s that simple.’
She gently stroked his cheek, then turned his face so that he was looking into her eyes. ‘There’s no point in me going on without you.’
‘But there is. Come on, Juliette, I know you. I know everything there is to know about you.’
He stood up in frustration and Juliette couldn’t help but marvel that she was looking at her husband again. That she could run her eyes over his body, that she could just reach out a hand and lace her fingers through his.
‘I know that your favourite flowers are tulips,’ he continued. ‘I know that your middle name is Agatha and I know that you hate it.’
He looked back down at her and spoke with tension in his voice.
‘I know that all that I have to do to make you shudder beneath me is take both of your nipples between my fingers and squeeze. And I know that if I keep squeezing, you can come within thirty seconds, if that’s what I want you to do.
‘But most importantly, I know that there is still life inside of you. I know that if you keep on living, you can be happy again. You can do something with your life. For God’s sake, you could change the whole damn world if you set your mind to it.
‘Look at what you did in just a few days in our building with your baking. You don’t know it, but you changed those people’s lives. I never told you this, but I could feel how each person that received one of your gifts responded to your baking. There was one couple that had been fighting for days over something stupid, something trivial. But when they tasted your cooking, when they inhaled the longing that you weave into your food, they fell into one another’s arms and they made love.
‘There was another apartment, where an old man had been mourning his dead wife. She used to make cranberry muffins for him. The exact thing that you delivered to his door. When he tasted that muffin, he tasted his wife again and his soul was rejuvenated. He sat and he cried as he ate, but they were tears of joy, and as his tears mixed with your cooking, the taste helped mend his broken heart.
‘You did that, Juliette. You did that.’ Danny sat back down next to Juliette, placed an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him so that her head was resting against his chest.
‘Remember the weekend away we took, just before I had that first heart attack? When we went to the Blue Mountains?’
‘Of course, I remember. God, I remember it like it was yesterday. We were supposed to go bushwalking, but it rained the entire time, so we stayed indoors. And it was so freezing cold that we slept out in the lounge room by the fire.’
‘Yes. We dragged that horrible red and orange comforter from the bedroom, and we set ourselves up on the rug and we played Scrabble for hours, constantly starting new games because neither of us wanted to accept defeat. And then the words we played started to turn dirty – words like sticky, hard and thrust. And before we knew it the Scrabble board was overturned, the small plastic tiles were scattered across the floor, we were in each other’s arms and we were fucking like crazy.’
Juliette smiled. ‘It was a wonderful weekend,’ she whispered.
‘I know that it was, and, as much as it hurts to say this, it has to be said. Juliette,’ he paused to swallow, as though his throat had become dry, his fingers stroking her hair as he spoke, ‘Juliette, you could have that again. That sort of passion – with someone else.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘No!’ Juliette protested, pulling away, tears springing to her eyes. ‘That’s not possible. It’s absolutely not possible.’
‘Look, I don’t mean straightaway. It’s hard for me to think about, too – but one day, yes. There’s someone else out there for you. I know it. My life has ended, but yours doesn’t have to. Yours can still go on.’
‘But I’m nothing without you. There’s nothing here for me. I have no career, no talents, no family close by – no reason to keep going.’
‘You think you have no talents? Juliette, you heard what I said about your baking. It’s simply magical, the way that you cook. You put something of yourself into your food. You infuse it with your passion. Your instincts for flavours are incredible. That’s what you should be doing with your life – that’s what you love to do. And I still can’t believe that I selfishly allowed you to just stop. I was thinking about me, Juliette, thinking about a way for me to hold on, to stay in this world. And although a part of me thought that I was doing that for you – for the good of us both – I wasn’t. It wasn’t right. I was stopping you from having your own life. A life that you still deserve. Juliette, you’re an amazing chef, you have true talent.’
‘I’m not, I’m not and it doesn’t matter, because I don’t want to keep living.’
‘God, woman, you’re infuriating. Please, for once, will you just do what I ask of you? Please, Juliette, you have to keep living.’
‘I don’t know how to do it without you.’
‘You do. You just haven’t tried yet.’
‘I have tried,’ she replied. ‘But when I’m with you, I feel free.’
‘I can wait for you, Juliette. I can move on to the other side and I can wait for you there. And you can come to me when you’ve lived your life. When you’ve grown old. That’s when we can be together again. But if you do this now, if you take your own life, I will never, never be able to forgive myself.
‘Please, Juliette, will you please, please, just come down off the railing?’
For a moment, Juliette was confused. They had been sitting here on this park bench for so long that she had almost forgotten that it wasn’t real. But as he said those words, she felt the world begin to spin around her again.
The mist began to rise up and Juliette looked up at Danny, her face panic-stricken.
‘No,’ she cried out. ‘No, I’m not ready to say goodbye.’
Danny reached out his hands, grabbed hold of her and pulled her in close.
‘I love you,’ he whispered fiercely into her ear. ‘I love you and I need for you to live.’ And then his mouth found hers and they kissed, forcefully and passionately and she could taste the tears that were streaming down her face.
They were suddenly wrenched apart and Juliette went flying again. When she landed, she felt the cool steel of the railing beneath her feet and in that moment, as she opened her eyes and looked down at the far-off earth below her, she realised something. She wasn’t sure if it was because of everything that Danny had said, if he had somehow brought her around to his way of thinking, or if it was just a primal, innate desire from inside, a human desire to survive, but either way, Danny was right, she did want to live.
As soon as the thought surfaced in her mind, however, she felt her balance waver and she was pitching forward, just about to fall.
‘Danny!’ she cried out. ‘Danny, help me!’
Just as her feet started to slip, she felt a hand close on the back of her dress and she was hurled backwards. She landed hard on the tiled floor of the balcony and she looked up at the stars in the black sky above her as she sucked in the night air in relief.
Goodbye, Juliette.
She felt lips kissing her softly on the cheek, and then the feeling faded and her skin tingled where she had been touched.
‘Danny,’ she cried out with a sob. ‘Please don’t go.’
But it was too late. He was gone.
Later, Juliette would wonder how it was that he was able to just simply leave her – that he could move on without her leaving the apartment, but she decided it must have had something to do with desire. His desire to save her and his certainty that the only way he could do
that was by removing himself from her life. She wondered where he was, and she hoped it was somewhere peaceful, somewhere safe. She hoped that heaven was real, that it really did exist and that was where Danny had moved on to.
She didn’t see the sun rise from her prone position on her balcony, because the sky slowly turned thick with heavy black clouds, and when she heard the clap of thunder, she still didn’t move. When the rain started, it was a wild, wind-driven downpour, the rain coming in sideways, and Juliette allowed her body to become soaked and she started to shiver in the whipping wind, but still she didn’t move.
When she heard her balcony door slide open, she didn’t look to see who it was, but when she felt the arms around her, she knew. She turned her face and looked into her mother’s eyes and she let the tears stream from her eyes, to become mixed there with the rainwater. Her mother gathered her into her arms and stroked her head, and eventually she was able to pull her to her feet and guide her inside.
Inside the apartment, Eve wordlessly drew her a steaming hot bath, then she kissed her on the forehead and told her she would be there when Juliette was ready to talk. It was past midday when Juliette finally found the strength to clamber out of the now cold bath, wrap herself up in a towel and then stumble out to the lounge room, where her mother caught hold of her and gently eased her onto the couch before she could collapse.
‘How did you know?’ asked Juliette, her voice small, meek, as she sat, her damp hair spread out behind her on the back of the couch.
‘First, I tried phoning you. I called and called for weeks,’ said Eve. ‘I tried to contact friends of yours, to ask after you, but everyone seemed to have lost touch with you. No one knew where you were, or why you never answered your phone anymore. Finally, I couldn’t handle it any longer. I booked a flight and I caught a taxi straight here. When I saw you the other day, Juliette, I was so afraid for you. It was as though you’d gone mad. I didn’t know what to do. Call a doctor? Get the police and have them make you come with me to the hospital? I decided to come back one more time on my own before I got anyone else involved. I slipped into the building when a young couple were on their way out the door. Your apartment door was wide open, as if it had been left open just for me. Oh Juliette, to find you out there on the balcony like that, just lying therein the rain, so still, not moving, almost not even breathing …’ Eve’s voice broke off and Juliette let her body slide down the couch so that she could rest her head in her mother’s lap.
‘How am I supposed to go on without him, Mum?’
‘One day at a time, my darling. For now, you just breathe. Just go on breathing.’
It took an entire week for Juliette to decide that she was able to go outside. One whole week of her mother nursing her back to health, cooking for her and slowly coaxing her into allowing the food to pass her lips. She didn’t tell Eve the truth about everything that had happened. Didn’t explain that Danny’s spirit had actually been there with her. She assumed that her mother had just concluded that Juliette had been deluded when she had screamed at her that day that Danny was still there, as Eve didn’t ask her directly about it.
At first, the reason Juliette didn’t bring it up was she wanted it to be something that was just between her and Danny – to keep those memories special. Also, she didn’t want to risk her mother putting doubts in her mind if she didn’t believe Juliette’s story. But as each day passed, her memories of the time spent with Danny became weaker and weaker, until she realised she was struggling to pin down which memories were real, and which were dreams or her imagination. Finally, she even began to wonder if none of it was actually real – if it had all been part of her own mental breakdown, which had culminated in her suicide attempt. Had she been heading towards that all along, since Danny had died? Perhaps the spiritual world simply didn’t exist. Perhaps it was just all in her head – an excuse to lead her towards what a part of her had obviously wanted, a reason to give up on life.
It was a Saturday morning when Juliette told her mother she was ready to leave the apartment. She convinced Eve that it was something she needed to do by herself and her mother conceded, with the warning that she would come searching for Juliette if she wasn’t back within the hour.
When Juliette finally walked through the heavy front door of the apartment block and stepped outside into the sunlight, something strange began to happen to her. It was as though over the past few months that she had spent cooped up inside that apartment block, a heavy fog had settled around her body. And now the fresh air of the outside world was breaking through it. The fuzz in her mind was clearing. Her skin tingled as she walked down the footpath towards the beach. The memories of her days spent with Danny’s ghost faded even further and instead they were replaced with more solid memories. Images of the days they spent together before Danny died rose to the surface. She saw them together on the beach, jogging side by side. She saw them sitting at a café, Danny with a latte, Juliette with a double-strength espresso – him tapping away on his laptop, her leaning back reading a book, their legs entwined under the table. She saw them on their wedding night, when they had decided to sneak away from the reception to take just five minutes on their own, to stand in the moonlight, surrounded by beautiful flowers, and to hold each other close and just let the fact that they were married sink in.
She reached the edge of the sand and, kicking off her sandals, she stepped down the concrete steps to the beach. Then she made a direct line for the ocean, crossing the beach in her bare feet. When she reached the water’s edge, she stopped and allowed the rushing waves to send the foamy water out to meet her. When the cool water hit her toes, she felt as though she was completely cleansed.
‘I’ll always love you, Danny. Always,’ she murmured quietly to herself. And then she turned from the water and headed back across the sand to her shoes.
Chapter Sixteen
Twelve Months Later
Juliette felt that she should somehow mark the occasion. She knew that today was particularly important. She knew that it represented a turning point for her. It was year since the day that she had hit rock bottom. But it was also a year since the day that she had been re-born. It was strange, though, that she couldn’t remember all that much about how she had ended up out on that balcony that night. About why she was lying on the ground in the rain, or why her mother hadn’t been able to get hold of her in the weeks that lead up to that day. She knew that something had happened during that time, something that had triggered her final, eventual full breakdown. But she simply couldn’t remember what it was.
Her mother had stayed with her for a month, and then convinced her to go back to France for a short time, and while she was recovering in her mother’s home, Juliette had begun to bake again. It had been a natural progression. One day, she had felt her fingers begin to twitch. This had always meant that she needed to bake, that she needed to stir and mix and taste. She had headed downstairs from her childhood bedroom to the large oak kitchen, and started pulling equipment from the cupboards, ingredients from the fridge and the pantry, and had looked up to see her parents smiling at one another as they watched her.
From there, she found herself inventing more recipes that she had ever created before. She paired together ingredients she never would have dreamed of mixing. Her parents invited friends to come and visit and taste her cooking, and each one exclaimed enthusiastically about her talents. Their words were warm and genuine. When her father suggested she consider starting her own business – perhaps a catering business, or a small bakery or cake shop – Juliette found the idea exhilarating. She knew her parents were hoping she might set the business up right there in their hometown – but Juliette wanted to return to Australia.
She started drawing up her business plans, gathering her best recipes. Finally, she told her parents it was time she returned to Sydney. Eve wasn’t happy about it, but she had to concede that she couldn’t force her adult daughter to stay in their family home forever.
Back in Syd
ney, Juliette found herself a new place. It was completely different from the apartment she had shared with Danny – a little house right on the beach at Bronte with dark chocolate floorboards and bright orange paint. She filled it with warm, wooden furniture, brightly coloured rugs and a mix-and-matched collection of art and framed photographs – some that she had picked up at the markets and others that she created herself, just for fun.
Juliette was lucky; the money that Danny had earned as such a successful author and had left her meant that setting up her own cake store was more than feasible. She leased a shop front, hired a company to fit it out for her, bought all of the equipment and advertised for an assistant. She hired a young student, a girl who was studying hospitality at TAFE. Tara was friendly and bubbly and full of ideas for the store. As the opening day of the store approached, Juliette felt a growing sense of excitement rising up within her, and she accepted that she had finally found her calling – she knew what she wanted to do with her life and she knew that it was going to be a success.
Now, Juliette stood up from her computer. She had been going through the accounts for the shop, double-checking that her supplier’s invoices had been paid, chasing a late delivery and checking out a new competitor’s website. She stretched her arms and arched her back, grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulders. She pulled on her sneakers and headed out the door. Mostly, she visited Bronte Beach these days, but today she would take a walk across to Coogee. She would sit on the sand and allow herself to look back at her old apartment building and think about Danny and about how far she had come in this past year. And, most importantly, she would try not to cry, but instead to feel grateful for the time that they had spent together.
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