More Than Us

by Dawn Barker

  My face reddened as I thought of Cameron when I’d dropped him off yesterday. He’d gotten out at the slipway but left his sports bag in the car. He hadn’t turned around when I beeped the horn. There was a queue of four-wheel-drives behind me, so I had driven around the corner and double parked; I’d only be a minute.

  I hadn’t seen him at first. Then I’d frozen and just watched. It’s not that he was doing anything unusual, he wasn’t drawing attention to himself other than by being him. Lots of kids were milling around, in pairs or groups, as they waited for the bell to ring. It’s so hard to describe what it is that made him stand out – I’m trying to convince myself that actually, he blended in fine and it was just that I was looking for something odd that I noticed it. But he was all alone. It was like he had a force repelling everyone else. I saw a group of boys that he played rugby with, chatting and mucking around, and I watched Cameron go up to them and edge his way into their circle. The boys glanced at him, then turned away and kept walking, leaving him all alone.

  Emily’s voice filled the car again. ‘Did you tell them why you needed some time off? That it’s your son’s health? What if we were going to meet with a cancer specialist?’

  ‘Emily, come on. That’s not a fair comparison.’

  ‘You don’t know how serious this might be.’

  ‘I just don’t think that saying I wouldn’t be there if our child had a life-threatening disease is fair.’

  ‘It is absolutely fair, Paul.’ I could hear the tears in her voice.

  I wasn’t going to win this one. ‘Alright, okay. You’re right. I’ll tell Damian. I’ll come,’ I said quietly. Damian would understand. But I felt something burning in the pit of my stomach. Why was I so nervous about asking him? I was a grown man, but I felt like a child. I was worried that if I told him I couldn’t come, that maybe I would be cast out from his group, that I’d never reach the status of people like Lucas and Tim. He invited them on his boat, they went away for weekends together and to meetings where I wasn’t invited, and while I hated myself for it, I found myself hanging around the edges hoping to be included. Shame burned through me. Shame about my sycophantism, and shame about my desire to have the sort of money Damian did. But really, was it so bad to want to decrease the stress on my wife from working so much, or to try and keep up with mortgage payments?

  I forced myself to breathe slowly.

  Emily hadn’t said anything for a moment or two, then she spoke quietly. ‘It’s fine, Paul. I’ll manage it.’

  ‘I said, I’ll cancel the meeting,’ I said.

  ‘And I said I’ll manage it. If it’s that important then you need to go.’

  ‘I do want to be there, Emily, it’s just—’

  ‘I know, Paul. Look I’m almost at work, I can’t talk about this now, it makes me too upset and I don’t want to go in there looking like I’ve been crying.’

  ‘Alright. I’ll try.’

  ‘Thank you. I would love you to be there, but I understand if you can’t.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ I would call Damian and say I’d forgotten that Cameron had a medical appointment, and that I needed to leave early. But with Emily now giving me permission to skip the doctor’s meeting, I could use that time to give myself some room to manoeuver. I had to keep Damian onside. I had to show him that I could keep up with him and everyone else, and to do that, I needed to take more risks.

  Six

  Emily

  The months passed, and before we knew it, it was two years since Paul had started working again. Cameron, fourteen now, was no worse than usual: the paediatrician was monitoring him every few months but nothing definite was diagnosed, and we just muddled through, dealing with issues as they arose. Tilly started high school.

  I hadn’t stopped working; I had learned that the carefree dream life that we had for years was long gone. Life still didn’t feel easy though: with the restaurant finally due to open soon, Paul was working more than ever. He had meetings during the day, and in the evenings he was often out late. The dinners and corporate engagements meant that most weekends, he was out until the early hours on at least one night. Other evenings, even though he was at home, he spent hours fiddling with his phone, preoccupied, stressed, taking calls from work and disappearing into the study until I gave up and went to bed alone. I said nothing though: Paul was happiest when he was busy, engrossed in something and feeling useful. That’s not to say that I didn’t frequently feel a flicker of irritation when he stopped talking to me mid-conversation as he hurried out of the living room to answer his phone, while I waited with our TV show paused. I went to bed exhausted, and woke up tired, but we had a routine and I was, if not in control, then at least on top of things. Paul was being paid and, with the top-ups from speaking at charity lunches and corporate dinners and my wages, we had built a buffer again. The money was trickling in.

  And then it wasn’t.

  * * *

  When the kids were younger, I would go to the park every week or so with a few of the mothers who didn’t raise their eyebrows when Cameron misbehaved. One of them, Samira, was from London, and as we pushed our children on the swings, we compared how we were each managing as best we could to raise our children without any family around. Her husband was some sort of engineer, and she was in finance, or had been, before children.

  One of those days, a few of us were sitting on picnic blankets in the shade of a fig tree, with tubs of cut up watermelon and packets of crackers in the middle for the kids to share. Their kids were running around; Cameron was sitting alone in the sandpit sifting sand through his fingers. It was chilly in the shade, with a cool breeze coming in off the river. Samira took her wallet out of her baby bag and opened it up, then handed each of us a business card. She was bored being at home with only children to worry about and so had decided to start a new business, she explained. I frowned, both jealous at her initiative, and irritated at her trying to recruit us. I gave out free physio advice to them all the time, especially when Samira and another woman had decided to run a half-marathon. I pushed the feeling away.

  ‘That’s fantastic, Samira. Good on you. I don’t know where you find the time,’ I had said, smiling.

  She beamed. ‘Thanks! I knew you’d all understand how important it is to me and how it feels to want something just for me. Anyway, I want to teach women financial literacy.’

  I rolled my eyes as one of the mums groaned, then we laughed.

  ‘I see it all the time,’ she continued, smiling, waving her hands around to make us listen. ‘We are smart women, we have – or had – careers, and we put it all aside for our kids. Which is great, don’t get me wrong, but the problems start when your husband leaves you ten years later for some floozy and you’ve lost your skills or your registration and you have no idea how much you have in your superannuation, and what shares you own and you’re buggered.’

  I bit my lip. I had let my physio registration lapse. ‘I do all our banking and bills. Paul’s useless at that stuff. And then we send it to his accountant at the end of the year and she sorts out all our mistakes.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ Samira said. ‘You’d be surprised. Do you have a company and a trust set up? Income protection? Wills?’

  I made a face. ‘God, no. It’s just money in, money out. I think…’

  At that time, I didn’t think we had any need for all those things. Why would we need a will? Any money we had would go to each other, and the kids, wouldn’t it?

  But now, we did have a company and Paul had invested what little money we had in other companies owned by Damian and his group, and a self-managed super account that didn’t have anything in it because Paul said that we were better off using the money now, and we each had credit cards. And every month, I sat down to try and make sense of it all.

  * * *

  I don’t know how I didn’t notice sooner. On the first Monday of every month, I dropped the children at school then went home, made a coffee and did our family banking on
line: I paid the phone and credit card bills and school fees, and filed away things I could claim as a tax rebate. I never really looked at the available balance on the internet banking properly – it was complicated, as it included our business account and self-managed super and credit cards, and I had become secure again, knowing that we were both bringing money in to the family. I never really studied the money coming in: it was never regular, and the money from the speaking gigs was unpredictable and often took a long time to clear through Paul’s agent.

  I sat at my desk in our home study with my laptop open with the pile of bills and receipts on my left-hand side, ready to work through them. I took a sip of my coffee, but, as I went to put the mug down, my eye stopped on the available balance. ‘$9356.72 available.’ I squinted, thinking I must be reading it wrong and missed a digit. I was sure that the last time I’d checked, or at least recently, we’d had ‘$39039.39 available’ in our account. I remember looking at it and, as well as being so relieved that finally, we had enough to see us through any other brief disasters, also wondering what the chances were of having exactly that pattern of numbers. It felt like good luck. And a lot of money. We still owed over a million on the house, but the Sydney property market had gone up so much that it was worth at least double that, so we could always sell it and move to a cheaper suburb.

  I traced the number on the screen with my finger. No, it definitely said nine thousand, not thirty-nine thousand, available. Maybe it had been a couple of months ago that I’d seen that balance. I mustn’t have read it properly last month.

  Our mortgage, due the following week on the 15th, as always, was almost five thousand a month. My car repayment was $900, and my credit card bill alone was over two grand, just from groceries and day to day things – I put everything on my card, to get the frequent flyer points so Paul could upgrade his flights when he went travelling. So once those were paid, we’d have practically nothing.

  I frowned, then clicked on the savings account to open the list of transactions. Paul’s salary had been going in as usual. But there was nothing else: no speaking fees. And there were some big withdrawals: $3000 here, $5000 here, $5000 a week ago, from ATMs and transfers into another account that I didn’t recognise including $10000 two weeks ago. I scrolled down, holding my breath. These transactions had been going on for the last few months. Where had $30000 gone? I leaned back in my chair, staring at the screen, the house quiet apart from the thumping of my heart and a dog barking in a neighbour’s back yard. What was going on?

  Tears filled my eyes as I remembered the story of a man who couldn’t face the shame of telling his family he’d lost his job, so instead dressed in his work clothes and sat in the public library all day, reading Proust. No, that wasn’t it. Paul was still being paid. I’d met Damian and seen the restaurant. But what had happened to the payments for the corporate work? He’d been going out to dozens of functions in the past few months; I’d seen him put his suit on and hurry out the door then come back late at night. I’d been complaining about the amount of time he was out, and he had told me he had to work.

  My mouth went dry. An affair.

  He must be having an affair.

  Strangely, I heard myself start to laugh. I shook my head and groaned. What a bloody cliché. And to be stupid enough to think that I wouldn’t notice tens of thousands of dollars disappearing from our account? This is what they do, men who have affairs, isn’t it? They want to be caught, and they’re too weak to tell their wives so they set up some clues to be found out so that the wife has to bring it up and confront them. Pathetic. It was pathetic to be unable to admit that you’re unhappy before you drop your trousers and open your wallet and take food from the mouths of your own children.

  I laughed and then I cried because now what would I do? Paul and I were a team. We’d always said we’d be together forever, and we’d remember all the great things about us to counteract anything bad because, we’d promised, we wouldn’t be like everyone else. We loved each other.

  I wiped away my tears as I heard the engine of the postman’s motorbike outside. I was relieved the blinds in my office were still drawn so he didn’t see me. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. Paul wouldn’t have an affair. Other men that I knew, yes, but I had a good eye for the men who strayed. And Paul wasn’t one.

  But if he wasn’t, where was all our money?

  I picked up my phone to call him, then put it down again. My heart was racing and I knew that if I spoke to him now, I’d come across all frantic and I’d look like the crazy one. I needed to calm down and think through this. I needed to be sure before I confronted him.

  I would sort out the things I could control first. I sorted the bills into a pile and checked the due dates. I wasn’t going to pay them yet, but needed to see what the priorities were. I walked through to the kitchen and made a cup of tea because the coffee would make my nerves worse. And, how could a disaster happen when I was making a cup of tea in my own kitchen? Holding my mug with two hands to save it spilling from my trembling hands, I went back through to the office and sat down again and checked the bank screen again.

  It hadn’t changed. Had the bank made an error?

  I scrolled through all the transactions again to try and work out what was going on. I printed out a calendar page then, with a red pen, began to write down where he’d taken money out, when he’d been paid, looking for a pattern, cross referencing it to my diary, trying to remember what we’d done on each day. Most of the time he’d taken the cash out in big chunks, it was on the weekends, in the evening, when he’d been doing speaking engagements. Or that’s what he’d said.

  He’d been cagier about where he was going recently; or maybe I’d stopped asking. All this stuff with Cameron, and work – I’d been distracted. Tears welled up in my eyes, then I clenched my fists as rage surged through me. No! I wasn’t going to take the blame. I wasn’t the one doing God knows what and if I hadn’t asked where he was going every night, it was because I trusted him. I screwed my eyes tight: I was going to cry but I hated crying, and I didn’t want to let myself break, but as my breath started to come in gasps and I heard myself call out with the fear of it all, I knew that I had to confront him. If he was having an affair, I needed to know, I wanted to know. Maybe we’d been hacked, his card stolen. That would explain everything.

  I took some deep, jittery breaths, until I thought I was calm enough to talk. I picked up my mobile. What had he said he was doing today? I hadn’t asked; he hadn’t volunteered anything. As I swiped the screen of my phone, my fingers trembled. My face contorted again with the pain of it all and tears spilled over. I didn’t trust myself to speak; I texted him.

  Are you busy? I need to talk to you urgently.

  I dropped the phone on my desk and watched it, noticing the ‘delivered’ message change to ‘read’ and then the dots appeared on the screen as he began to type a reply. He must know what it is about. He knew I accessed the bank accounts.

  Just in a meeting. Call you soon. Everything okay?

  No, I wanted to type, no it’s not and you know it. I pictured Paul sitting with Damian and all his cronies with their sparkling water and herbal tea and white teeth and nice suits in these meetings, him trying to get into their circle and understand what they were all talking about, how vulnerable he had seemed, how my heart had ached to see how hard he had been trying to forge a new career.

  But he’d been lying to me. I typed back.

  Call as soon as you can.

  Half an hour later, I was still sitting at my desk, glancing at my phone every few moments. I’d checked the banks accounts, again, and again, checked my emails, even Googled ‘husband withdrawing large amounts of money’ and read forums of women whose husbands had double lives. But I may as well have been reading a novel; I couldn’t believe that what these people had experienced really could ever happen to me.

  I jumped as the phone rang. My hand shook as I reached for it, seeing a photo of Paul with his arms arou
nd Cameron and Tilly on the screen. I’d taken it years ago in Bali. They were all sitting at a pool bar, him with a bottle of beer, the kids with some fizzy drinks concoctions with little umbrellas in them, all grinning. It was so rare to get a good shot like that. That holiday had been great; it was before Paul was injured, and life seemed perfect. Even Cameron had relaxed on the holiday, maybe as there was no pressure on him to do anything. At least that’s how I remember it now. I’m sure at the time it wasn’t as idyllic; memories of trips are often far better than the reality of the holiday itself. And besides, an all-inclusive resort in Bali with no one working and no one at school wasn’t real life. Cameron did have to go to school, and one day he’d have to get a job. And so, when the day came to leave Bali, everything went right back to the way it was.

  The way it was. Right now, I wished that life was the way it was back then, even the way it was this morning, before I knew about this, when Cameron was the only thing we had to worry about.

  I answered the phone, still with no idea what I was going to say.

  ‘Hi. I’m sorry, I was in a meeting. Everything okay?’ Paul said, sounding breathless. ‘I’m just walking to my car, about to head into the city for another one, though, but your message worried me.’

  ‘I don’t have any idea what you do all day. Where are you now?’ I know my voice was accusatory; I didn’t care.

  ‘What? I’m at work, at the office.’

  ‘You’ve never invited me to your office.’ I could feel myself building and building.

  ‘What’s wrong, Emily? You’re—’

  I spat the words out. ‘I checked the bank accounts today, Paul. You tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh?’