The Ex Factor

by Laura Greaves

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper. ‘It’s a family emergency. I just need a moment.’

  She sighs noisily. ‘Ma’am, if you don’t . . .’

  But I’m not listening. I can barely hear her, anyway, over the painful thudding in my chest. Tears well in my eyes.

  ‘Kitty, Adam says Rama can’t survive this,’ Frankie continues. ‘She’s too old and her little body is too frail. The kindest thing is to —’

  ‘Ma’am? Ma’am!’

  ‘NO!’

  The stewardess recoils. She shoots me a filthy look and marches down the aisle towards the cockpit.

  ‘No, Frankie. You can’t put Rama to sleep. You just can’t!’

  The horrified stares of my row-mates soften as they grasp the situation. The middle-aged woman next to me pats my hand.

  ‘You know Adam would never recommend this unless it was best for Rama. She’s in terrible pain and she won’t recover,’ Frankie says gently. ‘She’s in my care, Kitty, and I’m making the decision.’

  ‘Wait,’ I plead. I remove the phone from my ear for a moment to check the time. ‘It’s, what, one in the afternoon there?’

  ‘One-thirty,’ says Frankie. ‘Why?’

  The haughty stewardess is stomping back down the aisle towards me, this time with the cabin manager in tow.

  ‘Miss, you are delaying this flight,’ he says. ‘If you don’t end your call this second, I will have you removed from the aircraft.’

  I shoot a desperate look at the woman next to me. She nods knowingly and turns to explain my situation to the pair.

  ‘I’m literally on a plane right now,’ I tell Frankie. ‘I land in Sydney at six o’clock tomorrow morning. Please, please, don’t do anything until I get back. Can’t Adam just make her comfortable until then so we can discuss it?’

  The confab between my neighbour and the crew is getting heated. ‘For heaven’s sake, have some compassion,’ the woman is saying. ‘Haven’t you ever lost a pet?’

  The cabin manager purses his lips. The stewardess rolls her false-lashed eyes. Cow.

  I sense Frankie’s surprise at the other end of the line. ‘You’re coming home? Since when?’

  Sure, because now’s the time to get into that.

  ‘Just promise me, Frankie. Will you do that?’ I know what I’m asking is horrifically selfish. I know Frankie wouldn’t be making this decision unless it was truly necessary. But I also know that if any vet can soothe Rama in her final hours, it’s Adam. And I can’t cope with another loss right now, not with a never-ending night in a pressurised steel tube ahead of me.

  My sister hesitates. ‘Okay,’ she says at last.

  ‘Please call ground security,’ the cabin manager says to the stewardess.

  ‘Thank you, Frankie,’ I say in a rush of breath. ‘I’ll call you when I land.’ I end the call and switch off my phone. ‘Thanks so much for your understanding,’ I say, turning to the crew members. ‘Let’s get this tin can in the air.’

  I don’t sleep a wink on the flight. I spend much of it weeping and telling my kindly neighbour, who turns out to be a Texan widow called Laverne, all about my mother and Bananarama and how much the little dog means to me. She listens patiently and when I’m done pouring my heart out she nods sagely and says, ‘Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature’s delight.’

  ‘Is that from the Bible?’

  ‘No, honey,’ Laverne replies. ‘Marcus Aurelius said that. You know him?’

  I frown. ‘Wasn’t he in Gladiator?’

  She chuckles. ‘He was a Roman emperor, and his life was full of tragedy. He buried a number of children, but he never feared loss because he knew it was a part of life. He also said, “One man prays: ‘How I may not lose my little child’, but you must pray: ‘How I may not be afraid to lose him.’”’

  ‘Well, I bet he never lost his dead mother’s dog.’

  ‘Oh, honey,’ Laverne says. ‘It’s not about the dog. It’s never about the dog.’

  She dozes off after that, but I still can’t sleep. I sit there in my cramped seat, staring dumbly at some terrible movie on the screen in front of me and replaying Laverne’s words over and over in my head.

  It’s not about the dog. It’s never about the dog.

  I know she’s right. My heart breaks at the thought of what awaits me in Sydney, but I know deep down that letting Rama go is the right thing to do. So why am I so grief-stricken, so desperate to get home and save that little mutt? I don’t remember feeling this adrift even when my mother died.

  By the time the plane touches down in Sydney, I think I’ve figured it out. If Bananarama dies, it means one more being that I love with all my heart has left me. First my mother, then Mitchell; Rama’s passing will complete an unbearable trifecta. And they all left without a farewell, without even a real explanation. Mum didn’t tell me and Frankie that she was sick for almost two years, and by the time it became obvious it was far too late. She was gone in what felt like a heartbeat, leaving only the expectation that I’d soldier on somehow, that I’d pick up the pieces because that’s what I always do. And if Mitchell’s lack of contact is any indication, he’s vanished from my life just as quickly.

  But not Rama. At least I’ll have the chance to say goodbye to my beautiful, dainty little girl.

  The queue at the airport taxi rank is mercifully short, but with the flight delay and battling through the morning rush hour it’s still nearly ten o’clock by the time I cross Spit Bridge and head back towards Narrabeen. I text Frankie and tell her to meet me at Adam’s clinic. She replies that she’s already there.

  My sister is nervously pacing the waiting room when I arrive. She looks up at me, her face streaked with tears. And shakes her head.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Kitty,’ she whispers. ‘She just couldn’t hold on.’

  The floor tilts sharply beneath me. I hear a strange sound, like a howling. A deep, primal noise that’s rent with anguish. I reach out for the corner of the reception desk to steady myself, but it’s not there. As I crash to the floor, I realise the sound is coming from me.

  When I come to a few minutes later – or is it hours? – I’m stretched out on a rickety camp bed in Adam’s office. My stomach twists bitterly. What’s the point of him sleeping at the clinic if he can’t save the animals in his care?

  There’s no sign of Adam, but Frankie is perched at the end of the thin mattress, wringing her hands.

  ‘Did I dream it?’

  ‘No, sweetie,’ my sister says. ‘I’m sorry.’

  It feels as if there’s a ten-tonne weight pressing down on my chest as I heave myself into a sitting position. My head is spinning and I can’t tell if it’s grief, jet lag, or a torturous combination of the two.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Frankie takes a deep breath, as though she’s rehearsed what she’s about to say. ‘Adam did everything he could. He gave her painkillers and tried to make her comfortable, and for a little while it worked. She was pretty out of it, but she was hanging in there. But then around three o’clock this morning, she just crashed. She was in so much pain, Kitty. It was obvious. The way she cried —’ Frankie breaks off as her own tears spill over. ‘I’d never heard a sound like it, until you keeled over in the waiting room just now.’

  ‘So why didn’t Adam up her pain meds? Try a different drug? Why didn’t he do something?’ It was only a few hours, I want to scream. That was all I asked.

  She shakes her head. ‘There was nothing he could do. We couldn’t let her suffer like that, Kit. We just couldn’t. The only option —’

  ‘Wait.’ I hold up my hand and Frankie stops speaking. ‘You said she couldn’t hold on.’

  Frankie nods. ‘She couldn’t.’

  ‘So, she passed away naturally, right? Rama chose her time to go?’

  She pauses for a moment that feels like an eternity. ‘No,’ she says finally. ‘I made the call. I chose.’

  For the second time that morning, it feels as if the
ground falls away beneath me. What’s left of my heart splinters in my chest.

  Frankie sees my stricken expression. ‘You couldn’t have fixed this, Kitty,’ she says hurriedly. ‘Even if you’d been here. It wouldn’t have mattered.’

  It wouldn’t have mattered. My presence here, being able to say goodbye to Rama, might not have made a difference to Frankie. But it would have made a difference to me.

  Suddenly, Adam’s stark office and the biting chemical smell of the clinic could be the hospital where my mother passed away; the anguish consuming me now feels as fresh as the day she died. Only that day I had Rama to comfort me.

  Today I have nothing. And why? Because I was selfish and stupid and deluded enough to think someone like Mitchell Pyke could love me. Because I was too blinded by his ‘star quality’ to see the futility – the insanity – of trying to exist in his world. And because that blindness led me to blithely entrust the care of my last connection to my mother to someone who can barely take care of herself.

  I get unsteadily to my feet and reach for the handle of my wheeled suitcase.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Frankie says.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘You can’t go, Kitty. You’re exhausted. And you hit your head when you fell – you might have a concussion.’ My sister wears a concerned expression. ‘Lie down. Please.’

  She reaches for my elbow and tries to guide me back to the camp bed, but I shake her off. ‘Don’t pretend you care about me, Frankie,’ I hiss, rounding on her. ‘Don’t you dare.’

  Frankie’s eyes widen in shock. ‘I’m not pretending anything.’ Her voice is small.

  ‘I can’t imagine how tough the last five weeks have been for you, burdened by Rama and the other dogs,’ I continue flatly. ‘What a hardship it must have been to act like you gave a toss about something besides yourself. It must have felt like an eternity.’

  ‘It wasn’t a burden, Kitty. You know I was happy to —’

  ‘Well, I’m back now. You never liked Rama, and now you don’t have to worry about her or the others. The Frankie Show rolls on. How convenient.’

  Tears well in Frankie’s eyes, but she doesn’t respond. A voice from behind me does instead.

  ‘If you are suggesting that the decision to end Rama’s suffering was easily made, Kitty, you are very much mistaken. There was absolutely nothing convenient about the last few hours.’

  I turn to see Adam filling the doorway, as tall and pale and lanky as ever. I feel a brief flicker of pleasure at the sight of my best friend, but it’s instantly extinguished. It feels like a hundred years since I last saw him that awful night at the restaurant. Can I still call him my best friend? If he’s really standing there defending my sister, justifying yet another example of Frankie shirking her responsibilities and putting herself first, then I guess I can’t.

  Adam steps fully into his office. ‘I think you owe Frankie an apology,’ he says, looking down his nose at me like a reproving schoolteacher.

  ‘Do you, Adam? Do you think I’ve misjudged my sister? That I’m being unfair?’ I hold his gaze, daring him to respond. The gall of the guy, after the things he said to me during our last meeting.

  At last, he looks away. Coward.

  I look at Adam a moment longer, then shift my gaze back to Frankie. She’s staring at the floor.

  ‘I’m going home. I don’t want to see either of you,’ I say, heading for the door.

  ‘Okay,’ Frankie says softly. ‘We’ll give you some time. I’ll be home later.’

  I stop, take a deep breath. ‘No,’ I say without turning back. ‘I don’t want you there later. I don’t want you there ever. I just want to be left alone.’

  And as I walk away I know that I mean it.

  19.

  If it’s tough for a movie star like Mitchell to be publicly dumped, being left on the cutting room floor by a movie star is definitely no picnic either.

  Okay, I guess Mitchell didn’t actually dump me. He may have been only playing the part of a man in love, but I suppose technically speaking it was me that ended it. But it hurts every bit as much as if he’d been the one to walk away.

  Foolishly, I imagined that leaving Mitchell and his ridiculous Hollywood existence in Hollywood meant I could scurry home to Australia and quietly resume my old life in my little house with my exasperating sister and my four-legged posse. I figured I’d make amends with Adam and revive my business. I thought that if there were a silver lining to the gut-wrenching failure of my relationship with Mitchell, it would be the return of my anonymity.

  I was wrong. Way wrong.

  I arrive home from Adam’s clinic, tear-stained and exhausted, to find my front lawn crawling with media. And, of course, Erin McInerny’s flaxen mane is front and centre. ‘Kitty, so sorry to hear about you and Mitchell,’ she says, not sounding sorry at all. ‘Would you care to make a comment?’

  How does this woman always seem to know more about my love life than I do? If I wasn’t utterly astonished to see her there, I might ask her for some pointers.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say, standing dumbly on the kerb as I wait for the driver to retrieve my suitcase from the boot of the taxi.

  I see Erin sweep a critical eye over my puffy face and dishevelled attire, and I know she’s mentally slapping a ‘devastated celebrity cast-off’ label on me. She probably thinks I’m gutted that my brief turn in the limelight is over. Well, fine. She can think what she likes. I’m not about to tell her that my tears are for my dead mother’s dead dog. I wouldn’t expect someone like Erin to understand that I’d be perfectly happy if the world had never heard my name; that I’m sorry I ever left my little dog’s side.

  She wouldn’t understand that, at this moment, I wish I’d never met Mitchell Pyke.

  ‘Are you home for good?’ Erin says, and there’s a definite note of triumph in her tone. She lowers her voice and leans in close. ‘You were, uh, overheard on the aircraft.’

  Apparently there are spies even at forty thousand feet. I refuse to believe kindly Laverne stepped off a fifteen-hour flight and promptly called the local news media. It must have been one of those sour-faced flight attendants.

  I pay the taxi driver and make a beeline for my front door, pushing past Erin a little more assertively than is strictly necessary. I can hear Reggie, Carl and Dolly howling a welcome-home chorus inside the house. My battered spirits lift a little at the thought they still recognise my voice after five weeks away.

  Erin is hot on my heels as I slot the key in the door. ‘Just a few words, Kitty. Please?’

  I turn to face her. ‘It sounds like someone has already given you most of your story, Erin. Feel free to make up the rest. As if you need my permission.’

  I step inside and am about to close the door – quietly, but only because I don’t want to give her a headline by slamming it in her pretty face – when she wraps her fingers around my wrist.

  ‘Look, Kitty,’ she says, speaking even more quietly now. ‘I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there, too.’

  My eyes widen in horror. Is she actually telling me she’s been with Mitchell? Erin frowns, confused, as she registers my stricken expression. Then her own eyes grow to the size of saucers.

  ‘No! Oh, nononono! I don’t mean that literally.’ She throws her head back and laughs throatily. ‘I mean generally speaking. I’ve punched above my weight and been knocked flat on my backside. Haven’t we all?’ She cackles again. In Erin’s world, we’re just two unlucky-in-love gal pals, bemoaning love’s rocky road. A sudden wave of nausea washes over me.

  ‘But seriously,’ she continues, tightening her grip on my arm. ‘I know what it’s like to be dumped, and I know how hard it is being a woman in the public eye. If you ever —’

  ‘I’m only in the public eye because of people like you,’ I spit, my earlier resolution to take the high road instantly forgotten. And I dumped him, I want to scream.

  Erin purses her
lips and adopts a condescending expression. ‘Sweetie, you’re in the public eye because you were granted entrée to a world most of us can only dream of, and you’ll stay in the public eye because you’ve been thrown out of that world. That’s how it’s going to be, whether I’m on your front lawn or not.’

  Fresh tears prick my eyes. She’s right. I’m not so arrogant as to doubt I’ll be forgotten, but I’ve had a comprehensive enough crash course in the workings of the world’s tabloid media to know it won’t be any time soon.

  There’s a telltale flash of unabashed glory in Erin’s eyes. She knows she has my attention.

  ‘Use it to your advantage, Kitty. That’s all I’m saying. You turned your life upside down for this guy. Why shouldn’t you get something out of everything you’ve been through?’

  The other reporters still milling on the grass have noticed Erin’s and my tête-à-tête and are trying to look inconspicuous as they creep closer. That sick feeling in the pit of my stomach is growing more intense. I just want all these parasites away from me.

  ‘What are you saying, Erin?’

  She casts a glance over her shoulder at her rivals. ‘If you thought your life had been picked apart when you and Mitchell were together, you’d better prepare yourself for what’s coming next,’ she says hurriedly. ‘Eventually you’re going to want to tell your side of the story, and when you do I promise I can make it worth your while. I imagine you’ve become accustomed to a certain lifestyle.’ Erin gives a theatrical wink.

  Wait. Is she suggesting what I think she’s suggesting?

  ‘Are you implying I’m some kind of gold-digger?’

  ‘I don’t judge, Kitty. I just report the facts,’ she says, her pretty face the picture of innocence.

  The facts. Right.

  ‘Anyway, call me when you want to talk.’ She presses her business card into my hand, then releases my wrist, pivots on her spike heels and strides away.

  Finally, mercifully, I’m able to close my front door and I luxuriate in the cool, silent interior of my home for a full second before I’m felled by a rocket-propelled Reggie. Then Dolly’s tongue is in my ear and Carl is dancing elegant little circles around us. I leave them to it for a good few minutes and try to imagine this is just a regular day. A day when I’ve simply come home from work, and haven’t lost anyone or anything, and haven’t been away from the dogs for over a month. I luxuriate in their unbridled joy. I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt so at ease, so welcome, so loved. And besides, I’m too shattered to get up right now.