Annabel laughed.
‘I remember coming home from the hospital with Dad after we heard Mum wasn’t going to make it,’ Clementine said. ‘I was sixteen. When we got to the front door there was a pot of curry sitting on the welcome mat. For the next few months food from friends and neighbours just kept appearing. People would come and visit, of course. But it was the offerings that really struck me. They were such sustaining gifts delivered with selfless compassion. It was as though people were saying, “We understand you might want to be alone, but we’re thinking of you.” It was the most wonderful thing.’
‘That’s lovely,’ said Annabel.
They continued down the aisle.
‘I can’t believe what Harry did,’ Clem said after a moment.
‘Can’t you?’ Annabel raised an eyebrow.
‘I suppose I can.’
‘It’s not important. I feel far worse for poor Humpty. He’s devastated. And he’s selling his place.’
‘The one in Double Bay?’
‘Yes. He’s giving Mirabella half.’
‘Half of what? The house?’
‘Half of everything.’
Clementine stopped pushing the trolley. ‘What? Less than four months of marriage and he’s giving her half his estate?’
‘I know, I know,’ Annabel shook her head. ‘He says he has no choice. They signed this prenuptial agreement that states she gets half in a no-fault divorce.’
‘But it is fault. It’s her fault!’
‘Humpty says he has no proof. She’s denying everything.’
‘And she’s still living in the house?’
‘Scandalous, isn’t it?’
Clementine shook her head. ‘Did you hear she landed that House and Garden photo shoot she was after, too?’
‘You’re kidding?’ Annabel dropped a plastic tub of grated Parmesan. It bounced off her foot and rolled across the aisle.
‘Clem’ — Annabel clutched her arm — ‘isn’t that Jason?’
Clementine’s head snapped up. Over by the ready-made sauce, Jason Ceravic was standing with a basket in his hand. Amanda was loading it with pesto. Clem tried to back out of the aisle. Too late. Amanda had seen her.
‘Hello there,’ she waved.
Jason looked up. Their eyes met. ‘Y-you two know each other?’ he stammered.
‘Darling,’ said Amanda, touching her husband’s arm, ‘we met at Mirabella’s wedding, remember? How are you, Clarabell?’ She had softened. Her hair was longer and sat more naturally. Her face was rounder. She looked healthier. Jason looked ashen.
‘Clementine.’ Clem offered her hand. He shook it.
‘I am sorry, you’ll have to forgive me, Clementine,’ Amanda said. ‘Pregnancy brain.’
‘I heard you were pregnant,’ Clem said, smiling. ‘Congratulations.’ Jason stared at her, wide-eyed.
‘Yes. We’re very excited.’ Amanda smoothed her hand over her belly.
As Amanda flattened her silk shirt, Clem could see the beginnings of a bump. She felt a stirring of longing, but it wasn’t as acute as usual. She was glad Jason had stayed with Amanda, and she was glad the affair had been severed without hurting her.
Annabel introduced herself.
‘Annabel Summers — I know you,’ Amanda responded. ‘Sweet Success is one of Sydney’s most exciting PR companies. I loved what you did with the Farouk spice launch.’
‘Thank you,’ Annabel beamed.
‘Clementine.’ Amanda touched her arm. ‘You simply must bring Annabel to Damon’s fundraiser next month. He’s done an incredible job supporting The Three Peaks Foundation. You must be so proud.’
‘Actually, I haven’t seen much of Damon lately,’ Clem said. Jason shifted on his feet.
‘Really?’ said Amanda. ‘He was talking about you just the other day, telling us what fabulous luck you had had at the races together.’
‘He was?’ She felt an unexpected surge of happiness in her chest.
Jason raked his hand through his hair. Clementine enjoyed watching him squirm. Amanda started digging in her handbag. She pulled out an invitation.
‘Here,’ she gave it to Annabel. ‘Damon climbs mountains to raise money for a juvenile justice programme. The fundraiser is next month. It would be wonderful to have your support.’
‘Thank you,’ said Annabel. ‘Sweet Success needs to do more philanthropic work.’ She nudged Clem with her elbow.
Amanda smiled. ‘We had better go,’ she said.
‘Good luck,’ Clem said.
‘Nice to see you, Clementine,’ Jason muttered.
‘You too,’ she called as they walked away. ‘I’m glad everything worked out for the best.’
The Wednesday after Gia’s funeral, they met at The Carrington for a meal. Dani hardly touched her food. She told Annabel and Clementine that she didn’t want to talk about her mother and immediately changed the subject.
‘I can’t get over what Harry Barchester did,’ she said. ‘What is wrong with men? Why can’t they just keep it in their pants?’
‘Have you spoken to him?’ Clem asked Annabel.
‘He called me the other day to cancel dinner plans we had for Friday evening. I didn’t tell him I knew about Mirabella.’
‘Why do they just have to spray it everywhere?’ Daniela asked.
‘Dani.’ Annabel wrinkled her nose. ‘Yuck.’
‘It’s to do with biology and the relative scarcity of eggs versus sperm,’ Clem said. ‘Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have. They’re precious and finite and they degrade over time, so evolution made us discerning. Men’s sperm is constantly being replenished.’
‘How do you know all of this stuff?’ Annabel asked.
‘University. Besides, I like having a biological explanation for my neuroses.’
‘I saw James the other night,’ Daniela said. She pushed a scrap of rice around her plate. Her head was bowed. A piece of hair fell forward, partially hiding her face.
‘I called him over because I wanted to tell him how I felt about him.’
Annabel dropped her knife. ‘And?’ She and Clem leaned forward eagerly.
‘He just sees me as a friend,’ Dani said, sadly.
She had lost weight. After the funeral Clementine had watched as Dani spoke with guests at the wake and poured cups of coffee for older mourners. She had always had a lithe, feline grace, but now her tiny frame took on the quality of frailty. She looked gaunt, and her skin had lost its glow. The bones in her wrist were visible as she pushed the rice back and forth on her plate.
‘At least I know,’ she said. Her shoulders were bent forward under the weight of sadness.
‘Are you sure there’s no hope?’ Annabel asked softly.
Dani shook her head. Her eyes were glistening. ‘No, you were right, Clem. We’ve got to forget about this romantic love notion. I should concentrate on winning Cameron over so we can have the other important things. A home. A family. He’s a really good man. I’m sure over time we would develop a deep affection for each other.’
‘I’m so sorry, Dani.’ Annabel gave her a hug.
Guilt bloomed in Clem’s chest. She felt like she should be able to do something, but she didn’t know what. Instead she just held Dani’s hand.
‘It’s good you told him,’ Annabel said. ‘We have to do what we think is right for us. At the funeral I realised something: I don’t want to be with a prize that I’ve hunted. For me it has never been about having a family, and if I can’t find love, well that’s okay. I’ll be alone and my life will be about other things.’
Clem squeezed Dani’s hand. It had rained the morning of the funeral. Inside the church, steamy vapour rose from sodden shoulders, and the air filled with the doggy smell of wet wool. Mourners clasped droopy, damp hats. She and Annabel had sat behind Daniela. As the service started, Clem reached forward and squeezed Dani’s shoulder. The woe carved on Mr DeLuca’s face was as deep and as permanent as a scar. She cried as he spoke about his wife. He told the story of
how they met. ‘Pain is the price we pay for love,’ he concluded. It seemed a fair transaction.
The waitress brought over coffee.
Daniela took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I just feel like it’s never going to happen for me. He’s always been the one. Ever since university.’
‘You used to write me such longing letters about him at uni,’ Clementine mused.
‘I hate him,’ said Dani suddenly. ‘How can he not feel it, too? How can he be so … impervious?’
Annabel and Clementine looked at each other. They had seen them together. They lit up. Clem didn’t understand how he could not feel it.
When Clementine got home she went to her linen cupboard. Down the bottom was a large cardboard box wrapped like a Christmas present. It was full of letters and mementos. The most recent entries were a crayon birthday card from Oscar (it was a picture of a smiling sun accompanied by the letters H, P and the number 6, which Will told her expressed sincere birthday wishes from his four-year-old) and the card that had come with the tulips Jason had sent her the night he had cancelled their last dinner.
At the bottom was the oldest stuff: work she had been proud of at high school, a university transcript, birthday cards and letters.
There were photos of her mother. They ranged from her last days when they had all driven to the coast and eaten fish and chips on the sand, to a Polaroid from before Clem was born. Her mother was smiling in a wedding dress, with a rose-gold band — the same colour as her hair — shiny and new on her hand. Clementine touched her bare finger, missing her ring.
Then she found what she was looking for. It was a letter from Dani written on light blue graph paper. She had scrawled it during a university lecture.
7 April
Remember that guy I told you about? The cute one with the longish hair? He asked me out for pizza!! He said he needed help with the linear algebra classes he missed. Do you think that’s just an excuse? He’s so gorgeous and smart and interesting. Did I tell you he just got back from Peru?
In those pre-smartphone days, they had always written to each other during the lectures, then swapped notes when they met on the lawn for lunch. Clem fossicked some more, and found another blue page.
19 April
I’ve got so much to tell you!! I know I said I wanted to wait until I got married, but we went back to his place after the pizza and it just sort of happened. I didn’t tell him he was my first, because I didn’t want him to think I was some sort of prude.
Clem pulled another letter out, and another.
16 May
He told me I’m really cool!! Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing? I want him to think I’m amazing and beautiful and funny. I don’t want him to say: you’re cool. I don’t want him to treat me like just one of his mates.
Clem counted fourteen in all. There had been dozens more, but they had been lost over the years. They went on in this vein for pages; Dani pining and cataloguing James Jensen’s many virtues, then trying to come up with ways she could stop herself from being infatuated with him. It was in the eighth letter that she started using the word ‘love’. Then she set about discovering an antidote to it, as though it were some sort of flesh-eating disease.
Clementine couldn’t remember what she had written back to Dani, but she could tell she had been counselling her to tell him. Daniela had refused, and had eventually started seeing another guy to dull the pain of what she perceived as James’s indifference.
Now, Clem put all of the blue letters in a pile and returned the rest of the stuff to the box. The last thing to go in was the card that had come with the tulips. She looked at it: You deserve better. And a kiss.
‘You’re damn right I do,’ she said to nobody. Then she tore the card in half and tossed it into the bin. She plugged the vacuum cleaner in and attacked the carpet in the lounge room, hoping the roar would drown out her thoughts. Dani hated showing emotion. She spent so much time working with men that she had become almost pathological about wanting to prove she was just like them. Or rather, that she deserved to be treated no differently.
Clementine looked at the blue pile of her letters. She had thought she would give them to Dani, but was worried they would only upset her. Sliding them into a large envelope, she walked around feeling their weight as she tried to decide what to do. She felt as though somehow they could make a difference.
She had seen James with Dani, and she had seen him with his new girlfriend. When he was with Daniela his adoration was clear. She also knew how impenetrable Dani could be. Clem felt like she had a clear picture of what had happened to the relationship. Sometimes when couples laid out their stories, she could see where they had taken missteps and was able to come up with solutions. It didn’t mean it would be easy, it just meant the cause of the problems could be treated. Now she felt like some sort of pragmatic relationship fairy. Clem was certain that James loved Daniela but believed she didn’t love him back. She thought that perhaps if she gave Dani the letters, reading them would remind her of how happy James made her. They would urge her to let him see how sincerely she felt.
Clem jumped up and grabbed the envelope.
She looked up the address of Dani’s building site and added enough stamps to ensure it got there. She couldn’t remember Daniela’s title, but she supposed there wouldn’t be more than one Ms D.B. DeLuca working there. She started to write ‘Daniela DeLuca’, but somehow it came out ‘James Jensen’.
Clem looked at what she had written.
I can’t do that, she told herself. I can’t meddle.
But a part of her thought: if he only knew. She wondered what was the worst thing that could happen. Walking downstairs, she made the three-block journey to the nearest letterbox.
I’m just going for a walk, she told herself. I won’t send it.
She was mentally tallying the possible good and bad outcomes of James seeing these letters. She could only think of good. He would learn that Daniela truly loved him — had always loved him — and they would be together. But what if Clementine was wrong? James was hardly going to get angry at Daniela for being in love with him. If anything, he would be more sensitive to her feelings. Besides, Clem reasoned, reciprocity of attraction is one of the key drivers when attachment is first being formed in a relationship. Human beings are insecure creatures. We like those who like us.
‘I’ll just post them,’ she said.
She pulled down the metal opening of the letterbox and shoved the envelope through the slot. It landed on the pile of mail with a soft sigh. The second it was gone, she wanted it back.
Daniela was going to kill her.
Clementine pulled open the metal door and peered into the darkness. She tried to squeeze her hand down the chute, but the letterbox wouldn’t let more than the very tips of her fingers in.
‘Dammit,’ she said, feeling as though she was emerging from a bout of temporary madness. She tried to prise the letterbox door open.
‘Dammit,’ she said again, kicking it. It was sealed tight.
Walking home, she pondered what she had done, almost suffocating in panic. She looked at her watch. It was past midnight. The next mail pick-up was at 4am. She decided she would set her alarm and then plead with the mailman to let her retrieve the letter. She felt calmer. Yes. That was exactly what she would do.
She couldn’t sleep, instead squirming under the covers, thinking about Dani and James. It was nearly three when she finally dozed off. The alarm started blaring at 3.30am. She squashed it, then rolled over, sleeping until seven. When she woke, she sat bolt upright. The mail! She had missed it. Daniela’s teenage heartache was working its way to James right now. Clem thought about calling her; warning her. She even started to type a message, but the words looked ridiculous. Watch out! James knows you love him.
She dialled, but as the phone rang she clamped her thumb on the red off button. She couldn’t leave this up to Dani to fix. Clem thought about going to the building site and trying to intercept the ma
il at the other end, picturing herself there, hiding behind a rubber plant while watching guard over the mailbox.
Then she pictured James getting the letters. He wouldn’t laugh or be cruel. At worst he would be touched but uninterested. At best he would rush to Daniela and tell her he loved her, too. But what if he didn’t?
Clementine scooped up her car keys, put a cap over her bed hair, and pulled a jacket over her pyjama top. Then she raced downstairs and jumped into her car.
In half an hour she was screeching to a halt outside the part-built apartment block.
‘Clem?’ Daniela was unloading tubes of plans from her backseat.
‘Dani! Hi, how are you? Is everything okay? Are you okay?’ The words tumbled out of her. Clementine’s voice was an octave higher than usual.
‘I’m fine. Uh, what are you doing here?’
Clem breathed. Daniela seemed normal. Nothing had happened yet. She could still stop it.
‘Nothing, I just, ah, wanted to come by and see how you are, and ask you, um, have you seen James this morning?’
‘I don’t think he’s in yet,’ Dani said, looking at her watch. ‘It’s only half past seven.’
‘Great,’ Clementine said, glancing around. ‘I was wondering, where does your mail get delivered to?’
‘Our mail? Clem, what’s going on? You’re starting to scare me.’
‘Oh, Dani.’ Clem looked at her. ‘I’ve done something really bad.’
‘What? What have you done?’
‘It’s silly really. Just a little mix-up when I was addressing some letters …’ She had half-scripted an excuse in the car on the way over, as she had dodged commuters and freight trucks. All the time she had been wildly thinking: She doesn’t have to know. She never has to know what I’ve done.
But looking into Daniela’s large, trusting eyes as she waited for her to explain, Clementine realised she couldn’t lie. She had been lying and deceiving people in one way or another since she had met Jason. It was time for it to stop.
She took a deep breath and told Daniela about the letters. Dani’s eyes widened and her eyebrows rose as Clementine recounted each step: what the letters said and what she had done, and what she had been thinking when she had done it.
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