The Chance of a Lifetime

by kendra Smith

  He’d left that morning telling her he was sure it had all been legal – lots of his colleagues at work had used the agency, too, to avoid the hefty stamp duty. He’d given her a very hurried kiss on the cheek that day; she noticed he hadn’t shaved. Tom always shaved. Later that day she could barely make out his voice on the phone – when he’d told her they were unlucky, they did have to pay that stamp duty bill – thirty thousand pounds they just didn’t have.

  ‘At least I still have a job.’ He looked away from her towards an air hostess who was walking purposefully down the aisle.

  ‘Yes, darling, yes,’ she sighed, taking his hand. Yes, thought Katie, we’ve been given a chance; we really must use it. How would Tom or I have coped without a job, an income? With buying a smaller place, with me working? Working? What would I have done! Katie squished up her nose at the thought, then studied the pert air hostess handing out drinks. She was wearing fresh make-up and had a tiny belt round her petite waist. She was smiling.

  Yes, but you used to look a bit like that, didn’t you, when you sold advertising space to heavy-duty clients in London? When Tom first met you, didn’t you? God, there she was again – her inner critic, the she-devil who danced on her thoughts. You used to get a thrill, phoning clients minutes before the ad went to press, to increase the cost. You used to wear mascara and lipstick on the same day. Used to know the absolute latest you could phone the printer and get ads changed without it costing the earth, but still charge it to the client. What happened, sister?

  What’s happened is that I have had carnal thoughts about Adam, for Pete’s sake, Adam, Lucy’s husband.

  What had she become? She watched the air hostess flash a lip-glossy smile at the two of them. Katie could provide a cost analysis of multi-seed bread at each supermarket, but couldn’t win Editorial Newcomer of the Year as she had in 2004 any more, even if Robbie Williams was holding the award, naked and covered in melted Green & Black’s. Where did that girl go? The ‘old Katie’?

  Honestly, I have been so wrapped up in the demands of motherhood that I seem to have lost hold on lots of things, our financial mess, my sanity sometimes, who I am… what I nearly became… She looked down at her stained skirt (two hours in, James’s raspberry yogurt).

  She glanced at her adorable boys. Six-year-old James with his messy hair and knitted eyebrows like his father, who seemed to know about the world already. Andy had finally fallen asleep, James’s four-year-old happy-go-lucky brother, a bundle of energy and love now exhausted, his face crumpled into a pillow, eyes twitching. Sometimes she made excuses to check them at night, watch them sleeping, watch their chests rise and fall in their Winnie the Pooh pyjamas, watch their tiny cherub mouths. We made those mouths, she’d think, standing in their bedroom doorway; it’s a miracle. We made those tiny nostrils, those curling eyelashes. She’d stand and gaze, smiling to herself for ages.

  The boys had packed their own rucksacks. Their little treasures – the things that mattered most to a four- and six-year-old, including four pairs of pants, Pokémon cards, and a picture of Gramps they kept by their beds. They were so innocent, so trusting. Can we sit next to the window? Mum, will we see the pilot? Where does the poo go on a plane?

  What would they think when their world was turned upside down? When they realised that this wasn’t just a holiday – it was a – what? Katie could feel her mouth go dry. She folded her arms tight around herself and squeezed. Would they miss their best friends? Their hiding spot in the garden (behind the shed), their goldfish? How on earth would they all cope with the weather? She hastily ripped open a plastic bag containing the airline blanket and quickly wound the comforting blue wrap securely around herself.

  ‘Hey pretty lady, what you thinking?’ That my insides feel like a too-tight womb. Instead, she smiled at him, clutched his hand and pulled her blanket up further to her chin as she slid down the chair.

  *

  Katie woke with a start to the pitch of the engine changing, a high throttle noise as the plane began its descent.

  ‘Mummy! Look! We’re here!’ James was pointing at the window and peering out of it. Katie gazed outside and caught her breath. She was expecting red earth and acres of arid desert. What met her eyes was a vast ocean of greenery (Australia, green?). There were bright splodges of purple dotting the landscape – jacaranda trees she later found out – sprinkled across the ground alongside pockets of sapphire swimming pools glistening in the sun. It looked like springtime – in September? She glanced at her watch: 3rd September 2010, the day her life would change forever. She stared out the window while twisting her wedding ring round.

  The plane banked abruptly and the iconic Sydney Harbour show played out underneath them in all its glory: the sun was just coming up over the Opera House; the Harbour Bridge was a menacing, gun-metal grey in front of a milky-blue sky with streaks of sunrise. Minuscule ferries chugged along the water, leaving trails of fluffy foam behind them. Sailing boats, which looked tinier than pearls on a necklace, dotted the harbour.

  Suddenly, Katie felt an enormous surge of panic. Australia was a planet from another galaxy. She clutched her armrest. She was allergic to hot – it made her eczema worse. She was particularly terrified of creepy crawlies, couldn’t imagine being twenty-four hours away from her roots, from her family, from her sister, Debra, from her best friend, Lucy… and Adam… Oh God. She leant back in seat 27A. If nothing else good comes out of this, it’s that I’ve put thousands of miles between me and Adam. My best friend’s husband. What an idiot.

  ‘Boys, we’re here,’ she said, attempting chirpy. Then she took a deep breath and stared at the majestic creamy white Opera House.

  What in God’s name have I done?

  3

  ‘Do you have any food in the bag, darl?’ A customs official with legs encased in khaki shorts was speaking. Shorts. The world stopped and Katie stared at his long socks, at his curly leg hairs escaping from the confines of his hosiery and wondered what a ‘darl’ was – a newly arrived English woman to Australia carrying illegal substances? Her overnight bag had just been pulled off the conveyor belt X-ray after being identified as containing suspicious substances. Honestly, she thought, do I look like I’d carry anything dodgier than old Marmite sandwiches and glitter felt tips?

  ‘Ma’am?’

  It was the American ‘Ma’am’, not the British ‘Madam’, ‘Ma’m’ or even ‘Miss’.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Oh. Some McVitie’s digestives. Just a few packets.’ She beamed at him.

  ‘What are those? Can you please show me, Ma’am?’

  Stop calling me Ma’am. Katie unzipped the bag to reveal her stash.

  ‘Milk chocolate ones – they’re my favourite,’ she whispered. ‘Not the plain ones.’ She leant in closer. Please don’t take my biscuits.

  ‘You know that you can’t take food into Australia, don’t you?’

  She scratched her chin and looked at him. ‘Really?’ she said, clutching the packets to her breast. She was out of her depth. She handed over her five packets, defeated.

  All she could see were uniformed men everywhere, in shorts exposing their hairy limbs: taxi drivers, bus drivers, the security guy at the door of the airport. Everyone was telling them to have a good day. She felt waves of nausea; it was pretty stuffy in there. Tom was muttering about a rental car. All Katie could do was stare. Stare at the women’s legs. Her eyes darted to her own feet, sheathed in sixty-denier John Lewis opaque black – dark sausage legs. Suddenly, this English Rose felt mighty out of place.

  *

  Tom yanked on the handbrake outside 34 Wattle Avenue, in what felt like one of the highest suburbs in the northern beaches of Sydney: Allambie Heights. Katie grabbed the rental paperwork from Tom’s lap and stared at it.

  ‘We can’t live here!’

  ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ But even as he said it, his tone was odd: like he was equally as uneasy as she was. They stared at the house – perched up on stilts, with a rickety w
ooden staircase leading up to the door. As far as Katie could tell, the house seemed to be stuck perilously somehow into the side of a hill. What an awful house, she thought, closing her eyes and shuddering.

  ‘I thought you said it was a nice house, Tom?’ Katie whispered at him as they got out the car. ‘It didn’t look like that on the website pictures.’

  ‘Katie, it’s all we could afford,’ he said putting his arm across her shoulders.

  With that she pulled her shoulders back and was jerked back to reality. Right, make this work…

  The estate agent was standing at the gate with a clipboard. She was smiling very hard. Katie wanted to haul the clipboard out of her perfectly manicured clutches and hit her over the head with it. I specifically said no hills because Andy is very heavy in his buggy.

  ‘Must be super views here,’ said Tom striding towards her.

  ‘Yes!’ She beamed, taking Tom’s hand and shaking it. ‘You and Mrs Parkes will just be able to get a glimpse of the ocean from your window in the en-suite! It’s amazing! How was your flight? Oh, aren’t your kids adorable! Let me show you the house.’

  The house had cold, tiled floors. It had an outside laundry room. Why on earth was it outside? It had a huge overgrown Balinese garden pond with a tinkly waterfall; it looked like it was still being built. She closed her eyes with a sigh, imagining how her children would fall in and drown.

  What was the estate agent thinking? There were huge glass windows offering no peace of mind to a mum who knew perfectly well that her kids would get out of bed at night and play lightsabre stabbing games and ram straight into them. It had an exceedingly high balcony leading off the – she nearly fainted when she saw it – children’s bedroom. Oh my God. Katie caught her breath. She couldn’t help compare it to her gorgeous London house, especially the kitchen: her beautiful sanctuary. Her heart felt empty thinking about the comfy sofas, the shabby chic ‘country’ kitchen – as rural as she could make it in Crouch End. It will do till we leave London, she’d thought then. She never imagined they would be quite this far outside the M25.

  ‘Mum!’ James was crouching next to her, yanking at her skirt. ‘Come look. There’s a pond in the garden. With fish! Daddy said, “Go get Mummy, she’s a fish out of water at the moment.”’

  Katie frowned, then stood up and let James take her by the hand to look at the fish outside. As she walked past her new furniture, she couldn’t help feeling like she was in a strange reality TV show. One where they take a London housewife who used to spend far too much time fantasising about her best friend’s husband to Australia to sort all her problems out. Yes, thought Katie, sternly, we will sort this out and make a go of it. However, she thought, steadying herself on the side of the wicker chair as she got up, I really do feel queasy. She squeezed James’s hand and tried to smile.

  Walking past the rented pastel furniture she realised she’d maybe been a bit hard on Red Lips. She had, after all, got them all the right rented pastel-coloured furniture for their new pastel-coloured Sydney life. But rented? It seemed weird to be spending fifteen quid a week renting a bedside lamp, it really did. Especially when they didn’t have fifteen quid. Then, out of nowhere, like a butterfly landing on a leaf, a feeling settled upon Katie’s heart: it wouldn’t be the only thing that was going to be weird…

  *

  Later that night, Katie sank into her new salmon pink cushions on the sofa and stared at her stark surroundings, thinking about her lounge in London, the one she had so reluctantly rented out. She recalled the night she had sat and looked at all the packing boxes, flat-packed, waiting to be assembled and stuffed full of their treasures and shipped off in a container to Australia.

  She had watched the raindrops falling on the windowpane, then turned to survey her surroundings with all their things for the last time in their rightful places: the baby photos on the walls, the wedding pictures on the mantelpiece – she and Tom deliriously happy in morning suit and ivory chiffon, silk daisies in her hair – cushions scattered around the sofa, one from every holiday they’d had, the slightly too-bright Indian rug (Tom teased her about it) from Marrakech last summer. Our things, she had thought. Our life in a room.

  Suddenly there was a bleep on her iPhone. Little sister Debs.

  Hi K! How are you? How’s Sydney? Flite? Are you already having bbqs and swimming at the beach? Miss you. Big kiss for the boys. Dxx

  She texted back:

  Hi D, Not really. Feel fed up and ’bout as happy as a battery chicken considering escape options. Rented house has potential to kill kids due to dangerous water feature and alarmingly high balconies! Let’s chat soon. Exhausted. Lots love, Kx

  She pressed ‘send’ and thought about her younger sister Debs. Remembered when they were kids, when they used to pretend they were reading in bed – especially in the summer. Debs with her nightie that she would rustle under the duvet in the dark, sparks flying with electricity, and laugh. Her hair was always so neat, so straight, cut into a bob to frame her face. Not like mine. She sighed. I got Dad’s hair – an unruly mass of curls ready to spring into a dreadful mop despite Mum’s Luxury Hair Gel. She was, she reflected, closing her eyes, much more like her home-loving dad than she realised.

  *

  Katie woke with a start. What was that terrible cackling noise? It sounded like a bird turning into a machine gun. O-oh-aa-aaa-ohh-ohh-aaaa… oh-oh-aaa…

  She wandered into the bathroom, bleary-eyed. The enormous Aussie mirrors were unforgiving. Not like in England where you put a tiny one above the sink to reduce the necessity of looking at your flabby belly unless you stood on a chair and jumped quite high. Not here. The view was available in full three-way glory. Katie grimaced.

  She sucked in her two-baby belly, as she liked to call it. It gave her a good excuse to explain away the extra rolls around her middle. Children? Oh of course, it took me years to get back into shape. What she didn’t tell people was how she used to sit at her local patisserie in London sampling the croissants, cream cheese bagels, flicking through celebrity magazines, pretending that she was researching the women’s magazine market when, in fact, she was just stuffing her face. Time to take control.

  She looked in the mirror and let out a little yelp. Sucking in her belly she stood up straighter, thought about Tom, about how disciplined he was. His body was toned and taut from hours at the gym, cycle rides, pushing himself to the limit – had got that from his father, a man who’d been in the army for twenty years. ‘You’re a lean, mean cycling machine,’ she used to say with a laugh, as he’d trace his finger over the soft folds of her belly, up over her breasts, cupping them in his hands and smiling at her. ‘And you’re delicious!’ he used to say… When was the last time they…?

  The bird was still making a racket when she came back, wrapped in one of James’s old yellow swimming towels. She joined Tom at the window and they both stood and looked at the landscape.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Kookaburra,’ said Tom softly, gently taking her hand. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’

  A huge eucalyptus tree took up the majority of the view, its small blue-green leaves moving daintily in the breeze. Perched on a lower, silvery branch was an enormous bird, with a white-and-coffee-coloured Mohican and a whopping beak.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ said Tom, staring ahead.

  Nodding, she looked out at the piece of Australia they could see from their window. She felt completely lost. Her reference points of crowded London streets, sparrows, the Tube, Evening Standard and parking permits had been replaced by vistas of gum trees and exceedingly loud birds. Not that she always liked the Tube, sparrows and parking permits; she just understood them. They were the points of reference in the satnav of her brain.

  And it was baking – warm air enveloped them as they opened the window; the sun was already intense on her cheek. She felt yet another wave of dizziness wash over her and wiped a bit of sweat from her brow. She’d just had a shower – how could she be sweating again? Oh my Go
d, I feel utterly lost.

  It was spring, a curious discovery. How exactly did she go from N8 to gazing at cappuccino-coloured kookaburras from her bedroom window? Lost, lost, lost. Like Dad must have felt when he gave up work. A lost soul. She remembered when he’d been made redundant from the carpet factory. Remembered him saying over and over to her mum, ‘But, Gloria, I don’t want to retire – there’s more in me yet. My whole life has been in carpets…’ It killed him, not having a job, no purpose. He had tried to manage the garden, but there was only so much strategising you could do with a quarter-acre plot in Hertfordshire.

  Closing the window on the heat, Katie rested her forehead on the cool glass and wondered what her dad would have made of Australia. Would he have advised her that it was a chance for Tom? Would he have encouraged her to support him, knowing, as he knew well, that he’d have been devastated to have lost his job, unable to speak to his friends. At least here they could reinvent themselves somewhat. She let out a deep sigh. Fresh start. Chance to pay off debts. And yet, how would they cope? It just seemed so drastic to have come all the way here. Katie scratched her head. Why wasn’t Tom offered something in England?

  Suddenly there was a ping from the phone lying on her bedside table.

  A text from Lucy:

  How you doing? You around?

  How did she answer that? I want to throw up all the time with nerves and feel totally at sea. Suddenly the phone rang: Lucy’s number flashed up. OMG.

  ‘Hi, darling, I know this is costing a fortune but thought I’d quickly call. How—’

  ‘Fine, fine…’ Katie’s voice started to break; she just wanted Lucy off the phone. I want to chat, chat like we used to around your solid oak kitchen table, just three doors up from me, but it all feels so wrong. There is so much I want to say, huge enormous suitcases’ worth of feelings I’d like to share. Katie shook her head. But I just can’t, can’t. Lucy couldn’t understand.