The Night We Met

by Zoë Folbigg

  As the sun sizzled on the horizon, everyone came out of their shady corners, leaving their walls and their whispers, chants and private jokes, and turned to look at the same spot out to sea. As the light tinkled over the water, and the fisherman sketched furiously, Daniel faced out towards the sun, pretending to be mesmerised by the burst while he was in fact giving a sideways glance to her.

  ‘Wow!’ gasped the man who was doing tai chi. ‘We don’t see that often!’

  ‘A whale?’ said the redhead, stepping out of the shadows. Daniel followed her gaze and saw it too, out to sea, powering its mottled body out of the water in front of the rising sun.

  Oh my god.

  ‘A humpback,’ said one of the seniors authoritatively, and everyone gasped as it blew a spray to the heavens. Daniel looked back at the girl, noticing that her eyes were the same colour as the fire beyond the whale’s water in the sky.

  *

  Now he had seen her, for a fourth time, overtaking his bus on the Bruce Highway – she had looked at him, actually acknowledged him and given him a playful wave.

  So Daniel made a promise to himself, on his grandad’s grave, that if he saw her again (and wasn’t restricted by Kelly, groups of German football fans, or a glass window barrier), that he would go over and say hello. Because what could be wrong with that? He had to get her jewellery back to her anyway, it’s not like he didn’t have a reason.

  She’s so out of my league.

  She might think I stole it.

  As the dusty greyness of tarmac, roadkill and concrete fruit turned to lush jungle vegetation and low-rise buildings, Daniel arrived at the bus station in Cairns and stepped off his last Greyhound bus in Australia with a spring in his step.

  She’s here, I know it.

  After navigating his way to his hostel and laying his heavy backpack down on the floor under his dorm bunk, Daniel grabbed the chain and went to look for the girl with the red hair in the hostel common room, kitchen and dorms.

  He looked for her in local pubs, bars and even one of the clubs you had to pay to get into. He spent a whole evening popping his head around doorframes, pretending he was looking for his mates, when really he was just checking to see if she were there. If she had arrived yet. His handsome face meek yet friendly, his eyes hopeful. But she wasn’t anywhere.

  Six

  September 2018

  Cambridgeshire, England

  ‘You know, I remember the first thing she ever said to me,’ Mimi whispered from a wooden chair, as she looked up from her magazine. She was a small woman with black hair, pale blue eyes and a soft, high voice. Daniel hadn’t seen her face back in the cafe in Sydney, but he’d never forgotten her voice.

  ‘Huh?’

  Daniel had been close to falling asleep on Olivia’s still arm. The room was so warm – it was always overheated and had a stifling and soporific pull – and Mimi was reading so quietly, he’d almost forgotten she was there. Machines weren’t beeping today. Dionne no longer pressed her button. Everything was quiet and the ward felt empty. Even Fraser hadn’t passed through for a while with the rhythmic squeak of his trolley wheels.

  Mimi, Olivia’s best friend from school, was staring dreamily into the mid-distance, to the wall beyond Olivia’s shoulder.

  ‘What’s that?’ Daniel asked again, as he rubbed his eyes.

  ‘The first thing she ever said to me. Livvi. On my first day at high school. I still remember it as if it were yesterday.’ Mimi’s Australian lilt made her statement seem like a question. She looked from the wall to Olivia’s face as her friend slept, and gave a wan smile. ‘It was my first full day in Europe. I was so tired – so scared! But Livvi had such an assurance about her. She bowled over, all sassy and stuff. Full of attitude. She was wearing one of those puffball skirts and long socks. She looked so cool! She kind of walked at me and said “I’m Olivia”, as if I had been expecting her, waiting for her all my life. I suppose I had. All eleven years of it anyway. I’d never had a best friend before Livvi.’

  Daniel smiled and sat up.

  ‘She said in this quite deep and serious voice, as if she was a news announcer or something, “I’m going to be a fashion designer.”’

  Daniel laughed.

  ‘I know, right! I laughed, of course. In Melbourne, kids like me didn’t even know what a bloody fashion designer was! All I knew was my mum would buy me daggy dungas from Best & Less or Kmart – clothes were just something I played in so people wouldn’t see my foof. I was just a little tomboy…’

  ‘Oh really?’ Daniel asked, as the lines around his eyes crinkled. He was amused to imagine what Mimi might have looked like as a boyish little girl in Eighties terry-towelling shorts and neon T-shirts.

  ‘Yeah, I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. But I did know she was gonna do whatever it was she said she would. She had this magic about her. The conviction. The bluntness, I guess.’

  Daniel frowned. He didn’t like Mimi talking about Olivia in the past tense, even though she were talking about her in the past.

  Olivia stirred in her sleep and Daniel spoke quietly so as not to disturb her.

  ‘Yeah, she said she always knew; that it was in her blood.’

  ‘Except it wasn’t… was it?’ Mimi said wistfully and shook her head a little in bafflement. ‘Has Liv seen this?’ she asked, changing the subject. Her face morphed from thoughtful to excited as she held up the double page spread from a Sunday supplement fashion special. She gestured to the model wearing a grandiose blush pink dress with biker boots in the middle of the Atacama Desert.

  ‘Yeah, Nancy brought it in yesterday.’

  ‘Did she clock it was one of hers?’

  ‘Yeah, she was really lifted by it. It was cool. She asked me to text Vaani about it but even she hadn’t known it was going in – they must have bypassed the PR and called it in for themselves, it’s great.’

  ‘So great,’ Mimi sighed, clasping the magazine open and admiring it. ‘Amazing coverage. And they’ve shot it beautifully.’ She stroked the page once with a small hand before turning over to the next spread.

  Daniel’s lids started to droop as he looked back to Olivia and he felt bad that he envied her for being able to sleep whenever she wanted to. He felt wretched for having even thought it, for being so tired, for having so much yet so little to do at the same time. All he needed was to be here. But the girls needed him too. Flora had a county basketball match on Thursday; Sofia was booked into a street dance workshop on Saturday. Plus all the other clubs, homework and playdates they had in the diary. Daniel had so much to remember. He sat looking at Olivia, one part resentful, two parts in awe, as he stared at the sleeping face he adored. Olivia’s mouth in a state of silence used to be a wondrous thing – so different to her punchy laugh and exaggerated gestures – but now her peace was disconcerting. It wasn’t right.

  He looked at her and felt guilty for worrying about all the things he should be doing right now rather than sitting here; guilty about the fact two women were running around after them, when really they should be putting their feet up. Guilty because he knew what Olivia would give to be doing these things, to be the one watching the girls play basketball, guitar, drums or dance. Mimi was lost in an article on the world’s most impressive bedrooms, so Daniel gazed at Olivia and pondered the first words she had said to him.

  He panicked for a second. What if I can’t remember them? Panicked that he might have missed something significant. Panicked about what if Olivia never spoke again and he couldn’t even remember her last words to him, let alone her first. He panicked about how easily Mimi recalled Olivia’s first words to her, and that was a good ten years before Daniel had met her; ten years further back in the depths of the past.

  Daniel mentally scrolled back through the timeline of their relationship, from sitting in the uncomfortable wooden chair he was on, to the highs and lows of hospital appointments as if they were scenes from a film he was watching. The euphoria of the all-clear. The fear in
Ibiza. The times he couldn’t take his eyes off Olivia as doctors spoke, as if he were a bystander.

  He pictured Olivia in a karaoke bar in Tokyo; he saw her strolling towards him in a park in Milan. He saw her throwing up all over him in an apartment in Soho. He saw her storming out of a pub, leather biker jacket thrown in her face. He saw Olivia standing, wearing a cagoule, on the edge of a peninsula, looking out to sea, in a place as quiet and as silent as the room he and Mimi were sitting in now. Although that place, that precipice, was much more beautiful and much more calming.

  Then the words came back to him.

  Part Two

  Seven

  July 1996

  South Island, New Zealand

  ‘Rock bottom, hey?’

  Daniel turned to the woman emerging into his peripheral vision.

  It’s her!

  He was awestruck, silenced to see her, even though he had been quietly absorbing the view anyway: the rolling hills, secluded sandy beaches, and occasional royal albatross floating over the headland as he looked out to sea from this barren and refreshing ledge. Daniel hadn’t spoken to anyone for hours, and his surprise made it hard for him to find his voice. All he could manage was a Neanderthal grunt that sounded something like, ‘Huh?’

  ‘Rock bottom,’ she repeated with a smile. ‘We’ve hit rock bottom. We’re at the end of the world, or at least it seems like it.’ She let out her punch of a laugh, the one that he remembered from the cafe on the Blues Point Road in Sydney. It was so sudden and all-encompassing, it washed the smile off her face and hurt Daniel somewhere inside his ribcage.

  It was the girl he had seen at four different spots on Australia’s east coast, the girl who had punctuated his time there and given him the impetus, the strength and the confidence to move on when, sometimes, he didn’t feel up to it. The girl whose ankle chain was zipped securely within the interior pocket of his daypack, hugging his shoulder blades as he looked out to sea.

  Daniel hadn’t expected to see her ever again, let alone in another country, but he felt an overwhelming sensation of awe and relief.

  He gazed at her, in her cagoule and long trousers. A nose ring looped around the freckles of a neat nostril. He hadn’t noticed that before. He hadn’t been that close before.

  Daniel knew he shouldn’t look so intently, so he stared back out, to where her eye had drifted to, not noticing that her face had dropped a little – sadness fluttering across her eyes with the reflection of the thunderous clouds on the horizon.

  ‘It certainly feels like the end of the world,’ Daniel finally answered, as he marvelled at the view and just stopped short of putting his hand to his brow. He didn’t want to look like a catalogue man.

  ‘Like you could just drop off the end of it,’ she said contemplatively.

  For a few moments they looked out from the Otago Peninsula opening out into the Pacific Ocean beyond it. A grey fuzz on the horizon indicated a storm at sea. The girl made a box with her forefingers and thumbs and pretended to take a photo of the scene in front of her with a clicking sound of her tongue against her teeth.

  ‘What’s on the horizontal?’ she asked.

  Daniel found her use of words cute; it made her even more different. To him and to what he knew. To Kelly. To the girls in Elmworth or at Farnham. To anyone he had ever met.

  ‘Antarctica,’ said Daniel, keen to impress her. ‘Around the corner a bit though. Beyond Invercargill and across the Southern Ocean. Zucchelli Station perhaps.’

  ‘Zucchelli…’ she lingered. ‘Sounds Italian.’

  ‘Or maybe McMurdo Station.’

  ‘Sounds Scottish,’ she said, arching one straight, dark eyebrow.

  She turned to him and hit him on the arm like an old friend realising something. Daniel was taken aback and laughed at her forwardness as he put a hand to where she had struck, in mock pain and shock, but suddenly felt self-conscious and dishevelled when he realised she was actually looking at him now.

  ‘Isn’t it mad?’ she said, studying his face enthusiastically.

  Might she recognise me?

  Daniel straightened out his red checked shirt and ruffled his grizzly bear hair.

  ‘How weird this place is. The city centre, the grey sky out there… It looks eerily like… home.’ She was waving her arms around her head to accentuate the point. Her accent sounded both American and European, Daniel just couldn’t place where home might be. ‘Well, my mom’s home. The city centre. Did you go into the city centre?’ she asked, flitting from one idea to another, realising that of course he had, as all the trains, cars and buses would have had to. She brushed her wind-whipped hair out of her face and exhaled a sigh of wonder.

  Daniel wondered where such a goddess, or her mother, could come from but didn’t take the cue to ask; he was almost too scared to make eye contact, so he looked back out to the horizon.

  ‘I thought the city centre looked strangely like Edinburgh,’ he said in a small voice. ‘Only smaller.’

  ‘Exactly!’ she said, again going to hit him on the arm, only this time she didn’t quite make contact and Daniel silently cursed the invisible forcefield of reserve he had conjured, a barrier to protect him from another rejection. ‘A miniature version of Edinburgh. Like Legoworld.’

  Scottish?

  She really didn’t sound Scottish.

  ‘Legoland,’ Daniel corrected, kicking himself for sounding pedantic. Luckily she didn’t seem to care.

  ‘That’s right. Legoland. It’s even called Princes Street. I thought I was going crrrrazy.’ She rolled her ‘r’ as she said crazy. ‘Somewhere so like home, yet so far away. On the rock bottom of the world.’

  Daniel eyed her with friendly suspicion and clutched his arm.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she laughed, giving it a rub.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, I was just kidding,’ he smiled.

  He wanted to know her name and where she was from. It couldn’t be Scotland. Her accent definitely wasn’t Scottish. He wanted to know whether she recognised him or whether she thought it strange that they had seen each other before. Four times in four different locations. Or maybe she didn’t remember him at all. Perhaps she wouldn’t find it funny, and if he pointed it out he might seem creepy and scare her. It definitely didn’t seem like the right time to tell her about her jewellery.

  He could see her rampant beauty up close now. Her thick dark eyebrows were the same colour as her lashes, and a mole teased at one corner of her lip.

  She didn’t look all that Scottish, red hair aside. But it was a deep red of a shade he’d never seen before; her skin was too swarthy to be considered Caledonian. He couldn’t picture this woman in Edinburgh.

  Daniel remembered Hogmanay in Edinburgh. He and Kelly had been, the New Year’s Eve before their A levels. A group of sixth-form friends had taken the train from King’s Cross and it had got very messy. They stayed in a hostel, ate KFC and drank Buckfast, and Kelly snogged a police officer on Princes Street and got annoyed that Daniel had minded.

  He gazed back out to sea and studied the view, trying not to look across at her as she un-self-consciously held her hand to her brow. Her hair rippling to the sound of her cagoule rippling in the wind.

  Edinburgh.

  That’s where the similarities ended. The Otago Peninsula, with its shags, sea lions and penguins; the sandy flats between rocky heads. A burst of red poked out from behind the storm, signalling the start of sunset. Daniel hadn’t seen colours in the sky like this before anywhere.

  ‘Are you Scottish?’ he plucked up the courage to ask.

  ‘No, my mamma is. One of my mammas anyway.’

  Daniel didn’t know which facial expression to show. He’d never met anyone with gay mums before. He tried to be cool, but looked down at his walking shoes.

  ‘Oh cool.’

  Olivia looked to Daniel and saw the familiar assumption.

  ‘Oh, I have two moms. They’re not lesbians. I was just brought up by two women.’

  Daniel
was surprised by her boldness – and embarrassed she had read his mind.

  ‘Oh cool,’ Daniel repeated. Lost for different words. Almost too nervous to look her in the eye. This… goddess… he had seen in all of these strange places. He wanted to ask her so many questions: where she was from, what her name was, who she was travelling with. Whether the guy with the dreads and no shoes was her boyfriend. Why would she have two mothers? Perhaps one was a stepmum.

  They paused for a beat. She didn’t make it easy. She was both friendly yet out of reach.

  ‘Where are you from then?’ Daniel finally asked.

  The girl with two mums looked at the colourful Swatch watch on her left wrist and let out a sigh, as if she was trying to decide whether to bother answering. Daniel waited on tenterhooks, feeling strangely comforted, excited, by the fact that he had no idea what she was going to say next.

  ‘Look I have, oooh…’ She counted in another language under her breath. ‘Five hours. Before my train leaves. Wanna get a drink?’

  Daniel’s legs were tired – he had hiked almost all day, a lonely but pleasant walk to Larnach Castle and the tip of the peninsula beyond it, and he felt in need of a shower and his bed.

  But his heart soared.

  *

  Strangers from a faraway continent meandered along the cove back towards Dunedin, the sedate and slightly shabby Gothic mirror of a European capital: Daniel, hands in his pockets looking at his walking boots, Olivia, tactile and wide-eyed as they passed stately weatherboard houses, coffee shops and student digs. The sight of the grand Victorian bluestone train station, with its Italianate clock tower, lured them into the city centre and its sports bars. It might have been summer holidays in the northern hemisphere, but at the bottom of the world, student life was in full swing.

  ‘Where is your train heading tonight?’ Daniel asked, trying not to sound disappointed.