walking distance to the cute local store.
Murray was focusing on getting his first role in an international tech company, and climbing the ladder. He talked about things like security, and stocks, and mortgages, and planning where we’d go when he got long-service leave after twelve years.
I dreamt about a cottage with an apple orchard. An apple orchard! Who doesn’t want one of those? And maybe renting a place in Tuscany for a year, or the French countryside, or living like locals on a sleepy Greek island. He dreamt about a nice suburban house, on the Sydney busline. Ugh, I thought, who wants one of those?
I wanted to do up an old van or bus, put a bed in it, and travel around New Zealand. He wanted a 4WD for all the kids we were supposed to be having, except I didn’t even know if I wanted kids. Ever.
I couldn’t see the life he wanted becoming mine. And neither could he see the life I pictured becoming his. His felt too fixed to me, too vanilla. And mine felt unstable to him, too spontaneous. We pushed back the wedding date. Twice.
Finally, we talked about saving enough to buy our suburban house and the country cottage, and, even though that felt big, we said in small voices, we can do this. We booked a wedding date, in the early spring, and this time we committed to it.
A few nights before the wedding, Murray turned over in bed and held me really close and kept saying, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’ I didn’t know if it was him or me he was comforting, but for the first time I felt a distance between us. My best friend, Tansy, already married, told me it was just cold feet. Perfectly normal. Everyone went through it.
The night before our wedding, I was packing the final parts of my over-priced wedding underwear, preparing to stay at Maggie’s house. Before I left, Murray held up his three-piece tux to show me. We didn’t believe in fate jinxing us – but maybe we should have. He was so proud that he’d lost weight to fit into it. He asked what I thought, and I said he’d look amazing. He was looking at me strangely, and he kept asking, ‘What’s wrong, Em? What’s wrong?’
I said nothing. That I was fine. Excited. But then I felt wetness run down my cheek. I was crying. But they were tears of happiness, weren’t they?
I told myself it was nothing. I kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘Tears of happiness.’
The next day was our wedding day. I was standing in a small makeshift marquee next to a colourful spring garden. Dressed in white. My hair in soft waves, half pinned up, a crown of flowers. Soft blush make-up. A long lace dress, a sea-green sash around my waist to match my eyes. I held a bunch of wild pink roses, tied with string. We’d chosen soft pink peonies, bunched, at the end of each row. The aisle had no carpet, and instead was just flushed with white petals.
The sun was out, and it was a gorgeous spring day. The celebrant was waiting at the end of the garden, peering at her watch and trying not to make it look obvious. Murray was late. People in the congregation were waving their programmes in front of their faces, like fans. My mum was pacing, muttering under her breath, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’
I stuck my head out of the marquee. The string quartet had finished ‘Pachelbel’s Canon in D’ and they glanced across at me. I made a circling motion with my hand, a play it again sign. They nodded, and picked up their instruments. The guests started looking around because it was very obvious that something wasn’t right, or, really, that someone hadn’t turned up yet. I bet everyone thought it would be me. Because it was never Murray. Murray was never late.
‘Give me my phone,’ I’d said to someone. ‘Where is my phone? I’ll call him. He’s in traffic, maybe there are roadworks down on the M2. Or the M4.’ I was babbling about roads, and traffic lights, and where they were doing roadworks, and someone had my phone in their hands, and I was reaching for it, and still talking about the M7 or M2, and trying to figure out what road he would be taking to get here.
Then someone was whispering, ‘He’s not coming.’ He’s not coming.
***
Someone got me in a car. Someone took my dress off. Someone covered me in a blanket because I was shaking. Someone made sure I ate something. Someone put me in the shower. Lay with me through the night, while I tried to sleep. Someone kept bringing me tissues, and a million hands patted me on the back. For the first few days everything was a blur.
When I finally got out of bed, Tansy helped me throw that awful bad-juju dress in the garbage bin. Mum helped me get money back on the honeymoon to Europe. I couldn’t have done any of those things myself. Maggie wanted to know if she could clock him. Amy said she’d slash his tyres. God, I love my friends. They were all I had, when my world fell apart for a while.
He texted me. I’m sorry.
And a few days later I managed to respond. OK.
He texted me. I hope you’re OK, and that you find what you really want.
I didn’t know how to take that. Was he right? I thought I knew what I wanted, but then … maybe I didn’t. For days I thought about his text and what it meant. Murray was someone who was born knowing exactly what he wanted. In all likelihood, his head probably popped out of the birth canal and, before the rest of his body was out, he was saying, ‘I want a white-picket-fenced house in the city, on the busline and a stable job for life! Pronto, people!’ I mean, he was genius-level smart, so it’s completely possible that he could talk on entry to this world.
Deep down, I felt guilty that I couldn’t be the wife he wanted me to be. Why didn’t I want to settle down and have kids and live in a nice house? Who wouldn’t want that? I thought maybe there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I remember Murray had once shown me pictures of great houses we could buy in a newly developed suburb that were only forty minutes from the city in peak hour. He’d had a look of excitement in his eyes. For me it felt as exciting as a root canal.
A few days later, Murray texted again, asking if we could meet. I read his text over and over for days. In the end, I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t hear what he had to say.
All I knew was I had to leave – immediately. I felt a strange mix of self-loathing and guilt and anger, at Murray, but also at myself. I was unsure why I didn’t seem to want to fall into domestic bliss like everyone around me. Plus, everywhere reminded me of Murray, and I couldn’t be around the places we used to visit. Where we had coffee. Held hands. Got engaged. Planned a future. I had to get out of Australia, and not look back.
***
I arrived, relaxed and sun-kissed, at Sydney airport after sunset, where Mum and Dad were anxiously waiting. Mum gave me an extra-hard hug.
‘Hi Mum, it’s good to see you.’
Before she could utter a word, I raised my hand and said, ‘No, I didn’t meet anyone. But I took a cooking class and can make a mean lemony fish. Plus, I wove this basket.’
I held up a slightly wonky reed basket that the customs guys had ummmed about before finally letting me keep it.
‘I wasn’t going to ask that,’ Mum said.
I shared a look with Dad.
‘I wasn’t,’ Mum insisted.
Dad said, ‘Lorna,’ in a warning tone, then turned to me. ‘Hey, sweetie.’ We hugged.
‘Yes Lorna, listen to your husband.’ I said smiling gratefully at Dad. I’d taken to calling her Lorna when I was fifteen just to annoy her. When I’m irritated, it comes back out – like now, since I was feeling a bit weary that I hadn’t even stepped out of the airport, and already the Relationship Rant was beginning.
‘I mean, but did you meet anyone? Perhaps any kind of special someone?’ my mum asked, leading both of us out of the airport, marching ahead. ‘I think we’re parked over here, Ted.’
I thought about Nick for a second. ‘No one special, Mum.’
To make matters worse, she