The Pause (21 page)

‘So tell us about Kim,' says Mum out of the blue.

‘How do you know about that?'

‘She called your mobile a couple of times while you were lugging boxes up from the garage; I thought I should get it for you. She sounds nice. And she's certainly keen. You meet at uni?'

‘Yeah. She's studying commerce/law. Though she wants to be a humanitarian lawyer.'

‘Good for her. So you and Lisa …?'

‘We email sometimes. But …'

‘But …?'

‘We're in different hemispheres, Mum. How's that supposed to work? Besides. She's seeing someone. They met through her church. He's a bit older than her. Works in finance. Probably a total douche.'

Lisa and I were good together. We'd both been abused – she more so than me – and we helped each other heal. But things pass. We learn. We
grow. We move on. We just have to avoid killing ourselves over pain that will pass. Though I do miss her. I miss her smile. I miss her subtle sense of humour, too. I miss her.

‘She'll be right with Susanne looking out for her.'

I'm not being entirely truthful with Mum about Lisa. Yes, she is seeing someone, as I am. But we still email and text each other about eight or nine times a day. With Maaaate enrolled at some private college in Perth studying business, and Chris backpacking around Europe with his ‘friend', and despite my growing relationship with Kim, Lisa has long since become my best friend. I miss my best friend. And I miss what might have been.

A phone call at four in the morning never brings good news. When that phone call occurs at four o'clock on the morning of your wedding day, it's only ever going to bring disaster. And I'm not about to be disappointed. Actually, I am going to be more than disappointed with both the news it brings and the subsequent ramifications.

Kim stirs in her sleep but my ringtone is soft enough not to wake her. I'm happy to let this call go through to the keeper. It'll probably just be Chris or Maaaate still whining about the fact that I didn't want to kick on with their bucks party/pub crawl last night, preferring instead to bail around midnight for home and bed with Kim.

‘It's bad luck to sleep with the bride the night before the wedding,' said Chris as he saw me into a taxi at the end of the night.

‘It used to be bad luck just to
see
the bride the night before her wedding,' offered Maaaate, as he stood on the side of the road, tucking into an ill-advised service-station kebab. ‘What's next? Bad luck to sleep with the bride
and
the bridesmaids the night before her wedding?'

I wound down the window. ‘Maaaate. That's my fiancée and her friends you're talking about.'

Maaaate buried his face into his road-kill kebab and then came up for air. ‘No it's not. I'm not referring to Kimberly; I'm just talking hyper … hoperthetical-l-ly … hi-i-iperthotical-l–'

‘Pathetically?' suggested Chris.

‘I'm out of here,' I said. ‘Come round early tomorrow for breakfast. I'll make eggs benedict with smoked salmon and industrial-strength coffee, then we're going to go for a morning surf and do blokey stuff.'

‘Like what?' said Chris. ‘Play darts and dress up as lumberjacks?'

‘If that works for you,' I replied.

And so I ditched them on the side of the road with Chris, my best man, looking forlorn, and Maaaate staring into his kebab, perhaps wondering if its contents were in fact fit for human consumption.

Now it's the morning of my wedding. My phone rings again, but this time Kim
does
stir. ‘Declan. Your phone keeps ringing.'

‘Sorry, babe. I've been trying to ignore it.'

‘You'd better answer it,' she says. ‘It might be important.'

‘Maaaate's probably eaten an entire Krispy Kreme franchise and is now in the emergency liposuction ward.'

Kim doesn't laugh at my joke. Kim thinks Maaaate (or ‘Simon', as she insists on calling him, even though he has asked her not to) is deeply sad, which is why he eats so much. When in actual fact Maaaate's one of the happiest people you could ever meet and he eats so much not because he's deeply sad but because he's deeply fat and absolutely loves food just about as much as he loathes exercise, which is why he opted out of the corporate world and is now a trainee chef.

I pick up my mobile but I don't have my glasses on so I can't make out who it is. ‘Just a sec.' I take the phone out to the kitchen and sit at the breakfast bar, not wanting to disturb Kim.

‘Hello.'

I was right. When your phone rings at four in the morning, it brings nothing but bad news. The worst kind, in fact.

After I hang up, I walk back into the bedroom
and stare at Kim's silhouette, knowing that our lives are about to change. Mine already has. I want to let her sleep a while longer, to put it off, but I can see that she's aware of my presence.

‘Who was it?'

‘There's been an accident.'

Kim sits up in bed. ‘Oh, my God. Who?'

‘Lisa.'

‘What happened?'

I sit down on the bed. Kim crawls over and hugs me.

‘Susanne, her mum, was pretty vague. She was hit by a car.'

‘Is she …?'

I shake my head. ‘She's in a coma. It doesn't look good, though.'

Kim pulls away and stares at me. ‘You're going, aren't you?'

Guilty as charged. ‘I have to. I need to. Sorry.'

Kim nods. ‘You should. She is your best friend, after all.'

I don't think Kim means it as a criticism, but I still feel a slight stab to the heart. I take my travel bag out of the wardrobe and start throwing in a few things.

‘Thanks for being so understanding. Not everyone would.' Who am I kidding? ‘No one would.'

‘We can get married any day,' she says. ‘I mean, let's face it, we've been living together for two years already. Today is – was – just the official ceremony.' Luckily we opted for a small, civil service in a park with only a few guests and a small party at a restaurant afterwards. Still, I feel guilty that Kim will have to do all the ringing around to reorganise things.

I take my passport from the bedside drawer.

‘Can I ask you a question?' says Kim.

‘Of course.'

‘How many people would you drop everything – including your wedding – for, to fly halfway across the world to be with?'

‘Only one,' I reply, without even thinking. ‘Just Lisa.' As soon as it's out there I realise that I can't take it back. I could seriously kick myself. ‘And
you
, of course.' But no matter how nonchalantly I put it, the ship has sailed. I realise now that the ‘of course' made it worse. Kim doesn't look shocked or even surprised. In fact, she looks like she's known this for some time.

‘Declan. I need to be with someone who would drop everything to be with me. I can't be anyone's “and”.'

I sit down next to Kim and rub her back. ‘It was just a slip of the tongue.'

‘No, it wasn't. It's when we don't plan what we're going to say that we're at our most honest and our most vulnerable.'

I try to pull her to me but she tenses up. ‘Why are you so suspicious, anyway? She's married.'

‘I can't be your consolation prize, Declan. I'd be your wife but Lisa would still be your best friend. I need to be both.'

‘You are. You will be,' I say, but I don't sound too convincing. I change tune, Susanne's words hitting me again. ‘Let's not do this now,' I whisper. ‘Lisa's dying.'

I give her a hug and pick up my bag. She doesn't say anything. ‘Thanks for understanding.'

I walk towards the door.

‘Declan.'

I turn back to face Kim when I'd rather be anywhere else. I know what's coming. We both do.

‘I know you need to be with her. I get that. I truly do. And you are an amazing person because of it. But I need someone who'll fly across the world to be with
me
. So if you
do
go – and I believe you should because she
is
your best friend – then the wedding isn't postponed. It's off.'

It already is.

The problem with leaving your fiancée at your North Sydney apartment at four-thirty in the morning to fly to your stricken best friend's bedside
is that by the time you get down to the street and google flights to Hong Kong on your phone and realise that there isn't one for another four-and-a-half hours, you can't then go skulking back up to your apartment and slip back into bed for a couple of hours. You can't even slink back up and sit at the breakfast bar and have a coffee. Having made such a grand gesture and dramatic departure, I have no choice now other than to follow it through or I'll look and feel like a complete idiot.

Fortunately it's only a short walk to the train station. Unfortunately I have about a thirty-minute wait until the trains start running. It gives me time to think about the decision I've made, and what shocks me is that my decision doesn't come as a surprise. Have I always known, deep down, that Lisa is more than a friend?

By the time I get to the Cathay Pacific sales desk at the airport, some residual memory – as well as the lanterns and dragons they have decorating the desk – reminds me that it's only a couple of days until Chinese New Year, meaning that quite possibly the only way I'll be going to Hong Kong today is by renting a canoe.

‘
Kung hei fat choy
,' I say to the sales clerk.

‘Good morning, sir. How may I help you?'

‘I need to get on the next available flight to Hong Kong.'

She pulls the sort of face that makes me wonder if I should start work on that canoe. Still, she goes through the pretence of checking seat availability.

‘I'm sorry, sir. We're fully booked today. Chinese New Year.'

‘When's the next available –'

‘I could waitlist you.' She checks her screen again. ‘But there are already twenty people ahead of you.'

I try the sympathy card, knowing that it's next to useless. ‘My friend's in hospital, you see, and it doesn't look good. And I know it's no one's fault, certainly not Cathay's, but is there anything you can do?'

She taps her computer again, perhaps looking to see if there's anything under the Cathay Pacific ‘Friend's had an accident and probably won't make it' special reserved-seating clause.

‘There are a few seats still available in business class if you have the means.'

This lights me up. ‘Oh, that's brilliant. Yes, please. Get me on this flight. Whatever it takes. First class if I have to.'

‘Don't you want to know how much it costs?'

I shake my head. ‘She's my best friend. I don't care how much.'

The sales clerk takes my credit card and smiles at me. ‘So she really
is
in hospital?'

‘Yeah. Of course. I wish she wasn't, but I wouldn't lie about something like that.'

‘You'd be amazed what people will say and do to get on a flight.'

She processes my credit card and hands me the receipt. I look down at the charge, preparing for a serious cringe and knowing full well that my English teacher's salary is about to take a massive hit. ‘Er, I think there must be some mistake. This is the economy rate, surely.' I point to the charge.

‘Oops,' says the sales clerk with mock shock. ‘Have a pleasant flight, Mr O'Malley.'

I look at her and am practically speechless. Because of the doom and gloom thrown up by the nightly news, you sometimes forget how wonderful people actually are. ‘May flights of angels sing you to your rest,' I say, then remember that that's the sort of thing you say to someone when they are dying, or at least when they were dying in the Elizabethan period, ‘and I mean that in the strictest non-celestial sense.'

No matter how comfortable Cathay Pacific business class actually is (and it is pretty bloody comfortable) at thirty-five thousand feet, you are kind of isolated from the world. I don't know
if Lisa is still in a coma, if she's alive or dead. Unlike Lisa, I'm not religious, but I do find myself praying that she will hang in there. That she finds the strength to fight. To live. And if God needs to take someone early to balance the books or whatever, then let it be me. She doesn't deserve this. There was that time years ago when I nearly called it quits on the train platform anyway, when I almost gave up my life willingly, so carelessly, so recklessly, so cheaply, so pointlessly. But I paused. And I've had a wonderful – what is it – eight plus years, since that day. Bonus years. Amazing years that I wouldn't have traded for the world. Years I would now happily trade for Lisa's life.

Being on a long-haul flight, especially a morning one where you can't get hammered at least until it's midday somewhere, you're kind of left alone with your thoughts. And after offering my life for Lisa's, my mind turns to those people that I would die for.

Kim. Although she didn't believe me, if there's one word to sum up Kim it would be ‘perfection'. So drop-dead gorgeous that she paid her way through uni modelling. She is a truly wonderful and intelligent person and I am (was) lucky to have her in my life. But I pretty much left her at the altar to be with my married friend who may already be dead. Now that I think about it, there
was something missing from our relationship. And I'm not sure if that something wasn't me.

Mum. Since the divorce, she has wanted for neither attention nor company but seems to be at her happiest when she's on her own. She travels a lot for both business and pleasure. She and Kate still live together, while Kate finishes uni, and she's still my hero. The best mum anyone could ever have. Ever. She's not just my mum, she's my friend, and I am so happy I was able to spare her the lifetime of agony that my suicide would have rained down on her. She deserves better and because of my pause she has it.