It’s a weekend of ‘just us’ as a family, which we’ll always remember. At least, I will.
Late on Sunday morning, with Charlie having a nap and my fingers still sticky from Cam’s signature breakfast in bed of pancakes and maple syrup, I steal a glance at him and wonder when the tendrils of dementia will first seep into the kitchen. How many more Sunday breakfasts will he make me? Will the tradition just drop off his radar one weekend, and I’ll find myself hungry at midday, tipping dry cereal into a bowl?
He’s still in such early stages of the disease, half the time we can almost pretend it isn’t happening. We can make excuses when he slips up and repeats himself or forgets why he came into the room. I can pretend he’s not getting enough sleep, or he’s stressed at work, and that’s why his mind is fragmented. If I try really hard, I can even indulge a fantasy that we’re going to grow old together. Or even properly middle-aged.
‘Katie, I need you to know how much I love you, even when I can’t express it,’ he says as we lie in bed, facing each other, close enough for me to study every fleck in his blue eyes. Every freckle. Every pore. My fingers travel up the tapered sides of his dark blond hair into that mess of curls on top, while he traces my face and neck and collar bone. Familiar choreography. We’re lost in each other, the way we used to be at nineteen when we were first exploring. But now there’s a different urgency. We’re imprinting every contour, every line, every blemish deep into our collective consciousness.
‘Remember this moment,’ he urges me. ‘Burn this into your brain, that I adore you. Have always adored you.’ His eyes fill with tears.
‘Cam, I don’t think you’re going to forget me overnight.’ At least, I hope he isn’t. Surely it’s going to be more gradual than that?
‘Never doubt it,’ he continues. ‘Never doubt us. I will never give up on you, Kate. I will always find a way to reach you. I want to remember you until the very end.’
We both know that’s not how this is going to play out.
I tortured myself with Dr Google one afternoon last week while Cam was at a seminar. I’d gone down a rabbit hole in a younger-onset dementia carers’ forum and asked for frank advice on what a newbie should expect.
He’ll forget all the mundane things first. Make mistakes. Get confused.
He’ll start to forget what you did that day, and then that hour, and then that minute.
He’ll forget people he doesn’t see much, and then the ones he does.
He’ll forget your child.
He’ll forget you.
He’ll forget who he is and how to eat and take care of himself.
One day, he’ll forget how to breathe . . .
It was a crash course that taught me this determined, steamroller of a disease is going to shut Cam down, one function at a time, like someone’s pulling the switches from some random control board, turning off the lights one by one until it’s pitch dark and there’s nothing left any more.
‘Right, that’s it,’ he says, reading the expression on my face. He gets out of bed and drags the doona clean off me. ‘I’m not moping around in here with you another minute!’
I roll over, face-first, away from him, and put the pillow over my head.
He takes me by the hips. Pulls my body towards the foot of the bed, spins me face up and climbs over the top of me. He takes my hands in his and pins them above my head on the mattress, fingers interlaced, and brings his lips to mine, kissing me like he hasn’t done since we were teenagers. Wildly. Urgently. As if it’s the first and last time we’ll ever do this and someone might catch us, any minute. I wrap myself around him as the kiss slows and stops, leaving me breathless and crazily in love.
‘Remember, Kate,’ he says in a low voice, holding my gaze, and my hands, and my heart. ‘I’m not dead yet.’
A few Fridays later, the three of us head to Black Mountain Peninsula for a barbecue with my colleagues. They say it will be one of the last warm days of autumn – still warm enough for some people to swim in the lake, not that I do.
‘Not enough chlorine or salt in the lake for my wife,’ Cam jokes when Sophie asks if I’m going to take a dip.
Hugh eventually pulls up, late, swings into the nearest dirt car park among shady eucalyptus trees, pops the boot and retrieves a box of alcohol and soft drinks, to a grateful round of applause. He walks over and sets the box down on the concrete barbecue, while one of the accountants, Andi, fires up the plate and runs some paper towel over it before it heats.
I’m standing with Cam and corralling Charlie between my ankles, feeding him bits of avocado from the salad we brought, most of which he’s mashing into my jeans, while I attempt to hold a conversation with our Comms manager, Isobel, about our shared love of true crime podcasts.
Hugh starts passing out craft beer to anyone who wants one, including Cam, who he hadn’t noticed at first.
‘Thanks, mate!’ Cam says, and Hugh realises it’s him and lights up. He comes around the barbecue and they share a firm handshake.
‘Cam, good to meet you! Glad you could come.’
They pat each other on the shoulder, and then Hugh notices Charlie between my legs and crouches down to say hello to him, too.
‘Decorating Mum’s jeans?’ he observes. ‘Wow, you are cute! Yes, I’m talking to you. Hello, Charlie!’
It’s always slightly disconcerting seeing work colleagues in personal settings. My team has had a rapid immersion in the Whittaker Saga, as Grace and I have already come to refer to our various recent misfortunes. It slashed a short-cut through some of the early ‘getting to know you’ period at work.
It’s not long before Cam and Hugh break off and engage in some terribly intellectual-sounding conversation about the future state of university strategy or some other thing nobody wants to get into at a picnic, except those two. Hilariously, they’ve both dressed in linen shorts – Cam in brown, Hugh in grey, and white T-shirts. It’s like they got on the phone beforehand to organise some masculine equivalent of the ‘jeans and a nice top’ dress code. Wherever the conversation moves to next, it’s funny and vibrant and almost enough to trick me into forgetting this Goose and Maverick friendship they’re striking up here is destined to burn out early.
Cam looks incredible. He’s a man in his prime, physically, intellectually, career-wise, as a dad . . . just in every conceivable dimension. Grace had said he was ‘delicious’ and she was right.
Maybe the doctors got it wrong? Surely they did. Cam is nothing like the partners of those people on the carers’ forum. Those poor people lost control, fast. But look at him. Listen to him. He couldn’t possibly be sick.
I get the idea they’re talking about me now. The way Cam looks at me when we’re out socially always makes me feel so connected to him. And makes me feel gorgeous, whether I’m wearing mashed avo or a wedding dress.
‘Ears burning?’ Hugh says as I approach with Charlie on my hip. Cam extends his arm and draws us in.
‘Should they be?’
‘Should what be?’ he asks brightly.