Hugh gives me a grateful smile across the table, and all I can think is, who the fuck is Genevieve? The woman has him utterly flustered. She’s got me utterly flustered. I start fanning myself with the serviette and it does precisely nothing. It’s just pushing the humid air around. I’m actually starting to feel a bit faint. Is this the perimenopause? I almost hope so, because getting this hot and bothered about your boss’s first love is plain pathetic. I pour a big glass of water, ensuring several blocks of ice tumble into the glass too, then I fish one out and hold it to my face.
I know. Terrible manners. It’s just so cool on my cheeks, and I run it over the back of my neck and round the front and drops of icy water run down my chest and it’s truly divine, particularly when there’s just a hint of a breeze, enough to give me goosebumps . . .
It’s not until their conversation pauses, mid-sentence, that I realise Andrew and Hugh are both watching this performance. I come to my senses. Drop what’s left of the ice cube into a plant to my right and dab my skin dry with the serviette.
‘I thought women only did that in eighties soft drink commercials,’ Andrew observes.
Is it my imagination or does Hugh actually kick him under the table?
‘I’m just hot,’ I explain, but I don’t mean it the way it comes out. ‘Physically, I mean. Wait!’
I look at Andrew and shake my head, then at Hugh. ‘Sorry! I don’t mean this the way it sounds. I’m just—’
‘Hot,’ Hugh confirms. ‘We know.’
He catches the attention of the waiter. ‘Can we have another jug of water, please? Extra ice. She’s hot.’
I know he’s only stirring, but hearing this observation from the horse’s mouth, even as a joke, is exhilarating.
‘Andrew. Tell us about your new screenplay,’ Hugh orders, and Andrew takes the bait, because he’s a writer and this is a chance to workshop his plot. Whatever he says next, though, is a blur. I stare at Hugh and he stares at me, and I begin to think there’s not enough ice in the second jug for a job of this magnitude.
The waiter brings my smashed avocado and his eggs Benedict and he scrapes half the mushrooms onto my plate without asking if I want them, which of course I do. And while Andrew provides some never-ending background noise, revealing the entire three acts of his screenplay, it occurs to me that Hugh and I, perhaps for the longest time, have been involved in a dance, choreographed by my grief. It’s been me leading it, every step of the way. Always choosing the music. Always picking the pace. He’s followed so closely that there have been times when it’s felt like he was the one leading. The day I lost the baby. My first day back at work after Cam’s funeral. First year back, probably. Each time I lost my way, everything kept turning, like magic.
And now he’s sitting across from me, looking at me in a way that he never has before – not once in four years, until the airport yesterday morning. But the familiar music has stopped. The dance has faltered. And neither of us knows the new steps.
We pay the bill at the cafe and I excuse myself to use the bathroom while Hugh and Andrew wait outside. I’m really only in here for a break from Hugh. The man is doing things to me that I didn’t think could still be done. It feels unstable and dangerous – one wrong move and we’ll fall off this cliff. So many unanswered questions, some going a long way back. Way before we met, in fact.
Checking myself in the mirror, I imagine Genevieve. In my head she’s impossibly beautiful. Long, luscious, perfectly straight and therefore perfectly manageable hair. Eyes so dark and deep, young Hugh couldn’t stop himself falling right into them, never to fully clamber out.
Now he’s coming up for air. Encountering me. A woman who is hot in the wrong way, and off to a writers festival, feeling like a fraud beside the real writers.
As I come out of the bathroom, I can see Andrew and Hugh on the street. They’re deep in conversation. That is, Hugh is deeply conversing while Andrew listens intently. He has to. Hugh’s drumming something home passionately and I have a fair idea what it’s about. Or whom. Their mutual crush turned Hugh’s first love. The one you never get over. And the one he’s no doubt imploring Andrew not to tell me more about this afternoon. But why?
I pause in the doorway. Seeing them like that gives me a horrible flashback to that moment in our lounge room with Cam and Hugh about three years ago, after Hugh had been AWOL from work for days, thinking. The moment was so fleeting, I almost missed it. All I know is Cam had hope in his eyes when Hugh walked in, and Hugh extinguished it. When we went to bed that night, I asked Cam to tell me what it was about and he said he couldn’t remember. It’s the only time in the two years after his diagnosis that I’m sure he was lying about his memory.
Sure enough, when I appear at the door of the cafe, the conversation stops dead. ‘Talking about me, Hugh?’
He laughs. ‘Kate Whittaker: hottest topic in Byron Bay. Says so herself.’
It’s like we’ve met up at the school gate in Year Ten. I thump him on the arm.
‘Whoa, this takes me back,’ Andrew says.
‘To when, exactly?’ I ask, guessing he’s had ‘third wheel’ experience with Hugh before.
Hugh realises I’m taking no prisoners. He asks Andrew to excuse us for a second while we have a brief word, and pulls me aside. Andrew says he’ll go get the car. I sort of want him to stay. Safety in numbers.
‘Kate. I know I’ve been secretive about Genevieve. It’s not for the reason you think.’
‘You don’t know what reason I’m thinking.’
‘I can guess.’
‘It’s none of my business who you loved in your past. Or your present,’ I add, even though it twists my insides to voice the possibility.
‘Not in the way you imagine,’ he says.
So he does still love her. Perfect.
‘I feel like you’re always keeping secrets from me,’ I admit.
‘What secrets? I haven’t told you about Genevieve, but there’s a reason for that. It’s too complicated to explain now.’
The bottom drops out of my world. I imagine he has Genevieve and some secret family stashed somewhere. Maybe that’s where he disappeared to that time when he fell off the face of the earth for a few weeks and came back looking traumatised.
‘I know that look,’ he says. ‘Whatever idea you’ve taken and you’re running with, just stop it. Wait for me to explain. Please.’
‘I don’t understand how this is anything to do with me, Hugh.’ It’s none of my business if he has a family of six and a Tarago. He could have hordes of children for all I know. All those one-night stands. The mind boggles.
‘Just please don’t ask Andrew about it. He’ll butcher the story.’
‘So you admit there is a story,’ I say. I’ll whip out a notepad and pen next.
He sighs in frustration, looks to the heavens, then back at me, resigned. ‘Of course there’s a story, Kate. I’ve wanted to tell you so many times over the last four years, but whenever I tried, I lost my nerve.’
Well.
I never.
A car draws up beside us, and Andrew winds the window down. ‘C’mon, Kate. Festival time!’
There’s a festival going on right here on the pavement. I am ninety per cent enthralled by the trailer Hugh is playing for this epic tale, and ten per cent have my hands over my ears, too scared to hear it.
‘Please,’ he says again, placing his hand on my arm. He’s imploring me to wait for later.
‘Kate, come on. Get in!’