I look around the Quay. There’s First Fleet Park, where he told me the truth about my brother. Then there’s the café up in The Rocks where we shared coffee and then dinner and I caught my first glimpse of the exhilaration that came from hearing him talk about his work with such passion. Just around the corner there are the Botanic Gardens, where we shared countless walks when we were dating, and God – right in front of us is my apartment building, and we had countless significant firsts there.
‘We spent a lot of time together around here in the early days. There’s just so much here…’ I say, and I tail off, suddenly uncertain. ‘I don’t even know what you do know, Leo.’
‘Forget what I do and don’t know. I remember some things about our early days together, but it’s so patchy and I have no way of knowing what memories are missing. Why don’t you just tell me about your favourite memory of us here?’
That narrows it down. Those early memories are all good – but the thought of only one night can still make my heart race.
‘Let’s go to Circular,’ I say, and I point eastward towards the restaurant beneath the Opera House. We make the short journey around the ferry wharf and along the pier beneath my apartment building. We opt to sit at a table by the big glass windows, looking out over the harbour. After we order coffees and I convince Leo to share some cake, we’re alone again. I look out at the bridge for a moment, and when I turn back to him, I find he is staring at me.
‘We had dinner here, right?’ he asks.
‘We did.’
‘I think I remember some of that night,’ Leo frowns as he focuses. ‘You wore that dress… was it pink?’
‘Yep, rose pink chiffon,’ I say, and I’m surprised. ‘I can’t believe you remember that.’
‘I can’t believe I ever forgot it – you looked incredible.’
I’m strangely touched by the thought that Leo had tucked that little detail away in his memory at all. I smile to myself, and I ask hesitantly, ‘So, do I still feel like a stranger to you?’
‘No. When I first woke up, all of this seemed completely impossible. I couldn’t imagine how we could have happened… It felt like everyone was playing a particularly complicated trick on me. The details of my memories are slowly coming back, but it’s very different with the feelings – they’re kind of simmering below the surface, and every time we talk I’m reminded that you’re actually familiar to me. It’s like….’ he raises his hand and points to his head. ‘I’ve forgotten you up here…’ his hand lowers, and he points to his chest, then grimaces again, as if this is a painful admission to make, ‘but I always knew you here.’
My breath catches in my throat. I am devastated to realise that already Leo has rekindled emotions for me – that seems like a brutally unfair thing of me to allow, given that we are actually separated, and what he’s remembering is long gone. When he told me he wanted to separate, we had a conversation that was drenched in sadness, but neither of us even had enough passion left to fight for the marriage – it felt almost inevitable. So I know that Leo really doesn’t feel this way anymore – if he did, he would never have walked away.
At the same time I feel I am being drawn back towards him, even as our eyes lock. Leo is a charmer – he is someone who knows how to work with people and how to make them feel comfortable enough to open up to him. But he’s not great at talking about feelings, particularly his feelings, and he’s not a romantic by nature – he’s the kind of guy much more likely to flirt than woo. This quiet declaration seems like an unusual level of vulnerability from him, although I suppose he feels safe to make it because he knows that we are married.
I love the way he’s looking at me, as if he could drink me up with his eyes or find contentment just by keeping me in his gaze. And I connect very suddenly with a realisation that just as the feelings might be ‘simmering below the surface’ for Leo, they are doing so for me too. That thought is so startling that I panic and try to lighten the mood with a joke.
‘You do realise that is the corniest thing you have ever said, right?’
Leo smiles at me, gently and kindly. ‘Why do you think I’m wearing this face?’ he says, and then he pulls an exaggerated expression of disgust and points to his cheek. I burst out laughing, and then we laugh together, and the two sounds mingle and I feel that just for a second, we’re truly connecting – somehow, through that laughter, we’re one again, just as we used to be – and I love that every bit as much as I miss it. I stop fighting my resurging feelings for just a second and I let them be. The ugliness will return, I know it will – but I make the most of this brief moment of togetherness. Leo quite casually reaches across and entwines our fingers, then rests them on the table between us.
‘Do you remember when we held hands the first time?’ I ask him. Leo stares at our hands, and I watch the laughter lines around his eyes relax and the way his expression shifts and morphs into something very intense. After a moment he raises his eyes back to me and searches my gaze.
‘I remember being completely lost in you.’