Page 9 of The Soulmate

Gabe ignored him. ‘I haven’t even introduced myself,’ he said to me. ‘I’m Gabriel. Gabe.’

‘Pippa.’

‘Gabe,’ the groom said, sounding less apologetic now.

But Gabe didn’t take his eyes off me. ‘I think it’s pretty clear that the universe has spoken. So . . . do you happen to be free later? I came stag to this wedding, but I’m sure I could get them to add one to the bridal table. Right, Ant?’

Ant exhaled heavily. ‘If you sign the register right now, you can bring an entire footy team to the reception, mate.’

‘What do you say?’ Gabe said to me.

‘She says yes,’ Kat said, when I found myself lost for words.

I felt like I was floating. Gabe got out his phone, and I keyed in my number then handed it back. The entire time, Gabe kept his eyes on me.

‘I’ll call you in a couple of hours,’ he said, before he was pulled back to the wedding. When he resumed his position, the wedding guests broke into a round of applause, and Gabe took a bow. Lucy, the bride, rolled her eyes.

I hurried home and washed my hair, did my make-up, tried on three dresses. Then I waited for Gabe’s call.

But it didn’t come for three weeks.

7

AMANDA

AFTER

Death isn’t so bad when you settle into it. In fact, there’s something soothing about it; watching everything but having no bearing on any of it. Hurts from life come with you, but they don’t sting – like a mosquito bite that has lost its itch, you know it happened, but you don’tfeelit anymore. I wish I’d known this when I buried my mother. It would have helped me a lot. All I wanted my whole life was for my mum not to hurt anymore. To have the happy ending she always dreamed of but never got.

My father wasn’t a good man, you see. He was hot-tempered, stupid, occasionally violent. He was extremely good-looking and charming, apparently, but that was part of the problem. He swept Mum off her feet, wooing her with promises of happy ever after. Then, like a lot of charming, good-looking men, he never delivered on any of it.

The story goes that my grandmother warned my mother about him.

‘A blind man could see that man was a player,’ my grandmother said. But Mum didn’t listen. He was hersoulmate, she said. She moved away from her family and friends to a small regional town. She gave my father every cent she’d saved, as well as the car she’d worked so hard for. She became pregnant within a couple of months of their wedding, starting the family they’d talked so much about. She tried hard to make our modest house a lovely home for my father – a waste of time, seeing as he was rarely inside it.

Everyone in our small town knew what my father was up to, myself included. I was a child, but I wasn’t deaf. I heard people talking – my friends’ mothers, the supermarket cashier, the ladies at the hairdressers. People gossiping about my father’s behaviour as if it were entertainment. The worst part about it was that most people treated it as Mum’s shame – as if his behaviour was a reflection on her rather than him. Mum seemed to agree with them, because to my knowledge she never once confronted my father, and if anyone so much as implied that he was less than faithful (like her best friend Sue did once, as gently as she could), she cut them out of her life.

I was ten years old when Mum and I saw Dad’s car parked outside my teacher’s house on our walk to school. Dad hadn’t come home the night before and Mum had told me he was ‘away on business’, which was how she usually explained his absences. I know Mum saw the car too, but she didn’t comment and so neither did I. We were about to cross the road when the front door opened and there they were. Their eyes were on each other and they didn’t notice us watching. Miss McKenzie was helping Dad put on his tie. Then she gave him the kind of kiss I’d only seen in movies.

‘Come on, Amanda,’ Mum said, tugging my arm. ‘We’re going to be late.’

When I arrived at school, I realised we weren’t the only ones who’d noticed my father’s car outside Miss McKenzie’s house. It was all anyone could talk about in the playground. Even my best friend Avana asked me if Miss McKenzie was going to be my new mummy.

At the end of the day, the other mothers made no attempt to keep their voices down as I approached the school gates.

‘Can you believe it? With the teacher, no less! Why not the nanny?’

‘When a husband strays as often as he does, you have to ask: what’s the wifenotdoing?’

‘Apparently she never . . .you know. . . so who can blame the poor man for finding someone else?’

Mum was standing a few metres away. I’m not sure if the other mothers were oblivious to her, or if they simply didn’t care that she was listening. I do remember how small she looked, caved in, as though she was trying to make herself disappear.

That night, when I came into the kitchen for a glass of water, Mum was crying.

‘Are you all right, Mum?’

She was startled to see me and quickly wiped her eyes. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just fine.’