Silver

Chapter 43 - then

The first time I saw Millie after my wedding day, we caught up in Mailing Road, Canterbury, in a specialist chocolate boutique. She now lived in a mock Victorian townhouse three streets away. She squealed in excitement when I walked in to the cafe and threw her arms around me. 'I've missed you so much,' she said. 'I can't believe that it has taken us this long to catch up.' There had been a number of scheduled catch ups that she'd had to be reschedule for one reason or another.

She ordered a skinny hot chocolate and I ordered a classic Italian hot chocolate with whipped cream. She held my hands across the table and asked, 'So how was it? Was it fabulous?'

'It was fabulous,' I said. 'Sabah is so beautiful and the accommodation was amazing. Huts on stilts on water. It was so romantic.' This was pretty much the script I'd recited to anyone who asked.

'And the sex?' she asked quietly, leaning across the table further.

'Amazing,' I lied. 'I never knew that I could feel so good, just having someone kiss me.' Of course, I was talking about Jarvis, not Alistair, here.

'I know,' she squealed again in delight. 'It's just getting better and better for us. At first I was nervous, but I'm starting to relax now. I'm so sorry for launching into this straight away. It's just that I've so been looking forward to seeing you and talking to you.'

Our hot chocolates arrived with a complimentary artisan chocolate on the side.

'Who could believe that we would be sitting here as wives today? It feels like so much has happened since six months ago.' Her voice was like a bird, high on a tree. I took in the whole picture of her. She was wearing a silver heart-shaped locket necklace. Her wedding ring was white gold with three diamonds. She was wearing a fitted cotton top, in an olive green colour. She had blonde ombre in her hair and she was wearing foundation and blush. She looked so mature all of a sudden. And she still looked so thin.

'You're still wearing Lolita clothes,' she whispered, almost breathlessly, as though it was a sin.

'Yeah, yeah. Alistair is fine with it now. He's happy with whatever makes me happy.' The truth was, he'd hardly even noticed. Or if he had, he hadn't made a comment about it. We hardly talked since the honeymoon.

'And what about your new place? You said you were living somewhere in town?'

'Yeah. I moved into Alistair's apartment. Just off Spring Street. Right in the hustle and bustle of the city.' I tried to inject some excitement in my voice, but the truth was our apartment was uninspiring. It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a galley kitchen and living/dining room, in drab contemporary style. Its only feature was the floor to ceiling windows in the living room. It was a three-minute walk to Alistair's work. I didn't think he'd care if he had to live in a cave, as long as he could get home from work quickly, stuff some noodles in his mouth and switch on a computer game.

'I love our house,' Millie said. 'Three bedrooms. It has a garden. I just love roses. They're so beautiful, don't you think? We bought a clothes dryer today. It feels so adult, doesn't it?' She sighed as if she was breathing in this whole experience of us two wives catching up and having an adult discussion about all these adult things. 'How's school?'

'It's fine,' I said. I commuted back to my old school every day. It took an hour each way. But I didn't mind. I couldn't stand the thought of having to go to a new school in my final year. I thought about telling her that I missed her and that it wasn't the same without her there. But I was still angry at her. Like my mother said, I should never have put all my eggs in one basket. I should have had a contingency plan at school, a back up friend. But I had no one and it was so lonely.

'How's your new school?'

'It's fabulous. Everyone is so lovely. I've already had a couple of friends over for dinner.' By dinner, I guessed she meant a husband/wife team and I felt some stinging kind of jealousy at these people that I'd never met having dinner at her place when I hadn't even been invited there today. 'We will have to have you and Alistair over soon,' she said. 'It's so busy. Don't you find that life is so busy now?'

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't find life all that busy. I found it the opposite. Now that I'd moved into our apartment, now that our two separate lives had been unpacked and set up on shelves and in cupboards and our toothbrushes lived in one bathroom each, I felt like my life was very still. Alistair had his gaming room, where he spent an average of six hours a day playing his virtual games. Sometimes he appeared in the kitchen and prepared himself some two minute noodles. In three minutes he was gone again, slurping his way down the hallway, slamming the door behind him. If I wasn't at school or on the train, I was generally in bed. Life didn't seem busy, it was tiring. It made me want to sleep a lot.

'How's your dad?' she asked.

'He's good. I don't see him that much. Once a week, I go there for dinner or something.'

'Does he get on well with Alistair?' she asked. She knew that I had a soft spot for my dad.

'They get on all right,' I said. Alistair had only been there once for dinner. I preferred to go on my own, it was the one treat that I had each week.

'My parents love Jason. They don't think I could have done any better. We have dinner every week with them, either at their place or ours.'

Her life seemed full of dinners with fabulous, wonderful people, who all loved each other, in the house that she loved, with new white goods. My life felt like a glass jar of air.

I couldn't tell her that I had a steaming love affair with a sculptor on my honeymoon. It felt too risqué for this conversation about upper urban life in Australia. Here there was no place for cheats that had rendezvous on the beach.

'I've got news,' she exclaimed. 'We're trying to get pregnant.'

'Already?' I asked, suffering on the inside. This chat was worlds away from the chats we used to have in my bedroom about music, Lolita idols, that guy we saw from the balcony at Bayside Shopping Centre. That was all a life of fantasy. When did life become such a boring reality?

'We are on tonight. Every second day at the moment. We start eight days after the end of my last cycle. I've seen a fertility specialist. I'm taking Fertilish, have you heard of it? Everyone is taking it. It increases your chances of falling pregnant quickly by 30 per cent. I should have the baby by the end of the year. Can you believe it?'

I was so exhausted listening to all this, I couldn't quite take it in. All I wanted to do was go home and sleep.