Nine Perfect Strangers

‘Get a grip. Get a grip. Get a grip.’

chapter twenty-one

Carmel

Carmel stood in her room and slapped her own face. Once. Twice. Three times. The third time she slapped herself so hard her glasses flew off.

She picked them up, went to the bathroom and looked at her flushed cheek in the mirror.

For a moment there, when she was in the pool, swimming her laps, endorphins zipping through her body after that fantastic bushwalk, she’d felt fine, more than fine – she’d felt exultant. It had been years since she’d had time to do laps.

As she swam she gloried in the fact that there was nowhere to be, nothing to do, no-one to worry about. No jazz pick-up or karate drop-off, no homework to supervise, no birthday gifts to buy, no doctors’ appointments to book; the endless multitude of teeny-tiny details that made up her life. Each obligation on its own seemed laughably easy. It was the sheer volume that threatened to bury her.

Here, she didn’t even have to do her own laundry. Carmel simply had to put her washing outside her door in a little cloth bag and it would be returned to her, laundered and ironed, within twenty-four hours. She’d literally cried with happiness when she read that.

She had set herself a goal of fifty laps of freestyle, faster and faster with each lap. She was going to get so, so fit here! She could almost feel that excess weight falling off her. All she’d ever needed was time to exercise and a pantry free of treats. As she swam, she silently chanted in time with her strokes: I’m so happy, I’m so happy, I’m so happy, breathe, I’m so happy, I’m so happy, I’m so happy, breathe.

But then that tiny voice beneath the exultant chanting, just the faintest whisper, had begun: I wonder what they’re doing now.

She’d tried to ignore it, chanting louder: I’m so HAPPY, I’m so HAPPY.

The voice got louder until it became a shout: No, but seriously, what do you think they’re doing RIGHT NOW?

That’s when she’d felt her sanity come loose. The feeling of panic reminded her of one of those recurring dreams in which she’d lost all four of her daughters in some bizarrely negligent way, such as leaving them on the side of the road, or just forgetting they existed and going out dancing.

She’d tried to calm herself with rational thoughts. Her children were not lost on the side of the road; they were with

their father and Sonia, his perfectly lovely new girlfriend, soon to be wife. Carmel knew from the itinerary that today they were in Paris, staying in a ‘wonderful’ Airbnb flat. Sonia, who ‘just loved to travel’, had stayed there before. It would be cold, of course, in January, but the kids had new jackets. They were on the trip of a lifetime. They were having a wonderful educational experience while their mother had a wonderful break to ‘recharge’.

Their father loved them. Their father’s new girlfriend loved them. ‘Sonia said she loves us more than life itself,’ Rosie told Carmel after only the third time she met the woman, and Carmel said, ‘Well, she sounds like a total nutcase!’ but only in her head. Out loud she said, ‘That’s so nice!’

It was an amicable divorce. Amicable on Joel’s part, anyway. On Carmel’s part, it felt like a death no-one acknowledged. He just fell out of love with her, that’s all. It must have been so hard for him, living with a woman he no longer loved. He really struggled with it, poor man, but he had to be true to himself.

It happens. It happens a lot. It’s essential that the discarded wife remains dignified. She must not wail and weep, except in the shower, when the kids are at school and preschool, and she’s alone in the suburbs with all the other weeping, wailing wives. The discarded wife must not be bitchy or unkind about the new and improved wife. She must suck it up but without developing a sour face. It is better for all concerned if she is thin.

Carmel had touched the side and turned to do another lap when she saw that someone had joined her in the pool. The friendly-looking older woman. Carmel almost said, ‘Hi,’ before remembering the silence and ignoring her.

She kept swimming and thought about how that woman’s hair was a similar shade to Sonia’s hair. No doubt they both paid handsomely for it.

Carmel’s daughter Lulu was fair-haired. Lulu looked entirely unrelated to Carmel, which had never mattered until the day Lulu told her that when Daddy and Sonia took them out to dinner a lady stopped by the table and said to Lulu, ‘You’ve got beautiful hair just like your mummy, haven’t you?’

Carmel said, in a high, strained voice, ‘Huh, that’s funny. Did you tell her that Sonia wasn’t your mummy?’

Lulu said that Daddy had said it wasn’t necessary to always point out that Sonia wasn’t her real mother, and Carmel had said, ‘Of course it’s necessary, darling, you should point it out every single time in your loudest voice,’ but only in her head. Out loud she said, ‘It’s time to clean your teeth, Lulu.’

Remembering this, she’d picked up speed, her arms and legs chopping through the water, harder and harder, faster and faster, but she couldn’t sustain it, she wasn’t fit enough, she was so unfit, and fat, and lazy, and disgusting. And she thought of her four girls on the other side of the world, in Paris, where Carmel had never been, having their hair done by Sonia, and probably sitting still for her, and suddenly she swallowed a giant mouthful of water.

She hopped out of the pool, without making eye contact with the friendly blonde lady, as per the rules, fortunately, because she was crying like a fool, and she cried all the way to her room. There was no way the big man coming down the pathway to the pool hadn’t noticed.

‘Get a grip,’ she said now to her reflection in the mirror.

She wrapped her arms around her body.

She missed her children. It hit her like a sudden fever. She longed for the comfort of their four beautiful little-girl bodies and their heedless, proprietorial use of her body: the way they plonked themselves on her lap as if she were a chair, the way they burrowed their hot little heads into her stomach, her breasts. She was always yelping at someone, ‘Get off me!’ When she was with her children, she was needed – essential, in fact: everything relied on her. Someone was always saying, ‘Where’s Mummy?’ ‘I’m telling Mum what you just said.’ ‘Mummmmmy!’

Now she was untethered by obligations, as loose and free as a balloon.

She undid the tie of her swimsuit and let it fall in a heap on the bathroom floor while she studied her naked body in the mirror.