Nine Perfect Strangers

He said something else but she didn’t catch it. ‘What?’

He said it again. ‘And that’s all we’ll ever know.’

‘Yes,’ said Heather.

‘And it will never, ever be enough,’ said Napoleon.

‘No,’ said Heather. ‘No, it won’t be.’

*

That night Heather slept deeply and dreamlessly for seven hours straight, something she hadn’t done since Zach died, and when she woke she found herself moving across the invisible, un-crossable expanse that had separated her and Napoleon for the last three years, as if it had never been there in the first place. She had made some bad decisions in her life, but saying yes to a freakishly tall, nerdy boy’s polite invitation to see a ‘well-reviewed film called Dances With Wolves’ was not one of them.

You’re not meant to think of your children when you make love. Sexuality between married parents is for behind closed doors. And yet, that morning, as Napoleon took her so tenderly into his arms, she thought of her family of four, of both her children, of the baby boy who would never become a man, and the baby girl who was a woman now, and the powerful currents of love that would always run between them: husband and wife, father and son, mother and son, father and daughter, mother and daughter, brother and sister. So much love that came about because she said yes to a movie invitation.

And then she thought of nothing at all, because that nerdy boy still had the moves.

One year later

Ben and his mother had imagined it so many times that he thought they would surely be prepared when it finally happened, but they weren’t.

Lucy died of an overdose during one of her good periods, which is often the way, just when everyone thought that maybe this time she was going to make it. Lucy had started an interior design course. She was driving her kids to school. She’d been to a parent–teacher night for her eldest son, which was unprecedented. She had her eyes on the future.

Ben’s mother found her. She said she looked strangely peaceful, like a little girl having a nap, or a thirty-year-old who gave up battling the monster that just refused to let her be.

Ben thought first about ringing Jessica. They were on very good terms, although he still squirmed with embarrassment when he thought about the post she’d put on Instagram ‘announ

cing’ their split, as if they were a celebrity couple who owed it to their public to let them know the true story before the media began hounding them. She wrote: We’ll always be best friends but we’ve decided the time has come to lovingly separate.

Right now, Jessica was in the middle of auditioning for the next season of The Bachelor. She said it wasn’t so much that she wanted to find love, and she doubted she would, but it would be great for her ‘profile’ and it would guarantee her so many thousand more Instagram followers. He couldn’t laugh too much because she was an ‘ambassador’ for multiple charities and her Instagram account was filled with photos of glamorous lunches and balls and breakfasts that she and a new group of society friends were so ‘honoured’ to have organised.

Ben was back working with Pete. The guys gave him a hard time in the beginning – ‘You short of a buck, mate?’ – but eventually they gave up and forgot he was rich. Ben still had the car, and a nice house, but he’d put a lot of his money into a foundation run by his mother to help support families of addicts.

Lars helped them split their assets without vitriol and without going to court. That was one thing they’d gained from their retreat at Tranquillum House: meeting a great family lawyer.

Ben didn’t ring Jessica to tell her about Lucy straight away. He couldn’t bear to hear the lack of surprise in her voice. Instead, he dialled Zoe’s number. They’d become online friends and occasional texters since the retreat but they’d never actually talked on the phone.

‘Hello, Ben,’ she said cheerfully. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m calling –’ He found he couldn’t speak. He tried to remember to exhale.

Her tone changed. ‘Is it your sister?’ she said. ‘Is it Lucy?’

She was there at the funeral. His eyes kept seeking her out.

chapter seventy-six

Five years later

Yao wouldn’t normally have turned on daytime television, but he had just returned home from a stressful time at playgroup where his two-year-old daughter had sunk her teeth into the arm of another child and then thrown back her head and laughed like a vampire. It had been both embarrassing and terrifying.

‘Oh yes, you were a biter,’ his mother told him on the phone. ‘She gets it from you.’ She said this with some satisfaction, as if the propensity to bite was a wonderful trait to pass on to your children.

Yao put his daughter down for a nap and pointed a stern finger at her. ‘Never do that again.’

She pointed a sterner finger back up at him. ‘Never do that again.’

Then she lay down, plugged her thumb in her mouth and closed her eyes. He could still see her dimple, which meant she was just pretending to be asleep, hardly able to suppress her hilarity.