Off Limits

Of course it helps that I’ve hardly seen Jack.

He’s been in Tokyo for four days, on a trip I would usually do with him.

Here’s how it would go: Private jet. Limousine. Luxurious hotel accommodation—his apartment there is being remodelled. Meetings. Late-night debriefing.

You get the picture, and you no doubt see the risk.

‘I have too much on,’ I said when he’d decided he needed to go personally. ‘Seriously, there’s no way I can leave the office now.’

He ground his teeth together, looked at me as though I were pulling some soppy, emotional crap and then he nodded. ‘Fine.’

He’s due back today and my desk is no clearer—it’s just a different heap of papers that covers it now. My phone bleats and I grab it up, my nerves not welcoming the intrusion.

Perhaps my impatience conveys itself in my brusque greeting.

‘You sound like shit.’

The cackling voice brings an instant smile to my face. ‘Hi, Grandma.’

‘Where’ve you been, lovey?’

‘Oh, you know...’ I eye the paperwork dubiously. ‘Living it up.’

‘If only. Let me guess. You’re at work?’

‘You called my work number, so I suspect you know the answer to that.’

Another cackle. ‘Are you coming to see me any time soon? I have something for you.’

‘Another lecture on my priorities?’

‘You’re a smart girl. You know your priorities are out of order.’ She sighs. ‘Take it from a woman at the end of her journey. There’s a big, beautiful world out there, and even if you devote your life entirely to travelling you’ll still never get to see everywhere and everything.’

‘God, that makes me feel both nauseated and claustrophobic. It’s saccharine and overly sentimental even for you, Grandma.’

She laughs. I love her laugh. My grandma shines a light with her smile alone.

‘Everyone’s allowed a bit of sentimentalism at some point, aren’t they? Especially at my age.’

‘I travel everywhere,’ I point out, flicking my calendar onto my screen and scanning it. ‘In fact I’m off to Australia next week.’

Crap. With Jack.

‘Oh, yes? That wouldn’t be a work trip, would it?’

I grin. ‘No. And by no, I mean yes—but I imagine I’ll still get time to pet a koala.’

‘You know they’re not just crawling around the streets? You actually need to go bush to find one.’

I burst out laughing. ‘“Go bush”? Grandma, you’re a Duchess. I think it’s in the manual that you’re not allowed to “go bush”—or go anywhere, really.’

I’m not joking. Grandma really is a Duchess. She married my grandpa, who was a decade her senior and had come back from the Second World War with what we’d now know as post-traumatic stress disorder. She was a nurse, and his family hired her to care for him—to “fix” him. She quit on the first day. There wasn’t anything wrong with him, she declared. He was just different.

They got engaged that afternoon.

It’s the only fairytale I believe in—and only because it has a macabre degree of reality to it. Grandma did fix him. He made her a princess—of the social variety—and she made him whole in a different way, just like she said.

We lost him years ago, and now she’s the one who’s a little bit broken. But still amazing. The most beautiful person in my life. My other constant.