What Alice Forgot

“Yes,” said Alice. She was surprised at just how very, very irritable she was feeling. “It’s just that I don’t remember why Nick and I are splitting up.”

“Oh,” said Luke. He flipped over on his stomach and started doing push-ups on the top veranda step. “I remember once you said that in the end your divorce all came down to one thing. I went home and told my girlfriend that night. I knew she’d be interested.”

He put one arm behind his back and started doing his push-ups on one hand. Was that really necessary?

“So . . .” said Alice, as he switched arms with a grunt. “What was that one thing?”

“I can’t remember.” He flipped back over and grinned at the expression on Alice’s face. “You want me to call her?”

“Could you?”

He pulled out a mobile phone from his pocket and pushed a button.

“Hey, babe. Yeah, no, nothing’s wrong. I’m just with a client. Do you remember I told you that lady said her divorce was caused by one thing? Yeah, no, I just want to know, what was that one thing?”

He listened.

“Really? You’re sure? Okay. Love ya.”

He hung up and looked at Alice. “Lack of sleep.”

“Lack of sleep,” repeated Alice. “That doesn’t make much sense.”

“No, that’s what my girlfriend said, but I remember Gina seemed to understand.”

Alice sighed and scratched the side of her face. She was sick of hearing about Gina. “I’m feeling really grumpy. I need chocolate or . . . something.”

“You probably need to see your dealer,” said Luke.

“My dealer?” What next? Was she a drug addict? Did she drop the kids off at school and then go home and snort a few lines of cocaine? She must be! How else did she know this drug-addict sort of terminology, like “snort a few lines”?

“The coffee shop. Your body is screaming for a flat white.”

“But I don’t drink coffee,” said Alice.

“You’re a caffeine junkie,” said Luke. “I never see you without a takeaway coffee in your hand.”

“I haven’t had a coffee since my accident.”

“Have you had a headache?”

“Well, yes, but I thought that was the injury.”

“It was probably the caffeine withdrawal as well. This might be a good opportunity to give it up. I’ve been trying to get you to cut back for ages.”

“No,” said Alice, because now the desire she’d been feeling had a label. She could smell coffee beans. She could taste it. She wanted it right now. “Do you know where I get my coffee?”

“Sure. Dino’s. According to you, they do the best coffee in Sydney.”

Alice looked at him blankly.

“Next to the cinema. On the highway.”

“Right.” Alice stood up. “Well, thanks.”

“Oh. We’re done? Okay.” Luke stood up, towering over her. He seemed to be waiting for something.

Alice realized with a start that he wanted his money. She went inside and found her purse. It was physically painful to hand over two fifty-dollar notes. He actually wasn’t that good-looking at all.

Luke’s huge hand closed cheerfully around the cash. “Well, I hope you’re back to yourself next week, eh? We’ll do a killer session to make up!”

“Great!” beamed Alice. She paid this man over a hundred dollars to tell her how to exercise each week?

She watched him roar out of the driveway and shook her head. Right. Coffee. She looked at the step where Luke had done his push-ups and suddenly she was down on her hands and knees, palms flat, body horizontal, stomach muscles pulled in hard, and she was bending her elbows and bringing her chest smoothly down toward the step.

One, two, three, four . . .

Good Lord, she was doing push-ups.

She counted to thirty before she collapsed, her chest burning, arms aching, and yelled, “Beat that!” as she looked around triumphantly for someone who wasn’t there.

There was silence.

Alice hugged her knees to her chest and looked at the For Sale sign across the road.

She had a feeling the person she’d been looking for was Gina.

Gina.

It was very strange to miss a person she didn’t even know.

Chapter 24

Elisabeth’s Homework for Jeremy Well, I don’t know, you seemed a bit grumpy this morning. Is that allowed? Are therapists allowed to have feelings? I don’t think so, J. Save them for your own therapy sessions. Not on my time, buddy.

I really wanted a bit more praise when I showed you how many pages I’d written for my homework. Couldn’t you tell that, as a therapist? I mean, I know you’re not meant to read it, but the reason I brought along my notebook was so you could say something like “Wow! I wish all my clients were as committed to this process as you!” Or you could have said what nice handwriting I had. Just a suggestion. You’re the one who is meant to be good with people. Instead you just looked a bit taken aback, as if you didn’t even remember asking me to do the homework. It always bugged me when teachers forgot to ask for the homework they’d set. It made the world seem undependable.

Anyway, today, you wanted to talk about the coffee shop incident.

Personally, I think you were just curious about it. You were feeling a bit bored for a Monday morning and thought it might spice things up.

You seemed quite testy when I said I preferred to talk about Ben and the adoption issue. The customer is always right, Jeremy.

This is what happened in the coffee shop, if you must know.

It was a Friday morning and I’d stopped in at Dino’s on the way to work. I was having a large skim cappuccino because I wasn’t pregnant or in the middle of the cycle. There was a woman at the table next to me with a baby and a toddler about two years old.

A little girl. With brown curly hair. Ben has brown curly hair. Well, actually, he doesn’t because he gets it cut really close to his head like a car thief but I’ve seen photos from before we met. When I used to imagine our children I always gave them brown curly hair like Ben’s.

So, there was that, but she wasn’t particularly cute or anything. She had a dirty face and she was being sort of whiny.

The mother was talking on her mobile phone and smoking a cigarette.

Well, she wasn’t smoking a cigarette at all.