‘Is everyone coming?’ Leah asks.
I was getting up to go. I’ve been eating fresh-baked bread, lemon curd and hot strawberry jam in her grey kitchen which she made while I pruned her roses.
‘No,’ and I sit down again on the high stool. ‘I’ll tell you some gossip.’ I instantly regret the word.
‘Oh.’
‘It’s not good gossip,’ I say hurriedly. ‘I didn’t invite Serena.’
‘Oh.’ Leah sits and waits. She looks at me with her expectant azure gaze.
***
Ellie comes for tea on Tuesday afternoon. ‘I have to tell you something about drinks on Saturday.’
‘Oh?’
‘I haven’t invited Serena.’
‘Oh, okay.’ She squirms up in her chair and I think she's going to say something, but she just tells me to go on.
Serena introduced me to Ellie, so I’m nervous, but there’s no escape. ‘A couple of months ago I told Serena I had a crush on her.’
‘Aw,’ she says with a smile tucked into her chin. ‘What did she say?’
‘She said, “that stopped the conversation didn’t it”.’
‘Agh,’ she gasps and she slaps her hand on the edge of the table. ‘Serena is a very good communicator, but she is not good with these sorts of things.’
I tell her about how I tried a few times to get in touch, but hadn’t heard back really. A returned call while she was walking the dog to wash it and hung up at the first set of pedestrian lights. A text to say she felt put on the spot by me inviting her to dinner.
‘I’m one of her best friends and Serena hasn’t told me anything about it!’ She breathes. ‘I know she might not good at these kinds of things – but I do know she will be feeling pretty bad about it. Me knowing you both would make it even more difficult for her to tell me. Do you think you could still be friends?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s hard to be interested in someone who ignores you.’
***
Now, in Leah’s kitchen, I tell her something I didn’t tell Ellie: ‘I don’t keep crushes on girls who don’t talk to me.’ And as I wonder why I don’t get crushes on the women who do, Leah chirps, ‘Are you going to reveal yourself to anyone else before you go? You’ve still got six days.’ We both laugh.
Saturday
Leah and Ellie come early for dinner. I poach salmon and strawberries in blood orange juice and sugar. It makes a sweet thick syrup dressing for the salmon and the on-the-side pink grapefruit from a neighbour’s tree. The oranges blood the spring and are in season for only six weeks.
Leah asks Ellie if she’s dating anyone.
‘I went on a few dates with someone recently, but we decided to be friends. Only time will tell you if really are going to be,’ she reflects. ‘He’s going to Western Australia in a month anyway.’
None of us can agree if lovers should be friends. What kind of friends anyway? Friends-friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends with benefits, special friends, lovers, live-in lovers, life-partners, husbands, wives.
‘I don’t need a boyfriend to be my friend,’ Leah says. ‘I already have friends.’
‘What about if you’re married?’ I ask. ‘Wouldn’t you be friends with your husband?’
‘That would go way beyond friends to a whole other level.’
I try to understand the complex balance but I am the first to push the last flake of salmon through the sweet red syrup. After I have taken what I can off the plate I take it off the cutlery.
Leah is astonished. ‘I can’t believe you just did that!’
‘What?’ I think as I stand up to clear the plates, before I remember plunging the knife into my mouth and drawing it out through closed lips. ‘These are the things you can get away with when you live on your own,’ I say.
‘I can see that.’
I wonder what other habits I’ve created to set my friends aback.
***
We leave. The Brunswick Green is a shop front pub on Sydney Road. Its beer garden is lined with palm trees and incandescent lights of red, orange and blue. There are gas heaters overhead and umbrellas to trap the heat. We wait about half an hour for the others and about twenty people come and go through the night.
Matt straightaway orders something from the kitchen which everyone can share. After two hours he shouts ‘How long did it take you to get bored in the planning job?’ I tell him ‘About two weeks.’ He uses it to explain how bored he is after five years in the public service. How does it get this way?
Sal and Amy meet and find they are doing a photography course together. Kathleen and Susie are radiographers but sit at either end of the table. I don’t think to introduce them and they don’t meet.
Ellie and Leah look tired and maybe ossibly unwell and leave early and I wonder if it was the salmon or the blood.
Sarah and Nick have been singing all day, rehearsing and performing Beethoven’s Ninth. They come late. It is a mix of ecstasy and exhaustion after a concert and a drink brings you back to earth, especially after the Ninth, the Enlightenment symphony's climax, and very high and very loud for the choir.
Everyone who comes wants me to be excited and single people ask me if I’m excited and married people tell me they’re envious.
I’ve spent most of the week feeling sad and uncertain, but just saying I’m not excited is too disappointing for other people. I’m sad about Serena, about not seeing the garden spring, uncertain about leaving good people and wondering if I will find anything different to what I would have at home. It is easy to forget other places are where other people live no better than you.
By midnight students are crowding the other tables and its getting harder to talk. The umbrellas that trapped heat are now trapping their smoke. People finish their drinks and leave in twos, except for three single Brunswick people – Sal, Michael and me – who leave at midnight after the dregs settle in the last drops of wine.
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