After Cleo

Romance

Cats and daughters come home when they please

Two weeks before the wedding, Chantelle appeared glowing with excitement at the front door. Her gown was finally ready. It was in her car. She didn’t want to store it at their place. Even if she tried to hide it in their spare room, she was sure Rob would find it. I was thrilled when she asked me to guard the precious garment at our place.

Under the watchful eyes of the painters, we carried the gown, sheathed in protective covering, up the front path. From his viewpoint in the living room window, Jonah’s ears pricked with interest. He ran to meet us at the door, glued himself to our heels and trotted after us into my study. I was too engrossed to shut him out. Chantelle unzipped the cover to reveal a wedding gown fit for a princess. Pearls on the bodice shimmered against the soft pink silk. It was simply the most . . .

‘Jonah! ’ Chantelle cried.

We’d been too engrossed in the gown to notice the effect it was having on our cat. With his ears pointed forward and blue ray eyes, he lunged forward and buried himself under the hem of the garment. We were too nervous to grab him in case he dug his claws into the silk.

‘Jonah, come out!’ I called. But he only wriggled deeper into the folds of the tulle under-layer.

Enraptured by the softness and glitz of the wedding gown, Jonah refused to budge. One careless scratch would cause untold emotional and financial damage. Chantelle had proved herself an incredibly level-headed bride-to-be so far, but if Jonah ruined her dress she’d have every reason to become Bridezilla.

I fetched one of his fishing rod toys and managed to divert his attention long enough for Chantelle to lift the gown off him and zip it safely back in its bag. I scribbled ‘NO PEEKING!!!’ on a scrap of paper and Sellotaped it to the cover.

Not every writer gets to store a bridal dress in her study cupboard. I was honoured Chantelle had trusted me with its keeping, especially with our live-in feline formal-wear fetishist.

Every day, once I’d made sure Jonah was safely shut out of the study, I’d open the cupboard door to ogle the gown. A couple of times I disobeyed my own instructions and unzipped the cover to admire the garment folded like a butterfly inside its chrysalis.

A symbol of love and hope for the future, the wedding dress shimmered with expectation. It felt like a lucky charm. Especially when an email arrived from Louise at Allen & Unwin saying she loved Cleo. I naturally assumed Louise was being polite and protecting my fragile writer’s ego. Jude, who was to edit Cleo, sent an email echoing Louise’s enthusiasm – and the anxiety lifted. Maybe the book wasn’t so bad after all.

When fifteen pages of editorial suggestions arrived from Jude soon after, my heart muscles contracted. But once I understood what a sensitive and thorough editing job she had done, I was more than willing to follow her guidelines. She was asking me to delve into the dark emotional corners I’d obliterated from the first version of Cleo.

As I revised, reliving the painful days after Sam’s death wasn’t easy, though I was surprised how much detail I remembered. But remembered pain isn’t as bad as it is first time round.

I hoped maybe now the book would have a better chance of reaching out to other parents who’d suffered loss – and that Cleo might find a few readers not just in New Zealand, but Australia as well.

As the wedding day drew closer, the house hummed with excitement. Every phone call and early wedding present delivered to our doorstep brought more happiness. The fact that six months earlier I’d worried I mightn’t be around to be part of this, made it all the more wonderful. Nevertheless, I still had to be careful. While my body was stronger, I still wasn’t entirely back to normal. Whenever I pushed myself too hard, I’d crash in a heap of exhaustion. Occasionally I’d collapse in tearful frustration, wondering if I’d ever feel strong again. During these low moments, malevolent thoughts crept into my mind. What if this extraordinary tiredness was abnormal, and cancer was still swirling inside me?

It was hard to believe Rob was getting married. I still thought of him as a six-year-old playing hide and seek with Cleo, or as the young Sea Scout who loved sailing. Then there was the fourteen-year-old hurrumphing home in his blue school uniform through a cloud of teenage hormones. We were all thrilled when the boy who’d had ‘learning difficulties’ won a scholarship to engineering school. Then devastated when at the age of nineteen he was struck by serious illness.

Rob and I had been through so much together. The day I’d had to phone him to say Cleo had died, he’d sighed and said, ‘There goes the last link with Sam.’ Our grief would always be an invisible bond between us. Even these days, when we had a moment alone, we’d thumb through old photos and talk fondly about Sam.

Rob always says bad times help you appreciate the good. Casting my mind back over the uncertainty and pain of recent months made these joyous days leading up to the wedding so precious.

In quieter, sombre moments I’d Google the latest events in Sri Lanka. The month before Rob’s wedding a suicide bombing in the town of Anuradhapura claimed the lives of twenty-seven people, including a former general. While Lydia insisted the monastery was a million miles from these atrocities, my maternal heart still fretted.

With the wedding only two weeks away, we were just about ready for visitors. Ahead of them all was one very important arrival. When I phoned the airport an automated voice said the flight would be arriving ten minutes early. That couldn’t be right. Planes are never early.

Philip and I bustled into the car and hurtled down the motorway.

‘She’ll have lost weight,’ I said. ‘Two vegetarian curries a day must be incredibly purging. I’m not going to say a word.’

Philip smiled tactfully, but remained silent. He dropped me outside the Arrivals Hall and went to park the car. There was no sign of her among the passengers spilling in from Singapore. Maybe she’d missed her connection. The trip from the monastery to Colombo airport would’ve taken more than four hours. There could’ve been all sorts of hold-ups – elephants, pot-holes, terrorists. Alternatively, the flight from Sri Lanka to Singapore could have been delayed.

There’s nothing like an airport Arrivals Hall to reinstate faith in human nature. A young Indian man clutched a cellophane-encased rose. A Chinese family stared intensely at the automatic doors. The atmosphere crackled with expectancy. The doors snapped open to reveal a tired-looking man in a suit. A woman ran forward trailing a child. They embraced in a pyramid of joy. All those stories about smiling being good for people’s health must be true. He looked suddenly younger and relieved of his jet lag.

Calls from Lydia over recent weeks had been sporadic – either she was in silent retreat or the monastery’s electricity supply was disabled. Once she’d written a letter but the post office had run out of stamps.

The doors opened again. My chest lurched. But I could tell from the luggage trolley it wasn’t her. Expensive suitcases and duty-free booze weren’t her style.

‘No sign of her yet?’ Philip asked, slightly breathless after jogging from the car park building.

The doors weren’t being co-operative. They spat out a beautiful young Indian woman who was swept away by her rose-toting lover, followed by an ancient Chinese woman to be mobbed by her family. Maybe customs officials were giving Lydia a hard time. I’d watched Border Patrol enough times to know how they operate, always on the lookout for weirdos. Maybe they’d mistaken a lingering aroma of incense on her clothes for something else.

Even if Lydia hadn’t become a nun, she’d certainly been living as one, sleeping in a cell and meditating more than twelve hours a day. I steeled myself for the possibility she’d decided to surprise us with a shaved head and maroon robes.

Years of waiting at airport barriers have taught me one thing. The only way to get people to walk through those doors is to go to the cafe and buy a polystyrene cup, preferably two, full of unbearably hot tea. Staggering back through the crowd, with splashes of tea scolding my hands, I heard a shout of delight from Philip. She’d arrived.

Thinner, yes. Almost worryingly so. Yet there was beautiful warmth in her eyes. Her clothes were reasonably normal, thank goodness. White pants and an ethnic-looking jacket. I was relieved to see her hair was still all there. The expensive colour job I’d booked her before she’d left had given her several inches of regrowth. The overall effect was unkempt or possibly rock star, depending on your perspective.

Thrusting the teas in a rubbish bin, I ran toward her and wrapped her in my arms.

‘You look . . .’ I said, way too skinny but I’ll fatten you up in no time.

‘. . . wonderful!’