Make or Break

I was partially aware of Pete leaving at 5 a.m. but didn’t wake properly until the much more respectable holiday time of 10 a.m. I padded across the cream tiled floor to the living room to check my phone. I had a couple of emails from Mum and Dad’s friends RSVPing to the party, one from the caterers asking to quadruple-check the food list (it contained three distinctly different, uncomplementary menus: Mum’s grain/sugar/dairy and fun-free items that the rest of us had mostly given up eating, Dad’s traditional ‘meat ’n’ veg’ fare and Hunter and Katie’s kid-friendly treats) and no emails from Dad. I had a text from Pete saying instead of the fifty-minute walk they were going to do a three-hour one, leaving the fifty-minute one (that I was intending to do in a leisurely two hours in a snake-proof, air-conditioned suit the internet was yet to provide me with) as a new experience for both of us. He said he’d meet me at Priya and Laurel’s BBQ. I smiled and flicked on the kettle.

With a hot coffee in a patterned mug, I slid open the doors to the balcony and got comfy on a lounger in the morning sun. I dialled Annabelle while soaking in the sights and sounds of the busy harbour. Annabelle answered and we exchanged updates on the party. We locked down the menu, agreeing to disagree that Brussels sprouts were a good choice (old people farting en masse? I wouldn’t be staying long) and then I asked if she’d heard from Dad. She hadn’t.

‘If you’re so worried about it why don’t you call his office?’ Annabelle said.

‘Nah.’

It was a pointless exercise I’d tried many times before. The secretaries at Dad’s London office had to remain discreet about their high-profile clients, so only ever took a message and said they’d have him call us.

‘Who’s that man I can hear?’ I said, not wanting to get off the phone just yet. I was feeling a bit homesick for my usual routine of being there over the weekend, having Katie cuddles and cleaning whatever Hunter had got stuck to the walls/floor/ceiling/cat.

‘Marcus.’

‘What’s he doing there again?’ I said, checking the time in England. It would be 9.30 a.m. Annabelle usually only did her accounting work in the afternoons or evenings when Mum or I were around to help with Katie. Although with us both away perhaps her schedule was totally different.

‘I’m helping him with his new business.’

I began to worry. What if Marcus’s new business took all of Annabelle’s attention and Katie started having breathing problems and nobody noticed because they were nose-deep in Marcus’s books and had found his 100-flavour popcorn café was spending too much on organic vanilla dust? I forced myself to exhale. That would never happen. Annabelle was a sharp-eyed mama bear and nothing would ever, ever make her compromise her precious children. But oh my gosh! What if he intended to be the next to nail and bail? To fornicate and evacuate? To bump hips and jump ship? To hit it and quit it?

‘What are Marcus’s intentions?’ I said stiffly.

‘Oh, well, he thinks he should be renovating one of his sites but with the current business loan rates so low and his equity levels, I’m suggesting he diversify—’

‘No,’ I said, thinking Annabelle sounded extremely money-knowledgeable, and also, renovating? What happened to the popcorn café? ‘His intentions with you?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Does he have romantic intentions? Or sexy-time ones?’

‘You’re on speakerphone.’

I cringed. Then coughed my dignity back in check. ‘Hello Marcus,’ I said formally.

‘Hi,’ a soft Welsh voice replied.

‘How . . . how are you?’ I attempted. ‘Business going . . . is it going? Annabelle, can you take me off speakerphone please?’

‘Oh sure,’ she said, then came back on the line a bit louder than before. ‘There you go.’

‘You should tell people when they’re on speakerphone so they don’t make an arse of themselves. Do you know this Marcus very well? He might be a psycho or a pervert or a money launderer or—’

‘I can still hear her,’ Marcus said in his soft voice.

‘He can still hear you,’ Annabelle repeated matter-of-factly. ‘I think I’ve got the volume quite loud.’

‘Annabelle!’

‘Marcus is a property developer. He buys big old houses and renovates them to become private childcare centres. He’s not a psycho, or a pervert, or a money launderer. From what I can see from his books so far, anyway,’ she chuckled and I heard Marcus laugh softly in the background.

The thing about Annabelle, which is something she doesn’t seem to be aware of, is that she is beautiful. With her olive skin (something we both got from Dad), cupid’s bow lips, rich chestnut hair and huge brown eyes ringed in lashes so thick and long I used to call her Camelbelle, she looks elegant and vulnerable. Like a French Bambi. With wrist tattoos and a small scar from a septic home eyebrow piercing. And despite her chaotic youth, she moved about her adult life with a measured peace. She doesn’t expend any unnecessary energy. Perhaps she’d used it all up sneaking out of her teen bedroom, lugging backpacks full of Carling across south London and scaling nightclub walls. And, most worryingly, Annabelle is not wary of men. She’s wary of who she becomes around men, and even though there is no scientific evidence, she still harbours a fear that her wayward years have karmatically caused Katie’s Down’s Syndrome and Hunter’s ‘hyperactivity’ (the family ADHD). She is pragmatic and says there is no point blaming men as a whole, which is refreshing and enlightened and all that, but it means she doesn’t have her shit detectors on. I felt she needed reminding of the dangers of the unknown (penis).

‘Advancing males need to be heavily vetted, not heavily petted.’ I repeated the helpful motto I’d come up with after Daniel had poked and revoked.

‘Marcus is not an advancing male. He’s a client,’ Annabelle said airily.

‘AS LONG AS HE KNOWS THAT,’ I said so Marcus could hear.

There were some muffled noises like Annabelle was covering the mouthpiece and making unknown gestures.

‘I do,’ was Marcus’s distant, somewhat uncomfortable, reply.

An hour later I threw my beach bag in the back seat and clambered next to Trust in the front of his van.

‘This OK?’ I said at his shocked look.

‘Yes, Sisi!’ He broke into a brilliant white grin and drove towards the security gates.

‘When do you get a day off?’ I asked, competing with Trust’s music.

‘Oh,’ he shifted in his seat and turned the radio down. ‘Maybe one day if you don’t need me I get a day off. But Miss Priya, she says to look after you, so that’s what I do.’

‘Do you like your job?’

‘Yes. Very much. I like to drive.’ He shot me a sideways amused look.

‘Are you married?’

‘No,’ he said and his voice was warm and chocolatey. ‘Not married yet.’

‘Oh,’ I replied. ‘Girlfriend then?’

Trust gave a slow chuckle. ‘You ask many questions.’

‘Yeah, I know. I can’t help myself.’ I said. ‘So . . . do you have a girlfriend?’

‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘She’s pregnant. And I have a daughter. Two years old.’

Trust and I chatted all the way to Priya’s and I was stunned to find out he lived in a small township. Like the ones Pete and I had seen sprawled out on either side of the motorway. I was embarrassed to find myself inspecting his clothing. His striped polo shirt was box fresh and I wondered how they did their laundry in those tin houses. Trust was surprised that Pete and I had been together so long and had no children. He was twenty-two but he didn’t know how old his girlfriend was because she was an orphan. They guessed she was between twenty and twenty-five.

‘So you not married yet?’ Trust asked as we turned up the steep, winding road that would take us to Priya’s white house in the hills.

‘No, not yet,’ I said, thinking fond thoughts about my mountain-scaling boyfriend with his mountain-scaling thighs straining against his mountain-scaling shorts. ‘But we’ve talked about it. One day.’

Trust raised his eyebrows.

‘Soon, hopefully.’

It was a little jarring to exit the van at Priya’s giant, shiny holiday rental after hearing where Trust lived. With thoughts of the advantages of birthplace I followed the fastidiously tended garden path round the house to the pool area, and saw family and people I’d met at the wedding lounging in beanbags on the grass or sitting at outdoor tables under brollies. Laurel was in the pool riding a huge inflatable unicorn, singing along to an Imagine Dragons song while Priya sat on the edge with her feet in the water, laughing. The vibe was that of hung-over relaxation. Nothing like the fizzy anticipation of two days previously.

I scanned the garden with my new snake data. Flat lawn edged in manicured box hedging, various palms and lush trees behind that and behind them steep banks that eventually became the cliffs and rock faces of Table Mountain, home to lethal serpents. Snakes were everywhere in South Africa, yet people just lived their lives as though it wasn’t a big deal. Like Australians. They still went camping and did other outdoor things, knowing that 73 per cent of their wildlife is deadly and mean-spirited. OK, that statistic is made up. But it seems plausible. The point was, I was in Cape Town on a magnificent lawn with luxury travelogue views but could be two steps away from death at all times! The only way to deal with the anxiety was to start drinking. Luckily it seemed to be everyone else’s plan also, so within an hour we were cocktail-merry and sunbathing or swimming or eating and laughing by the pool. I sent Lana one of those annoying pictures of your bare knees with the pool and the blue sky in the background and she sent one back of a watery-looking coffee and her computer complete with boring spread sheet.

Laurel and Priya got everyone involved in a game of Marco Polo and I couldn’t stop laughing at Laurel’s clumsy attempts to move around the pool with her eyes shut. I climbed out of the water and collapsed on a lounger next to Priya, who was watching Laurel with adoration as she slipped under the surface mid-open-mouthed ‘Marco Polo’ call and emerged spitting out water.

‘So, I’m an old married woman now,’ she said, turning to me and sliding her purple D&G glasses on top of her head. ‘When is it yours and Pete’s turn?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, getting comfy on my stomach, a grin starting to form at the idea of it being my turn to trip and stumble round a fire pit. Or was that only for lesbians? Or Hindus? Or Hindu lesbians? ‘We’ve talked about it but I think Pete is really distracted with work at the moment. And he’s so tired from the commute. I don’t think he has the brain space to be thinking about that right now. Maybe at the end of the holiday when he’s relaxed we can talk about it again.’

Pete hadn’t wanted to talk marriage until he had got a bit further in his career. But positions at his school were coveted and very rarely came up. Someone would have to leave for him to be promoted, and in the three years he’d been there no one had even contemplated moving on.

‘Talk shmalk. How unromantic. You should do it, babe. Just propose. Do it! Do it tomorrow,’ she urged. ‘There’s no need to wait for the guy. You can totally propose. Tradition schmadition. I did it!’

‘Yeah, but you’re a girl marrying a girl. Tradition is right out of the wedding window.’

Priya snorted with laughter while looking at Laurel in the pool. ‘So . . .? Are you going to do it?’

‘I could ask him, I guess . . .’ I said, running the idea through my cocktail-compromised brain. If Annabelle coped on her own while we were away and we started looking at moving across town then he might be more receptive to the idea. My skin tingled with delight. ‘Maybe I could do it at the top of Table Mountain on our last day here?’

‘Perfect!’ Priya said. She flipped her glasses down over her eyes and lay back. Then she shot up again, raising her glasses. ‘Did we just decide that you’re going to propose to Pete? Here in Cape Town? In like, a week and a half?’

‘I dunno . . . maybe . . .’ I said, not feeling wholly in sync with my sensibilities.

‘OMGEEEEEEE!’ Priya pounced on my lounger. ‘Let’s get drunk!’

‘I’m already drunk,’ I giggled, trying to keep my bikini top on amid Priya’s overzealous hugging.

‘Then let’s get drunker!’