now also deaf Shelley was getting ready to ask me some more questions. Lily and Di stood up together and started clearing glasses away, as if they had made some kind of secret society decision.
“Let’s get you into bed, Kari,” said Lily. “You should probably stay here with Di. Too late to go home now – unless you’re up to dealing with Dirk?” Her sleek black bob swung into her face as she turned to look first at me and then at Di. “I spoke to him earlier,” she added. “Told him maybe you would stay here if he didn’t hear from you.”
I love Lily.
“I’m definitely not ready for Dirk.” The only upside to the day had been that I hadn’t had any time to think about my husband. “Is it okay? Can I stay here?” I asked Di, who was already nodding her agreement. I didn’t need more than that. I dished out the goodnight hugs and bolted for the guest room, where yesterday’s rejected yoga kit was waiting for me to turn it into a pair of pyjamas.
In bed I could hear the others talking in low voices. Owen was saying I should stay at home on Monday if I didn’t feel like work. Thank God I work with Owen so I won’t have to fake an excuse to a boss. And Shelley was still wondering out loud how I had managed to deal with Dirk and a funeral on one day. Lily said she would call again in the morning. I heard Di putting the dishwasher on.
I could only think of Dirk.
I love you, he’d said. Don’t leave me.
8
Sunday was busy – for my phone.
07:15 AM Dirk: Hi, are you ok? How is it going there? I love you.
10:00 AM Dirk: Haven’t heard from you but talked to Di, she says you still there. Can I come around? Love you.
12:30 PM Dirk: I am so sorry about everything; can you call when you get a chance please? I have to go back tonight but I would like to see you or at least talk before I go. Please, I am so sorry. I do love you. Please can I come to you?
02:35 PM Dirk: Are you getting my messages? Please can we talk before I go? Or can I see you? My flight is at 9. It’s the latest one I can get and I will only be back on Friday afternoon. Just let me know that you are ok. Xxx
11:40 PM Dirk: Just landed. Hope you sleep well. Love you x
Also four missed calls just before his flight left at nine. Three voicemails. I ignored them all. I’ve been hiding in here the whole day. Di comes to check on me, bringing food I can’t bring myself to eat. I knew he would talk to Di and Lily again, and they would tell him to just wait. Usually I would reply to Dirk the instant the messages arrived. Usually he’d only be replying to my messages. Usually he’d say that messages are for basic information only, not for chat; chat could always wait until we saw each other. Voicemails? You had to be kidding. Now his messages have love and kisses in them.
I did nothing. Another day, I’d have killed for them.
9
06:30 AM Dirk: Hi, I am thinking of you, sorry we didn’t get to talk yesterday. Please ring me. Love you x
I usually hate Monday mornings. This one felt like the Mother of all Mondays. I am in Denial and it’s not a fucking river in Egypt.
I woke up at five, a good two and half hours before my usual wake up. I could’ve gone home last night but in the same way I couldn’t face Dirk, I couldn’t face our empty house. Di must’ve seen it in my eyes.
“Stay another night at least, no need to rush off,” she’d said, delivering supper to the bedside table and fresh towels to the bathroom. I ate the cold pasta this morning, picking out the ham bits (go figure: I can drink wine but I still can’t eat ham bits), while reading all of last week’s Cape Times that someone – Alan, probably – had left folded on the other bedside table. I scanned all the horoscopes (Gemini for me, Scorpio for Dirk), looking for some crazy clue I had missed that could have tipped me off about the disaster that was Friday. The only clue – and it was not an obvious one – I found on my phone in a last-ditch google of the “importance of 14 February 2014”. Some number jumbo about it having been “a unique day because its specific circumstances have never happened before and can’t happen again for eighteen thousand years. The Valentine’s Day of 14 February 2014 has the month and day numbers reflected in the year number”.
Great. It has never happened before and it isn’t going to happen again for eighteen thousand years. Lucky. Going to bookmark affinitynumerology.com in case they send out some kind of heads-up alert for when the numbers say your husband is going to cheat and your gran is going to die. And that family who hates you? You’re going to move in with them for six weeks.
Never happened before. And not again for eighteen thousand years. Hallelujah.
Six weeks! How did I even get myself into that? Stupid self, nodding at Dhanyal like that.
The early morning wake up didn’t help me get out of bed. I stayed there the whole day, hiding. It seemed easier to eavesdrop on Di’s life than try to deal with my own. I listened. Heard Di and Alan getting the girls, Kate and Sarah, ready for school. Di always said it was a nagfest in the morning but I’d never really believed her. This morning the scales fell from my eyes. Di made being a mother to Kate and Sarah look easy; hearing the school routine confirmed that it was actually at least as hard as I suspected. What kind of mother would I be? What would it have been like if Dirk and I had had children?
At 12:30 Di came into the room. She stood at the side of the bed with another cup of coffee and a fresh toasted cheese sandwich on a tray. A perfect latte-art heart sat on the foam. She’d learned to make all kinds of things at the zillion courses she did to keep sane.
“Come on, I’ve left you alone long enough, let’s see what you need to do today.” She put the coffee and the sandwich down next to the bedside clock and picked up the pasta bowl. “I’m going to have to leave for Woolies soon and then get the kids at school. Are you okay here?”
I’m sure Di never spent a day in bed in her life. Not even when Alan went AWOL. I felt stupid just lying there in a pile of newspapers, glued to my phone, Medusa hair all over. But I couldn’t get myself to do anything else.
“Kari, come on, let’s make a plan,” Di said. I wasn’t in Egypt, but I think Di could see in my eyes that the guest bed was my Survivor Island and I wasn’t ready to get voted off just yet. She sat down and put her arms around me instead, as if I was one of her girls. “Have you spoken to Dirk? He called here a few times yesterday asking how you are. I told him you were probably going to stay here but that I didn’t know anything more . . . He sounds as shattered as you look,” she added softly into my hair.
I had no answers. I just cried on her shoulder for a long time.
10
02:30 PM Dirk: Hi, let me know you’re ok? Please ring me. Love you x
Di tried her best to get me to move but I stayed in that room, even when Kate and Sarah were home. It was just not my day for playing princesses and tiaras. I listened to Di give them lunch and help with homework, like a family sitcom playing on the TV in another room. Who would’ve thought a seven- and a nine-year-old could have so much homework? And that Di could say the same thing so many times without losing her mind. Silence while they all rushed off somewhere and came back from somewhere, and then the Bartlett Family Barney was
