had to be white. I had no idea white came in so many varieties.
The hardware shop man raised his eyebrows when I showed him the colour chip. ‘Enough for a one-bedroom apartment please,’ I said.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer White on White, Natural White or Whisper White?’ he said.
I shook my head. Despite their names, these colours were varieties of cream. If there’d been anything whiter than Antarctica I would have bought it. My apartment is like a hermetically sealed compartment – white as snow, surgically clean. No cobwebs hang across my lights, no cockroaches loiter in dark corners. An antiseptic fragrance greets me as I open the door each evening. Bliss.
Cleaning products are my one indulgence. Over the last year I’ve discovered I love to clean. Under the sink I have Vim and Ace, Gain and Gumption. I have products for glass and products for wood, three types of dishwashing detergent and four types of laundry detergent. I use different products depending on my mood and the task at hand. Softly is for quiet moods and Tornado for energetic ones. I think of myself as a domestic artist.
I subscribe to electronic newsletters that keep me up to date on the latest cleaning breakthroughs and look forward to Saturday morning – cleaning time. The tricky area between the bathroom tiles is my favourite. I use cotton swabs for that, discarding each one as it becomes soiled. This makes me feel like a surgeon – forceps, nurse! I don’t understand why some people have an aversion to toilet-bowl cleaning – the modern products make it a joy. Once I’ve cleaned the bathroom I am elated, practically euphoric.
Sometimes I have sexual fantasies of being scrubbed head to toe with a toothbrush or gently polished by Mr Sheen while he sings his little song. Oh Mr Sheen, oh Mr Sheen …
I haven’t shared these fantasies with Adrian. Adrian and I have a lot in common, but he might find my cleaning fantasies strange. And, given the state I was in when we first met, I’ve had to work hard to convince Adrian I’m the opposite of strange. I think I have succeeded.
Maybe one day I will tell him. Imagine the things one could do with a feather duster and a roll of extra-strong Chux. But I should be visualising, not daydreaming. Adrian says daydreaming is my worst habit. It’s lucky he is not fully acquainted with all my habits.
Adrian and I have been together for one year – one gloriously, gloriously productive year. If it wasn’t for Adrian, I don’t know where I’d be.
I’d like to hear Marley’s thoughts about Adrian. I’ve started emailing him again lately. Pulling my laptop onto the bed, I open last week’s email.
To: Marley Lennon Wright
From: Summer Dawn Rain Wright
Subject: I encounter an existential elephant
I expect you’ve been wondering why I sent you that text, Marley. I’ll get to that. First, let me tell you about Adrian.
Adrian and I met on a plane from Kathmandu, of all places. I shudder to think of the impression I made at the time.
I’d been lucky to make the flight at all. I’d woken late, rushed out into the street and squandered the last of my rupees in a bribe to my taxi driver. We’d narrowly avoided a garlanded cow, almost driven a man on a bicycle off the road and run a gauntlet of beeping cars. Check-in had closed, but I talked my way through.
You know me, Marley, this was the way I always travelled – close to the edge.
Stuffing my backpack into the overhead locker, I squeezed my way past a pair of knees to the window, collapsed onto the seat and fastened my seatbelt. A quick glance at the man next to me assured me we had nothing in common. He was thirty-ish – button-up shirt, dark grey trousers and business shoes. He was unusually clean, as if buffed up in a car wash. Staying clean in Kathmandu was no mean feat. A small briefcase rested under the seat in front of him and he held a notebook computer in his hands, waiting for the all clear to turn it on.
He reminded me of Adam Carrington, the oldest child of Blake and Alexis. You remember how Adam was kidnapped at birth and the woman who stole him confessed on her death bed that he was a Carrington? Then, when he went to find his birth family he ended up falling in love with his sister?
Aargh, Marley – my greatest fear!
‘Good morning,’ the man said to me.
I nodded in response. Australian. So we did have that in common, but if I kept my mouth shut he’d never know.
He held out his hand. ‘Adrian. Adrian Robertson.’
I toyed with the idea of feigning poor English skills before replying. ‘Summer. Summer Wright.’
If he noticed my feeble parody, he showed no sign. While the plane taxied down the runway he told me he’d been on a seven-day Business Leaders of the Future trek. He’d been pushed to his physical limits during the day and drilled by a leadership consultant at night.
It was like we’d been in different countries.
I’d been up all night partying with a group of Swedes, Irish and Israelis. A cocktail of the usual stimulants was leaching out of my system. For the moment I was buzzing, but I knew that soon an existential crisis would hit me like a rampaging elephant. This elephant had been lurking in the wings for weeks now, stamping its feet. I’d kept it at bay with determined activity, but it was butting at the flimsy support of my wildlife hide.
That’s a metaphor, Marley. There were elephants in Kathmandu, but not in my part of town and definitely not on the Air Nepal flight to Sydney.
Over the last two years I’d worked in a range of occupations. I’d been a chalet girl in Chamonix, a bartender in Biarritz, a dish-washer in Dublin, a waitress in Wales and a secretary in Sussex. I’d followed my whims all over the globe, not knowing what I was looking for. Not knowing how to find it. Not like you, Marley – you knew what you were doing from the moment you were born.
One week previously I’d woken up in the Annapurna Guesthouse next to Owl, a handsome Canadian I’d met in Lukla en route to Everest Base Camp. I’d examined him closely while he slept, cataloguing his many assets. He had a tattoo of an owl on his chest, a black spike through his ear, the softest skin I’d ever felt, curly hair like a poodle, teeth so white they glowed in the dark and, most notably, he was some kind of genius in bed. Despite all this, I rolled away from him, stared at the cracks in the ceiling and a desperate certainty smote me. I couldn’t do this anymore. I needed to start.
Start what? whispered a voice inside my head. It sounded like you, Marley. Anything, I replied to you. I need to start my life. Before I changed my mind, I pulled my phone towards me and sent you that text – coming home.
On the plane, I closed my eyes and, for the first time since I booked my plane ticket, acknowledged the existential elephant’s existence. What? What? What do you want? I asked it.
The elephant raised its trunk and trumpeted a question that made me quake.
After a two-year binge of travel, parties, crappy jobs and even more crappy relationships
what do you do hoo hoo
with the rest of your life life life?
My eyes flew open
