Make or Break Page 8

  ‘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!’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Around 1 p.m. I realised Pete hadn’t arrived so checked my phone and saw I had a missed call from him. I spread my towel on a lounger in the shade, lay down and dialled his number.

  ‘Hey!’ he answered. It sounded like he was in a car. ‘Did you get my message?’

  ‘No, I just phoned you back. How was the hike?’

  ‘Oh my god, Jess,’ he said. ‘It was unbelievable! It’s this track called Skeleton Gorge. It goes through a ravine and at the top there’s a lake! Heaps of other people were walking it and they were cheering each other on and singing. And everybody seems to know Goat.’

  ‘Sounds amazing! I can’t wait to see the photos,’ I said and felt a pinch of guilt I hadn’t gone with him. ‘So are you on your way here?’

  ‘No, the hike is one-way so we’re in a taxi back to the car at the other end. But Jess,’ he lowered his voice like he didn’t want his fellow passengers to hear him. ‘Goat and his cousin are going snorkelling with seals and they’ve invited us along. We can swing by the BBQ and pick you up in half an hour?’

  ‘Snorkelling with seals?’ I laughed. ‘In the ocean where sharks hang out? And isn’t it totally freezing?’

  Priya had said the ocean in Cape Town never gets above an icy fourteen degrees, which confirmed I was never going in there.

  ‘You won’t be freezing, you wear wetsuits.’

  ‘A dark shiny wetsuit? Sort of like a dark shiny seal?’

  ‘Jess—’

  ‘You want to swim with seals, dressed as a seal? If a shark is heading out for lunch you’ll be the slowest seal on the menu.’

  ‘I really want to do this,’ Pete said, a small plea in his voice. ‘My god, this place is amazing! Please come?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Come on, Jess, I thought this trip would be a great time for us to, you know, reconnect and stuff.’

  ‘What?’ My stomach dropped. ‘You think we’re disconnected?’

  Pete sighed. ‘Look, I’m just saying that this time here is a great opportunity for us to spend some proper time together. Between my job and Annabelle we hardly spend any time together. It’s important.’

  ‘Oh, right. I agree. Totally. It’s just, the thing is, I’m a bit tipsy.’

  ‘You’ll be fine.’

  ‘Probably more like a lot tipsy. If they did a breath test, hey . . . do you think they do breath tests for snorkelling? They should. You could totally drown if you were so drunk you used your snorkel as a straw – I mean, it looks like one big straw and for a drunk person—’

  ‘Jess?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you coming or not?’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘You go though, OK?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  I looked across the garden. Priya was gathering players for a game of pool volleyball, Laurel’s head was thrown back in laughter at something somebody had said and the elder family members were gathered around a table under a white brolly, getting along famously.

  ‘Yeah, I’m happy here by the pool,’ I said, raising my hand to be included in the volleyball game.

  ‘You’re two steps away from death at all times, remember?’ Pete joked.

  ‘Ha! Then I’ll have to stay in the pool, won’t I? Snakes can’t swim, right?’

  ‘Yeah, they can.’

  ‘God! It’s not safe anywhere! Online flights to South Africa sh
ould come with a warning. Like a pop-up box that says, “Are you sure you want these flights? Please check the left box if you are OK with imminent death at all times. Enjoy your flight.” ’

  ‘You’re a weirdo,’ Pete said with warmth in his voice.

  ‘Pete?’ I said, getting serious.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I love you and I don’t want you to be eaten.’

  ‘I won’t be. Have you seen the size of Goat? They’ll definitely go for him before me.’

  I heard Goat make laughing protests in the background. We arranged to meet back at the apartment and I hung up feeling like Pete and I had two very different holidays in mind. I shook my head. I would go home, buff my starting-to-tan skin, put on something short and flirty and take Pete to one of the restaurants Priya had recommended.

  Trust dropped me back at the apartment at 5 p.m. I looked at the lift, inviting and quick, especially with an afternoon of cocktails in my system, but instead turned, and with my sandals dangling from my hand, began a barefoot, stamping ascent to our sixth-floor apartment. Priya and Laurel were leaving for their ‘tech free’ honeymoon at an eco-resort at 3 a.m. the next day. They’d return the day after Pete and I left, and Priya had given me strict instructions to enjoy the apartment, hit all the places she’d listed, trust in Trust and have a ‘fucking good holiday, babe, you deserve it’. An hour later Pete came home fizzing with exhilaration.

  ‘Hey!’ he said, dropping his gear bag and launching himself onto the bed where I was looking at my inbox void of emails from Dad admitting to having joined the South African diamond mafia. I got a waft of manly sweat and sea salt when he kissed me. ‘Look at this!’

  He pulled his phone out and, with eyes gleaming, showed me a picture of him on an inflatable boat with a gigantic outboard motor. The sun glinted off soft undulations on the ocean’s surface and Pete sat on the boat’s edge with a mask and snorkel pushed on top of his head. He looked ecstatically happy.

  ‘Did you see seals?’ I asked.

  ‘Did we see seals?’ Pete grinned.

  He swiped through photo after photo of endlessly clear blue sky, sapphire ocean, hundreds of seals, the fins of a pod of dolphins, penguins, dramatic cliffs and colonies of seabirds. I felt truly jealous. I was disappointed in myself for being scared of sharks (and jellyfish and swordfish and undetonated 1940s underwater mines and spontaneous tidal rips). And a bit upset Pete had gone on the trip when he was supposed to be with me at the BBQ. If he’d waited until the next day I’d have gone too. Perhaps not in the actual water dressed as lunch, but at least on the boat trip. I decided to agree to whatever was Pete’s next desired pursuit. As long as it didn’t involve sharks or water or heights or caves or snakes or— STOP! I would do whatever he suggested.

  ‘The Cederberg climb?’ I said as we took delivery of our tapas-style dishes.

  The Uber driver had dropped us off outside an old factory building (I’d told Trust to go home to his family) and we’d taken a glass exterior lift up to a seventh-floor exposed-brick-and-pipe/black floor-and-ceiling restaurant. The interior was dimly lit, so the 360 views of the harbour and city were the focus. It was intimate and lively at the same time and the two glasses of champagne, flippy summer skirt and Pete’s interest in my low-cut top had made me feel sexy and excited about life. But then Pete had mentioned, in a leading and hopeful manner, that there were spaces on the seven-day trip, and my life-loving mood had taken a nosedive.

  ‘Is that the one Goat was talking about at the wedding? The one that was brutal and dangerous and all that?’

  ‘It’s a measured risk,’ Pete said in a measured tone.

  ‘How exactly do they measure it?’ I said, getting out my phone and googling The Cederbergs. A quick scroll told me what I needed to know. ‘They have snakes and cliffs and scorpions and leopards. You don’t want to go, do you?’

  ‘Leopards are shy. You’d be very lucky to see one.’ Pete popped a dumpling in his mouth, avoiding the question.

  ‘Pete?’ I said, putting my phone to the side and looking directly at him.

  ‘I think it’s an amazing opportunity.’ He shrugged one shoulder.

  ‘But it’s for seven days,’ I said, trying to reign in my mounting frustration. ‘Today you said you thought we needed to reconnect? Going away without me is not “reconnecting”. It’s the total opposite.’

  Pete sighed like he’d known what my reaction would be and had already been getting aggravated by it. ‘I just feel so energised by this place. Like I’m in the right place for me for once!’

  ‘For once? What does that mean?’

  ‘I feel . . .’ He glanced at the people either side of us. ‘. . . stifled sometimes. Like I could be doing these amazing things but I can’t because of my job and where we live and stuff.’

  ‘Where we live? England, you mean? You want to move to South Africa – is that it?’

  ‘No,’ Pete sighed. He picked up another dumpling from one of the shared platters and plopped it on the mini plate in front of him. ‘It’s just that most of our life seems to be organised around Annabelle and Streatham and driving to my job and it’s just so . . . so regulated.’ He looked up at me. ‘Don’t you ever feel like you’ve had a door open to you for the first time and you can suddenly see so clearly that you’ve been living a half-life?’

  At Pete’s mention of Annabelle I realised I hadn’t called to see how Katie’s therapy had gone. It was the first time Mum wasn’t there to pick Hunter up from school. Had the lady from the nanny service known Hunter couldn’t eat normal biscuits because he’d go supersonic and end up leaping from the tops of large furniture items like a demented flying squirrel? I clicked back into Pete’s monologue about how the world is a vibrant, exciting place that must be climbed on and swum in and run along. Planet Earth was one big jungle gym and he wanted in on it.

  ‘I mean,’ he looked at me, ‘are you happy just being a PA and going to work and yoga and Annabelle’s, and for every week just to be the same?’

  ‘I’m not just a PA, and you know it!’

  I looked at him; dark rings under his eyes, pale English skin that had pinked under that day’s sun and an expression of desperation. Or was it exasperation? We’d been on heaps of holidays together but never before had we seemed on such different wavelengths. Before Annabelle had Katie, Pete and I would hit all the major European cities. We loved walking, seeing the sights, climbing the ancient steps, eating all the food. We’d been happy with our regular mini breaks to Paris and Barcelona, and our once a year medium-sized breaks to Turkey or Greece. When Katie came along Annabelle needed help and we’d pretty much dropped our lives to be there for her. I knew we’d get back to how we’d been before. One day. It hadn’t happened yet, though, and I didn’t realise Pete was feeling so frustrated. I leant across the table and grabbed his hand. He was tired and just needed a few days to relax into holiday mode.

  ‘Shall we skip dessert and just go home?’ I asked, giving him a flirtatious look from under my lashes. ‘I’ve got the best day planned for us tomorrow.’

  Pete gripped my hand and nodded but he looked resigned. Our eyes met across the table full of picked-at food and tea lights, and I tried to push down my feelings of uneasiness.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The next day we got up early and ate breakfast at a steampunk café. Huge vintage machinery with shiny copper piping and multiple levers and cogs took up the majority of the warehouse-like space. Waiters in waistcoats adorned with chains and leather straps, top hats and/or vintage aviation goggles on their heads and iPads in holsters took orders from lively locals with bundles of cheer and personality. The coffee menu had strange things like egg-white shots or orange juice infusions, and I ended up trying far too many and chittered incessantly like a coked-up Warner Brothers’ chipmunk. I think I was also trying to compensate for Pete’s slight downturn in temperament. It was something we were both trying to overlook but it was there, loud in its silence.

  ‘What did you thin
k of the egg-white coffee?’ I said as we hopped into Trust’s waiting van. ‘It felt like I was drinking, sorry, but a coffee that someone had ejaculated in.’

  Pete made a face. A justifiable face. And yet I carried on.

  ‘Not that I’ve ever drunk a coffee that someone has ejaculated in.’ I clicked in my seat belt. ‘Well, not knowingly, anyway. I mean, I could have. But I’m sure I would have been able to tell. It’s a very distinct consistency, isn’t it?’

  Pete glanced towards Trust then looked at me with his eyebrows raised so high they were almost in his hairline.

  ‘Sorry,’ I made an ‘I’m-being-a-bit-gross-aren’t-I’ face. ‘I feel a bit wired. I think I’ve had too much coffee.’ I shot Pete a sideways glance and lowered my voice. ‘Too much cum coffee,’ I muttered, and then giggled behind my fist.

  We walked off the generous breakfast along a clifftop footpath, busy with Capetonians and their dogs. The sea pounded below us and I pointed out (after googling the correct collective noun) a murmuration of starlings twisting and folding in on itself, some risk-loving paddleboarders and a host of great whites that mostly (always) turned out to be rocks breaking through the rolling surface of the ocean. Pete walked beside me trying to muster enthusiasm but I could tell his heart was elsewhere. Surfing an avalanche or diving for toxic-shelled crabs, perhaps. We ran through our individual ideas for the rest of the trip.

  ‘I think we should go shark cage diving. And ziplining. And I really want to try canyoning,’ Pete said. His eyes had shone when he’d mentioned the Cederberg climb again.

  ‘I’m pretty keen to visit some more wineries. And animal sanctuaries. And I’d love to go to a festival while we’re here,’ I said. My eyes had watered when he’d mentioned the Cederberg climb again. I was really trying to understand his new need for going to the top of things or under things or off the edge of things. He’d never been into this type of stuff before – just your regular ‘go to the gym/lift some weights/Map-My-Run-and-share-it-on-Facebook’ type stuff (I’d been very disappointed that he didn’t take on my suggestion of running in the shape of a dick and balls like I’d seen on Bored Panda and sharing that map on Facebook). I wanted to share his enthusiasm but it felt forced, whereas his was real and desperate.