Me Without You (33 page)

And the brothers I’d thought of as strangers for years rang me or Skyped me at least once a day.

For forty years, I’d viewed the world as a hostile place, where even those close to me were aloof, and I was an outsider in every group. Somehow, in losing Lilah, my perspective had been broken down and rebuilt. I had decisions to make. I still had paid leave from work, but I wasn’t sure if that was a smart move anymore. My life had been turned upside down and inside out, and I now stood in exactly the same place I’d always been, but the world around me had completely changed. I needed to get moving.

I sat at my computer and researched options for travel, new jobs, and some university courses. I bookmarked pages for marathons I’d once thought I might train for. I tried to buy new lenses for my camera online.

I’ve never been great at decisions, but this was impossible. It was too soon, too raw, too hard. What would I even photograph with new lenses? Who would be waiting for me at the marathon finish line?

The thought of selecting a new path for my life nearly overwhelmed me, until I picked up the phone.

‘Tison Creative. You’re speaking with Elise.’

‘Elise.’ There was genuine warmth to my tone. ‘It’s Callum.’

‘Oh, Callum. We miss you. The place has gone to hell in a hand basket, I swear. How are you
doing
?’

I knew that my whole firm was well aware of why I’d been away, and it would be painful and tedious for me to return. But I was ready to get back to work, to have a real distraction to focus on, and to look for a kind of normal while I figured out what to make of myself. I closed my eyes, inhaled, and put my best game-face on.

‘I’m doing okay, Elise. I need to arrange to come back.’

I
forgot about the will
. The next month was all about getting back to work, getting back to running, and getting back into working on my apartment in the hopes that someone would actually buy it. Getting back to sleeping all night, to feeling like I might survive after all and getting back to normal were all a long, long way off yet—but at least I could go through the motions.

I was in a meeting at work when I got the text from Peta.

Will reading is tomorrow at the office. 1:00 p.m. xoxo

Not even a full day’s notice. I sighed and reached for my iPad. Of course there were meetings which would be just about impossible to reschedule. I had such a great excuse to miss it. It wasn’t even like I had to see Peta’s disapproval; I could just text her back and say the timing didn’t work for me. Easy.

I moved my attention back to the phone.

See you then.
My fingers betrayed me. I watched the text send and then pretended to refocus on my meeting.

There was one appeal to attending the reading, and that was a chance to speak with Alan.

P
eta
and I met in the foyer of Davis McNally, and after an awkward hug, simultaneously noticed the missing plaque on the wall where the partners were listed. The exposed cement had two visible screw holes and a squiggle of glue still attached, but no doubt it would be covered up soon when the new partner started. Lilah was being erased here, just as she probably needed to be, but it was still uncomfortable.

We had shared a silent elevator ride to Alan’s floor. I had Lilah’s laptop with me, in a spare case I’d found at home. I felt a little paranoid about it. If Peta asked me about it, could I convincingly lie and say it was my work laptop?

She didn’t ask of course. Why would she? I’d come from work; it made sense that I might have a laptop with me. If I was outwardly jittery at all, no one would blame me or even think twice, given the circumstances.

‘You’re looking well, Alan,’ Peta greeted him with a kiss on the cheek.

‘My wife has me on Lilah’s wacky diet. I’ve lost a few kegs’ worth of weight.’ He shook my hand and directed us into a boardroom.

‘I’m sorry this has taken a while for me to get to.’ He leant his elbow on the table. ‘I just needed to get my head right before I came back. Saoirse was a critical part of our team here and I knew the morale was going to take a hit, so I needed to be on my game.’ He looked down at the papers before him. ‘But legally, as you might imagine, she’d left everything in A1 condition.’

There was so much preamble and my thoughts wandered. I thought about how many hundreds of hours Lilah had spent in this building, probably in this very boardroom. I wished I’d seen her there, in that crazy plum suit, with her hair tucked away in that no-nonsense bun.

‘The Manly property shall be bequeathed to Callum Roberts…’

The words sank in belatedly and I looked to Peta, who was staring back at me in surprise.

‘Shit, Peta—my apartment is on the market.’ Embarrassment made me stumble over the words. ‘You can have the money for your studio.’

Peta smiled and clasped my hand in hers.

‘Don’t feel you need to do that, sweetheart. Lilah wanted you to have her place, and she’s given it to you.’

I needn’t have worried. The Gosford property, and Lilah’s car, and the shares and the savings we didn’t know enough about, were all going to Peta. Lilah had made sure her mother would be just fine.

‘Now, there were a few letters.’ Alan opened another folder. ‘There was one to her team, which I passed on this morning. Basically she apologised for being a slavedriver and thanked them profusely. I believe she also told those poor paralegals to quit immediately and find a job they actually liked.’

He picked up a sealed envelope.

‘This is addressed to Janice and Ryan Abel. I’ll track down their address later today and deliver it.’

I knew immediately what it would contain; an apology and an explanation. I was proud of Lilah for finding a way to make things right, even if she couldn’t do it in person.

I looked to the folder, hoping for more.

‘One for you, Peta.’ He passed the second envelope across the table and closed the folder. ‘And…there was one for me.’

It was awkward again in the room, this time Alan and Peta each avoiding my gaze. And I was disappointed—God, I was so disappointed. She had time to change her will to give me her house, but no time to write a few words to explain why, or to tell me what the hell to do next?

‘I’m sorry, Cal.’ Peta’s eyes were brimming. ‘She must have—’

‘It’s okay,’ I interrupted her as gently as I could. ‘It really is. I think I know where we stood.’

Peta nodded, swiped at her eyes, and clutched the envelope to her chest like a baby.

‘That’s about it,’ Alan said softly. ‘I can take the legal mumbo jumbo from here to transfer the properties into your names. Thanks for coming in.’

Peta was keen to leave, mumbling something about a choir practice back at Gosford, but I saw the death grip she held on the envelope and I knew she was probably headed home to read it. I remained in my seat as Alan walked her to the door, an unspoken request for a private audience with him, and one he clearly understood because he shut the door when she left.

‘When did she name me in her will?’ I asked.

‘Months ago, when she first knew she was sick again,’ he admitted.

After we broke up, before we reunited. I swallowed and forced myself to start the conversation I didn’t know how to have.

‘Did you know...’ I wasn’t sure how to convey the right meaning in my tone, and I assumed I’d failed, because Alan didn’t react, not even a little bit. That startled me and when I spoke again, I was rambling, ‘…what she’d planned?…I found an email addressed to you with a video that I guess proved that Peta and I… didn’t know how Lilah was really dying. The video was too big; it couldn’t send.’ I lifted the laptop case from under the desk and pushed it in front of him. Alan stared at it for a moment.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said hesitantly. ‘But if I
did
know, we might have considered the relevant laws and ascertained that if she did self-administer the right drugs, that certain parties shouldn’t be present, and in case it came to light, she should obtain video proof of her isolation at the time of self-administering to protect certain parties.’

It took a minute to decipher the sentences.

‘The one thing that bothers me,’ I whispered, when it all sunk in, ‘is why didn’t she just tell me?’

‘You silly man,’ Alan murmured. ‘I can chart a direct course from the start of your relationship to now—and it was all about protecting you from pain, and then when that became utterly unavoidable, she was protecting you from prosecution.’

I shook my head and moved to argue, and Alan cut me off with a violent move of his arm.

‘I sat
with that woman in this very
room and discussed for hours how we could indemnify you under the current law. She wanted to go out on
her
terms with those who loved her around her, without any risk of you suffering further after her death. Whatever video you found was her way of protecting you, in case she was found out. She was so determined to donate her body to the university, even though it was risky because of what toxicology studies might find, I think she saw this video as her—
your
insurance policy. She also, I might add, had drafted up some very strict conditions for what could and couldn’t be done to her after her death, and one of those conditions was anonymity—the researchers who were to study her where to have no idea who she was. The point is, the chances of that video ever being needed were very slim.’

‘Did Peta know?’

‘I don’t know, but I’d assume so. She’d seen James die, she knew what it was supposed to look like, and I’m guessing Lilah’s passing was a whole lot more peaceful than that. But she’s hardly going to make an issue of it, so I guess it’s all over to you.’

He’d misunderstood my angst. I had no intention of going to the police or whoever would care about such a thing; I was just trying to understand her secrecy. I was too emotional to explain myself any better. I cleared my throat.

‘She didn’t want me to find it. She just didn’t understand how computers worked.’

Alan and I shared a sad smile.

‘That was our Lilah for you,’ he sighed. ‘Brilliant at handling the law, useless at handling a keyboard.’

‘What do I do with the laptop?’

‘Leave it with me. I’ll keep it for a few more months, and then I’ll have it quietly destroyed.’

I
t took
me weeks to get the courage up to visit Lilah’s—
my
—new apartment in Manly. First, I had to grieve enough to face it without it breaking me. So I watched the days on the calendar tick past and I waited until I could again think of her without the sense of loss feeling overwhelming.

I knew it was time to go when the unsettling feeling that I was slipping back into my old habits grew stronger than the grief. The morning I woke up and felt dread at the thought of another long day at the office hit my mind before thoughts of Lilah, I called in sick and went to the apartment instead.

I stood in the hallway with my key near the lock. My hands shook and memories of Lilah danced all around me. I remembered times she’d greeted me at the door, times we’d kissed as we said goodbye. I remembered that last day, when she’d behaved so strangely, and then the walk we’d taken back to the Corso, as if we were just any old couple wanting an outing.

As I’d expected and maybe even hoped, the grief resurged, bigger and stronger than it had been in weeks, and I pushed the key into the lock and opened the door.

The very first thing I saw, beyond the stacking doors but before the ocean, was a balcony that was fully in bloom. Plants that had been totally dead months before were green again, with blossoms at their most unbelievably perfect peak. Every colour of the rainbow was perched upon a pot, bulbs and succulents and perennials and every other kind of flower, burgeoning with life in spite of the season.

I had my travel bag on my shoulder. It slipped off and hit the tiles, and I stared.

Dead twigs were thick bushes, and scrawny seedlings held heavy-set flowers. The herbs were in full health, and the pansies were virtually glowing in their finest display. I quickly calculated, it had been almost four months since our last visit, and somehow in spite of the neglect of that time, those skeletal plants had become the brightest of examples of the beauty of life.

And then I knew that, somehow, Lilah was okay—and that in death, she’d found a way to be free.

I
found
her diary almost immediately. She’d propped it on the kitchen bench, right between the kettle and the coffee jar. The necklace I’d given her for Christmas was hanging over it.

I sat on the balcony, with the waves lashing the coastline below me and a cool wind blowing a scattered cloud cover together into something which actually threatened rain. But I kicked my feet up on the coffee table and I read. I started on the first page, and I kept reading, even when my bladder threatened to burst and my backside was numb from pressure.

I read, and I cried, and I felt Lilah’s skinny arms wrap around me to bring me comfort. I watched her handwriting and even her eloquence begin to slip. And then I found her last entry, which she must have written sometime during that last visit to see Lynn, and I understood why she’d left it for me.

4
June

Dear Cal

Well, obviously I’m dead, so sorry about that. I can’t imagine how it’s been for you. If it were you instead of me, I’m not sure I’d cope. Please cope, Cal.

I’ve debated long and hard with myself about what to do with this journal. I destroyed the others when I got sick again, but this one… I thought I wrote it for me, but I think it’s actually for you.

There were some things I needed to make right, and things inside my head are just too feeble for me to do it properly now. So maybe this is the coward’s way—but, hey, if you have to die tragically, there has to be some benefit, right?

I loved you, Callum Roberts, you uptight, annoying, stubborn freak of nature. I loved every cell in your stupidly handsome body and every moment I had with you. I loved your stinky meat breath and your hopeless uncertainty about your life. And you know what? You loved me too, and I couldn’t have doubted it for a second when we were together, because it was more real to me than anything else I’d known in my lifetime.

You’re reading this, so you must be back here at my place, which I guess means you’ve read the will and you know it’s now your place. It’s worth a fortune you know, so do whatever the fuck you want with it, and get out there and
live
. Walk the Andes. Get Bali belly. Rescue an orphan in Romania. Go to fucking Paris. Pick up a gorgeous lady in Thailand and run screaming from the room when you realise she is actually a
he
. Just do something. You have so many days, Cal, so many days before you—and you know what’s a bigger tragedy than me getting HD? You
not
getting HD and dying of inertia, or locking yourself away and pining over me when you could be living for the both of us.

So don’t fucking do it, okay? Get your arse on a plane.

Love always, and forever, truly.

Your Lilah