You may recall my mother predicting I would see the spires of a beautiful castle with someone I loved, and it could have been at Schloss Vaduz in Liechtenstein—we laughed a lot that day and there was definitely snow on the ground—or perhaps it was the hike ending at King Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, which Mum would have been more likely to have seen on a wall calendar. Although I was annoyed with Ned that day, so maybe not.
His impatience could annoy me. He could not bear to wait or line up, and it’s inevitable when you travel. My so-called rigidity could annoy him. He wanted me to be more spontaneous, take more chances, and stop scanning every situation for possible risks. (That was literally my job.) He bounded up to strangers like a Labrador and asked them if they knew a better way, a shorter line, a faster option. Sometimes they did and he was triumphant, and sometimes they didn’t and I rolled my eyes.
We lived for five years in an apartment in Sydney with a view of the Harbour Bridge, for three years in a stone-built cottage (circa 1630!) in Oxfordshire, England, with a view of a bubbling stream (there were swans! We couldn’t get over it), and for one year in a one-bedroom Brooklyn brownstone with no view at all, for a rent you would now find unbelievable.
One year we got into role-play, one year we got into tantric sex (very time-consuming), and one year we got bored of sex and stopped for a while. One year we became obsessed with health food and exercise, and another year we got into fine dining and theater. One year, our twentieth year together, everything went wrong. Auntie Pat died, Ned’s mother died, Ned and I both had health issues, our car was stolen, and we couldn’t seem to catch a break. We bickered constantly, then we shouted, and then we stopped talking, and that was awful because talking was what we did best. We went to a counselor, who we both hated at first, but who we grew to love, and she helped us drag ourselves back from the brink. It’s possible, just like Mum said it was, and then everything feels richer and deeper because of your awareness of what you so nearly lost.
Ned retired from teaching and I moved into a consultancy role, which meant I could work from anywhere doing the hours that suited me. We moved to Hobart and bought an ordinary shabby redbrick house with an overgrown garden and magnificent views of the Derwent River and the Tasman Bridge. I said, “No more moving. I’m done. They’ll have to carry me out in a box.”
Honestly I was just sick of the change-of-address forms.
Ned shook my hand. He said, “No more moving, Cherry.”
On our first night our neighbors came over to introduce themselves. Their names were Jill and Bert. Jill carried a magnificent pavlova filled to the brim with cream and chopped strawberries and bananas. Her signature dish. It was a funny thing to take to a new neighbor because it had to be eaten right away and there was too much for two people, and what if we weren’t hungry? What if we were lactose intolerant? Anyhow, that was my darling friend Jill: so foolhardy! We felt compelled to invite them in. Ned gave me a comforting look that communicated: Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of them fast.
But they stayed until midnight, and we drank the champagne our real estate agent had left for us while we polished off the pavlova. When I look back on that night it’s like remembering the night we all fell in love.
To be clear: We didn’t begin a polyamorous relationship, if that’s what you’re thinking! (Each to their own, but no thank you.) We just clicked in an entirely conventional but somehow very special way. The four of us seemed to balance one another out, like a beautiful equation. Euler’s identity is considered the most beautiful equation in the world and is often compared to a Shakespearean sonnet, but a simpler mathematical analogy probably makes more sense. We were like a square. A square is mathematical perfection.
We were different. Jill and Bert, for example, did not like to travel outside of Australia. They only visited the mainland under sufferance to visit their three grown-up kids. Bert had a flying phobia. Jill had to dose him up on Valium to get him on the plane.
Jill had been a high school librarian and she was always trying to find Ned and me books we would like, as if we were reluctant young readers at her school. We preferred nonfiction, and when Jill told us fiction was “the lie through which we tell the truth” (she was quoting Albert Camus), we said truth is stranger than fiction (she told us we were quoting Mark Twain, and that wasn’t the point). Bert, like me, was still working when we met, in construction, which was fortuitous, as he helped Ned with some of his more overambitious renovation projects.
Because we lived next door we could get together at the drop of a hat. We played board games on cold winter nights in front of our fireplace, and we had barbecues in the summer on their back terrace. We discovered a shared love of hiking and camping, although as we got older our lower backs preferred we stayed in lodges. Tasmania has some of the best hikes in the world, and I’m confident the four of us did every one of them.
I think we moved next door at exactly the right time for Jill and Bert, because they had just become classic empty-nesters. Their children had all moved to the mainland for careers and opportunities. Jill and Bert were hoping lower house prices and free childcare would lure them back when the grandchildren arrived.
Ned and I still traveled, but Jill and Bert took care of our house when we were away, and when they were away visiting their children we looked after Bob, their adorable German shepherd.
Our friendship never got too much, which it could easily have done. We seemed to know when we needed to give one another space.
—
One day I came down with a very bad head cold, as I do every couple of years. The four of us had planned to go for lunch at a vineyard and I told Ned he should still go.
While they were gone, I lay on my bed and the thought came into my aching head: They’re not coming back. I’ll never see them again. It was the same cool precise voice I’d heard when Jack was going away to Vietnam.
Jill and Bert drove a white Toyota Camry. Jill was driving home so the men could try lots of wine at the vineyard. She had a bit of a lead foot.
I saw it happening. The men a bit raucous after the wine-tasting. Jill distracted. Just for a moment, as she took a sharp bend too fast. The car flipping. Three times before it settled. Bang, bang, bang. All three gone. Only me remaining.
When the knock on the door came, I was not surprised. I knew it was the police, and I knew they would ask if there was anyone I could call, and I would have to say no, there is no one. Everyone I loved most in the world was in that car. I went to the door slowly.
I wanted to stay in my life for just a few seconds more.
—
It was Ned. He couldn’t let himself in because he’d forgotten his keys. He was so taken aback when I collapsed sobbing into his arms. He said Jill did take some of those corners too fast, but she was a good driver and he never felt unsafe. I said the pain when I thought I’d lost them all had been unbearable. I didn’t think it would be possible to go on. I felt that I would have to kill myself. He said I mustn’t think about it, I had not inherited my mother’s gift—if she even had a gift—and everyone imagined terrible things, but that didn’t mean they were going to happen. Jill was deeply offended when she heard about my vision and said she had an impeccable driving record, thank you very much.
—
Four years went by. More hikes with Jill and Bert. Our pace as brisk as ever, even after Jill hurt her ankle. She was good with her rehab, she got better. More board games. Ned and I did a road trip on the East Coast of America and visited my old friend Ivy and her husband, as well as some of our friends from when we’d lived in Brooklyn all those years ago.
Jill and Bert had their first grandchild, and two of their three children moved back to Tasmania as they had always hoped. Ned’s nephew (Hazel and Tony’s eldest) got married and Ned was MC at the wedding, and he was marvelous, hilarious, everyone said so. Where did Uncle Ned get all that energy?
I think it’s possible I was as happy as I could possibly be during this time. That vision had really affected me. I felt there was another universe running alongside me, where Ned, Bert, and Jill really had died just as I foresaw, and I was grateful every day to have remained in this one. I remember once, on a Sunday morning, splashes of sunlight on our kitchen floor, a Coldplay song on the radio, I bit into a piece of multigrain sourdough toast with peanut butter and I looked at Ned’s broad back as he stood shirtless in his boxers, chopping up celery for his awful morning smoothie; it was just another normal morning, nothing special, but I felt the most extraordinary feeling of bliss, euphoria, and contentment combined. I have never forgotten it. On the days I believe in heaven, I believe it’s like that moment.
Then Ned pressed the button on the blender so I couldn’t hear the chorus of the Coldplay song and I cried out in exasperation, “Ned!”
—
Now I will tell you what happened on another Sunday morning four months before the flight that made me famous.
Chapter 110
Ethan is at the Opera Bar. He’s found a good table with an unobstructed view of the harbor, and he’s ordered a big bowl of fries and a beer.
He has secretly avoided bars since the prediction, but the mood here is so congenial. There are office workers, backpackers, families, and theatergoers. There are children. Nobody looks like they want to pick a fight with him, or with anyone, in fact. All he can hear is laughter, conversation, the squawk of seagulls and coo of pigeons, the toots of ferry horns as they come in and out of the wharf at Circular Quay. It’s the end of a soft-breezed spring day. He’s definitely not going to be assaulted tonight.
He’s waiting to meet Harvey’s hot sister and a friend, or cousin, or something, he’s unclear on the identity of the other woman, but they have both come up to Sydney from Tasmania for the weekend, and Lila texted and asked if he wanted to meet for a drink. To toast Harvey, she said.
The waiter drops off his bowl of fries and a seagull settles on the railing and looks Ethan straight in the eye.
“Not for you,” says Ethan, and he looks for the guy in the yellow vest patrolling the concourse with a kelpie on a lead. The kelpie wears a Bird Patrol collar and appears to love his job shooing away the seagulls, which used to be a big problem at this bar. Ethan remembers being here with Harvey when he threw a handful of tomato sauce packets at a marauding seagull. The girl Harvey liked had accused him of animal cruelty. Poor Harvey. He was so downcast. He’d thought he was being chivalrous.
Ethan has finally told his parents about the prediction.
“That’s not going to happen.” His mother was adamant. “Absolutely not. You’re not the type.”
