She has enrolled Timmy in Tiny Fish Swim School, which is an inconvenient forty-minute drive from home. It’s the closest swim school she could find that takes babies under six months. Willow does swimming lessons five minutes down the road and loves it. “We’ll put Timmy’s name down and see him in four weeks!” the manager at Willow’s swim school had said, tickling Timmy’s feet. “Look at those gigantic feet! You’ve got a swimmer there!”
But Paula found she couldn’t wait. Her desire for immediate action was too powerful. Timmy must learn to swim right now. It’s irrational because if she believes the lady’s prediction, then she also believes he’s not drowning until he’s seven, which is years away. But that brings no comfort.
Since returning to Hobart after the wedding, she and Matt have not spoken about the prediction. After all, what more is there to say? She knows he wants her to forget about it but she thinks of it constantly. Even while she is chatting quite coherently and cheerfully about something else, a ticker tape of thoughts scrolls through her head: I don’t believe it. But what if it’s true? Where have I seen her before? I don’t believe it. But what if it’s true? Work out how you know her! But how will that help? I don’t believe it. But what if it’s true?
It’s exhausting.
“Well, that sounds exhausting, Paula,” said Dr. Donnelly when she was seventeen and explained her hours-long thought process regarding some long-forgotten issue. Paula was taken aback. Didn’t everyone think like that? Apparently not.
“Your baby already has a natural ability to swim! Up until six months, the mammalian dive reflex stops water from getting into a baby’s lungs.” The instructor flips her baby onto her tummy the way Matt does with Timmy when he’s playing Superman. She waves her through the air and the baby chuckles. “The amphibian reflex means their legs will move when you place them on their tummies in water.”
“Ah ah ah!” agrees Timmy. At least he’s happy to be here.
His new bracelet jingles on his plump little wrist. Paula can’t decide if she finds the bracelet sinister, comforting, or amusing.
The instructor turns serious. “By coming here today you are giving your children a head start on a natural skill that may one day save their lives.”
“Timmy is too little for swim lessons,” Paula’s mother-in-law said when Paula dropped Willow off at her place this morning. “This is because of the witch on the plane, yes?”
Matt must have told her. The prediction is obviously still on his mind too if he’s telling his mum, which makes Paula feel tenderly toward him. Perhaps he’s not as unconcerned as he made out.
“Oh, no, no, it’s just a fun activity for Timmy,” said Paula. “Anyway, thanks so much—”
“Wait.” Zehra held up an imperious hand.
Matt’s mother is Turkish, dark-haired, dark-eyed, fashionable, and alluring.
“I have something for Timmy,” she said. “I should have given one to both children when they were born, but Matt always said, Mum, don’t embarrass me in front of Paula with your village superstitions.”
“Matt said that?” Paula was surprised. She thought he understood his family—wealthier, more stylish—was demonstrably superior to hers. She was ordinary Paula Jones when she met him. Of course she was happy to change her name to Paula Binici and automatically become more glamorous. (She’s still waiting to become as glamourous and interesting as her new name. Those plain vanilla Jones genes won’t go down without a fight.)
“An evil eye bracelet. To protect him,” said Zehra. She’d attached a silver bracelet with a blue and white pendant around Timmy’s wrist. “I have one for Willow too.”
“Thank you,” said Paula, and then she said curiously, “Do you truly believe this, Zehra?”
Zehra shrugged an elegant shoulder. “They are Swarovski.”
Everyone has superstitions. That sensible-looking, glasses-wearing guest at Paula’s sister’s wedding, a tax auditor apparently, was ecstatic to catch the bouquet, as if she truly believed it would bring her a marriage proposal.
Now the instructor walks to the edge of the pool. “What we teach at Tiny Fish is a concept called self-rescue.”
The baby in the instructor’s arms beams. Paula knows what’s about to happen before it happens.
“Meet my granddaughter, Olivia, who learned to swim before she could crawl!”
The instructor drops the baby. Everyone gasps. She descends for a few terrifying seconds but then rolls sideways, kicks her little arms and legs, and her grinning wet tiny face emerges from the water as she floats on her back.
“Yeah, this isn’t for us,” says the man next to Paula as his baby buries her face into his heavily tattooed chest. “I thought we were going to sing ‘I’m a Little Teapot.’ ”
But Timmy is in a frenzy of delight. He’s trying to leap free of Paula’s arms into the water and she has to hold tight to keep his slippery body in her grip. She has never seen him so excited.
“Well, your little man is keen,” says the instructor to Paula.
Paula laughs, as if with pride and pleasure, but she is remembering her mother-in-law’s muttered words, spoken so low that Paula had to lean close to hear her as she clasped the evil eye bracelet around Timmy’s wrist: “It may not have been a prediction, Paula, it may have been a curse.”
Chapter 42
I think my mother was wrong. Fate can be fought.
You go to the doctor. You do your health checks. You don’t ignore symptoms. You eat your vegetables. You exercise. You take your medication. You stay on the marked trails. You wear your seat belt. You wear your sunscreen. You check your blind spots. You look both ways. You check your brakes. You download a dating app. You go to that party. You apply for that job. You speak to that person. You study as hard as you are able. You invest sensibly.
You won’t necessarily win against fate, but you should at least put up a fight.
Chapter 43
“How is your back, beta? Are you still taking the painkillers? Your father and I just watched an excellent documentary about the opioid crisis. It was interesting, but also terrifying.”
Allegra’s mother is softly spoken, but her authority is so unassailable, Allegra finds she has to actively keep a grip on the grown-up version of herself even just talking with her on the phone.
She looks around the bedroom of the North Sydney apartment in which she once again finds herself, the one that she had promised she would never return to again, and yet here she is, not yet at the self-loathing stage, still at the to-hell-with-it stage.
All it took was some concerted texting on his part. He appears at the bedroom door holding up a bottle of wine, pointing at the label, eyebrows raised. For a moment he is illuminated only by the city lights from his window: stubbled, sculpted, gorgeous. It’s always a relief and a surprise to note he doesn’t have the rock-hard abs you’d think would go with his personality. He says he likes his food too much to ever get a six-pack.
He promised on his life not to make a sound while she takes this call from her mother. These days, if Allegra ignores a call from her mother for too long the next thing she might hear is rescue helicopters. She nods yes to the wine and he disappears.
“Remind me of the name of your medication, Allegra, I thought I’d written it down, but I can’t find it. I want to ask your brother what he thinks.”
“Who cares what Taj thinks?” says Allegra instinctively. There you go. Two minutes into the call and she’s already behaving like she’s twelve.
