She reads, in jarringly inappropriate cheerful pink curly cursive:
RIP KAYLA HALFPENNY
TAKEN TOO SOON.
FOREVER MISSED.
FOREVER NINETEEN.
Chapter 59
The flap of a seagull’s wing and everything changes.
Chapter 60
“No, no, please, no,” says Sue under her breath.
She watches the video on her phone in the grocery store, surrounded by the bright colors of fresh fruit and vegetables. Ladyfinger bananas on special, death on her phone.
She remembers Kayla dropping her phone in the check-in line, her polite gratitude when Max picked it up for her; telling Sue about her flying phobia.
You’re more likely to die in a car crash, darling.
Sue is pretty sure she didn’t actually say that to her, she probably just thought it, although what does it matter if she did. Sue wasn’t the one making awful predictions that day.
She thinks about Max teaching the boys to drive: “You still look, mate, even if you get a green light. You can’t trust other drivers to do the right thing.”
She and Max tossed out last-minute warnings like hopeful lifebuoys every time their sons left the house, from when they were bike-riding kids to newly licensed young drivers to young dads with new babies. “Wear your helmet!” “Don’t drink too much!” “Drive slowly in the rain!”
But you could never say it all and you could never say it enough. Check, double-check, triple-check, please protect your vulnerable beautiful heads that we once cupped so tenderly in our hands.
Sue knows her children often ignored their boring parental advice, yeah, yeah, sure thing, Mum, got it, Dad, she knows they took risks Max and Sue never knew about, and it’s only pure luck they got away with it.
She thinks of Kayla’s parents but only momentarily because she could never have worked in the ER for all these years if she took on everyone’s pain. It won’t help them. Nothing will help them. There is no pain relief she can offer.
Instead, she returns to grocery shopping while scenes from the video continue to flicker behind her eyes.
This doesn’t mean her own prediction will also come true, of course it doesn’t, but as soon as she gets home she will make the appointments. She will do the tests.
Chapter 61
It feels wrong to be sharing my life story, without acknowledging the life story of Kayla Halfpenny.
I saw Kayla in the departure lounge in Hobart. She was the one who reminded me of my tearful piano teacher. The one who knocked over her drink and then her phone.
I have learned a lot about her. It’s all still there, online, if anyone cares to look.
Kayla Halfpenny lived in Lauderdale, a town on the outskirts of Hobart, with her parents and her two younger sisters. She was studying for a Diploma of Beauty Therapy. She was a “Swiftie” (a passionate fan of the extraordinary performer Taylor Swift, whose music I also find extremely catchy). Kayla was terrified of flying, but that weekend she was bravely flying alone to Sydney for a friend’s party. She had a good time at the party. She told everyone about the very tall boy she’d met at the baggage carousel.
Her younger sisters worshipped her. Her parents adored her. They had surprised her with a puppy for her eighteenth birthday. Kayla was so pleased and surprised she cried hysterically. I have seen the footage of this. It’s touching. She called the puppy “Ruby Tuesday.” I don’t know why. “Ruby Tuesday” is a Rolling Stones song that came out in 1967. I don’t know if Kayla loved the song, but I love that song. Ruby Tuesday grieved so badly for Kayla the vet put her on antidepressants. Kayla’s sister posted this online. She’s doing better now. Ruby Tuesday, that is. Not the sister. I know I’m rambling. I’m upset.
Kayla died in a car accident on a Thursday afternoon at an intersection in Primrose Sands, Hobart. It was not rush hour. It was a clear, cold July day. Visibility was good. She was not speeding. We know exactly what happened because her friend, who survived, although she was seriously injured, livestreamed the accident on social media. If, like me, you are over the age of fifty—or even if you’re over the age of thirty?—you will not understand why she would be “livestreaming” a conversation in a car, its only significance to share with “friends” that Kayla was driving slowly because of a psychic prediction.
The accident was not Kayla’s fault. She obeyed every road rule. She should have been able to trust the green light.
It was not technically my fault, either, although it has occurred to me that if Kayla had been driving faster that day, not so cautiously, she might have been at a different intersection at the moment a forty-year-old man, more than three times over the legal alcohol limit at ten in the morning, with two previous drunk-driving convictions, drove straight through a red light at over one hundred kilometers an hour.
I wish this thought had not occurred to me and I hope it has not occurred to her parents.
Chapter 62
“It’s only money, babe,” says Dom when he finds Eve crying, her phone pressed to her collarbone. “We’ll work it out. What is it? Another bill?”
She has played the video at least five times, as if hoping something different will happen. It feels like her heart is breaking and she doesn’t know this girl, so her heart has no right to break!
“No, it’s nothing to do with money.” Eve wipes her disgusting snotty nose with the back of her hand. Her teeth are chattering. It’s a cold day and they’re trying to save money by not turning on the heating because every volt of electricity, or whatever you call it, costs so much. “It’s that girl from the plane. She…she…”
She can’t speak. She is remembering Kayla at the baggage carousel, touching the lace on Eve’s wedding dress with that delicate fingertip and then how she touched her hair when she talked to the tall boy.
“I don’t want to be famous,” she’d said, when Eve told her Kayla Halfpenny sounded like it could be the name of a famous person, and now she’s gone viral.
Dom takes the phone.
He watches the video and she watches his face, and then she thinks to herself, Oh, Eve, you stupid, stupid girl.
Chapter 63
A “hard determinist,” like the bearded man, would say the driver responsible for Kayla Halfpenny’s death could only have behaved as he actually did. His actions were the inevitable result of a genetic tendency toward alcoholism, perhaps, along with a childhood that gave him little or no moral code, an argument with a girlfriend that brought up infantile memories of abandonment, leading him to drink all through the night and then get behind the wheel the following morning.
