And here we are: Pete, his not-quite ex-wife and her parents, their kids and me, standing around the outdoor chairs at his wife’s new place. Shuffling plates of grain waves and watermelon to make way for sadness and sandwiches.
‘What’s going on in the garden?’ I ask the five year old, hoping that someone will sit down in those chairs while we’re rummaging through scorched basil, pumpkins and bees. Pete’s wife comes out with a bug zapper made to kill small things. ‘It’s sort of fun,’ she says.
The three year old has his helmet on. He takes his new bike up and down the driveway on a birthday walk of glory, then lets it clunk against the side of the house. Back to the table full of sugar, his hand in a bowl full of snakes. I give him an hour before he crashes.
I follow Pete’s wife into the kitchen for a glass of water and her mother follows shortly after, to fuss over the symmetry of the train cake she has baked. ‘Do you read The Age?’ the older asks, standing too close. Sizing me up, diverting attention.
I know that you know that he thinks I’m fucked, Pete’s wife says with her eyes as she hands me a tumbler. Please don’t think I’m fucked.
In the middle of this kitchen, my face is up against the glass at the end of someone else’s marriage. And there’s a three-carriage, four-colour train-shaped cake between us.
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