Page 188

Woah mysterious

•••

Ada Highfield

12:37

Come round at 7:30? I’ll be back by then

•••

Ada Highfield

12:38

Actually come round whenever you want, you still have a key

•••

From: Gabby Highfield

To: Hank Mathers, bcc: me

Hello Aussie family and friends!

Sorry for the mass email but I know people aren’t on Facebook as much any more so the glory days of the status update are over. Hank and Orion and I wanted to let all our most loved people know that we have exciting news – we’re moving back to Sydney! My wonderful old company Banquette have agreed to take me back (hello Banquette fam on this email! Your girl is back!) so I’ll be returning to work a little earlier than expected (when Orion is six months old). And Hank is going to be a full-time dad while we wait for his partner visa to come through. We can’t wait to see everyone and to introduce our little guy to you all (if Nana and Grandad let anyone else see him, that is). We haven’t booked flights yet but we’ll definitely be home for Christmas, in the words of Tim Minchin, drinking white wine in the sun!

Lots of love and excitement,

Gabby (and Hank and Orion)

FORTY-SEVEN

Ada ended her day with Clem feeling only slightly closer to having a job. She had brought all her most temp-y skills to the task, presenting spreadsheets that she’d had to email Mel to print out at work, and saying ‘projected income’ enough that it felt like a real phrase. And Sadie was coming to dinner and Gabby was moving home but Ada stayed focused on Clem and this job which she needed with increasing desperation. She’d never been to the bar in the day before and it looked bored, all empty and with every light on, the grimy magic clearly an illusion. When she left at six, it was filling up with after-work drinkers and when she stepped outside, brown leaves were gathering in the wet Camden gutters and there was the grimy magic after all.

Sadie arrived exactly at seven thirty and let herself in while Ada was shaping balls of dough. Sadie came into the kitchen and said, ‘What smells so good?’ and Ada indicated the oven with her foot and said, ‘Butternut pumpkin. I’m roasting it for a cobbler.’ Sadie said, ‘Wow, I don’t know what a cobbler is but I’m excited to find out,’ and Ada said, ‘It’s a very autumnal dish, I saw it in the Guardian, daaaaahling.’ She turned back to the balls of dough and Sadie hesitated, Ada felt the whole room hesitate, and then Sadie walked to her and hugged her from behind, squeezing her tightly and then stepping back and climbing up to her familiar place on the bench. She grabbed herself a glass and poured from the open bottle of Malbec next to Ada.

Ada assembled the cobbler and told Sadie about her almost job and how she almost wanted it. Roasted squash, red onion, cream, greens, tinned tomatoes, the little balls of dough on top. It went into the oven and she turned to Sadie who said, ‘It doesn’t really sound like the kind of thing you want to be doing,’ and Ada said, ‘I know, but I’m not sure if you heard, my rent is going up.’ And Sadie said, ‘That’s kind of fucked of Mel to leave you in the lurch like that,’ and Ada said, ‘Maybe.’ But she didn’t want to talk about Mel. Loyalty or something like it.

Instead she asked, ‘What happened with Ealing woman then?’ and Sadie said, ‘What happened with Liverpool man?’ This was unusually coy for her but she held Ada’s eye and Ada said, ‘He ghosted me but importantly, only after I had got to Brighton.’ Sadie said, ‘What?’ and Ada said, ‘He never showed up,’ then, ‘I really hope your story is equally embarrassing.’ And Sadie said, ‘Oh, it is. The Ealing woman had, I dunno, gay-centrist vibes and I was like, hmm, OK, and then she said something dodgy about trans kids and that was when I booked the Newcastle trip.’ Ada said, ‘So we both picked winners then,’ and Sadie said, ‘I guess we did.’

Ada opened the fridge and looked inside, forgetting immediately what she needed. She kept staring though and said, ‘Did she hurt your feelings? Liverpool man hurt my feelings.’ She pulled out butter then put it back, she wasn’t serving the meal with bread, and over her shoulder Sadie said, ‘Not really, it never felt built to last. I’m sorry about the guy though.’ Ada closed the fridge, she didn’t need anything, and sat on the floor leaning on it. ‘The thing is, like really, I think I loved him? But I also think I … invented him.’ Sadie didn’t say anything but passed Ada her glass. ‘I think he wanted me so much and I wanted the person who wanted me to be like … something other than what he was. So I invented him. And we were never together, it was mostly messages and calls and then one drunk night and I fell in love with all the spaces that were left to colour in, you know? So when I threw myself at him there was actually nothing there to, like, catch me. No one. In the end he was just a story.’ Sadie said, ‘That’s … I mean, I think in some ways you’re very self-aware but also that seems like bullshit. He was a whole person, he wasn’t a character, you just never saw past his outline,’ and Ada said, ‘Well, is that my fault though? Familiarity breeds contempt right? He was all romance but then when I returned it to him he was like … reactionary.’ Silence and then, from Sadie, ‘Men, right?’ and they laughed, both of them, and it was all familiarity.