Pictures of Lily

the stove. I’m not hungry now either.
    My anger turns to sadness and then to regret. I sit on the sofa and wait for him, unable to bring myself to look at my new camera. My excitement is long gone. Eventually I start to see it from Richard’s point of view. He thinks I’m changing, and he must believe it’s to do with him. He’s right, to an extent. I started to change when he proposed to me. But it’s not his fault. It’s mine. It’s all because of Ben.
    I hear his keys turn in the lock after fifteen minutes and he appears, looking downcast.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, coming through to me without removing his coat.
    ‘I’m sorry too,’ I say. ‘I should have asked you before buying it.’
    ‘You don’t have to ask me, of course you don’t,’ he says. ‘I just wish you’d talked to me about it.’
    ‘I know I should have. I’m sorry.’
    He pulls me to him and we hug each other tightly.
    ‘Are you still hungry?’ I ask over his shoulder.
    He glances through to the kitchen. ‘Is the rice ruined?’
    ‘Probably.’
    ‘I could put some more on?’
    I smile through the tears welling up in my eyes. ‘Yeah. Let’s do that.’
    My camera stays on the floor where I left it. I don’t have the will or inclination to play with it now.

Chapter 25
     
    I’m sitting on a yellow swing in a park full of purple and pink wildflowers. A black and white magpie is singing in the background and I sense that it’s early morning. I’m in a playground I recognise in the Adelaide hills, but it’s different. Not quite the same. I hear my husband walking through the grass behind me and I smile and turn my face up to the sun. And then he’s in front of me and I open my eyes to see Richard standing there, holding the hand of a little boy. My son. And he looks like Ben. I wake up with a start.
    My family – minus Mum, of course – leave on Saturday afternoon. Richard and I see them off at the airport before heading to Nathan and Lucy’s for a drink before dinner. I’m glad of the distraction because I always feel morose when Dad and the girls fly home.
    ‘I’m so sad you’re leaving,’ I moan to Lucy. We’re sitting on the decked terrace in the back garden. The boys are inside talking shop.
    ‘Aah,’ Lucy says. ‘We’ll be back before you know it.’
    ‘Will this renovation really only take six months?’
    ‘Hopefully,’ she replies. ‘We’ll have to get cracking on it straight away. I can’t wait. Obviously I’ll miss you lot,’ she adds. ‘But it’ll be good to spend some time with my mum.’
    I take a sip of my rosé and dig into the salted macadamia nuts. ‘Do you have many other friends over in the UK?’ I haven’t really spoken to Lucy much about her life on the other side of the world. I don’t know why. I guess it’s because I left it all behind.
    ‘I have a few,’ she says. ‘They live in London mostly, but I’m hoping they’ll come down occasionally to Somerset where we’ll be staying with my mum, and Nathan and I will get up to see them, too.’
    ‘Do you miss them?’
    ‘Of course. But you can’t have everything, can you? I chose Nathan, and everything else has a knock-on effect. We’re lucky that we can spend time in two countries.’
    I vaguely remember knowing that Lucy had a boyfriend when she met Nathan. Now I’m curious about him. ‘Do you ever hear from your boyfriend before Nathan?’
    ‘James? No, not any more. He harassed me for a while after we broke up, but he had to call it quits after I found out more about the lies he’d been telling me.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Screwing around with women, taking drugs . . . Loads of things, but they were the ones that bothered me the most. That, and the fact that so many people knew the truth about him, yet I’d been with him for years and was completely clueless. I felt so stupid. And the worst thing was, I didn’t find out everything at once. I used to hear dribs and drabs from people at his work and my work, since a friend of mine was going out with a colleague of his, and it was horrible – horrible! – not being able to get over him once and for all because some new shitty thing would always come along and make me feel like crap again. I know that no one likes to be the bearer of bad news, but I wish everyone had sat me down and told me everything they knew in one go.’ Her hazel eyes are sparking as she remembers.
    ‘That sucks,’ I murmur, knowing my words can never fully sum up the