Fish and Chips - Two, 2.

Harry was your best friend. He was one of the nicest people I had ever met. He was warm and friendly and always funny. I never remember him having a girlfriend, instead he would hang out with us. You and me in the front of that huge old merc. and Harry sitting in the centre-back his long legs pushing his knees up to the height of the front bench seat as he leant forward to chat and laugh and pass us a bong or a perfectly rolled joint. Harry didn’t drink either. I guess I thought it was a bit weird that you didn’t drink, maybe I thought it was because of your commitment to your football but it wasn’t something I wondered about until later; until it was too late. Harry on the other hand, I found out, was very ill. We visited him in hospital when he was having dialysis, he looked so awful and I could only think of his lovely mother and the pain she must have felt at seeing him like that. We went to his house fairly often. I have photos of your youngest brother and me posing together on the front porch of their house. I have a bad perm and my short sport shorts are somewhat scary in their thigh revealing height. Your brother has a small grin and by his body-language you’d almost think he was fond of me. In fact he detested me and made a point of telling me once. Harry is in the photo too, his arm around his mother’s shoulders and a grin from ear to ear. Months after the Radiator’s concert, we came home to my flat one night and my ex-boyfriend Brett was there with Nadia. I felt a jolt through my soul, a nail in my heart and I knew you felt me flinch. I saw the look you gave him and your jealousy was like a mask you wore. The first thing I thought of was about how Nadia pushed you and I together. I can’t remember now where I met her or how she came to move into my flat. I remember her telling me about your family, how your mother had recovered from cancer and how she used to date your other brother. I remember her taking me to the football in your hometown and afterwards into the pub there. I know I saw you there and maybe this was the day we started hanging out? You were wild and different, scary and strong. I was besotted; you made me feel so special and after the way Brett had treated me that was what I craved. So, when we got home that night and he was there I really thought I could make myself not care, I knew that you cared though. Later, in the dark of night, getting up and knowing that he was there in the next room with her, I felt ill. It felt very wrong. I wanted to shout at her. I didn’t say a word but I felt you watching me and that is when I realized that trust wasn’t a strength that you had. ……………………………………………………. There are 4 or 5 of us in the car, I am the only girl, I sit in the back knitting a jumper, it is funny because I have never knitted much before. It is pink and yellow. Somebody is mulling up and we pass a bong around the car. We drive into the rainforest, it is clear and clean and crisp. I think Harry is driving, you scream to stop the car and he pulls over, you run into the trees and we follow laughing. You lie down in the leaf mulch and we laugh at you. You scream at us to get away, we take sticks and pretend to attack you, laughing. We think you are kidding but you don’t stop. Harry says to leave you. We sit in the car and wait. When you come back we drive on to the kiosk in the national park. I love it here. The air is clean and we get ice blocks and sit on the grass, there are lots of people around, but to me their voices are lost and disjointed, I lie on the grass and watch the sky spinning over me. You are nearby but not close and I lie alone on the grass with the people walking all around me, their voices as high in the sky as the blue. Later I ask you about what happened on the way up, you say you were really frightened and thought that monsters were attacking you, I laugh, but you don’t think it is funny. I feel I don’t have to force myself to be something I am not anymore, when I am with you everything is okay. We relax and cruise along, Saturdays are so much fun, we drive around the countryside in the merc, we drive where we shouldn’t and get bogged and you carry railway sleepers on your shoulders to build a bridge to get us out. We laugh and joke and nothing really matters. You teach me to play pool on a rainy day in some century old pre-renovation hotel somewhere in the hills. I am a girl among guys, being a tomboy and I love it. When I am back in Toowoomba and I see the people I used to know, I feel removed from them; I don’t feel I belong with them anymore, they belong to some long forgotten past that I convince myself that I don’t need in my life. If I stop to think of the things I miss, I quickly call you or roll a joint and then I can let it all fade away again. ……………………………………………………. Then there was that phone call which changed everything. What if she hadn’t called to tell you? But she did and you told me right away. It was only a few weeks later when I got it too. I think you might have tried to blame me, which doesn’t seem very fair but when my doctor handed me the results I decided that I was with you for the long haul. Somewhere inside of me before that I had not ended it with Brett and as I sat there I knew that and I knew that now it was over with him forever and I thought I would have to marry you one day. I didn’t want any more men in my life, I made up my mind that there would never be an ‘after you’. I no longer felt good enough for him and maybe not good enough for you either but I was determined to keep you. Without you, I surmised, I had nothing.