‘And I’m here for you too,’ the doctor continued. ‘There are also some wonderful online resources you might find really helpful if you’re finding it hard to talk to friends and family about it, which lots of women do.’
‘Thank you,’ Netta said, standing. ‘I’ll think it all through and come and see you when I’m ready to take the next step.’
Netta walked the long way home along St Kilda Beach, taking in the warm, briny air and the sound of laughter carrying on the wind. She passed the gym and the pier and disappeared into the gardens, threading her way through the towering palm trees standing on either side of the path. A pissed off–looking pony was trotting begrudgingly alongside a sturdy man in a plaid shirt, a chubby toddler on its back. Joggers muscled by and a group of people were setting up banners and temporary fencing for an event of some kind. A huddle of dreadlocked bongo drummers kept a hypnotic rhythm under a tree and a possum darted across the path, clearly confused about what time of day it was. Just before the park gave way to the paved beachside path once more, Netta passed a circle of women on the grass, each with a baby—either at their breast or on a blanket before them—and the hollowness of her uterus stretched and ached, prodding her grief. She swallowed hard against the brick in her throat and hastened her stride.
She crossed the busy esplanade and cut up Cowderoy Street, stopping for a coffee, which was good, but not as good as the one Mo had made her that day in the hotel. The thought crossed her mind that maybe no coffee would ever be as good as that one, ever again, and a new wave of sadness crashed down on her. An impossible love. A lost baby. A body that felt like it must belong to someone else and forty so close she could feel it breathing down her neck.
The apartment was quiet and cool when she let herself in, but the usual sense of calm she felt when she opened the front door was stolen by the hovering stench of stale pizza and general filth. She hadn’t cleaned since the miscarriage started and her apartment was starting to smell like it.
Netta threw herself into cleaning—even the plants got a wipe down—and sank into the couch an hour later, exhausted, the spurt of energy tailing off into a grey melancholy only slightly tempered by the orderliness of the apartment.Messy house, messy head. Tidy house, tidy head.That’s what her mother had always said.
‘It didn’t work this time, Mum,’ Netta whispered as she dissolved into the cushions. She picked up her phone and settled back for the kind of brainless distraction that only a good socials scroll could provide. Audrey and Fletcher’s Instagram account—which had more than a hundred thousand followers—had become a favourite destination for Netta. Photos of the two of them being glamourous in fabulous locations filled her feed with joy. The rest of Instagram, on the other hand, seemed full of Bali holidays and birth announcements, so she checked her email instead.
Her inbox was stuffed with a long stream of spammy crap, newsletters she couldn’t remember signing up to and a library overdue notice. And then, wedged between a phone bill and an invitation to the opening of a new bar, was an email from Mo. Netta’s heart scuttered to a halt, hanging limply in her chest like a beaten-todeath pinata swinging pathetically in the breeze.
She clicked on the message, her finger bouncing off the phone like it was a hot coal.
SOMETHING FOR YOU
Morrison Maplestone
To: Netta Phillips
Just press play.
M
Just press play.That’s all it said. No,Hi Netta.No,I’m sorry. No,I love you endlessly and please can we start over. None of that.
An audio file was attached to the email, and as Netta’s finger hovered over the link, she had the feeling of being jerked from the shallow depths of early sleep, stumbling off a kerb in a dream. Freefalling.
She clicked.
Chapter Fifty-Four
NETTA
Freya’s lounge was chaos, strewn with toys and laundry and crayons. Discarded remnants of their fish and chips dinner lay on the coffee table and the lights were dimmed, the kids all finally asleep and Freya exhausted on the couch. Netta sat cross-legged on the floor among the mess, numbed by a misery that seemed to thicken with every day that passed. She knew it would get easier, eventually. But right now her grief was a fifth limb, carried with her everywhere, and Mo’s email had made it even heavier.
‘Play it again,’ said Freya.
Mechanically, Netta opened Mo’s email and pressed play, sparking Freya’s Bluetooth speaker to life. Mo counted himself in at the start—a mumbled one, two, three, four that hooked Netta through the heart—and then he started singing.
Years in the bright lights
But always in the dark
Through the black you shone
And found my buried heart
You opened me like a gift
When I thought I was a curse
You’ve seen my darkest corners
You’re more than I deserve
