Jenni slid through the door. ‘Sarah,’ she said. ‘Sarah, what’s up? You’re talking to yourself.’
‘I know.’
‘Is it about Reuben? I can ask Kaia to leave, if you want. They shouldn’t behave like that.’
I took a long breath. But while I waited for the right words, Jenni marched out of the room. I stared stupidly at her back, realizing only too late what she was about to do.
Kaia and Reuben looked up. Jenni said something; they smiled, nodded. Reuben was whistling as he came through the door, but there was something about his face that told me he knew what was coming.
No, I thought weakly.Not this. This is not the problem.But Jenni had already kicked off. She stood squarely at the top of the table, talking in a voice I had heard three, maybe four times in our entire history.
‘Kaia, we’re very grateful you’ve been helping us out, but I think we need to clarify exactly which projects you’re helping with, and whether or not there’s an unmanageable workload somewhere in our team. Because if there is, we’ll need to take a look at that. It’s not appropriate for you to be here, helping on a casual basis. Nobody signed off on it.’
Silence. Reuben’s eyes rolled over to mine, wide with shock.
Kaia’s face had paled. ‘Sure,’ she began, although I knew she had no idea what to say next. ‘I . . . well, I’ve just been trying to help with a few things that Reuben needed off his desk . . . And Sarah’s deputy, Kate, seemed to . . .’ She fiddled with the ring that sat halfway up her finger and I realized her hands were shaking.
This is neither the problem nor the solution, I thought. I was so tired. So desperately tired.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kaia said after a pause. ‘I didn’t want to be inappropriate. I realize I’ve probably been here a bit too often . . .’ Her eyes filled with tears.
Instinctively, I stepped forward, but Jenni stopped me. ‘I’ve got this,’ she said, passing Kaia a tissue. She didn’t put her arm around her. I watched in horror and fascination as my friend directed all of her rage and disappointment at the woman crying at our meeting table.
Reuben was paralysed.
‘I . . . lost a . . . It just really helps me to come here . . .’ Kaia was backing off now; an animal half run over. ‘I’m sorry. It just helps me. I’ll stop coming. I . . .’ She moved towards the door.
And suddenly I knew. ‘Kaia,’ I said quietly. ‘Hang on a second.’
She hovered.
‘Look, that story you told me, the day I met you,’ I said, and her face slackened, became all loose and billowy somehow, like a tent with its poles removed. ‘The story about the boy on the oncology ward. Who our clowns cheered up.’ The tent collapsed completely and there it was: a human being razed to the bone. ‘Was he your son?’ I asked.
Reuben stared at me. Kaia took a slow, potholed breath and nodded.
‘Phoenix,’ she said. ‘He was my boy, yes.’
I closed my eyes. This poor woman.
‘How did you know?’ Reuben asked, stunned.
When I’d opened our mail this morning, I’d found a letter from a couple called Brett and Louise West. Four months after losing their son, they had finally managed to put pen to paper; said we were their first letter.Thank you so much . . . It vastly improved his last few weeks . . . Can we help your organization at all? . . . Would love to come and volunteer . . . Would be great to give something back . . . Make ourselves useful . . .
It had made me wonder again about Kaia, and why she was here. I wasn’t convinced it was just because of Reuben.
A few days earlier we had had a call to say that a child we’d been working with for months was in remission and ready to go home. Kaia, who had never met the child, had broken down in tears. ‘A second chance,’ I’d heard her sayingto my deputy, Kate, who’d announced the news. ‘A second chance at life. Oh, that is a blessed thing.’
And it was a blessed thing. We’d all cheered. But I had watched Kaia, long after everyone had gone back to work, and I’d wondered. Wondered if maybe there had been someone in her life who had not been given a second chance.
And as I watched her trying hopelessly to explain herself to Jenni just now, it seemed obvious that the little boy she’d told me about the day we met had been her own. She had lost her son, and with him an irreplaceable part of herself. And at some point, when she was able to get out of bed, to breathe, she had arrived in the non-profit sector – just like the two parents who had written to us today; like me, and so many others – because it felt like the only conceivable way of forging good from bad. Of keeping going.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Me too. And I apologize for having been here too much. My partner and I split up last year; we couldn’t get past it. So it’s been . . . lonely. Not that that’s your problem, but it . . . it just kind of helps, being here.’
I closed my eyes. I was so bloody tired. ‘I get it.’
I watched them leave. Jenni was slumped at the end of the table.
