The Bit In Between (28 page)

Alison let out an angry cry and hurled a plate at the floor. ‘Because you didn't even let me have that. Not for myself. You had to try to make it for me. What does that make me? I'm nothing. I'm not anything. I don't know what I am.'

His eyes were pleading. ‘You're something to me. Isn't that enough?'

And in his heart he knew it wasn't. Alison stopped throwing things and instead collapsed on the floor, exhausted. Oliver did the same. He felt irreparably broken. After a while she looked over at him, tears running down her cheeks. Her voice was much softer now.

‘We've ruined everything, haven't we?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is there any way to make it better?'

He considered this. ‘I don't know. Maybe. Probably not.'

‘Can we try? Should we?'

He didn't reply. After an excruciating minute he stood up, took his laptop and walked out.

Alison waited a long, long time for Oliver to come back. When he didn't, she curled up into a ball and cried. Eventually she got up, cleaned up the room, tidied the rest of the house, waited, cried some more and then, unwillingly, fell asleep on the floor between the wall and the bed in the bedroom of their little blue house.

When she woke up the next day the house was still empty. She crawled out into the main room and found that the desk had been cleared of almost all its notes. She pulled herself up and half-ran back into the bedroom. Oliver's clothes were gone. She ducked into the bathroom. His toothbrush too. Everything that was Oliver was gone. Alison staggered back into the lounge room and over to the desk. His manuscript was still there, but the final pages at the bottom looked new. There was a handwritten note next to it. She stared at Oliver's messy writer's scrawl.

This is the book exactly as it should be – no happy ending. This is the book I dreamt I'd write.

She held back a sob and wiped her eyes. And then she read it from the start. She read their lives – his and hers – and she relived it all. Their meeting, the move, the mugging, the babies, the arguments, Ed, everything right up until their fight the night before, all told through the lives of Colonel Drakeford and Geraldine – Oliver and Alison – and it hurt every bit as much as it should have. But when she got to the last chapter she pushed the manuscript away. She wouldn't read it. She couldn't. There was another handwritten note underneath the manuscript.

In one year's time if you want to go to KL International Airport lounge
I might be there. I might not. Go find your happiness. For yourself.

She put the note down and stared at the manuscript on the table. After a few moments she looked around, lost in the wreckage and debris of the previous night/week/month. She stood up, took her backpack down and started packing.

THE BIT AT THE END

ANOTHER WAVE

A
young man sits alone in an airport lounge. The seat beside him is empty. It has been a long year. Things have happened. His book was published – good enough sales, but a story he's proud of. Part of the earnings go – anonymously – to the bank account of a small but burgeoning NGO where a young woman leads a growing number of volunteers to support women in the Pacific to find work and participate in politics. He never contacts her, but sometimes when he makes his donations he sees her in photos published on the NGO's website. She looks exhausted, but always content.

The seat beside him is still empty. Outside, on the tarmac behind him, a fire engine rushes past, lights flashing, to douse the flames that erupt from the twisted metal wreck of what used to be a plane. Someone sits down next to him . . .

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

B
y far the greatest thank you is for the exceptional Haylee Nash at Pan Macmillan who fished me out of the slush pile, bought me a fancy lunch and believed in this manuscript more than I could ever have hoped for. To Emma Rafferty, Julia Stiles and Elizabeth Cowell for making the book better and for making me yell at the silent computer screen until I felt I'd made my point. To Debra Billson for the cover I would have designed had I a single ounce of artistry in me. And to my lovely agent, Grace Heifetz at Curtis Brown, for her kindness and her wisdom and all the funnies.

Belief in someone is an exceptional thing, particularly when it far outweighs that which you have in yourself. With love and gratitude: Pip, Nat, Laura, Leah and Renee 
–
 the demented stars by which I navigate. Mrs F 
–
 my long-term champion. Rhoda, Loretta, Gabriel, Tuksy, Edna, Sizah, Charley, Kanijama, Sarina, Aunty Jan, Uncle Joe and the rest of my Solomon family – you are some of the best people this world will ever know.
Bae ufala olowe stap insaed hart blo mi.
The owners of all the couches, foldout beds and spare rooms I inhabited across three continents whilst writing this – thank you for your kindnesses: Nat, Daniel, Vassos, Evangelia, Youla and Sophie, Jaine and Antonio, Ana Karenina, Andre Filipi, Filipi, Goleo, Dona Lucia and Mr Macedo, Tereza, Mayanne, Christian, Christianne, Ana, Manuela, Mariana, Gabriella, Giselle and Leo, Cris and Rafael, Ann, Peter, Tom dog, Cas, Bruce, Sid and Magee, and Ben and Dani. Doaky – early draft reader/top-shelf friend. Rani and Rani's dad – for polar/stellar legal advice. Jemal – because he asked and because I'd like extra TIL. Aunty Rene and Aunty Jo – for helping with the Greek. Brian and Lauren 
– 
for accepting my ratbaggery and returning it with love. Matt and Max 
–
 I didn't get to choose you but I wouldn't choose anyone else. John – my person and my world, who holds me together when I'd otherwise crumple and reminds me mid-histrionics that the sky will never actually fall. And Ma, always.

To EC for being there with me on the jetty by the lagoon when this all started. And a too-late thank you to Terry Pratchett for first making me adore stories and then making me want to write them. Your books are my oldest friends.

The Pacific is an incredible place and as Australians we should know more about our closest neighbours. The Solomon Islands, like many other Pacific nations, faces many challenges in their efforts to improve the opportu­nities of their people, particularly women and girls. I lived and worked in Solomon Islands for nearly two years and I know that when people are supported to design and implement their own development projects, real sustainable change can happen. To find out more about some of the inspiring change happening, visit
www.pacificwomen.org
or
www.iwda.org.au

About Claire Varley

Claire Varley grew up on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria. She has sold blueberries, worked in a haunted cinema, won an encouragement award for being terrible at telemarketing, taught English in rural China, and coordinated community development projects in remote Solomon Islands.

The Bit In Between
is her first novel.

First published 2015 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000

Copyright © Claire Varley 2015

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

from the National Library of Australia

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

EPUB format: 9781743539040

Typeset by Post Pre-press Group

Cover design by Debra Billson

Cover images: Majivecka and Bioraven/Shutterstock

The characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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