How To Lose Weight And Survive The Apocalypse

Chapter 20

When I woke up the next morning, it was light and Rueben was gone. Logically I knew that he would have to steal back to his own bed at some stage to be there for Mischa, but my emotional state was as precarious as a glass teetering on the edge of a table, and logic didn't help the sting of being left alone.

The day was bright and clear and hopeful, everything I didn't feel. Easing out of bed, I pulled on my clothes and decided to walk barefoot to give my aching boot toes a break. Plus my scant collection of socks was currently hanging in a limp wet row outside the cabin, their tortured shapes flapping pitifully in the cheeky morning breeze as I stepped out into the sun.

Camp was serene and I left everyone to their sleep-ins, needing some quiet time myself. The concrete paths were smooth and warm beneath my soles, and I padded my way down to the lake edge where the path meandered away from camp and followed the pink curve south. I walked for an hour, trying to digest everything from the night before: reliving those days with Dom, Rueben's words about coercive control, everyone's agreement that my relationship had been unhealthy.

It hadn't felt unhealthy though, not at the time. It felt dramatic, sure, but I'd been trained by a generation of rom-coms starring women with cute names like Drew and Cameron and Kate that all relationships were meant to be filled with drama and theatrics. As I walked, I tried something new and took myself and my feelings out of my own history and summarised what I'd had with Dom in logical statements.

He put her down constantly.

He made her feel ashamed.

He wanted her to always be there for him, but never returned the favour.

He never let her meet his family and friends.

He left her.

I hadn't even touched on the pregnancy, but I could already tell that if someone, say Nev, had come to me and told me their relationship looked like this, I would have told her to run a mile. So why was it so much harder to do that for myself?

Because of love. I'd loved Dom, believed I could fix him, believed I could fix myself so he'd want me. And I wasn't wrong, was I? People were capable of change. People deserved second chances.

"That's a big frown."

Simon's voice cut through my thoughts, and I glanced up a nearby hill to see the big bearded man sitting on a bench. "I'm working some stuff through," I said, tramping up the side of the small rise and parking myself next to him.

We sat in silence for a while. The lake view was spectacular, with the sun dancing on the pink crystal surface, the rolling mountains in the distance a perfect frame for the pastels. I squinted in the sun and cast my gaze over to Simon, unnerved to see his face greasy and pallid. He'd lost weight in the last week (lucky. my automatic thought) but not in a good way. His skin hung from his bones in heavy flaps, the hollows of his cheekbones enviable only to skeletons and the heroin chic set.

It's not the grog, I realised in horror. "Simon, what have you got?"

He didn't try to pretend not to know what I was asking. Stoically he said, "Liver cancer. Well, it's probably spread a bit by now, but that's what it started as."

"How bad?"

"Bad."

"How long?"

"A couple of months."

"Fuck." We both fell quiet again, the sounds of the bush a background track to this new development, the rustling of the leaves and the calling bird songs filling the space.