Margaret, Are You Leaving?

As far back as she could remember, Maggie had held in her a deep sense of something important she couldn’t place, or name, or decipher. An unknowable nugget that never left her. She could be reminded of its existence in a random fashion – a brief sensation that might hit her in an ordinary moment – but mostly it came to her in her dreams. In there, it was a source of frustration, of a fruitless grasping, a pressing need to act on something she couldn’t clearly see or get close to.

An hour before dawn she’d woken from one such dream feeling bereft and with no desire to return to it. She got out of bed, dressed in a t-shirt and thick socks and padded around her house, switching on lights. She filled the kettle and flipped it on, then stood looking out her back doors into her garden. Moonlight cast shadows on the lawn and gave the small trees a ghost-like presence.

She carried a cup of tea around with her as she tidied her house, put on a load of washing and mopped the kitchen floor, only stopping when she first glimpsed a paling sky.

She gave Brian’s inert form a soft nudge. ‘We’re going for a jog,’ she told him. She needed to run off this feeling.

They left the house. Outside, the world was pale grey and quiet.

‘Let’s go to the bay,’ she told Brian.

They headed down the wide leafy streets of their neighbourhood, past the huge elms and birch trees already thick with the new season’s growth, and as they ran, the day arrived, swamping the sky with colour.

Rounding a corner with the water in view, Maggie caught sight of a man who struck her as familiar. He was walking well ahead of them at the far end of a long, curved stretch of path, and as she watched him, he began running a light hand along a low hedge he was passing. She smiled to herself, finding the gesture sweet.

By now she was closing in on him , and from about twenty metres away she realised it was Will. She slowed her pace to a walk, feeling a strange desire to continue observing him unnoticed. It came to her how self-contained he was, how there was a patient strength about him, and she found herself simply enjoying watching him walk.

He began running a light hand along a low hedge he was passing. She smiled to herself, finding the gesture sweet.

Anna had once told her she had a weakness for the way Colin Firth walked. Maggie had asked, ‘How? How does he walk?’ and Anna had said, ‘I won’t be able to explain it adequately; it’s just so attractive.’ There were some very memorable walks in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice: the iconic moment when Mr Darcy walked out of the lake in the wet white shirt, the brisk walk through the rooms of Pemberley when he was trying to catch Elizabeth before she left with her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner, and that misty-morning walk through the meadows. Anna had stopped after that, admitting she could go on for days.

When Will appeared about to turn off the path, Maggie increased her walking speed and called his name, her voice louder than she’d intended.

‘Will!’

He swung around, smiling, and for the first time she appreciated the warm qualities of his face. She jogged up to meet him.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Fancy meeting you all the way over here.’

‘Hi, Maggie,’ he said, before narrowing his eyes and asking, ‘Have you been following me?’

‘Following you? Why would I do that?’

‘I don’t know. Why would you?’

‘You knew I was there?’

‘I did.’

‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘Because I was trying to work out what you were doing.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘So, what were you doing?’

She paused briefly. ‘It’s a secret,’ she said. It was pitiful, but it was all she had on the spot. A funny silence fell between them as he absorbed her answer – he appeared at a loss for a comeback – and in its midst Brian gave a small yelp as a reminder he was there.

‘Sorry Brian!’ Maggie said, grabbing the escape route. ‘Will, meet Brian.’

Will nodded at Brian. ‘Nice to meet you, Brian.’

Brian sat back and raised a paw at Will.

Will smiled and asked, ‘Is he actually pointing at me?’

‘He is. It’s in his DNA to point but he really overdoes it.’

‘I feel like I’m being identified in a line-up.’

Maggie laughed. ‘So you’re feeling guilty about something?’

‘Only guilty of loving this beautiful morning.’

Now she flinched. ‘Whoa, that was cheesy.’

‘God, I know. I can’t believe I said that. Who says stuff like that?’

‘Nobody I know.’

He smiled. ‘I’ve been up since five this morning working on a very earnest, uplifting manuscript. It may have tipped me over.’

‘Five’s early for earnest.’

‘Exactly. Cynical would have set me up much better for company.’

‘A five o’clock start’s impressive though.’

‘Sylvia Plath used to get up at five to write her poetry when she had young children and Ted Hughes had left her and she— ’

Will broke off. ‘Why am I telling you this?’

‘Good question.’

‘God, I need to reset! I need a coffee. Would you be interested in a coffee?’

‘I’m always interested in a coffee.’ More truthfully, she was always interested in company.

‘What about Brian?’

‘Same. He loves doing coffee.’

‘Great. This is your suburb, lead the way.’

‘Okay.’

They set off and she remarked, ‘You’ve walked a good distance from Summer Hill.’

‘I felt like seeing the water. And I cheated – I drove.’

She took him to her favourite coffee shop and they sat at a small table outside. She asked him about his boys and he gave her a quick character assessment of each one and explained they’d stayed with his ex-wife Sally overnight. She told him about her job as a teacher’s aide and the boys who were her favourites, even though she shouldn’t rightly have favourites.

‘Have you always worked in education?’ he asked.

‘No. Just in the last few years. I was in sales before that. I worked for a stationery company for a long time. I cannot tell you how much I love stationery. But teaching is definitely where I want to stay. I’m hoping for a full-time position soon.’

She surprised herself when she added, ‘I left school at thirteen – long story – but I caught up via a correspondence course in my thirties and completed my higher school certificate. Now I’m keen to one day do a Bachelor of Education.’

‘Sounds like you should,’ he said.

Their coffee arrived and she asked him about the earnest story he was working on. While he was talking, she was struck by the sensation that she was watching them from above; a sense of disassociation that came upon her occasionally. She watched them trading information, establishing the formwork of a friendship; she imagined him picturing her in sales, in teaching, the shallow facts about her, the tips of the hopeless iceberg that was her life to that moment.

While he was talking, she was struck by the sensation that she was watching them from above.

She wanted him to like her, because she was beginning to really like him. She wasn’t physically or romantically attracted to him, but there was something about him that made her feel good. And that was attractive.

‘By the way,’ she said, ‘I was joking before about Sylvia Plath. I actually thought it was interesting what you said, about her getting up so early to write. I know she had a tragically short life, but she loved something enough to get up very early in the morning to do it. Some people never have that their whole lives.’

What came next almost startled her. The moment she finished speaking, Will gave her a look so singular it made her question whether she’d ever been looked at in that way before. It came to her as unusual and yet in some way familiar. It made the back of her neck tingle.

That night, as Maggie lay reading her book in bed, Will’s look from that morning returned to her. She took her eyes off the page and stared into the room, seeing only his face. The familiarity of the look, she wondered, the knowledge or sensation it engendered in her, was it déjà vu? Had she been here before? It was troubling, and as she returned to her book, as she read and even in the sleep that followed, her mind searched for a comfortable conclusion to the problem, but never found it.

This is an extract from Dianne Yarwood’s Margaret, Are You Leaving? (Hachette Australia), available now at your local independent bookseller.