CHAPTER ONE:

I was nervously waiting and checking the website every hour, on the hour, as I had been for the last two days. I asked myself again what I was thinking. Why on earth did I think that I was even remotely good enough of a writer to share my very amateur scribbling with the rest of the world?

It was almost embarrassing to put some of my deepest fantasies down into words and share them with complete strangers. I never would have dreamed of doing this if it hadn't been for the anonymity of using a pseudonym. I had tried to share a story already, but it had been rejected because I had no real training as a writer and hadn't focused on writing since I was in high school, more than half my life ago.

It was the story of a middle-aged woman who was trying to escape a loveless marriage and, at the same time, exploring the desire to expose herself sexually. On some level, she was trying to get caught because she knew her husband would hate it, and hopefully, do the one thing that she hadn't been brave enough to do herself: leave.

It was an obvious reflection of how I felt and what I had been through. It was a deeply personal story for me, even though it was written from a woman's perspective, and I hoped that it would resonate with others.

I was suffering a lot of pain from rejection, having been blindsided by my wife, who had decided that she didn't love me anymore and wanted out of our marriage. I wasn't just dealing with the shock of her leaving me; it was also the stress of having to find a new place to live. My wife had humiliated and rejected me, and then I was rejected several times by rental agencies because of a lack of rental history, despite having had a mortgage for the last twenty years. I also had to refinance the loan on my car because we were both on the title. The bank didn't seem interested in helping me at all, and it took a lot of convincing and unnecessary guarantees before they reluctantly agreed to help me. It felt like my life was just an endless procession of begging just to go on being normal, followed by a lot of rejection.

The story I had written had been riddled with grammatical issues and plot holes galore. Thankfully, the rejection, which still stung, came with some great advice and a connection that ultimately changed my view on my writing.

They put me in touch with an editor who was willing to read my stories and offer me advice on how to move forward. I almost didn't bother, just accepting that it was just one more rejection in my life, one more thing that I was no good at. In the end, while harbouring the expectation of yet more rejection but with the smallest glimmer of hope, I sent it to her with a fatalistic view of “What's the worst that can happen?”

She was a fantastic help and got me thinking in a way that was more like a writer and not just throwing random thoughts at a page and hoping they made sense to someone other than me. I rewrote the entire story and got her to check it out again, this time getting the thumbs up and encouragement to post it.

With a lot of trepidation, I sent that story off on the Thursday after work. I knew that it wouldn't go through on Friday, as the process took time, but that didn't stop me from constantly checking.

It was Saturday, the first day of a long weekend here with Monday being a public holiday, and I had been in and out of the room more times than I really should have, constantly refreshing the web page. It was a nice sunny day, which seemed like the first in a long time since my wife had left over six months ago. I knew I should be outside soaking in some of that sunlight, if for no other reason than to try and alleviate some of the depression I had been feeling, not to mention that the lawns desperately needed mowing.

Yet again, there was no news, and I felt my heart sink a little further.

“For fuck’s sake, Charlie. Get off your arse and go mow those lawns.”

I had taken to talking out loud to myself a lot more lately, mainly to fill the quiet, I guess. Being that it was the kids' week with their mum, the house was extra quiet. I might have been concerned about the amount of talking to myself I was doing if I could bring myself to care at all about my mental health. I forced myself out the door and looked at the lawn mower with absolutely no enthusiasm and a certain amount of disdain, but, with an epic sigh, I forced myself to start it.

As I have always known and, ironically, always ignored, the exercise made me feel a lot better about things. The mindlessness of doing such manual labour also left my mind free to wander. As I trudged back and forth, making nice crisp lines across my yard, I thought about the story I had just written. I was quite proud of the fact that I had set out to do something that I had never done before and actually completed it. I still felt nervous about sharing it with the world, but it was an excited kind of nervousness. I was excited to see how it would be received.

I also thought about family. Some changes had occurred since my wife left, and it gave me a whole new perspective on my life and the relationship that I thought was good until it disintegrated. I rediscovered my joy for creating things as well as my passion for music. Two things that had been important in my life but had subtly been pushed aside for the things my wife wanted. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that she didn't like it when I focused on anything other than her, and certainly not on myself.

The other thing that had changed over the twenty years was the fact that I had slowly been separated from the rest of my family. There just seemed to be less and less time available to talk to my parents and siblings. My cousins had also disappeared into the ether as I went to fewer family events over time. It wasn't that I didn't want to go to these things, but whenever one came up, there was always something that she had planned for that day that took precedence. Don't get me wrong; I don't think it was done with malicious intent. It was more an insecurity of hers, and a lot of these things she did subconsciously. The results were the same, though. Isolation and separation.

I had been completely blind to it while I was with her. Not something that I am proud of, for sure, but there was nothing I could do to change what had already happened. After the separation, the fog began to clear a little, and I began to understand what had happened.

I made a renewed effort to get back in touch with family, making a real effort to be involved with family events once more. It was embarrassing having to explain to some of my family the reason for my long absence. It seems, though, that they had a better understanding of what had been going on than I did. Many of them told me afterwards that they had seen what was happening but didn't feel that they could say anything. I wish they had, but the truth is, I probably wasn't ready to hear it back then.

I was interested in catching up with one cousin in particular, Anne. I hadn't been in touch with her since even before I met my ex-wife. We lived close to each other as kids and spent quite a lot of time together. When we reached high school age, her family moved interstate into a very rural outback town. This was in the days before the internet and mobile phones, so we simply fell out of each other's lives. We went from being close friends to people who saw each other maybe once every year or two at Christmas, depending on whether travel was on the cards that year.

When we caught up, it was always nice, and we talked endlessly, but there was now a distance that was more than geographical. We were at that age where our friends and peers were everything. All the insecurities of puberty and the sudden realisation that we were of different genders became a seemingly insurmountable barrier to the depth of friendship that had previously been easy. Then, as we got older and other things became far more important than family events, we saw each other even less.

More than twenty years had gone by since I had last spoken to her, and I had no idea about her life. I knew through my mum that she had a couple of kids and was married, but not much more than that. My aunt and uncle were still alive, but I hadn't spoken to them for a long time. They were the eldest of that generation in my family and very conservative. We were also of that generation where we weren't allowed to be a part of big conversations with our elders. We were usually told to leave the room and find something else to do when they were having a conversation. They were still in that thought process of “children should be seen and not heard,” although preferably not seen either.

I knew that Anne had several older siblings as well, but there was a large age gap between her and them. I had very little to do with them when I was younger, and as such, I know virtually nothing about them now. Once I was old enough to understand such things, I suspected that Anne was an “oops” baby.

As I began talking to my other cousins again, I found myself becoming intrigued with the idea of reconnecting with her, wondering if that spark of friendship would still be there between us or if our lives had diverged too far for that now. I asked my mother if she had contact information for her, and through my mum, I learnt that there had been a big falling out between Anne and her parents years ago, and she was in very limited contact with them now. Mum didn't have her contact details, but she did fill me in a little on where she thought she lived now and her married name.

I did some stalking through social media and found a page that I believed to be hers, but it was very limited, with only a few photos of other people. I later learnt they were her kids, and the name was similar but with certain differences that made me uncertain. I plucked up some courage and typed out a message explaining who I was and why I was contacting this page. I hit send and waited.

I'm not the most patient person in the world, and when I didn't get a response straight away, I thought about giving it up as a bad idea. As the day went on, I convinced myself that it either wasn't her page, or it was, and she didn't want anything to do with me. I know it's melodramatic, but as I said earlier, I was dealing with a lot of rejection and had come to feel that perhaps I wasn't worthy of people's attention or care.

So when I received a reply the following Thursday, I felt over the moon with excitement. I had seen there was a response there during the day at work, but I told myself I would wait until I got home to read it. The rest of the afternoon went by painfully slowly, and I had all but convinced myself that the message would say, “I'm not the person you are looking for” or something along those lines. When I saw that it was Anne and that she was just as excited to hear from me as I was from her, I was far more excited than seemed necessary.

I immediately set about writing, deleting, and then rewriting a huge message telling her about my excitement at reconnecting with her. This time, I was fortunate, and she was online, so we started a conversation that carried on until two in the morning. We both eventually agreed that we needed to get some sleep, as we each had work in the morning. We did agree, though, that over the weekend, we would sit down and have a long conversation and try to catch up on the last twenty years. She sent me her phone number, and I sent her mine with a promise to call on Saturday morning.

I was way more excited to be catching up with Anne than I had been with any of my other relatives, and I questioned my motives a number of times. I had never felt a physical attraction to her before, and there had been nothing said that would nudge me in that direction, but the excitement I felt and where I felt it was undeniable. Even though nobody else knew, I couldn't help but be embarrassed by my behaviour and my reaction. I put it down to the fact that my mind had been playing tricks on me in a desperate desire not to feel so lonely and so unwanted.

I woke up early on Saturday morning, and despite the desire to ring straight away, I made myself wait. It wouldn't be fair to ring so early on the weekend, and I was sure she wouldn't appreciate being woken up at the crack of dawn. Instead, I got out of bed, made myself some breakfast, and went for a walk.

I live in a fairly small coastal town, and although there isn't a huge population, we do get a lot of passing traffic headed towards the local beaches. I walked the one and a half kilometres from my house to the main street, where I found the local coffee shop already doing a roaring trade.

“Morning, Charlie.”

“G'day, Jim. Looks like a busy morning.”

I nodded towards the crowd outside, sitting around drinking their morning lattes and cappuccinos.

“Yeah, a bit of good weather, and they all come out of the woodwork. I'm certainly not complaining about it. You want the usual?”

“That'd be great, thanks, Jim.”

There's something nice about being a regular somewhere and having them know what it is you have without even having to ask. I could live with being a bit predictable, and it was nice to feel at home somewhere.

There was the usual small talk about business, the weather, and plans for the weekend while I waited for my order. Normally, I would sit and enjoy my coffee slowly while chatting with Jim, but today I was too keyed up to sit in one place. I needed to move, to burn off some of the nervous energy that was coursing through me. I laughed as I had a moment of self-awareness and wondered again at why I was so excited.

Jim handed me my drink, and I thanked him before I began the walk back home. I was almost halfway home when a message pinged on my phone.

“I'm awake now; call when you are ready. I hope this message doesn't wake you up.”

It seemed I wasn't the only one who was keen to catch up. I thought about dialling straight away but convinced myself to wait. I opened the front door, leaving it open and the fly screen closed. I made my way through the house to the back door and did the same, allowing a slight breeze to drift through the house. It was a bright sunny day that was going to get quite warm, but for now, the breeze was almost perfect, just bordering on being cool. The smell of fresh-mown grass and coffee filled my senses, and I felt myself relax.

The anticipation finally got the better of me, and I couldn't wait any longer, so I opened my phone and hit the dial button. When she answered, I felt a strange thrill run through me. Her voice was husky and low, as though she had just woken up and was trying not to wake anyone else in the house. We greeted each other, and I could hear the smile in her voice. Then I heard what sounded like rustling sheets and those small grunting breath noises of someone rolling over in bed. I couldn't deny that it intrigued me, imagining her lying in bed and being happy to hear from me.

Once again, I felt slightly ashamed of myself as I imagined her lying there in a sexy negligee or nightie, stretching languidly like a contented cat across her bed. Her voice was a purr of sexual excitement at having heard my voice on the line.

What the fuck was I thinking? Was I really so hard up that my mind would immediately go there? I told myself, silently, of course, to behave and focus on the conversation at hand.

We spent hours that morning talking and rediscovering each other as adults. We talked about our work, our kids, and our less-than-pleasant exes. I was surprised by how open-minded she was compared to the rest of her family and wondered if that was what was behind the feud in her own family. Most of all, though, I was amazed by how much we had in common and how our lives had followed eerily similar trajectories. Our paths may have deviated at a young age, but they were very much on parallel tracks.

Our kids were around the same age and even had similar personalities. Her eldest was very outgoing and confident and loved...