The Last Love Note by Emma Grey

Author:Emma Grey [Grey, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761047633
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

23

I turn and face the mirror, feeling demoralised enough already without also being confronted by a full-length reflection of my semi-naked self under stark fluorescent lights.

It’s not about appearance. Not completely. I’ve done enough work on body acceptance since having Charlie and losing Cam to be grateful for a body that gave someone life and has also managed to keep itself alive, despite all the trauma and stress it was forced through.

Watching Cam degenerate, physically, as the disease ravaged him, gave me a perspective on the workings of the human body that transcends image. Once you’ve watched a strong man fade, when you’ve borne witness to a body in peak physical condition spiralling until it’s unable to will itself into one more day, it’s harder to care whether breastfeeding has deflated your boobs or a miracle growing within you has graffitied your skin. And when you’ve spent a few minutes with a body that no longer houses a soul, so still and lifeless and empty, you really see it for what it is, and how incredible it has been, no matter how it looks.

At least, that’s the philosophical position I’d arrived at before everything got messed up on that motorbike. And now I feel like a hypocrite. With confidence issues. I’d reached that comfortable place with Cam where he loved me the way Mark Darcy loved Bridget Jones: just as I was. He’d seen me in the delivery suite during childbirth and looked at me like every moment of that experience brought us closer together. Since he died, I’d been perfectly content going about my post-Cam life living vicariously through Grace’s dating capers, but now I have a vague recollection that there are things a body can do beyond haul sadness around. And a vague idea that perhaps I might want to do those things again one day.

The bell tinkles over the door to the shop. As the door opens and shuts, the breeze blows open a slight gap in the changing room curtain. Peering through it, I see Hugh looking around the store, searching for me. It’s strange seeing him so relaxed here, in cut-off jeans and a black T-shirt. Strange to be here with him at all, in a setting like this.

Behind this flimsy curtain, which looks like it was hung in the 1980s and could disintegrate at any moment, I feel more exposed than ever. I pull the two pieces of fabric tightly together and press myself up against the side wall of the cubicle. Catching my breath.

‘Can I help you?’ someone says. It’s the old lady looking after the store.

‘I’m looking for my colleague,’ he says, before correcting himself. ‘Friend.’

It’s a subtle distinction, but one I’m glad he’s made, even if it’s nothing to this woman whether we work together or hang out socially. I think once you’ve spent time under a shower with someone crying her eyes out, you’ve moved well beyond workmates.

‘You must mean the lady with the dog,’ the woman says. Apparently everyone in the shop heard that entire conversation.

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