‘I have to do it. I have to contact Marshall. I have to try, at least.’
‘I always think Sam is my son. He is my son here.’ Erik slapped his forearm to his chest and a split opened in Ella’s ribs. Such pain in Erik’s voice.
‘Sam loves you, and you mean the world to me.’
He picked up the salt shaker and rocked it to and fro on its end. Shards of salt crystals shone where they spilled on the table. ‘But it is not enough now?’ he said.
‘Not anymore, Erik. I’m so sorry.’
He gave a big sigh and another ‘mhmmm’, flicking salt flakes one by one.
Ella took sips of her wine; Erik drank his beer. Very faintly from inside they could hear the sound of the cartoon Sam watched on TV, and a magpie scratched a beat across the iron roof. The sun was going, going, but not quite gone.
Erik drained his beer and burped gently. ‘Shall we go inside? There will be mosquitos invading very soon.’
‘Good idea. There’s a movie on tonight that Sam wants to watch. You up for some dinosaur action? It’s Jurassic World.’
‘How can I wait?’ Erik said.
* * *
Ella scrubbed cleanser into her nose and cheeks, lifted her face to the shower water and let the jets wash the foam away. There wouldn’t be enough hot water for Erik if she didn’t get out soon, but oh, how incredible the heat felt as it drummed on her shoulders. She could stay in here for hours.
She’d given up on the movie, and what with the constant replay of her conversation today with Henry Graham in her head, plus the noise of the television, it was hard to get invested in her book. She’d flipped through a magazine for a while, but in the end all the thoughts in her head demanded attention.
She didn’t swim anymore, but water was still the place where she felt most at home. Water was about solitude, and having time to think.
She leaned her forehead into the tiles, feeling the spray hit her shoulders, and sighed. You could cry in a shower, too, and no one ever knew.
She’d made it hard for everyone when she’d married the man who was her swimming coach and friend, but wasn’t Sam’s father, and she was still trying to pick a path through the rubble of that earthquake-sized mistake all these years later.
When Sam had been four, he’d come home from day care and told her that another boy asked why he didn’t call his dad, Dad, and why he called him Erik.
‘And what did you tell him, Sammy?’
‘I said I called him Erik because that was his name, silly.’
It was such a little thing in the scheme of things, whether Sam said Erik or Dad, but it made a difference to Ella.
Sam had spent so much time at swimming pools with them when he was small, not swimming—the pool was about doing the work, not having fun, and Ella rarely took him in the water—but poolside while Erik barked orders at his squad. Ella would pace beside him, taking notes and recording times and splits, writing skin-fold measurements in her book when the squad lined up for those loathed things, plus anything else Erik wanted noted about a swimmer’s program or progress.
All the swimmers called Erik, Erik.
And Ella always called Erik, Erik, not Dad, when she was talking to Sam.
When Sam started kindergarten, Ella explained it was like having a mum or a dad who was your teacher in school. You couldn’t call the teacher Mum or Dad in front of all the other kids, so you called her Mrs Robinson or Mr O’Neill. He’d been satisfied with that.
When Sam started primary school, they sat him down and told him Erik wasn’t his real father and that his real father lived a long way away. That had been fine until a cameraman shooting a commercial asked Sam to climb on his dad’s shoulders in the pool. Sam, of course, solemnly advised the cameraman he couldn’t because his daddy lived too far away.
Ella would never forget the confusion on the man’s face as he jerked out from behind the lens. She’d covered it by picking Sam up herself and arranging him like a clinging monkey on Erik’s back. ‘Erik’s not too far away. Jump on,’ she’d said.
The cameraman glued his eye back to his lens, but it was Erik’s face that had come unstuck, and that hurt Ella more. Erik didn’t deserve to suffer for something that was Ella’s mistake.
Not long after the photo shoot she sat Sam down and told him who his father was was nobody’s business except theirs; but it made Erik sad to talk about him, so maybe we just won’t until you’re older. Okay, Sammy?
‘How old?’
‘Just … older than you are now.’
Ella turned the water off and let herself drip dry in the cubicle before stepping out and drying herself properly with a towel.
She put her shorts and tank top back on, combed her hair and brushed her teeth. The television was off and Erik sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, reading the same magazine Ella had earlier shelved.
‘Sam went to bed,’ Erik said.
‘I’ll go say goodnight to him.’
Ella moved quietly to Sam’s room and opened the door a crack. His window was open and the faintest eucalypt-scented breeze stirred the air.
‘Still awake, Sam?’
‘Yeah.’
Ella eased inside and stood over her son’s bed, bending to kiss his forehead. The light from the passage was bright enough for her to see his dark eyes peeking up from the pillow but his blond hair blended with the pillow slip.
Her son’s colouring was all Marshall. It never ceased to amaze Ella why more people didn’t see it.
‘Goodnight, Sammy. Love you. Moon and back.’
‘Trampoline.’
In ten-year-old boy-speak, ‘trampoline’ meant right back atcha.
His sleepy voice mumbled, ‘Goodnight, Mum,’ as Ella shut his bedroom door.
* * *
‘Here you go,’
