For the first thirteen years of her life, Alice had struggled to keep up with Libby, who was smarter and more coordinated than she’d ever be, but the one thing that had sustained her was being her twin’s best friend. Everything changed the day Jess arrived in Kurnai Bay and Libby’s focus shifted away from Alice. Suddenly, her twin was just a sister. It was the first time Alice experienced true heartache. Now she was a pro, although she wasn’t certain she was any better at dealing with it.
Karen had tried consoling a sobbing Alice, telling her it was normal for girls to have a wide circle of friends with different interests and that Libby’s friendship with Jess didn’t mean she loved Alice any less. But Alice didn’t see it that way. Jess was everything Alice wasn’t: worldly, street smart, edgy and confident. Dangerous even, although only Alice thought that. Her mother had dismissed her concerns as “nonsense’”
Karen, usually so cautious about people outside of their social circle, happily welcomed Jess to Pelican House. Once, when a frustrated Alice complained that Jess was “always here,” Karen had replied firmly, “Her life hasn’t been as easy as yours.”
Alice’s early years had been a continuous round of therapies—speech, occupational, physiotherapy—with Karen constantly pushing her to practice her reading, writing and times tables. She hadn’t thought her life was particularly easy. She’d gone to bed each night hoping the intense friendship would burn out and that Jess would tire of Libby. But far from fracturing, the friendship deepened, leaving Alice firmly on the outside whenever Jess was around.
Now all three of them were grown and back in the bay, Alice was finding it harder than ever to catch her twin on her own. Not that Nick was the problem—it was Jess who left Alice feeling thirteen again and a third wheel. Or did she just allow herself to feel like that? Was she the problem? She got a definite vibe from Libby that her twin believed she was. Judging by the therapy podcasts she’d been bingeing recently—it was voyeurism catnip—feeling this way was probably due to some deep-seated insecurities from childhood. It seemed everything stemmed from childhood. The problem was, Alice’s childhood had been rock-solid stable and full of love. It was her adulthood that was proving the challenge.
Six months earlier, everything Alice believed to be true about her adult life had blown up with the force of a terrorist’s bomb, shattering her life in ways she’d never thought possible. Lawrence, the love of her life, her partner of three years and the future father of her brown-eyed, curly-haired children, had taken her to their favorite restaurant—the venue of their first date. Giddy with excitement, Alice had spent the day anticipating a proposal and an engagement ring. Instead she got, “It’s not you, it’s me. I just don’t love you enough.”
Whenever she looked back on that cold July night, facing Lawrence across the table as he worked through his printed list of their shared possessions, she still couldn’t fathom how she’d managed to eat a meal and participate in the destruction of their thirty-six months together.
“You take the Creuset cookware and I’ll keep the DeLonghi coffee machine,” he’d suggested.
“Because you don’t cook and I don’t appreciate coffee?”
“Exactly.”
“What about the Emily Kame Kngwarreye? We both appreciate that.” They’d bought the canvas at auction a year before. It was Alice’s first big art investment, but it had also been an investment in Lawrence.
“I don’t want to sell it just yet.”
Through the anesthetizing shock, Alice had managed a moment of clarity. As much as she loved the painting, she couldn’t afford to buy Lawrence out and she needed money to eat. “Then we get it independently appraised and you pay me half.”
Lawrence’s grimace had been the first sign that their separation might leave a flesh wound.
Lawrence still lived in the house Alice had lovingly decorated, only now he shared it with another woman who wore his great-grandmother’s antique diamond. The effect of “not being loved enough” had hit Alice with the devastation of a tsunami. Within hours, she’d lost her home, her job in Lawrence’s family’s high-end art auction house and her friends. That had felled her as much as losing Lawrence. She hadn’t anticipated the loss of their friends, but as they’d been his friends first, they’d closed ranks after the separation and locked her out. Alone and jobless, she homed like a pigeon, desperately seeking reassurance that someone still loved her.
Her life had been officially declared a train wreck by everyone who’d heard the story. And since this was the bay, not only had everyone heard the story, they’d gleefully discussed it at the Returned Soldiers League—RSL—the supermarket, the marina—hell, she was surprised it hadn’t gotten its own segment on Kurnai Bay community radio. People greeted her with sympathy for her circumstances, but it was always overlaid with sheer relief that they weren’t being forced to start over when societal rules declared that your thirties were prime time for career advancement and personal success.
Her parents and Libby had tiptoed around her for a couple of weeks, her mother hovering like a hawk. Then the advice kicked in.
“Today’s the perfect day to get up, shower and go for a walk along the coast.” Her mother threw open the bedroom curtains. “Spring sunshine and a calm sea soothes the soul. I’ll come with you.”
Her dad handed her a piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it. “The RSL needs a part-timer at the bar.”
“Don’t give him your power,” Libby instructed with the certainty of a woman who’d never been dumped.
Alice had hunkered down, concentrating on getting through each day. For the first time in years, she’d embraced the prohibitive distance between herself and Melbourne. If it wasn’t for those 280 miles, she’d likely have stalked her old home, been caught standing in the yard at 02:00 screaming “Why?” and been arrested for slashing the tires on Lawrence’s and Laetitia’s cars.
