Over the next couple of days Amber got to thinking that it was actually foolish of her to have left the flat. She planned to take up a job interstate in a few months and she started to think that it was not fair that she should have to move twice within a short period. It’s the way she put this to me that gave me pause. I could sense the anger mounting like the rumble of a distant plane overhead growing louder.
So she contacted her now estranged partner, Perry, and suggested they meet at the flat at a mutually agreeable time to discuss the arrangements for their separation.
She arrived on time. Perry was late. She sent him an SMS telling him she had arrived and was letting herself into the flat. She waited, looking around at the detritus of their life together. The knickknacks and art works gathered on travels around the world and the combined book and music collections. There were also more intimate memories associated with seemingly pedestrian items like the coffee table where she had badly bruised a hip, having fallen onto it from the couch where they made love not long after moving to the flat some years ago.
She sighed and brushed away a tear as she heard the front door open. She squared her shoulders and turned to greet him in what she hoped was a business-like manner. He was sweaty and looked like he’d been running. ‘I’m sorry to be late but do you mind if I shower? I’ve been at the gym.’ She nodded her ascent and he headed for the bathroom.
As he closed the bathroom door his phone, dumped on the kitchen bench near where she was standing, buzzed with a text message. Without stopping to examine why, Amber looked down at the phone. ‘Thanks for a great night. Hope you made it home in time to look innocent. xx.’
What shocked her was her lack of surprise. She sighed again. It was just all so boring and tawdry. She steeled herself for the conversation ahead. When Perry emerged in fresh clothes with damp hair and bare feet from the bathroom, she was seated at the dining table, notebook open on the table in front of her. She gestured for him to take a seat on the other side of the table and he sat.
Over the next hour she put to him her terms, bullet point style. She would live with her friend for the next three weeks whereupon she was moving back into the flat and expected him to be gone. She would live there until moving interstate in three months. At that point he could buy her out and she would seek a tenant, or he could sell the flat and give her half the proceeds. They talked about independent valuations. He could have the car. She resolved questions about who would take what of their furniture and other shared possessions, and she outlined how she planned to tear their joint finances apart.
He dithered. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with the flat. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted the antique sideboard he had insisted on buying one weekend in the country, even though it was outrageously expensive, didn’t quite fit the space and she hated it. At one point she wondered aloud whether, in all the time he had been planning to break up with her, he had not once considered that would mean they didn’t stay living together in the same place, their lives otherwise unchanged?
As the conversation drew to a close Amber indicated she would document the agreements they had reached in an email. She encouraged him to question anything he found she had misinterpreted or recorded incorrectly and asked him whether there was anything he felt had not been covered. ‘What about my e-tag?’ He sounded limp and feeble, like he was about to purchase a used car knowing he was being ripped off. ‘What about your e-tag?’ Inwardly she rolled her eyes. He was breaking up with her after eleven years, he couldn’t decide what to do about their home but he was concerned how he would continue occasional travel on the Monash Freeway? ‘Well it’s topped up from your credit card.’ He looked away from her as he spoke. ‘And I’ll be cancelling that direct debit, so you’ll have to top the e-tag up yourself.’ She rose to leave. ‘How do I do that?’ he asked, to which she replied ‘You will have to figure that out.’
She walked towards the door then stopped and turned to meet his eyes. ‘We are done, finished, over.’ She rounded on her heel and walked out the door. As she stepped into the hall she heard a sigh. It was the most he had communicated all day, like an existential moan. It was an invitation to go back, to talk about what had happened between them and why. She pressed the button for the lift which would take her finally out of their life together. When the lift came she entered and rode to the ground.
