Хелен Браун - Bono

Staring into the darkness, I wondered what was going on inside my husband’s head. He seemed to have transitioned from the high passion of our early years to midlife contentment with hardly a glitch. Either that or he was an actor of Oscar-winning potential.

I supposed it was inevitable that French kisses should morph into Sunday night pecks. Love has many layers. Sex can be transporting and addictive, but to lust after the same person over and over again is asking a lot of the imagination.

Movies make a big deal of the first kiss and rapturous nights in bed together, followed (ninety minutes later) by the frantic dash to the airport when he thinks she’s leaving him. Hollywood seems to have little interest in portraying the everyday and astonishing achievement of sustaining love through all the reincarnations two people go through in a lifetime together.

His breathing was becoming deep and regular.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Whaaa?!” he said, tugging the sheet over his shoulder, and encasing himself like a caterpillar. “A good night’s sleep wouldn’t go amiss.”

“No, I mean it,” I said, tapping his shoulder. “If you had just a few years left, how would you choose to spend them? Is there something you’ve always dreamed of, a place you’ve wanted to go?”

The room fell silent. He’d either fallen asleep, or was thinking.

“Antarctica,” he said after a long pause.

He knew my theory on Antarctica. Some places on Earth are so sacred people should leave them alone. Besides which, I can’t stand the cold.

“And . . . ?”

“A shack by the sea, and maybe a little boat to knock about in.”

He’d always talked about having a beach house, but I could think of nothing worse. Being in charge of two kitchen sinks, having double the number of beds to make and a house full of sand sounded like slavery. As for boats, I hadn’t earned the title of Vomit Queen for nothing.

Jonah stirred and made licking sounds. A ball of panic settled in the back of my throat. It wasn’t so much that my life was nearly over, but that I might have chosen the wrong life. There was every chance this restlessness was nothing to do with second adolescence but a sign I was wasting my days cooking dinners and sifting through the litter box of an imperious cat. Maybe my soul—if I had one—was telling me I didn’t belong in a ramshackle house on a dead-end street in inner Melbourne, and that my real home was somewhere altogether more glamorous?

At first, the voice in my ear sounded like tinnitus, but the message grew loud and clear:

Time’s running out. Grab all the excitement you can. I’d

I sank into a whirlwind of turbulent dreams. Since I’d opened up to the idea of excitement, it seemed to be rushing in with cyclonic force. Though I’d never experienced a super storm, I’d seen how the one called Sandy had engulfed Manhattan a few months earlier. Watching the televised images of waves swallowing up the city moved me deeply. At the time, I had no idea that hurricane’s force was far from spent. It would soon be driving another form of tumult into my life. I needn’t have worried about lack of adventure. In an animal shelter across the world, a bundle of excitement was sitting inside a cage, licking its fluffy black paws . . . and calling across space and time to me.

Chapter Two

HEAVEN OR HELLHOLE

A feline is seldom what she seems.

The following morning, I woke with a plan so perfectly formed it practically qualified as a vision. If it were true that I’d ended up in the wrong life in the wrong city, I’d change it, at least for a little while. And where better to move to than New York?

After all, New York and I had unfinished business. Though I’d never lived among the city’s skyscraper canyons, I’d spent a tantalizing time there a few years earlier celebrating the launch of my first book, Cleo. The parties were every bit as glittering as I’d dreamed, the people warm and fascinating.

No one had been more surprised than me when Cleo bounced onto the New York Times bestseller list. For one thing, the book was about a cat and how she’d helped our family heal after my nine-year-old son Sam was run over and killed in 1983.

While Cleo the cat seemed to be an angel from another world through the darkest days of my grief, when I sent her story to literary agents and publishers most had run for the hills. Eventually it was picked up and before long it had been translated into countless languages.

Just when I was thinking it was time to sign up for gardening classes, I was spinning around the world in a whirl of happy disbelief—magical parties in Frankfurt and Vienna, where writers are revered as artists. In Warsaw, Poland, I found people love to read so much they fill a soccer stadium for their book fair. A tour of the tsunami region of Japan affected me profoundly. It was an honor beyond words when people who had lost so much wanted to share their grief with me.

At an elegant lunch on a whirlwind trip to New York, I steadied a glass of chardonnay and hoped my antipodean earthiness and oversized feet weren’t too laughable.

Across the table, a woman beamed worldly warmth from under a froth of blond hair. The bright scarf around her neck was pinned together with a vivid enamel brooch the shape of a cat. Feline fanatic to the core, she confessed to keeping three cats in her two bedroomed apartment. When she smiled, the restaurant took on a peachy hue. Her name was Michaela Hamilton, executive editor at Kensington Publishing, and Cleo ’s US editor.

Now, with a new book soon to be released in the United States, I had a watertight excuse to return to New York. Except this time, I’d stay longer, immerse myself in the city, and put my dreary suburban life on hold. If I met enough fabulous people, some of their glamour might rub off on me. I’d drink champagne with the literati and (if my knee held out) dance down Fifth Avenue at dawn. They might even like me enough to ask me to stay on indefinitely. Only a fool would say no to that. All I had to do was contact Michaela and introduce my other half to the brilliance of the idea.

Philip’s side of the bed was empty. I knew the rule. I was supposed to stay put until he brought in the tea and toast. Our sleepy cat protested as I rolled him off my body and leapt out of bed into my dressing gown. Jonah yowled and tried to cut me off so he could wrangle me back to bed for his regular cuddle. I sidestepped the flicking tail and dashed into my study.

According to my calculations, it would be late afternoon in New York.

I was in luck. Michaela was still at her desk.

Her enthusiasm bubbled back across cyberspace. If I visited in a couple of months’ time, toward the end of March, to coincide with the release of Cats & Daughters, we could have fun together and maybe sell a few books. She agreed that instead of staying in a hotel I should rent an apartment. That way it would be easier to extend my stay and discuss new projects with her.

I pictured myself trotting across Times Square to her office building every morning to discuss my outline for the next Game of Thrones before heading around the corner to binge on a Broadway matinee. As dusk settled over the Empire State Building I’d make a cameo appearance on The Daily Show , before heading across town for cocktails with Stephen Colbert. It was like offering an ice addict her own meth lab.

After Michaela and I signed off, I floated into the kitchen, where Philip was applying broad strokes of jam to a slab of toast.

“What’s up?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure how to share the news. Jonah snaked around my ankles and wailed like Plácido Domingo.