Silver

Chapter 79 - now

'One word,' Jarvis says 'Symbiotic. I depend on you for survival.'

He leans over and kisses me gently, lighting the pyrotechnics of my heart.

'Let's run away together,' he says. 'You can design a house for us. We'll call it Sylvie's White House, or Casa Blanca, just so it sounds more exotic. You've always said that you love white houses. I'll make a series of bronze sculptures for the back garden. We'll plant silver leaved plants and they'll look amazing against the bronze. I've been thinking about it all.'

In all my wishes I say yes.

Yes. Let's do it. Let's run away.

I save him from Nina's pregnancy.

I save him from guilt.

I free him from entrapment.

We live in a tiny apartment in Fitzroy, close enough to RMIT, while I finish my architecture course. My parents were concerned that I left Alistair, but they like Jarvis. They see how creative and passionate he is. So they help us out. They give us enough money to survive, even though we are outcasts and living on the fringes of society, living in sin, they are proud of me following my dreams. Dad is proud that I'm studying Architecture and Design. We have deep discussions about my work. Dad looks at my plans, reads my essays, and with his help and advice, I'm a distinction student, I win awards, before I've even graduated.

Jarvis uses our light-filled spare room for his own work. After his long apprenticeship with Van Darger, he has the skills and experience to create impressive sculpture in different media. But he prefers bronze. He makes meticulous futuristic figures in movement. They are small pieces at first, but as he sells more through his art dealer, the scale becomes larger, until he needs to rent a studio that will allow him to create large-scale exhibition pieces.

I get a job with one of Melbourne's leading architecture firms. I work on projects in Tokyo and Beijing and Dubai. We buy land backing on to the Yarra River and I design our dream white home, three levels, with an upstairs kitchen, and an infinity pool. Downstairs, we have two bedrooms for our two children, who grow up without a nanny. I work part time for eight years, and Jarvis works part time, we co-parent our children until they go to the local primary school. When they turn 16 we don't force them into an arranged marriage. We let them find love on their own terms. We welcome a new daughter-in-law and a son-in-law into our family.

At fifty, we are young. Jarvis' hair has greyed, my face shows the lines of the decisions I've made, my belly, the two children I carried. We sit on the top deck, sipping red wine, overlooking the infinity pool, overlooking the Yarra River, overlooking the city of Melbourne, and we marvel that life has turned out so fine. Jarvis turns to me, 'I'm glad we ran away,' he says. 'I'm pleased we were brave.'

I reach for his hand, running my finger over his calloused fingertips. I pull my chair towards him and kiss him on the lips, grateful for the stretched resolution of our relationship. 'I'm so glad we believed in love,' I say.

His bronze torso sits on our mantlepiece. A marble sculpture of my head sits on a plinth in the living room, by the floor to ceiling windows. Bronze casts of our babies' feet are hung on our bedroom wall. In the cobblestone courtyard, there's a bronze statue of our bodies, wound together like ivy. Our relationship is immortalised. A white house of our love that cannot be chiselled back. There forever. Existing even when we die. Casa Blanca. Casa Blanca.