Silver

Chapter 48 - then

I made friends with Bianca at school. We ate lunch together on the steps by the library. She'd been married for six months and her husband was a fireman. She had no idea how she'd ended up with a fireman. 'I was completely dumbstruck after I met him. There was nothing at all on my paperwork that said I would be compatible with a fireman. That agency was terrible. Mum said afterwards that they didn't have many people on their books, so they were probably scraping the bottom of the barrel. Mum and dad should have paid the extra five thousand dollars for a better agency, but there's been some redundancies at dad's work, you see. Dad always says if you buy cheap, you get cheap. Now look. I'm stuck with cheap.'

Bianca's husband does martial arts training six nights a week. His body is his temple. He monitors his intake of protein and carbs down to the gram. He did cage fighting until he got hit in the head and his doctor told him to stop. 'Cage fighting,' she said. 'What kind of person cage fights, seriously?'

In Family Matters class Mrs Hasen spoke about fidelity. She told us those who engage in infidelity will end up divorced, their children will be taken off them and they will end up either alone or having to marry a divorcee or a desperate. 'Don't fool yourselves girls, no one wants to end up with a divorcee or a desperate. There's always something very wrong with them.'

Cynthia asked, 'but what if you aren't getting any loving from your husband?' The whole class laughed. I felt pain. It seemed all the other married girls in my class were getting loads of loving from their husbands. Even Bianca was giggling.

It made me think about Jarvis. This session on fidelity did the opposite to scaring me. It made me want to see Jarvis again.

Later that night, home in bed, alone again, I traced Jarvis down. It was easy. Jarvis's email was listed under staff on Van Darger's website. My email was brief, 'Hi, just checking in to see how you are? Sylvie.' I kept refreshing my emails at five minute intervals, sometimes even at two minute or one minute intervals. I felt sick with anticipation. I told myself to calm down, he may not even respond. He may have forgotten all about me. Perhaps I was just a dirty secret from his past, one that he didn't want to be reminded of. Perhaps he had lots of dirty secrets.

And then it was there. His name Jarvis, bold, in my inbox. My stomach felt like it had a caged animal inside of it. His message said, 'Sylvie, I've searched everywhere for you. But you left me no clues, no last name, no school, no suburb, nothing. I had almost given up hope. I want to see you again. I can come to Melbourne next weekend, let's meet at that sculpture park you told me about. Yours, Jarvis.'