Broken by Ilsa Evans Page A

programs or a game of chess, had never hit it off. Perhaps that was why they had all lost contact? Or maybe it was simply because Liz was unable to have children, and Mattie felt guilty with her healthy, happy pigeon pair.
    But there had been other friends too, who would cry on her shoulder over the loss of a boyfriend one minute and then drag her out to a nightclub the next. Who would turn up on a Friday night with a tear-jerker movie and a bottle of Baileys, or would sprawl across her bed and offer advice while she cleaned out her wardrobe. How had she not noticed that gradually, over the past decade, she’d drifted away from all those she could lean on and not replaced them with new friends, new confidantes, a new circle of support? So that now she sat alone, without one person who could help her even fill out a damn form.
    Mattie flung the pen across the table and leant back, her head pounding with self-pity.
How had this happened?
Had marriage and children taken over her life so completely that she hadn’t noticed the loss of friends? Or was this how it was meant to be – that, once married, a person was
meant
to create distance around herself, a space to be filled with family now rather than friends? But then that meant it was even harder to escape, even harder to break away and start again.
    Mattie wiped her eyes roughly. It just wasn’t fair. Why did everything have to be so damn
hard?
Couldn’t one thing, just
one
bloody thing, come easily? She hugged herself and stared at the far wall, allowing her misery full rein. It quickly rose, greedily demanding sustenance until it became so bloated that its very wretchedness began to disgust her. So she got up to wash her hands and then shoved her chair back so that she was facing the fridge, with its confetti messages of hope.
The future depends on what you do in the present. The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings
.
    She read through the sayings, and then forced herself to do so again. Because she knew, from years of close acquaintance with the malignancy of self-pity, that taking such a path led her to a place where the misery itself would render her helpless. Feeding on itself until it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that threatened to destroy her more effectively than whatever it was that had sent her there in the first place.
    So, with practised determination after re-reading the motivational exhortations, Mattie dragged her focus outside of her problems and started to systematically address them. First was the issue of the paperwork and, without suitable friends, there remained only Hannah. Who would make Mattie sweat while she read it through with thin lips, and would, when finished, shake her head and sigh sadly – but she would sign it nevertheless. And then Mattie could submit the whole application and be officially on the government payroll, which meant she would have breathing space until she worked out what to do next.
    But the issue of friends was still important, because Mattie knew she was going to need a support network, not so much to unburden herself but so that she could feel
connected
. A community fabric capable of weaving her a richer life. She reached across the table to retrieve her pen and started doodling on the Centrelink instructions.
We will rebuild
. Shades of the six-million dollar man, back when six million actually meant something and Farrah Fawcett Majors was every young guy’s pin-up dream.
    The phone rang just as she was putting the finishing touches to a cartoon caricature of two little figures holding hands
(Friendship is
. . .), so she abandoned her musings and got up to answer it. No more streamlined cordless telephones networked throughout the house, just a mustard-yellow wall-phone that hung by the refrigerator with a long, tangled cord spiralling nearly down to the floor.
    â€˜Hello?’
    â€˜Hello there, sweetheart,’ Jake’s voice came warmly down