This Too Shall Pass by S. J. Finn

if I’m stressed. My mother has the same tendency, and, although I haven’t consciously followed in her footsteps, I’m not exempt, unfortunately, from doing just that.)
    â€˜I’m just relaying what they said. That it was gross, over the top.’
    I shrugged challengingly, looking at him nonplussed. ‘I don’t know what you want me to do about that. What do you want me to do?’
    In the time he took to construct an answer, I’d already stepped around him, my eyes burning with upset. I strode towards the hall to collect Marcus, where his little legs were taking him over an obstacle course of equipment. While he was finishing, my blood pressure rose in direct correlation to the effort required in pushing my umbrage down. My sharp call gave him a message of urgency. We shunted out of the hall, my hand sternly gripped around his, his little legs running to keep up.
    On hearing this story, Renny, as I’d predicted, was furious. With Marcus tucked up in bed, she’d paced.
    â€˜Hippies. More bigoted than a bunch of conservatives. Backward, pathetic men with long hair in pony-tails. This town! I can’t stand it.’
    The escape to Melbourne had been made six weeks later. Renny and my relationship would never have lasted if we’d stayed. It wasn’t just in Dave’s mind anymore, it had been put in mine: the town had become his .

FIFTEEN
    R enny’s memories weren’t all in regard to excusing me. Some were told as a way to point out my flaws – in particular, my inability to get on with things. She wanted me to be realistic about life, to take responsibility for my tendency to want to hold on. She reminded me of something that had occurred six weeks or so after Dave and I had separated, and of which I’m deeply ashamed.
    In an amalgam of horror and depression in the early hours of a long and feverish night, I’d rung Dave. He informed me I’d woken him from the first restful sleep he’d had since I’d gone. I apologised for this amongst flurries of tears and recriminations, blathering on about how I thought I’d made a mistake. He was calm, cut off. He told me to call him the next day if I still felt the same way.
    In the morning, under the steely light of a cloud-ridden sky, I knew that madness had gripped me in those dark hours. I was struck by my stupidity and lack of strength. Regret swarmed in me like locusts on a wheat field. There was no way I could go back to Dave.
    I confessed the phone call to Renny. She was hurt, furiously hurt. I was making the ground heave for all of us. I crawled under my doona to nurse my guilt. It didn’t help. My face ruined, I surfaced with my hands, if not covered in blood, then certainly sticky from all my snuffling. It took me two weeks to convince her I hadn’t meant it, that making the phone call to him had been a mistake. Renny, ever practical and learning a harsh lesson about me – a tendency towards doubt that kind people call self-reflection – said we should live together so that this wouldn’t happen again. It was the beginning of autumn and we’d known each other for four months. Since I was living in Ange’s house full-time then I had to ask her if she’d mind if Renny moved in. Renny would have to travel back and forth for work, but between us, we’d been travelling up and down the highway almost every day anyway. As for Ange, she was happy to have the company and the extra cash.
    Renny shifted on a cold morning when the wind was lashing about. Despite her mattress having been secured on the back of her load, somehow it flew off. We laughed with a kind of fatal bemusement, hoping it hadn’t landed on the windscreen of another car.
    Even though we looked for that mattress every time we drove along the highway, we never saw it. It had disappeared into the murky, fetid, whipped-up air and remains a mystery to this very day.

SIXTEEN
    T o find a friend at