Free Life Support: Escape to the Country by Nicki Edwards

Melbourne University was overflowing with Lleyton’s family, friends and work colleagues. Outside, cars whizzed past, people going about their daily lives oblivious to the amount of grief trapped within the old building.
    Emma had little to do with the service preparations – Lleyton’s parents had seen to all the arrangements, right down to organizing a company to create a professional DVD presentation in which she barely featured. Not that she minded. His parents were grieving the loss of the man they’d known since birth. She was grieving the loss of a man she’d only known for three years and been married to for two. And as it turned out, she hadn’t really known him at all.
    She sat in the front row, dressed in an uncomfortable but obligatory tailored black dress and jacket, flanked by her parents. During the service, she surprised herself when her tears flowed freely as the minister spoke of Lleyton in glowing terms. She roughly wiped them from her cheeks with the back of her hand and sniffed. Win glanced at her before quickly averting his eyes, but not before Emma caught the sheen of tears that glistened.
    Maybe the tin-man does have a heart.
    Andrew sat behind her, slightly to the left, in the pews reserved for close family friends. At one point Emma heard him weeping openly and her heart broke for him. As difficult as the circumstances were surrounding Lleyton’s life and death, it was clearly as hard for Andrew to say farewell as it was for her. She sighed. The physical pain of Lleyton’s death wasn’t as bad in its intensity as the emotional pain it had caused.
    Her head told her to move on, but her heart was trying to find a way to do that. At times her grief felt like an insurmountable brick wall. As much as Lleyton had let her down, she had loved him once, and inexplicably she found herself missing him at the strangest of times. She dragged her attention back to the choristers hoping for anything to distract her from the raw memories.
    When the long and formal Anglican service was over and the final hymn was performed by the choir, Andrew managed to pull himself together long enough to perform his duties as a pallbearer. His eyes caught hers briefly as he proceeded past, his back ramrod straight. They shared a tiny smile of comfort and understanding. As extraordinary as the whole situation was, they’d formed a mutual respect for one another and Emma saw no point in hating the man. It was far better to forgive him so she wouldn’t be entrapped in a lifetime of bitterness.
    She was, however, still working on forgiving Lleyton.
    Her parents stayed for the week after the funeral, but at Emma’s insistence they headed north back up the highway. She needed time to grieve alone. They pleaded with her to come back to Birrangulla with them, but Emma made no plans or promises. She simply had to get through one day at a time.
    *
    On the fourth of July, a week after the funeral, Emma sat opposite Andrew in his thirty-ninth floor corner office with its commanding views across the city toward Port Philip Bay. She hadn’t seen or spoken to any of the Chirnsides since the afternoon of the funeral and this was the first time she’d had any contact with Andrew. It was the day Americans celebrated their independence, but Emma felt anything but independent. She felt anxious, unsettled about the future, and nervous about the meeting with Andrew to hear the details of Lleyton’s will.
    “The police are calling it an accident, which is good,” Andrew said once he sat and straightened the pens and papers on the desk in front of him.
    “How is that good?” Emma asked.
    “If it was deliberate, there wouldn’t be a life insurance policy which would mean no money for you.”
    “Lleyton would never have taken his own life.”
    “I know, I know.”
    Andrew straightened his already perfectly hung tie and smoothed his hand down the front of his shirt. He rubbed at a spot on his wrist. Why was he so nervous?
    “I’ve