Free An Astronaut's Life by Sonja Dechian Page B

remained such a source of comfort during this period. Something would come up,
she always said, let’s see this as an opportunity, etc, and I took her lead. I’m
sure I tried to tell her that things would soon be dire, the job market was competitive
and I had no special skills, certainly no ambition; I must have mentioned that, in
fact, I was feeling more and more relieved to be out of the workforce all together.
But something will still come up, she said.
    A friend of mine once told me you always know at the start of a relationship what
it is that will cause it to end. I had not known with Gina, even though I’d thought
hard about it before we bought the house. Was it my cynicism that would drive her
away? Were we a mismatch? Maybe tensions over the child that was not mine, legally
or otherwise, or once money started to become an issue—maybe that? But still I could
not see how any of this would be enough to derail us.
    Not long into my period of unemployment, Gina began to take extra shifts at the hospital,
although we did not yet need the money. Despite all her reassurances, she was preparing
for me to fail.
    Still she encouraged me to be proactive. Maybe enrol in a course, she said. So I’d
found one in comms planning and on the first day I rose early and dressed for work
and caught the train, and although I was only going through the motions for Gina’s
sake, for a short time it seemed as if the whole exercise might wake something in
me, after all.
    Then I joined a room of unemployed strangers and for the next four-and-a-half hours
we sat and watched as a series of amateur PowerPoint slides swam before us.
    At lunchtime I’d gone to the bathroom and the zipper on my pants had come off in
my hand. I sat on the toilet for fifteen minutes trying to force the teeth back in.
I didn’t even have a safety pin to hold it, so I tied my jacket around my waist and
stepped out into the hall where I asked another woman from the course if she had
one, but she didn’t. I explained quietly why, and she went around asking everyone
until it became a sort of bonding exercise for them, the six women in the course
rifling through handbags in a little hallway conspiracy. Someone handed me a pin,
I fixed things up as best I could, but I did not return to class.
    I’ve come to see the space that had opened up when I lost my job had to be filled,
but I hadn’t thought carefully enough about this. I was vulnerable to the wrong perspectives
and obsessions. I could feel myself becoming unmoored from our relationship, from us, but I didn’t know how to stop it from happening.
    And I couldn’t explain this to Gina.
    ‘You’re not even trying,’ she said, which surprised me. I had not been trying for
some time.
    The Friday before the arrival of the cops, we’d celebrated my very first contract.
‘The birth of your business,’ Gina called it, even though it was only one contract,
and I’d won it with a quote that was much too low.
    Gina had picked up a bottle of bubbly on her way home from Lucas’ school and they
came in from the car singing a sort of hip-hooray for Ma. Lucas had a postbag in
his arms. It was stamped from Singapore—a package from his father.
    He sat on the floor and tore at it. Things felt festive; champagne and Lucas’s excitement.
    ‘School bag away first,’ Gina said, which was the rule. Lucas ignored her and she
tried again until he took the package from between his teeth to speak.
    ‘No, but can I please? It’s from my dad.’
    ‘All right, but let me. You’ll break your teeth.’
    He wouldn’t let Gina take it so she went to the kitchen for scissors.
    ‘Let Mum help,’ I said, and he held it out for her. Gina snipped the top end of the
package and angled it down.
    ‘Shake it out,’ she said.
    A card and gift in boyish wrapping fell to the carpet and Lucas squealed, scooping
the present with such care there might have been a kitten inside and not just an
ill-fitting item of clothing, like