Love is all in the footnotes

“Did I ever tell you…? Did we ever tell you…?” K asked one night when we were all in 2am, the dessert bar I describe to people as my boyfriend. They are talented and young; their sweets are subtle and thoughtful, though none has been as orgasmic as anything by Pierre Herme, the George Clooney of pastry masters; they remember my favourite foods, or rather, the things I have capriciously professed a preference for. If I love them they love me back.

“No,” I said, “tell me.” Nestling against a couch, I hadn’t been taking much note of K and C’s talk about old Melbourne times. Down under is a closed chapter of my life, after all.

“That day when we were in Crown Casino…we stalked you.” “You what? Crown Casino?” “We stalked you.” They were to have chaperoned me on my first offline date that day, ten years ago, with some man I had met online. A tallish, thin man with haunted eyes and a hunted, jumpy walk. And somehow or other, soon after everyone was introduced to everyone else, in the instant of a heartbeat, I pretty much made off with him – what was I thinking? I wasn’t – and gave K a heart attack.

OMG! She let her idiot friend leave with a man who looks like a South Asian terrorist! What if something happens? Should she call the idiot’s mum? What if nothing happens and she shouldn’t have called the idiot’s mum? So they had to stalk me. They went all the way to the man’s house – what was I thinking? I wasn’t – and stood outside, trying not to look like stalkers.

“You were outside?” “We were. We were saying there were no bushes to hide behind…” “There were bushes!” “Nearer the window. Not outside…” C said as she showed me some stoop-and-hide moves and re-enacted how he nearly saw her at the window. “I was like, shit.” K remembered how she gave C a hard time about wearing a yellow parka. “Yellow! When we were on a mission! I gave you such shite about that…”

And I realised, 10 years later, not too late, what great girl friends I have. They love you back; they love you more than you know.