Lyn had spent the last ten months working in a London hotel and hating every minute of it. Now she was making up for it with eight long weeks of carefree summer travel around Europe before returning home in time for Gemma’s wedding.

Lyn had met an American boy named Hank in Barcelona. They caught the train together down the Costa Brava and stopped at a little town called Llanca. Each day lasted a lifetime. Their balcony looked right out on sparkling sea and hazy mountains capped with snowy white buildings. She and Hank weren’t sleeping together yet, but it would take only couple more jugs of sangria. Sometimes as they walked through sunlit cobbled streets he’d grab her and push her up against a wall and they’d kiss until they were both breathless. Lyn felt like she was living in an Audrey Hepburn movie. It was laughably romantic.

“What bad news?” asked Lyn calmly. She looked down at her sandy feet on the white tiles of her hotel room and admired her tanned, pink toenails. No doubt it was the bridesmaids’ dresses. Gemma probably wanted them to look like fluffy meringues, or more likely, something strange, like Gothic witches or flower-power hippies.

“Marcus is dead.”

Lyn watched her toes curl in surprise.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I mean he’s dead. He got hit by a car on Military Road. He died in the ambulance. Gemma was with him.”

It was like being winded. Lyn grabbed at the telephone cord.

“It’s O.K. She’s fine. Well, she’s not fine. Her fiancé is dead. But she’s fine. She’s not hurt or anything.”

Lyn let out her breath. “My God. I can’t believe it.”

“She says you’re not to come home. She doesn’t want to ruin your holiday.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Lyn. “I’m coming now.”

There was the tiniest tremor in Cat’s voice. “I said you probably would.”

Hank came into the room while she was calling the airline and sat by her feet on the tiled floor, dripping from his swim. He took hold of her ankle. “What’s the deal?”

“I’m going home.”

He was sitting right next to her, touching her, but already he felt like a memory. His wet hair and tanned face seemed frivolous and insubstantial.

And that was when things switched to fast-forward.

She caught a train to Barcelona and managed to get on a flight to Heathrow, where a man at the Qantas counter upgraded her to business class, clucking sympathetically and tap-tapping conspiratorially at his keyboard. He handed her the boarding pass with a beatific smile, as if he knew he was handing her a brand-new destiny.

She had the window seat next to a man in black jeans and T-shirt. As they were putting their seats into an upright position for takeoff, he asked her if she was from Sydney.

“Yes,” she said in an exasperated tone, without looking at him. He was irrelevant. Didn’t he see that? He was completely irrelevant.

“Ah,” he said sadly, and she was suddenly disgusted by her unnecessary rudeness.

“I’m sorry. I’m going home for a funeral. It’s been a bit stressful.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry. How awful for you.” He was a long, lanky man with a mop of black curly hair and serious eyes behind John Lennon glasses.

It was his voice that did it. Maybe if he’d just had an ordinary voice, they would have spent the rest of the flight in silence. But he had “the voice.” Ah, the voice, her sisters said with understanding when they heard. Not that they went for it themselves, they just recognized it on Lyn’s behalf.

Gemma would say, “The mechanic who serviced my car had that sort of voice you go on about. I gave him your number. He has a girlfriend, but he kept it just in case things didn’t work out. He said it’s good to have a backup.”

She first heard it from her Year Eight Geography teacher. Mr. Gordon was bearded and paunchy, but he spoke about rivers and mountain ranges in a voice with an underlying sweetness. It was perfectly masculine but somehow gentler or softer than the average man’s voice. It made her feel safe.

“My sister’s fiancé was killed in a car accident,” she explained. “They were getting married in six weeks. The invitations were just about to go out.”

He made a “tsk” sound. “That’s terrible.”

Lyn came from a family of poor listeners. If you had something to say, you had to battle constant interruptions, challenges, outright boredom—get on with it—and loud triumph over any trip-ups—Ha! You just said the opposite two seconds ago!

Michael listened to Lyn with unhurried, flattering interest. It was a brand-new experience for her. It made her eloquent.

It was why she fell in love with him, the pure, almost physical pleasure of their conversation—listening to him and having him listen to her.

Not that she fell in love with him immediately. There wasn’t a hint of inappropriate flirtation in their first conversation. He spoke about his wife and little girl and Lyn told him about Hank. But still, it was quite an intimate conversation for two strangers. Perhaps, Lyn always thought afterward, it was the environment—that strange roaring vacuum suspended high above the planet, that peculiarly familiar feeling that you’d always been on this plane and you always would be.

She told him how angry she felt with Marcus for dying so stupidly, so thoughtlessly, so close to the wedding—ruining her sister’s life! Why wasn’t the fool looking when he crossed the road?