Natasha Sholl - Found, Wanting

One of the greatest privileges of having a manuscript published is seeing what goes on behind the scenes to bring a book into being.

To my publisher, Alex Craig. I audibly gasped when your name first appeared in my inbox. Thank you for scooping me out of the slush pile and believing in my manuscript. Working with you has felt like a dream. Thank you to editor extraordinaire Brigid Mullane, and to Emily Cook, James Kellow, Robert Watkins, Julia Kumschick, Katherine Rajwar and everyone at Ultimo Press. You live by your tagline of being bold, creative, and different and your commitment to your authors can be felt in everything you do.

Alissa Dinallo, this cover is everything. I may never stop staring at it.

To Elena Gomez for your exceptional edits and comments, and Camha Pham for your expert proofreading.

I am thankful for the space created for me at the Phoenix Park Writers Group and especially grateful that through it I found Glenys and Tim.

Eleni Hale, I feel so lucky that I walked into Phoenix Park with you as our teacher. It was the start of everything. You will be published one day. Keep going, was a note that you wrote on an early version of what would become Chapter 3. I kept that page in my bedside table drawer and read it (and re-read it!) whenever it all seemed too hard. And now look!

It is because of the Kill Your Darlings Mentorship and Rebecca Starfords astute insights (and deadlines!) that the first draft of this manuscript was completed in the early days of the pandemic.

Deepest gratitude to the incomparable Nadine Davidoff, for your exceptional feedback and guidance, and for bringing my attention to the multitude of lives within us all.

To the brilliant Sarah Krasnostein. Thank you for your generosity, kindness and grace. And for always talking to me like I was a writer even when I very much did not feel like one.

Lior, my heartfelt thanks for allowing me to use your beautiful lyrics.

My fierce, warrior (and worrier) mother. Thank you for instilling in me a love of language from as early as I can remember, for asking me what colour I felt when I was happy and for swapping the boys names with the girls names when you read The Famous Five aloud. Mum and Dad, your love and support is fierce and limitless, in words and actions and feelings. This book is many things, and one of them is a love letter to you both.

For being there then, now, and always, my brother Andrew. And to Dina, Aidan, Millie, Fiona, Cara, Noah, Betty and Leon, for all the writerly and non-writerly support and love.

Skye, our friendship is another kind of love story. Thank you for everything and for being an exceptional proofreader and typo queen. I am a better person because you are in my life.

Carla, thank you for seeing me through every version of myself and being there from the beginning.

And to Jordy and Ari for reading those first, messy, mortifying drafts.

Supporting someone who is grieving is an often thankless and exhausting task. Thank you to those who saw me through my darkest days. For the invisible work that brought me through to the other side. For those named and unnamed in these pages, thank you for allowing me space to interweave your stories and our friendship into this book.

To Rob and to Matt. If there is ever a way for the words in this book to find their way to you, I hope they make you proud. You are loved. You are missed. Its as simple and as complicated as that.

The four best humans I know: Ezra, Levi, Alon and Eden. I am in awe of you. Thank you for giving me my second heart. It all begins and ends with you.

Dean, you loved me back to life and for that I will always be grateful. Thank you for your gentle (and not so gentle) encouragement, and for telling me the only thing I could ever do to disappoint you was not write. The unexpected byproduct of working on this book was finding new ways to love you and to fall in love with us all over again. Were doing okay, Norm.

THE BUSINESS OF DEATH had already started. The more people moved and talked, the further I was taken from the last time I had seen Rob alive. As if the milliseconds, seconds, minutes were propelled by movement. I tried my best to keep time anchored. Tried to keep still. It was making me seasick, the flurry of activity. The sound and the noise. JUST STOP, I wanted to shout. But the effort to speak would have been too much. Would have pushed us further still.

I found out later that the morning he died was when my friend Romy had called, while my brother guarded my phone to stem the flow. She had called to tell me she was engaged. Her fianc, Jez, had proposed on Valentines Day because this was the kind of thing that happens on Valentines Day. She was the first in our group of friends, all in our early twenties. My brother Andrew had picked up the phone and told her Rob had died. I was the first in our group of friends too, it seemed.

Dont let Natasha find out, my brother was told. His duty was to make sure no one started talking about wedding plans in the midst of funeral plans. As if acknowledging good news would somehow make Rob more dead. Or worse, as if his death would somehow taint her joy. The loss like a shadow, darkening everything in its path.

It wasnt until a week later, after the funeral, that Romy came over to tell me that Jez had proposed. A loud, cackling burst of laughter followed by tears. The awkward clunk of our heads as we leaned in close. Her blonde strands clinging tight to the strands of my dark brown hair. The way even our follicles knew. Sorry, we whispered over and over. To each other. To ourselves.

I bought her an Italian cookbook as an engagement present to show that I was happy for her even though I was absolutely not. That I thought about her and Jez fucking to celebrate their engagement as I performed CPR. That I wished it was Jez who had died even though this was not something I was allowed to think about. I bought an Italian cookbook for the newly engaged couple to hide this fact. I hoped that every time she made Bucatini allAmatriciana on page 257 she would know that Rob loved me more than Jez loved her and that the world was a place of unbridled horror.

No one had ever felt like us before. We thought we were the only ones. We were smug with our love. Maybe this is where it all went wrong.

Rob and I met at a party, although we didnt technically meet. My school friend Elise was dating one of his friends. At the kitchen island in a seventies-style Californian bungalow with a swell of people, there he was. Someone was pouring drinks into plastic cups. Flat Coke. Cranberry juice. The smell of gin made me gag a little after drinking too much of it the weekend before. Dark skin, long brown hair, unnervingly blue-green eyes and enormous arms and shoulders hugged tight by his clothing. The kind of tight t-shirt that wouldnt have been tight on anyone else.

We didnt say a word. It was a night that was otherwise completely forgettable. Bookended by forgettable moments. The stickiness of the benches, the background noise of overlapping conversations. The loud drunk-volume laughter. Hipster jeans and excessive bronzer. The crunch underfoot of dirt brought in from the garden. These are things I know to be true but not things I remember. I make up these details to flesh out the night. To give meat to it. The night we met. The split second of eye contact.

It was months later that my phone rang. As if it was a completely ordinary ring. As if it wasnt the phone call that would change everything.

Hi, its Rob, said the voice. I got your number from Elise.