Five Times to Voicemail

"Every unanswered call is a decision. Every silence is a statement."

The phone felt heavier than it should.

I picked it up from the bench where I'd set it, turned it over in my hands. The screen was dark, waiting. My reflection stared back at me from the black glass—distorted, unfamiliar, just the vague shape of a face in a too-bright kitchen.

I unlocked it. Found Paul's contact. His photo looked up at me from the screen—an old picture, taken years ago at some orchestra concert, his smile easy and unguarded in a way I couldn't remember seeing in a long time. I'd kept meaning to change it to something more recent. Never had.

My thumb hovered over the call button.

He was probably at the Palace. Or the Barrier Social Democratic Club, nursing a beer and staring at a television screen, letting the noise wash over him so he didn't have to think. That's what he did when things got hard—found somewhere to hide, somewhere with enough background noise to drown out his own thoughts. He'd sit there for an hour, maybe two, until he'd convinced himself that he was the wronged party, and then he'd come home and we'd do the whole exhausting dance of pretending nothing had happened.

I pressed call.

The phone rang once. Twice. A third time, and then—

"Hi, you've reached Paul Smith. I can't take your call right now, but leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

His voice was warm. Professional. The voice he used for clients, for business contacts, for the outside world that didn't know what he was really like. The voice that had charmed me once, years ago, when we were both young and I'd mistaken careful performance for genuine feeling.

The beep sounded.

I hung up.

The kitchen hummed around me—the refrigerator, the light overhead, the small electronic sounds of a house running on autopilot. I stared at the phone in my hand. The call had lasted seven seconds. Seven seconds of ringing and then his voice, that recorded greeting, that wall between us.

He'd have his phone on silent. That would be it. Shoved in his pocket while he sat at the bar, deliberately not looking at it, deliberately not giving me the satisfaction of a response. Making me wait. Making me wonder. It was passive, and it was aggressive, and it was so completely Paul that I wanted to throw the phone across the room.

I called again.

One ring. Two. Three.

"Hi, you've reached Paul Smith—"

I ended the call before the beep. My jaw was tight, the muscles aching all the way up to my temples. I made myself breathe—in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way I taught my students when they were nervous before a performance. It didn't help. The tightness stayed, settled deeper into my chest like something taking root.

Third time.

I let it ring out this time, let his cheerful recorded voice wash over me, waited for the beep.

"Paul." My voice came out flat, clipped, each syllable precisely controlled. "Call me back."

I hung up. Looked at the screen. Looked at the time.

Seven thirty-two.

He'd left at—when? Six-thirty? Quarter to seven? The time before his departure had gone fuzzy, blurred by anger and adrenaline, and the time after wasn't much better. Less than an hour. He could be anywhere by now. The Palace was only ten minutes away. The club, maybe fifteen. He could be parked somewhere—the lookout on the edge of town, maybe, or one of the empty car parks near the mining museum, sitting in the dark with the engine off and his phone ignored on the passenger seat.

Broken Hill wasn't a big place. There were only so many spots a man could go to sulk.

He'll come back, I thought. He always comes back.

I set the phone down on the bench. The granite was cold against my palm as I pulled my hand away.

The kettle was still sitting there, full of water that had long since cooled. I should empty it. Refill it. Make tea like I'd meant to earlier. Do something normal, something domestic, something that didn't involve staring at a phone and waiting for a man who'd climbed out a window to avoid me.

I picked the phone up again.

The weight of it in my hand, the smooth glass against my fingers—it was almost a compulsion now, this need to check, to try again, to reach across the distance he'd created and force him to acknowledge me. I wasn't going to just stand here and be ignored. I wasn't going to let him sit in some car park or some pub booth and pretend I didn't exist.

Fourth call.

"Hi, you've reached Paul Smith—"

I waited for the beep. This time when I spoke, my voice was harder, the edges sharper.

"This is ridiculous, Paul. We need to talk about this like adults. Call me back."

The words hung in the air for a moment after I hung up, echoing in the quiet kitchen. Like adults. As if climbing out a window was adult behaviour. As if running away in the middle of an argument was something a grown man did, a father, a husband, someone who was supposed to be a partner in building a life.

I was pacing again. I hadn't noticed starting, but here I was, moving back and forth across the kitchen floor, the tiles cool under my bare feet, the phone clutched in my hand like a talisman. Six steps to the sink. Turn. Six steps to the table. Turn. The rhythm of it was almost soothing—the body finding its own way to discharge the energy building inside me, the restlessness that had no other outlet.

The clock on the wall ticked. Seven thirty-six. Seven thirty-seven.

He was probably ordering his second drink by now. Probably telling whoever would listen about his difficult wife, his stressful life, poor Paul who just needed a bit of peace and quiet. The image made something hot and sharp rise in my chest—him sitting there, comfortable, unbothered, while I paced this kitchen like a caged animal.

Fifth call.

This time I didn't speak. Just let it ring through to voicemail, let his greeting play out in my ear—that warm, professional voice, that careful performance—and stood there in the middle of the kitchen, listening.

"Hi, you've reached Paul Smith. I can't take your call right now, but leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

He could take my call. He was choosing not to. That was the thing about mobile phones—they told you things whether you wanted to know them or not. Every unanswered call was a decision. Every silence was a statement.

The beep sounded.

I didn't leave a message. Didn't trust what might come out of my mouth if I opened it. Just stood there, breathing too fast, the phone pressed against my ear, listening to the empty hiss of the recording waiting for words I wouldn't give it.

I hung up.

The anger was there now, hot and bright in my chest—not the cold anger from before but something sharper, something with teeth. He didn't get to do this. He didn't get to sit in some pub or some car park, ignoring my calls, making me wait and wonder while he played the wounded party. He'd climbed out a window. He didn't get to be the victim here.

Something touched my ankle.

I startled, looked down. Charlie was there, pressed against my leg, her tail wagging in that tentative way she had when she wasn't sure of her welcome. Her head was tilted up towards me, brown eyes catching the overhead light, and her tail swept slowly back and forth across the floor.

"Not now, Charlie."

The words came out sharper than I'd meant them to. Harder. Charlie's tail stopped mid-wag, and she took a small step back, her ears flattening slightly against her head.

I looked away. Looked at the phone. Looked at the blank screen that wasn't showing me any notifications, any missed calls, any sign that Paul had noticed or cared that I'd been trying to reach him.

In my peripheral vision, Charlie slunk towards her water bowl. It sat in the corner by the back door, the stainless steel catching the light. She lowered her head to drink, and I heard the sound of her tongue lapping at water—except the sound was wrong. Too shallow. Too quick.

The bowl was nearly empty. Just a thin layer of water coating the bottom, barely enough for a few mouthfuls.

I should fill it. The thought arrived, noted itself, and then slipped away, replaced by the phone in my hand, the screen I was looking at again, the call log showing five outgoing calls in the last ten minutes, each one unanswered.

I'd fill it in a minute. She'd be fine. It wasn't like she was dying of thirst—there was still some water in there, enough to get by. And I had other things to think about right now. More important things.

Charlie finished drinking—or finished trying to—and retreated to her bed, turning in a circle once, twice, three times before settling down with her nose on her paws. Her eyes stayed on me.

I looked away.

The phone. The time. Seven forty-one.

He'd be back. A few hours of sulking, a few drinks to take the edge off, and then he'd slink home with that hangdog expression he always got when he knew he'd been in the wrong but couldn't bring himself to actually apologise. He'd make some excuse about needing air, needing space, needing time to think, and I'd be expected to accept it, to smooth things over, to pretend that climbing out a window was a reasonable response to a marital disagreement.

And I would. Because that's what I did. That's what I always did.

I could feel something building in my chest—a pressure, a tightness, something that wanted to expand but had nowhere to go. It wasn't panic. I knew what panic felt like, had felt it before performances as a younger dancer, that specific clutch of fear in the throat. This was different. Duller. Heavier. A weight settling onto my ribs, making each breath slightly shallower than the last.

I didn't name it.

Instead I looked at the phone again. At Paul's contact photo. At his smile, frozen in time, captured on a day when things had been different—or at least when I'd believed they were different, which might not be the same thing at all.

My thumb hovered over the call button.

Not yet. Give it time. Give him time to finish his drink, to run out of self-pity, to remember that he had a wife and a home and responsibilities he couldn't escape through a bedroom window. If I called again now—if I kept calling, over and over—I'd be the unreasonable one. The demanding wife. The woman who couldn't give her husband an hour of peace.

I set the phone down on the bench.

Picked it up again.

Set it down.

The clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. Charlie watched me from her bed, silent and patient, waiting for something I wasn't going to give her.

He'd be back by ten. Eleven at the latest. He'd come through the front door smelling of beer and cold air, and we'd have the same exhausting conversation we'd had a hundred times before, and nothing would change, and tomorrow we'd wake up and keep going because that's what we did.

That's what we always did.