I met Hugh in 2012 during my summer of fun – when nothing serious was meant to happen. I was 23 and had just finished my literature degree in England. I had returned home to Melbourne for three months to apply for the work visa I needed to start my first grown-up job in London.
I’d been a student journalist so thought I’d keep myself busy with some writing. I was asked by a local lifestyle publication to write an article on the best dumplings in Melbourne. The only problem was I hadn’t lived in Melbourne for five years – and had never eaten dumplings.
Panicked, I asked my friends to recommend their favourite local dumpling spots. My best friend, Milly, passed my email on to her boyfriend’s friend, Hugh. He wrote back: “I love a place called Hutong – why don’t we all go?”
The next week Milly and I caught the train into the city. I was glad I’d worn my new pink skirt when I saw the guy who’d be joining us for dinner – he had dark hair, brown eyes and looked sharp in a crisp blue business shirt.
Over a few bottles of red wine I discovered I liked both dumplings and the person sitting opposite me. Here was someone with a razor-sharp brain who noticed the absurdities of every situation, making us laugh with stories about his zany housemates. Afterwards we kicked on to a bar; then, because the night wasn’t young but we were, we all went back to my parents’ house and drank more red.
A few hours later Milly went home and I asked Hugh if he wanted to crash in the guest room. It still housed the wooden rocking horse me and my siblings had played on as children. As I said goodnight to Hugh, I climbed atop the horse with its faded paint and thinned-out mane. He laughed and our eyes met. Then Hugh crossed the room, leaned down and kissed me.
I never wrote the article about Melbourne’s best dumplings because over the next few weeks my only preoccupation was Hugh. We spent every day together, living in the moment of our “summer fling”. He noticed my bookshelves were crammed with romantic comedies and left a new novel by my favourite author, Catherine Alliott, on my bedside table with a note inside the cover and handwritten comments throughout that made me laugh. Hugh took my eccentric family in his stride and won over my mum by taking the family dog on his runs. On Valentine’s Day he created a scavenger hunt of treats across the city. And we realised we were a good team – Hugh treated every task as if he were painting the Sistine Chapel whereas I could start and not finish most things.
As summer drew to a close, our days together took on an urgency and intensity. I was returning to England while Hugh’s job required him to stay in Melbourne. We began to dance around the idea that what was happening between us was more than a summer fling but we avoided discussing the true depth of our feelings.
One hot February night I told him my visa had been processed and I cried in his arms.
Normally when boarding a plane at Tullamarine airport bound for Heathrow, I would be grinning. On this trip I spent the whole flight in tears.
On my first day back in London I found myself walking alone through the rain to Daunt bookstore where I bought a copy of Penguin’s Poems for Love. I needed other people’s words to express what at that moment I could not. When I got home to my basement flat a parcel was waiting for me. Inside the box, beneath the bubble wrap, lay a miniature wooden rocking horse. Grinning, I took a selfie with the present and sent it to Hugh: “I love you too.”
We lasted nine months living in different hemispheres, meeting up for one magical European summer holiday but otherwise subsisting on Skype calls. By the following Australian summer we were together again.
Now, 12 years later, Hugh and I are married. We live in Melbourne, a short train ride from Hutong, with our two kids who love dumplings. And in the corner of my daughter’s bedroom is a rocking horse.
