The Duvet Cover We Could Not Escape

The first thing I fancied about Leah was that she could make a decision. At the wine bar in Carlton she chose a table, ordered something she could pronounce and told a man blocking the doorway that the doorway was, in fact, for going through. I had spent twenty minutes choosing socks. We offered each other balance.

At the bar, she had asked what I did when I wasn't working. I told her I liked cooking, walking and going to the cinema, which was true but sounded as though I had borrowed a personality from a rental application.

'Anything you're rubbish at?' she asked.

'Keeping indoor plants alive.'

'Everyone says that. Give me something specific.'

I considered admitting that I could never remember which way my own front gate opened. Instead I said I was bad at relaxing on holidays. She nodded as though that was an answer she could use.

'I make lists,' she said. 'Then I get cross when enjoying myself takes longer than I allowed.'

We compared failed attempts to become breezy people. I had once packed a novel for a weekend away and spent the whole trip looking for a quieter place to read it. Leah had booked a spontaneous lunch three weeks in advance.

'We're doing very well tonight, then,' I said.

'I've only checked the tram times once.'

She turned her phone face down. I liked the deliberate way she did it, as though deciding to stay was something she wanted me to see.

When the waiter asked whether we wanted another drink, we both paused. It was the first silence of the evening that contained a possible next step. Leah met my eyes and smiled.

'I have tea at home,' she said. 'And a cat with very low expectations of visitors.'

'I might impress him, then.'

'Let's keep the targets realistic.'

I paid for the drinks while she found her jacket. On the way out, she slipped her hand through my arm. For a moment I stopped planning the next sentence and simply enjoyed the fact that she was there.

By ten, we'd agreed to walk back to her place. We were both thirty-eight, both divorced, and both trying to behave as though inviting someone home required less administration than applying for a council parking permit. She kissed me at her front gate. It was an excellent kiss. No committee needed.

Inside, Leah went to the bedroom and stopped. 'Ah. The linen situation.'

On the bed sat a clean doona, two clean pillows and a clean cover folded into a rectangle so crisp it looked professionally offended. Everything smelled of sunshine. It was a beautiful advertisement for a person who had started a household task before work and then remembered they had a job.

'Two minutes,' she said. 'I was going to do this before I left.'

'I can help.'

This was the sentence that changed our evening. Until then, things had been going well.

Leah handed me two corners. 'Hold these.'

I took them with the confidence of a man who had personally owned bedding for twenty years. 'Inside-out method?'

'Obviously.'

'Great. That's my method.'

It was not my method. My method involved pushing the doona into the opening and shaking it until exhaustion made the result acceptable. I knew an inside-out method existed in the same way I knew competitive sailing existed. Other people did it, using terminology.

Leah disappeared up to her elbows inside the cover. 'Now give me the corners.'

I gave her the corners I was holding.

'No, the doona corners.'

'You said hold these.'

'Yes. Until I got the other corners.'

There was a pause during which our first potential disagreement politely entered the room and wiped its shoes.

We reset. She laid the cover flat. I laid the doona on top. She said it needed to be underneath. I said that depended on where we were standing. She looked at me. I moved the doona underneath.

'There's a rolling trick,' I offered. 'Like a burrito.'

'I don't want a trick, Martin. I want a bed.'

I rather liked her saying my name. Under other circumstances I would have mentioned that. Under these circumstances I was responsible for a corner and needed to concentrate.

Before the second attempt, Leah suggested we remove the decorative cushions. There were four. I carried them to the chair, which already held a cardigan and an envelope marked IMPORTANT in handwriting that looked increasingly familiar.

'Important?' I asked.

'Car insurance. Or a birthday card. I write it on anything I don't want to lose.'

'Does it work?'

'I know where the envelope is.'

She caught me smiling and raised an eyebrow. I held up both hands. My own important documents lived in a supermarket bag beneath a desk. I was in no position to question the system.

We spread the cover again. Leah stood at the foot of the bed with the concentration of somebody measuring curtains. I tried to be helpful by smoothing the material, then realised I was smoothing the section she was trying to lift.

'Sorry.'

'No, you're fine. Can you just stand there?'

'This is one of my stronger skills.'

She laughed, and I relaxed enough to stop anticipating every instruction. For perhaps fifteen seconds, we worked smoothly. Then the cover folded over my hands and she lost sight of which corner I held.

'Don't move,' she said.

I remained perfectly still while she walked around the bed. The cat arrived, inspected my trouser leg and moved on. Leah looked from my hands to the fabric, then back again.

'You've somehow got the opening.'

'I was available, and it approached me.'

She leaned her forehead briefly against my shoulder. I felt her laughing through my shirt. It was the first time all evening I had done nothing useful and felt entirely welcome.

The second attempt produced something resembling a huge stuffed envelope. One side held all the doona. The other side was an empty cotton corridor. Leah peered into the opening as though considering whether we needed someone from the water board.

'You've let go.'

'I changed grip.'

'Into letting go?'

'Briefly.'

She laughed then, a proper surprised laugh, and the room became easier. I laughed too. We were sensible adults. This was fabric. Fabric had no strategy. We would prevail.

We did not immediately prevail.

At my place, the doona had little labels. At Leah's, the cover had buttons on a side neither of us expected. We turned it ninety degrees, then ninety degrees again, achieving a complete return to our starting position with considerable effort. Her cat watched from the hallway without offering the slightest assistance.

'Queen?' I asked.

'Yes.'

'Both?'

Leah inspected a label. I inspected another. We confirmed we had compatible bedding, which felt like information we should have obtained before developing opposing political positions about it.

We attempted to consult the instructions, only to discover neither item had instructions beyond care symbols. Leah held up a label as though one of the tiny diagrams might secretly mean 'ask a person with better spatial awareness'.

'We could look up a video,' I said.

She reached for her phone. We stood beside the bed watching a cheerful pair of hands complete the task in seventeen seconds. No face appeared. No cat interfered. The cover behaved as though it had signed an agreement in advance.

'Again,' Leah said.

We watched again. I nodded at a point that seemed significant. She rewound it and asked what had just happened.

'I think they changed corners.'

'Which corners?'

I did not know. The hands completed their flawless performance once more, then a different video began. Someone was demonstrating how to fold a fitted sheet into a square so perfect it seemed an unnecessary personal attack.

Leah locked the phone.

'I'm not taking criticism from an anonymous pair of wrists.'

'Fair.'

She put the phone on the bedside table and pushed her hair back. I noticed a little ink mark on her thumb. Earlier she had mentioned writing reminders on her hand when paper was unavailable. I wondered what this one had been, and then realised I could ask her another time. The possibility pleased me more than any progress with the cover.

We decided to use plain descriptions. No top, bottom or inside-out until we agreed what they meant. Leah pointed. I repeated the instruction. The cat yawned from the doorway. Our audience was losing confidence, but we finally had a shared vocabulary.

Then she suggested we each take one top corner, reach inside, grip the doona and pull. Clear instructions. Shared objective. I could see why people married her.

We reached. We gripped. We pulled.

Her hand met mine somewhere inside the cotton darkness.

'Hello,' I said.

'Wrong corner.'

'Lovely to see you anyway.'

She squeezed my fingers before withdrawing them. It was a small, warm thing. Better than the competent performance I had been attempting all night.

For a moment we stood with the cover between us, looking at each other across its ridiculous white acreage. Her hair had escaped its clip. My carefully chosen shirt had one sleeve rolled higher than the other. Neither of us looked like our dating profile. I liked this version considerably more.

'I have a confession,' I said. 'I normally just shove it in and negotiate afterwards.'

'That is also my method.'

'You said obviously.'

'I wanted to seem like someone with a method.'

We considered how much time two people could lose by pretending to be good at laundry.

Leah sat on the floor. I joined her. Above us, the bed displayed our effort as a lumpy white mountain range. The cat stepped onto it, turned around twice and settled in the only properly filled section.

'Should we remove him?'

'He seems to understand the arrangement.'

My stomach made a noise. Not a coy little suggestion. An unmistakable public statement.

'Toast?' she asked.

'Absolutely.'

In the kitchen she asked whether I wanted butter, Vegemite or the expensive jam she'd bought because the woman at the market had called her darling. I chose jam. Leah said that was also why she'd bought the expensive olives. We ate them while the bread toasted, which made no culinary sense and suited the evening perfectly.

We took our plates back to the bedroom floor. She leaned against the wardrobe. I leaned against the bed. There were crumbs, but after our contribution to the bedding situation it seemed arrogant to worry about them.

She told me that after her separation she'd decided her home would always be ready for unexpected company. Then she admitted she hated unexpected company. I told her I'd ironed three shirts before choosing the one I was wearing, and that two of them were still hanging over the ironing board like rejected contestants.

'You could've worn either,' she said.

'Easy to say now you've seen my corner work.'

She reached across and took my hand. No fabric intervened this time.

We didn't finish the bed. We finished the toast, talked until midnight and kissed at the front gate again. That kiss was even better, perhaps because neither of us was trying to make it look effortless.

The next morning Leah sent a photograph. The doona was neatly covered. The cat remained in possession.

'How?' I wrote.

'Mum came over. I'm not discussing it.'

I asked whether she'd like dinner on Saturday.

'Yes,' she replied. 'Somewhere lovely.'

I sent her a restaurant booking. Then, because optimism should occasionally be backed by infrastructure, I sent a hotel link.

'Professional linen service,' I explained.

She replied with the first genuinely romantic sentence anyone had sent me in years.

'I'll leave the corners to them.'