by Nikki Logan
Both their heads snapped around as two platypus emerged onto the rocks a few metres from where they sat quietly talking.
‘Oh, my goodness …’ Belinda managed to scream in whisper. That took some talent. ‘Look at them! They’re amazing …’ She scrunched forward and wrapped her arms around her knees, as if making herself smaller would make them larger.
‘It’s like someone swept up all the bits left over from nature’s workshop floor and said, Waste not, want not …’ she said, laughing.
Duck’s bill, beaver’s tail, otter’s body, cat’s paws, living in the water but laying eggs like a bird. ‘Yeah, Frankenstein’s pet.’
‘Oh, I’m definitely going to send a photo home. The centre will want to see this.’
He dragged his eyes off the stream entertainment. ‘Centre?’
She wasn’t shifting her focus for anything and her wide-eyed wonder made her look more like she had on that hospital table. Young. Naïve. Hopelessly out of her depth.
‘I work for SOS Hedgehog. Helping out.’
‘You’re kidding!’ She was a volunteer? And a wildlife volunteer, at that. Possibly the last thing he’d expected to discover. No, correction, exactly the last thing he’d expected. ‘Why hedgehogs?’
It pained her to drag her eyes away from the animals in front of her, but she did—briefly. ‘Why not hedgehogs? They’re as special as any other creature. We rehabilitate nearly six thousand a year. I was worried about leaving them, about missing them, but …’ her smile broadened as she turned her face back to the stream ‘… I think I’m going to be just fine. These guys are going to be very good hedgehog substitutes.’
He stared at her beaming smile. What kind of a life did she have back in England—she’d left her city and family and friends and the only things she was going to miss were a few hedgehogs?
It was hard enough reconciling her physical appearance with being a Rochester—Belinda’s Amazonian redhead to Gwen’s diminutive blonde—but then to discover she’d give up her youth and her body to save two unborn children, and that her family background wasn’t everything the Internet had led him to believe, and that instead of being a latte-drinking, trust fund debutante she gave up most of her week to help wipe hedgehog backsides …
‘You’re nothing like your sister, you know.’ That brought her attention back around. ‘Screw you, too.’ His breath caught. ‘You’re as touchy as her, though. I meant that as a compliment.’
Dark eyes held his. ‘I spent most of my childhood trying to be more like her. Failing abysmally. Being unlike her is not a compliment.’
‘Depends on your perspective.’
Almost as though they sensed the growing tension on the bank and wanted to ease it, the two platypus increased their activity to fever pitch in his peripheral vision, splashing and wriggling in the shallows as they foraged, racing each other and galloping across the fallen stones as fast as those little swimming legs could take them. But if they’d tap danced across the log bridge it wouldn’t have drawn his attention away from her. Her eyes blazed. ‘You’re nothing like Drew, either.’ The man who blew off his family? ‘Thank you.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s like we knew different people. My Drew and Gwen were wonderful, happy, talented people who were excited about starting a family. Yours were thoughtless, narcissistic miseries. How can they both have existed?’
The million-dollar question. ‘Maybe it depends where you’re starting from on the perspective continuum.’
Her whole body stiffened and she stood slowly, one eye on the flighty platypus. ‘You assume a lot, Flynn.’ She looked down on him. ‘Yet you really know nothing about me.’
That was true enough. All he knew was how much he obviously didn’t know. Because a very bright mind ticked away behind those cornflower-blue eyes, too. A bright and captivating mind.
He pushed that thought away.
Roughly.
‘Change of plan. Go and see Pop about helping out if you’re so determined not to freeload.’ Like your sister. ‘Tell him about your hedgehogs. See what he can find for you to do for a few hours a day.’
His grandfather would definitely be able to use some help with the rescue animals if she had rehab experience.
She switched on her torch and kept it low, away from the stream. ‘Thank you.’
‘Might as well get as much exposure to Australia’s wildlife as you can. This could all be over in a week.’
If she wasn’t pregnant, she wasn’t staying.
Then again, if she wasn’t pregnant all she’d have would be these memories. And so far they hadn’t stacked up to much.
Belinda nodded, took one long last look at the frolicking platypus and then turned for the house, her face drawn, leaving Flynn with all the peace and quiet he could ask for.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE was pregnant. And she did stay.
Bel found herself slipping comfortably into Bunyip Reach’s daily routine. Into the Bradley family. She let the ‘guest’ stuff go on for three days before gently starting to earn her way. She did her own laundry. Helped in the kitchen. Cleaned things as needed. And not just because it was such a novelty actually fitting in somewhere. She was happy to have busy hands because it stopped her mind from getting busy—thinking, worrying, wondering—as the deadline for her first assessment drew closer.
But then the two week test results had come in and, though a positive result was everything she’d wished for, there’d been little enough reason to celebrate. The embryos holding just meant that she and Flynn had to ramp up the legal fight for the little lives incubating deep inside her.
And had to kick into a whole new level of deception.
Her lawyers knew where she was and pumped her relentlessly for information they could use to weaken Flynn’s case. But all she could tell them was how idyllic this place would be for a child, how loved one would be, how cherished. They soon stopped asking.
At the back of her mind, she knew Flynn’s counsel would be doing the same. That every conversation she had might feed their case. He knew she was isolated, unemployed, had an unhappy childhood. She was sure he wouldn’t be telling them about her conservation volunteering, or the fact she owned her own home outright. Even if it was small and grannyish.
She knew all of that, but found herself telling him things anyway. There had to be someone here that she wasn’t lying to. Besides, she’d laid her situation open for all to see during the first legal petition—more or less—so there were few secrets left for anyone who cared to look.
In the afternoons she hung out with Flynn’s grandfather and his terrible sense of humour and learned from a man who’d been working with Australian wildlife for the best part of six decades. He wasn’t as perceptive as his wife—or if he was he didn’t act on it—and for those few hours of the day it was possible for Bel to just be herself. Enjoy the animals. Enjoy the Australian outdoors.
Not that being someone else wasn’t strangely liberating. How long had she wished she could become someone else? Fit better.
When she’d left home a few months ahead of her eighteenth birthday her parents had clearly received the signals she’d been sending and only engaged with her when she contacted them, which wasn’t often. Bel considered they were just happy to be free of the problem child in the family, possibly congratulating themselves on how it had all worked out. Though they’d winced when Gwen had followed not long after. But Bel had what, ultimately, she’d wanted.
Her own life.
Away from the compulsory university studies they’d had lined up for her. Away from the damning self-talk they somehow birthed in her. Away from their parties and the drinking and the substances and apparently empty friendships.
Thank God her parents had found each other because who else would have had them? Even in the ridiculously moneyed set.
‘Can you bring a sack over, Bel?’ Arthur called from across the little fenced yard where the wallaby joeys lived. Each one had a sheepskin sewed up the side, turned insi
de out and folded into a proxy pouch where they spent the many hours when they weren’t being hand fed, toileted or weighed. There were only three in residence—a good year on the roads according to Arthur—but there was room for a dozen more.
Her chest squeezed as Arthur withdrew the smallest of the three from its fake pouch and lowered it carefully into the sack she gave him. It was so young its fur was only just starting to come through and so it was all joints and gangly limbs and veins through translucent skin. Arthur hung the whole sack on an old-fashioned butcher’s scales to weigh it. The needle barely travelled before swinging to a stop.
Poor little mite.
Had she always been this clucky? Or was it only since coming to Australia? Since being implanted? It was still such a surreal concept that at least one life was busy growing away deep inside her. In its own liquid pouch. She couldn’t begin to imagine how her body would … adapt … for getting it out again and mostly she tried not to think about it, but since women had been doing it for millennia she had to assume that it could happen.
The wallabies had the right idea, born the size of a rice-grain and all their growing done externally.
That sounded infinitely more sensible.
‘Good growth,’ Arthur mumbled happily as he moved the tiny creature back into its usual abode.
Bel pottered around after Arthur, watching what he did and learning what to do herself. The road injured echidnas were similar enough to her hedgehogs to make her feel all warm and fuzzy towards them but different enough to have her shaking her head and smiling. It was a wonderful way to pass every afternoon and, as soon as she was past the vulnerable first trimester and she knew she’d be staying, she’d offer to help him with some of the rest of his jobs. The midnight feeds, the intensive care. The harder tasks.
It would be good training for nine months from now.
She bent to tip out the dregs of water from a ceramic bowl for a refill and as she stood a wave of weakness washed over her and she stumbled into the fence and grabbed it for stability, letting the bowl slip from her fingers back down to the rich earth. Its thud drew Arthur’s eye to her before she could straighten and compose herself and he was by her side in a moment.
‘Belinda …’ His hands went under her elbows and took her weight.
‘Wow …’ His strength freed her hands up to rub over her face and eyes, scrubbing away the dizziness.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m …’ She couldn’t say what she was. ‘Maybe it’s the Australian heat finally getting to me.’ And maybe morning sickness didn’t have to be in the morning. ‘I’ll be fine in a moment, Arthur. Please don’t worry.’
‘I’ll call Flynn.’
‘No!’
The joeys lurched in their pouches at the vehemence in her tone. Flynn’s keen-eyed scrutiny was the last thing she needed. He was constantly on the watch for any sign that things weren’t going well. He’d probably start looking up flights for the UK. One way.
‘He’ll only tell me to stop helping you. And it’s not necessary, I’m feeling better already. See?’ She stood on her own and only wobbled a little bit, quite proud of that.
‘Well, at least go in to Alice, then. Make yourself a cool drink and sit for a bit.’
Oh, heaven. ‘Yes. I’ll do that. Thank you, Arthur.’
She wobbled her way inside and waited until she was much more recovered before emerging into the kitchen where Flynn’s nan was pickling onions. Within a heartbeat she went from dizzy and nauseous to fixated on what Alice was doing.
She’d kill for a decent pickled onion.
Oh, Lord, was she going to be one of those pregnant women—licking blackboards and scarfing daisies when no one was looking? The thought brought a smile to her face just as Alice looked up.
‘You look peaky. Sit down and I’ll get you a drink.’
‘I can get it, Alice.’
‘Of course you can, but I’m right by the fridge. Just set yourself down.’
She did, and closed her eyes for a moment and when she reopened them Alice placed chilled water with a twist of lemon in front of her and a plate with a selection of home-jarred goodies on it. A blob of chutney, some dried strip meat, cheese and a strange dark sphere. She leaned closer and examined it.
‘It’s a pickled egg. Bill makes them.’
Bel picked it up and studied the awful looking thing as closely as Alice was watching her. ‘Why?’
‘Everyone has different tastes,’ she chuckled. ‘He loves them.’
And then, for no good reason, Bel suddenly had the impulse to experience this new cuisine. Whole. She shoved the entire shelled egg into her mouth and her eyes drifted shut.
Heaven.
‘Did you know I was a midwife when I was younger, Bel?’ Alice mentioned casually after a moment.
Speaking around an entire boiled egg wasn’t easy and so Bel didn’t have a prayer of being able to respond. She just lifted both her eyebrows with polite enquiry and kept chewing, her hand discreetly in front of her mouth.
‘Growing up out here, lots of women had to learn the essentials of childbirth,’ she continued easily. She nodded to the jar of blackened eggs in the larder. ‘Those were popular amongst the pregnant ladies. Anything pickled, really.’
Bel froze, but then realised how suspicious that would look and so kept chewing slowly, doing her best to appear normal. Finally she swallowed it down. ‘Interesting flavour,’ she said, super-casually. ‘Not what I was expecting.’
‘Would you like another?’ Those sharp eyes missed nothing.
Yes. Desperately. ‘No, thank you. We’ll call that an experiment satisfactorily undertaken.’ She gulped at her water.
‘Arthur shouldn’t push you so hard. You’re still getting used to farm life. You look worn out.’
Ah, that will be the sleepless nights wondering how I can get out of all of this. Wondering what I will do if I leave here without Gwen’s babies. But as long as they were talking about Arthur, they weren’t talking about midwifery and pickled eggs.
‘It’s not his fault. The heat just takes me by surprise. I can’t work out how it can be so warm and so cool only a few hours apart. I love it out there with Arthur. The joeys are doing so well …’
Bel effectively steered the conversation onto matters less contentious as she gnawed on the dried meat strip and sipped her water. The chewy protein wasn’t her first since arriving and it was fast becoming a favourite. Alice chatted about what she was preserving this week and cleaned up after the last of her onions.
‘All done?’ the older woman asked when Bel brought the half-empty plate to the kitchen island.
‘Yes. I don’t want to spoil dinner.’
Alice glanced at the remaining contents as she scraped them into the scraps bin. For no good reason Bel was reminded of the wacky tea leaf reading woman at her local tea-house back home.
‘I … um … might just go and find Flynn. Thank you for the break and the snacks. I feel much recovered.’
Alice smiled. ‘Good. Remind that boy he’s eating with us tonight. He’s worked through enough dinners lately.’
‘I will. Thank you, Alice.’
It was hard not to demurely respond when Alice turned her full matriarchal powers onto her. She reminded Bel so much of her own missed grandmother. The one adult she’d really adored as a child.
She quietly left the kitchen and went in search of Flynn.
He’d been on and off with her for the past three weeks, in her face one minute and then keeping a healthy distance the next. For a man who was fighting so hard for the little lives inside her he really didn’t seem that happy when the pregnancy confirmation came in. About the only time she enjoyed being around him was when they sat together on the bank of the stream and watched the platypus. He taught her all about their biology, about their behaviours, the threats they faced. The very specialist conditions they needed to thrive.
He was particularly resistant to any discussion about Drew and
Gwen. As if he’d simply decided they were no longer worthy of his mind space. Of course this only drove her to discuss them more and, short of walking away, there was not a lot he could do to stop her speaking her mind.
But she’d grown weary of even that game the few times they were alone together and she found herself wanting to get to know more about him from him. Flynn the man, not Flynn the brother or son.
But first things first.
‘I think your grandmother is onto us,’ she said the moment she walked in his back door, puffing from the hike across the gully.
CHAPTER SIX
FLYNN looked up from his paperwork. ‘What did you do?’
Bel skidded to a halt, outraged that he could have such accusation in his tone when he’d done little enough to dissuade any of them that things weren’t odd between them. ‘Nothing. But she was asking questions today, and talking about delivering babies.’
He let his focus fall back to his papers. ‘She was a midwife. She’s bound to talk about it at some point.’
‘It was in the way she looked at me. Like the pickled egg was some kind of sign—’
His head snapped up. ‘What pickled egg?’
‘The one I tried at afternoon tea. I had a little … rest …’
He got to his feet. ‘Why did you eat it?’
Her brows closed in on each other. ‘Because she served it to me on a plate. I didn’t want to be rude. And besides, I felt like an egg. What’s the big deal?’
‘My mother hates those eggs.’
‘Understandable. They’re not the prettiest to look at.’ Or to swallow.
‘But she went crazy for them when she was pregnant with Drew.’
Oh. ‘Truly?’
‘Don’t eat them again.’
The seriousness of his tone infected her. ‘I won’t.’
But would she? She’d not meant to eat the first one, just examine it. The next thing she knew, it was in her mouth.
‘You’re expected for dinner tonight,’ she said, changing subject rapidly.