From Paradise...to Pregnant!

by Kandy Shepherd

  ‘She blamed me for the death of my father.’

  Mitch was obviously too shocked to speak for a long moment. ‘But you weren’t driving the car. Or the truck that smashed into it.’

  He remembered.

  She was stunned that Mitch recalled her telling him about the accident that had killed her parents and injured her leg so badly she still walked with a slight limp when she was very tired or stressed. They’d been heading north to a music festival in Queensland; just her and the mother and father she’d adored. A truck-driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and veered onto their side of a notoriously bad stretch of the Pacific Highway.

  ‘No. I was in the back seat. I...I’m surprised you remember.’

  He slowly shook his head. ‘How could I forget? It seemed the most terrible thing to have happened to a kid. I loved my family. I couldn’t have managed without them.’

  Zoe shifted in her seat. She hated people pitying her. ‘You felt sorry for me?’

  ‘Yes. And sad for you too.’

  There was genuine compassion on his handsome famous face, and she acknowledged the kindness of his words with a slight silent nod. As a teenager she’d sensed a core of decency behind his popular boy image. It was why she’d been so shocked at the way he’d treated her at the end.

  As she’d watched his meteoric rise she’d wondered if fame and the kind of adulation he got these days had changed him. Who was the real Mitch?

  Here, now, in the aftermath of an earthquake, maybe she had been given the chance to find out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WERE THERE ELEPHANTS in Bali? There were lots of monkeys; Mitch knew that from his visit to the Ubud area in the highlands.

  He’d heard there were elephants indigenous to the neighbouring Indonesian island of Sumatra that had been trained to play soccer. But he would rather see elephants in their natural habitat, dignified and not trained to do party tricks.

  Whether or not there were elephants on Bali, there was an elephant in the room with him and Zoe. Or rather, an elephant in the pool. A large metaphorical elephant, wallowing in the turquoise depths, spraying water through its trunk in an effort to get their attention.

  Metaphorical.

  Zoe had taught him how to use that term.

  The elephant was that last day they’d seen each other, ten years ago. He’d behaved badly. Lashed out at her. Humiliated her. Hadn’t defended her against Lara’s cattiness. He’d felt rotten about it once he’d cooled down. But he had never got the chance to apologise. He owed her that. He also owed her thanks for the events that had followed.

  Zoe hadn’t said anything, but he’d bet she remembered the incident. He could still see her face as it had crumpled with shock and hurt. He mightn’t have been great with words when it came to essays, but his words to her had wounded; the way he’d allowed her to be mocked by Lara had been like an assault.

  Now Zoe sat back on the lounger next to him, her slim, toned legs stretched out in front of her. He didn’t remember her being a sporty girl at school. But she must exercise regularly to keep in such great shape. It seemed she hadn’t just changed in appearance. Zoe was self-possessed, composed—in spite of the fact they’d just experienced an earthquake. Though he suspected a fear of further tremors lay just below her self-contained surface.

  ‘I want to clear the air,’ he said.

  ‘What...what do you mean?’ she said.

  But the expression in her dark brown eyes told him she knew exactly what he meant. Knew and hadn’t forgotten a moment of it.

  ‘About what a stupid young idiot I was that last day. Honest. I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see you.’

  Mitch was the youngest of four sons in a family of high achievers. His brothers had excelled academically; he’d excelled at sport. That had been his slot in the family. His parents hadn’t worried about his mediocre grades at school. The other boys were to be a lawyer, an accountant and a doctor respectively. Mitch had been the sportsman. They could boast about him—they hadn’t expected more from him.

  But Mitch had expected more of himself. He’d been extremely competitive. Driven to excel. If his anointed role was to be the sportsman, he’d be the best sportsman.

  The trouble was, the school had expected him to do more than concentrate on soccer in winter and basketball in summer. With minimal effort he’d done okay in maths, science and geography—not top grades, but not the lowest either. It had been English he couldn’t get his head around. And English had been a compulsory subject for the final Higher School Certificate.

  His teenage brain hadn’t seen the point of studying long-dead authors and playwrights. Of not just reading contemporary novels but having to analyse the heck out of them. And then there was poetry. He hadn’t been able to get it. He hadn’t wanted to get it. It had been bad enough having to study it. He sure as hell hadn’t been going to write the poem required as part of his term assessment. He couldn’t write a poem.

  Zoe Summers hadn’t been in his English class. No way. The new girl nerd was in the top classes for everything. But during a study period in the library she’d been sitting near him when he’d flung his poetry book down on the floor, accompanied by a string of curses that had drawn down the wrath of the supervising librarian.

  The other kids had egged him on and laughed. He’d laughed too. But it hadn’t been a joke. If he didn’t keep up a decent grade average for English he wasn’t going to be allowed to go to a week-long soccer training camp that cut into the school term by a couple of days. He’d been determined to get to that camp.

  The teenage Zoe had caught his eye when he had leaned down to pick up his book from the floor. She’d smiled a shy smile and murmured, ‘Can I help? I’m such a nerd I actually like poetry.’

  Help? No one had actually offered to help him before. And he’d had too much testosterone-charged teenage pride to ask for it.

  ‘I’ll be right here in the library after school,’ she’d said. ‘Meet me here if you want me to help.’

  He’d hesitated. He couldn’t meet her in public. Not the jock and the nerd. A meeting between them would mean unwanted attention. Mockery. Insults. Possible spiteful retaliation from Lara. He could handle all that, but he had doubted Zoe could.

  His hesitation must have told her that.

  ‘Or you could meet me at my house after school,’ she’d said, in such a low tone only he could have heard it.

  She’d scribbled something on a piece of paper and passed it unobtrusively to him. He’d taken it. Nodded. Then turned back to his mates. Continued to crack jokes and be generally disruptive until he’d been kicked out of the library.

  But he had still needed to pass that poetry assignment. He had decided to take Zoe up on her offer of help. No matter the consequences.

  Her house had been just two streets away from his, in the leafy, upmarket northern suburb of Wahroonga. Their houses had looked similar from the outside, set in large, well-tended gardens. Inside, they couldn’t have been more different.

  His house had been home to four boys: he still at school, the others at universities in Sydney. There’d been a blackboard in the well-used family room, where all family members had chalked up their whereabouts. The house had rung with lots of shouting and boisterous ribbing by the brothers and their various friends.

  Zoe’s house had been immaculate to the point of sterility. Straight away he’d been able to tell she was nervous when she’d greeted him at the front door. He’d soon seen why. An older woman she’d introduced as her grandmother had hovered behind her, mouth pinched, eyes cold. He’d never felt more unwelcome.

  The grandma had told Zoe to entertain her visitor in the dining room, with the door open at all times. Mitch had felt unnerved—ready to bolt back the way he’d come. But then Zoe had rolled her eyes behind her grandmother’s back and pulled a comical face.

  They’d established a connection. And in the days that had followed he’d got to like and respect Zoe as she had helped h
im tackle his dreaded poetry assignment.

  ‘I want to explain what happened back then,’ he said now.

  Zoe shrugged. ‘Does it matter after all this time?’ she said, her voice tight, not meeting his eyes.

  It did to him. She had helped him. He had let her down.

  ‘Do you remember how hard you worked to help me get my head around poetry?’ he asked.

  ‘You were the one doing all the work. I just guided you in the right direction.’

  He slammed down his hand on the edge of the lounger in remembered anger. ‘That’s exactly right. You made me use my own words—not yours. It was unfair.’

  ‘What...what exactly happened in the classroom that day?’

  ‘The teacher had had the assignment for a week. So I was on edge, waiting to see if I’d passed or not. By then it had become something more than just wanting to go to the soccer camp. She handed out the marked essays, desk by desk. She saved mine for last.’

  ‘You should have easily passed. By that time we’d spent so much time on it—you really understood it.’

  ‘I thought I’d understood it, too. She got to my desk. Held up the paper for everyone to see the great big “Fail” scrawled across it. Told the class I was a cheat. Read out my grade and added her comments for maximum humiliation.’

  The look on that teacher’s face was still seared into his memory.

  Before he’d studied with Zoe he would have made a joke of it. Clowned around. Annoyed the teacher until she’d kicked him out of the classroom. But not that time. He’d deserved better.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I snatched the paper from the teacher’s hand and stormed out.’

  ‘To find me lurking outside in the corridor. Pretending I was waiting for a class to start in the next room. Ready to congratulate you on a brilliant pass. Instead I got in your way.’

  He noticed how tightly she was gripping on to her glass. No wonder. He’d vented all his outraged adolescent anger and humiliation on her. It couldn’t be a pleasant memory.

  ‘Instead I behaved like a total jerk.’

  ‘Yeah. You did. You...you thrust the paper in my face. I can still see that word written so big in red ink: “Plagiarism”.’

  ‘She thought I was too stupid to write such a good essay. And I took it out on you.’

  He’d yelled at her that it was her fault. Told her to get out of his way. Never talk to him again. Had he actually shoved her? He didn’t think so. His words had been as effective as any physical blow.

  He’d seen her face crumple in disbelief, then pain, then schooled indifference as she’d walked away. She’d muttered that she was sorry—she’d only been trying to help. And he’d let her go.

  Worse, a half-hour later he’d encountered Zoe again. This time he’d been hanging near the canteen, with his crowd of close friends and his girlfriend, Lara. Zoe had obviously been startled to see them. Startled and, he’d realised afterwards, alarmed. She’d immediately started to turn away, eyes cast down, shoulders hunched. But that hadn’t been enough for Lara, who hadn’t liked him studying with another girl one little bit.

  ‘Buzz off, geek-girl,’ Lara had sneered. ‘Mitch doesn’t need your kind of help. Not when he’s got me.’

  Then Lara had pulled his face to hers and given him a provocatively deep kiss. Her girlfriends had started to laugh and his mates had joined in, their laughter echoing through the corridors of the school.

  He’d just kept on kissing Lara. When he’d finally pulled away Zoe had gone. It was only later that he’d realised how he’d betrayed her by his silence and inaction.

  That had been ten years ago. Now she smiled that wry smile that was already becoming familiar. ‘Teenage angst. Who’d go back there?’

  ‘Teenage angst or not, I behaved badly. And after ten years I want to take this opportunity to say sorry. To see if there is any way I could make it up to you.’

  * * *

  Digging deep into feelings she’d rather were kept buried made Zoe feel uncomfortable. She found it impossible to meet Mitch’s gaze. To gain herself a moment before she had to reply, she put her glass down onto the table and tugged her dress down over her thighs.

  ‘We were just kids,’ she said.

  Though Lara’s spite had been only too grown up. And the pain she’d felt when Mitch had ignored her hadn’t been the pain of a child.

  Truth was, the episode was a reminder of a particularly unhappy time in her life. She’d rather not be reminded of how she’d felt back then. That was why she had tried to avoid Mitch earlier on, when she’d first recognised him.

  ‘I was old enough to know better,’ he said.

  Now she turned to face him. ‘Seriously, if you hadn’t always been popping up in the media I would have forgotten all about what happened. I’m cool with it.’

  He persisted. ‘I’m not cool with it. I want to make amends.’

  She wished he would drop it. ‘If it makes you feel any better, my experiences at Northside made me stronger—determined to change. No way was I going to be that miserable at my new school. I decided to do whatever it took to fit in.’

  ‘Your piercings? Which, by the way, I used to think were kinda cute.’

  ‘Gone. I wore the uniform straight up—exactly as prescribed. Put the “anything goes” lifestyle I’d enjoyed with my parents behind me. Played the private school game by their rules. I watched, learned and conformed.’

  And it had worked. At the new academically elite school she hadn’t climbed up the pecking order to roost with the ‘popular’ girls, but neither had she been one of the shunned.

  ‘Was it the right move?’

  Again she was conscious of his intent focus on her. As if he were really interested in her reply.

  ‘Yes. I was happy there—did well, made some good friends.’

  One in particular had taken the new girl under her wing and helped transform the caterpillar. Not into a gaudy butterfly, more an elegantly patterned moth who fitted perfectly into her surroundings.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. But I want you to know I feel bad about what happened. I want to right the wrong.’

  Zoe shrugged, pretended indifference, but secretly she was chuffed. Mitch Bailey apologising? Mitch Bailey maybe even grovelling a tad? It was good. It was healing. It was—she couldn’t deny it—satisfying.

  ‘Consider it righted,’ she said firmly. ‘Apology accepted. You were young and disappointed and you took it out on the first person who crossed your path.’

  ‘I tried to find you,’ he said.

  ‘You did?’ she said, startled. That he’d remembered the incident at all in such detail was mind-boggling.

  ‘After the soccer training camp I went away on vacation with my family. When I got back to school you weren’t there. I went around to your house. Your grandmother told me you didn’t live there any more. I thought she was going to slam the door in my face.’

  ‘Sounds like my grandmother.’

  ‘Remember how she always made you leave the door open and patrolled outside it? I felt like a criminal. Did she think I was going to steal the silver?’

  ‘She was terrified you’d get me pregnant.’

  Mitch nearly choked on his beer. He stared at her for a long, astounded moment. ‘What?’

  Zoe waited for him to stop spluttering, resisting the temptation to pat him on that broad, muscular back. She probably shouldn’t have shared that particular detail of her dysfunctional relationship with her grandmother.

  She felt her cheeks flush pink as she explained. ‘I told her we were just friends. I told her you had a girlfriend. That the only thing going on in that room was studying.’

  Not to mention that Mitch Bailey wouldn’t have looked at her as girlfriend material in a million years.

  ‘Why the hell did she think—?’

  ‘She wasn’t going to let me—’ Zoe made quote marks in the air with her fingers ‘—“get pregnant and ruin the future of some fine young man” the
way my mother had ruined my father’s. You counted as one of those fine young men. She knew of your family.’

  How many times had her grandmother harangued her about that, over and over again, until she’d had to put her fingers in her ears to block out the hateful words?

  Mitch frowned. ‘What? I don’t get it.’

  Thank heaven back then her grandmother hadn’t said anything to Mitch about the pregnancy thing. She would have been mortified beyond redemption.

  ‘It sounds warped, doesn’t it? I didn’t get it either when I was seventeen. I thought she was insane. I’d adored my parents. They’d adored each other. But Mum was only nineteen when I was born. Because my father dropped out of his law degree my grandmother blamed my mother for seducing him, getting pregnant on purpose and ruining his life.’

  ‘Whoa. You said your life story was mundane.’ He paused, narrowed his eyes. ‘And she transferred the blame to you, right?’

  ‘Yep. If I hadn’t come along her son would have got to be a lawyer.’

  ‘And he wouldn’t have died?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘That’s irrational.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Yet she gave you a home?’

  ‘Reluctantly. She couldn’t even bear to look at me. I look like my dad, you see. A constant reminder of what she had lost. But she felt she had to do the right thing by her granddaughter.’ In spite of herself a note of bitterness crept into her voice. ‘After all, what would her golfing friends have thought?’

  ‘Did you have any other family you could have gone to?’

  ‘My mother’s brother, whom I love to pieces. But as he has a propensity to dress in frocks sometimes the courts didn’t approve of him as guardian to a minor.’

  Mitch laughed. ‘The lawyers must have had fun with that one.’ He sobered. ‘No wonder you were so miserable back then.’

  The rejection by her grandmother had hurt. There had been no shared grief. No comfort. Just blame and bitterness. ‘I did something about it, though,’ she said.

  ‘What could a kid of seventeen have done?’