The Sister's Gift

by Barbara Hannay

The poor man’s face was suddenly blank with shock, and the muscles in his throat jerked as he swallowed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I – I had no idea.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t.’

  He gave a strange little huffing smile that quickly came and went. ‘And your baby’s father . . .?’

  . . . Is out of the picture? Billie wanted to answer this smoothly, but she found herself floundering. ‘He’s away at the moment,’ she said after what, she was sure, was too long a pause. ‘Overseas.’

  ‘Right.’ Dan was already sitting straighter, squaring his jaw and making a business of watching Molly at the playground. ‘Well, I guess congratulations are in order,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’ It was crazy to feel so uncomfortable, but Billie knew there’d been a connection, the shimmer of possibilities that she’d now quite thoroughly squashed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  A familiar voice brought Freya whirling round. Damn. Seb had caught her out.

  ‘I’m taking Won Ton for a walk,’ she defended herself.

  ‘I can see that. Morning, Won Ton.’ Seb was unshaven, barefoot and wearing a white shirt left hanging open over bleached denim cut-offs. With a backdrop of cobalt sky, white sand and coconut palms, he looked like an ad for the relaxed island lifestyle. ‘Nice morning for it,’ he said.

  It was a spectacular morning, clear and sunny and not too hot. Better still, this was the first of two precious days off from the restaurant and free time had never been more welcome. Freya had enjoyed a luxurious lie-in and a wonderfully leisurely breakfast with Billie, but eventually she’d given in to Won Ton’s pleading eyes.

  Now, as she avoided staring at Seb’s naked chest, she hoped he didn’t expect an explanation as to why she’d chosen this particular beach at Nelly Bay for their walk. After all, there were any number of bays available for a pleasant beach walk. Alma Bay was the closest to Pearl’s house, but there was also Geoffrey Bay, and a short drive could have seen Freya at Picnic, Florence or Horseshoe bays.

  She certainly wasn’t going to admit to a burning curiosity as to which house in Nelly Bay might be Seb’s. Since they’d shared their late-night supper, there’d been no more unguarded moments between them. They’d resumed a commendably sensible and businesslike relationship.

  And thank heavens for that. It would be crazy and would serve no purpose to stir up messy emotions from their past. Freya was intensely relieved that she hadn’t embarrassed herself the other night and she’d given herself stern lectures ever since.

  Despite the lectures, there’d been dreams, however. Such cruel things dreams could be, opening windows into bliss she’d neither asked for nor expected. Just last night she’d dreamed she and Seb were in Florence Bay at sunset, sitting cross-legged on the sand. Could she even sit cross-legged these days? They’d been cooking their dinner of fish over an open fire and she’d been wearing his ring, loving the glistening, perfect little diamond. Loving him.

  Longing for him.

  When he’d taken her into his arms, the most glorious joy had blossomed inside her, rising through her like the moon lifting from the distant horizon.

  Waking up had been such a downer.

  ‘I didn’t mean to intrude on your walk,’ Seb said. ‘But I was having a coffee on the deck when I saw you.’ His shoulders lifted in a casual shrug. ‘Thought you might like to join me when you’ve finished.’

  ‘Oh?’ Freya hoped her response sounded equally casual. ‘So you live at this end of the bay? How – lovely.’

  ‘Very last house.’

  ‘Lovely,’ she said again, feeling foolish for exhibiting such limited vocabulary, but unable, when trapped by his steady grey gaze, to unearth a more intelligent response.

  Seb smiled, stepped back and lifted a hand in a parting wave. ‘Take your time. See you whenever.’

  She hadn’t planned a very long walk, but now she made sure she went to the opposite end of the bay and out along the harbour wall. Here, Won Ton was in ecstasy, despite being kept on a leash, as the wall was home to rock wallabies and exquisite scents abounded.

  Freya might also have enjoyed the walk if annoying tension hadn’t tugged away inside her, pulling tighter and tighter. It was so difficult, coming to terms with Seb’s re-entry into her life. She was far too conscious of the memories they’d shared, of the giddy and shining, youthful love she’d so recklessly shattered.

  Surely, she should be able to conduct herself calmly now if she and Seb were to have a proper conversation? Cleared the air, so to speak. Laid a few ghosts and got important points out in the open. Actually, if Freya was truly honest, a desire for a cathartic chat with this man was probably the real reason she’d come to his bay.

  By the time she turned back, she was quite decided. This was as good an opportunity as any and she would at least try to initiate some kind of grown-up discussion.

  The sun was quite hot now as she made her way back along the wall and then down the beach to the very end. To Seb’s house.

  Gulp.

  The pain of losing her own home had been gradually receding and while she’d enjoyed living in Pearl’s home, she hadn’t felt especially envious. Stunning as it was, her sister’s house had never really felt like home.

  But this house, right on the beachfront, at the very end of a no-through street and bordered by a tangle of scrubby bush, was, to Freya’s mind, damn near perfect.

  Unpretentious, low-set and of modest proportions, Seb’s house had a deep verandah that ran across the entire front and a wall of bi-fold shutters that rolled back to expose glimpses of a living area with polished timber floors, tropical cane furniture and beautiful artwork.

  Freya supposed privacy wasn’t really an issue, as hardly anyone came to this sleepier and almost secluded end of the little bay, and the sense of being at one with the beach and the bush was deliciously inviting.

  Seb appeared on the deck to greet her, and she was relieved to see that he’d done his shirt up. She retrieved the dog lead from her pocket. ‘You’d probably prefer Won Ton to stay outside?’ she suggested.

  ‘Hell, no.’ Seb reared back in exaggerated shock. ‘We can’t leave the little lady out in the street.’

  He smiled then, and something in his eyes sent the smile rippling through Freya. No, she mustn’t be ridiculous. It was time to finally prove to herself, to Seb, to anyone who might care, that she was mature and worldly-wise and well past girlish flutters.

  Stepping onto the deck, she paused to compose herself and to admire a hanging mobile made from birds styled out of driftwood.

  ‘This must be your mother’s work,’ she said.

  Seb nodded. ‘The very last piece she made.’

  One of the larger birds – which was, in reality, nothing more than a single weathered branch of pale and twisted wood – had been given beautiful wings of woven string. ‘It’s gorgeous,’ Freya said gently. ‘Elise must have loved knowing that she passed on her artistic talent to you.’

  ‘A lucky gene,’ Seb suggested, but although the comment was made lightly enough, Freya didn’t miss the shadow that crossed his face.

  Disquiet thudded in her chest. As far as she knew, Seb had never fathered a child and she had no idea how he felt about this.

  Suddenly she was nervous about raising the big unasked questions that lay between them. Perhaps, after all these years, she no longer had the right to probe too deeply. Or perhaps she wouldn’t want to hear Seb’s answers.

  Her confusion returned as they continued into the house, where the aroma of coffee melded with the scents of citronella and incense sticks. Several of Seb’s landscapes hung on the walls and Freya stopped again to admire the way he’d captured one of the island’s headlands. So breathtakingly real, with an almost sculptural quality, yet transfused with a soft, dreamy glow.

  ‘Wow,’ she whispered, and she almost told him about the art lessons she’d started – after all, their romance had begun during their high-school a
rt class – but Seb was already in the kitchen, and so she followed.

  This central space was quite simple, with timber cupboards and white benchtops, but lifted by clever touches of colour. A bright-green teapot, a tiled splashback in shades of aqua that spoke of the sea, a coral-pink vase holding a single spray of the yellow orchids that grew in rocky crevices all over the island.

  ‘This is lovely, Seb. Just —’ Freya didn’t want to be too effusive, so she scratched the word ‘perfect’. ‘Just so relaxing.’

  ‘Yep, it works for me.’ He poured coffee into mugs.

  ‘Do you have a studio?’ she asked.

  ‘The shed out the back.’

  Following the direction of his nod, Freya saw, through a window, a wonderfully ramshackle shed almost hidden by a clump of banana trees, but offering a glimpse of old-fashioned wooden louvres and flowering vines crawling over a rusty iron roof.

  ‘Very authentic,’ she said.

  Seb merely grinned, but despite the relaxing ambience, Freya didn’t feel any version of calm as they carried their mugs back to the lounge area and made themselves comfortable in well-cushioned cane armchairs, while Won Ton settled at her feet.

  And although Seb seemed outwardly composed, she sensed tension simmering just below the surface.

  ‘This is kinda weird, isn’t it?’ she said.

  He frowned. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Us.’ Freya waved her mug-free hand, a helpless flap. ‘I never expected to see you again.’

  ‘Ditto,’ he responded cautiously.

  An awkward silence fell. Freya wondered why he’d invited her. Had he wanted to talk?

  She tried again. ‘You have to admit it’s strange, Seb, to find ourselves working together after all these years, seeing each other every day.’ She didn’t add that it was even stranger to know that he’d voluntarily put himself in this potentially ticklish situation. And she certainly wasn’t going to mention that now they’d negotiated the initial frostiness, she’d spent way too much time remembering their youth and the fateful day she’d tried to hand his ring back.

  To her dismay, Seb made no comment. Worse, his gaze narrowed and became wary now, as if she had pushed in a direction he didn’t want to follow.

  She sighed. She was tempted to give up, to paper over the cracks and pretend everything was fine. And it was fine. If she and Seb ignored their history.

  But that wasn’t realistic, surely? And after having her house and her life reduced to ashes, Freya was beginning to understand that the best way out of any mess was to simply push right through it.

  ‘Seb, should we talk?’

  At first she thought he was going to be facetious, to merely suggest that they were already talking, weren’t they?

  ‘You’d like to tell me about your marriage?’

  Thud.

  ‘Actually, no.’ Brian and the divorce were the very last things she wanted to talk about, but Seb wasn’t about to let her off the hook too easily.

  ‘What went wrong?’ he asked.

  Freya gave a frustrated shake of her head. ‘Oh, lots of little things, I suppose.’ And now it was she who tried to be flippant. ‘I got tired of Brian leaving cupboard doors open all the time.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  She shifted in her seat. ‘I – I guess we might have been bored with each other. Well, obviously, he was bored with me. He took up with a thirty-something blonde.’

  Again, the expression in Seb’s eyes suggested he wasn’t buying this excuse.

  Freya found herself saying, ‘And I guess Brian took not being able to have kids pretty hard.’

  Seb was staring at her now, clearly shocked and, quite possibly, appalled. ‘Are you telling me that you couldn’t have children?’

  ‘I am, yes.’ Taking a deep breath, Freya added, ‘But just last week, Brian’s new wife had a baby. A little boy.’

  Jo had rung Freya with this news, passing on the message as gently and diplomatically as she could.

  ‘I have a friend in Nambour Maternity,’ Jo had told her. ‘And I asked her to let me know. I didn’t want you to hear about it weeks later after the whole world already knew.’

  Strangely, the news hadn’t hurt Freya nearly as badly as it might have done before the fire, or before she’d learned about Billie’s pregnancy. Perhaps she was mellowing. But her infertility news had clearly rattled Seb, which was understandable. He knew she’d had no problems getting pregnant with Billie.

  ‘What was the problem?’ he asked, clearly baffled.

  This was not the direction Freya had planned for their conversation, but having opened the can of worms, she could hardly close it. ‘I ended up developing the same problem as Pearl,’ she said. ‘Endometriosis.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  To Freya’s dismay, this news launched Seb out of his chair and onto the verandah. As she watched him stride away, she felt her throat close on a hot knot of pain, but she couldn’t move to follow him, was sure he wouldn’t want her to. Was he angry?

  Watching his stiff back and straight shoulders as he stared out to sea, she couldn’t help remembering the shocked accusations he’d delivered all those years ago . . .

  ‘You’re offering your body to your sister?’

  ‘Not my body, exactly. Just my uterus, Seb. It’s not as if I’ll be having sex with Troy.’

  ‘Oh, so that makes it all okay?’

  ‘Well, yes, I think so. Pearl’s desperate.’

  ‘Poor Pearl. And you didn’t think you might speak to me first? You just went ahead and offered? Signed on the dotted line?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Freya knew she’d been impulsive, but when she’d been hit by her wonderful idea, she’d been fired with an almost holy zeal. She’d been so aglow with self-righteousness, with sisterly love and the magnificence of such a wonderfully generous mission that she’d just dived straight in. And expected poor Seb to understand.

  God, she’d been naïve. Apart from delivering a healthy baby girl, she’d handled every aspect of that scenario so heavy-handedly. And, foolishly, she’d thought Seb would come back to her when it was all over. Instead, in one fell swoop, she’d lost her fiancé and had put her relationship with her sister under a strain that had never resolved. And she’d carried all that baggage into her marriage.

  Perhaps a psychologist might have told her that Brian could sense she’d never given him her whole heart.

  ‘So, I presume you want to talk about us?’

  Freya jumped and so did Won Ton, who’d been snoozing at her feet. Seb was back, standing before her, his expression intense, almost threatening.

  Despite the slamming of her heart, she gave a tight nod. ‘We left so much unsaid at the time. Back then.’

  ‘As I remember it, we said plenty.’

  ‘But we were so busy arguing, Seb. I was pig-headedly determined to go ahead with the surrogacy. And you . . .’ She paused, giving him space to respond.

  ‘And I was in shock.’

  ‘Yes.’

  At least, he now lowered himself back into a chair. ‘Have you any idea how it felt to learn that the woman I planned to marry was prepared to give her body to bear another man’s child before she’d had a child of her own?’

  ‘A child of yours,’ Freya clarified.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  She resisted the temptation to suggest he’d behaved like any young male primate similarly threatened. ‘We were young, Seb. We’d never really talked about having our own family. And I was healthy. I guess I thought . . .’ She paused, tried again. ‘I guess I naïvely assumed I could have it all – Pearl’s baby, you and our – our own family eventually.’

  Seb made no response, simply sat there frowning at some distant spot on the floorboards.

  Watching him, Freya wondered yet again if she was foolish to try to rake up their past. Was she actually being selfish? Trying to ease her own guilty conscience?

  But even as she asked herself this question, she found herself saying, ‘You do und
erstand why I broke off the engagement, don’t you?’

  ‘You lost patience with me.’

  ‘No, not that.’ She had tried to explain at the time, but Seb had been far too angry to listen. ‘We were so young, Seb.’

  ‘I think you’ve mentioned that.’

  ‘But surely that’s the point? I was totally gung-ho about my body, but I did feel bad about not considering how you might react. And I also felt guilty about keeping you tied to a woman who was going to have someone else’s child.’

  With a sense of urgency, Freya groped for the right words. ‘I lost my freedom with the pregnancy, but I convinced myself you should be free to date other women, to have the chance to think twice about whether you really wanted me.’

  The look Seb shot her now was filled with heat. Anger? Hurt? Freya couldn’t be sure, but it was reminiscent of the look his mother had given her all those years ago, after she’d lost Seb.

  When she’d gone to Seb’s mother, weeping, Elise had been sympathetic, but quite firm. ‘You hurt Seb badly, Freya. I’m sorry, but you made a serious mistake when you chose to go ahead without even discussing the surrogacy with him.’

  ‘I know. I can’t believe I was so stupid.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a hard lesson to swallow, but there are some things in life you just can’t undo. Sometimes we make serious mistakes and we just have to learn to live with the consequences.’

  Freya’s problem now, all these years later, was that the consequences of her rash decision had never really finished. Here she was, back in Seb’s orbit, but finding him suddenly bored by this conversation.

  ‘Water under the bridge,’ he said, and he sounded tired and so fed up Freya was silenced.

  Defeated.

  Clearly, there was no point in finishing her confession. Thank heavens she hadn’t admitted the other, more shameful reason she’d embraced the surrogacy plan with so much gusto – that for the first time in her life, she’d found a way to be superior to her big sister. Pearl had always been better than Freya at just about everything – at school, at home, always conscientious and neat, a dream student and daughter.