‘All right,’ he said with a good-natured smile. ‘But you know the rules. Don’t go too far, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘On the count of three.’ This was clearly a well-practised ritual. ‘One, two —’
Molly took off and Dan sent Billie a shrugging grin. ‘What happened to three?’
Billie was grinning, too. ‘She’s certainly a beach lover.’ And as they watched Molly begin to sort through the shells that lay among the snowy-white driftwood and coral rubble littering the beach, she told Dan about the surrogacy and necessary adoption, about the fallout from Sonia Brassal’s misinformation, about Freya’s generosity and Pearl’s secrecy and, finally, the new chapter about Pearl’s health crisis.
Dan was a very good listener, hardly ever interrupting her and never once looking as if he was losing interest. But it wasn’t possible to tell him her story without also thinking about his own situation, and how appalling it must have been for him to lose his wife, the mother of his baby girl. Billie couldn’t help choking up when she thought about that.
‘My family probably sound like something out of a soap opera,’ she said, trying to lighten the moment.
Dan shook his head. ‘It’s a pretty amazing story.’
‘I know. I look in the mirror now and think – did I really start life in a test tube? It’s so surreal.’
‘But what a great result.’ He grinned at her then and something in his eyes, a flash, a spark, made her look away quickly before she blushed again.
She told herself she was being foolish. Imagining things. Dan wasn’t cracking on to her. He was simply being Dan. Being nice. No, that wasn’t the right word. Decent. Yes, Dan was decent, although Billie was sure he could be tough, too. She’d seen the way he stood up to those guys at the courthouse.
More to the point, she was pregnant and Dan knew it, and the last thing he would want was the burden of a woman with another man’s kid. And she certainly wasn’t looking for a partner. She planned to be a single mum and a damn good one at that.
She looked at him again now as he watched his daughter stooping to pick up yet another beach treasure. She saw the softening in his smile, and the way his brown hair caught hints of gold in the sunlight. She found herself asking, ‘Isn’t your job rather dangerous for a single dad?’
His brown eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘It’s not like NYPD Blue. I don’t have guns pointed at me every day, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘But you’re still dealing with crime. You see bad stuff all the time and you have no partner to offload to when you get home. I just —’
Dan shook his head. ‘Now you’re starting to sound like my mother.’
‘Sorry.’ More carefully, Billie asked, ‘So what do you like about your job?’
‘Apart from the fact that I don’t have to wear a uniform and I get to drive an unmarked car?’
They were both smiling now.
‘Haven’t you heard that men look good in uniform?’ Billie teased.
Dan accepted this with a shrug. ‘Truth is, I spend quite a lot of time on routine stuff – writing reports, making notes in files, checking photos. Taking phone calls from families of victims. Interviews and more interviews.’
‘Middle-of-the-night phone calls?’ Billie asked.
‘Sometimes. Our weekends are rostered, so it’s not all bad.’
‘How did your wife find it?’ Billie couldn’t help asking this. ‘Did she mind?’
Dan shot her a quick, searching glance, but if he was surprised or upset by her question, he didn’t show it. ‘She preferred not to know too much,’ he said simply.
Billie couldn’t resist trying to learn a little more. ‘What was her name?’
‘Jane.’ His mouth formed a crooked smile. ‘She taught kindergarten. Loved little kids.’
‘Oh, Dan.’ Feeling wretched, Billie switched her gaze to Molly, but she couldn’t stop the sudden spill of tears. She grabbed one of the paper napkins that came with their meal and dabbed at her face, but the tears might have been hard to stem if Molly hadn’t called out suddenly.
‘Daddy! There’s a little bird here and it’s hurt.’
Frowning now, Dan rose from his seat. ‘Coming,’ he called, and Billie rose quickly, too, and went with him.
It wasn’t easy at first to locate the little ball of feathers that Molly was pointing to, but as they got closer, they could see a rather ordinary small grey-brown bird huddled among the driftwood not far from Molly’s feet. It was cowering close to the sand and quite visibly distressed.
‘Has it got a broken wing?’ Molly cried. ‘Daddy, help it.’
The poor little bird was certainly struggling and one wing did appear to be dangling at an awkward angle. Billie wondered what had happened. Had the bird been grabbed by a hawk? Hit by a car?
Molly reached for her father’s hand and gave him a shake as she looked up at him with imploring blue eyes. ‘We’ve got to save him, Daddy. Can we take him to a bird doctor?’
Billie thought this might be quite feasible, actually. If they could catch the bird safely, there were several wildlife carers on the island who could help. She was about to say as much, when Dan, who was watching the bird carefully, shook his head.
‘She’s okay,’ he said. ‘She’s not hurt. She’s a mother sandpiper protecting her eggs. Or maybe her babies.’
‘No, she’s hurt,’ Molly insisted.
‘I know she looks hurt, Mollz, but she’s acting.’
Molly scowled at her father in disbelief. ‘Acting?’ she repeated in amazement. ‘Like people on TV?’
Billie was pretty amazed, too. She’d never heard of such behaviour from a bird, but Dan seemed quite certain.
‘She thinks we want to hurt her babies,’ he explained. ‘So she’s acting hurt to get our attention. She doesn’t want us to find them and she’s trying to lead us away.’
‘Wow,’ said Billie. ‘How do you know this, Dan?’
‘My parents had a fishing shack down at Cungulla. As kids we used to see shorebirds doing this sort of thing.’
‘And I’ve lived on the island all my life and I’ve never seen it before.’
Molly, however, wasn’t nearly as impressed. ‘Where are her babies? I can’t see them.’
‘They’re probably still eggs and they’ll be hard to find,’ said Dan. ‘They’ll just look like little pieces of rock or wood.’
Intrigued, Billie scanned the stretch of sand strewn with broken coral, pieces of dried seaweed and driftwood. Cautiously, she stepped forward, super careful about where she put her feet. Then, when she least expected it, there they were.
In a bare circle of sand. Two beautiful little speckled eggs, almost the same pale tan as the damp sand, with dark specks like strips of seaweed.
‘Here they are,’ she cried, but of course the little bird became more agitated now, piping shrilly and dragging her wing, and to Billie’s dismay her eyes filled with tears. Again.
She was thinking of her own mum. Small, plain, tough Pearl, ferociously loving, and so scared of losing her precious baby that she’d gone to great lengths to keep danger away, even if that danger had come in the form of a loving aunt and surrogate mother.
From behind her now, she heard Dan call, ‘Billie’s found them, Molly. Come on. We’ll have a quick look and then we’re going to shift far away from here so we don’t upset their mother.’
Billie was aware of Dan and Molly next to her now, but she was too blinded by tears to see them properly. She was still thinking of her mother, now so ill, of her unborn baby that she longed to see and hold, of Dan’s poor wife, Jane, killed so unfairly in a car accident, and now, of this fiercely protective little mother bird . . .
Molly was squatting so she could inspect the eggs.
‘Okay.’ Dan was taking her hand, urging her upright. ‘Let’s move away now, so we don’t upset the mother.’
‘When will the eggs become babies?’ Molly was asking as he led her away.
‘Billie’s crying,’ Molly announced a moment later and Billie, who hadn’t brought the paper napkin with her, had to madly swipe at her face.
‘I’m okay,’ she told them. ‘It’s just pregnancy hormones.’
Through tear-blurred eyes, she was aware of Dan leaning in to check her, could see his concerned smile. She tried to smile back, but her mouth pulled out of shape. She must have looked hideous.
‘Truly,’ she said in a voice choked by tears. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Sure,’ he said, but he slipped his arm around her shoulders anyway and gave her a sympathetic hug.
A simple gesture, but incredibly comforting and calming.
Billie blinked to clear the tears. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and she almost threw her arms around him and gave him a whopping great kiss, just because he was so lovely and understanding. But she behaved herself, which was just as well. She didn’t want to give him wrong ideas.
Then they went back to the picnic table where they’d abandoned the remains of their meal, which they wrapped and stowed with their drink cans in the bins. Billie checked the time on her phone. ‘Gosh. I’d better get cracking or I’ll be late for work.’
‘Daddy, can we come back another day to see the baby birds?’ Molly was asking.
‘Oh, I don’t think we’d find them a second time,’ her father told her.
‘Maybe you can come and see my baby.’ Billie couldn’t believe she’d said this aloud, but the words were out now and she couldn’t take them back.
Molly was staring at her with wide eyes and an open mouth.
‘Whoops, sorry,’ Billie said to Dan, but luckily he was grinning. Besides, her tummy had really popped out lately, so her pregnancy was hardly a secret.
‘Daddy?’ Molly was clearly bursting with questions.
But Dan was still smiling at Billie. ‘I’ll explain,’ he told his daughter.
‘Sorry,’ Billie said again. ‘I’d better dash. Oh, and thanks for lunch.’
‘Our pleasure. Great that you could join us.’ Dan walked with her to her car.
‘Daddy!’
‘In a minute, Molly. We’re saying goodbye to Billie.’
When they reached her car, he said, ‘Take care, won’t you?’
‘I will and thanks again.’
His brown eyes shone with a warmth that made her heart sing. ‘See you later.’
‘Great.’ But she had no idea when that ‘later’ might be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
‘So do you think this wall would be best?’ Pearl, with a finger to her pursed lips and her head dipped to one side, studied an expanse of white-painted wall in her restaurant’s dining room.
‘Probably,’ said Freya. ‘You’ll need to find a spot that can be seen through the windows from the deck as well.’
It was a Tuesday. The restaurant was closed and they were discussing the hanging of a painting that Seb was going to auction to raise money for the local lifesavers. Pearl mightn’t have been too keen about hanging Seb’s work in Island Thyme if she hadn’t owed him a huge favour for filling in as their chef. But now that she’d actually seen the painting, she was quite enchanted.
Executed in Seb’s trademark strong colours, it offered a bird’s-eye view of Alma Bay, and the Nippers, the junior lifesavers, busy at their training on the beach. Freya had been quite amazed when she’d seen it.
Seb rarely included human figures in his landscapes or seascapes, but he’d done a wonderful job with this, using clever daubs of colour to portray the little Nippers in their bathers and red and yellow swimming caps. Their bodies were, necessarily, foreshortened by the overhead view and at first glance they might have been little crabs, or flowers scattered on the sand. But a closer look showed they were unmistakably children. Busy, mischievous, full of life and purpose.
‘The effect’s quite gorgeous, isn’t it?’ Freya enthused.
‘It’s fascinating,’ Pearl agreed. ‘And I’m not sleeping with the artist, so I’m not biased,’ she added with a sly grin.
Pearl had been smiling quite a bit lately, which was rather wonderful, given the seriousness of her circumstances. Freya, on the other hand, had found it hard to stay cheerful, mainly because she’d seen almost nothing of Seb and she suspected that he was avoiding her.
Retreating . . . echoes of the past.
Since the evening she’d told him about her decision to donate, he’d either been busy collecting art supplies or locked away in his studio producing this masterpiece. Which would have been fine if it hadn’t also meant that there’d been no further discussion about her plan.
We’ll give it more thought, he’d said, but Freya still had no clue, really, about how his thoughts on the subject were progressing, so she could only assume he was backing away. Again.
‘We shouldn’t try to hang the painting till Seb gets here,’ decided Troy, who’d arrived sensibly equipped with a bag of tools including a hammer, screwdriver and tape measure. ‘He’ll want to get the right light, or the right height or whatever.’
Standing in front of the painting, legs planted apart, arms folded over his chest, Troy seemed to be studying it, as if he was a learned art critic. But then he turned to Pearl and Freya with a cheeky smile. ‘So what’s the collective noun for a gathering of Nippers? A confusion of Nippers?’
Pearl obligingly laughed.
‘A hilarity of Nippers?’ suggested Freya.
‘A noise of Nippers?’ added Troy. ‘A squeal?’
‘A shrill?’ said a voice from behind them.
In unison they turned and there was Seb. For Freya, the air in the room seemed charged with new energy.
‘Ah,’ said Pearl. ‘The man himself.’ And Freya wished she felt calmer.
Fortunately, neither Pearl nor Troy seemed to notice anything amiss with her, although Seb’s piercing glance found its mark, landing inside her like an arrow. Discomfited, she kept well in the background as a discussion ensued about the best position for the painting, which was followed by an equally serious discussion, led by Pearl, about the wording of the sign that would accompany the artwork.
‘We need to explain that the Nippers are a good cause,’ she suggested, earnestly. ‘It’s not just a group of kids having fun. They’re getting an early education about water safety and a good introduction to community service.’
Pearl managed to sound sanctimonious as she made this pronouncement, but no one was inclined to argue, so she offered to type up the sign on her computer and print it out. Then, between them, Troy and Seb set to with tools and tape measure to hang the painting in place. It looked brilliant.
‘Great,’ said Seb, stepping back and surveying the result, clearly satisfied. Then, turning to Pearl and Troy, he said, ‘And while you’re both still here, there’s something else I’d like to discuss with you and Freya.’
Ping. A nervous tremor zapped through Freya. What on earth could Seb need to discuss with all of them? He was avoiding eye contact with her now, which was hardly a good sign.
‘Perhaps if we could sit down?’ he said, gesturing with the air of a genteel host towards one of the dining tables.
Seb, what are you doing?
Freya almost refused to join them at the table. She was terribly afraid Seb was about to announce that he couldn’t agree to her donation plans. But he wouldn’t be so arrogant, surely? It was her body, her decision.
Pearl and Troy were quite obedient, however, sitting where Seb directed, and Freya, reluctantly, followed. When she looked around at the assembled group, she saw restrained curiosity in Pearl and Troy’s faces, and cautious determination in Seb’s. For her own part, she suspected she looked as nervous as a woman on the edge of a crumbling cliff.
‘So,’ Seb said smoothly. ‘I’ll get straight to the point. Freya’s told me about your difficult health issues, Pearl, and that she plans to donate
a kidney.’
‘Yes,’ said Pearl, but then she turned to Troy and they exchanged a worried glance.
Freya was beyond worried. She was furious. How dare Seb barge in here all heavy-handed and masterful? ‘Seb, you can’t do this.’ Her voice was too loud, but she was too stressed to make adjustments. ‘You have no right.’
‘Let him finish,’ Pearl said rather sharply.
Somewhat startled by her sister’s intervention, Freya closed her mouth, while Seb dipped his head, as if to acknowledge Pearl’s support. ‘The thing is,’ he continued. ‘I’m not happy about Freya making yet another generous sacrifice.’
‘Neither am I,’ said Pearl. ‘Not really.’
Troy was frowning, leaning towards Pearl, speaking in an undertone, and Freya was sure he was advising his wife to be cautious, that she mustn’t throw away her best chance of recovery.
And good on him. Seb was way out of line.
Freya glared at him. ‘You should have spoken to me first. You know I’m a perfect match.’ And she might have hammered this point home, if she hadn’t seen the way he looked at her then – as if he was sending her an intense silent entreaty.
Or reminding her that this very moment was an uncanny echo of their past when he’d said those exact words —
You should have spoken to me first.
Somewhat shaken, she sat back and remained silent as Seb continued.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I understand this is primarily a family matter, but the thing is, I’ve been to the Townsville hospital and I’ve had the tests.’
Ignoring Freya’s shocked gasp, Seb continued now in a voice of quiet authority. ‘I received the last of the results this morning and I’m ninety-nine percent certain I’d be a good match for you, Pearl.’ He held out both hands, palms up. ‘Which means you have options.’
Freya gasped again, but could find no air. It was as if she’d dived too deep and could no longer find her way back to the sea’s surface.
‘You, Seb?’ Pearl was saying. ‘But why would you —’
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