by Fiona Lowe
‘I didn’t think I was doing it on my own, but it turned out that way.’
‘Shit. Sorry. Again.’ He sighed. ‘Is the father why you didn’t want to tell me?’
‘No, not at all,’ she said, finding that question easy to answer. ‘Talking about Jason doesn’t upset me. After Eliza … We wanted different things.’ She thought about the words she’d just spoken and suddenly it was very important to clarify so the truth wasn’t hidden.
‘Actually, it turns out we’d always wanted different things but I’d convinced myself otherwise. Eliza’s birth and death shone a bright light on the fact I’d been deluding myself for a long time. It forced us to be honest. I wanted children. He didn’t. The end of our five years together was quietly unremarkable and far less devastating to me than losing my baby.’
She splayed her fingers on his chest, watching the shadows flitting between them. ‘And that’s my pathetic story.’
‘It’s not pathetic,’ he said quietly but firmly.
‘Well, it’s not exactly inspiring. I attached myself to a guy for years in the hope he’d change his mind about parenthood.’
‘It’s no less inspiring than being dumped because you’re boring.’
Surprised, she pulled back to bring his face into focus. ‘Someone thought you were boring?’
‘Pretty unbelievable, eh?’ He smiled that mischievous smile of his, the one that made her feel like she’d forgive him anything. ‘But sadly true.’ He shrugged, his expression unperturbed. ‘You learn from your mistakes, right? And Ashley’s bald words taught me something. I’ve stopped dating student teachers and anyone under twenty-six.’
‘Phew. Lucky for me I just snuck in under the wire then.’
He laughed softly, his hand stroking her hair. ‘What was that you were saying about not deluding yourself anymore?’
She knew he was teasing her but the words prickled and scratched, making her uneasy. She was thirty-four and Ben was right, her timeline theory was stupid. It was getting in the way of what she wanted in her life. On paper, the sum of their relationship was half a dozen one-on-one meetings—probably nowhere near enough to have reached that mythical place magazine advice columnists talked about. But how long did she wait? How much time did she waste before she discovered his life plans might not remotely match up with hers? This wasn’t like asking him the big question on a first date; they’d gone way past that now. If it freaked him out, wasn’t it better to know sooner rather than later?
She binned her timeline theory. ‘Ben, do you see kids in your future?’
‘I’m a teacher, Georgie. Kids are my here and now.’
‘Ha, ha.’ She dug him in the ribs. ‘I’m being serious. I don’t want to waste any more time deluding myself. You just shredded my dumb timeline theory on what and when things can be asked and shared so …’ Her heart rate picked up and the words she wanted to speak stuck to the roof of her mouth like marshmallows.
His dark eyes watched her carefully. ‘Yes?’
‘Is having kids one day something you want?’
His lips curved in a sheepish smile. ‘It’s why I was called boring.’
Hope soared. ‘So if you met the right person?’
His finger drew soft circles on her shoulder. ‘I’d want to do the whole boring gig of getting married, having kids and coaching the local soccer team.’
Her heart seemed to be pounding in her throat. ‘That sounds like a good life. I hope you find her.’
‘I do too.’ A serious expression stole across his face. ‘I’ve got a feeling I’m a lot closer to finding her than I’ve ever been before.’
She wanted to squeal and whoop but she couldn’t make any noise and risk waking Charlotte and Edwina. Instead, she smiled at him and as she did, something close to peace stole into her. Peace and relief. Now they could relax and explore this wonderful thing that sparked between them. They could open themselves up to all that it offered and see where it took them, knowing they wanted the same things out of life.
‘What time can we head back to Melbourne tomorrow?’ Ben asked before amending, ‘Actually, it’s today.’
‘Ah …’
He frowned. ‘Please tell me you’re coming back to Melbourne with me so we can have our week together?’
She snagged her bottom lip with her teeth. ‘I want to, Ben. I really do, but I think I need to stay here. Charlie’s pretty vulnerable right now and Harry …’ God, how did she even try to explain Harriet?
‘Can we compromise.’ He said it in the tone of a statement rather than a question. ‘How about we drive back to Melbourne as planned but you come back here on Thursday? That means we have three days together without the distraction of family and you get to see how everyone down here copes without you. It still gives you another few days with them before you have to go back to work. You’d have time to set up anything that needs doing.’
Thoughts and ideas jostled in her head as she silently considered his suggestions.
‘What?’ he said after a long silence. ‘Bad idea?’
‘No.’ She smiled at him, bemused. ‘It’s just I’m not used to the radical concept of compromise. Jason wasn’t big on it.’
He grinned at her, looking as pleased as if he’d just won the competition against the other bloke. ‘So?’
‘I think it’s a great idea but I can’t leave until four. Today’s Easter lunch and it’s always a bit of a big deal.’ This year it’s going to be big in a whole new way.
‘Fair enough. I’ll be a good son and do something with Dad. I’m pretty sure he’s not heading home until Monday. I’ll be ready at four.’
‘Thank you.’ She gave him an appreciative kiss. ‘I’m hoping we might both be at Easter lunch next year.’
‘Sounds good to me.’ He ran his fingers up and down her spine. ‘So exactly how long have I got before you kick me out of this bed?’
She walked her fingers down his chest. ‘Long enough.’
‘That’s good to know.’
He tucked her under him and proceeded to use the time very wisely indeed.
CHAPTER
17
With the exception of her two years living and working in London, Harriet had always spent Easter Sunday at Glenora. Today she was breaking that tradition and she was fine with it. After all, why spend time with people who undermined her and only caused her grief?
She’d been called into the hospital at one in the morning to operate on a woman with a lacerated liver courtesy of a drunk driver slamming into her. Despite the tense situation when the woman had almost bled out on the table, there’d been a peace in the utter concentration required by the surgery. The chaos in Harriet’s life had blessedly receded, pushed back by the need to focus on finding the damaged vessels. One woman’s trauma had been Harriet’s mental health break and that would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. She’d left the hospital at four, slept for a few hours and had then gone for a run across the Stony Rises.
Her gaze slid from her recently returned computer to the wicker Easter basket. Georgie had brought it over when she’d invited her yet again to come to lunch. The basket overflowed with fresh flowers from Glenora’s garden, packets of Harriet’s preferred coffee, a book she’d expressed an interest in reading and some of Georgie’s handmade chocolates along with a Haigh’s chocolate bilby. It was a thoughtful gesture but that was Georgie: she knew how much Harriet liked to mark family occasions. Now the basket hovered like fog, hiding the jagged rocks that lay beyond it.
As a child, Easter Sunday had been a happily anticipated day and there’d always been an Easter egg hunt. Harriet still stored a vivid memory from the Easter when she was four years old and the awe she’d experienced on finding huge rabbit paw prints on the paths that wound through what she’d considered back then to be her magic garden. Long after she’d worked out that the Easter Bunny wasn’t real, the paw prints still made their annual appearance, only stopping when Georgie turned thirteen. When Charlotte was a tot, t
he paw prints had again returned to Glenora and that was when Harriet had discovered her father was the artist. It had made sense to her adult self, because drawing paw prints wasn’t the sort of thing Edwina would do. Edwina hadn’t been the fun parent—she’d been the passive parent. Always. Well, up until now.
Why the bloody hell had Edwina chosen this week to have opinions? Oh, Dad. Harriet rubbed her temples, missing her father more than ever. If he were alive, he’d have taken charge like he’d always done and her mother wouldn’t be aiding and abetting Charlotte in exchanging a good life for one of hardship and lost opportunities. But he wasn’t here and she wasn’t at Glenora and everything in her life had gone to hell in a handbasket. She had an irrational desire to go back to being that little girl who, when she slid her hand into her father’s large warm palm, felt invincible.
When she was growing up, her father had always been the one to organise the Easter egg hunt. In fact, her father had always been the one more likely to put down whatever he was doing and join her and her sisters in an activity. She couldn’t think of any times her mother had done the same thing and yet since Edwina had become a grandmother, she did have moments when she played. Once when Charlotte was seven, Harriet had come home early from work to find Edwina dressed up in a hat and an old ball gown, drinking tea at the plastic play table. She’d been so surprised by the sight that she’d taken a photo. Charlotte still had it pinned on the corkboard in her room.
Edwina was in many ways a far better grandmother than she’d ever been a mother but Harriet’s friends said the same things about their parents. Once, after a few wines, Jenny had told her that the relaxed version of Primrose who’d always surfaced at the annual Warrnambool beach holiday and who’d always vanished once they were back on the farm, was permanently present in Grandmother Primrose. Harriet had often envied the relationship Jenny had with Primrose but never the one she had with David. Up until five years ago, Harriet had often commented how she and Jenny shared diagonally opposite relationships with their parents. Things had changed when Jenny took a trip with David to Vietnam. Jenny said that holiday had made a huge difference to their relationship and now she understood her father better. Harriet only understood Edwina enough to know that despite sharing some DNA, they had nothing else in common. She didn’t want to admit that she envied the easy relationship Charlotte and her nephews shared with Edwina.
Last Easter, the first one without her father, Harriet had offered to organise the hunt but Edwina had thanked her and declined Harriet’s help—she had it all under control. Growing up, Harriet had always assumed her mother had been too busy playing hostess at Easter to join in the hunt. Only when she matched up the behaviour of her maternal grandparents had she wondered if the Easter egg hunt had been a Chirnwell tradition her father had brought into the family. Although her Mannering grandfather and uncles played cricket at family gatherings, they’d never joined in the egg hunt, preferring instead to observe from the veranda with a drink in hand. It was only when Richard had declared all the eggs collected that her Mannering grandfather would become involved, meeting her at the top of the steps and insisting on helping her count her stash. Each year he’d advise her to eat one or two and save the rest for later. She’d taken him on his word and in later years when her younger sisters were older, his advice had proved salient: Xara and Georgie always scarfed down their eggs on the day and her saved ones become good earners for her when they wanted more. With her supply in high demand, she’d been able to up her price and trade them for coins and other things she’d wanted—it had been her first lesson in market economy. Her grandfather had also told her that winners were grinners, money made money and if she wanted to be a true Mannering, she had to know how to make money.
Harriet slammed the lid of her laptop shut, closing out the stark and relentless view of her seriously depleted financial status. Not only had James stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from her and others, in the process he’d seriously damaged her ability to earn money. Debbie had carefully outlined the situation to her on Wednesday without sugar coating a thing. Taking the practice into the twenty-first century had been necessary but it also meant it was heavily geared. This hadn’t been a problem for her when she had a large volume of private patients coming through the door. Now those numbers had diminished drastically, and if it continued, her earning capacity would barely cover her payroll and running costs.
She fingered the letter from the bank that was addressed to Mr James Minchin and Ms Harriet Chirnwell. It outlined how two payments on Miligili’s mortgage had been missed and it stated the urgent need for them to contact the bank as soon as possible. ‘I didn’t miss them. He did!’ she yelled at the letter as if saying it out loud could actually change something.
The fact that her share of the payments had vanished from her account each month meant nothing when it hadn’t been used to pay the mortgage. Pushing back her chair, she walked to the front door of the guesthouse, opened it and stood looking at her beloved home; a house she hadn’t stepped inside in a week. A house that rat bastard was still living in. Miligili was so much more to her than just a house—it was her heritage, a piece of Mannering history, and she loved it dearly. It was also the biggest asset she shared with James. Going by the emails and the verbal abuse from the community she’d suffered this week, the people he’d stolen money from would force it to be sold so they could seize his share of the profits. James had already taken so much from her she wasn’t going to allow his actions to cost her the house as well.
Rolling a plan around in her mind, she pushed off the architrave and marched toward Miligili. She’d do whatever it took to keep it safe. Jogging up the steps, she hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should knock. Hell no. She tugged hard on the flywire door and walked into the laundry, stepping over a pile of dirty clothes as she entered the kitchen. As she took in the unholy mess—plates with remnants of dried food lay scattered across the bench and in the sink, the rubbish bin overflowed with detritus and the foetid stench of rotting food wafted from it—she felt the sharp pain of an arrow pierce her heart. Her beloved house had never looked so unkempt and uncared for under her watch.
She pushed open the kitchen door and walked into the large living space, calling out, ‘James?’ There was no reply so she walked further into the house, but after exploring all the rooms and drawing a blank she checked the garage. It was empty. Tracking back through the l’Orangerie, she noticed scissors and wrapping paper abandoned on the rectangular marble table and the remnants of ribbon that had drifted to the floor. She automatically stooped to pick up the gold material and while she was down there she discovered a bag and a receipt for Charlotte’s favourite chocolates.
Shit. Her plans evaporated. She’d bet James’s last dollar he was at Glenora. The fact that he hadn’t called her, or visited the guesthouse yesterday when he would have seen her car in the driveway, was a pretty fair indication he was yet to be told about the pregnancy. If he visited Glenora today all that would change. Once she’d have been confident of James’s reaction to the news but not now. Nothing about him was familiar; it was like he’d undergone a personality change. He, on the other hand, would know exactly how she felt about their daughter being pregnant at seventeen. Would he use it against her by siding with Charlotte? Offer her pipe dreams as a base on which she could continue to construct her fantasies? It was bad enough that Edwina and her sisters were supporting Charlotte without adding James and completely locking her out.
She shuddered. Surely her family wouldn’t welcome James at Glenora. No. They wouldn’t. Her convictions wavered as suspicion crept in, gnawing at her resolve. There was the knotty issue of her screaming at Edwina that she wished she’d been the parent to die. It was unlikely that had helped keep Edwina on her side. On the other hand, Steve wouldn’t tolerate James after he’d stolen the respite-care house grant money, but her brother-in-law was one of life’s nice guys. Even if he objected strongly to James being at Glenora, he was a guest
in his mother-in-law’s home; his only protest would be to leave the house while James was inside it. Edwina, irrespective of how she felt about Harriet, was just as likely to invite James in because he was Charlotte’s father.
A picture of James—all charm and contrition—sitting down and ingratiating himself with her sisters slapped Harriet hard followed by an equally disturbing image of her sisters happily chatting with that Doug person. All of it was more than she could bear. As much as she was seething about her mother’s recent behaviour with her new friend and with Charlotte, if she stayed away from lunch she had no control over what happened with James or the untenable situation with that man. No control over anything. One thing this fraught week had taught her was she was utterly over having no control.
Right then. I’m going to lunch. Her mother had taught her that a guest never arrived empty-handed so she carefully negotiated the old stone stairs worn smooth by generations of Mannerings. Making her way into the cool, dark cellar, she smiled as she carefully selected a bottle of her father’s favourite cabernet sauvignon. It was a wine that would perfectly match the lamb she knew was being served at lunch. It was a wine she knew Edwina disliked and never drank.
* * *
‘Doug cut off his finger,’ Hugh announced importantly to Xara and Steve.
‘Oh God! And Harry’s not here.’ Xara dived across her mother’s kitchen to reach the cupboard where the first aid kit was stored.
Steve frantically pulled open the freezer, grabbing ice cubes for the severed finger. ‘How the hell did he do that?’
‘Like this.’ Hugh bent his left index finger, tucking it around his thumb, which was resting across his palm. He then crooked his right thumb and wriggled it around. His little face creased in concentration as he stared hard at his hands. ‘Aww, I forget. Wait here. I’ll come back and show you.’ He ran outside.