Clara wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry or turn red again. ‘I’m sorry about that. I swear they didn’t get that idea from me.’
‘So you don’t want to marry me?’
Gregg had to be joking—it was way too early to be having this conversation—but his tone was hard to read and she didn’t want to offend him if he wasn’t.
‘It’s not that. It’s not you. It’s just …’ Oh Lord.
‘It’s alright,’ he interrupted with a chuckle, taking one hand off the wheel and squeezing her knee. ‘I’m just messing with you. I know things have moved pretty fast between us and I’m not unhappy about what we’ve got, but I reckon we just enjoy it for a while, don’t you?’
She smiled and put her hand on top of his. ‘That sounds like a perfect plan.’
Before either of them could say anything else, Clara’s handbag started ringing at her feet. She frowned. The only people who ever called her were Gregg and her sisters and she’d just spent hours with them. And Rob. But he no longer could.
‘Maybe we left something behind,’ Gregg suggested as if she’d just spoken her thoughts out loud.
‘Maybe.’ She leaned over to retrieve her phone and her frown deepened.
‘Who is it?’ he asked when she simply stared at it a few long moments.
Her stomach muscles squeezed as a feeling of dread washed over her. ‘It’s Rob’s mother.’ She hadn’t seen nor heard from Brenda since the divorce.
‘I see.’ He sounded both surprised and a little put out. Since the episode on her front porch, they’d spoken very little about her ex-husband.
‘Are you going to answer it?’
It suddenly crossed her mind that maybe it wasn’t Brenda but Rob from his mother’s phone. ‘No,’ she said as the phone stopped ringing of its own accord.
Her high of earlier rapidly diminishing, Clara shoved the phone back in her bag and tried to ignore the prick of guilt. So what if it was Brenda? There was no valid reason for her ex-mother-in-law to be calling on a Sunday afternoon, or any other day for that matter. Unless something terrible had happened to Rob.
She didn’t allow that thought to take root. He wasn’t her problem anymore.
The phone immediately started ringing again. Reluctantly she retrieved it and this time a different number—one she didn’t recognise—flashed up at her.
That feeling of doom grew in her stomach. She’d never been good at ignoring unknown numbers but usually regretted answering them the moment she did.
She pressed the phone up against her ear. ‘Hello?’
‘Is this Clara Jones?’ asked an unfamiliar voice.
‘Yes.’
Within two minutes, the voice on the other end of the line explained everything. She was a nurse at St Vincent’s and one of her patients—an elderly woman called Brenda Jones—had listed Clara as next of kin. Brenda had fallen at home and badly broken her ankle in two places; she needed some things brought in to the hospital.
‘She has a son,’ Clara said curtly.
There was a muffled conversation at the end of the phone line, then the nurse came back on. ‘Apparently her son is missing.’
‘What?’ Her grip tightened on her phone. ‘Put Brenda on, please.’
Rob’s mother was very apologetic about bothering Clara but explained she had no one else to call. He hadn’t been home since going out three Saturday mornings ago.
Clara did the calculations—the morning they’d argued about her selling the house. She refused to feel guilty about this timing. ‘Have you reported this to the police?’
‘Yes, dear. You know what he’s like—sometimes he doesn’t come home for a night or two, but he’s never been away longer than three nights without letting me know, so I called them then. Two officers came round to my place but they didn’t seem overly concerned to be honest. Told me they’d put him on some register and would keep an eye out. I’m so sorry to bother you but … I didn’t know who else to call.’
When Brenda began to cry, Clara’s heart softened. She was furious with Rob but she could hardly leave his mother all alone in the hospital without a clean change of underwear.
‘It’s okay,’ she tried to assure her. ‘Do you still have the spare key under the flowerpot out the back? I can go over now and collect whatever you need, then bring it to the hospital straight away.’
Brenda sniffed. ‘Oh, thank you. You always were such a good girl. Far too good for my Rob.’
Clara didn’t make comment on that.
As her ex-mother-in-law dictated a list, she messily scribbled it down on the notebook she carried in her handbag. ‘Be with you soon,’ she told Brenda and then disconnected the call.
‘What’s going on?’
And although she’d vowed to keep her messy past out of her conversations with Gregg, all her good intentions flew out the window. She gave him a no-holds-barred account, starting from the phone call and working backwards to Rob’s disappearance, right to the night she’d met him and all their heartbreak and disappointment in between.
‘When Rob was seventeen, he got his fifteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant. They broke up and the baby was adopted—he knew he had a son—but her family moved away and Rob never saw her or the baby again. Although devastated, he threw himself into his music as a distraction. When we met, his band were just about to record their first album—it turned out to be a big hit. Especially one song.’
‘Would I know the band?’
‘Maybe. They were called One Track Mind.’ When Gregg shook his head, Clara added, ‘You’ll have heard their big hit—“Lost Without You, Baby”.’
His eyes widened. ‘I loved that song. I can never remember who sang it though.’ And he burst out in song, ‘I’ve lost my direction, without you …’
‘Everybody did. Most people still do.’ Of course they all thought it was just a twisted love song; only a small few knew just how real those words were for Rob.
‘Wow.’ Gregg was still in awe. ‘I can’t imagine what it would be like to be famous like that and then fade almost into obscurity.’
‘Well, fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be—but it brings with it money, which meant Rob was never short on cash for grog. Even years later that song still brings in a reasonable income.’
‘So alcohol ruined him?’
Clara nodded. ‘To an extent, that was his drug of choice, but he started drinking to numb his pain. He never got over the guilt of letting his baby go. He never stopped wondering what his son was like, if he was doing okay, and he desperately wanted us to have a family. I think he hoped another baby would fill the hole inside him, give him a chance to prove himself as a dad. He was in a good place—his music career was just kicking off when we met—so although he told me about the adoption I didn’t realise just how badly this experience had affected him until it became clear we were never going to have children of our own.’
‘Can I ask why you couldn’t?’
‘I had a couple of miscarriages early in our marriage,’ she began slowly. ‘We had the tests that were available at the time but the doctors could never work out why my body kept rejecting the pregnancies, then finally I almost carried a baby to term.’
‘Almost?’ Gregg’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.
‘We … I … found out the baby had died at thirty-seven weeks.’ Clara swallowed.
In her head she was back in that room with its pretty lavender wallpaper and the sunshine streaming in through the windows, a ridiculously perfect spring day to have her world shattered. She’d known something was wrong, but she’d hoped. Damn she’d hoped and that had always been her problem. The doctor had been sorry. Everyone had been extremely sorry.
But sorry hadn’t helped. Sorry couldn’t bring her baby to life.
The lump she’d been trying to ignore expanded in her throat. ‘I went through labour knowing …’
‘Oh, Clara. You don’t have to say any more.’ When Gregg turned and pulled her into his arms, she
realised he’d stopped on the side of the road to focus on her. ‘I’m so sorry you went through all that.’
No matter that it had happened over two decades ago now, she’d never forget the feel of rocking her dead child in her arms, of watching her tears fall on her pallid skin and hoping they would miraculously revive her. When the nurse had finally tried to take her away, she’d held on, screaming and yelling. Eventually they’d had to sedate her.
She sucked in a breath, trying to stop the tears that threatened at Gregg’s kind words and strong, warm embrace.
But it was hopeless. They fell hard and fast.
He reacted quickly, tugging a tissue out of his shirt pocket and offering it to her. ‘It’s clean. I promise.’
Clara sniffed and managed a ‘thank you’ as she took it from him.
After a long silence, she said, ‘Rob’s social drinking got much worse after that, until it stopped being social at all. I think the death of our baby triggered something inside him that brought back all his guilt and sadness over his other child. I kept hoping we would have another baby and that would save him but there were only more miscarriages and eventually I decided it wasn’t meant to be. That the pregnancy losses were only making things worse. I tried to help him. For years I tried, but …’
She’d lost track of the number of times he’d joined Alcoholics Anonymous; he’d never lasted more than a few months.
‘But you were dealing with your own grief,’ Gregg said, as if that explained everything.
She looked up at him and smiled. What would Gregg have been like in such tragic circumstances? Would he have supported her more than Rob? Would they have been able to support each other? It was almost impossible to even imagine what being with someone who wasn’t so dependent was like. Would it have changed who she was as well?
‘Did Rob ever try to make contact with his son?’
‘He didn’t really have anything to go on. As far as we know, he wasn’t listed on the birth certificate, but I did help him join a couple of groups that try to connect lost family members. Nothing ever came of any of them.’
‘How sad.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now he’s missing?’
‘Apparently.’ But the bitterness she wanted to feel wasn’t as strong as her gnawing concern. What if he’d finally done the stupid thing he’d been threatening to do for years and it was all her fault?
At least then you’d be rid of him once and for all. She hated herself for that thought.
‘You don’t believe he’s missing?’
She sighed. ‘I don’t know what to think.’ Three weeks seemed too long a time to be lying in some gutter somewhere in a drunken stupor.
‘Would you like me to come with you to his mother’s place?’
Clara had almost forgotten Brenda’s phone call had been what started this discussion. ‘I can’t ask you to do that,’ she said, not after she’d unloaded so tremendously on him and spoiled their almost-perfect day.
‘You didn’t ask me to do anything,’ Gregg said gently but firmly. ‘I’m offering. Tell me her address and we’ll go there now.’
‘Thank you.’ Clara felt her tears rushing back. For once in her life she was happy to lean on somebody else.
Josie
Josie greeted Paige in the high school reception office and pulled her into a hug.
‘Thank you so much for coming in at such short notice.’ She wasn’t usually the hug-to-greet type and they’d only known each other a grand total of six days, but it just felt right with Paige.
‘No worries. It’s the least I can do for you after you’ve been so kind about the dress and it’s good to see you again.’
‘It is,’ Josie agreed.
They might be almost eight years apart in age and their artistic talents might lie in different fields, but over a few cups of tea and the shouts of their footy-loving husbands in the background, they’d clicked in a way Josie hadn’t done with anyone before. Well, not a woman—she’d had friends growing up of course and still did now, but those friendships had all taken time to mature—the closest she’d ever come to a similar connection was the night her eyes met with Nik’s across the busy bar. If she were honest, her almost-instant liking of Paige had surprised her. The other woman seemed so young and idealistic; her chatter about her mum and her upcoming nuptials should have been annoying in Josie’s current state of mind but instead she’d found them endearing. And, as the conversation continued, she’d found herself comforting Paige about her mother and even opening up about some of her own heartache.
Why she’d felt comfortable telling Paige about her miscarriages, she didn’t know—perhaps it was proof her sessions with Clara were helping—but by the time the football had finished, Paige knew more about Josie than many of her so-called friends.
‘Is that your bestseller?’ Josie asked as she signed Paige in as a guest on the visitor register and noticed the book under her arm. ‘Can I take a quick look before we go meet the kids?’
‘Sure.’ Paige handed it to her and Josie gasped in delight as she looked down upon the beautifully illustrated cover. Of course she’d googled Paige’s work like any responsible teacher would but she hadn’t seen a copy of her book in the flesh. ‘It’s gorgeous.’
‘Thanks. I’m really happy with how it turned out.’
‘I can’t wait to hear you read it to the kids.’
Paige bit her lip. ‘I hope they like it. They’re a little bit older than my target audience but I have included a few little nuanced things for parents reading it, so they should enjoy those.’
‘Trust me, they’ll love it—it’ll be a welcome change from the last book I made them read.’
‘What was that?’
‘Far from the Madding Crowd. It was before the school holidays and they’re still whining about it.’
Josie led her outside and into the throng of students racing between the classrooms from one period to the next. ‘Get off your phone or I’ll confiscate it,’ she warned one of her year nine students as she held onto Paige’s arm.
When they got to the classroom, her students were all milling about outside, talking, but they went quiet the moment they saw her visitor.
‘All right everyone, inside and sit down quickly,’ she ordered. ‘As you can see I have someone special here to talk to you today and so we don’t want to waste any time.’
They all gave Paige the once-over as they filed inside but then settled in a timely manner.
‘As you know we’re about to start learning about picture books …’ A couple of the students groaned before Josie could continue, but she shot them both the evil eye. ‘I’m hugely excited to introduce you to my friend, Paige MacRitchie, who has recently published her first picture book, We All Live Here. Paige is going to talk about the process of writing and publishing. As you are all going to have to choose two picture books to analyse and write an individual essay comparison on and then in groups create your own picture book, I suggest you listen carefully.’
Someone’s hand shot up in the air. ‘Can we do our essay on Paige’s book?’
‘No. Stop looking for the easy option, Noah.’
As the kids scrambled for pens and paper, Josie looked to Paige. ‘Over to you.’
Paige cleared her throat and smiled at the students—some of them didn’t look that much younger than her. ‘Hi everyone. Thanks for having me here today. I thought I’d start with a little reading.’
Josie waited for some smart alec to complain about being too old for picture books but thankfully nobody did. And, from the moment Paige peeled back the cover, the kids were enthralled. She put on unique voices for all the characters and Josie wished her drama students were here as they could learn a lot as well. When she finally closed the book, the students cheered and clapped as if she’d just won Australian Idol or something.
‘Can you read it again?’ asked one of the girls.
Paige beamed. ‘I’m glad you liked it.’
&nbs
p; For the next twenty minutes, she gave them background about herself—how she’d loved books and drawing from a young age and how as she grew older and became passionate about humanitarian causes, she decided she wanted to combine her loves for good. She continued on to talk about how she’d studied her favourite picture books and found they all had certain things in common.
‘The main characters all have a problem to solve and the description is minimal. The illustrations are what bring a picture book to life. And just because picture books are short—usually about thirty pages—doesn’t mean they’re easy.’ She spoke about the number of drafts she’d gone through with her publisher and also about the actual publication process.
When the siren for the end of the day sounded, the class let out a collective groan, something Josie hadn’t witnessed in all her years of teaching and she found herself as disappointed as her students that time was up.
‘Can you come back again?’ asked Noah. A number of other students reiterated his request.
Paige looked to Josie as if for permission and Josie said, ‘If you have the time, we’d love to have you back when we start planning our own picture books. Your feedback would be invaluable.’
‘I’d love to,’ Paige said and once again the class erupted into cheers, before waving goodbye as they spilled out the door. ‘Wow. They are way more enthusiastic than I remember me or my friends being when we were at school.’
‘Trust me, they’re not always that way,’ Josie replied. ‘But I guess passion breeds passion. Thanks for inspiring them.’
‘It was my pleasure. And are we still on for tomorrow night?’
‘Yep.’ Josie grinned. ‘I can’t wait to see your mum’s reaction.’ All the bitterness she’d harboured when she heard about Paige and her mother had gone and now all that was left was the joy at being involved in such a special plan.
‘Thanks. She’s trying to be positive but it’s obvious her illness and the monotony of dialysis three times a week is getting her down. She deserves a little happiness.’
With a rendezvous next evening to look forward to, Paige left and Josie started around the room, pulling down the blinds. She was just picking up her bag, when her phone beeped with a message.
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