Return to Stringybark Creek

by Karly Lane

  ‘Merry Christmas, darling,’ Lavinia called as she met her daughter at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Sorry, we’re late,’ Hadley heard Harmony say, before her mother hugged her as she entered the room, squashing the bags she carried between them.

  ‘Holder, Merry Christmas,’ her mother called, releasing Harmony as Hadley’s nephew appeared. ‘Where’s your sister … Oh!’ Lavinia’s surprise caused everyone to turn their heads towards the staircase.

  ‘Payton,’ Lavinia said weakly. ‘You’ve changed your hair.’

  ‘Changed your hair’ was an understatement, Hadley thought as her niece appeared, her once long dark hair now cut short, with one side shaved completely and the other dyed bright blue.

  Bob came out, spotting his daughter. ‘Well, it’s about time,’ he started jovially, before letting out an almost breathless, ‘Christ Almighty.’

  ‘Robert,’ Lavinia reprimanded faintly.

  ‘What the hell have you done to your hair?’ Bob continued, ignoring his wife’s weak protest to shush.

  ‘I got it coloured,’ Payton said defensively.

  ‘You look like a flaming peacock.’ Bob shook his head, his expression flabbergasted. ‘You let her do this to herself?’ he asked, looking over at Harmony with a frown.

  ‘It’s what she wanted for Christmas,’ Harmony said wearily and Hadley saw her shoulders sag slightly. Hadley felt some of her anger shift. Her sister looked close to tears. She couldn’t recall her ever looking so defeated before.

  ‘I guess we should be grateful she didn’t want to put a bloody stick through her nose like some New Guinea highlander then,’ Bob said sarcastically.

  ‘It’ll grow back,’ Harmony said, heading for the kitchen.

  ‘I think short hair suits you, Payton,’ Cash said, coming to the rescue and breaking the awkward silence that followed the shocked reactions.

  This was the ice-breaker everyone seemed to need to snap out of their stunned silence and there was a murmur of compliments before Linc brought over the presents and started handing them out, creating a timely distraction.

  Hadley gave Ollie a quick kiss on the cheek and told him she’d be right back, then followed her sister into the kitchen. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say once she got in there; she wasn’t even sure why she felt a need to check on her, only that their father had been pretty harsh in his opinions and she hated seeing anyone upset.

  She found Harmony standing at the sink, her hands braced on the edge and her head hanging low. She straightened immediately, hearing someone enter the room, and Hadley knew once she turned around there would be no sign of her earlier vulnerability.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Hadley asked.

  ‘Oh, just wonderful. I love nothing better than to be attacked by my family and have to defend my child’s appearance.’

  ‘Come on, Harmony. Even you have to admit that’s some statement Payton’s making.’

  ‘Yes, well, maybe she’s entitled to have a moment of rebellion. Things haven’t exactly been easy for either of them lately with a divorce and their father leaving.’

  ‘Admittedly, I’m no parent, and I imagine a teenager would be a handful, but I think what’s worrying Mum and Dad is that, as her mother, you probably could have stopped her from being so … extreme.’

  ‘You’re right. You aren’t a parent and you have no idea what it’s like. So you and your condescending, smug opinions can bugger off!’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to be condescending or smug. I’m just trying to explain Mum and Dad’s reaction.’

  ‘It’s really none of your business.’

  ‘It is my business. I was worried about you.’

  ‘Since when? Come on, Hadley. You don’t have to go to all this trouble just to get in Mum and Dad’s good books. You’re already the favourite child. You can do no wrong. We all know who the villain is here.’

  ‘Whose fault is that?’ Hadley snapped, then instantly regretted her remark. Every time she tried to put all this behind her, she ended up saying something snarky. Maybe it was still too soon.

  ‘Mine, Hadley,’ Harmony sighed sarcastically. ‘It’s always my fault.’

  ‘Here you are,’ Lavinia said, coming into the kitchen. ‘We’re giving out the presents, come out and join in.’

  ‘Sure, Mum. I’ll be right there,’ Harmony smiled vaguely. ‘Just bracing myself for another blast of Dad’s disapproval.’

  ‘It just took us by surprise. He’ll come around.’

  ‘Well, we’ll only be here for lunch. We’re heading off to Sydney later for a few days.’

  ‘Sydney? Why?’ Lavinia asked, frowning.

  ‘I thought it might be nice to take the kids away for a break. We’ll stay with a friend and play tourist for a few days. It’ll do us all good to get out of town for a bit.’

  Hadley had a fair idea who the friend was, but she didn’t look at her sister. She already heard the note of self-justification and she could imagine her sister’s defensive glint as she dared Hadley to comment. God, she was so sick of all this crap. She just wished everything was already out in the open once and for all. Actually, she wished this was a few years down the track and they’d all moved on. That wasn’t about to happen any time soon, so meanwhile here they were, all stuck in this horrible holding pattern, waiting for everything to fall apart.

  Eighteen

  Hadley leaned back in the lounge chair and groaned. She couldn’t believe the amount of food they’d just consumed. Why did she do this to herself every year? Because it was her mother’s cooking, that’s why. She and Linc used to joke that they’d gorge themselves at Christmas to make up for the rest of the year when they were away from home.

  ‘So what’s your plan, Hads?’ Linc asked now as they recovered from the afternoon’s overeating.

  ‘My plan is to lie here until I can move without feeling like I’m going to explode.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. Although it sounds like a good plan,’ he nodded. ‘I was wondering when you’re going to stop hiding.’

  ‘I’m not hiding.’

  He lifted an eyebrow and she gave an irritated grunt. ‘I am lying low, which is completely different.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not saying I wouldn’t do the same thing. You did the right thing by coming back here and staying as far away from those media vultures as you can. But does this mean you’re giving up the foreign correspondent job?’

  ‘No. I mean, it was kind of a mutual agreement with my boss that I take some time away when everything was set to blow up, but I was already coming home for Christmas anyway, so technically I’m just on annual leave at the moment.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to make a relationship with Ollie work once you go back? I mean, it would put a bit of strain on things when you’re away all the time.’

  ‘It’s not that much different to a lot of other jobs. Yours for instance … the military … fly-in fly-out work,’ she shrugged. ‘We’ll make it work.’

  ‘The success rates with relationships in all those fields aren’t great.’

  ‘What do you suggest I do? Give it up and become a stay-at-home mum?’

  ‘Not at all. I think you’ve worked hard to get where you are. I’m proud of you, kiddo,’ he said with a smile that slightly mollified her growing irritation. ‘But I guess what I am saying is this thing with Ollie could be the real deal and maybe changing your direction might not be such a bad thing. And before you jump down my throat,’ he said, putting up a hand, ‘I’ve gotta tell you, if I’d met Cash when I was still in the service, I’d be rethinking my career too. I don’t think I’d have stayed in. When you find a relationship that works, a job just isn’t worth the sacrifice.’

  ‘I’m just not sure I’m ready to give up my career yet.’

  ‘You might not have to do that. Look at me. I may have gotten out of the military, but I’m still using all my skills and training, just in a different environment. It’s the same with you. There’d be any numb
er of different ways you could use your skills without having to leave everyone you love behind for months on end.’

  Her brother hadn’t said anything she hadn’t been thinking herself, but she hadn’t realised just how much the rest of her family had been worrying about her. She knew it asked a lot of them, her line of work. Like Linc’s career in the army had, it took her to some of the most dangerous parts of the world at some of the most perilous times—after earthquakes, lava flows, political unrest. She accepted the risk because she believed people’s stories needed to be told. Would she be able to give that up? A year ago the question would have horrified her. Today though, she hesitated. There was only so much you could compartmentalise and there were some things that you simply couldn’t forget or push to the back of your mind. Some images haunted you forever; for her it was faces of hurt children and grieving mothers. Over the years she’d learned how to tell the story and move on, but you never truly forgot those faces. They stayed with you.

  Yes, she’d miss reporting on world events from out in the field, but there’d been times recently when she’d felt burnt out and disillusioned. She’d become cynical, and that had always been her greatest fear.

  When she’d started out as a foreign correspondent, she’d sat next to an American journalist in an airport bar. She’d only been a few weeks in her official position and was full of excitement and burning with determination. After listening to the veteran reporter for the better part of an hour, she’d come away from the encounter vowing that if she ever became that jaded and bitter, she’d leave the job. There’d been something empty in his eyes as he’d given her sage advice and then begun telling her war stories. There was no life in his voice. He’d gone through three marriages and had kids he didn’t even know. He was looking at retiring soon and Hadley suspected that terrified him more than any conflict he’d reported on or dangerous situation he’d found himself in. He had no life beyond his career. He had no real home and no one to miss him if he stayed away too long. It was sad.

  A few years later she’d heard that he’d been killed in a plane crash somewhere up in the Amazon rainforest.

  ‘Hey,’ Ollie said later as he and Hadley lay in bed. ‘What are you thinking about?’ It crossed his mind that once upon a time he’d have laughed if anyone had told him he’d be willingly initiating a deep and meaningful conversation after sex, but it just went to show that when you found the one …

  ‘Lots of things,’ Hadley’s reply interrupted his train of thought.

  ‘Like?’ he prodded, gently tracing a pattern along her arm as they lay comfortably entwined. God, he could lie like this forever and never get sick of it.

  ‘My job,’ she said after a long while, and turned slightly in his arms to look up at him. ‘I want to go back, Ollie.’

  His stomach dropped and disappointment, no, it was much more than that—gut-wrenching anguish—twisted his insides. There was no way he could cover up what he was feeling, not when she’d sprung it on him without warning like this.

  ‘Wait, I haven’t finished.’ Clearly from the distraught look on her face, his dismay had been obvious.

  He couldn’t bring himself to get his hopes up, he was still hearing her tell him she wanted to go back. That she wanted to leave.

  ‘I want to finish out my contract. I’ve got eight more months,’ she said calmly. Too calmly? Was this a sign that maybe their relationship wasn’t the biggest mistake of her life? ‘Ollie?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m listening. I’m just trying to digest it.’ She was leaving him for eight months. The longest they’d been apart lately had been twenty-four hours and that had felt like a lifetime.

  ‘I need time to plan what I’m going to do next. I’ve got some ideas—I really love the freelance work I’ve been doing and I have an editor who wants to talk about a permanent arrangement—but I need to take my time and consider all my options. I’ve worked too hard to get where I am to just give it all up without a plan. You know?’

  He saw the searching look she gave him and took comfort in the fact that she hadn’t given up on them completely. If she had, wouldn’t she have just said she was going back and it was over? ‘I get it.’ But eight freakin’ months?

  ‘I know it seems like a long time.’

  No shit. Eight months!

  ‘But I’ll be back and forth a lot and maybe we can have some time in Sydney together if you can get away.’

  He tried to feel relieved that she wanted to make this work, but he couldn’t stop thinking that a hell of a lot could happen in eight months. He knew she believed right now that she was ready to walk away from her job once her contract was finished, but what if she realised how dull life was here compared to the plane-hopping international one she was going back to?

  It wasn’t the happy-ever-after he’d been hoping for. Although he wasn’t sure he’d ever believed, deep down, that she would give up her career, he’d been holding on to a wild hope.

  ‘Ollie?’

  ‘Yeah. No, of course you can’t give up your job. I’ll do whatever it takes,’ he said, forcing a smile to his lips.

  ‘You don’t look very sure,’ she said and he hated the worry he read in her eyes.

  ‘I am. You just caught me off guard. I thought we had more time before we got to this bit.’

  ‘I don’t like leaving things till the last minute,’ she told him and added a look that said, You should know that by now. And he did. ‘I want to make sure we have a plan.’

  ‘I like plans,’ he said, coaxing her back into his arms again.

  ‘You do?’ she asked, and a small smile soon smoothed the tension from around her eyes.

  ‘Absolutely. For instance, the plan I have for the rest of the night is one of my best.’

  ‘Oh, really? And are you going to tell me what this plan is?’

  ‘I think I’d rather show you,’ he told her, leaning down to kiss her, effectively putting an end to any more making plans. At least until he had time to process the humdinger of a one she’d just dropped in his lap.

  Hadley sat cradling her coffee the next day, the remainder of its contents forgotten as she watched Cash nursing her baby.

  ‘Hey, you okay?’ Olivia asked, dragging her attention from mother and child.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Hadley said. ‘Just tired. I had a late night.’

  ‘Oh, I can only imagine,’ Cash teased, looking up from her child’s sleeping face.

  ‘Gross, I’m trying not to imagine that,’ Olivia said.

  ‘Oh, come on, Liv. It’s romantic,’ Cash said wistfully. ‘I remember hot sex … before babies,’ she added.

  ‘Eww. Gross. That’s my brother,’ Hadley said with mock indignation.

  ‘It’s impossible to have a conversation with anyone in this family,’ Cash said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘But seriously, Hads. What’s going on?’ Olivia prodded, and Hadley’s hope that she’d dodged a bullet disappeared.

  ‘I told Ollie I was going back to work.’

  ‘Oh.’ Olivia exchanged a glance with Cash.

  ‘Oh, what?’ Hadley demanded, eyeing the women.

  ‘It’s just that we were wondering what was going to happen,’ Cash told her gently.

  ‘And when,’ Olivia added.

  ‘It’s not like it was unexpected,’ Hadley pointed out.

  ‘No,’ Olivia agreed slowly.

  ‘But?’ Hadley prompted.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s because he’s my brother and I thought there might somehow be a miraculous happy ending.’

  ‘I don’t want to give up my job, Liv. I thought you of all people would get that.’

  ‘I do,’ she said quickly. ‘And you shouldn’t give up your job. I just want you both to be happy.’

  ‘What is it that you really want, Hadley?’ Cash asked quietly.

  ‘What do I want?’ she repeated. ‘I don’t want to give up my career that I’ve worked hard for.’

  ‘I didn’t ask what you didn’t want … Do
n’t think. Just say the first thing that comes to mind. What do you want?’

  Ollie. It was Ollie that came to mind, and there was a flash of regret when she also saw an image of the two of them huddled together over a sleeping baby. She blinked quickly and swallowed past a tightening throat. Why was she thinking about that? Okay fine, so maybe that was what she wanted someday, but that didn’t mean it was what she wanted now.

  ‘What I want is to finish out my contract and find the perfect job to move on to. And don’t look at each other like that,’ she groaned.

  ‘Like what?’ Olivia protested.

  ‘Like it’s a big cop-out or something. I don’t want to just hand my job over to someone like bloody Amber Latoy.’

  ‘Who?’ Cash asked, screwing up her nose.

  ‘Never mind,’ Hadley said. ‘The point is, I want to finish what I’ve started. I do want to be with Ollie, and we’ve talked about it. We have the next eight months to get through and then we’ll have a permanent solution.’

  ‘And he’s fine with this?’ Olivia asked doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Hadley said firmly.

  ‘And you’re okay with this?’ Griffin asked Ollie as they shot a game of pool at the pub.

  ‘It’s not like I have much choice, is it. She’s going back.’

  ‘Eight months is a long-arse time to be apart,’ Griff added doubtfully.

  ‘It’s doable,’ Linc corrected his younger brother, looking pointedly at Ollie. ‘It can be done.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ollie said, taking his shot and sinking the ball. ‘It’s not so much the time away.’ He lined up his next shot. ‘I just don’t know if she can give it up—the whole danger thing, you know?’ He glanced across at Linc. If anyone knew about the adrenalin-rush career it was this guy.

  ‘She never told Mitch she’d finish up her contract and leave the game,’ Linc pointed out, taking a sip of his beer.