‘Oh, I didn’t know that,’ Alison muttered.
‘I think Simon and Nikko are right, Alison,’ David Greiner, the senior partner of Greiner, Lowe and Pearce, put in, after checking with Max and seeing him nod his head. ‘If Jessica is ever to get back to the person she once was, a complete change of surroundings will do her more good than harm. We’ve in some way pre-empted Simon’s decision by putting on a temporary barrister to take her place. But,’ he added for everyone’s benefit, ‘Jessica will remain as junior partner and be welcomed back, when she’s ready.’
‘Thanks, David, she’ll appreciate that.’ Simon’s voice held genuine gratitude.
Alison Marcelle compressed her lips. She was astute enough to sense that the battle was over. Decisions had been made and she didn’t stand a chance in hell of changing Simon’s mind. On occasions the man could be as stubborn as her baby sister. ‘So, you’re all closing ranks on me.’
‘Love,’ Keith tried to placate the volatile woman standing in front of the marble fireplace. ‘Jessica’s health is more important than any other factor here, such as your missing her, don’t you think?’
‘All right,’ she conceded. Then, with a sparkle in her eyes, she challenged Simon. ‘And who knows, we just might take the family to Norfolk for a holiday within the next six months.’
CHAPTER THREE
Damned airplanes.
Grimacing, his thumb and index finger pulling at his ear lobe, he tried to relieve the pressure on his middle ear as the aircraft lifted off and made a rapid ascent. This happened every time he flew which, thankfully, wasn’t often. Pressurisation of the cabin caused the pain and he had to sip a glass of water or blow his nose until the pain eased.
A stewardess came up the aisle. ‘Are you all right, sir?’
Marcus Hunter nodded. ‘Just the pressure, it’ll ease off soon.’
Ten seconds later another stewardess stopped by his seat to ask, ‘Would you like the paper, a magazine perhaps?’ She finished her promo with a smile meant to charm.
Marcus patted the book in his lap. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘Going on holiday to Norfolk, are you?’ she tried to keep the conversation going as she studied him openly, assessingly.
‘I have family there. It’s where I was born,’ Marcus said politely. He looked down at his book, opened it to where the bookmark lay.
‘Well, have a nice time. It’s good to get home for Christmas.’
‘Yes, I’m looking forward to it.’
In a half-whisper she added. ‘I lay over regularly in Auckland, I’m most often on the New Zealand to Sydney route. I’ll give you my number. If you’re ever at a loose end…’ She pulled a piece of paper out of her coat pocket.
Marcus took a closer look. Blonde hair, tinted, green eyes, pleasant features and a good body. He took the piece of paper with a nod of thanks and then, right on her heels, the first stewardess returned and gave him the water. He began to sip the liquid, and at the same time wondered if there was a sign stencilled on his forehead that said, ‘Separated, soon to be divorced. Available’. Marcus wasn’t vain enough to think it was his looks or his personality that had a smattering of women falling over themselves lately to be more than necessarily nice to him. Maybe women had some kind of internal antenna that sensed his availability. Interesting thought. Or could it be coming from him, in the way he looked at them or his own body language?
Not that he objected. He’d had a few pleasant dates with several women of late. Amanda Townley, lecturer in modern history within his faculty at Auckland University, for one. Attractive, academically ambitious and divorced. He’d found that by their second date they had a lot in common. Trouble was though, at the ripe old age of forty-four, he still felt like a married man, despite the six months separation from Donna and the kids. He even missed her, the familiarity of rituals, companionship, though the mutual love had departed the marriage several years before. Now she was shacked up with an electrician five years younger than herself. Good luck to him, he thought without malice. A believer in fate, he realised that he and Donna had not been destined to stay together forever. But he also acknowledged that it was tough on the kids. Rory, fourteen, and Kate, a year younger, were at a vulnerable age and needed the stability of a two-parent family. He just hoped the electrician, Joe Malakini, was an understanding man.
He missed Rory and Kate so much, the day-to-day being together. Checking on their homework, planning the odd outing with them. Just watching them grow into young adults. And there were nights when he’d agonise over the belief that they didn’t need him any more. With them both growing so fast, he worried, too, that Donna was trying to wean them away from him, either innocently or deliberately.
As the pain in his ears began to subside, he leant back against the seat and closed his eyes, visualising his minuscule bachelor apartment within walking distance of campus. Large enough to accommodate him and his library of books, he was made aware of how cramped it was when the children visited. In the new year, he decided, before first semester, he’d find better accommodation. Or, should he wait until the divorce went through and the property settlement was finalised?
Sighing, with a restless shrug of his shoulders beneath the lightweight sweater, he opened the book in his lap and tried to lose himself in the plot, instead of dwelling on the inconsistencies of his personal life. In another hour he’d be home with Nan. Funny, he still thought of Norfolk as home, even after all these years. The island was as familiar to him as the back of his not-so-hairy hand. He’d walked, cycled, driven and trekked just about all over it in his time there. And when he was home he could indulge his off-campus passion of recording the island’s complete history for posterity. He fully expected such a work to take a lifetime.
His sister thought it an impossible quest, a thankless one too, but he didn’t agree. Over the last three years, since he’d begun, he had found so many interesting facets of the island’s history, from the first white man’s footprints on the island, up to the present time. How colonisation had begun, up to how it survived today. During this break he’d finish cataloguing the headstones in the cemetery. Nan considered it gloomy work, chronicling the details of the dead but as a historian he well knew the importance of such a task. It would form the base for his historical work.
The blonde stewardess returned, smiling. ‘Coffee, tea, orange juice, sir?’
Marcus smiled back at her, nodded. ‘Coffee.’ It was going to be an interesting flight.
Jessica stood by the window of the two-room suite on the ninth floor of the Novotel Hotel, watching the scene below. Simon had refused to allow her to return to their home at Mandurah or the townhouse they owned on the outskirts of the city. Since she’d had Damian they had used the townhouse on weekdays and spent weekends at the resort town, which was about an hour’s drive south of Perth. Simon loved Mandurah because of its casual atmosphere, and their house, situated on the canal, allowed him to indulge his love of fishing and driving the twenty-year-old powerful cruiser moored at their wharf. The house had been sublet to a professional couple. The diesel cruiser had been pulled up on slips to have the barnacles scraped off and the timber hull anti-fouled and then repainted, so it would be ready for action when they returned from his posting on Norfolk.
Simon had brought her entire wardrobe to the hotel for her to choose what she wanted to pack and what would be stored. She knew Simon was right about going back. At the townhouse or Mandurah, she would lapse into a melancholy mood or worse, a deep depression…because of the memories.
It was better to make a clean break and maybe, once some time had elapsed, they could return there. She had decided to look at the months they were going to spend on Norfolk as a kind of ‘marking time’ period until she was one hundred per cent again. Jessica smiled at her reflection in the glass. Thank God her hair had grown. She’d had it styled in a layered bob with a half-fringe that the hairdresser had said was popular, and it suited her heart-shaped face.
; People, friends, had been uncommonly kind. Faith and Mandy from the office had taken her shopping for some summer outfits, perhaps only to keep her occupied. David and Max had shouted her lunch and gone to great pains to assure her that she would remain junior partner with the firm and be welcomed back when she was ready. Keith and Alison and their two teenage children, Lisa and Andrew, had invited them to their home overlooking Kings Park for dinner every second night. Consequently, the days had flown and today she and Simon, would fly away, too, away from Perth, her birthplace, to a remote Pacific island that, as Alison had complained often enough, was probably a ‘godforsaken speck in the Pacific Ocean’.
She studied the contours of the Swan River, the water dark grey on an unusually cloudy day, as it curved its way through to the sea. Several craft scooted along the main channel. Across, on the other side, the suburb of South Perth stretched as far as the eye could see.
A noise disturbed her reverie. She turned to see Alison struggling with a huge suitcase.
‘God, what have you got in this, the family silver? Or are you taking enough clothes to last a couple of years?’ she grumbled as, with a grunt, she heaved the bag up onto the king-size bed.
‘Don’t lift that, you’ll give yourself a hernia.’
‘Great. Now you tell me! Just as well I have a brother-in-law who’s a doctor. He can give me a discount on the procedure,’ Alison quipped brightly to hide the fact that she was feeling emotional about Jessica leaving, especially so close to Christmas. They’d be separated for six months. The realisation hit home harder than she would have believed possible. They’d never been so far apart for so long, other than when Jessica had stayed in London. She thought she had reconciled herself to the parting, but she still didn’t like it.
‘It’s not forever, Al,’ Jessica said, intuitively tapping into her big sister’s thoughts.
‘Of course not.’ Again, the brightness. ‘Do you good not to have me nagging at you for a while.’
Jessica’s mouth twitched. She tried not to smile, because Al was trying to be serious. For as long as she could remember, Alison had been her foundation, especially after their mother, Sally Ahearne’s sudden death when she’d been sixteen. Alison, five years older, had taken over the management of the house, the accounts, organised their father’s business dinners and generally accepted the role of pseudo-mother to her younger sister. She’d given advice when Jessica had needed or wanted it—even when she didn’t want it—been supportive of her studying law, of her marriage to Simon and her career. They were close but they’d had their disagreements, plenty of them. With Alison’s forceful personality, so similar to James Ahearne’s, and Jessica’s own tendency to dig her heels in when she felt strongly about something, life in the Ahearne household could never have been considered dull.
Into her thoughts popped a memory of just one occasion…She’d been grounded for staying out too late and Alison had decreed that she couldn’t go to a particular party the following weekend. She wanted to, because Mike Treloar, an up-and-coming Aussie Rules footballer, would be there and she knew he was attracted to her. When party night had come. she’d shinnied down the drain pipe of their two-storey home and gone to the party, where she’d had a marvellous time with Mike. Back home, as she’d tried to open the front door, she found that someone—Alison, no doubt—had deadlocked the front and back doors.
She’d contemplated trying to climb back up to her room the same way she’d got out, but going up seemed more treacherous than coming down had. Finally she’d spent the night in the garage, trying to sleep comfortably in her father’s sports car, a Jaguar XK120. Not recommended if one really wanted to sleep!
There had been the inevitable confrontation with Alison, and their father had had to adjudicate, something he hated doing because, when it came to disciplining either girl, he wasn’t much good at it. Both were able to wrap him around their little fingers, and Jessica had escaped with a nominal punishment, which had made Alison fume and conscientiously ignore her for several days.
‘Well, you’re a big girl now, I’m sure you’ll be fine,’ Alison proclaimed. She patted Jessica’s cheek. ‘Just don’t go native on me.’
‘I won’t if you promise to come over for a holiday,’ Jessica countered.
Alison sighed. ‘Do you know what the flying time is from here to Norfolk Island?’
‘Yes, about eleven hours. You can catch the red-eye from Perth, which gets you into Sydney at six am, then there’s a morning flight to Norfolk around about ten am. But don’t you dare use distance as an excuse,’ she admonished with a wagging finger, ‘when you happily traipse over to Cannes or other places in Europe every other year. Besides, you know that Lisa and Keith love historical stuff and Andrew can flirt with the female tourists. You’d all have a great time.’
‘It’d serve you right if the four of us did land on you,’ Alison half threatened.
‘Easter would be a good time,’ Jessica’s eyes sparkled as she teased her big sister, ‘not too hot or too cold.’
Alison’s eyebrows rose. ‘Hhmmm!’
The bathroom door opened and Simon emerged, carrying his toiletry bag. He packed it into one of the smaller cases. ‘Easter would be a good time for what?’
‘The Marcelles to visit us on Norfolk Island.’
‘Super idea,’ Simon said with a straight face, at pains to sound enthusiastic. He got on well with Keith and the kids, but sometimes he and Alison locked horns. Yet…she was Jessica’s sister and, by Easter, he knew she’d be missing the contact with her.
‘We’ll see…’ Alison refused to commit herself. ‘Now, you’d better ring for the concierge to come get these bags. You…’ she paused, looked at Jessica and promptly had to clear her throat, ‘have a plane to catch.’
Jessica’s nose wrinkled up at the musty, closed-up smell, as she followed Simon from room to room of the old cottage. The patterned damask-covered three-seat sofa and two mismatched arm chairs were old and, if she took a deep breath, she was sure she’d smell the aroma of beeswax. All the furniture she could see was lovingly cared for, even if it was, by today’s standards, unfashionable. The stained timber floors were highly polished and covered by huge scatter rugs and, in the combination lounge/dining room, stood a wide, hand-hewn volcanic rock fireplace. That’s what the island was formed from, an old volcano, according to Simon. Sooty smudges stained some of the stonework and the firepit was stacked, she noted, ready for lighting, even though it was early summer.
The bathroom and the two bedrooms were basic. A double bed stood in the larger of the two, with a handworked patch quilt and matching scatter cushions. The four walls were covered with a muted blue and grey wallpaper that had seen better days. An ancient rocking chair stood near the window, perfect for sitting in to gaze at the view of a dense stand of trees which grew close to the house. The only other piece of furniture was a huge walnut timber wardrobe with a bevelled glass mirror in the centre panel.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Simon asked. He’d watched her roam around the rooms without making any comment. Nikko had told him it was important she feel at home here, she had enough problems to overcome without feeling over-alienated by the cottage. And he needed to see some physical reaction, positive or otherwise, that he’d done the right thing by bringing her here. He was no psychiatrist, but he believed that how she reacted would allow him to gauge whether her mental balance was continuing to improve or whether the sudden change was making her withdraw into herself again.
‘You hate it, don’t you?’
‘No,’ she shook her head at him, her fringe bobbing up and down on her forehead. ‘It’s fine.’ She looked at Simon and lifted an eyebrow at him. ‘Much better than the digs we had in Islington.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. I’m just tired. The travelling, you know.’ She knew she wasn’t being very enthusiastic, and he was trying so hard. ‘Sorry.’ It sounded lame, even to her own ears and—she was making excuses—she tired so easily
these days…as if she had little or no energy. Maybe the medication Nikko said she had to take caused the tiredness. She hated pills, hated what had happened to her, being weak and out of control. She wanted to be one hundred per cent now…not in one, two or three months’ time.
‘There’s a bit of a garden out the back,’ he told her, trying to infuse some enthusiasm for the place. ‘Needs work though, it’s overgrown. I’ve been told that most of the islanders have their own veggie patch because they can’t always buy what they need at the grocery store, especially when certain fruits or veggies are out of season. Evidently the local government body has some rule about not importing perishables.’
‘Sounds primitive,’ Jessica commented. She didn’t mind gardening; her mother had been a great gardener and had enjoyed teaching her, as a youngster, about planting and pruning and when to fertilise. At least if one did it right, one actually saw the result of one’s efforts—not like some other things one might do.
‘I guess so, but you know the saying, when in Rome…’ He studied her drawn features, the tense line of her mouth. ‘You’ve a knack with plants and such, Jess, I’m sure that your green thumb’ll have things growing in no time.’
He took her hand and led her through the kitchen to another doorway. ‘I’ve kept the best for last. Close your eyes,’ he ordered mysteriously.
Smiling at his boyishness, she did so and was led across a timber floor until, still holding her hand, he placed it on a pane of glass. ‘Now. Open.’
Jessica did, and promptly caught her breath. The view from the aluminium full-length windows was magnificent. Rolling fields, separated by rock walls, dropped away to the ocean. A red-roofed farmhouse stood in the distance, with a line of cows meandering in the twilight towards the milking shed. On the left side a stand of trees, a small, thick forest, continued as far as she could see. ‘Goodness, it looks so…English!’
Whispers Through the Pines Page 4