A Night, A Secret...A Child

by Miranda Lee

  ‘Felicity,’ he said firmly. ‘You have to come with us now, or we’ll all die.’

  Felicity lifted startled eyes at his voice. ‘Oh, it’s you, Nicolas. Look, maybe you can get the fox out. You have longer arms than me.’

  ‘Leave the damned fox, girl!’

  Felicity speared him with a mutinous look. ‘I will not leave the damned fox!’

  ‘Felicity! For pity’s sake!’ Serina screamed at her daughter. ‘Just do what your father says!’

  Nicolas gaped at Serina’s immediately stricken face, then at Felicity, who looked more than a little confused.

  ‘Silly woman,’ Nicolas said straight away. ‘Doesn’t know if she’s Arthur or Martha at the moment. It’s Nicolas here, Serina, not Greg. Still, it’s a shame Greg isn’t here, given his wealth of experience with bushfires. So tell me, Felicity, what would your dad have done at this moment?’

  ‘He’d have saved my fox if I’d asked him to,’ she replied, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. ‘But he’s not here, is he? He’s dead.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Nicolas agreed. ‘But I think he’d save his lovely daughter, too, wouldn’t he? So let’s get your fox out of that hole and get us all safely out of this forest.’

  The fox wouldn’t cooperate. Pain and fear were making it panic. Nicolas lifted it out of the hole in the end, though not before the animal had bitten him on the hand.

  Not that he cared. Nothing mattered but getting the people he loved to safety.

  When Felicity hesitated to leave again, he glared at her. ‘What now?’ he demanded to know.

  ‘My mobile phone. It’s at the bottom of the rabbit hole.’

  Nicolas almost swore. Instead, he gritted his teeth and prayed for patience. ‘I’ll buy you another phone,’ he said. ‘A better one. Now go, girl. And take your mother with you,’ he said, only then noticing that Serina was still standing there in a shocked silence.

  This time Felicity did as she was told, grabbing her mother’s arm and pulling her towards the trail, Nicolas hot on their heels carrying the fox.

  Not that they were out of the woods yet. The winds had whipped the fire into a fireball that was moving at tremendous speed towards them through the bush.

  ‘Run,’ he screamed at Felicity and Serina. ‘Run faster.’

  They made it, just, bursting out onto clear ground with the flames licking at their heels. Even so, they didn’t stop running till they reached the house where Janine and Kirsty were waiting for them with anxiety on their faces.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re all right,’ Janine said, then shot Nicolas a rueful glance. ‘I see you brought the fox.’

  Nicolas shrugged. ‘Felicity wouldn’t leave it behind.’

  ‘He was wonderful,’ Felicity said. ‘Here, Nicolas. I’ll take the fox now. I know what to do with it. Kirsty and I have a makeshift hospital in one of the sheds.’

  ‘Excuse me, missy,’ Janine said firmly, nodding towards where the fire had reached the grassy surrounds of the property. ‘But we’re all going down to the cellar till this fire is under control. Ken’s just rung. He said they’re on their way here and they’re bringing a couple of water-bombing helicopters, but he doesn’t want us taking any chances. My husband’s one of the volunteer firefighters,’ she explained to Nicolas.

  ‘Well, the fox comes, too,’ Felicity insisted. ‘Kirsty, we’ll need a beach towel to wrap her up in. And a dish of water for her to have a drink. She’ll be very thirsty.’

  ‘We’re all pretty thirsty,’ Nicolas said, and wrapped a tender arm around Serina. ‘Aren’t we, sweetheart?’

  ‘What?’ she asked, her voice somewhat vague.

  Still in shock, he realised.

  ‘I said we’re all thirsty.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘There are drinks down in the cellar,’ Janine informed him. ‘And a cupboard full of food. But no toilet. So anyone who wants to use the bathroom had better do so now. We might be down there for a while.’

  No one did. Possibly because they were all dehydrated.

  It was a large cellar, with a wine rack along one wall, an old sofa along another, boxes and bits and pieces stacked along another and several chairs around a table in the centre. Temperature wise, it was lovely and cool.

  Nicolas pulled out a chair for Serina at the table whilst Janine got some cans of drink from an ancient bar fridge. Felicity sat next to Kirsty on the sofa with the towel-wrapped fox in her lap, stroking its ears and singing some kind of song. There was not a peep out of the mesmerised animal.

  ‘I’ve spawned Doctor Doolittle,’ Nicolas muttered under his breath when Janine moved away to give Kirsty and Felicity their cans of Coke.

  ‘Hush up,’ Serina said sharply.

  Nicolas sighed. ‘Serina, you don’t have to worry. No one heard me and I covered your earlier blunder.’

  ‘But what if you hadn’t been able to? What if Felicity had guessed the truth?’

  ‘She didn’t.’

  Serina just shook her head. ‘You just don’t understand, do you?’

  Janine came back to sit at their table and Nicolas lifted his can of drink to his mouth.

  Janine gasped. ‘Nicolas! Did you know your hand was bleeding?’

  ‘What? Show me!’ Serina said.

  ‘It’s nothing much. The fox bit me.’

  ‘There’s a first-aid kit here somewhere,’ Janine said, and went in search of it.

  ‘What kind of person am I?’ Serina said bleakly. ‘I didn’t notice that you were bleeding. And I haven’t even thanked you for what you did out there. I’m a terrible person.’ And she burst into tears.

  ‘What’s wrong with Mum?’ Felicity asked straight away, her voice worried.

  ‘She’s just in shock,’ Nicolas replied as he held a weeping Serina against him with his non-bleeding hand. ‘You must realise how worried she was, Felicity. She thought that you were going to die, too. Like your dad.’

  ‘Oh… Oh I see.’

  ‘I hope so, Felicity,’ Nicolas said firmly. ‘Next time, think before you risk your life. Your mother needs you just as much as that fox.’

  ‘Found the first-aid kit!’ Janine piped up.

  ‘What do you need the first-aid kit for?’ Felicity asked.

  ‘Nicolas’s hand is bleeding. Your fox bit him.’

  ‘Your good hand or your bad hand?’ she asked him.

  ‘My bad hand,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right then.’

  He laughed whilst Serina wept on. If it hadn’t have been funny he might have cried, too.

  Nicolas’s hand had been properly attended to and Serina had stopped crying when suddenly, there were sounds overhead and all eyes simultaneously went upwards. The cellar door was flung open and daylight flooded down the steps. Fortunately, there was no smell of smoke, and no other evidence of the fire having reached the house.

  ‘Everyone okay down here?’ called a deep male voice.

  ‘Yes, Ken,’ Janine said, jumping up onto her feet and racing over to the bottom of the cellar staircase. ‘How’s the house?’

  ‘Right as rain.’ Ken, a big brawny guy dressed in his yellow firefighting suit and holding a hard hat, came down the steps. ‘The wind changed again and sent the fire back in the direction it came from, which was a bonus. So!’ He smiled broadly as he gathered his wife into his arms then glanced over at Felicity and Kirsty. ‘I see our own little rescue team has been busy. What do you have this time, girls?’

  ‘A fox,’ Kirsty said as both girls struggled to their feet. ‘It has a broken leg.’

  ‘We’ll have to take it to the vet,’ Felicity said, and looked straight at Nicolas.

  He was taken aback. Why look at him? Why not Ken, or her mother?

  ‘Dad always took all my sick and injured animals to the vet for me,’ she said, her voice just a little shaky.

  Nicolas’s heart turned over.

  ‘You’ll have to give me directions,’ he said. ‘I have no ide
a where the nearest vet is.’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Felicity exclaimed, her pretty face breaking into a smile….

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘I HOPE the fox will be okay,’ Nicolas said.

  He was sitting with Serina in the vet’s waiting room, Felicity having taken her patient into the consulting room fifteen minutes earlier. Although the hospital wasn’t open for surgery for another hour, there’d been a bell on the front door to ring for emergencies, and luckily the vet—who lived at the back of the building—had been at home.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ Serina replied. ‘Ted’s a good vet.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. Felicity’s somewhat obsessive about saving wildlife, isn’t she?’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘Do you think she has any idea of the risks she took today?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘She needs a firm hand, Serina, and a protective one.’

  ‘I do my best, Nicolas.’

  ‘She needs a father.’

  Serina gave him a panicky look. ‘You promised you would never tell her.’

  ‘And I won’t. But how about a stepfather?’

  ‘Stepfather?’ Serina echoed, her eyes blinking wide.

  ‘Yes, Serina, stepfather. I was going to wait till tonight to propose to you over a candlelit dinner with a big diamond ring in my pocket. But I doubt you’ll come out with me tonight after what happened today. I also doubt that a big diamond ring would impress you, anyway. So I’m asking you now—will you marry me?’

  Serina just kept on staring at him.

  Nicolas sighed. ‘I can guess what you’re going to say,’ he went on before she could argue with him. ‘We come from different worlds. We don’t really know each other anymore. We’ve left it too late. Well I have the perfect answer for all of that and it’s balderdash! All that matters is that we love each other. We’ve always loved each other. If there’s anything that today should have shown you, it’s that all life is a risk. We could have fried in there today. All three of us. Instead we’re alive and well. Look, I promise you that I won’t ask anything of you that would make you unhappy. I won’t ask you to move, or change, or anything. We can make this work, Serina. I’ll make it work. Trust me, darling, and just say yes.’

  Serina closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, they were awash with tears.

  Nicolas thought they were tears of happiness.

  But he was wrong.

  ‘Oh, Nicolas…if only you’d asked me to marry you twenty years ago. Or that night at the Opera House. Or even yesterday. Yesterday, I might still have said yes. Though of course that would have still been a big mistake. What happened today showed me that I can’t marry you. Ever. Neither can I have a relationship with you. Not one around here, anyway.’

  ‘What? But why?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘Couldn’t bear being what?’

  ‘Couldn’t bear keeping another secret. Couldn’t bear being afraid all the time of the truth coming out. It was bad enough when I was married to Greg. I coped because I was the only one who knew. And because you were another world away. I nearly died today when I said what I said. I felt ill. I still feel ill, thinking about it. Because if Felicity ever found out Greg wasn’t her real father, she’d never forgive me. She’d hate me. Yes, life is a risk, but I can’t risk that, Nicolas, no matter how much I love you. I’m sorry.’

  Nicolas just sat there. Stunned, hurt, devastated.

  He struggled to find the right words to say. The right questions to ask.

  ‘When you said you can’t have a relationship with me around here, what exactly did you mean?’

  ‘You know very well what I meant, Nicolas. I’ll visit you overseas every now and then, but I don’t want you coming here. Not anymore. Because one day, one of us might say something in front of Felicity—or someone else—like we did today.’

  Nicolas’s head understood her reasoning. But his heart reacted very badly. ‘I offer you marriage,’ he said, bitter resentment in his voice, ‘and that’s what you offer me in return? Well I’m sorry, too, Serina, but a dirty weekend here and there is not enough for me. I love you and I want to spend quality time with you. I also love my daughter. That’s something I discovered today. I would never do anything to hurt her. I gave you my word that I would never tell her I was her father, and I will keep my word. But I want to be able to play some kind of role in her upbringing. I want to watch her grow up. I want to watch over her. It seems, however, that you’re going to deny me even that.’

  ‘Nicolas, I…I…’

  ‘Please don’t say another word,’ he snapped. ‘The subject is now closed. We are now closed. Finito.’ He made a chopping gesture across his throat as he stood up. ‘I will wait outside for you. Then, when Felicity is finished, I will drive you both home and say my goodbyes with our daughter present. That way I can be assured that I will not say anything further that I might later regret. No, Serina,’ he snarled when she opened her mouth again. ‘Do not waste your breath. I have always been a very black-and-white person. You don’t love me the way I love you. You never have. So please, let’s just leave it at that.’ And whirling, he stalked out of the waiting room.

  Serina stared after him, her head whirling, but her heart like lead in her chest. He doesn’t mean it, she reasoned. He’s just angry with me. He can’t mean it.

  But he did mean it, she was to discover to her despair. He’d meant every word.

  He drove them home and said his goodbyes, Felicity quite upset by his decision to leave Port Macquarie the following day.

  ‘But I was hoping you’d be with us for Christmas,’ she said plaintively. ‘Mum, tell him he has to stay.’

  Serina just shook her head. She could already see that Nicolas was not about to change his mind. And she couldn’t trust herself to speak.

  ‘I have to go, Felicity,’ he said, and gave his daughter a quick hug. ‘I’m needed back in New York. The show must go on, sweetheart. Look after your mother for me. And give my regards to Mrs Johnson.’

  Felicity waved him off from the front porch, her goodbye smile fading once he was gone.

  ‘I don’t see why he had to go back to New York in such a hurry,’ she grumbled whilst Serina set about feeding a noisily complaining Midnight. ‘Unless, of course, he does have a girlfriend back there. Did you ever ask him, Mum, if he was dating that Japanese violinist?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said he wasn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t think so. Kirsty and I reckon he’s still in love with you.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘The way he kept looking at you.’

  ‘What way is that?’

  ‘Like he adored the ground you walked on.’

  Serina swallowed the great lump in her throat, then forced out a small laugh. ‘You two girls. You’re just like Allie and Emma, incorrigible romantics. If he adored the ground I walked on then what’s he doing going back to New York? Look, could you put this cat food away for me, love? I have to go to the bathroom.’

  She just made it into the bathroom before the tears came.

  It was not the first time she was to cry uncontrollably during the following few days.

  She cried when the mobile phone arrived for Felicity, posted from Sydney airport. Then again when she had to go into Port Macquarie to buy Christmas presents. And again when she passed the spot where Nicolas had pulled the SUV off the road and kissed her.

  She dreaded Christmas, fearing she would not get through the day without breaking down, especially since that year they were holding their family celebrations at the Harmons, in the house where Nicolas had lived. Serina managed to keep it together till Felicity’s grandparents requested Felicity do an encore of the medley she’d played at the talent quest…on Nicolas’s old piano, no less.

  Serina started weeping shortly after her daughter started playing and she just couldn�
��t stop.

  Fortunately, Greg’s parents didn’t connect her distress with Nicolas. They thought she was still grieving for their son.

  In the end, Serina had to go home where a very upset Felicity demanded to know what the matter was.

  ‘It’s Nicolas, isn’t it?’ she said when Serina didn’t enlighten her. ‘He’s broken your heart again like Grandma said he did once before. You still love him, don’t you?’

  Serina just couldn’t bring herself to lie.

  ‘Yes,’ she confessed brokenly. ‘Yes, I still love him.’

  ‘But he doesn’t love you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, he does. Very much.’

  ‘Then why did he go back to New York?’

  Serina looked deep into her daughter’s eyes.

  ‘Because I asked him to go,’ she admitted.

  ‘Mum! But why?’

  ‘Because I was afraid…’

  ‘Afraid of what?’

  Serina’s face twisted, her courage failing her once more. ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Of course you can, Mum. You always say that we can tell each other anything!’

  ‘If I tell you, you might hate me.’

  ‘I would never hate you, Mum. You are the best mother in the whole wide world.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, dear…’

  ‘Mum,’ Felicity said firmly. ‘You have to tell me what’s making you so unhappy and we’ll work it out together.’

  Could she really tell her? Dared she?

  Serina thought of Nicolas, all alone in New York and wanting so much to be a part of their lives. And then she thought of herself, living the rest of her life the way she’d felt this past week. Not just lonely, but horribly guilty. More guilty than she’d ever felt when she’d been married to Greg.

  No more guilt, she decided. No more secrets.

  Serina said a little prayer first, then started talking….

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE snow had stopped falling by the time Nicolas alighted the cab outside his apartment block, but the air was bitterly cold.

  ‘Don’t know how you stand it, Mike,’ he said to his favourite doorman as he hurried up the front steps.