by Trish Morey
Pip sat by her side all day, wondering at the strength of this tiny woman, cursing the cruelty of a disease that had cost Gran her mind and left her body to continue on for so many years without her, while a parade of nursing home staff dropped by to visit, with a quiet word and a touch of fingertips to her papery cheek or a stroke of her snowy white hair. As if they knew.
When it was this close, it seemed, everyone knew.
So Pip stayed right there by her bedside, still reading from the tattered book that Gran had considered her bible, and she was there when the sun slanted, sending red rays through the garden doors to bathe the room in a warm, ruby glow, and Violet took one sudden gasp and then another, and Pip looked up from her reading and held her own breath as her gran left this world on one long, slow exhale.
Pip sat there a while, waiting – suspecting – and this time there was no answering intake of air after an impossibly long wait. No sound in the room but the thump of her own frantic heart beating out of time with Andrea Bocelli singing ‘Ave Maria’.
Her gran.
The last link to her family.
Gone.
Finally she could put off the inevitable no longer. With a heart that was breaking, torn between relief and despair, she squeezed Gran’s hand and said, ‘I love you,’ and kissed her brow, before she went to let them know.
Molly Kernahan came bustling out of a corridor carrying a bundle of towels when Pip was halfway down to the nurses’ station. The other woman started to smile at first, until she saw the look on Pip’s face and dropped the towels to pull her straight into her embrace instead. Pip dissolved into tears on her shoulder. ‘There, there. It doesn’t matter how much you expect it,’ Molly said, rubbing her back and squeezing her tight. ‘It’s always a shock.’ She rubbed her back some more, before she said unevenly, ‘It’s always a shock.’
Craig came to collect her, both he and Tracey refusing to let her drive. And Tracey hugged her close when she got back to the farm, and then pulled her dinner from the warming oven.
‘It’s mad,’ Pip said, feeling numb as she forked at the meal in front of her, still trying to make sense of it. ‘She hadn’t been with us for years. Not really.’
‘It’s the end of an era,’ said Tracey. ‘There’s ninety years of history gone right there.’
And Pip sighed, because what Tracey had said was true, and because whatever secrets her grandmother knew, whatever secrets she might once have known, were gone with her. ‘My boss texted today,’ she said numbly, because it was easier to concentrate on the here and now and the future rather than that which was gone and lost forever. ‘He wants to know when I’m coming back.’
‘Oh no, Pip. Surely not already? You only just got here. Surely they can’t expect you to turn around and get back on the next plane?’
‘No. They know I have a funeral to organise. But they’re flying in the London Vice President of the bank for these interviews in a week.’
‘But it’s almost Christmas. Summer holidays. Haven’t they got anything better to do?’
‘They had their summer holidays in July and August. Now they want to set up the branch for the coming year, before the end of this one. They were good to give me leave to come and be here. But after the funeral, I have to get back.’
Her friend shook her head. ‘You only came home this time because your gran was dying. How long before we’ll see you again?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, her heart already heavy with the thought of leaving, and then added with a sad laugh, ‘Maybe when Chloe decides it’s time to visit me.’
*
‘Oh, I meant to tell you! Fi texted me last night.’
It was ten o’clock the next morning and because there’d been no need to rush to the nursing home, Pip was sitting in Tracey’s kitchen munching on vegemite toast while giving Chloe a cuddle.
But Pip sat up straight now. ‘What did she say? Is she okay?’
‘She said she was sorry she missed getting together, but they’re coming home from Adelaide today and she’s hoping we can catch up tonight instead.’
‘So everything’s all right then?’
‘I don’t know. If there’s anything wrong, she didn’t say, and I didn’t like to ask. I just suggested a barbie here. I figure the men can cook, my kids can look after the twins, and we girls can open a bottle of wine and talk. And if there is anything wrong –’
‘She wouldn’t come, would she, if it was seriously bad news? Surely the hospital wouldn’t have let her go if it was that bad.’
Tracey nodded. ‘That’s what I’m hoping.’
‘Phew. I think. I’ll grab some wine when I’m in town. I have a date at the funeral director’s and then with a funeral celebrant –’ she looked at her watch ‘– ooh, in about an hour’s time. And then I have to clean out Gran’s room.’
Tracey pulled a face. ‘A bit bizarre to call someone who does funerals a celebrant.’
‘Yeah, my thoughts exactly.’ Pip kissed Chloe’s forehead one more time before she handed the baby over to her mother. ‘I better scoot. Thanks for lending me your car. Let me know if you need anything while I’m there.’
Her mother let Chloe grab hold of the index fingers of both her hands, but she didn’t accept the baby, not properly, not yet, leaving her suspended by Pip’s hands under her armpits. ‘Pip, I know you said you had to go back to New York soon, but what happens next? What happens after you’ve seen this funeral celebrant person?’
‘Then I’ll be pretty sure of when the funeral will be, and I’ll be able to confirm my flight home.’
Her friend looked up at her. ‘Home,’ she repeated. ‘You called it home. Is New York home for you now? Is that how you see it?’
Pip got stuck between a shrug and a shake. ‘I’ve lived there for nearly ten years now, Trace. And my job is there, and if I get this promotion . . .’
Tracey nodded, blinking eyes sheened with moisture, as finally she took the baby from Pip’s hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, kissing Chloe’s forehead before turning her around to sit upon her lap. ‘Of course your life is there. But it’s just so good to see you. So good. I miss you so much when you’re not around, and New York is just so far away. It’s not like we can just pop over for a weekend.’
Pip leant down towards her friend and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. ‘I know.’ She kissed her friend’s cheek. ‘I miss you guys too.’
Tracey nodded. ‘I just feel like, with your gran gone and now if you get this new job . . . I just feel like we’re going to lose you.’
Pip shook her head. ‘No! That won’t happen.’
‘It’s already happening though, isn’t it? You wouldn’t even be back now if it wasn’t for her.’
‘Hey, I’ll still have you guys.’ She touched a hand to Chloe’s head, a baby who was already well on the way to worming her way into her heart. ‘I’ll still have this little one to bring me back.’
Tracey sniffed. ‘You mean that? You really mean it?’
‘Of course, I do.’ She smiled at her friend. ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily.’
But as Pip drove towards Kadina, she bit her lip and wondered if Tracey wasn’t right. She hadn’t bothered to come back for the best part of eight years. The last time was for Fi’s wedding, and she wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for Gran.
What would it take to bring her back again?
A funeral for a ninety-year-old woman shouldn’t be such a big deal to arrange, Pip reasoned, and yet still it was an hour of sitting down with a serious looking woman in a seriously grey suit and sorting through a seriously long checklist of music choices and prayers and eulogies. Pip was exhausted by the time every last box was checked, and then the woman apologised profusely and told her that the earliest the funeral could be arranged, given the weekend, would be Wednesday. She dutifully nodded at the news �
�� because by now she’d figured that nodding dutifully was her role – while in fact she was breathing a sigh of relief. Because a Wednesday funeral made a return to work next week unviable. But Monday week was eminently doable, giving her a few precious days here and making sure she’d be back in time for her interview with the London VP.
It was the best possible outcome.
It was so neat she could have written it into her CV. ‘Able to arrange family funerals half a world away with minimal impact on visiting VIPs.’
That, in New York’s pressure cooker work environment, might even earn her a few brownie points towards this next promotion.
And winning this promotion would be so sweet. So very sweet indeed.
Because the guy who’d dumped her two Thanksgivings ago, Edward J Stanwyck Jnr, was going for the same promotion she was. It had taken months of hard work to claw her way up to his level, but she’d made it and now they were both vying for the same job.
If she scored this promotion, she’d be his boss.
And wouldn’t that be the sweetest victory of them all?
The staff at the nursing home greeted her with hugs and kind words about Violet, and about what a sweetheart she’d been to care for. The room was quiet now, the CD player gone, and there was only the sound of people talking as they came and went along the corridor outside, and of cupboards opening and closing as she sorted through her small wardrobe and chest of drawers, putting anything worth donating in one bag, anything that had seen better days going into another, and all the while trying not to think too much about the empty bed, now stripped and bare and cold behind her.
After an hour, she was done. Some keepsakes she would take. The copy of Not Only in Stone. Gran’s brush and mirror set and the lace doilies. Tracey might like the narrow hall table in the B&B. The rest the nursing home could keep, to use where there was a need.
And then Pip was back outside in the fresh air and sighing as a couple of stray tears squeezed their way out. Because it was done. Her gran was gone, the funeral arranged, her room cleaned out. All that remained was to write her eulogy and to get through the funeral.
Thank god she had this evening’s dinner to look forward to. It had been so long since she’d enjoyed a simple barbecue with friends. She stopped at a supermarket and bottle shop and bought cheese and crusty bread and wine, and then suddenly found herself at a loose end. She didn’t have to rush back to the farm. For one of the first times in years, there were no demands on her time at all.
She wasn’t sure why she found herself headed out towards Wallaroo and the coast except it would be a shame not to at least visit while she was here. Besides, she was bothered by the strange feeling that if she didn’t see it now, she might never see it again.
Which was crazy, she told herself, because of course she’d be back.
But when?
The doubt gnawed away at her as highway gave way to town streets and the car slowed – even if her racing thoughts didn’t. Tracey had put these thoughts into her head. Tracey had put this challenge to her and despite all Pip’s assurances, it was sitting uncomfortably in her mind like an ugly fat truth.
Because hadn’t she been heading towards this exact point for the last fifteen years? Weaning herself from home and her friends, coming back for a wedding or two, until there was nothing but a fragile thread linking her back to this place?
A tenuous thread that had finally snapped when her grandmother had given up her valiant struggle to live yesterday evening.
Wasn’t this what she had wanted all along? A final severing of the ties? A reason not to have to come back. A reason to put the secrets and lies and betrayals of the past behind her forever.
And her friends? Tracey and Fi and their families and now tiny baby Chloe? Well, it wasn’t like they couldn’t still be friends. She could still visit. She would visit, like she’d told Trace.
She breathed deeply, steering the car into the car park at the end of the Wallaroo jetty, her mood like a dark cloud when the day was bright.
It was being here that was unsettling her, that was all.
It was being here and losing Gran and finding a connection with Tracey that had only needed to be dusted off to be as shiny and warm as it had ever been.
But that was hardly a surprise.
What had happened was hardly Tracey’s fault.
Damn. She shook her head, wishing she could shake away the thoughts that plagued her, and ran her fingers through her hair, finding a wave where there shouldn’t have been one.
She pulled the offending strands around and examined them with disbelief. And then remembered it was three months since she’d had her hair straightened, and the appointment she’d had to cancel because she’d be away, and how she’d been unable to book another since she didn’t know when she’d be back. She’d have to see if she could make an appointment for next weekend with Rikki or she’d look like something the cat dragged in at her interview. She’d grab a coffee and text the salon and make sure he could fit her in.
And while she was at it, now that she knew when the funeral was, she would get her agent to check out flights too.
She tugged on the wayward curl as she stepped from the car into warm air that tasted of salt and seaweed and fish and chips, feeling at less of a loose end now she had a plan.
Her hair stylist was a genius. She’d spent her first five years in New York wasting precious time every morning with straightening tongs, and it had been a godsend when someone had told her about chemical straightening and given her a referral to the salon where Rikki had just started. And the bonus was that he was an expert colourist, so her hair was now cleverly streaked in cinnamon and honey and every bit as sleek and professional as the image she wished to convey.
It was worth what the salon charged. Well worth it.
Bypassing the fish and chip shop close to the car park, she headed for the coffee shop overlooking the beach. It wasn’t like she was avoiding the fish and chip shop, even though it was the place she’d spent more than a few Friday nights with Luke a lot of years ago.
It was just that the coffee shop looked new and trendy and had a great view over the beach.
That was all.
She found a small table free and gave her order for coffee and then, on a whim and with a promise to herself to do an extra spin class next week, decided on a sliver of lemon tart to go with it.
To her left, the Wallaroo jetty was as long and crooked as she remembered, with a huge ship was berthed out in the dark blue waters that signalled the deep. The massive silos rose high above the shore, connected to the ship by a conveyor belt hidden in a long white tunnel that snagged out at right angles to the jetty.
Just like it always had. She loved that some parts of the now meshed with the past she remembered. She’d forgotten how much she had loved these beaches when she was a kid. She loved the colours of the sea – the clear sandy shallows fading into turquoise as the water gradually deepened, before the abrupt dark line that indicated the start of the channel.
Her family had celebrated Christmas at Moonta Beach once, just for fun, although the day had ended early when the wind had come up and they’d all ended up eating sand with their Christmas turkey. She and Trent hadn’t cared though. They’d spent most of their time playing in the clear aqua waters and laughing with Gran, who’d tucked her floral dress into her long drawers and had cackled her head off as she splashed like a kid through the shallows.
She smiled at the memories.
Dear, dear Gran.
The end of an era indeed.
Her lemon pie was sweet and tart when it arrived, the coffee strong and bitter. The perfect combination, she thought, as she texted Rikki and begged him to fit her in. She was pushing it, she knew, being so close to the holidays, but like the best doctors, Rikki always kept space free for emergencies – and she was one of his longest and mos
t loyal clients and this was definitely an emergency. Nothing, least of all a wayward curl, was going to come between her and this job.
Next she emailed her travel agent and asked her to find a flight home on Thursday or Friday so she’d be back in time for the weekend, and then she sat back and drank in the view. The shaded terrace overlooked the sunlit beach and the only downside was that she could also see the fish and chippery she’d avoided going to because it reminded her of Luke.
She angled her chair away. She refused to let Luke hijack her thoughts. She refused to let memories of their past or concerns about seeing him again rattle her and ruin the peace of this place. She could cope with him being Chloe’s godfather, of course she could.
And she’d show him she was over him in the process.
So instead of thinking about Luke, she concentrated on the rhythm of the tiny waves that shooshed in and out, and Pip actually felt her pulse slow with it, relaxing for the first time in days. Weeks. Probably months if she thought about it.
But that last week or so had been the maddest – the rush to get here in the hopes of saying goodbye. She sighed. Even though Gran hadn’t known it was her, she’d known someone was there, and Pip was glad she’d come.
And now, in just a few short days, she would be back in New York City.
Mad really.
But soon was good too. Because once she was back there, this feeling of belonging and yet not belonging – this feeling that some piece of the puzzle of her life was missing – would be gone and everything would slide back into its proper perspective.
It would be easier to think once she was back. In New York she’d be so busy with work that she wouldn’t have time to fret about secrets and unresolved mysteries in a tiny place half a world away.
Especially once she got this promotion.
Excitement zinged through her at the prospect.
The job was hers, her boss had all but told her. She had the inside running. All she had to do was be confident and show the UK Vice President that she had the goods.