I, Sarah Blaxland, have been asked to complete this very real and obviously authentic performance review. Elizabeth Hordern may be the obvious choice for critic, however, it is in my personal opinion that Dr. Hordern would submit a biased report on the trainee under review. It appears that, in the process of Elizabeth Hordern’s time at my homestead last winter, she fell madly, hopelessly in love with Miss O’Connor. It is for this very reason I believe, that her opinion is completely, utterly invalid.
If any further questions present themselves, I may be contacted through the power point outlet in the parlour. Plug in any device—if a fuse blows, you may take my answer to your question as a ‘yes.’
Ever yours,
Miss Sarah Blaxland
At midday the next day, with the clock ticking down the two hours until Dylan was due at the homestead, she considered calling Beth and claiming a twenty-four-hour bug, a migraine, salmonella poisoning…
She was ill with nerves. With shaky hands as she collected empties on the bowling club veranda, it became obvious that her confidence had plummeted. Between her dad’s near-death experience and her losing the homestead, she’d gone downhill. Now, the Ritalin barely seemed to be doing its job, and she was close to turning away Beth’s offer.
But this was like that time in final year when she’d had to pull herself together and get to her exams. It was time to help herself. She wanted the homestead back. The day before, returning to her old job had made her feel like her old self—her real self—and she couldn’t lose that again. It was time to fight for what she wanted. Beth had had her turn to take what she needed, and now it was Dylan’s. She had no option but to return to the house. She owed it to herself. And more importantly, she owed Beth an apology.
Dylan washed her hands and looked out the bathroom window at the gift shop. Four guests were waiting. She had missed this—constantly being on the go, feeling needed. She dried her hands and gently closed the bathroom door behind her.
Beth was in the parlour in the middle of her tour, and the gentle cadence of her voice was enough to set Dylan’s heart thumping.
They’d barely spoken all afternoon. When Dylan arrived, Beth had just been getting started with a tour. “Your blazer is hanging in the office,” she’d said, and it had sounded sheepish, shy. But as Beth had headed out, she’d brushed a hand over her arm and the intentional touch had sent an unwelcome charge through Dylan.
As Dylan stood unmoving outside the bathroom, her eyes landed on the peach-tinted bruise on the side of Beth’s neck. Her face grew warm. She had done that.
As Beth moved her group from the parlour to the grand staircase, she spotted Dylan. “Do you need me for something?” she murmured to Dylan, her smile shy, almost hopeful.
Dylan ground her teeth. “I don’t know what kind of light you did your makeup in this morning, but…” She lifted two fingers to her neck and tapped lightly at her pulse.
Beth’s eyes went wide. Dylan brushed past her to join her guests.
Dylan climbed the back stairs, her heart firing rapidly.
The loft door was open, and Beth’s back was turned where she sat at the computer, her hair lightly flitting across the back of the chair beneath the weak force of the desk fan.
Gently, Dylan rapped her knuckles against the door.
Beth swivelled in the desk chair. She smiled timidly. “Hey, you’re finished early.”
“Not really. It’s already six…”
“Oh. It is too. Well, I’m almost done here,” she said. “Do you want to order Chinese?”
Seriously? She blinked. “I…I can’t do this,” she blurted.
Beth’s face fell as she registered Dylan’s expression. She leant forward and grasped her knees. She sat primly, straightened her shoulders. “What can’t you do?” she said slowly.
“I can’t play house with you,” Dylan husked.
A tense silence filled the room.
Beth tilted her head. “You can’t have dinner with me but you can take me on the stairs?”
Dylan blinked in surprise. Evidently, the doctor had become emboldened. She blew air from her cheeks. “I came up here to say that I’m sorry about yesterday.” She picked at the chipped paint on the doorjamb. “It shouldn’t have happened. I don’t know why it did. I mean, I know why it did,” she mumbled, her ears burning. “But you deserve better than…that. You’re sophisticated and classy and you deserve—”
“Dylan, it’s okay…”
“No. It’s not okay. I know we’ve had heated…run-ins, but I’m not…I’m not like that. With other women, I mean. I’m not…rough.”
Beth’s face crumpled. “You think you were rough with me?” She paused. “Dylan…honey, I promise you, you weren’t. Sometimes,” she said softly, “sometimes sex is like that.”
“Like what?”
Beth’s face turned pink. “You know like what.”
She did, but she wanted to hear Beth give name to it.
“It’s not a bad thing, Dylan.” She lowered her voice. “It’s not a bad thing at all.”
“Then why do I feel dreadful?”
Beth breathed her name so softly that Dylan’s stomach somersaulted.
“No. I’m…I’m sorry, Beth.”
“I’m not.”
Her gaze locked on the mark on Beth’s neck. “It was a mistake.”
Beth sighed. “Dylan, we were friends before any of this—”
“We were never friends.”
The claim rippled through the loft.
Blinking, Beth stood. “In…in the beginning, I mean. Like that night at the Winter Festival? We had fun, didn’t we? We were friends then?”
“At the Winter Festival, I wanted you more than I’d wanted anything in my entire life.”
Beth’s cheeks coloured deeper. I can be bold, too, Dylan thought.
The room stilled. Beth’s eyes blazed. “And do you still want me?” she whispered.
Dylan dropped her gaze, her heart a ticking bomb beneath her ribs.
“Okay. I shouldn’t have asked that,” Beth said breathily.
“No, that’s okay.” She paused, the truth ready to float from her lips. “When I’m with you,” she whispered, her breath catching, “I’m so attracted to you that sometimes I can’t even hear myself think. But when I’m not around you, when there’s distance between us, I resent you, Beth. I resent what you asked of me. And I don’t know if I could ever look past that…if that will ever stop. We can’t…people can’t just rewrite stuff like this.”
“I don’t want to rewrite anything,” Beth proclaimed. Quietness settled. “Can I say one thing?” she asked. “And you don’t…you don’t have to say anything.”
Dylan looked up from her sandals. She nodded.
Beth gripped the edge of the desk. “You mean more to me than anything in the world and I’m going to fight for this. For us.” Her voice wavered. “I came back for you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
The breath caught in Dylan’s throat.
“I’m sorry if what I wrote was too much,” Beth whispered. “I’m sorry if you didn’t want to hear it. But I just needed you to know where I stand. I need you to know that I care.”
Dylan ground her teeth. “I don’t want to talk about the letter, okay? I can’t.”
Beth nodded.
“I…I’m not in a good place right now.”
“I can wait,” Beth said breathily.
“I’m not asking you to wait,” she said, her voice thick. She cleared her throat. “I want this job. And I’ve decided that you owe me that. This is my home and I miss it. It’s the only place I’ve ever really felt smart. This is my thing.”
“Of course.”
“No. You don’t get to say ‘of course.’ You don’t get to offer me this. It’s not fair that you got everything, that all your problems were solved while I was left with nowhere to go, nothing to do. I was really happy, and…I gave up everything I had so that you could get your life together. So, yeah, you owe m
e this. You’re not offering it, and you don’t get to play the martyr. I’m taking back what was mine.”
Beth fell into the chair. “I was never trying to play the martyr,” she whispered. “I just want you to be happy.”
“Well, I just want my job back. That’s all I want.”
Beth nodded, her eyes swimming as she dropped her gaze. She turned back to the computer. Dylan watched the neckline of her shirt flutter before the fan. “Well, I’m doing the roster right now. I assume afternoon shifts are best for you?” She paused. “That is, if you only want to work part-time…”
* * *
With an arm full of glasses, Dylan pushed open the door to the bistro kitchen. Mikey looked up from unpacking the dishwasher. Leaning against the sink, Dylan’s father discreetly shifted a beer bottle behind a crate of dirtied utensils. She rolled her eyes. “Who gave you that?”
“None of your business.”
She scoffed. The steam of the dishwasher was warm on her face as she started packing the tower of glasses into the side Mikey had already emptied. “What are you doing in here?” she asked her father.
“Waiting for your mother to stop gas-bagging so we can eat,” Jack told her. “What are you doing back here? You had the morning shift.”
“Mum called and said you were eating here tonight so I thought I’d join you both.” She pointed a thumb at the deserted canteen window. “Bistro’s quiet tonight.”
“Everyone’s on the smorgasbord or down at the main bar. What’s that fancy shirt you’ve got on?”
“It’s the uniform for the homestead. I’m helping out there.”
“You mean working there?”
“Yeah. Working there.”
“With that Beth?” he asked crossly.
“Yes.”
“Thought you had a blue with her.”
Gee, thanks, Mum. “We had words.”
Mikey grinned. “I heard around town you had more than that with her.”
“Shit!”
Both men looked over as Dylan held up her hand and winced. The nick to her thumb was small, but she was bleeding.
Mikey lifted the offending glass from the dishwasher. “Christ, Dyl, that doesn’t look good.”
“Come ’ere, love,” Jack said as he pulled out the first aid kit. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”
“Just my meds. I’m one of the lucky few with thinning blood as a side effect of Ritalin. Could be worse—at least I don’t get rashes.”
As Jack dressed Dylan’s finger in a blue kitchen Band-Aid, he ignored her comment. He’d never really been open to hearing about her ADHD, and even now, almost ten years after she’d been diagnosed, she wondered if he still thought her disorder “hogwash.” Ever since she was little, he’d made a point of claiming that he “didn’t believe” in mental illness. People were either “a few screws loose” or “they were right as rain.”
One night, just after she’d started on Ritalin, she’d heard him tell her mother that he thought it was more than coincidental that Dylan happened to have been diagnosed just after Kyle’s accident. So what if he still thought that her problems stemmed from Kyle’s death? Deep down, Dylan knew she’d always struggled. She loved her father dearly, but she no longer cared what he thought about it all. She was almost thirty—it wasn’t anybody else’s place to dictate how she lived her life. How she chose to take care of herself was her business and hers alone.
“Dad?”
“Mmm?”
“I was wondering if maybe you could think about making Mikey two-I-C again.” Jack wouldn’t meet her eye. As she watched his tongue trace along his top row of teeth, she wondered if he’d be embarrassed to know it was Dylan—not his distraught wife—who had cleaned his dentures in the hospital bathroom the night of his surgery.
“You want to go back to the homestead?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
Her father had always been a man of few words. They were quiet for a long moment until he leaned forward and balanced his hands on his knees. “Well, I think we can figure something out.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Beth swiped the tears from her lashes as she watched Dylan’s car pull into the parking bay. For the first time in the three weeks of Dylan back working at the homestead, Beth wished for just ten more minutes alone. God, she was being ridiculous. She was a grown woman. She knew better than to let some country tiler’s blatant bullying chauvinism upset her. Yet, somehow, it had.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
“What’s that smell?” Dylan looked around the kitchen. “Smells like a man in here.”
“Aftershave.”
“You use aftershave now, do you?”
Beth turned.
“What’s wrong?” Dylan asked.
“Nothing.”
“You have mascara,” she indicated to below Beth’s lashes, but quickly realising that her motions were in vain, her hand dropped. “Beth, what is it?”
She drew a breath. “It’s nothing, honestly. I called the tiler to come back this morning and look at the bathroom floor. The tiles around the base of the toilet…they look messy. When he finished last night, I wasn’t happy with it. He came back this morning before his first job and…we argued. Well, not argued, not really, because he wouldn’t listen to a thing I had to say. He was just…” She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I was being difficult.”
Dylan frowned. “You? Difficult? How? Show me.”
Dylan squatted beside the toilet, traced her fingers over the disjointed tiles and shook her head. “That’s a fucking joke. We’re not paying for this.” She pushed at a tile with her fingernail. The grout was still wet, the tile still moveable. Gently, Dylan edged it into line where it belonged. “Look at this—they’re all completely uneven. That’s not acceptable work.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Dylan glared up at her. “What did he say to you to make you so upset?”
“He just…he said that I didn’t really know what I was talking about.” Dylan’s stare was intense as she listened. Beth leaned back against the vanity. “I can’t explain it. He didn’t say anything pointedly, but…he just had this attitude…”
“He shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.” In a flash, Dylan stood and headed past her out the door.
“What are you doing?” Beth asked as she followed her down the hallway. “Where are you going?”
Dylan swiped her keys from the kitchen table. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Soon” was an hour later, with Dylan red-faced and eyes on fire. “He’s coming back first thing tomorrow morning,” Dylan said. “And he’s going to fix it.”
Beth’s stomach turned. “Don’t worry,” Dylan assured her. “I’ll make sure I’m here with you. I’ll deal with it.”
Beth didn’t know exactly what had gone down in the tile shop across town the day before, but the tiler was unusually polite as he passed Beth in the kitchen the next morning. And later that afternoon, when the tiles were perfectly aligned, and the lingering stench of aftershave long gone, Beth found a Post-it on the lid of the guest bathroom toilet.
Sue me if these tiles aren’t the straightest thing to be found in this joint.
–Miss Sarah Blaxland
Beth puffed strands of hair back from her line of sight. Even with her hair tied up, she knew the humidity had her looking a mess. Thank god the day was over. After the week she’d had with Tile-Gate, all she wanted was to go home and stand under a cold shower followed by a glass of chilled white.
As she pulled open the front door to the cool air-conditioning, she caught sight of Dylan moving down the hallway. She’d pulled down her bun earlier that afternoon complaining of a headache, and with her golden tresses in disarray, she looked as lethargic as Beth felt.
Beth swiped beads of sweat from the back of her neck. “Oh my god, it’s boiling out there—” She stopped herself abruptly as she focused on Dylan. She was ashen-faced. Her gaze flickered from t
he phone in Dylan’s hand and back to her vacant gaze. “What happened?”
Dylan licked her lips. “My mum just called…said my dad fell, uhh…has some chest pain. They’ve taken him back to John Hunter.”
The hallway creaked, the bones of the house aching with heat. “Is he okay?”
Dylan’s stare was glassy. “I think so.” Her lips twisted.
She itched to reach out and touch Dylan’s forearm, ground her, but the last thing she wanted to do was unsettle her further. She moved closer, just enough to allow Dylan space. “What did your mum say?”
“She said not to worry, but to come to the hospital when I could.” Suddenly, like the thought of a hospital had a Pavlovian effect, Dylan pushed past her and darted for the bathroom. When Beth reached the doorway, Dylan was heaving into the bowl.
Pulling the elastic from her own hair, Beth hurried across the room to her and lifted the veil of Dylan’s hair until she had it all gathered and combed it into a low ponytail. Dylan heaved again, but to Beth, it sounded like all that escaped was a sob. She ran her palm between Dylan’s shoulder blades. “Just take deep breaths.”
Dylan pulled back and sat back against the wall. She blew air from her cheeks and closed her eyes. Beth reached over and flushed the toilet. “I’m going to go and get you a glass of cold water, okay?” She wondered if Dylan had even heard her, but after a moment, she nodded.
When she returned, she expected to find Dylan still crouched on the floor, but she was standing by the vanity. She’d found one of the spare toothbrushes they kept in the top drawer for the odd guest overwhelmed by the history of the house. Beth watched as she tore open the packet and squeezed toothpaste onto the brush.
Beth placed the glass on the vanity and smiled weakly.
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