by Margaret Way
She searched his face. Blaine was a central part of her life, but hunkering down inside her bolt hole had become a habit. “You make that sound like I could be steering into dangerous waters.”
“And so you could be.” He made the sombre observation.
“They know I’m coming?”
Blaine nodded. “I expect they’re feeling their own brand of trepidation. But life has moved on. You have moved on, Mallory. You’re Dr. James now, a highly regarded professional in your field. You could even be of help to the child.”
The thought took the edge off her upset. “Only I’m certain Jason and his wife wouldn’t want any help from me. Jessica was never my friend.”
“I did tell you that as well.”
“You did indeed.” Between the heat and her sizzling emotions, she felt compelled to get away from him. “You know I’ve always thought you a complete—”
He cut her off, opening her car door. “No need to say it, Mallory. I can fill in the dots. And it wasn’t always. Once we were good pals until puberty got in the way.”
“Puberty? Whose puberty?” she demanded, incensed.
“Why yours, of course. I’m not a fool, Mallory. I know you hate it, but I know you too well.”
“You’ll need to do a lot of catch-up.” With practised grace, she swivelled her long elegant legs as she settled into the driver’s seat. “You find this funny?” She caught the glint in his eyes.
“Not at all. I just hope you’re relatively okay with it.”
“Like I’m relatively okay with a Force 5 cyclone. What time tomorrow?”
“Say eleven o’clock. Robert has a new housekeeper. Mrs. Rawlings. She lost her husband, Jeff, to cancer.”
She nodded. “Uncle Robert did manage to tell me. I’m sorry. He told me plenty about your goings-on as well. We do so know he thinks of you as the son he never had. What did go wrong between you and Selma anyway?” Her voice was edged with malice, when malice didn’t come naturally to her. “I would have thought she was madly in love with you?”
“You’ve managed to make that sound like one would have to wonder why.”
“Just trying to spin your wheels. Besides, I didn’t think you cared all that much what I thought.”
“I’ll let that one go as well. It was Selma who decided against an engagement,” he offered with no loss of his ironclad composure.
“It was the other way around, I fancy. She loved you, but you found you didn’t love her, or not enough to get married. Had you a new conquest in mind?”
He made to close her door. “Let’s swap stories at another time, shall we, Mallory?”
“Nothing for you in it, Blaine. I’m a closed book.”
“Unknowable to everyone but me.”
She could have cheerfully slapped him. Instead she found herself tightening her body against the odd tumbling inside her. “I assume that’s your arrogance talking?”
“Not entirely. See you tomorrow.”
He shut her door.
He walked away.
He didn’t look back.
It wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. But it was the way it was. She started the engine. She and Blaine were like a couple of tectonic plates doomed to scrape away at one another.
* * *
Twenty minutes later she arrived at the estate by way of Poinciana Road, one of the most beautiful country roads anyone could travel anywhere in the world. Thanks to the foresight of the town’s founding fathers, the Forresters, of course, the magnificent shade trees had been planted in great numbers all over the district as well as being chosen to line the scenic drive just north of the town. It was the poinciana that gave Forrester its special character.
For Mallory on that hot afternoon, it was like driving through a dreamscape. The trees were a flamboyant scarlet against the burning blue sky. The lush emerald green of the open fields were sprigged with lovely little lavender wildflowers that visited periodically.
The avenue came to an end a hundred yards from the entrance to the estate. The high wrought iron gates were open in preparation for her visit. The name of the plantation house, Moonglade, was inscribed on a shiny brass plaque set into one of the stone pillars. Her heart swelled as she drove straight through, looking up at the towering Cuban Royals that lined the broad driveway up to the house. She had already pushed the button to wind her window down so she could hear their great fronds clattering in the breeze. She liked to think they were applauding her arrival.
Gorgeous tropical parrots and little lorikeets soared and darted between the trees, their exquisite multicoloured plumage gleaming like jewelled silks. She remembered, as a little girl, the wild symphony of birdsong waking her up to a new day. Moonglade had entered her imagination early. She had always loved everything about it. Moonglade was a magical place.
At the end of the gravelled drive sat the house in all its golden tranquillity. The site was marvellous. It had been built on a headland that jutted into the Coral Sea with a secluded crescent bay at the foot of the cliffs. Access to the beach was by way of a steep series of steps, with an iron railing to hold on to. As a child she had always chosen to skip down those steps as sure footed as a mountain goat. She had expected the sight of the house to somehow sadden her; all she felt was a profound sense of homecoming.
Doesn’t everyone long to go back home at some point?
Slowly she turned the car into the circular driveway. She needed a period of solitude, a quiet space in her head to get a clear overview of the situation. Jason, his wife, and their little girl on the very doorstep? Worse, Jessica was still around to make trouble. And her uncle had kept it a secret! She was aware of the build-up of emotions inside her, but they were pale shadows of what once they had been.
The Cartwrights had doted on the twins, even though Jason had been the clear favourite. The good-looking Jason had been a popular figure in the town, a very pleasant and courteous young man. The same couldn’t be said of his twin. Jessica had never come across as a poppet. The truly bizarre thing was, Kathy Burch had always been Jessica’s main target for humiliation. Kathy, the town’s little temptress, but as far as anyone knew at the time of her brother’s engagement, Jessica had never had a boyfriend. She appeared to live in an emotional vacuum, or maybe she had a secret relationship no one was supposed to know about. It could have been an older, married man in the town. Loving her brother the way she did, it wasn’t difficult to explain Jessica’s resentment of his fiancée. Jealousy was a terrible force. It could do a power of harm.
In the blazing sunshine, the big white house shimmered like a mirage. The two-story building, colonial in style, was supported by series of pillars, six in all, wreathed in jasmine. The huge corrugated iron roof was painted dark green. The drumming of rain on that roof was locked into her memory, the smell of ozone. The rooms on the upper floor opened out onto a broad wrap-around veranda, the railings embellished with ornate white cast iron. French doors hung with tall shutters were painted a matching green to the roof. The spacious porch on the ground floor was similarly decorated with white cast iron.
Afterwards, she was grateful she had been travelling at a crawl. Her eyes had shifted from the house to the three-tier baroque-style fountain. The fountain had always been there. Its playing filled the hot summer air with delightfully cool, babbling sounds. She wondered if it was playing especially for her arrival. In the next instant a small child—it could have been either a boy or a girl from the unisex clothing—came running full tilt around a corner of the house and straight onto the drive.
Bloody hell!
Mallory felt her heart quake as all her old fears surged. The child wasn’t at all close to being hit, but her reaction was a result of her own childhood trauma. Besides, children were just so unpredictable. She slammed on the brakes, mastering the panic that jumped into her throat. Engine off, she threw open the door and got out. She thought the child was a girl. There was something about the little knock-kneed run.
“Hello, little
girl! Hello!”
Could this be Ivy?
The child skidded to a halt at the sound of Mallory’s voice, almost losing her balance. She regained it by putting one hand down on the gravel.
Ouch, that must have hurt.
At the same time, a lean fair-haired woman rounded the corner of the house as if a gale force wind was behind her. She had a bundle of what looked like dried flowers in her hand. Clearly she was in furious pursuit of the child. Or had she panicked the child might run into the car? Mallory didn’t have to wait long for an answer.
“Wait up, Ivy, you little brat,” the woman yelled, swishing the bundle of flowers hard against her side like a jockey on the home run.
So this was Ivy, the problematic child. How could anyone so small evoke adult fury?
The child, a scrap of a thing in the land of plenty, ran directly at Mallory, hurling herself at Mallory’s legs and wrapping her puny arms around them. Mallory found herself hugging the small curly blonde head to her waist. It was an extraordinary moment. No doubting who the father was.
“Well, well, well,” the woman called, still flapping her bundle in manic fashion. “Our princess returning. Quelle surprise!”
The bright, jokey tone contrasted sharply with the taut piano-string body language. No difficulty seeing Jessica’s aura. It was a blinding orange. She recalled Van Gogh had once said orange was the colour of insanity.
“You knew I was coming, Jessica?” Mallory asked pleasantly, with no intention of spending a lot of time with Jessica, who had always hated her.
“Of course. Of course. The beautiful and brilliant Dr. Mallory James, alive and well!” A smile was plastered on Jessica’s face.
“Alive at any rate.” Mallory thought the smile wouldn’t fool anyone. She bent to check on the little girl. “Let me have a look at your hand.” Her voice was full of tenderness and concern. Instantly the little girl put her hand up for Mallory’s inspection, watching as Mallory brushed specks of gravel away from her palm.
“Thank you,” the little girl said sweetly, staring up into Mallory’s face with a kind of wonderment.
“You’re welcome.” Mallory returned the endearing smile. She had a great liking and a strong protective feeling towards children. No aura to this child. Not as yet.
“Long time no see, Mallory.” Jessica’s lips now formed a thin line.
“It has been a long time, Jessica.” There had always been volcanic activity about Jessica. From her years of study, Mallory now began to consider Jessica with her history of highs and lows might well be undiagnosed bipolar. “How is life treating you?” she queried. Good manners made the world go round.
“I’ve known better times.” Jessica looked like she wanted to wallop someone.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Jessica had always had a grievance. “What has this little person been up to, to make you so angry?” she asked, keeping a reassuring hold on a small sticky hand.
Jessica feigned shock. “Moi, angry? Who said anything about angry?”
“Cross certainly.” Mallory took a good look at Jessica. She looked washed out, posture rigid as though she didn’t have a clue how to relax. Not yet thirty, Jessica could have been mistaken for several years older. The absence of any effort to look good didn’t help. Jessica had gone to no pains. Her thick blonde hair, a real asset, had darkened. It was scraped back. She wore no make-up, not even a skerrick of lipstick which would have protected the sensitive skin of her mouth. She was dressed in a dark red T-shirt that had a clinically depressed blue dolphin on it leaping half-heartedly through a hoop. The shirt hung so loosely on Jessica’s thin, yet athletic body, it had to belong to her brother, and her wrinkled khaki rollup cargo pants looked like they needed a good wash. Jessica wasn’t looking good. She had to wonder if Jason was faring any better.
“You are angry. You are angry, you, you, you!” The little girl broke in with a show of spirit. For good measure she kicked up a spray of white gravel, aiming deliberately at her aunt’s thin brown legs. “That’s why I ran away.” She raised a mucky little face to Mallory. She was all Jason. Bright blue eyes and a bubble of white-blonde hair curling around her head in the manner of Renaissance putti. There was no trace of her mother, the extremely pretty, sable-haired, hazel-eyed Kathy, Mallory remembered.
“Don’t take any notice of her,” Jessica warned, not about to be short listed as Aunty of the Year. “She’s always trouble.”
Ivy’s bottom lip started to tremble, so Mallory increased the gentle pressure on the child’s hand. “She couldn’t be that, Jessica. Why isn’t she at school?”
Ivy twisted her curly head to look up at Mallory. “What day is t’day?” she asked.
“It’s Wednesday, Ivy.”
“Then I been home three days,” Ivy said. “I been sick. I’m always home sick,” she confided as though Mallory had come with the right medicine to cure all her ailments. “I vomit a lot.” She clutched her little stomach.
“You’re not sick now?” Instantly Mallory bent over the child, concerned.
“Nuthin’ left to come up.” The child gave her a perky grin.
“She’s one sickly kid!” Jessica said in disgust. “Kathy is always at the hospital with her.”
“That’s no good.” Mallory frowned. “It needs looking into, Jessica.”
Jessica bridled ferociously. “It has been looked into.” The look blared, don’t interfere. “As far as I’m concerned, Kathy is responsible.”
“Kathy?” Mallory was taken aback. “In what way?”
“The kid looks anaemic.”
Ivy’s skin was indeed pallid and paper thin. She was definitely underweight.
“If there’s a problem, it needs to be sorted out.” That was her job, sorting out children’s problems. She was dedicated to it. “There’s no shortage of good nourishing food around here. Has any medication been prescribed for Ivy?”
“Mede-kay-shun. Mede-kay-shun.” Ivy was trying the new word out on her tongue.
“How should I know?” Jessica responded tartly. “I’m the aunt, not the mother. It’s Kathy’s job to feed her.”
“But you take a keen interest?”
“I have work to do,” Jessica bit off. “Looking after Ivy isn’t high on my list of priorities. She has her mother, only Kathy spends her life nursing her headaches.”
“Migraines?” Migraines could be hell.
“Who cares!” Jessica was in a flurry of impatience.
Ivy butted in. “You give me juice. I don’t like it. It’s yucky.”
“Vitamin C,” Jessica pronounced, still banging away with the bundle of dead flowers. Swish, swish, swish. Their decapitated heads flew about like confetti, blanketing the gravel.
“She shouldn’t be short on vitamin C. Plenty of fruit to eat and enjoy.”
“Ivy doesn’t like fruit.” Jessica spoke as if she were being tested beyond endurance.
“I do too!” Indifferent to her own safety, feisty little Ivy spoke up again, thrusting out her bottom lip. Mallory found her show of spirit cheering.
That did it for Jessica. “Come here to me, Ivy,” she cracked out.
But Ivy wasn’t about to obey. She shut her eyes tight like she was wishing her aunt would go up in a puff of smoke. When she opened them she looked up at Mallory, her new best friend. “Aunty Jessy is a cranky old thing. Are you a princess? You look like the princess in my picture book. You have the loveliest hair. It has sparkly gold through it.”
“Thank you, Ivy.” Mallory smiled. “When I was your age I was nearly as blonde as you. My hair has darkened over the years.”
Jessica kept her eyes trained on the child, her expression sending out the message: This is no joke. Jessica was not well pleased by the turn of events. She was seething to haul the child away, especially as Ivy was now busy doing a good job of mimicking her aunt’s swishing actions with her hand.
“Kathy needs day in, day out support,” Jessica said, her tone showing contempt for her sister-in-law.
“She’s no woman of substance, I can tell you that. You might remember the Burches came up real short on brain cells. Kathy lets Ivy run wild.”
“I ran wild around here,” Mallory said, gazing about the splendid grounds any child would adore. There was a man-made lake with its flotilla of waterlilies, its borders deep in thick stands of iris and arum lilies. A swimming pool was at the rear of the house. The lake would be off limits, but surely not the swimming pool with an adult present? “Can you swim yet, Ivy?” Mallory knew all Queensland schools had a swimming program.
Jessica snorted, but Ivy said proudly, “Daddy taught me. I’m never allowed to go near the lake. It has mucky things in it. Besides, I can’t get past all them lilies. I’m not afraid of water. We have lessons at school.”
“That’s good. Do you like school?”
“It’s okay.” Ivy nodded. “I’m in grade two. Some of the kids aren’t very nice to me.”
“Their loss, Ivy. I’d like to see you swim one day. Perhaps in the swimming pool?”
“She’s not allowed into the swimming pool.” Jessica was busy tugging at her T-shirt like she wanted to pull it down over her knees.
“Certainly not on her own, but with an adult present?”
“As though any of us have the time!” Jessica scoffed, a woman kept so busy she had no chance to lounge about.
“Where is Kathy?” Mallory asked. Meeting up with Kathy again couldn’t be as bad as this reunion with Jessica.
Ivy gave a little nervous giggle, while Jessica shot a glance at the child, blue eyes glaring. “She’s around. We’ve got the farm running well. Not that you would be interested in that, I reckon. Jason took a long time to recover after you ran off.”
“Ran off?” The injustice of that grabbed Mallory’s attention.
“Oh, yeah, the princess!” Jessica’s resentment blew wide open.
“I know’d you was a princess!” Delightedly Ivy intervened, clapping her hands.
“No, Ivy.” Mallory gave the child’s shoulder an extra pat. “I’m an ordinary person.”
Jessica gave a final swish to the decapitated bunch of dried flowers. “Nothing ordinary about you. My brother worshipped you. Only Kathy tricked him into marrying her, the cunning little—”