Belle's Secret

by Victoria Purman

  “Ms Martenson?”

  At the sound of her name, Isabella looked up. “They’re ready for you now.”

  Isabella stood and held out a hand. “Hi, Eddie. Nice to meet you. And please call me Belle.” Her mistake made her shake her head. “Isabella, I mean. First names are fine with me. How are they?”

  Eddie was a country bloke, with a weathered face and pale wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was wearing what looked like his best checked shirt and a pair of moleskin trousers with leather boots, polished up for a special occasion. “Oh, you know. Smiling today. I reckon today will be a good day. For them at least.”

  Isabella took a step closer and put a hand on his big, broad shoulder. “You’ve done an incredible job for your mom and dad. They must be so proud of you.”

  He pushed his hair back from his forehead, a subconscious gesture he’d probably made a million times out on the farm before setting his hat back on his head. He was missing his hat. She could see it in the fidget in his fingers.

  “Oh well, it’s what you do for your folks, right?” He chuckled softly. “Who woulda guessed that after all these years of living in sin,” his tone put quotes around those final three words, “that they’d want to finally get married. Fifty years they’ve been together.” He shook his head. “And now Mum gets it in her head that Dad should make an honest woman of her.”

  Eddie had called her the week before, when news about his mother’s prognosis had worsened. Kath had been living with ovarian cancer for a year and when chemotherapy and radiotherapy hadn’t stopped the spread of the disease, when her doctors had told the family there was nothing more to be done for her, they suggested she move into the new hospice in Wirralong. She’d agreed, Eddie had told Isabella, to put an end to the fussing. And that’s when she’d shocked Neville by announcing it was about bloody time they got married. Eddie, as oldest son, had organised everything.

  “Things were different when they met each other, Eddie. People threw out all the old rules in the sixties, didn’t they? And no one who knows your mum and dad, or your family, would think they were less in the eyes of anyone because they’d never made it official in the eyes of the law.”

  Eddie sniffed. “I think Mum decided … oh hell.” Tears drizzled from his eyes and he wiped them away with the back of his hand.

  “It’s okay,” Isabella soothed. She patted Eddie’s shoulder three times for comfort and then withdrew her hand. Her natural instinct would have been to throw her arms around this big bloke but she held back. She was here in a professional capacity. She made a practice of never letting her emotions get the better of her when she conducted weddings. She was there to undertake the official and legal business of a marriage celebrant, according to the laws of the Commonwealth of Australia, and then to blend into the background so the couple could shine.

  “I think Mum’s doing it for Dad, you know? So that when she’s gone …” Eddie let out a shuddering breath and stood taller. “Geez.” He reached inside a trouser pocket, pulled out a neatly ironed handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

  “They love each other very much,” Isabella said.

  “Yeah,” Eddie smiled through his tears. “Let’s go.”

  They walked up the corridor and Isabella followed Eddie into a side room. It was quiet, soft music was playing in the background—she recognised Simon and Garfunkel’s harmonies—and the curtains were half-drawn.

  “Mum, Dad,” Eddie managed to say, “this is Isabella, the marriage celebrant.”

  Isabella stood at the end of the bed. “Hello everyone.”

  “Thanks, love,” Neville said as he took a step to Isabella and shook her hand. He had the same firm grip as his son and the same full head of hair, despite his age.

  Eddie’s mother Kath was tucked up under white sheets, her arms lying on top of them to accommodate the lines in her arms and the monitors on her fingers. She wore a floral scarf around her head, tied like a turban, which only make her sunken cheeks look more hollow and her bones more pronounced. She had barely any colour left in her face and her lips were almost white. Isabella was glad they had called her when they did. She wondered how many more days Kath had left.

  Eddie cleared his throat. “These are my sisters, Karina and Sandra, and their husbands, Tom and Alan.” Isabella shook hands with them all and nodded politely.

  The sheets rustled. Kath’s hand was grasping at the sheets. “Where’s that damn remote control?”

  “Here it is, love.” Neville slipped the unit into Kath’s hand and with the press of a button she was being elevated from a lying to a semi-seated position. When she was about forty-five degrees, the whirring noise of the bed stopped.

  “That’s better,” she said, her voice thin but determined. “I want to be awake for this.”

  “Thanks for doing this for Mum and Dad,” Karina said.

  “It really is my honour.”

  Then Karina began to cry and Sandra joined in. Isabella couldn’t look at them. She took a deep breath, pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth to stop any tears that might think about springing from her eyes, and said, “Are we ready?”

  *

  That afternoon, Isabella cleared her throat and took in the sight of two grooms whose eyes were welling with tears.

  “I do,” the groom said.

  “So do I, handsome,” the other groom replied with a smile and a wink.

  Every single guest turned to Isabella for the words she had said a thousand times. She was supposed to declare two people to be married. She’d already done it once today, but when she opened her mouth to speak, standing under the gums back in the gardens of Wirra Station, her throat closed over and she couldn’t seem to force any words out. She quickly glanced from groom to groom but they hadn’t registered her momentary lapse. They were lost in each other, in the possibilities that each new day would bring now that they were married to the one they loved. How lucky they were to have their whole lives ahead of them. Unlike Kath and Neville.

  Isabella was wrung out.

  The wedding that morning at the hospice had been one of the most beautiful and most heart-wrenching things she’d ever done. She’d managed not to cry while all those around her were in tears or, in the case of their youngest daughter, sobbing. Kath had summoned up the energy to sign the certificate of marriage and had then grasped her new husband’s hand and kissed him with all the familiarity that fifty years as a couple bestows. Kath hadn’t said it, but Eddie was right. Kath had wanted to leave Neville with that memory, of such happiness, rather than what was inevitably to come, any day now if the prognosis was correct. She had given him the gift of a new story to tell when he talked about Kath’s last days; a happy story, one filled with love and memories.

  She had given him the gift of a lifetime together and then one to carry with him when she was gone.

  That’s what a true partnership was, wasn’t it? The gift of yourself for a lifetime.

  Tears welled from somewhere and Isabella gulped. She suddenly felt exposed, wide open, her heart beating on her sleeve in a way that she’d never felt before.

  These two men were so lucky to have this.

  Every couple she’d married this week had found “the one.” The teens. The reunited lovers. Simon and Amanda. Kath and Neville.

  The realisation struck her like a church bell ringing. She’d been lying to herself all this time. She wanted this. She wanted the kind of happiness she saw in this couple’s eyes. She wanted the kind of happiness she’d let herself feel back in Vegas when she’d married Harry. In a blinding flash she realised she had completely and utterly failed in her quest to get him out of her system. Because he was there. He was her gift and she was his.

  Something streaked through her forehead like a thunderclap. A wave of dizziness almost threw her off her feet.

  “I now pronounce you happily married.”

  As the couple kissed and were engulfed by friends and family, Isabella took a step back to steady herself. She splay
ed a hand against the stone walls of the cottage to hold herself up. Her heart thudded and her head was throbbing, as if it might split in two any second. She managed to hold herself together while the husbands signed the documentation; when they sauntered, hand in hand, over to The Woolshed for their reception, her legs gave way and everything went black.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Belle?”

  Isabella blinked her eyes open. It took a moment for things to register but it was dark and she was horizontal.

  “It’s me. Harry.”

  And Harry was there.

  His hand was on her arm, gently caressing. “How are you feeling?”

  How was she feeling? Like she was in a cloud with a blindfold over her eyes. Everything around her was soft—her pillow, her sheets—but her limbs were limp and heavy.

  “Oh …”

  “I’m here. You’re safe.”

  She thought she might sit up but when she tried to lift her head from the pillow, it hurt so she stopped trying.

  His voice was close to her ear, but soft. “The doctor gave you a shot. You’ve been asleep for a while.”

  “A doctor?” she whispered.

  “Do you remember what happened? You fainted. Maggie and Max called the doctor.” Harry’s hand smoothed its way up her arm across her cheek. Then there was a cold pressure on her forehead. An ice pack.

  “There’s a glass of water right here on your bedside table and some more medication. It’ll help you sleep.”

  The last thing Isabella remembered was the cool slide of water down her throat and swallowing two pills, which knocked her back into oblivion.

  *

  When Isabella woke, light was peeking around the edge of the curtains. She opened her eyes to test if her head still hurt and was relieved when it didn’t. She heard the sound of a fan whirring in the corner of the room and slid one foot out from the sheet so she could feel the cool. She lifted a hand to check her forehead. No ice pack. She turned her head and saw that the clothes she’d been wearing for yesterday’s wedding were neatly draped on a chair in the other corner of the room.

  The fog in her head had cleared a little and she worked hard to remember what had happened. The groom and groom. The ecstatic friends and family. And then … after that everything was a blank. But now, she was feeling better, not so spaced out. That was good. She sat up slowly and gingerly swung her legs over the side of the bed. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but judging by the desperate need to go to the bathroom, it must have been a while. She stood, tentatively, waited for any new throbbing in her head, and in slow steps she padded across the rug, down the hallway to the bathroom.

  When she was done, she brushed her teeth to try and wake herself up a bit and remove the furry feeling from her mouth. She rinsed and spat, avoided looking at herself in the mirror above the basin, and drank a full glass of water. Everything still seemed to be in slow motion. She looked at her hairbrush sitting beside the liquid soap and decided against trying to untangle her hair. All that pulling would only make her head throb. She splashed cold water on her face and then swallowed down another glass of water instead.

  She remembered now what had happened. A migraine. She hadn’t had one for a long while, but the memory of that first one was so vivid even after all these years that she recognised it. She wiped her hands on the towel hanging from the rail and bent to wipe her face as well. Was she hungry? She could maybe whip up some dry toast. That’s what she would do. Dry toast and then maybe a shower. Or perhaps she could sneak back under the covers and sleep until tomorrow morning’s wedding with the lady on the horse. The Lady Godiva except wearing clothes. She and Maggie had talked about it yesterday, when they’d had coffee in the morning, before the hospice wedding and the groom and groom, before she’d fainted. That’s right. She remembered now.

  Toast. That was a plan. She stepped out of the bathroom, closed the door behind her, and bumped right into Harry.

  “Shit.” She planted a hand on her chest. “Harry?”

  He’d reached for her elbow and she looked him up and down. Dressed only in his boxer shorts, his hair was sleep-mussed. “Are you okay? You’re not throwing up or anything?”

  “No. What are you doing here?”

  He dipped his head and peered into her eyes. “You don’t remember?”

  Isabella searched his face. His eyes were narrowed and focused intently on her. His lips were pulled together in a worried line and he hadn’t shaved in what looked like a couple of days. “Did you stay last night?” she asked. He took her arm and led her across the hallway to her bedroom. And her bed.

  “You don’t remember what happened?” The backs of her knees hit the mattress and he urged her to sit.

  Isabella rubbed her eyes. “I did the wedding and … then I got a migraine. I’ve had one before.”

  “It was more than that, Belle. You fainted.” Harry sat next to her. His strong thigh brushed against hers. Without even thinking, she laid a hand there. He covered her hand with one of his and held her fingers.

  “Oh, shit. It wasn’t in the middle of the wedding, was it? It can’t have been. I remember the grooms and they were heading off to The Woolshed and …”

  “You married them and then you fainted. Max found you flaked out on the verandah. Everyone went into panic stations.” Harry’s voice was calm and quiet but his fingers were tight and getting tighter around hers. His voice sounded strange, too. “He called the local doc who came racing over and at one point you came to and mentioned something about a migraine, so he loaded you up with a shot and some meds and Maggie and Max brought you back here.”

  “That’s quite the adventure,” Isabella swallowed. Quick as a flash, Harry reached for the full glass of water on the bedside table and held it to her lips. The cool water was soothing and she swallowed it down.

  “So how did you …?”

  “Maggie called me. Told me everything.” A shudder went through him and he nudged her gently with a shoulder.

  “And you came?” she asked, looking up at him. His face was so close to hers, and even in the dim light of her bedroom she could see something there in his eyes.

  “Hell yeah, I did.”

  He let go of her hand and slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close. It felt good. She let her head rest on his shoulder and when he turned and kissed her temple, she let out a breath. She felt the urge to stay right there for the rest of her life, in his arms.

  “You should get some more sleep,” he told her.

  Her hand was still on his thigh. She gave it a quick squeeze. “I can sleep tonight. I’ve got the bride on the horse wedding to do today. I need to have a shower and get ready. What’s the time?”

  “It’s six in the morning.”

  “Oh, good. I was going to make myself some toast, and some juice might make my mouth feel less fuzzy.” She pressed a hand into the mattress to help herself up but Harry tugged at her singlet top.

  “Belle. It’s six o’clock in the morning on Saturday.”

  She blinked. “No, it’s Friday. Yesterday was the hospice and the grooms and …”

  “The hospice?” His back stiffened and his jaw clenched. “Why were you at the hospice?”

  Isabella shook her head. She didn’t want to remember it and she certainly didn’t want to talk about the things she would never forget: tragedy and family and love. “I’ve got to do the horse wedding. That’s on Friday. Today.”

  “Here.” Harry reached for her phone, which had been sitting on her bedside table all along, on silent. He pressed the button and turned the phone towards her so she could see. The display lit up: 6:08. Saturday.

  “Oh no.” A hand flew to her mouth.

  “You’ve been out of it for thirty-six hours, Belle. That was one cracker of a migraine.”

  “Oh no. Maggie … I’ve got to tell Maggie …” Isabella tried to stand up but Harry held on tight to her arm. “She’s been here. Everything is under control. Sleep now
and I’ll explain everything when you wake up.”

  Her head spun. She lay back, put her head on the pillow and Harry reached for the bunched-up sheet at the bottom of the bed and covered her with it. “Sleep.”

  Snatches of things swirled in her head. Horses. Rainbows. Slot machines. Dark hospital rooms. Regrets. Two people in love for a lifetime.

  After a long look, he turned to go but Isabella wasn’t so dazed that she couldn’t reach out quickly for his hand. “Harry.”

  His back was to her but he turned his head. She let her eyes drift closed. He was here and she wanted him close. For safekeeping. “Stay with me.”

  And when he slipped in beside her, she turned to him, snuggled into his outstretched arm, and drifted off into slumber.

  *

  Harry slipped two pieces of bread into Belle’s toaster and pushed down the lever. “She’s still sleeping.”

  “Good. I think that’s good. I hope when she wakes up it’s totally gone,” Maggie said down the line. “I know there’s nothing else I can do but wait, but hell, Harry.” She’d called every half hour that morning to check on Belle and now, at eight-thirty, Harry had checked all the missed calls on his phone and called back to reassure Maggie that Belle was still in bed, sleeping peacefully, no doubt still sleeping off the migraine that had hit her like a two-tonne truck and the drugs that had helped her knock it off.

  He opened the fridge, hoping to find some juice. Bingo. Orange and mango. He opened an overhead cupboard where he knew the drinking glasses were kept and filled one. He put the juice back in the fridge and took out the butter. He was trying to distract himself from the fear, deep down in his gut, that something far worse was wrong with Belle than a really bad headache. He needed distraction. After he’d slipped into bed beside her a couple of hours before, he’d stayed wide awake, checking that she was breathing. He counted the breaths on his shoulder, held her arm, which she’d laid across his belly, and thought about the impossibility of going back to a life that didn’t have Belle in it.