Eric looked around. ‘Yes. We love it here, we could both get jobs at the resort and the more money we have put away, the better. But…’ He stopped a little awkwardly. ‘I guess you know more about his plans.’
‘No,’ she said barely audibly.
‘Fleur—I don’t know what to say.’
She smiled briefly. But could think of absolutely nothing to say herself.
That afternoon she got her usual call from Bryn, but it turned out to be a far from usual call because of the news Bryn had to impart, still sounding dazed himself about it. Alana had come back…
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘BRYN! That’s…that’s wonderful!’
‘Yes,’ he said down the line. ‘I’m still finding it hard to believe but it’s the best news I’ve had for years.’
‘Is she staying?’
‘Yes. She says she’s got herself together at last and she never wants to leave Tom again. She’s dying to see him, although she’s scared stiff at the same time because she doesn’t know what to tell him and she feels so guilty—but I’m sure we can work that out. Dad, as you can imagine, is over the moon and it’s the best tonic he could have at the moment. Fleur, will you bring Tom down? I’m trying to organize a flight for tomorrow.’
‘Of course! What should I tell him, though? And where will they live…?’ She paused and felt a little arrow of pain pierce her heart.
‘Alana wants to come to Clam Cove for a time. Fleur, I know how much you love Tom—’
‘Don’t worry, Bryn,’ Fleur said quietly down the phone. ‘The sooner this happened, the better for Tom. It’s going to be much easier for him to accept at this age and, if it hurts a little, I’m also tremendously happy for him, and her.’
There was a short silence. ‘You are still his aunt.’
‘That too!’
‘Fleur, are you OK?’
‘I just told you—’
‘No,’ he broke in. ‘Look, I don’t think you quite understood why I didn’t want you to come down.’
She took an unexpected breath. ‘Perhaps not. But I don’t think we should worry about that at the moment. Getting this reunion right is the main thing. Bryn, if any pre-explaining to Tom is required I think you should do it. You’re still the person he admires most on the planet.’
‘All right, but so far as post-explaining goes, to you—’
‘Later, Bryn,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m fine. Tell me more about Alana.’
He hesitated, then did so and they ended the call companionably.
But she was not fine, of course.
She went to sit on their favourite log on the beach, and stared unseeingly out to sea. She’d barely had time to get over the shock of discovering that Bryn had asked Julene and Eric to caretake Clam Cove for the summer without consulting her, she mused, before this news had hit her.
Not, she reflected, that she had married Bryn because of Tom. She could never deceive herself about that. But Tom had been a part of Clam Cove and its fascination for her. All that was due to change now and it would require an effort from her, that she would gladly make, to ensure that Tom had no conflicting feelings for her. But it mightn’t be easy. Would it even be harder, she pondered, to be wondering if Bryn had married her because of Tom?
‘It seems to me,’ she murmured to the sea, ‘that there’s a growing list of reasons for why he might have married me, none of which was the right one. Tom,’ she counted off her fingers; ‘because I was being stalked; because he was restless and needed a diversion, which I patently didn’t provide other than in bed. I just don’t know what to do.’
‘So we’re going to Brisbane to see Grandpa?’ Tom said. ‘Yippee! Anything else I should know?’
Fleur regarded him affectionately at the same time as she thought, Help! ‘Bryn has a surprise for you,’ she said.
‘Oh? What?’ he asked excitedly.
‘I can’t tell you that. It wouldn’t be a surprise then! But you remember meeting my parents, Tom?’
‘Sure.’ He looked at her enquiringly.
‘Well, I may spend a bit of time with them. I’m their only kid, you see,’ she said gravely.
‘Can I come?’
‘No, dude. But you’re very important because you’re needed to make your grandpa feel better after his operation!’
‘Just don’t stay away too long, Fleur,’ he warned, then looked impish. ‘Or do anything I wouldn’t!’
Fleur relaxed inwardly. An hour later they stepped aboard the private plane that had picked up Bryn and were winging their way to Brisbane.
Bryn was at Eagle Farm to meet them and Fleur felt her heart start to beat heavily at the sight of him. He was wearing the same clothes as he’d worn the first time they’d met, although she wondered if he remembered that or if it had any significance—or if she was grasping at stray thoughts because she didn’t know what else to think? Other than that what she planned to do was going to be harder than she’d expected.
Then she was in his arms and Tom was hugging them both. Finally they turned and there was a tall woman standing diffidently behind them but with such a look of hunger in her eyes as they rested on Tom…
Alana Wallis was in her early thirties, willowy and, as Bryn had told her, she had the same colour hair as Fleur, although it was cut short, and blue eyes. She also had the same bearing that Fleur could recognize as being that of a trained model. But when she smiled you could see the relationship to Bryn, and to Tom…
It was Bryn who said, ‘Alana, this is Fleur. Tom, I don’t know if you remember me telling you when you were a kid that your mother, who was also my sister, had to go away? Well, now she’s come home, for you, and here she is right here.’ He put out a hand to Alana, gave Tom his other hand then piled all their hands on top of each other.
Done so simply, Fleur marvelled some time later. Although, it was only the groundwork, of course. Because Tom, being Tom, had had his own unique reaction to this turn of events.
He’d said to Alana, ‘Hello! Do you think you’re going to like me?’
Alana had cleared her throat and said simply, ‘Yes. Very much. But you might like to take your time about getting to know me.’
‘Well,’ he’d considered, ‘I might do that. Let’s go and see Grandpa. Fleur told me I was very important because he needs me to make him feel better after his operation!’
‘You’re not wrong, old son,’ Bryn agreed. ‘Let’s go.’
It was only after dinner that night that Fleur and Bryn were alone.
The Wallis family home in Brisbane was on Hamilton Hill with views of the river and Moreton Bay. It was a lovely old Queenslander with verandas all around and some priceless objets d’art within. It was at the same time, she couldn’t help reflecting, strange to think that both the son and daughter of this house had shunned it.
She was watching the lights on the river, the rhythmic blinking of the red and green channel markers, the blue and yellow lights of the leads, lights she knew well, when Bryn found her on the veranda.
‘I brought our coffee. Penny for your thoughts?’
She turned to him. ‘I was thinking that you and Alana did well today,’ she disseminated.
‘Yes.’ He put the cups down on a wrought-iron table and pulled up two chairs. ‘We decided a low-key approach was the only way to go.
Fleur, what’s wrong?’
She sat down and studied her cup. ‘Bryn, I’m going to spend some time with my parents. Oh, I’ll stay another day or so but I really think it will make it easier for them both, and easier for me. Tom knows about it and he doesn’t mind.’
‘I mind.’
Fleur raised her eyes to him at last. ‘Why? Surely we should think of Tom first? I don’t want him to be torn between me and Alana—’
‘It can only help him to know that you approve of Alana, Fleur. But how is he to know that if you jump ship?’
‘I’m not jumping ship,’ she returned evenly. ‘If I’d wanted to do that I would have don
e so by now. And I do approve of Alana. I know I’ve only known her a few hours but I think she’s lovely, and brave, and my heart goes out to her.’ For a moment there was a glint of tears in Fleur’s eyes. ‘But do you think I couldn’t see her…anguish and guilt when it was me, out of habit, he wanted to read his bedtime story?’
‘Fleur,’ there was something grim in the set of his mouth, ‘I know it’s asking a lot of you, but only you can help Tom make this transition. Disappearing is not the way; gradually releasing the ties is.’
‘I wasn’t going to disappear,’ she protested. ‘It so happens my parents live half a mile away. I could see him every day!’
‘How about me?’
‘You too…’
‘Is that what all this is about, Fleur?’
She picked up her cup and sipped her coffee. Then she could no longer lie. ‘Yes. It’s a funny thing, Bryn,’ she put her cup down, ‘but I feel as if I know less about you than I did when I married you. Which was not a lot at the time, anyway.’
‘What do you want to know?’ he drawled.
‘Nothing,’ she replied flatly, ‘if that’s the way you feel.’
‘If you think your timing is good, Fleur, you’re wrong. And if you’re comparing me with Eric, no, I guess being an open book and “straight up and down” is not my forte.’
He closed his eyes abruptly and when he spoke again it was in a different voice. ‘But it doesn’t mean I want to be anything other than married to you.’
She stared at him, transfixed.
He opened his eyes. ‘I came down here on my own because I needed to think things through. I told you that I could no longer ignore my father’s plight but I’m still not sure whether I want to…take over, or going on living a lotus-eating life at Clam Cove. I was going to, when I got back, present all the pros and cons to you so we could make a joint decision.’
‘Why couldn’t you have told me this?’ she asked huskily, at last.
He gestured. ‘I don’t know. There are some things I’m not good at, Fleur. Tearing you away from Clam Cove…has turned out to be one of them.’
‘If we were together, would it matter? What do you mean?’ she added immediately as the impression sank in that she had not grasped his meaning at all.
But they both turned at a small sound and it was to see Alana standing hesitantly in one of the veranda doors.
‘Come and join us,’ Bryn said immediately and got up to pull forward another chair.
‘Thanks.’ She had a cup of coffee in her hands. ‘It’s been quite a day. To be honest, it’s been a turbulent few months as I came out of…six years of a kind of numbness. Fleur, you probably can’t understand—’
‘I can,’ Fleur said quietly. ‘As Bryn knows, I went through a period of wanting to withdraw myself.’
‘You’ve obviously been wonderful with Tom,’ Alana said after a moment. ‘I don’t know how to thank you and I can’t help wondering how difficult this must be for you.’
Fleur could see again the genuine emotion and anguish in Alana, and she sighed inwardly, as she knew what she had to do, and would have had no problem doing if it weren’t for Bryn and the doubts she had about their marriage. ‘We can get through this together, Alana. I know we can.’
‘Thank you for that,’ Bryn said as he closed their bedroom door.
Fleur looked around, at the twin beds with their beautiful old mahogany headboards and padded gold quilts. She glanced up at the embossed pattern on the pressed-iron ceiling then walked across to the dressing table.
‘I’m just wondering,’ he continued, ‘how you would like us to go on, Fleur?’
She sat down on the stool and picked up a silver-backed brush. She turned it over in her hand then stroked her hair with it. ‘What did you mean about finding it hard to tear me away from Clam Cove, Bryn?’
He stared at her then sighed. ‘You turn so many heads, Fleur.’
Her eyes widened.
‘My father was right, the day we had lunch with him, but I see it again and again.’
‘Would you like me to wear sackcloth and ashes?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I know this is not particularly rational but…’ He paused.
‘Let’s follow it through,’ Fleur said huskily and put the brush down as she realized she was gripping it tightly. ‘You still haven’t changed your original opinion of me, have you, Bryn? You think that the more men I’m exposed to the more likely it is that I’ll be tempted to run off into the “fast lane” again and become man-bait, too gorgeous for my own good and all the other things you’ve said about me.’
‘Fleur, no—’ But he stopped as she stood up.
‘Then,’ she said and couldn’t quite stop her voice from shaking, ‘there’s the supreme irony that Tom no longer needs a mother, so you needn’t have married me at all.’
‘That’s not true—’
‘Oh, I think it might be.’
‘Fleur,’ he said harshly, ‘your imagination is working overtime.’
‘Think what you like, Bryn. You’re not the one who had to be told almost everything she knows about you—secondhand. You asked me,’ she swallowed, ‘how I would like us to go on? I’ll do all I can for Tom and Alana but I would like to be alone tonight.’
His mouth hardened. ‘Be my guest,’ he drawled and walked out.
The next three weeks were the hardest three weeks of her life, she was to think later.
By day, she and Bryn were as normal as possible, although anyone who took the time to think about it would have noticed that they were never alone together. On the other hand, it mightn’t have been that noticeable because Bryn was also very busy, holding the reins of the Wallis empire for his father. But by night, they slept in separate although adjoining bedrooms with the door firmly closed between them.
It was inescapably the right way to go for Tom’s sake, though, as Fleur poured her heart and soul into, very delicately, befriending his mother and loosening the ties. Not that it was a penance to befriend Alana. Once she began to lose her diffidence a warm, intelligent person emerged with touches of Bryn’s sense of humour.
Fleur discovered that Alana had made the transition from her retreat three months previously so that she could come to grips with life in the real world before she tackled getting back to Tom. She also found out that Alana had discovered a vocation in life during her retreat. If Bryn had inherited a cooking gene and a way with wood, his sister could paint.
Of course it wasn’t all plain sailing. There were times when Tom was fractious for no good reason, except that he could obviously sense there were changes looming in his life. It was on these occasions that Bryn, and his father when he came out of hospital, were invaluable. For that matter their transparent love for Alana and relief to have her back were also invaluable.
In fact, she said to Fleur one day, ‘They’re so good to me, I don’t know why…’ She stopped and sighed. ‘I always used to think Tom was better off without me. That was my greatest hurdle and greatest pain. I still don’t know how I came to have such little self-esteem.’
‘I do,’ Fleur replied. ‘Because I went a little way down that road myself. What I thought was the love of my life…fell apart and it was a little while before I realized I was…looking for love and the more I didn’t find it, the more diminished I seemed to feel. Is that how it may have happened for you, Alana?’
‘Yes. Oh, yes! But you must have had a lot more sense than I did. And now you’ve got Bryn.’
‘Now I’ve got Bryn,’ Fleur echoed and forced herself to smile. ‘I believe you’re coming back to Clam Cove with us?’
Alana hesitated. ‘I’m not quite sure what I should do. Clam Cove sounds ideal and Tom was obviously very happy there. As a matter of fact, Bryn suggested that we all go back together, Dad as well, while he’s convalescing, but I wanted to be sure it was what you wanted, Fleur? Bryn,’ Alana hesitated, ‘doesn’t seem altogether certain that his future lies there.’
Fle
ur flinched inwardly. ‘I know.’
‘So I wondered whether it was a good idea to take Tom back and then have to uproot him again if, for example, Bryn decides to sell it.’
‘I see your point,’ Fleur murmured through a bit of a daze that she devoutly hoped Alana didn’t detect. ‘Um…I did have a thought, Alana. Not in direct relation to Clam Cove but—well, you’ve met my parents? They don’t live far away but I was thinking of going to spend a few days with them. It won’t come as a shock to Tom because I mentioned that I might do this before we flew down. He was quite…cool about it.’ She smiled briefly. ‘The time has to come when I’m not there in his life and this may be a good way to…’ She stopped and gestured. ‘Do it naturally and not so that he feels he’s being—’
‘Torn away from you?’
‘Yes. You know, I can see a growing affinity between you and Tom already, so—’
‘I think that would be a good idea,’ Bryn said behind them.
They both turned, Fleur convulsively, to find Bryn smiling down at her in a way that sharply reminded her of what Julene had once said of Bryn along the lines of—asking him to do anything he didn’t want to do was like asking a tiger to be a pussy cat. Because she had never seen a more tigerish glint in his eyes beneath the amusement. And yet, this was not what he had wanted originally, she thought chaotically.
Then he ruffled her hair lightly. ‘Something has come up. May I have a moment of your time, Mrs Wallis?’
It was to the bedroom she was using that she followed him. He held the door open for her politely then closed it and leant back against it. ‘So you’re still of the same mind, Fleur?’
She stood in the middle of the room in her simple white trousers and lemon blouse. Her hair was gathered in a scarlet scrunchie. ‘You just said you thought it was a good idea.’
He shrugged. ‘We might as well be living in different houses, so what’s the difference?’
She swallowed.
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