The Country Girl

by Cathryn Hein

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Nicola smiled in sympathy. ‘I’m sorry we’d forgotten about him, and you. We should have talked to you earlier but …’ She gestured uselessly.

  ‘It’s okay. You’ve had bigger things to worry about.’

  Nicola’s gaze drifted to Maddy’s room. ‘Yes.’ Her hands tangled together. ‘I hope she’ll forgive us.’

  ‘I’m sure she will.’

  ‘I’m not sure Patrick will. I think he hates us right now. But we had to do it, for our own sanity as well as for Maddy. And watching him wasting his life was too heartbreaking. As for Annette and Derek, they were in complete despair. We love our daughter, and if there was any hope she could return to the girl she was we’d be proud to have Patrick standing by her side. But the sad truth is that will never happen. He knows that, but nothing we or his parents or anyone could say would make him face that it was time to move on.’

  ‘He didn’t want to break his promise.’

  ‘No, and we appreciate that. But Maddy would never have wanted him to be this way. She’d have wanted him to have a proper life, full of happiness and love, I’m sure of it.’ Determination edged her voice. ‘Now he has no choice.’

  No choice. That mantra again.

  Tash rose. After Nicola’s last words she wasn’t sure she was in the right frame of mind for a talk with Maddy, but it had to be done. ‘I should go and say hello.’

  She found Maddy on her side, staring vacantly. Tash pulled up the stool and sat close. She scrutinised Maddy’s face, thinking of Patrick and his fear that sometimes he thought she understood.

  ‘Patrick came around last night. We talked about you, about Mitch and what happened between us. It made me realise that I never apologised for how I acted. Afterwards, I mean. We should have talked it out instead of fighting, instead of …’ She blinked at the sting in her eyes. ‘I know you felt bad about it, I know you were sorry, but I couldn’t help it. I was just so hurt. But I want you to know that I’m sorry too. I should have behaved better. Our friendship was worth more than that.’ She breathed out a jagged breath and smiled crookedly. ‘We always were our own worst enemies. You with your fearlessness and me with my crappy confidence.’

  She rested her elbows on her thighs and studied the person who had been her best friend, with who she’d shared so many rites of passage, so much fun, so much growing up. The gorgeous young woman who had captured Patrick’s heart and held him spellbound.

  ‘There’s something else I need to tell you.’

  Tash looked down at her gripped hands, wondering why this admission was harder than the last. Why she even had to share it. Chances were it would never come to anything. Tash was by nature an optimist, but experience had taught her well when it came to men like Maddy’s fiancé.

  ‘It’s about Patrick.’ She looked up, intent on Maddy’s expression. ‘I have feelings for him. And I think …’ She swallowed. ‘I think he has feelings for me, and I don’t know what to do about it because it’s always been you and now you’re leaving …’ She rubbed her face. ‘Your mum says you’d want Patrick to move on and find someone else.’

  Her voice dropped even lower. She edged closer to Maddy’s face, sweeping its contours, hunting for something, anything.

  ‘But, Maddy, what if that person was me?’

  Chapter 28

  Patrick felt as though an hourglass had been implanted in his chest, the sand trickling through the narrow neck with ever-increasing speed. His visits to Springbank changed from once a day to any chance he could get. He wasn’t ignorant of his responsibilities at Wiruna and made sure to never leave his dad in the lurch, but when an opportunity arose to get away, Patrick took it.

  If he wasn’t sitting with Maddy, he was helping Nicola and Grant with sorting and packing the house and sheds. He kidded himself that the Handrecks appreciated the extra hand, but from the way they looked at him sometimes it seemed they were more exasperated than anything.

  Stiff. This was for Maddy and them whether they liked it or not. Other than easing their burden a little, Patrick didn’t know any other way to say goodbye. Or thanks. They’d once welcomed him to the family, celebrated his love for their daughter, and treated him like a son. Patrick wasn’t about to forget it. Or Maddy.

  He cut his dinners with Tash to Thursday nights only. He would have cut that too if she hadn’t insisted she needed his help to clear up all her leftovers. Patrick wasn’t convinced that was true. She seemed to serve a lot of meals cooked from scratch while he was there. Simple serves of grilled meat or fish, pastas and stir-fries, with plenty of salad or vegetables. Healthy food, and nothing like her usual range of meat and butter-laden dishes, giving Patrick the suspicion he was being nursed. He wouldn’t put it past his mum to have asked Tash to keep an eye on him. If he weren’t so distracted, he’d have challenged Tash about it. Either way he was grateful, and her constant cheerfulness soothed his aching heart.

  That didn’t stop Patrick feeling awkward around her, after her revelations about Mitch Green. The depth of her feelings for Mitch still surprised him. There was no way Mitch was right for Tash—everyone had thought so. Yet the deep hurt in her voice had been unmistakable. Hearing her describe Mitch’s faith in her, the way he’d made her feel adored, had made Patrick all too aware of his own failings. He’d complimented Tash hundreds of times in his mind, thought how talented, clever and gorgeous she was, but the words he’d said aloud could be counted on one hand. It was a wonder she wanted to spend time with him at all. That she was doing so had to be down to her innate kindness or as a favour to his mum. It wasn’t because of his charm, that’s for sure.

  Fortunately, Patrick had plenty of excuses to keep his distance. After several discussions with his dad and Grant, and then the bank, Patrick secured the financing to lease Springbank’s remaining few hundred acres. With its shared boundary to Wiruna and productive land, it made sense. Patrick had argued to include the house but it was kept separate from the deal. No one wanted him rattling around with Maddy’s memory, especially on his own. Once the move was complete, the house would be placed with an agent and advertised for lease.

  The thought of strangers at Springbank sat uneasily on Patrick’s heart. It seemed like another letdown. He’d always clung to the secret hope that he and Maddy would make their future at either Wiruna or Springbank, the way Tash’s parents had done at Castlereagh after Baz handed over management to Peter. Those secret dreams were gone though, like so many others.

  June arrived, and with it the last trickles of sand through Patrick’s internal hourglass. Boxes were stacked high in every room at Springbank, some labelled for transport, others for storage. Peter Ranger had used his flatbed truck to take several loads to the dump and deliver unwanted clothing, manchester and other goods to Emu Springs two charity shops. An uncharacteristically subdued Tash had taken the last of Maddy’s saddlery and horse gear, while Patrick’s mum and Liz shared pot plants from the garden.

  The week before, Grant had made a rushed trip to the Sunshine Coast to sign the lease on a small townhouse, collect the keys and hire a secure storage unit. His return kicked off a domino fall of activity. Maddy’s specialist transfer to the hospice was confirmed, along with the removalists, and the house placed with a real estate agent. Several farewell gatherings were held—dinners with friends and family, a party at the bowling club. Tears flowed, along with plenty of laughter and promises to stay in contact. Patrick attended none, choosing instead to sit with Maddy.

  Each visit he did what he’d always done and slipped her ring on her finger. The Handrecks had shaken their heads at it but kept their opinions to themselves, which was just as well. The turmoil in Patrick’s head and heart was barely controlled as it was. Staying engaged to a person not only unaware of his existence but who would also soon be living half a continent away was absurd. He knew it, everyone else knew it too. But how did you break that kind of pledge when the very person you made it to, who you’d promised to l
ove and cherish forever, no matter what, was lying helpless and unable to fight back?

  So Patrick kept putting it off. He simply sat and absorbed Maddy’s face, and with a cracked voice talked about the past, all the wonderful times they’d had, the love they’d shared and how much it had meant to him.

  On the morning of the last day, heartsick and haggard with sleeplessness, Patrick slipped Maddy’s ring on her wedding finger and held her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He swallowed, searching for more words. ‘I know I never said it enough but you were my world. My world, my dreams, my future. Now you’re leaving and I feel lost because I don’t know if this is right or wrong. I’ve tried so hard to see what you might want, to work out what would be best for you. What’s about you and not my selfish honour, but I don’t know.’ He blinked at the sting in his eyes. ‘I just don’t know and I’m so scared, Maddy. So scared I’ve let you down. That somewhere inside you’re screaming at me to help you stay. To not abandon you.’

  He pressed his face to her hand. ‘This is not what I ever wanted. If I’d been allowed I would have taken care of you like I promised I would. But the decision was taken from me and nothing I said or did could change it. Now all I can hope is that your mum and dad are right and that this place might help you come back to them, even if only a little.’

  He sniffed and lifted his head to stare at the face he’d once worshipped, his fingers on the hard edges of her diamond ring.

  It was time.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Patrick. Closing his eyes, he tugged gently and began removing the ring for the final time. As it hit the resistant ridge of her knuckle, Maddy’s fingers curled, locking the ring in place.

  Patrick’s eyes flew open. ‘Maddy?’

  Heart thudding, he studied her face then her hand. Already the fingers were loosening. It was probably coincidence. There’d been many lately. He’d been over-sensitive to them, seeing a sign in everything she did because he was so desperate, when his rational mind knew these movements were spontaneous and random. This was no different.

  Except the fear Patrick carried wouldn’t let him listen to reason.

  He sat, torn between his head and heart. Needing to say the words that would break them apart, unable to get them out.

  ‘Patrick?’

  He glanced up. Nicola was at the door. ‘I’m sorry, but we really need to start preparing Maddy.’

  He shook his head and stared back at his fiancée and the symbol of faith and love that remained on her finger.

  ‘Please, son.’ It was Grant, already crossing the room, as though Patrick’s response to Nicola had been anticipated.

  ‘I can’t.’

  Grant closed a fist over his shoulder. ‘I know it’s hard, but you have to.’ He waited but Patrick couldn’t move. The grip on his shoulder tightened. ‘Don’t make this worse.’

  ‘Here,’ said Nicola, lifting Maddy’s hand from his. ‘Let me help.’

  With a deft tug, the ring came off. She held it out to Patrick in her open palm.

  He ignored it. ‘It’s hers.’

  ‘Patrick …’

  He scraped his chair back and stood, feeling sick. ‘No. It’s Maddy’s.’

  Grant and Nicola exchanged a look.

  Nicola spoke hesitantly. ‘Wouldn’t it be better—’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t.’ He inhaled deeply in an effort to calm himself. ‘It’s hers. Always will be. Take it with her, so she knows … so she never forgets that she was once my world.’

  Without looking back, Patrick escaped through the French doors. He walked fast across the terrace and the yard, and took the track down past the shed. Wind flicked his hair and tugged his jumper, and froze the tears he couldn’t stop shedding for everything he’d lost.

  He stopped at a gate and surveyed the land that was now his to care for, reaching for calm he wasn’t sure would ever be his again. It was irrational, but the curl of her finger haunted him. As though she refused to allow that one last indignity.

  Patrick breathed in the metallic tang of winter. Nature carried on around him, oblivious to his pain, continuing its cycles of birth and death. Regret wouldn’t stop it, neither would guilt. Whatever the past, life would go on. Just as his would.

  He’d only really loved two women in his life. One he would lose today for a second time. The other wasn’t even his to lose, and might not ever be. If he and Tash did get together she still had dreams that could take her far from him. Patrick wasn’t sure he could cope with that again.

  Except he would. It was the way life worked. You endured.

  Patrick tilted his head back to take in the sky. Clouds raced on the wind and whipped shadows across the land. He felt as flailed as they were, buffeted by forces he had no control over, and hadn’t known how to fight. And where had that left him? Broken and weak and scared. Not the man Maddy had fallen for and definitely not the man he wanted to be.

  And absolutely not the man a girl like Tash deserved.

  Chapter 29

  Wednesday night ticked away with no sign of Patrick. Farewelled by her closest friends, Nicola had left Springbank with Maddy that afternoon and Tash had been expecting Patrick since, but the yard remained quiet and the gingerbread she’d baked for him untouched.

  She supposed it was understandable. The day would have been painful, a symbolic as well as literal end to a relationship that comprised not only their time as lovers, but their years of friendship. Even badly disabled, Maddy was still the woman he’d expected to spend the rest of his life with, to have a family with, to work and grow old with. This wasn’t just a person he was being parted from, but his dreams too. Tash had thought that after such a wrench Patrick might need her, if only for a little while, but her evening stretched on alone.

  With a sigh she set aside the notepaper where she’d been brainstorming business ideas and opened her laptop to check how her latest video was faring. Extremely well, if the number of hits and engagement was anything to go by. At least that was something to feel positive about.

  She scanned the comments, hitting ‘Like’ and replying to those who warranted feedback. To her surprise Patrick had liked the video. She hoped that was a sign he wasn’t feeling too horrible about the day. Tash toyed with the idea of sending him a direct message and decided against it. He knew how to get in touch if he needed to talk.

  Farmer Fred had left a comment complimenting Tash on her recipe for apple and chocolate bread-and-butter pudding, and her exemplary use of dairy products. ‘A girl after my own dairy farming heart.’ Smiling, Tash wrote back and told him she did her best.

  A request to instant message shot up, as if he’d been waiting impatiently online for her response. She wavered then hit accept.

  ‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he typed.

  ‘Hey back at you. How are things in Tassie?’

  ‘Cold. Uddery. I liked your pud.’

  ‘Thanks. I aim to please.’

  ‘You’ll have to make it for me one day.’

  Tash hesitated before typing back. She normally discouraged this kind of intimacy but she was feeling a bit abandoned and in need of distraction. ‘You could always make it yourself or get one of your girlfriends to do it.’

  There was a long pause before his reply appeared. ‘No girlfriend. Not anymore.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good one, Tash,’ she muttered. ‘Idiot.’

  She hunted for a way to shut down the conversation without appearing rude. ‘I guess I’d better let you get to bed. You probably have to get up insanely early to milk.’

  ‘I’d rather talk to you. You’re prettier than any of my cows.’

  ‘Er, thanks. I think.’

  ‘Sorry. Not good at this.’

  Tash smiled a little. That made two of them. ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘You are pretty though.’

  ‘Thanks. I can’t say anything about you because you only have an avatar.’

  ‘Would you believ
e me if I said I was six foot two, good looking, muscly and rich?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Okay. I admit it. I’m not rich. The rest is true though.’

  Tash rolled her eyes. ‘You must have women hanging off every long limb.’

  ‘No.’ There was another pause. ‘If I did I’d shake them all off for you.’

  ‘That’d be a shame.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have no plans to move to Tassie.’

  ‘Not even for a good-looking, muscly dairy farmer who thinks you’re gorgeous and clever and amazing?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You could have your wicked way with me … with butter.’

  Tash laughed. ‘You’re cute.’

  ‘Not as cute as you.’

  ‘I have to go now.’

  ‘Okay. Sleep well, gorgeous.’

  ‘You too. Be good to your cows.’

  Tash closed the computer down and sat back with her uggbooted feet on the coffee table, thinking. When was the last time she’d properly flirted with a man? She’d tried with Brandon but he’d been indifferent. Which was, in light of recent events, fortunate. Before him there’d been a couple of similar types—handsome, sporty, out-of-her-league men, blind to everything beyond her ‘great personality’—then darling Mitch.

  It was a nice feeling, to have someone flatter and tease. To have someone genuinely interested in her as a woman. But chatting up a dairy farmer from Tasmania online wasn’t quite what Tash had in mind. She wasn’t meant to be moping over this anyway. She had a business to run, a cookbook to complete, new ideas to explore. There were a hundred things going on in her life. Wonderful things. Satisfying things. So why the hell was she hungering for a man?

  And, worse, why did that man have to be Patrick of the beautiful people?

  Thursday morning brought Pa and a pumpkin the size, weight and colour of a small boulder.

  ‘Did you put it on steroids or something?’ Tash asked as he hoisted the monster onto the bench.

  ‘No, Flossie. That’s just good old-fashioned poo.’