Jason’s face brightened.
‘I’ll win the Junior by then,’ he declared. ‘Come on, how about another game?’
Alana groaned.
‘No way, kiddo. But I’m happy to play, say, weekends and Wednesdays, and knock up with you when I can on the other days, but only until you’ve settled in at school and either have a good coach and regular tennis sessions there, or you get a coach outside school and start working with him or her.’
‘You could coach me,’ Jason suggested, and Alana felt a spurt of excitement at the prospect of such a challenge.
Then she faced reality.
‘No, you need the best. I’m only a stopgap measure. Once you know what’s on offer at school, we’ll talk again. I know a coach who’d take you on, ex-Davis Cup player, but you don’t need two people offering you differing advice, so if the school coach is any good, you could stick with him.’
They talked a little longer, and were laughing about some of the antics of famous tennis players of the past when footsteps sounded on the path that led to the court.
‘It’s the Dracula-clone,’ Jason whispered, and Alana, realising she didn’t have time to protest at the remark, contented herself with a reproachful look.
‘Are you ready for this shopping expedition?’ a voice demanded—and Alana scrambled to remove her legs from the back of the seat and push herself into an upright position.
That definitely hadn’t been a woman’s voice.
Jason had walked away, obviously to answer his uncle, and Alana sneaked a look that way. Far from being a ‘Dracula-clone’, Drusilla was, in fact, a very beautiful woman. Dark-haired, fair-skinned, small and beautifully proportioned. At the sight of her by Rory’s side, a wave of totally unexpected, and definitely unacceptable, jealousy washed over Alana.
Suspecting she was flushed with embarrassment, and knowing for certain her faded shorts and skimpy singlet top were damp with sweat and probably grubby as well, she somehow managed to acknowledge the introduction to Drusilla McAllister.
But it was the scowl on Rory’s face that grabbed her attention. Surely she didn’t look that bad.
Or was he scowling because Jason was rattling on about her suggestion that he set goals, speaking as if winning the Junior then going to the States in two years’ time was a foregone conclusion.
Rory undoubtedly felt she’d crossed the boundary between casual friendship and family business. Hence the scowl?
‘I was only throwing up suggestions,’ she said lamely, hoping to eradicate the scowl. ‘We talked about coaches as well. I thought he should wait and see who coaches at the school.’
The scowl showed no sign of eradication. If anything, it seemed to be growing fiercer.
So she scowled back.
‘Don’t let me keep you from the shopping. I’ll gather up the balls and you can phone me if you want a hit-up, Jase.’
She heard Drusilla catch her breath, and looked towards the woman, who was watching Jason closely. But the boy didn’t seem to notice, simply turning to smile at Alana before demanding of his uncle if they could eat before they shopped.
‘You can grab one of Drusilla’s muffins and eat it while you change. That should keep you going until lunch,’ Rory said, as the three of them turned to walk away.
Alana watched them go, the tall man, the smaller woman, and the lanky teenager between them.
Her heart squeezed with sudden pain.
They looked like a family!
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘IF YOU’RE not doing anything else, let’s lunch.’
Daisy offered the invitation as Alana was unlocking her door. She spun around, surprised by the suggestion.
‘What’s with you?’ she asked. ‘Breakfast with Kirsten and me last week, lunch with me this week? Have you finally decided it’s time to break out of your self-imposed exile from the world?’
‘Is that how you’ve seen me?’ Daisy asked—as a psychologist would, of course.
‘Isn’t that how you’ve been?’ Alana shot back at her. Two could play the ‘answering a question with a question’ game.
‘Only because of my working hours. I go out in the daytime during the week, but the rest of you are usually working—or if you’re on night duty, you’re sleeping. It’s only been at weekends I’ve been anti-social—because of working Friday and Saturday nights.’
‘Hmmm,’ Alana said, hoping she’d injected a good measure of scepticism into her noncommittal noise. ‘But, yes, I’d like to lunch. Give me twenty minutes. Do you want to come in and wait? I’ve got the Saturday papers.’
‘No, I’ll wash my breakfast dishes. That way, I’ll feel swamped with virtue and can reward myself with a dessert.’
Alana laughed. Daisy had a chronic sweet tooth and, though not overweight, was nicely rounded. But in her own eyes, the extra pounds were a problem so, while forever offering advice to parents whose adolescent daughters were paranoid about their weight, she was always battling her own genetic disposition.
They chose a small café not far from the hospital, walking to it so Daisy could feel even less guilty about the dessert.
‘Now, without revealing trade secrets, tell me about Jason,’ Alana suggested, when they’d ordered and were enjoying a coffee while their meals were prepared. ‘He seems an OK kid to me, so why’s he seeing you?’
Daisy didn’t answer immediately, then she sighed, blowing air out so audibly that Alana worried about her young friend.
‘I don’t really think there’s anything the matter with him, but he’s had a lot to handle lately,’ Daisy said. ‘His uncle’s worried that he won’t talk about his mother—or about her illness. He—Rory, not Jason—is also concerned that he had to bring the boy away from his old environment at such a time, and the effects that might have on Jason.’
‘And?’ Alana prompted.
‘And what? Isn’t that enough?’
‘Not really. Are you helping him? Does he want to be helped? Won’t he talk about things when he’s ready?’
Daisy chuckled.
‘I know you’ve become friendly with him, and that’s probably the best thing that’s happened to him since moving here. But to answer your questions—I don’t know if I’m helping him, and he certainly doesn’t think he needs help, and, yes, he probably will talk about things when he wants to. So far, all I’ve done is talk to him about my work, what I do and how I do it. I’ve told him I’m there if he wants to talk—about anything at all, not just to do with his mother’s death. We’ve a weekly appointment and so far he’s come once to be introduced and for me to explain all this, and for him to tell me he didn’t need me—and that’s it.’
‘Yet you said, that day in the canteen, that he was a mixed-up kid who needed help—that’s why you had to talk to his uncle.’
‘I still think he probably is,’ Daisy replied, ‘but until he wants help from me, I can’t help him. I may never be able to help him and, to be perfectly honest, he could easily work his way through this by himself. I think what worries Rory is that there’s going to be a custody battle with Jason’s father, and if the court asks for a psychological evaluation of the lad, and the psychologist picks up problems, Rory might lose him.’
‘Hell! He loves the kid, and he loved Jason’s mother, and he’s the one who was there all through her illness. How could the court take Jason away?’
‘For any of the reasons I already mentioned—like Rory living here so far from where Jason grew up.’
‘Well, next time I talk to him—Jase, I mean—I’ll tell him he’d better get his butt into gear for his next appointment with you and make sure he’s sorted before any court-appointed psychologist gets hold of him.’
A waitress arrived with their meals—salad foccacia rolls for both of them—and Daisy waited until she’d gone before replying.
‘Don’t do that, Alana,’ she said quietly. ‘For a start, I shouldn’t have been talking to you about all of this, but I know you have his best interests at
heart. But the most important reason not to get involved in that way is because he sees you as a friend. Someone he’s found for himself. A person he likes and who, presumably, likes him. He needs you to continue to be his friend, not his spare psychologist.’
Alana frowned at her.
‘But we all do our amateur psychology stuff with our friends. Analysing ourselves and each other, discussing our reactions to just about everything under the sun. It’s what friends do.’
‘It’s what women friends do with each other, and there’s a two-way exchange. He can’t possibly do that for you, so you doing it for him would leave him in a lesser position in the friendship. Think about the roles we play in each other’s lives. We’re all different people to others—daughter, friend, lover, mother. Talking to him about stuff he’d expect me to discuss with him would have you stepping out of your role as his friend just as decisively as, say, you suddenly taking up with his uncle.’
‘Me taking up with his uncle? You mean romantically? As if!’
She hoped she sounded outraged, which was how Daisy would expect her to sound.
Not shivery, tingly excited, which was actually how she felt.
‘Yes. I realise it’s not likely to happen,’ Daisy said, with such certainty Alana had to bite back the ‘why not?’. ‘But it illustrates what I mean. Because he’s an adolescent there could well be a bit of boy-girl attraction in his relationship with you, and even if there wasn’t, it would still seem to him—if the pair of you did get involved—that his uncle had stolen his friend. And his attitude to you would change—you prefer his uncle to him and you’ve also pinched the man who’s been his sole support for the last few months.’
Alana heard this very logical explanation through a thick black cloud of gloom that seemed to have settled over her side of the table. Not that it didn’t make sense, for it did, and she could even pick up on all the unspoken nuances—like more hurt and loss for Jason—in the basic explanation.
Not that she’d ever really expected to have a rip-roaring affair with Rory Forrester—although, considering it that way, the alliteration made it an even more attractive proposition!
But she had been attracted—probably still was—and now Daisy’s theories had made him a definite no-go area. Rory Forrester was off-limits.
Something of her thoughts must have been visible on her face, for Daisy was looking anxiously at her.
‘What’s up? Do you feel I’ve got it wrong? I could have. I don’t claim to know everything.’
Daisy sounded so anxious Alana rushed in to reassure her.
‘No, you made perfect sense. I was thinking about the boy, losing his mother at that age.’
She glanced guiltily around, fearing that a plane trailing a banner saying LIAR might immediately swoop over the open-air eating area.
‘So, let’s get off the Forrester saga and do what women do best. Let’s analyse each other’s lives. What’s prompting you to reconsider your career, apart from the stupidity of the people who phone in to your programme?’
They chatted on but, though Alana felt a certain amount of pride in her composure, a large knot of disappointment remained lodged in her intestines, while the black cloud had turned the world a very colourless grey.
Back home, a major spring-cleaning project suggested itself as one way to get through the afternoon—and ignore the grey cloud and knot of disappointment. Alana started on the spare bedroom, so rarely used it didn’t need much attention, but she dusted and vacuumed, changed the sheets so any unexpected guest wouldn’t cause a flurry of bed-making, then moved on to the bathroom.
Cupboard first, where, with a garbage bag in one hand, she flung away any ancient almost empty bottles and tubes, reducing the contents to spare soap, tissues and necessities like shampoo, skin cleanser, moisturiser and a small bag containing her cosmetics.
‘Most efficient,’ she praised herself, when, with tiles and bath gleaming and the floor washed, she dragged the bag out to the living room, where months of old magazines joined the exodus.
Depositing the full bag by the door, she dusted the wooden shutters, then shifted all the furniture into the centre of the room, determined to vacuum bits of carpet that only saw the light of day about once a year.
‘Ugh! Does dust breed?’ she muttered to herself, then, as she pulled the vacuum cleaner around the room, someone knocked on the door.
Prince Charming for sure! Here with the slipper. And me in my oldest shorts and a filthy shirt and sweat and dirt for decoration!
‘It’s me. Jason! Are you home?’
She debated pretending not to be, then heard his key slide into the lock and shot across the room to open the door. At least, if there was, as Daisy suspected, any undercurrent of attraction in his friendship towards her, seeing her like this should dispel it.
‘I’m spring-cleaning,’ she said, though the explanation was hardly necessary.
‘It’s not spring,’ the literal-minded male replied.
‘I know that, it just needed doing,’ Alana told him, not adding that she’d needed something to occupy her mind and physical work had seemed the best bet. ‘Did you want something?’
Had she sounded abrupt, that Jason’s ears went pink and the usually vocal young man looked tongue-tied?
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have come,’ he muttered. ‘Rory said I shouldn’t…’
‘So, of course, you did!’ Alana smiled her encouragement. ‘Come on, spit it out, I won’t bite you.’
She won a half-smile.
‘It’s a favour, and though Rory says it’s too big a favour to ask of someone we hardly know—but I do know you, don’t I? Anyway, I’d eat upstairs and everything, it’s just a bed.’
Alana tried to make sense of the words, but failed.
‘What’s just a bed?’
‘Your bed.’ His cheeks went pink, while the ear colour escalated to scarlet. ‘Not your bed, of course, but your spare bed. You see, Rosemary’s just arrived. She’s Rory’s old girlfriend from for ever, and she’s come up to stay and Drusilla is still here and Rory’s already sleeping in the living room so I can’t sleep there…’
Light dawned, and though Alana’s mind was offering hilarious images of Rory Forrester with two females on his hands—and in his not so large flat—her intestines didn’t find it amusing and, really, her first priority should be Jason, still standing pinkly on her doorstep.
‘You want to stay? Of course you can. I must have been psychic because I started my spring—OK, autumn—clean in the spare bedroom.’
‘Thanks Alana,’ Jason said. Then, to her intense surprise, he reached across and gave her a quick hug before dashing off to the stairs to go up to his floor.
‘Get the vacuuming done,’ Alana told herself, and though she obeyed, the cleaning urge had died—killed by the thought of ‘Rory’s old girlfriend from for ever’.
It shouldn’t worry you—he’s off-limits, remember.
She pushed the nozzle of the machine fiercely across the carpet, banging it right up against the wall.
He’s not for you, no matter how attractive you might find him.
She slammed an armchair back into its usual position, then decided it might look better somewhere else and dragged it across the carpet to the opposite corner.
Another tap on the door. She was close enough, given where she’d shifted the chair, to open it immediately, saying brightly to her expected visitor, ‘It didn’t take you long to pack.’
‘Was I included in the invitation to stay? It’ll only take me a minute to whip upstairs and pack, believe me.’
Rory looked and sounded so harassed Alana was tempted to hug him—just a friendly hug—but the situation with Jason put even friendly hugs out of bounds.
‘Oh,’ she said instead, as the implications of the urge shook her composure. Then, suddenly conscious of how dreadful she must look, she took refuge in a babble of words. ‘I’ve already rented out the spare bed but you could have the lounger on the balcony, or
I’ve a spare guinea-pig cage in the basement.’ She looked him up and down. ‘If you wouldn’t find it cramped!’
He smiled and her bones melted and she told herself it was stupid to joke with Rory Forrester, but what else was she supposed to do?
‘I came to thank you for agreeing to take Jason. It shouldn’t be for long—hell, I hope it’s not for long. I…It’s my fault…’
He shrugged broad shoulders and looked even more despondent, and again the urge to hug him swept fiercely over Alana—so fiercely she had to clutch the vacuum wand very tightly so her hands didn’t involuntarily move towards him.
‘I should have told Drusilla to stay somewhere else, right from the start, but I didn’t and now, with her there, I can hardly tell Rosemary she can’t stay, so I need Jason’s room for her.’
Huh?
‘So it isn’t obvious to Drusilla that you and this Rosemary are an item?’
The question slid from her lips before she realised it was there, but once it was out she realised there was more.
‘Why? Is it a secret? Jason says it’s been going on for ever, you and Rosemary. Wouldn’t Drusilla have known?’
Rory said nothing, simply staring at her with a perplexed expression on his face—as if she might be speaking Urdu. Then light dawned in Alana’s mind.
‘Oh, Rosemary just needs a room. With you already camped in the living room, she needs somewhere to put her gear.’
Shaking his head, and totally uninvited, Rory stepped into her flat and slumped into the chair she’d just pushed over to the corner near the door.
‘Women!’
The word held such a degree of loathing Alana was glad he was off-limits, though there were bits of her not taking any notice of the ban and jiggling up and down with delight at the sight of him in her lounge chair.
‘I’m a woman!’ she reminded him, realising she should stand up for the sisterhood. ‘And I’m helping you out.’
‘You are not helping me out,’ he growled, then shook his head and added, in no less of a growl, ‘Well, you are with Jason, but every other way you’re driving me insane. You’d think when a man has two women camped in his home, one proposing marriage at regular intervals and the other arriving, no doubt ready to spring a similar offer on him at any moment, the last thing he’d be feeling is sexual attraction to yet another one of the species. You’d think it’d be enough to put him off women for life but, no, the old male urge kicks in and every time I see you, even with dust smeared across your face and rat’s-tail hair, I want to throw you over my shoulder, cart you off to my cave and have my evil way with you.’
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