by Lea Darragh
‘So this is the variety of wine and this is the year that it was bottled. And on the back here,’ he effortlessly rolled the bottle between his hands, ‘there’s advice on the cuisine that the wine complements.’
It wasn’t the way that he handled the bottle with sexy confidence that stole my breath. It was the easy smile across Nick’s mouth, put there with no real effort from the woman in a short black skirt and tailored white blouse, that haltingly stopped my heart from beating.
I should have let myself be known. I should have walked right into that cellar and interrupted my husband’s cosy one-on-one lesson with an overconfident woman, but I was frozen to the spot. I was hypnotised by him; I was in awe of him as he laughed and become animated over the pride and joy that was his wine. I was silenced by the memory of my husband that existed before he’d thrown himself into a bottomless pit of depressed melancholy. His face was alive. His laugh came from his stomach because for once his mood was unweighed by burdens, and I began to cry silent tears as I watched my beautiful husband’s buoyant disposition brighten my entire world. Then it all became dark again as I heard Lucy’s sing-song voice asking ridiculous questions. Surely he realised she was faking her obtuse grasp on what he actually did for a living, on what she had grown up around while his father built this place. Maybe he just didn’t care. Maybe he indulged her because she didn’t remind him of his failure.
‘So the variety of grape differs from white wine to red wine? That’s amazing,’ she said. I almost laughed out loud at how fucking ridiculous she sounded, but instead I became incensed as she reached out and touched Nick’s arm.
It wasn’t that Lucy had touched him that suddenly nauseated me, it was the fact that Nick didn’t move his arm away; he just nodded and let her touch him.
Enough was enough.
‘There you are,’ I said cheerily though inside my blood was simmering. The moment I had been dreading had arrived; his face fell in my presence and he had shrunk back into his hole.
‘I’m giving Lucy a belated induction. She missed out when I did the others,’ he said as he stepped out into his own space, and not the space of what could have been perceived as a flirty couple on a tipsy wine tour.
I eyed Lucy inquisitively. ‘Induction? Didn’t I give you one a while ago?’
‘Did she?’ Nick seemed as though he’d been misled.
Lucy shrugged an innocent apology and I wondered whether she’d bat her eyelids too. ‘I guess I needed a refresher.’
The air around us became awkward and I inwardly cursed myself, and Lucy, and Nick for that matter, for having found ourselves in such a strange situation. The only thing that could make it any worse would be if Blake was here; then it would be a love square and not a love triangle.
‘I need a word with you,’ I said to Nick.
He consulted his watch. ‘It’s almost time to open. Lucy, you should get started in the restaurant. Put the new menus that we went through earlier into the leather folders.’
‘Would you like me to keep some lunch for you again?’ she asked.
His eyes darted to me. ‘No. I’ll get my own.’
‘We have apple pie on the menu,’ she cajoled in her trademark flirty tone.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Ok. Well I’ll get to work, then.’ She turned to leave, but with an afterthought she flipped her hair and turned back around. ‘Catey, would you like some lunch kept for you?’
‘How generous of you, but no.’ As much as I fought to suppress it, my disdain leaked out, and it annoyed me that I finally allowed Lucy get to me.
Left alone in the cellar, which shouldn’t feel as if I were intruding, I drew in long, deep breaths in an effort to regain composure. This feeling of displacement was as foreign to me as a snow storm would be to the Bahamas. I felt that, for the very first time since way back when we were four or five and we had the ability to intuitively understand each other, our relationship was not only dislocated, but that I didn’t know if I actually knew him anymore. He stood as if he was resisting a magnet that was pulling him to the floor, and I became disenchanted when I felt the same pull against my will to fight.
‘Give me a reason not to walk away, Nick,’ I said. I was stunned to see how his face relaxed as I spoke. ‘You’re relieved?’
‘I don’t know what you want from me anymore.’
‘I want something other than a grunt or a careless, repetitive excuse from you. For the life of me, Nick, I just do not understand how you can treat me this way. What have I actually done to deserve your cold shoulder and even colder words — if I’m lucky enough to have you speak to me at all?’ My rant left my mouth of its own accord. ‘I am not the one who made you infertile. I am not the one who stumbled on this hurdle, even though it was a very difficult hurdle to clear. I know what it is like to struggle with life, and like you, I am there to catch you and I do it gladly, because you are my husband and I love you. But I tell you what—’ I suddenly halted because I now knew was coming.
‘What?’ he stepped forward toward me as if he knew the rest but wanted me to say it anyway. ‘Tell me what?’
‘Forget it.’
He stepped closer again. ‘Tell me what?’
‘You and I both know what’s happening here.’
‘I need you to say it, Cate.’ Now I was the coward. His hands went to my upper arms and he looked deep into my eyes. ‘You’ve had enough?’
‘I’m exhausted.’
He pulled me into his arms. ‘I know.’
I began to cry. ‘I don’t want to have to fight for you anymore. You’re making it so hard.’
‘I know.’
‘I can see what you’re doing.’
It was a few seconds before he said anything, and when he finally did his voice was thick with pleading angst. ‘Please give in. Stop plotting against me, please. Just put me out of my misery.’
I separated myself from him. ‘Is it really that painful being with me?’
‘I’m sorry.’
I let my niggling pang of jealousy get the better of me. ‘I bet it’s not painful being with Lucy,’ I muttered.
‘No, it’s not, because I don’t love her until my whole body aches.’
‘You say things like that, but then you avoid me like the plague. Just because we’ve fallen doesn’t mean that the fight is over. We have to get up, brush ourselves off and start again.’
‘Start again?’ he looked at me as if I’d asked him to flap his arms and fly to the moon. ‘There is no starting again; there is no fight here, Cate. We can’t win this. We have no control in the matter.’
‘We do though, if you’d listen to me once in a while. I almost give up on us and then you’ll look at me like you used to, or say something that vaguely resembles who you used to be and then suddenly it’s not over for me. It’ll never be over, ever. We can be happy again, and I must warn you that I will keep plotting and inciting awkward scenes as long as I believe that we still have some kick left.’
‘But you’ll stop seeing Blake?’
I blanched at his direct, unexpected question, especially at the slight hopefulness of his tone; a stark contrast to his vehemence of last night. ‘Will seeing him get a reaction out of you?’
‘It will not get you the reaction that you’re after.’
‘Will it make you jealous?’
‘Insanely.’
‘So it—.’
‘But I will not stand in your way if that’s what you think.’
‘Stand in my way of what?’
‘Of a chance to have everything.’
I rolled my eyes in exasperation. ‘You think that I actually want Blake? Having a conversation with you is like being on a bloody merry-go-round. I love you. You love me. I want nothing from you except for you. And I will fight and fight and fight until I prove that to you. Nothing will stop me.’
He dismissed me with the shake of his head. ‘Please just put me out of my misery.’
‘I won’t do that fo
r you. You have to do that yourself.’
Suddenly something sparked behind his eyes. It was the look he’d had when he’d talked about his plans for the restaurant, a look of striving purpose.
‘I have to go,’ he said in a rush as he made to walk away. I stepped backwards, step for step with him. I raised my hand to his chest to stop him.
‘What are you going to do, Nick?’
‘I have to go.’ He pushed past me and walked out.
I was excited and scared all at the same time. Did he have a plan to save us, or to end us? I hoped it was the former, because if he began to plot against me I wasn’t so sure that I would win.
Chapter 24
The next couple of weeks brought with them no clues as to what he was trying to do. There were no obvious changes to his routine to keep him out of the house, or to the way he spoke to me — or didn’t speak to me — or the way he interacted with staff. Blake was still employed at the winery, much to my surprise, and to Blake’s, so that wasn’t part of his brilliant counteractive idea. Maybe he was working his way up to it like a novice on a bungy cord; petrified to jump but still with full intentions of leaping. Maybe his plan was too scandalous and hurtful to rush. Whatever it was, I wished that he would hurry up, because every morning when I woke hoping to feel him beside me and getting nothing literally made me sick. Now I knew what it felt like to beg to be put out of my misery.
At six o’clock I finished my day’s work in the office, locking the door behind me. How I had managed to roster twenty staff members, equally sharing out night and weekend work, transfer everybody’s pays into their accounts and brought both the restaurant and the wineries invoices up to date, with a throbbing headache, was beyond me.
As I walked up to the house I pinched the bridge of my nose and squeezed my sore eyes closed, praying for the pain to subside. I’d never suffered from migraines in my life, and now that I had one I was grateful that I’d been spared the torment. I hoped that it was nothing that a couple of Panadol and a bottle of water couldn’t fix.
In bed, I was appreciative that daylight saving had now ended so that I could rest in the dark. My eyes hurt to open and my stomach churned. Just as I began to finally drift off, I sprang up and my head protested with a painful throb; my stomach rose into my throat and I just made it to the toilet before I violently threw up on the floor.
‘Bloody hell.’ I shuddered at the bitterness and held my head as it continued to punish me for ruining its sleep. I pushed myself up from the floor and sat on the edge of the bath. I held my head in my hands and massaged my temples with my fingertips.
‘What is going on here?’ I murmured. Then I counted back in my head using my limited concentration, and with sudden realisation I reached for the vanity drawer beside me.
I had to, yet again, search for Nick the following morning because, yet again, I had woken up alone — I wondered if I’d ever have the chance to get used to sleeping with him again.
With a spring in my step that I tried to keep controlled with measured, natural strides — in the end looking as if I was busting to use the toilet — I found him on his knees in the office trying to get a fire going. I remained in the door way.
‘It is pretty cold this morning, isn’t it?’ I startled him as he blew on the kindling. Once he saw who it was that had disturbed him he turned back around and let out a noise that was more of a slightly amiable humph than a word.
‘Can I use the Jeep today?’ I asked him. He blew onto the catching hardwood. ‘Nick?’
‘Where are you going?’ he said without turning.
‘I just have somewhere to be.’
After a silent pause he answered me. ‘I need it by lunch.’
‘I’ll be back by then. Thanks, Nick.’
His “you’re welcome” was another humph.
I hovered in the door way awkwardly. ‘Your keys?’ I said.
Without a word he stood and reached into his jeans pocket. I met him half-way across the office floor and took them when he handed them to me. His lips curved and my insides zinged in the anticipation that he may actually smile at me.
‘Remember that it is my car,’ he said with veiled warning.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that not everybody came to work today.’
I recoiled from him as if had just spat in my face. I thought with a comment like that I would have preferred it, even if I did deserve it. ‘Is that what you think of me? You think that I would use your car to pick up someone who hadn’t come to work today and we would stain it on the side of some road somewhere?’
His look was repentant. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Yes you did.’ I dropped the keys into my bag. ‘Don’t worry; I will have your precious car back to you just as it was before I had the nerve to ask for it.’
‘Cate,’ he called after me but it was too late. I had walked across the driveway and climbed into the Jeep before he had a chance to stop me.
As I drove toward Dr Crawford’s office I smiled as I replayed what had just happened with Nick and how my uncontrolled irritation had got the better of me. Despite the fact that it was warranted, I could now elatedly tick off mood swings on my lengthening list of symptoms.
Then my stomach lurched. What if Nick initiated his plan before I had a chance to save us? I hoped Dr Crawford could confirm my suspicions and give me the trump card that I needed to save Nick from himself before he ruined everything. And as I drove on, my determination rose once again. I had to wait six weeks — in my calculations until June eighteenth, our fifth wedding anniversary — to reveal my secret, so Nick had six weeks to reveal his, and as I drove I formulated my own counteractive plot. Game on, Nicholas Andrew Mathieson.
Chapter 25
I walked without direction toward the main township. I wanted nothing but to clear my head, to carefully script tomorrow’s anniversary dinner plans in my head. On autopilot, I pushed open the side gate of Dad’s house and walked around to the back door because I knew that it would be unlocked.
Nausea rushed my feet and I pushed past Dad in the narrow hall as I ran to the bathroom.
‘Sorry,’ I said through my fingers as they covered my mouth. I didn’t mean to, but I slammed the door behind me in my urgency and retched into the toilet.
There was a quiet tap at the door. ‘Are you ok, love?’ dad said.
I flushed and rinsed my mouth in the sink, opting not to use my old tooth brush that dad hadn’t brought himself to throw away in the last five years, instead using my index finger and some toothpaste to freshen my mouth. Then I kicked my shoes off because as weird as it was, my feet were so bloody hot all of the time these days. Being pregnant was having such an odd effect on my body and each day I marvelled at every new change.
I came out of the bathroom to where Dad was waiting in the hall way.
‘Everything ok?’ he said.
‘Fine, Dad. Brilliant, in fact.’ I squeezed passed him and went into the kitchen where I switched on the kettle. ‘Do you have any bread left?’
He had followed and planted himself on his chair at the small table. ‘The loaf you bought the other day is in the freezer.’
I pulled the brick of a loaf out and a sprinkling of ice fell to my bare feet. My toes scrunched at the coldness. ‘Toast?’
‘No thanks, love.’
‘Tea?’
‘Please.’
In habitual silence, I prepared my breakfast while dad read the paper. I sat on the chair opposite him and tried to force down some food, cursing Dr Crawford for promising me that the constant “morning” sickness that I felt would subside by three months. I was in half a mind to sue him, and in my sometimes cantankerous state, I might just do that. I almost laughed out loud when I imagined how Nick would have reacted to my constant irritability of the past couple of months. He would have been positively and adoringly fretful as he walked on eggshells around me. Lucky I’d spared him the carnage.
Dad closed the
paper, expelling a deep breath, and folded it in half. He leaned back from the table and crossed his arms. I was taken aback when he looked me directly, intensely in the eye.
‘Why are you here?’ His question was so accusing and I felt unexpectedly chastised. I swallowed down my toast and for the first time in my dad’s presence I felt unwelcome.
‘Well, long story short, Nick and I have been having some trouble,’ I began; my voice sounded small under his interrogative gaze.
‘So, why are you here?’ he asked again.
My brain had frozen. I couldn’t speak.
‘Do you think that running away will solve your problems?’ he said reproachfully.
‘Dad, it’s not like that. Let me tell you what’s been happening.’
He leaned into the table. ‘Do not run away from what you have.’
‘I’m not running away, Dad.’
He shook his head, dismissing me. ‘Whatever it is, Cate, fix it.’
I watched his face shift from scolding frustration to the anguished one that I was used to, and I knew that he was begging me not to end up sad and alone like him.
No longer stunned, I had a sudden rush of realisation. ‘Tell me what happened all of those years ago.’ He swallowed hard and he shrugged as if he didn’t know what I was really asking. ‘Tell me why my mother left. And stop playing with that.’ I reached for my dad’s left hand as his thumb bent to the torturous ring on his third finger, invading his space and doing it without caring that it would make him uncomfortable
‘There are some things that have nothing to do with you.’
What!!! ‘I was left without a mother! How does have nothing to do with me?’
‘Do not raise your voice to me, Catherine. You would never understand, anyway,’ he softened.
‘Maybe when I was five I wouldn’t have understood, but I’m an adult now, Dad. I think I can handle it. Please tell me why such a selfish, self-regarding woman still has a constricting hold on you.’