Sarah's Journey

by Susan Bella Ikin

  One of the carpenters, who had also heard the commotion, came to the door, and seeing that my cat was injured, got straight on his phone and brought up the number of the nearest vet. The wonderful man called them for me, and they said there was an appointment in fifteen minutes. As I was still shaking, he helped me to get Snowball into his cat carrier, gave me directions to the address of the vet and told me not to worry, he still had a couple of hour’s work to do, and if I was still out when he was due to go, he would make sure all the doors and windows were locked when he left. He was a bit concerned that I was safe to drive, but I took a few deep breaths and calmed down enough so that I could drive the short distance to the veterinary surgery.

  Once there, the receptionist gave me a new patient information sheet to fill out and weighed Snowball – still in his carrier – and said she would weigh the carrier later when Snowball and I were seeing the vet, and would be able to work out how much he weighed. After that, I sat down, poking my finger through the carrier to try to touch Snowball, he didn’t appear to be in any pain, but I knew he needed some medical attention and possibly a vaccination, just for safety’s sake.

  Just then the door to the surgery opened, and I looked up – into Adam’s startled face.

  25.

  The receptionist, a woman who appeared to be a few years older than me, and who also appeared to be oblivious to our unusual behaviour, said:

  “Adam, this is Sarah Sharpe. She has just moved to the area and is a new patient. Her cat has just got in a fight and needs a bit of patching up. When you are settled in there, can you just pass the carrier out so that I can weigh it?”

  She waited for Adam to respond, and when he just continued to stare at me, she said quizzically:

  “Adam, did you hear me?”

  At this, Adam seemed to shake himself out of his shock, acknowledged her and strode over to me, leaning over and grabbing the carrier. As he bent over near me, he said so quietly that only I could hear:

  “If I have your cat, I guess you won’t run out, will you?”

  Adam then turned, and went into the room with Snowball, leaving me to scramble to my feet to follow him. Methodically he took Snowball out of the carrier and put it outside the door, closing it behind him. He then returned to Snowball, and inspected his wounds.

  “Everything appears minor”, he said “It’s only a little tear to his ear, I can patch that up and he will heal as if nothing had ever happened. It will be the cone of shame for him afterwards I am afraid. You will have to bring him back in about a week and I will check the stitches and see if we can take the cone off. Can you hold him please?”

  Well, Adam was certainly making his feelings clear. He was all business. After his initial shock, he was talking to me as if nothing personal had passed between us at all. So I decided to do the same. Adam made quick work of patching up Snowball, and affixing the dreaded cone to Snowball’s collar. When he was done, he surprised me by looking into my eyes, and testily asking:

  “Did you get the message I left at the café?”

  When I nodded yes he continued:

  “I thought so, but you chose not to call. Any reason for that?”

  At this I was shocked, after everything that had happened, he was angry with me? I grabbed Snowball and demanded:

  “How much do I owe you?”

  Adam’s jaw clenched and he said:

  “The receptionist will sort that out with you. Before you go, can you just answer one question?” Before I could answer he went on: “Are you pregnant?”

  I almost shouted when I said “NO!” and then turned to leave. I paid the bill, ignoring the strange looks that the receptionist was giving me, put Snowball back in his carrier, and went home. As the whole thing was done very quickly, the carpenters were still there and they made a big fuss of Snowball, clucking over the indignity of the cone. I think the rotten cat was feeling like a superstar, and I was shaking inside. I couldn’t wait to be alone, so that I could try to process what had just happened. Now everything became clear, on the ship, when Adam had been discussing his work at lunch that day, he had said he had a practice, and I did not hear what. He was a vet. And his practice was so close to my house I could walk there. Oh great. If I had not been so shocked, and had taken Snowball to his regular vet, I would not have met Adam again. Why was he so angry with me? Or was he not angry at all, but trying to justify his actions by making everything my fault, just like Nathan had done? No, that did not seem to be like something Adam would do. Even though we had not known each other long, I am sure I would have known if he was the same sort of person as Nathan. So what was the real reason?

  Vaguely I remember the carpenters turning off their power tools, saying goodbye and leaving. I sat in the quiet house, thinking about Nathan, and turning things over in my mind, and then there was a knock at the door. One of the carpenters must have forgotten something, I thought. So foolishly, I opened the door without checking who it was. Adam was standing there, with his hands in his pockets, looking grim.

  What should I do? Tell him to go? Let him in? Just then, Snowball, the rotten little traitor, came up to me, probably wanting his dinner. He was rubbing against my legs when he saw Adam, and I swear, if a cat could look happy to see someone, Snowball did right then.

  I decided that maybe now was as good a time as any to have that talk with Adam that I had realized I needed to have. My home was as good a place as any, it wasn’t public, and if I needed to, I could ask him to leave. So I stood aside, and silently allowed Adam to enter, closing the door behind him.

  I then walked past Adam into the lounge room, leaving him to follow me. I could hear the pad of Snowball’s feet as he followed behind Adam. Rotten cat, I really was going to take him back to the shelter, I thought, knowing again that I really wouldn’t.

  I sat down and held my silence, waiting for Adam to start. Snowball, the traitor, jumped up onto Adam’s lap and sat there, purring, while Adam absent mindedly stroked him.

  26.

  Adam’s first words surprised me.

  “I owe you an apology”, he said, “Well, I probably owe you a few, but let’s start with my behaviour today. You caught me by surprise. When I first saw you, I thought you had come to see me at last, and then I saw by the look on your face that you weren’t expecting to see me, you had just brought your cat to the vet. I was really disappointed and confused, and I reacted badly. I treated you appallingly and I am more sorry than you will know about that. And to ask you like that, in my surgery, if you were pregnant, you must think awful things about me, and I deserve them all”.

  Now I really was confused, and urged Adam to continue. He appeared reluctant and instead looked around.

  “So this is the house you were telling me about? You’ve moved in already? I’ve driven past this place and admired it lots of times, what are you going to do to it?” he asked.

  “Look”, I said, “I really don’t understand what is going on. I know you wanted to talk, you asked me today what you wanted to know, and you got your answer. What more do you want of me?”

  At this, Adam looked at me with an expression in his eyes that looked to me like the pain I had seen in my own eyes when I had looked in mirrors, trying to get the swelling from my excessive crying to go down. Adam took a deep breath, and continued:

  “After what happened in Suva, I was surprised you would even let me in the door, so I wasn’t really prepared for this conversation, but it’s one we have to have. First I will tell you why Lisa was there. Remember I told you that I was going to propose, and had bought a ring and everything?”

  At my terse nod, he snorted in a derisory way and continued:

  “Well, foolishly when Lisa left, I didn’t make sure she left her key behind. So while I was gone, she let herself in, she claimed later it was to get some of her things she had left behind, but she obviously did a fair bit of snooping too, because she found the cancelled receipt from the jeweler. She put two and two together, and realized what I w
as planning. She also found the booking slip for the cruise, and realized that I had booked the suite she wanted. Apparently she then decided that marriage to me – and my money – was preferable to supporting herself, so decided to show up at Suva and surprise me. Well, she accomplished that, that’s for sure. I was shocked when I saw her and her luggage there, I knew she had something in mind and couldn’t think fast enough to work out how to keep you out of her sight and her line of fire. As you experienced, Lisa can get pretty nasty when she feels threatened, and she is intelligent enough to realize that you were a threat. Despite what she tried to imply, I am not into casual relationships, and I wouldn’t pick up a woman just for a short term fling. If we were there together, she knew I was serious about you”.

  Serious about me? Adam was serious about me? A little kernel of hope started to grow in my heart at that. I must have made a little sound or something, because Adam looked at me and smiled a little. He continued, a little more confidently this time:

  “If you thought what Lisa said was nasty enough, believe me, it could have been much worse if I didn’t get you out of there. I knew that I should have stayed with you and walked away from her, but I also knew that she would have ended up screeching terrible things at the top of her voice, and I hoped to spare you that. I thought the best thing to do was to get you out of her sight, get her away from the ship and safely installed in a hotel, or better yet, on her way back to the airport, and get back to you to explain. I knew that Judy would look after you, and I saw the look that Tom gave me. I don’t think he was very impressed, but it was all I could think of to do right then.

  It wasn’t until I spent time with you that I realized how wrong I was about my relationship with Lisa, and how stupid I was planning to marry her, trying to convince myself I was in love with her, when I knew deep down that I wasn’t. What I didn’t realize, was the depth of my stupidity where Lisa was concerned. When I finally got a taxi, she left me to put her luggage in the boot while she told the driver where her hotel was. She lied to us both, the hotel he took us to was inland a fair way, and was not where she had stayed the night before. I didn’t realize until we got there what she was planning. Somehow she engineered it so that I helped her to her room with the bags rather than the hotel staff, I was just trying to get her settled in a hurry and get back to you, and didn’t think of the stupidity of going to her hotel room. When I carried in the last bag and the door closed behind us, she tried to seduce me. At that point, I lost my temper and told her that she left me cold. I have never seen Lisa so angry at that point. You won’t believe what she did next, she tore her dress, and screamed blue murder until people came. She then claimed that I had attacked her, and had the police called.”

  I started forward at this, of course I had not known any of this, and I could barely believe what I was hearing. Adam stared into space and continued quietly:

  “Luckily the policeman who attended had some commonsense, and soon worked out that Lisa had torn her own dress, and got her to admit to that. Of course, by the time everything was sorted out, the ship had sailed, which was Lisa’s plan all along. She wanted you to think that I had chosen her instead of you, and apparently that worked, because you must have had my number for a couple of weeks now, but you didn’t call me, which is why I over-reacted when you showed up at my surgery today. I had hoped that Lisa hadn’t succeeded, but clearly she had”.

  I looked at Adam, tears welling in my eyes. The selfish, selfish spite that Lisa had shown had caused the both of us so much pain. Maybe I could have called Adam sooner, but I was hurting, and I explained that to him.

  “Yes”, he said, “I can understand that. If only I could have met the ship when it docked in Sydney, I could have explained, but remember that my passport was still in my suite on the ship, safely locked away in the safe. When the police let me go, I went straight to the Australian High Commission in Suva, and pleaded with them for help. I even called the ship and got to speak to my stateroom steward, and promised to make it worth his while if he could make sure you were look after. I told him your name and he said he would speak to your stateroom steward.”

  Ah, I thought to myself, it was Adam, not Tom or Judy who made sure Eduardo was keeping an eye on me. That made me feel a lot better, Adam hadn’t forgotten about me, he just made a stupid mistake by trusting Lisa!

  Adam went on: “The High Commission did their best to help, but the paperwork took too long, and by the time I got a flight to Sydney, it was a day after the ship had arrived. I knew you were still in Sydney, but not where, so I flew back home and tried to work out how to contact you. You aren’t in the phone book you know, and the only way I knew was through the café where I bought your art, so I went there. When you didn’t call, I thought you were angry with me, as you had every right to be. I can’t imagine what you went through when you realized I hadn’t returned to the ship”.

  At this, the tears that had been forming in my eyes started to fall in earnest. Adam leapt up from his seat, Snowball falling from his lap, and in one bound was kneeling at my feet.

  “I am so sorry”, he whispered, “No-one deserved to be put through that scene, and the uncertainty you would have been through, especially after what you told me about how your marriage broke down. You must have thought I was as bad as that creep you were married to, but I really didn’t mean for all this to happen, and then to be so cold to you today, I can’t believe I did that”.

  He put his head down so that he was resting the side of his head on my knee, and as I looked at him I realized that we had both been victims of bad choices, and bad people. Although Adam probably had not handled the scene at Suva well, he had tried to the best of his ability to deal with the problem of Lisa, but had underestimated just how far she would go. Of course, with my history, I had jumped to the conclusion that I had been dumped again, although even if I hadn’t there was no way I could have guessed at what really happened. Obviously the misunderstandings between us had been compounded by the fact that we didn’t know each other very long before all the bad stuff happened, and that was something we could rectify. I pushed at him gently and asked him to sit beside me. I turned sideways on the couch so that I was facing him and said.

  “Ok, this is how I see it. If I am right, let me know, I hope I am right. I really fell for you on the ship, and I think you weren’t exactly indifferent to me either”. At his nod, I continued: “But it was an artificial environment, and maybe we moved faster than we would have done had we met at home, in our everyday environment. We jumped straight from a comfortable friendship into a very intense sexual relationship, and missed the step in the middle where people usually get to know each other. How about we go back a step and date for a while, and do that thing people usually do – talk to each other a bit more than we did?”

  Adam nodded, and exhaled. I really hadn’t realized until now that he had been holding his breath. Well, that was a good start, it obviously meant a lot to him that we gave ourselves a second chance.

  27.

  So that is what we did. We started dating. Talk about putting the cart before the horse! On our first date, Adam told me that after I virtually ran out of his surgery, his receptionist, Lucy, had walked into the consulting room, shut the door, and demanded to know why he was arguing with a new patient. After he had explained who I was – apparently there was no love lost between her and Lisa, so he had told her about Suva – she had gone back to her desk, written down my address and told him that as soon as he saw the patient that was in the waiting room, he was to leave and come to see me and sort everything out. She had then cancelled all the rest of his appointments for the day, telling people that the vet had been taken ill suddenly. I had decided then and there that I was going to like Lucy. For a start, apart from her very helpful interference, the fact that she didn’t get along with Lisa meant that she and I had something substantial in common!

  We went out to movies, to dinner, for walks on the beach with Adam’s dog, and for drives in the
country. We went to markets, had picnics, and explored city laneways. We dated for several weeks, making sure that we covered new, personal, topics of conversation each time we met. Adam met Emily, and after quickly dodging one of the crutches that she threw at him, managed to win her over after explaining what had happened. I spoke to Judy and explained everything, and while she was still a bit hesitant, she said that if I believed Adam and was prepared to give our relationship another chance, then she would do the same.

  Adam was a frequent visitor to my house while it was being renovated, always being careful to visit when other people were present. As his surgery was so close, he would often drop in for a quick visit around lunchtime, often bringing me soup! When the day came that the renovations were finally finished, we knew we were in trouble, as if Adam came around to visit when I didn’t have a house full of tradesmen, we were sure that things would very soon get heated and with no-one to chaperone us…..

  So finally, after more than a few stolen kisses at the end of dates, and both of us having to deal with increasing frustration levels, we decided to have a weekend away together. Pets were duly boarded, and Adam booked a holiday house in Lorne. I packed a lot of condoms in my overnight bag. A girl can always hope. Adam picked me up in the late afternoon one Friday, and after navigating city traffic, we were on our way. We stopped in town for dinner, which I am sure neither of us tasted, and then took the short drive to the beachside house that had been rented for the next two nights. It was lovely but I was unaccountably nervous. Why? Adam and I had been intimate on many occasions, and we were clearly still attracted to each other. I turned to Adam and noticed that he seemed to be as hesitant as I was.