by Emily Forbes
‘That’s good to know.’ Poppy smiled.
Daisy was completely deaf, having lost her hearing at the age of eight after contracting mumps. Because she had already been talking her speech was mostly unaffected by her hearing loss. She could lip read and sign, which gave her good communication options, provided she could see people’s faces.
‘What’s for dinner?’ Poppy asked.
‘Baked snapper with baby potatoes. You can make a salad if you like.’
Poppy pulled a bottle of wine and salad ingredients from the fridge. She poured two glasses of wine, passing one to her sister, and then made sure she was standing at the kitchen bench, facing Daisy, before she continued their conversation.
‘How was work?’
Daisy screwed up her nose. ‘I don’t think the nurse unit manager likes me.’
‘Why not?’ Poppy was flummoxed. Everyone liked Daisy.
Daisy was tiny, blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful—she reminded Poppy of a fairy—and people were naturally drawn to her. Almost everyone wanted to be her best friend, which was ironic as Daisy was quite happy with her own company. Daisy had been born a twin but the infection that had robbed her of her hearing had also claimed the life of her twin sister, Willow, and after that Daisy, who had only ever needed Willow’s company, had retreated into her shell. She’d been mothered by her older siblings but because of the five-year age difference between Poppy and Daisy she had spent a lot of time on her own.
She was quiet and introverted but in the field of paediatric nursing she had found the place she felt comfortable. She loved working with kids—they were uncomplicated—and Daisy adored them and they her. Poppy knew Daisy would be completely happy if she could work with kids and never have to see an adult but even if Daisy didn’t need adult company, it was rare for someone to take objection to her.
‘What happened?’ Poppy asked, wondering what could have gone wrong.
‘It might have something to do with something she heard me say.’
Poppy didn’t like to talk about her feelings but none of the Carlson siblings had any qualms about voicing their opinions on other matters. Even Lily and Daisy, the ‘quiet’ ones, weren’t afraid to let people know their thoughts on general topics if it was something they felt strongly about. Along with their fair athletic looks the four of them shared determined natures and opinionated views.
‘Which was?’
‘We admitted a child today who has a serious case of chicken pox with several complications and I might have strongly suggested to her parents that there is a vaccine for this disease and they should consider vaccinating their children.’
‘And what did the NUM say?’
‘She told me it’s not my place to lecture the parents.’
‘She’s probably right.’
Daisy sighed. ‘I know. But I had no idea she was standing right behind me.’
‘Would you have modified your lecture if you had known?’
‘No. You know there are laws in New South Wales about vaccinating children unless there’s a medical reason not to? If it’s good enough for the government it’s good enough for me.’
‘That sounds like a serious discussion between two of my favourite sisters,’ Jet said as he walked into the kitchen. ‘What have I missed?’
‘Daisy’s been lecturing people about vaccinations again,’ Poppy said with a smile.
‘It’s hard for me to keep quiet,’ Daisy protested. ‘I’m a walking advertisement for why vaccinations are so important.’
Jet gave her a quick hug on his way to the fridge. ‘Yes, you are, Daise, stick to your guns.’
‘I intend to.’
‘Good for you,’ he said as he helped himself to a beer and flipped the top off the bottle. He turned towards Poppy. ‘How was your swim? Cleared the cobwebs out after your road trip?’
Poppy nodded.
‘Craig didn’t change his mind and come with you?’ he asked.
‘No. He was busy,’ Poppy replied.
‘Busy with what?’
Other than his work she wasn’t exactly sure what he was busy doing. They hadn’t spent a lot of time together lately. They never really did. Their relationship wasn’t one where they spent every spare minute together and that was the way Poppy liked it. She suspected she’d grow tired of Craig if they lived in each other’s pockets. Craig didn’t need to spend every second with her or hear how she felt about him constantly and the same went for her. They had a compatible partnership even if they didn’t rely on each other emotionally.
They were working towards a common goal and that was enough for Poppy. With Craig’s help she was going to achieve the financial and physical stability and security she craved much faster. With Craig’s help she would pay off a mortgage and own a house.
For her part she’d been volunteering for any overtime shifts that had been offered, trying to save as much money as she could—working extra weekends and nights while Craig had worked days. ‘Making money, I hope. We have to get our house finished.’
‘I need to see this house. With the amount of money you seem to be throwing at it, I’m imagining something along the lines of the Taj Mahal by the time you’re finished.’
Poppy laughed. ‘It’s nothing extravagant but I wanted to modernise it without losing the heritage feeling, and everything with a Queenslander seems to cost more.’ The typical Queenslander house, built out of wood and raised off the ground on stilts, required a lot of TLC and a lot of cash if it had fallen into disrepair. Poppy and Craig had spent huge amounts on things that couldn’t be seen—replacing beams and joists and panels in the frame, the walls and the floors, as well as rewiring the house, and they weren’t done yet. The bathroom and laundry had recently been completed but the kitchen needed updating, the pool needed landscaping, and there was always wood that needed painting.
‘Would you do it again? Renovate?’
‘I don’t know about “again,”’ she said, as Lily joined them and Daisy took the snapper from the oven. ‘It’s not like we’ve even finished one yet. It’s been a lot of effort.’ On her part more than Craig’s, she thought, but she didn’t say that out loud. Craig put money into the house but she was the one who had the ideas, organised the tradesmen and picked up a paintbrush. To Craig the house was a sound investment but it was more than that to Poppy.
The house was her sanctuary and she loved the restoration process. She loved seeing her plans come to fruition, bringing the house back to life, but Craig had frequently reminded her not to get too attached. He looked at the house as an investment, his goal was purely financial. His aim was to renovate and sell for a profit and she knew she’d agreed to those plans in the beginning but the house had come to represent more than just dollars to her. It was her chance to have a home.
Initially she had seen the house as her path to financial security but during the renovation process it had come to represent physical security too. The house was a place she could call her own, and one that she had control over. She didn’t want to pay someone else’s mortgage. She didn’t want to be at someone else’s mercy. She didn’t want to be a tenant, always hoping that she would be able to stay. She wanted a place of her own. One she couldn’t be moved out of without her consent. She wanted security and stability and she was prepared to work hard to get it.
The house represented those things and she hoped that once the house was finished Craig would love it as much as she did and agree to keep it.
‘I’d like to propose a toast,’ Lily said as they sat down to dinner. ‘To the four of us being together again.’
‘It’s been much too long,’ Daisy added as they raised their glasses.
Poppy knew that was her fault. Her siblings had dinner together regularly, it was she who had been missing. She’d spent every spare minute on her goals. Every spare day either doing an extra shift or wielding a h
ammer, screwdriver or paintbrush. She hadn’t wanted to spend the time or the money on trips to Sydney. Looking around the table now, she was sorry that she hadn’t made more of an effort but she consoled herself with the knowledge that it would all be worth it in the end, once her house was finished.
‘It’s good to be here,’ she said, ‘and I’d like to think we’ll be able to have family dinner at my house next year.’
‘Maybe we could have Christmas in Brisbane,’ Daisy suggested.
‘Speaking of Christmas...’ The others laughed as Lily spoke up. She never missed an opportunity to organise them. ‘Will everyone be in Sydney this year?’
Christmas had only become an event for the Carlson siblings in the past half a dozen years. They had grown up in a commune in Byron Bay. They’d had an unusual childhood and traditions had been non-existent. Birthdays, graduations, Christmas, none of those had been considered remarkable or special in any way. No fuss had ever been made about an event, no child had ever been singled out as anything or anyone special, no achievement ever congratulated. It had only been when the four of them had begun to spread their wings and experienced how other families celebrated that they had begun to have more traditional celebrations, and that had included Christmas.
Lily organised Christmas get-togethers now. She had adopted her husband’s traditions with family gathered around the table for lunch followed by a swim at the beach or in the pool in the afternoon. But Otto had been in London last Christmas and Lily had spent the day with her own siblings. Poppy wondered where Otto would be this year.
‘I’ll be here,’ Poppy said. ‘I won’t have any leave.’
She hadn’t discussed Christmas plans with Craig. They’d spent last Christmas in Sydney on a brief visit, which meant it was probably her turn to spend Christmas with his family, but she knew she’d rather spend it with hers. She’d had one Christmas with his family and she’d felt like a fish out of water. It had been strange. Her discomfort hadn’t been specifically related to Christmas, she had never felt like a good fit with them. She still felt like an outsider, always hovering on the edges. She knew she was to blame—she didn’t want to get too involved. She didn’t want to be rejected.
The dinner conversation was robust as they caught up on everything from work to books they’d enjoyed to Jet’s love life and training schedule, but as the evening progressed Poppy found she was more interested in the topics that weren’t being discussed—no one had mentioned Otto and no one had mentioned Ryder either.
She wondered where Ryder would be for Christmas. Was his move to Sydney permanent? Were his family still in Perth? But she didn’t want to bring Ryder’s name up in front of her sisters, she didn’t want to draw attention to her interest. She knew her sisters would ask probing questions that she wouldn’t have the answers to.
As the eldest sibling, Lily was the organiser. She was the writer of lists and the one who made sure they all kept in touch. Lily had a strong protective nature, an inherent desire to look out for her siblings. She would want to know all the details and Poppy wasn’t ready to divulge anything just yet. If ever.
Daisy was the dreamer, seemingly content in her own world and, being deaf, it was too easy for her to ignore everyone and everything going on around her. But Daisy was also the romantic in the family and Poppy knew she would start to imagine all sorts of starry-eyed scenarios and Poppy wasn’t sure that was where she wanted the conversation to head.
She decided to wait for a chance to speak to Jet alone, he’d be the least likely to wonder about her questions. He wouldn’t analyse her comments, he’d take them at face value and answer in his usual straightforward manner with no additional cross-examination.
When Jet offered to do the dishes, Poppy saw her opportunity and volunteered to help.
‘I didn’t realise Ryder was in Bondi,’ she said as she filled the sink with water. ‘What’s he doing here?’ She asked the question that had been on the tip of her tongue all night.
‘He’s been travelling around Australia on a bit of a gap year.’
‘How did he end up working with you? I thought it was pretty competitive to get work at Bondi.’ Not to mention requiring a high skill level.
‘We’re down a couple of lifeguards because of injuries and Easy’s been working as a lifeguard at Cottesloe Beach in Perth so the council offered him a casual position to fill the gaps over summer, just until the others are fit again.’
‘He’s a professional lifeguard?’ Poppy knew that the paid lifeguard jobs were coveted. The job was demanding, challenging and rewarding but, in Poppy’s opinion, not remunerated adequately given the level of responsibility the lifeguards had and the hours they worked, and she couldn’t imagine that anyone would plan on being a lifeguard for ever. She knew there were plenty of lifeguards who had been in the job for years but she, privately, thought they should be aspiring to more. She thought Ryder should be aspiring to more but, for once, she kept her opinion to herself, knowing it said more about her than about Ryder.
* * *
As Poppy collapsed into bed at the end of a hectic but fabulous day her phone beeped, alerting her to a missed call from Craig. She crawled under the covers and rang him back.
‘Hi, sorry I missed your call,’ she said, even as she wondered why she was apologising. He was the one who had let her calls go unanswered. But she tried to rein in her irritation. It wasn’t like Craig to be uncontactable. He was consistent. Safe. Predictable. He rarely turned his phone off. Doing so was out of character for him and she found it unsettling. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yes, everything’s fine. I’ve just got home from golf.’
‘At nine o’clock at night?’
‘I stayed for dinner at the club.’
Her irritation rose to the surface again. There were a dozen tasks that that needed to be completed on the house and while some of those things required professional, skilled tradespeople, other jobs could be done by her and Craig. He could have been wielding a paintbrush instead of a golf club today. He could have been returning her calls instead of dining out.
‘You didn’t start the painting?’ She was annoyed now and she could hear the abruptness in her tone but she couldn’t temper it.
‘No. I don’t see much point when there’s still work to be done inside,’ he replied. ‘The kitchen, the deck, those bifold doors need to be installed. We can get painters in once everything is finished.’
Who was going to pay for that? Poppy wondered. She knew that some of the painting would have to be done by professionals, scaffolding would need to be set up to do the exterior, but they’d agreed that they would tackle some of the internal painting themselves to save money.
All Poppy could see was dollars. She’d been working overtime, taking every extra shift that was offered to her, in order to save the money needed to finish their house. Surely Craig could do his bit rather than take a day off to play golf?
CHAPTER THREE
RYDER SAT IN the lifeguard tower and monitored the beach. He alternated between peering through the binoculars, scanning the beach with his naked eyes and checking the monitors that displayed the feeds from the cameras installed along the promenade, looking for anything untoward.
He was currently volunteering for every available shift. He wanted to be busy, he wanted to keep his mind busy. He’d spent far too much time over the past several days thinking about Poppy and wondering how her first shifts had gone, and it was time he focussed on something else.
He hadn’t seen her for twelve years and he’d managed to get through each day without thinking about her constantly but now that he had seen her again he couldn’t get her out of his head.
It was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. Sitting here like a lovestruck teenager.
After a dozen years she couldn’t possibly still be the same girl he’d once known. Once loved. But try telling his heart that. The min
ute he’d laid eyes on her again he’d been knocked for six. His heart had started racing, leaving him so short of breath he’d felt as if he’d just completed the physically torturous, gruelling lifeguard challenge.
But it didn’t matter how he felt or what he thought. She was dating another guy. In an adult world that didn’t leave room for him.
They could only be friends. He knew they couldn’t go back to their teenage years, back to their first kiss, but he couldn’t stop himself from wishing for more.
A knock on the tower door brought him out of the past. He jumped up from his seat before anyone else had even moved, eager to answer the call, eager to have something to occupy his time and his mind.
He opened the door to find a couple of teenagers pacing on the threshold. He could tell they had come from the skate park. They weren’t wearing boardshorts, they were wearing shoes and shirts with their shorts and were dressed predominantly in black despite the warm weather.
‘Hey, boys, what’s the problem?’
‘Our friend came off his skateboard.’
Bingo.
‘He hit his head. He seems pretty bad.’
Attending to incidents on the beach or in the ocean were only part of the lifeguards’ duties. As council employees they also responded to incidents in other council areas like the skate park, the roads and footpaths or the area around the Bondi Pavilion building. Because the ambos had to come from the station near the hospital while the lifeguards were on location, on some days they seemed to spend just as much time assisting off the beach as they did on it. Mostly that wasn’t an issue, only becoming problematic when there were several incidents at once that took multiple lifeguards away from the beach. Or when one incident required several lifeguards to attend.
Ryder grabbed a kit bag and a radio. ‘I’ve got this one, Gibbo,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Can you send someone with the spinal board to back me up?’ It would be faster for the larger equipment to follow Ryder but he knew he needed it on hand. The risk of head or spinal injuries was high in the skate bowl.