It was a strange experience. She felt like an intruder into someone else’s life as she unpacked frothy underwear, a zipped bag filled with expensive toiletries, a couple of paperback novels by unfamiliar authors, a bottle of perfume, a drawstring bag of jewellery.
At the bottom of the case she found two pairs of carefully wrapped and rather swish high-heeled shoes—one pair was silver, the other black patent. Then, alone at the bottom of the case, another small bundle wrapped in white tissue paper.
For a moment, as Carrie stared at it, wondering what it might be, she felt a weird tingle—almost like a zap of electricity. Then she was gripped by a really strong sense of déjà vu.
She knew she’d seen this parcel before.
Goose bumps broke out on her arms. Her heart began to pump at a frightening pace. Scared, she closed her eyes and took a deep, hopefully calming breath.
When she opened her eyes the white tissue-wrapped parcel was still there in the bottom of the suitcase, and it was still inescapably familiar. With shaking hands she lifted it out. It was light as a feather.
Kneeling in the golden pool of afternoon sunlight, she felt her throat tighten and her pulses race frantically as she laid the little white package in her lap.
She wasn’t sure how long she knelt there, too afraid to undo the tissue wrapping. It was only when a tear fell, making a soft splash on the fragile paper, that she realised the moment she’d both longed for and feared had arrived.
She knew exactly what she would find when she opened this parcel.
Now, without any warning, she remembered it.
She remembered it all. Every tiny, heartbreaking detail.
CHAPTER TEN
Five months earlier, in Sydney.
‘I’M SORRY THAT I can’t give you better news, Carrie.’
The doctor sitting on the other side of the desk gave a slight adjustment to his bow tie before he finished delivering his bombshell. After conducting CT scans and X-rays he had discovered a malformation of Carrie’s uterus. It was so severe that she would never be able to have children.
Unfortunately her particular problem could not be corrected by surgery, and while her ovaries were healthy. and she had a perfectly good egg supply, her womb would never sustain a pregnancy. For this reason IVF was not an option.
She would never give birth.
There was no chance of a baby.
None.
Ever.
It was too much to take in. Carrie could hear the doctor’s words, and in theory she understood, but shock had numbed her from head to toe. The fateful message bounced off her like rubber bullets. Nothing made sense—not the kind of sense that sank in.
In a grey fog of confusion she thanked the doctor for his trouble.
He seemed a little shocked. ‘You look pale, my dear.’ Leaning forward, he pressed a button on the phone on his desk. ‘Suzy, could you bring Mrs Kincaid a cup of tea?’
‘I don’t need tea,’ Carrie told him.
‘Er... Suzy, cancel the tea.’ Behind gold-rimmed glasses, his grey eyes were sympathetic. ‘A glass of water, perhaps?’
‘No, I don’t need anything to drink, thanks. I’m fine.’
The doctor looked concerned. ‘This news has come as a shock, I’m sure. You’ll want to talk it over with your husband. And perhaps the two of you might consider also talking to a counsellor? There are several good people I could put you in touch with.’
‘Thank you,’ Carrie said automatically. ‘I’ll think about that.’
The doctor accepted her assurance and showed her to the door. Outside in the reception area Carrie handed over her credit card and her Medicare card to the smiling girl behind the desk.
‘Do you need another appointment?’ the girl asked.
Carrie told her no. There would be no more appointments. She was working on auto pilot as she folded the printed receipt and slipped it into her neat leather handbag, then slotted the cards back into her brightly coloured purse.
Without looking to right or left, she walked out through the congregation of expectant mothers seated in the waiting area. Glass sliding doors opened at her approach and she stepped out into sunshine onto a Sydney footpath.
It was a hot, late spring day, blinding bright. Traffic streamed past. From this point Carrie had a view of red rooftops, baking in the sun. In nearby gardens sprinklers sprayed softly, and New South Wales Christmas bushes bloomed with dainty red flowers.
The world looked exactly as it had an hour earlier, when she’d arrived for her appointment. But the doctor had just told her that her world had changed completely. Nothing about her future would be the way she and Max had planned.
It was still hard to believe. Still didn’t feel real.
Slipping the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, she walked along the footpath to the station. The swish of tyres on bitumen and the tap-tap of her heels on the concrete were city sounds, so different from the laughing call of a kookaburra or the drum of horses’ hooves on hard earth.
Carrie almost smiled when she realised what a country chick she was these days.
She’d been trying not to think about Max, her gorgeous, sun-tanned cattleman husband, but suddenly he was there, filling her head and her heart. And with thoughts of him the numbness in her body vanished, giving way to a pain so piercing that she almost stumbled.
Max would never be a father.
After five generations there would be no more Kincaids at Riverslea Downs.
Oh, Max darling, I’m so sorry.
Without warning, tears arrived, burning down Carrie’s cheeks, and she had to fumble in her bag for a tissue and sunglasses before she could continue. When she reached the station she knew that she couldn’t go home to her mother. She hadn’t told anyone about her appointment—not Max nor either of her parents—and she certainly wasn’t ready to talk to them about this.
She was still in shock. She needed time to adjust, if that was possible. Needed space to think.
It made sense to catch the next train into the city, and Carrie kept her sunglasses on even though most of the journey was underground. At Circular Quay she left the train and managed to board a Manly ferry scant moments before it pulled away from the wharf. The ferry was crowded, but she found a seat on the upper deck with a good view of the glittering harbour.
There, with a stiff breeze in her face and her hair flying, her arms tightly folded and hugged to her chest, she let her mind replay every terrifying detail of what the doctor had told her.
She had suspected there might be a problem, which was why she’d decided to see the city specialist, but she’d been confident the doctor would supply a solution. There was so much help for fertility issues these days. She’d expected to be told about treatment for endometriosis, or about IVF options. She’d even been prepared to have surgery.
It was so hard to believe that nothing could be done.
Nothing.
How could she bear it?
How could she find the strength to tell Max?
Now she felt wretched about buying that baby dress yesterday. When she’d seen it in the shop window she’d feared that she might be tempting fate if she bought it before her doctor’s appointment. But it had been so beautiful and sweetly old-fashioned, with delicate smocking across the front. She hadn’t been able to resist it. It would make the perfect Christening dress, she’d decided. It was white, and so beautifully simple it would be suitable for either a boy or a girl.
Carrie had even allowed herself to fantasise about the Christening. The service would be held in the little white wooden church in Jilljinda. Max’s parents would come from the Sunshine Coast, along with her mother and Doug and Meredith, and she would probably ask Max’s sister Jane and her husband to be godparents. After the church service there’d be a cele
bration at Riverslea, with friends from surrounding properties.
Carrie had even pictured the party—a long trestle table on the veranda, or possibly out on the lawn under the tamarind tree. She’d imagined spreading white tablecloths, setting out rows of shiny crystal glasses to be filled with champagne. And there would be a beautiful Christening cake, standing ready to cut. She and Max would cut it together, holding their dear little baby between them.
It would all be so perfect. Lunch would be simple, but delicious. Max would man the barbecue while Carrie produced fresh garden salads, complete with her Carrie K dressings and chutneys.
Oh, dear God. Such a fool she’d been to let her imagination run wild. Just thinking about those silly plans now brought an agonising rush of tears.
With a sob of despair Carrie lurched out of her seat and hurried to stand at the ferry’s railing, hoping to hide her face from the other passengers. Desperate to stem her tears, she stared hard at the seagulls wheeling overhead, at the pretty yachts zig-zagging across the water, at the stately Harbour Bridge, at the forest of skyscrapers that lined the shore.
But although she managed to staunch her tears, she couldn’t stop the tumultuous flow of her thoughts.
So many plans she’d had for their family.
Such happy dreams.
She remembered the bassinet in the storage shed. It was the one she’d slept in as a baby on her father’s property. Meredith had given it to her and Max to use when they were ready to start their family.
They’d wanted three children, and Carrie had known exactly which rooms in the homestead those little people would occupy. In her imagination she’d decorated the room closest to their bedroom as a nursery, with white furniture and yellow and white striped curtains, a brightly coloured mobile hanging above the cot. There would be shelves for books and toys, and a rocking chair. She’d also planned to renovate an old chest of drawers. She would paint it green, perhaps. Or bright red.
Now...
Oh, help. How could she bear it? How could she take this sad, heartbreaking news home to her husband?
I’m barren, Max.
Barren. Such a terrible word—especially for the wife of a grazier. For well over a century the Kincaids had worked hard to keep Riverslea Downs fertile and productive. And the women in the family had done their part by bearing sons.
Max would be a wonderful father. He was so steady and calm and loving. Carrie had always believed that together they would be fabulous parents. They had so much to offer their children—so much love as well as a healthy, adventurous lifestyle.
She knew she should try not to think about this now. It only made the pain in her heart cut deeper and sharper. At any moment it would break into bleeding chunks.
Even so, she couldn’t stop torturing herself.
She found herself fixated by the generations of Kincaids who’d lived at Riverslea Downs. She kept recalling the magnificent trees planted by Max’s great-grandmother, the family portraits painted by his grandmother, the vegetable gardens that Max’s mother had built using railway sleepers—a tradition that Carrie had happily continued.
Now she had to bring Max and his family the devastating news that there would be no more Kincaids at Riverslea. And, given the weight of family tradition and expectations, she was sure it would be much harder for them to bear than for most families.
These tormenting thoughts continued writhing and circling through Carrie’s head while she paced endlessly up and down the Manly foreshore.
* * *
Looking back, she could never pinpoint the precise moment that she’d finally hatched her plan. It had been a painful plan, but she’d been sunk in the pits of grief that day, mourning the loss of her dreams of motherhood. Utterly bereft.
Given her misery, and the tortured nature of her thoughts, it wasn’t so surprising that her new plan had seemed to make perfect sense. By the time she’d caught a return ferry and another train, and had finally reached her mother’s place, Carrie had been firmly convinced it was her only option.
Riverslea Downs. Present day.
To Max’s relief, Barney said nothing about the kiss he’d witnessed as they worked on the windmill pump. Max knew the old bloke was practically bursting with the effort of keeping quiet, but he was grateful for his silence.
His own thoughts were disturbing enough as he wrestled with a rusted bolt. He was remembering Carrie’s question: ‘Are you in a hurry for me to get my memory back?’
He was rather ashamed of the fact that his honest answer would have been no. Not that he wasn’t justified in preferring a wife who found him attractive and desirable, but he supposed it would only be a matter of time before this new, keen Carrie grew jaded and uninterested, just as she had before.
It wasn’t till the job was done and Max and Barney were stowing the tools in the back of the ute that Barney finally had to say something.
Hooking his elbows over the ute’s tray back, the old ringer sent Max a shy, lopsided grin. ‘So things are maybe working out, mate?’
Max knew exactly what Barney was talking about, but he pretended to misunderstand. ‘Yeah, Barney. I just need to fix that leaky pipe now, and then we’ll have the bore back and running.’
Barney looked at him as if he was a halfwit. ‘I’m not talking about the bleeding windmill. I meant things are working out—’ He swallowed and looked embarrassed. ‘You know—for you and Carrie.’
Max sent him a warning glance. ‘I wouldn’t read too much into one little kiss.’
Barney’s response was a cheeky, knowing grin. ‘Yeah, right. Didn’t look so little from where I was standing. And what about the way she looks at you—like you’re chocolate mousse with cream and cherries and she hasn’t eaten in a week?’
Max gritted his teeth. ‘I’m not joking, Barney. Carrie still doesn’t remember anything. Everything will change when she does.’
This stumped the old bloke. He lifted his hat and scratched at his bald patch—a sure sign that he was worried. ‘You still think she’ll take off again?’
The very thought made Max’s innards drop like a leg-roped steer, but there was no point in fostering false hope. ‘Yes, mate. That’s exactly what I think.’
Barney gave a rueful shake of his head and his shoulders drooped dejectedly as he stood gazing into the distance. In the gumtrees behind them a crow called. Ark, ark, ark, ark!
Max added the shifting spanner to the tool bag. ‘OK—let’s go.’
The men climbed into the ute. As Barney slammed his door shut he turned to Max, fresh determination blazing. ‘You’re not going to let that happen, are you? You won’t let Carrie just clear out without putting up a fight?’
Max didn’t answer as he started up the ute. He was as surprised as Barney was by Carrie’s recently renewed ardour. He welcomed it, of course. There was no way he could refuse Carrie when she looked at him as if he was the sexiest guy alive. A man would have to be nine-tenths glacier to ignore that. And yet Max knew he was setting himself up for a big fall.
The problem was he couldn’t really prepare for the return of Carrie’s memory. If the doctors were right it could happen any day now, at any moment, but he was as confused as anyone about the changes in Carrie before her accident.
He didn’t know why she’d fallen out of love with him, and there wasn’t a hell of a lot a man could do when a woman stopped fancying him. He certainly wasn’t going to beg or plead.
On the other hand, he decided now, as the ute rattled over the dirt track that skirted the creek, if Carrie wanted to leave him again he’d be damned if he was going to meekly show her the door.
* * *
Carrie was in the bedroom when Max returned to the homestead. He found her sitting on the bedroom floor beside the empty suitcase they’d brought back from Whitehorse Creek. A small white parcel lay in
her lap, and at the sound of his footsteps she looked up.
Her face was swollen and flushed, her eyes and nose pink from crying. When she looked at him he saw a flash of fear in her eyes and his heart gave a heavy thud.
He knew straight away.
She’d remembered.
His first impulse was to rush and take her in his arms, to find a way to protect her from the pain he read in her eyes. But he didn’t dare. He had no idea if she would welcome him or repel him.
‘Hey,’ he said gently. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s happened,’ she said in a choked voice.
‘Your memory?’
‘Yes.’ The single syllable was almost a wail of despair. ‘Total recall.’
Max swallowed, hating to see her like this. What the hell had upset her so badly? What had triggered this pain?
He looked around the room. The suitcase was empty. There was only the white parcel in her lap.
Could that be the culprit? The heart of her distress? Could it even hold a clue to the cause of their break-up?
He had no idea what the parcel held. He’d never seen it before. But the possibility that he might not be the sole cause of Carrie’s distress brought a brief ripple of relief. He’d been blaming himself for so long. He was very aware, though, that it was far too soon to get his hopes up.
‘How long have you been sitting here?’ he asked, moving closer.
‘I don’t know. Ages, I guess.’
‘Can I help you up?’
‘Yes, please. I’m so stiff I can barely move.’
He offered a hand and then reached for her waist to support her as she got stiffly to her feet. With her free hand she kept the tissue-wrapped parcel close to her chest.
He tried not to stare too hard at the parcel, hazarding a guess at its contents.
Some item of clothing?
How could that cause so much distress?
‘You look like you could do with a cuppa,’ he said.
The Husband She'd Never Met Page 11