The first page, on departmental letterhead, said simply, Thank you for your request. Please find copies of the requested information enclosed. There was a signature underneath which was nothing but a scrawl, as if no one wanted to put their name to such a sad account.
She’d tried to keep in mind something her psychologist had said: that everyone has a reason for how they behave, even if they don’t know it at the time. Stella had never been generous enough to her own mother to see that was as true for her as for anyone. She wanted to find out and was hoping those reasons would be somewhere in her file.
As Stella turned the pages, minutes became hours and it felt as if she were reading the story of a complete stranger. Because she was. She found herself putting together the pieces of her mother’s story. Her mother was Rebecca Marie Smith. Stella hadn’t remembered she’d been given the same middle name. Rebecca, or Bec, as she was described in the files, had been taken into care when she was six, rescued from her own dreadful, abusive family. Stella could barely read the words for the tears that were flooding her eyes. Bec Smith had been sexually abused by her stepfather, so viciously she’d been taken to hospital and immediately whisked away from her own mother once the doctors saw the brutal evidence of her injuries. After that, the poor, damaged girl who would become her mother had been in and out of twenty foster homes; had been pregnant for the first time at thirteen, although she’d lost the baby, and that seemed to have been the catalyst for placing her in a group home with other teenage girls too troubled for anyone to take on.
Stella lifted her eyes from the pages, didn’t want to fight the ache in her chest and the thudding pain in her head. She hadn’t known any of this. Why hadn’t she? She turned the pages, looking for clues. There were copies of child protection notifications from Stella’s school, reporting her failure to attend. Others noted the fact she hadn’t eaten breakfast; that her clothes were dirty. Stella’s gut clenched at those memories, and she felt the humiliation and the shame of those school days as if they were yesterday.
She turned page after page of categorised neglect. And then, when she was almost done, there was a copy of a handwritten note from her mother.
Stella wouldn’t have recognised her mother’s handwriting—she’d never had diaries or sick notes signed—but there it was, Bec Smith. The writing was childlike, indicative of someone who’d never learnt to write properly, and the sight of it broke Stella’s heart.
She was asking for Stella to be taken into care. The dates coincided with her mother’s suicide attempt, just after her father had been sent to jail when Stella was ten years old.
I’ve tried to be a good mother, but too much has happened. She won’t have a chance if she stays with me.
There were more pages and Stella read them all, her eyes hurting with the strain, her teeth and jaw aching as she clenched them tighter with every revelation. She found the last page. That was how the story of her childhood ended.
And that’s when the tears flowed like rain and everything she thought she knew flipped and collapsed in on itself.
It was a file note, made eighteen years before, when Stella was just eighteen. Her memory drifted back to that time. She’d been working at the Middle Point general store and saving as much as she could to escape to Sydney. Karen had been diagnosed with cancer and between school and work and caring for her beloved aunt, there was no time for anything else.
No time to be told what had happened to Bec Smith.
Mother Rebecca Marie Smith, deceased. Overdose. Next of kin is carer Karen Ryan.
Auntie Karen had never told her. No one had told her. She’d always believed her mother had run off to Darwin. But she’d been dead for eighteen years.
Stella shuddered, cried out, and began to sob. She dropped her head into her crossed arms and wailed. Her shoulders shook and her tears spilled onto the copy of the file note. She cried for Bec, the mother she’d always hated, always blamed, had always been ashamed of.
Until now.
Now she could see that her mother had saved her. The woman she’d always believed had abandoned her had put her out of harm’s way, had made sure she was in a safe place: had loved her enough to give her up. She may have been young but she knew what she needed to do to break the cycle of dysfunction and abuse and had made the heartbreaking decision to give up her own child.
Stella finally looked up at the clock. It was one in the morning.
‘I love you, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’
CHAPTER
38
Two weeks later, there was a Sold sticker on the sign out the front of Ian and Lee’s former café.
And its proud new owner was standing in the middle of the shop with a smile so bright it rivalled the pounding February sunshine beaming down from the damaged roof.
Well. Perhaps ‘shop’ was too generous a term. It was still a concrete floor open to the elements, bounded by the walls of her shop and a gravel driveway on the other side, with plywood sheeting at the front. There were some steel girders in place of the burnt-out rafters to secure the walls and the rear stone needed some serious repointing. There was no front door to speak of: Stella had simply walked in through the gap in the rear wall leading from the shared toilets.
But whatever state it was in, it was hers.
She felt ready to take this step now, to do something brave and bold. Stella had decided to take her summer profits from Style by Stella and turn them into a down payment on much more than a building.
She was investing in herself. And in the little seaside town that had welcomed her back all those years before, nurtured her and supported her. It had been a long road and there were still moments in which she thought too much about why she shouldn’t, but Stella felt ready now to take hold of her life, to treasure the gift her mother had given her. The gift of a safe place to be. And of her everlasting love.
Love.
Yes, she had been loved. She could see that now through the eyes of an adult. And she felt the gift of that love in her own heart. Hers was filled with so much love that she wanted—no, needed—to share it. With this town, with her friends.
And finally, completely, with Luca Morelli.
She’d set the wheels in motion the week before last and spoken to Ian and Lee. They were thrilled and had agreed to the sale immediately once she’d told them she had a wonderful builder who would be more than able to do the work to restore the place.
Or at least she hoped she still had a builder.
Oh, Luca.
He’d waited so patiently for her. He’d never pushed, and had given her the space she needed to get help, which she might never have done if it hadn’t been for him.
He was a one in a million. There was nothing surer.
Although she wanted to know what he thought first, she’d been doing a lot of thinking of her own about what she would do with the space, and had decided to keep it simple. Her plan was to turn it into a gallery instead of returning it to its former life as a café. She figured Luca would advise her that the rebuild overheads would be lower if she didn’t have to install a commercial kitchen, and anyway, it definitely wasn’t the time to try to lease out another café, given the quieter autumn and winter months ahead.
Stella looked up to the sky, blue and shimmering and warm on her pale skin. She was putting down roots and she didn’t have the words to describe how that made her feel. Grounded. Maybe that was it. The upheavals of her childhood, her failures in Sydney, were all behind her, and had been for years, although she hadn’t realised that until now.
She checked her watch. It was almost time to open the shop and she had to squeeze in a double espresso first. Within a couple of minutes she was ordering her coffee at the best café in Port Elliot (formerly the second-best) and waiting for it to be handed to her.
She felt good. She felt happy, but she still had one thing to resolve.
‘Here you go, Stella.’ The waiter passed her coffee over the counter and she paid for it in loose coins she’d bee
n clutching in her hand. With a smile, she breathed in the heady aroma and headed back to Style by Stella.
‘Are you gunna finish that coffee so we can go see this shop?’
Grace Morelli was sitting opposite Luca, wearing a huge broad-brimmed hat, and tapping her fingers on the table like a crazy woman.
‘In a minute,’ Luca said, downing his third double espresso. He was back in Port Elliot, two minutes walk away from Style by Stella, and he was slightly freaking out.
‘Well, come on. Anna’s told me all about the shoes and I need to see them for myself.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Luca stood, pushing back his chair with a scrape, and followed his little sister out onto the street.
He’d been waiting patiently for the woman he loved to get the help she needed, but he couldn’t wait any more. He thought that he could show how much he loved her by giving her space. But that was bullshit.
He had a whole other plan to show her. And it was burning a hole in his pocket.
Stella reached her shop, unlocked it and flipped the sign on her front door back to Open. When she was inside the empty quiet space, she breathed a sigh. She would never tire of looking around Style by Stella, at all the things she loved and which her customers loved too. The bright colours cheered her and the sun shining down from the skylight—Luca’s skylight—was bright on a display table of her loveliest glassware. Just as Luca had suggested, it acted as a drawcard to every person who walked in. No matter what else was happening in her life, her shop was a constant. She had managed to make that a success by pouring all her energy into it. And now, she had a plan to pour lots more energy into the shop next door.
Lots of energy.
Lots of pent-up energy of the sexual kind.
Boy, did she have a lot of that going on. She fished her mobile phone out of her bag and was about to dial Luca’s number when the bell above the door tinkled.
It was Courtney, in uniform, frowning. ‘Hey, Stella.’
‘Hey, Constable. You look like you’re in a hurry.’
‘I’ve got a date. And I’m desperate.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ Stella said with a raised eyebrow.
‘Oh god, I’m that too, but right now I need a dress. Something that doesn’t look like …’ she motioned to her dark navy trousers and shirt ‘… “cop”.’
Stella weaved around the counter to grill her friend. ‘So when did this all happen, huh?’
Courtney blushed the colour of sunburn. ‘I was called out to a break and enter last night and he lives next door. He wasn’t a witness or anything. He just happened to arrive home when I was about to leave. And we got talking about old Mrs Derringer and then we got on to how he’d just moved here from Adelaide and didn’t know her that well. It turns out he’s the new teacher at the high school. And did I mention really cute, in a nerdy, hot, distracted kind of way?’
‘Sounds interesting. And you’re not breaking any kind of ethical police rules or anything because he’s not a victim or a criminal, right?’
Courtney’s face lit up. ‘Exactly! I’m totally ethically in the clear. Which is such a relief. Not that I have found criminals I’ve arrested vaguely cute at all, given that the chances of them being guilty are pretty high. Although there was that one guy I caught speeding on the road to Yankalilla last Easter. Boy, was he a picture. Dangerous, you know? But totally out of bounds, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ Stella agreed.
‘So that’s why I’m excited about the teacher. He seems totally normal in that cute, nerdy, hot, distracted kind of way. Did I mention that before?’
‘Yes.’
‘So anyway, that’s why I’m here.’
‘How hot do you want to look?’
Courtney’s eyes widened. ‘You have to ask? I want can’t-keep-his-eyes-off-me hot. I want steam-up-his-glasses hot. Can you pull off a miracle, do you think?’
‘I have some shoes I think might just do the trick.’ Stella grabbed Courtney’s hand and led her across the shop to a particular pair of bright red stiletto heels. They were the ones Anna Morelli had loved and bought at the reopening and Stella had continued stocking them ever since. It seemed women loved a pair of fuck-me shoes as much as men did.
Courtney oohed and aahed as she handled the shiny patent leather, turning one over and assessing the heel height. ‘These are totally gorgeous, even though I won’t be able to walk in them without losing feeling in my toes. I don’t know, Stella.’
‘Trust me. You want hot? These shoes are hot.’
Courtney put the shoe back on the display rack. ‘I think they might be a little excessive for the Middle Point pub on a Monday night.’
Stella thought for a moment. ‘What if you bought these instead of a new frock and wore your navy sundress, the one you bought last summer for your grandmother’s birthday barbeque? Maybe some silver hoop earrings or a chunky necklace? That would look so great on you. And it’ll be hot without being over-the-top hot, you know what I mean?’
A smile began to blossom on Courtney’s face. Once they’d found her size, she tried them on in a change room so as not to arouse any suspicions that she was a strip-o-gram, and then whipped out her credit card.
Stella reached down to a low shelf for a paper bag and a pile slipped out onto the floor. She pushed them aside with her foot and completed Courtney’s transaction before slipping the shoebox into a bag. ‘I want all the gory details, Courtney. I especially want to know if the FM shoes worked.’
Courtney’s eyebrows knitted together. ‘The who what?’
Stella lowered her voice. ‘The fuck-me shoes.’
Courtney snorted. ‘That’s good. Let’s hope that’s really what they are. I’ll catch up with you—and thanks so much, Stella. You’re a lifesaver.’ She turned to go.
‘One more thing,’ Stella said.
‘What’s that? Make sure I have a condom?’
‘Well, that too.’ Stella grinned. ‘But I was going to suggest you wear bright red lipstick.’
‘Thank you, style guru. Bright red lipstick. I’m on it.’ Courtney smiled and walked out the door. Stella crouched down to tidy the dropped paper bags, pushing them back onto the shelf under the counter. She stood, grabbed her phone and dialled Luca’s number.
Then she heard the shop’s front door bell tinkle and a familiar ring tone.
And her heart thudded at what she saw.
CHAPTER
39
Luca Morelli walked into her shop, his long-legged stride and echoing footsteps so familiar to her that she would have known it was him even if she’d had her eyes clenched shut. He stopped a metre from the counter, lifted his chin and nodded in her direction.
He held out his phone. ‘You calling me?’
Stella hurriedly jabbed her finger on her phone keypad to disconnect the call. ‘What are you doing here?’ she stammered, her voice a mixture of happiness and bubbling nerves. She couldn’t believe he was there, as if by just thinking about him she’d summoned him out of thin air. That was a party trick she wouldn’t mind perfecting.
‘It’s great to see you. You look great,’ Luca said.
‘You too.’ Of course he looked great. He wasn’t dressed in a fancy way, just a plain old Luca relaxed way, in worn denims and a white T-shirt. It didn’t need to be tight to hint at what was underneath it: she knew full well what that well-worn fabric was covering.
His gaze flickered from her eyes down her dress, a sleeveless tunic she was wearing with pointed beige flats. Around her wrist dangled a bone-coloured chunky bangle and her signature red lipstick was freshly applied.
Luca tucked his phone in his front pocket. ‘So … what’s up? You can tell me in the flesh now. You got a problem with something?’ Luca lifted his eyes to the ceiling, looked around at his work. Her heart swelled at the pride in his face.
‘Not a problem as such.’ Stella bit her lip and tried to find something meaningful to do with her hands in case she accidentally reached out for him.
‘No?’ When his gaze returned to her face—her lips, to be precise—she had a shock of memory about kissing him, and being kissed by him. And dear god, it looked like he was thinking the same thing because he seemed reluctant to look away from her.
‘Luca!’ Someone was calling his name from the doorway.
When the bell above the door tinkled again, a woman joined them. She was petite—hell, she was short. She was wearing a pretty sundress and a golden tan and her full lips were pulled to one side in a scowl. She held a huge hat in her hand, in tan raffia.
‘I said I’d be two seconds, Luca. I just ducked across the road to the bookshop and I turned around and you weren’t there. Would it have killed you to wait for me?’ When the woman’s attention drifted from the back of Luca’s head to Stella, she stopped and covered her mouth with a flat palm. ‘Oh. Sorry. I didn’t see you there.’
‘Welcome to Style by Stella,’ its owner proudly proclaimed. She swallowed to loosen up her clenched throat.
‘Wow.’ The woman glanced around, taking in the shop and all its pretty, shiny things. ‘This is incredible.’ And then she elbowed Luca in the side. ‘So, is this her?’ The woman’s gaze switched back and forth from Luca to Stella, like she was watching the final of the Australian Open. When Luca didn’t answer, she nudged him again, more fiercely this time. ‘Well, is it?’
Luca shoved a hand through his hair. ‘Yeah. Stella, this is Grace. Grace, Stella.’
‘Nice to meet you.’ Stella could feel her nails digging into her palms. It hurt like hell. She wanted it to.
Grace swivelled her gaze back to Stella. ‘You won’t believe how much I’ve heard about this place.’
Stella found a smile. ‘Really? That’s so nice to hear.’
‘He hasn’t shut up about it. For months.’
Stella flicked a glance at Luca. Months?
Grace threw her hands in the air in frustration. ‘For god’s sake, you two. Will you talk to each other? I’ll be in the bookstore across the road.’ With a huff, the pocket rocket stormed out. Stella blinked. There was something so confrontingly familiar about the woman. Her height. Her stomping. The way she spoke to Luca.
Hold On to Me Page 30