by Lily Malone
‘Hello, Ella. Hi, Erik. It’s been a long time,’ Marshall greeted them, flashing white teeth in a tan way out of place in a Chalk Hill winter. His gaze raked Ella from head to toe and he said, ‘You’re looking well.’
She wanted to claw his eyes out.
Irene’s voice rattled loud through the speaker. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to introduce our Shire President Leo Calder and our Local Member of Parliament, Mr Terry Dryden, to commemorate the opening of our new town pool. You can see that we also have a very famous celebrity here with us today. I doubt Marshall Wentworth will need any introduction as you will all have seen him on telly, and might remember him from when he was swimming.’
Irene looked for Ella, hiding in the shadow of Erik.
‘We did this as a very secret and very special thank you present for you, Ella, and for you, Erik. We knew that Marshall used to swim in your squad, and we contacted him on the very slim chance that he might have a weekend free to be our guest in Chalk Hill and come to our town pool opening.’
The crowd clapped.
‘Credit where credit is due. We have to thank Helen Nillson for this bright idea, and Harvey Begg of Begg & Robertson Real Estate for stumping up a financial contribution to assist with flight and accommodation for Marshall and his camera crew.’
The crowd clapped Helen and Harvey.
‘So on Monday morning on live TV, Chalk Hill and its new community pool will feature on the Network 8 Beautiful Day, celebrating good news stories when a community all works together.’
Cheers. Hoots. Hollers.
Ella’s pulse swished in her ears so hard, she barely registered the crowd noise or Irene’s voice. Where was Sam? Had he heard all this? Had her letter got through to Marshall? Was he seriously here to film the opening of the community pool, or was he here for Sam?
Or both?
She couldn’t ask. She had to wait while Irene handed over to the Shire President and he droned on. Then the MP talked about the government’s commitment to West Australian regions …
Cameras flashed.
Network 8 cameras focused on Marshall. Did she imagine it? Or did those cameras also have her in the frame?
‘If we can get you people to come in closer,’ Irene was saying, flapping her arms at Ella and Erik like an airport worker steering a plane into the terminal. ‘We’ll cut the ribbon.’
Ella let herself be positioned next to Erik, one end of a thick red ribbon in her sweating hands. The Shire President and MP held the other end.
‘It is our great honour to invite Mr Marshall Wentworth to cut the ribbon and declare our new pool officially open,’ Irene announced.
Marshall strolled forward, but before he raised the scissors to cut, he paused.
Ella’s world paused with him.
Marshall beckoned for the loud speaker, and graciously, Irene swapped it for the scissors.
‘Good morning, Chalk Hill!’ he called, and all around them in waves bigger than any wash from a pool, the people roared back.
When things finally quietened down, Marshall began again.
‘It is such a great privilege to be here among old friends, and new friends. I want to thank your organising committee for contacting Network 8 and giving us this wonderful opportunity to bring good news stories to Australia. Good news stories that involve swimming and swimming pools are always going to be especially close to my heart.’
Ella screamed a silent litany of: does he know, does he know, does he know?
‘It isn’t just the opening of the pool that brings me to your town today.’
Oh God, he knows, he knows, he knows.
How did this happen? She’d had no chance to prepare Sam.
In front of her, metres from the stage, Jake took a stiff step forward. Beside her, Erik stood coiled and tense, indomitable as a German tank.
‘I have another very personal reason to be in Chalk Hill with my camera crew this morning, and it’s a reason that involves—’
Ella leapt to Irene and plucked the scissors from the old lady’s fingers. She was in Marshall’s face before he could blink.
‘Turn the loud speaker off,’ she said, pitching her voice only for him. ‘Turn those cameras off. Do it now.’
‘Excuse me, folks,’ Marshall breezed. ‘Apparently, we’ve got a small glitch.’
His dark gaze speared Ella’s.
Around her, Ella sensed Erik and Jake, both closing in to take her flanks, but the cameras smelled opportunity and she was dead certain none of them stopped filming.
‘Is everything okay, Ella?’ Irene’s querulous voice reached Ella’s ears. Irene would be smiling through her teeth, praying that everything was all okay on today of all days.
Ella directed everything she had at Marshall. ‘If you make this about you, and not about Sam, I will cut off your balls and feed them to that cute little pony over there, like little ball apples.’
She twitched the scissors to prove it and Marshall’s tan paled.
‘So you give the loud speaker back to the nice lady with the red hair and take these scissors and cut that ribbon. Smile at all the people and then we talk without cameras. Just you and me.’
Erik loomed. ‘And me.’
‘Me too,’ Jake said.
‘That’s quite the posse,’ Marshall said.
‘You decide, Marshall. I can tell it exactly like it is. I can tell this whole crowd if you like, with all your Beautiful Day cameras filming. I’ll tell them you got me pregnant and abandoned me and never wanted to know your own son. I’m not afraid of the truth, not anymore. But you should be.’
Marshall’s eyes flicked above Ella’s head, and she knew he was considering what he could and couldn’t get away with. His network cronies might swim to his tune, but there was other media there that would love nothing better than to spread a juicy headline.
Ella twitched the scissors again.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll tone it down.’
Marshall cleared his throat and flicked the switch to turn the loud speaker on. ‘As I was saying, I have a very personal reason for being here today—’
Ella’s gut twisted. She took a stranglehold on those scissors.
‘And that is because I credit Erik Brecker as the swimming coach who taught me the most. I have never swum faster than I did when I was with Erik’s squad. I haven’t seen him for a very long time so this is the first public opportunity I’ve had to say that I’m sorry my time with the Brecker squad in Perth didn’t end on a better note. And I’m very grateful to you, Erik, for everything you taught me.’
Beside her, Erik nodded, but only Ella heard him mutter, ‘Mhmmm.’
‘It’s also a very long time since I last saw Ella, who I understand is going to be leading swimming lessons for kids here, and swimming for fitness and therapy at the pool, using training techniques and programs that Erik’s been devising all of his coaching life.
‘So, Chalk Hill, you are very lucky to have both of these people here, and your new town pool is in very good hands.’
With that, a perspiring Marshall handed the loud speaker to Irene, and took the scissors from Ella (who didn’t turn them in her hand and pass them politely to him by the point— sue her).
Ella and Erik took a fresh hold on the red ribbon, and Marshall sliced it neatly, straight down the middle.
‘Now you can go for a swim!’ Irene called over the speaker, and a river of kids and adults poured into the pool building. ‘No diving. No bombies. No running,’ Irene hollered after them.
* * *
‘I didn’t know there was any bad blood,’ a very excited Helen Nillson said a few minutes later when she’d waded through the crowd to find an equally hot-under-the-collar Irene.
Jake couldn’t hide his amusement. Helen said bad blood like she’d been watching too much Game Of Thrones.
‘Neither did I,’ Irene whispered.
‘How could we know?’ Sally added, with a pleading glance at Jake.
All those old-lady heads turned to where Erik, Ella and Marshall had gathered in a neat trifecta out of the sun. The Network 8 cameras weren’t far away.
‘I hope we didn’t do the wrong thing,’ Helen said.
‘I wonder what it’s all about?’ Sally said, turning again to Jake.
‘Don’t look at me, ladies.’ He raised his hands, signalling surrender. ‘Now, have any of you seen Sam? Ella sent me to find him.’
‘Try the bouncy castle. All the kids are over there,’ Irene said.
‘Thanks.’
Jake wandered away, trying not to show the urgency that gripped him. He needed to find Sam before the boy saw Marshall, or before one of Marshall’s network colleagues did. Wouldn’t put it past the scumbag to have a camera pointed at Sam right about now.
Sam was on his own, standing outside the bouncy castle looking through the plastic windows at all the other kids having fun.
When Jake found him, Sam whacked his purple-clad arm with his other hand. ‘I am so sick of having this thing on all the time.’
‘Not much longer, mate,’ Jake said, hunkering down so he was nearer the boy’s height. ‘Hey, mate, your mum wants you, buddy.’
‘Aww, right now? Do we have to go already?’
‘I don’t think you’re leaving yet, but you need to come with me. Ella needs to talk to you about someone and there’s someone here you’ll want to meet.’
‘Not a politician. Those old dudes are all so boring.’
Jake snorted. ‘Not a politician.’
‘Who then?’ Sam said, getting stubborn in a hurry.
Was it his position to say? Ella wouldn’t care. Not now.
‘Your dad is here, mate. Your real one.’
Sam’s face screwed tight with concentration. ‘The swimmer dad?’
‘Yup. That one.’
‘I thought he lived a long way away. How could he be here?’
‘You and your mum wrote to him, didn’t you? He must want to meet you.’ Jake hoped for Marshall’s sake that it was the truth, and not some publicity stunt, because that pony looked like it was ready for lunch.
* * *
‘So you got my email, Marshall?’ Ella began, once the crowd thinned and she had space to think, and if she was ever going to find a good time to talk to Marshall, this was it.
‘I did. I also got an invite via the Network from your town pool committee asking me to come. The pool invite came first.’ He shrugged. ‘I talked to the producer, said we had history and that this might be the chance for me to have a reunion with my son, and he agreed with me that there were two stories in it. It’s coming up to the ratings period, you know.’
‘I bet he leapt at it,’ Ella said sourly. What television producer worth his salt wouldn’t leap at a story like this?
‘I couldn’t care less about you opening the pool, Marshall. All I care about is Sam. He’s here somewhere, and he is a young boy who desperately wants to meet his real dad. I wish to heck it wasn’t you, but there you go. Can’t help bad luck.’
‘Not bad luck. Mhmmm,’ Erik muttered from the side.
Marshall’s gaze snagged his former coach, and just as he might have done all those years ago, he dropped his head and kicked at a loose stone like he might once have kicked a tile on the pool deck. ‘I meant what I said, Erik. I never swam as fast after I left Perth. My PBs were all set when I swam with your squad.’
‘So why leave?’ Ella demanded.
‘I wasn’t the only one who thought about leaving the squad. I was just the only one who had the guts,’ Marshall answered.
‘Guts?’ It was so not what Ella anticipated she’d hear. ‘Nowhere in this whole sorry thing have you shown any guts.’ She nearly spat it at him.
‘The other guys in the squad said you favoured Ella,’ Marshall said to Erik. ‘She was the little protégé who couldn’t do any wrong. You never yelled at her like you did at all us others. She never had to listen to you rant and rave.’
‘Because Ella just got in and did the work,’ Erik said in his man-of-steel way. ‘Every time. Every session.’
Marshall kicked another stone, burying his hands in his pockets, and he turned to Ella. ‘Can we speak on our own for a moment?’
She looked at Erik once, back at Marshall, and said, ‘Sure.’
‘I will see if Jake finds Sam,’ Erik said, with a warning glare at Marshall as he walked away.
‘So the old bear hasn’t exactly lightened up in his old age, hey?’ Marshall said to her.
‘Don’t talk about him. All I care about is Sam and you not mixing him up in any games.’
Marshall sighed. ‘So he’s really mine?’
‘Of course he’s yours,’ Ella said, way too loud. She lowered her voice. ‘I wrote to you twice after … after Nationals. I wrote you that I was pregnant, and I wrote when Sam was born. All I got back was a letter from your coach asking me not to distract you before Olympic trials. The coach said I might have missed my shot at gold but I shouldn’t wreck that opportunity for you. Did Roarke pass on the letter? Did you know we had a son?’
His eyes tried to find any place but her. ‘I got the first letter. Roarke convinced me that it was all about Erik wanting me back in his squad—that you’d made up the story I was the father to get me to go back to Perth. After that the newspapers were all about you and Erik. You moved in with him. You two got married.’ He shrugged as if to say, what was I supposed to think? ‘I assumed the same thing the rest of the country assumed. I didn’t get any second letter telling me Sam had been born. I swear it. When I didn’t hear from you again, I thought Roarke was right and the whole thing was a lie.’
He seemed genuine. God, he seemed genuine. But hadn’t he fooled her before?
Ella inhaled, and the rawness of it hurt her throat. ‘So what are you going to do about it, now you know?’
‘My wife isn’t happy. She made me do the DNA test, and it matched those samples you sent across. Tina thinks you’re after money. Child maintenance. A settlement.’
‘I don’t want your money. I never did.’
‘How did Sam find out about me? What did you tell him?’
‘I told him that Erik wasn’t his real dad. That his real dad lived a long way from us. But I didn’t ever tell him who it was. I kept thinking I’d wait till Sam was older … but Sam got older and I never knew what to say. Then he heard me telling Jake, and’—she shivered at the memory of that horrible weekend— ‘that got rough on everyone.’
‘How did you explain it then?’
‘I said that it wasn’t that his dad didn’t want him, but that he didn’t want me. He also doesn’t know anything about how he was conceived, and what you did, that night at Nationals.’
When she said those words, Ella laced them with threat.
Marshall got it. His nostrils flared and his jaw got tight.
Then abruptly, his posture changed. His gaze lit on a spot over Ella’s shoulder and she turned to see Jake, Erik and Sam—his purple cast the very brightest thing about the three of them—heading their way.
‘What happened to his arm? That’s not going to look good on camera, Ella,’ he said, eyes shifting sideways, and he smirked. ‘My long-lost son with a cast on his arm. Can’t you look after him?’
Ella’s blood froze. The bastard. He was trying to scare her. Trying to make her back off. And she wouldn’t let him, so she gave it to him straight. ‘He broke it the night he found out you were his real dad.’
Whatever Marshall had been about to say, Ella beat him to the punch. ‘Marshall, I remember everything after I woke up and worked out you were pulling on your pants and you’d already had your fun. And so help me, if you wreck this moment for Sam, that’s what I’ll be telling your cameras.’
She wouldn’t. She’d never tell anyone about the rape because of what that wo
uld do to Sam, but she’d bet everything she owned that Marshall wouldn’t take that chance. He had his reputation to uphold. Ladies’ man wouldn’t hurt him. Rapist would.
Then Jake was there, his hands on Sam’s shoulders. He nudged Sam towards Ella, and her baby boy who wasn’t a baby anymore cuddled close into Ella’s hip.
She breathed out, settled her nerves, smiled at her son and said, ‘Sam Brecker, meet your father. This is Marshall Wentworth. Marshall, please say hello to your son, Sam.’
CHAPTER
39
‘So I think I will not be down in Chalk Hill for a little while now, Ella,’ Erik said, as they stood by F Troop the next afternoon.
Sam was with her, cast up to shield his eyes from the sun, now setting over the lump of Chalk Hill to the west.
‘You have Jake with you now. You have a new life here. You have found good people here. People who love you.’
Erik said it with all the generosity he’d always carried inside that huge chest and enormous heart. He was the most beautiful person she knew, and she’d miss him, but events she’d triggered—all the things she’d written on her list of things to do before the next Olympic games—were falling into place.
She had a new career, fledgling, but heading in the right direction.
She was in a new town.
She had a new and remarkable man in her life.
And she had told Sam about his father.
Things were looking up.
Ella hugged Erik to her, and he kissed the top of her head before he let her go.
‘And now you, young man,’ he said to Sam. ‘You will come to see me in Perth any time you like. I can meet the bus. I am never far away.’
‘Or I can drive you, Sam,’ Ella said.
‘I teach you to swim faster than your mother,’ Erik said.
Sam clung to Erik, hard as he could with one strong young arm and another in a cast. Then Sam broke away with a sobbed ‘Bye, Erik’, and ran into the house.
‘It’s been a big weekend for him,’ Ella said, ‘and that’s not me apologising for him.’
‘I know. Is a big weekend for a little life.’