by Jennie Jones
****
Goddamn him — he’d got her.
Kate shoved the top right-hand drawer back into its chest. He had a whole box of condoms. A whole box of forty!
Forty? Holy smokin’, devious, summer air and lime smelling….man! Typical. Just wait until she got him in front of that Exasperation board again. She’d pop him into oblivion.
Or would she? The thought of forty nights with Jamie sent shivers down her spine.
She felt so many things for him. Masses of…adoration. Heaps of tenderness. Bucket loads of friendship. Almost…almost… She shook her head. Not quite love. Not quite. It was too soon.
‘You still up here?’ he asked from behind her.
‘Yes,’ Kate answered, and opened the curtains on one of the windows. ‘I was just tidying up.’ She moved the next window and flung the curtains apart.
‘Are you hiding?’
He was right behind her. He’d crept up on her. He turned her to face him and tilted her chin up. He bent and kissed her mouth softly then brushed the fringe from her forehead. ‘I don’t want you to make the wrong decision.’
‘I can’t even think straight after last night.’
‘That’s why I want you to take your time. Think about you, Kate, not me. I want you to read yourself properly, from the inside out. All you’ve done so far is skim the surface. You think you’ve found yourself but there’s more.’
‘I don’t think I want to talk to you about it.’ She still felt too raw and confused.
‘That’s fine too. Now stop moping and come on downstairs. We’ve got to make up a plate of food for tomorrow’s festivities.’ He released her and moved to the door.
Kate yanked the top drawer of the chest open, pulled out a pair of rolled up workman’s socks and lobbed them at his back. ‘I don’t want to go anymore.’
The socks bounced off his shoulder and onto the floor but he ignored them and continued out of the door and down the hallway. ‘Come on, Contrary-Katie,’ he called. ‘Come give me a hand.’
Kate crossed her arms and leaned a hip against the chest of drawers. ‘I like you a lot,’ she yelled after him. ‘But you can’t expect me to you know what this quickly.’
No response. Kate slammed the drawer closed and stomped after him.
****
Kate walked cautiously towards the landline telephone in the kitchen. She didn’t recognise the number on the ID… Dang! Of course she didn’t. It wasn’t her phone. Wasn’t her house. She punched the caller ID number into her mobile in case it was business and Jamie needed to call them back. He had taken a few business calls on his mobile, but nobody had rung on the landline. Not since Kate had arrived. And he’d gone into town for foodstuffs for tomorrow’s Christmas Eve present-giving gig.
She picked up the telephone and pressed the answer button. ‘Hello, Knight Works. Jamie Knight’s residence.’
‘Oh — you sound lovely.’
She did? So did the young female voice on the other end of the phone.
‘I’m afraid Jamie isn’t here,’ Kate said. ‘Can I take a message?’
‘I know he’s not there, that’s why I’m calling you. It’s Kate, right?’
‘Right.’
‘I’m Megan.’
Oh, my goodness! Kate clutched at the bench top.
‘Jamie’s sister.’
‘Yes, hello. How are you?’ Damn. Kate winced. Perhaps she wasn’t supposed to ask that question.
‘I’m fine. Pretty good. Jamie told me he’s fallen in love with you.’
‘Um…’ There it was again — the love word. ‘Yes,’ Kate said softly. ‘He told me too.’
‘I just called him now, on his mobile, so I knew he wasn’t at home.’
‘You’re calling to talk to me,’ Kate said, worry at the upcoming conversation gnawing at her stomach. Was she going to have to admit to Jamie’s sister that she didn’t love Jamie enough? That love was there, bobbing around deep inside her somewhere. But that she felt so much pressure to get everything troubling her right that her emotions had crashed into a brick wall and were currently sinking in knee-high mud and getting showered in all sorts of parrot poop.
‘Can I be open with you?’ Megan asked. ‘Since we might — you know — be sisters soon.’
Oh dang. Kate squeezed her eyes closed. ‘Of course.’ Here it came. Do you love my brother? Will you cherish him forever?
‘I bet Jamie’s told you all about me,’ Megan said. ‘And my illness.’
Kate forgot her own fears and straightened her spine. ‘Yes, he told me, Megan.’
‘What I’ve got is a mental illness, you see. I realise it although I’ve only just managed to say so.’
‘You’re the bravest,’ Kate said softly.
‘There’s more to the world than I thought, Kate. I’m beginning to see other people. Those around me, you know? The family I’m staying with. I bet Jamie’s told you where I am.’
Kate said, ‘Yes, he did.’ Megan didn’t seem to mind. Truthfulness, Kate reminded herself. So long as it didn’t harm.
‘Well, you see — these people I’m staying with, I’m finding out that they have tough things to deal with too. Like ordinary things which are tough. Hard work — you have to get up early on a farm.’
‘I know.’ Kate didn’t know what happened on a farm other than what she’d read about it being a twenty-four-seven job. A struggle. A hardship that somehow every farmer and his or her family loved and endeavoured for. And where was this conversation heading?
‘I’ve missed out on so much over the last four or five years,’ Megan said. ‘And I don’t want to miss the next decade. Know what I mean?’
‘I do.’ Kate thought of her business and her lost raison d’être.
‘I look back now…’ Megan paused, the silence filled with what were obviously challenging thoughts for the young woman. ‘I realise how well I did. At school, at college. I got good grades even while feeling desperate about myself.’
Oh, you poor darling. To be so alone with this illness.
‘I didn’t think I was good enough.’
‘You are good enough. For anything you want to do.’
Another silence. Kate held her breath.
‘Jamie missed out too.’
Kate swallowed.
‘My brother missed out because he was helping me.’
‘He wouldn’t have had it any other way, Megan.’
‘I know that. That’s why I love him the extra special bit. That’s why I don’t want him to miss out on anything else. You…’
‘Me?’ Kate asked, almost breathless with panic now.
‘He loves you.’
Kate clutched the phone, blinking through a cloud of confusion. What was love? A condition of the heart, supposedly. Nobody had ever said anything about bells ringing and snowflakes falling, making your skin tingle in a cascading ripple of pleasure. Like when you came in from out of the cold and sat bare-foot in front a roaring fire, wiggling your toes and getting all warm and content. Or about wanting to help decorate and do up a stone house with a sloping roof and a paddock for a back garden. Or learn how to roast a chicken. That wasn’t love. Love was supposed to hurt so bad you couldn’t think straight, not sit around choosing colour schemes in your mind for bedrooms or think about how many cushions the Chesterfield would hold. Or whether or not tarragon and lemon peel would be a tasty topping for a roast chicken.
‘Kate,’ Megan said, breaking into Kate’s condition of the heart. ‘It’s none of my business,’ she said, ‘but I do hope you love him right back. That would be great.’
‘It’s not always easy, Megan… I mean—’
‘Oh, I’m not pressuring you, Kate. Honestly. But he’s never been in love before — that I know of.’
Please stop saying the love word. ‘I have a lot of business problems at the moment.’ Sounded worse than pathetic. Look what this young girl had gone through and Kate was blathering on about business problems? ‘But I do like Jamie. So very
much.’ So much it hurt. The pressure was building inside her now. To get something right. What did Fat Jacques matter? It was Jamie she should be gunning for. ‘He’s the best man I’ve ever met,’ she told Megan. ‘He loves you very much.’
Megan laughed. ‘Sometimes too much.’
There was no way on earth Jamie Knight could love too much. To be under the spell of his eternal love would be magical.
‘Thanks for talking to me,’ Megan said. ‘I’ve got to go, I have pig feeding duties to attend to.’ She laughed, as though the remark was some personal joke.
‘It was lovely to talk to you, Megan. Thank you for calling me. I know how much Jamie means to you.’
‘Bye, Kate. Hopefully I’ll get to talk to you again. Maybe see you one day.’
Maybe. ‘I hope so too. Bye, Megan.’
As she ended the call Kate’s mobile rang. She checked the ID on the vibrating, lit-up rectangular face. Fat Jacques.
Perfect. And you know what, Jacques Burch? Kate said to herself as she picked up her phone. You can have it. You can have the lot. I’ve made my decision.
She pressed the Answer key. ‘Kate Singleton.’
****
Jamie closed the front door and paused. The atmosphere in the house was as sharp as a razor. The walls felt all shook up. Any second now he imagined the roof might cave in. He looked up to the landing at the sound of a door slamming, then a chair or something being scraped across the floorboards, then the rollers of…a suitcase?
He took the stairs two at a time. From the racket going on, he half expected to see the fourteen-tonner fired up in the bedroom. Instead, he found Kate.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
‘Fat Jacques,’ she said, and threw her white pumps into the open suitcase on the bed.
‘What’s he done now?’
‘He’s thrown me a hard ball.’
‘You mean curve ball.’
‘Whatever. His aim is pretty good.’ She moved around the bedroom like a bullet. Whipping clothes from a bedside chair, scrunching them up, folding them haphazardly and slamming them into the suitcase.
Jamie held his hands up. ‘Slow down, Kate. What’s happened?’
‘I have to get back to Sydney.’
That razor blade pierced Jamie’s heart. ‘Now?’
‘I rang a car hire company in Cooma. They’re sending a car down for me tomorrow morning. They said they’d leave it in town because it’s Christmas Eve and they have to…whatever. So I asked them to leave it with Mrs Tam at the petrol station.’
Jesus.
‘I’ll drive to Canberra and catch a flight to Sydney. I’ve booked that too.’ She paused in her whirling dervish activities. ‘This is costing me a fortune.’ She slammed the suitcase lid down and zipped it closed.
‘Kate.’
She looked across at him, and straightened. ‘I have to go, Jamie. I built this business with my heart. I can’t let someone walk all over me and take it from me. I mean… They can have the business — but not my reputation. Never that. Do you know how hard I worked?’ she asked, poking herself in the chest with her finger. ‘For how long I worked to get to where I am today?’ She shrugged in some sort of despair and turned, heaving the suitcase off the bed.
Jamie stepped forwards and took it off her, putting it on the floor.
‘My reputation!’ she said. ‘I won’t let him take that from me.’
‘How has he ruined your goddamned reputation?’
‘Don’t swear at me,’ she yelled. ‘I’m teetering on the edge here.’
‘Alright. Alright,’ he said again, calmer. ‘What’s the bastard done?’
She sniffed. ‘He brokered that deal, remember? The one that would take Sensations into the big time.’
‘Yeah, and you had a choice. Let him take it and go along with it, or pull out. That’s what this time in the country was all about. Making your choice. The choice you want.’
‘Well, the scumbag has gone one better and razed all my choices. Apparently, the only way the deal will go through now is if I resign.’ Her eyes widened in bitter fury. ‘Resign! Give up everything I worked for. Because…’ She threw her arms up. ‘The new financiers have been told that I’m not to be trusted.’ She thumped her chest with her fist. ‘Me! Not trusted! Can you bloody believe that?’
No, he couldn’t. ‘You’re feeling torn apart, Kate. Why don’t you stay here with me until after Christmas?’ He was getting desperate and he knew it. But he didn’t have a choice. ‘We can figure things out. Chalk up the lot on the board downstairs.’
‘No time. I have to go tomorrow. If I could get into Cooma tonight I’d go now.’ She looked at him, blinked. ‘You wouldn’t take me, would you?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’ He walked across to her and took hold of her shoulders. ‘Are you sure you want this business? From what I’ve learned of you, you don’t. You’re making a snap decision.’
‘About time. I’ve been dawdling for days.’ She broke from him and walked to the windows.
‘Pretty good days though, weren’t they?’
She stopped her edgy pacing. ‘Jamie.’ She came to him and put her arms around his waist and her cheek on his chest. ‘I’ve had a fantastic time here with you.’ She looked up. ‘You do understand? Don’t you?’
About why she was going? No.
‘Will you come back?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
So here he was again, not wanted. What was the point in giving your heart if duty of care didn’t matter to the recipient of your love? This wasn’t the same as giving Megan her space, this was losing. There was every chance Kate wouldn’t return.
‘You’re scared, Katie. That’s all it is.’
‘Maybe,’ she said softly. ‘But we both know that if I stay in the city, this thing between us wouldn’t work.’
Now it was a thing?
‘You travel, I travel.’ She stepped back from him, took his hands in hers and tilted her head in what appeared to be bewildering exasperation. ‘We’d be travelling all the time. We’d never see each other.’
He smiled, released her hand although it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Worse even than letting Megan go off without him to her country farm. But he had to let Kate go. She had to find her own way through this, and he had to force himself to make it easy for her. ‘Jumpin’ jackfish, Katie,’ he said, forcing the smile into his eyes and into his voice. ‘You gone broke my heart, girl.’
She shot back, covering her face with her hands. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t joke about it.’
He stepped forwards and wrapped her in his arms. ‘It’s alright. Hush now.’ All he could do was let her go and hope she’d come back.
Where were the magic stars when you needed them?
Chapter 14
Jamie stopped on the walkway outside Cuddly Bear Toy & Gift shop. He peered through the fake snow and snowflake decals stuck on the glass and ran an eye over the window display behind. This was the only shop in town that sold gifts and he wanted one for Kate. He didn’t have time to drive into Cooma. Leaving Kate on her own yesterday while he shopped for groceries had been difficult enough. He’d thought she might scarper behind his back because he’d told her he loved her. She was ready to hear it in her heart, but not her mind. And the two hadn’t gelled yet. He’d half expected her to get into the excavator and drive that out of town. But he’d had no idea what trouble he’d really be going home to.
Now here he was in town again, this time to check that her hire car had been delivered.
It had. Thank God, because there was no way he was going to drive her anywhere. She was going to have to get used to hearing him say he loved her because he did love her. Adored her. And he was used to playing mind games although he hadn’t thought he’d have to use them to this extent. This time, it was Jamie who was cheating.
It didn’t feel like Christmas Eve, it felt like hell.
‘Morning, Jamie. What are you doing in a toy shop?
Where’s Kate?’
Jamie smiled at Mrs Tam who stood at the counter next to Ted and Mary Munroe, Gemma’s mother, who owned the shop.
‘I could say the same to you both,’ Jamie said, indicating Ted with a nod.
‘We ran out of teddies,’ Ted said. ‘Mary here ordered two more. Just got time to wrap them before this afternoon’s extravaganza.’
‘What can I do for you, Jamie?’ Mary asked, pushing her short blonde hair behind ears that somehow held up gold hoop earrings so big a dog could jump through them. A small dog, anyway.
‘I’m buying a present for Kate. I saw something in the window I think might be perfect.’
Ted huffed. ‘Love in the air, is it?’ he asked. ‘I’ve only just changed the population sign for you. I’ve got to change it again for the new guy, so if your woman is staying too, let me know soon, would you? Save me two trips up the ladder with a paintbrush in my hand.’
His woman. Sounded good. ‘I’ll let you know when I know, Ted.’
‘Like that, is it?’ Mrs Tam asked with a motherly frown of concern.
‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Tam. But don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.’ And maybe the townspeople could help. ‘Actually, folks, I couldn’t have a confidential quick word with you all, could I?’
****
They hadn’t made love last night but Jamie had held her. All night. Kate thought she must have dozed on and off. He’d been awake each time she stirred. Each time her eyelids flickered open. Perhaps he hadn’t slept.
She reviewed her appearance in the bathroom mirror. Smart. Professional.
He appeared in the bathroom doorway, a hand on the frame. ‘Okay. The car hire people have dropped off your car. It’s parked next to the petrol station.’
She looked at him in the mirror. ‘Thank you.’ She blinked at him. ‘How do I look? Fighting fit?’
‘You look just fine. Five minutes, and we’ll go. I’ve put your luggage in the ute.’
He disappeared from the doorway.
Kate plucked the lid off her lipstick, angled her face to the mirror and applied the dusky-rose colour to her lips.
This is the best thing to do, she told her reflection. She straightened the jacket of her raspberry-red suit and shuffled the slim-line skirt over her hips. Yes. Fighting fit.