One Summer Between Friends

by Trish Morey

  ‘Reckon there might be a couple of passengers in need of a change of pants when they get down,’ muttered Bill.

  Floss couldn’t help but smile. The sight of that rock wall at the end of the short runway could be daunting on a calm day; on a day like today, it was easy to wonder how the plane could actually clear it. Especially side on. But the pilots who operated flights here were the best in the business. They had to be. At the last possible moment, the plane straightened, touching down with only a couple of bumps, before taxiing to the small terminal.

  ‘All righty,’ said Bill. ‘Prepare yourself for incoming.’

  The stairs were wheeled into place, and in no time the doors were opened and people were disembarking front and rear, and luggage being removed from the hold. Floss held her Beached sign in front of her as the first passengers climbed down. She recognised two of her group of three—one waved to her—and then the third emerged from the plane. Great. Now she just needed to find her couple. She was scanning the twenty or so passengers when her gaze passed over a woman walking alone. Her eyes flicked back, because she looked like …

  Jules.

  Wow, their second inadvertent encounter in as many weeks. Imagine that.

  The first of Floss’s booked group of three reached her, all smiles, almost old friends the way she hugged her, and then they were all there, Alison, Rosslyn and Barb, talking nineteen to the dozen about the landing, about how happy they were to be back.

  Jules passed by and for just a moment their eyes met. Floss heard a ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ and turned her head to see Pru with a tight grip on the hand of a young girl.

  ‘Be careful, Mummy’s a bit sore,’ Floss thought she heard, before she noticed a couple looking around uncertainly as they entered through the arrivals gate and there was no time to wonder about Jules anymore.

  ‘Beached?’ Floss offered, holding out the sign that had been obscured during the mini reunion. The man smiled with relief and Floss knew she’d found David and Jill Jones.

  ‘Come on, honey,’ he said to the grey-faced woman beside him. ‘Here’s our shuttle. You’ll be fine now. My wife isn’t feeling too well,’ said the man to Floss and she swung into action.

  ‘Let’s get you inside,’ she said, ‘and we’ll get you a drink of water while we wait for the luggage.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to be a problem,’ said the woman weakly.

  ‘You’re not a problem. You had a bit of a rough approach. You’ll soon be feeling a whole lot better, I promise.’

  By the time the luggage was loaded into the van, Jill was beginning to look human again: there was colour in her cheeks and she was starting to appreciate her surroundings. ‘It’s quite beautiful here, isn’t it?’ she said, staring up at the looming heights of Mounts Lidgbird and Gower, and Floss knew she’d be fine.

  Floss barely had to say boo on the way back to Beached as the three walkers started offering advice to the first-timers about all the sights they simply had to see and all the places they had to eat, pointing out the landmarks along the way. It was fun listening to people doing her job and doing it well, and she only had to insert a footnote every now and then, mostly details about opening hours. And then David and Jill started talking about why it had taken them so long to discover Lord Howe—they’d been busy tripping to other places all around the world, and they got into a discussion comparing their favourite travel destinations: San Francisco, Istanbul and Venice, even the lost temples of Angkor Wat buried deep in the jungles of Cambodia. These people had been everywhere, it seemed, and as Floss listened to them recount their adventures, a part of her envied their freedom to explore any part of the world they chose. Floss knew this island like the back of her hand, but there was an entire world out there she’d only ever heard about. It didn’t help that their discussion was punctuated by comments about how beautiful this or that was on the way.

  She shoved her discontent aside as she pulled off the road. Beached was tucked down a hibiscus-lined driveway in the subtropical forest behind Ned’s Beach. The three walkers were telling the newbies that for an unmissable experience, they had to go and stand in the low waves and feed the fish as they swam all around them.

  Floss smiled. The walking group had just about mapped out the Jones’s itinerary by the time she pulled up. Beached’s dozen cabins were sprinkled between rolling lawns and stands of swaying kentia palms. The units were simple but comfortable, their timber steps leading to small verandas furnished with outdoor chairs and tables. To Floss’s eyes they looked fresh and inviting after their recent lick of paint.

  She sorted the luggage and showed them all to their rooms, reminding them to come to the office if they wanted to book a restaurant and the shuttle to take them for dinner (the three walkers were full of recommendations for the first-timers here too) then left them all to settle in. It was her dad’s day with her mum and she had whatever booking requests that had come in to deal with, and then she had a bolognaise sauce to get simmering for dinner.

  Dinner time at the Miller residence was loosely referred to as feeding time at the zoo. It was a noisy affair, with kids talking over, reaching past and annoying each other and generally trying to eat the most in the least possible time before clearing out, using the excuse of homework, before it was time to do the dishes.

  Floss didn’t mind that she was left with the cleaning up. She’d tried once upon a time to establish a roster system that shared the washing and drying up around, but over the years she’d grown sick of waking up to a dirty sink because someone had been too busy the night before to do their bit, so it was just easier to do it herself and be satisfied it would get done. The kitchen sink. The one bit of mess in the kitchen she figured she could control. It gave her ten minutes of quiet because no child was silly enough to interrupt her or they’d be press-ganged into drying, and was often her favourite part of the day. Especially if Andy was home to help out, which he was tonight.

  ‘I saw Jules again today,’ she said. Annie had gone off to do homework with Trent and, as expected, the boys had all cleared off so they could pretend to do homework.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘She was getting off the plane. She must have been to Sydney.’

  ‘Maybe she took Della to see her grandparents. Don’t they live in Canberra or something?’

  ‘Goulburn. But no, Pru and Della met her at the airport.’

  He shrugged. ‘So maybe she had something to do in the city.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. The last time I saw her was at the surgery.’

  ‘So?’

  Floss put one hand on her hip and pondered the fog the steam was leaving on the window. ‘She didn’t have Della with her then, either.’

  Andy brought over the plates. ‘And you think these things are somehow connected?’

  Floss rinsed them in the second sink before sliding them into the sudsy water. ‘They could be. I mean, Jules goes to see the doctor alone and then the next thing, she’s coming off the plane from Sydney, also alone. You don’t think something’s wrong, do you?’

  ‘So, Detective Floss,’ Andy said, scooping up a fingertip of suds and depositing them on her nose, ‘why don’t you just ring her up and ask her what’s going on?’

  She laughed at his unexpected silliness, and swiped the froth from her nose. ‘You know I can’t do that.’

  ‘So stop worrying about it.’

  ‘But I can’t do that either.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She shrugged. ‘Because we used to be friends and if something is wrong …’

  ‘Hey,’ he said, taking hold of her shoulders and wheeling her around to face him in a way that made her heart race. ‘You just said it. You used to be friends. If you were still friends, wouldn’t you both have stopped and said something when you met at the surgery or when she came in on the plane?’

  Floss could barely think. His eyes might be laughing at her, but the hands on her shoulders were big and warm and it had been so long since he’d touched
her that she almost forgot what she was talking about. She blinked, trying to find her place in the conversation. ‘But still …’

  He dropped his hands and moved away, collected more plates and brought them over.

  She smiled as she watched him work, his movements smooth, his reach long as he bent across the big table. No wonder this was often her favourite part of the day. The mornings were crazy getting the kids organised and off to school, while after dinner offered a precious few minutes to catch up with her husband. And lately, it had become their most intimate part of the day. How sad was that? But tonight Andy seemed to be in a playful mood.

  She turned back to the sink and washed a couple of glasses while the water was still clean.

  She licked her lips. ‘Andy, do you think we could go on a holiday one day?’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Somewhere we haven’t been. Maybe overseas. Really overseas, not just to Sydney or Port Macquarie.’

  ‘What? With this lot? How could we afford that?’

  ‘No. Just you and me. Somewhere romantic maybe. The couple who came in today were talking about Istanbul and saying how wonderful it was. But there’s always Paris, or even Hawaii.’

  He grunted. ‘Still going to cost a fortune.’

  ‘Maybe, but if we saved up a bit every week, maybe we could afford something for our twentieth anniversary. It’s only a couple of years away.’

  He picked up a tea towel and started drying the dishes in the rack. ‘I don’t get it. Why do you suddenly want to travel? You’ve never mentioned it before. I didn’t think you were interested in travelling.’

  ‘Maybe I wasn’t. Does that mean I can’t be interested now? Is it so unusual to want to visit somewhere else for a change?’

  ‘But why? People come here from all over the world because this place is so special. We’re the lucky ones, that’s what everyone tells us. We get to live our lives here.’

  ‘Yes, our entire life. I’m thirty-seven years old, Andy, and I’ve never been out of the state. I’d really like to see something else of the world before I die.’

  He snorted. ‘Now you’re just being melodramatic.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Will you think about it? There must be somewhere you’d like to see.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I reckon everywhere is kind of the same when you get there.’

  ‘That makes no sense,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if everywhere was the same, nobody would ever want to come here, let alone keep coming back.’

  ‘But they do, because this place is special.’

  ‘Good grief, Andy, you’re not listening.’

  ‘Yes, I am, I just don’t get what your problem is.’

  She slammed the balled-up washcloth down on the sink and crossed her arms. ‘You want to know what my problem is? I feel trapped, Andy. I feel trapped and bored and taken for granted—and yes, that includes by you. And I feel like if I don’t have a chance to go somewhere else and see something else, I might just go mad.’

  There was a commotion in the bathroom, rapidly escalating to physical blows. Cameron and Brodie arguing over who should have first shower.

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ Andy said, his eyes cold as flint, before the tea towel in his hands hit the table and he strode off to sort them out.

  Annie appeared at the door to the laundry, her eyes haunted, almost like she’d been crying. Floss wondered how long she’d been there. And how much she’d heard.

  ‘You’re home earlier than expected,’ she said, trying to inject normality into her voice while Andy was barking orders as he sorted out World War Three in the bathroom.

  Annie didn’t say anything, just headed to her bedroom and slammed the door.

  It suddenly hit Floss that Annie might have been right, and that she and Andy could be sliding towards divorce without her even realising.

  16

  What was it about a brush with your own mortality that made you spend the wee hours of the night tossing and turning instead of sleeping? By the end of her second night home, Jules was over it, unsettled and cranky. Sure, it didn’t help that her stitches were pulling, and that she knew, once healed, she’d probably be heading back to Sydney for radiotherapy, but in reality, she had nothing to be cranky about. Life was good. She’d had a close call. Less than that really—a mere brush with something that could have been a whole lot uglier, and she’d got off lightly. She was one of the lucky ones.

  You’re so lucky. The tourist she’d been sitting next to on the plane home to Lord Howe Island had said as much when she’d learned Jules lived on the island. She and her two friends had been to Lord Howe twice before, and all of them said that if they lived there, they’d never leave.

  But they were right. She was lucky.

  Funny how your perspective could change almost overnight. Jules had never considered herself a lucky person. She hadn’t felt lucky when she’d found herself pregnant, and likewise she’d felt anything but lucky when Richard and her father had been lost at sea. She certainly hadn’t thought herself lucky when the doctor had packed her off to Sydney because of the lump she’d found, a lump that, while benign, had led to the discovery of something sinister going on in her other breast.

  But maybe that’s what facing your own mortality was supposed to do—stop you from dwelling on what was wrong with your life and what you were missing, and got you concentrating on what was right with it. For starters, she did live on the most gorgeous island in the world, a fact most people seemed to envy. She had a beautiful daughter in Della, and a supportive mother in Pru. And to top it off, her cancer had been nipped in the bud.

  Clear margins. Her new favourite words.

  Because they meant the surgeon had got everything. Along with a sizeable chunk of her breast that might see her nipple pointing in a slightly different direction than her other one, but hey, Jules still had a breast and a nipple, even if the wound would be tender for a while. All in all, it was a small price to pay.

  And so what if she hadn’t got off as scot-free as she’d been hoping? It could have been worse. So okay, her cancer journey may still have a way to run, but right now she was back on Lord Howe Island with Della and Pru; why shouldn’t she just count her blessings and concentrate on the good in her life?

  She flipped over her pillow, searching for a cool spot to lay her overheated face.

  Damn it, but she knew what was bugging her. Because there was a flipside to appreciating what was good in your life. There was also an appreciation of what you had left undone, of things that refused to stay buried in the past—things that had to be put to rights while you still had time, however hard it was or impossible it seemed.

  Because nobody knew how long they had on this earth; this brush with cancer had rammed home that uncomfortable fact, no matter how lucky that was supposed to make her.

  Lucky.

  It was another kind of luck—dumb luck—that had seen her run into Floss, first at the surgery and then at the airport, after managing to avoid her for years. And now Jules kept seeing her face—kept remembering the questions and the concern in her eyes when they’d met at the airport. Only for a moment, before Jules had had to turn her head away, because it had looked like Floss had almost cared, and once again, Jules had been reminded of all the words that had been said and all that she had lost. But it was the words that played over and over in her head, like they were stuck in a loop.

  ‘You slept with Richard?’ Floss’s shrill words still stuck her with pain. ‘How could you do that?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to, it just happened,’ Jules had told her. Because it had. ‘He was devastated about Sarah losing the baby. About everything really. He was a mess, Floss, and he needed comforting, and one minute I was consoling him and the next—’

  ‘The next you were bonking each other’s brains out. Yeah, it’s obvious how devastated he must have been feeling. It’s obvious how you thought you’d console him.’r />
  ‘It wasn’t like that! You make it sound dirty.’

  ‘How do you expect it sounds? We grew up on this island together, we went to school and Sunday school together, we played together. What part of that upbringing told you it’s all right to sleep with your best friend’s husband? That it’s not wrong? That it’s not sordid?’

  ‘Don’t you think we know it was wrong? But it was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened, I know that, but it did. Only now it’s suddenly more complicated.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Floss had said, chewing on her lip, ‘babies can do that.’ Jules had got a sense then that maybe things weren’t all right in Floss’s world, but there was no time to think about why, not when she was being hit with a barrage of questions she’d already been angsting over.

  ‘So what happens now? What are you going to do?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. I thought about having an abortion. I was so tempted. But Richard wants to keep it.’

  ‘Is that so hard to understand? He’s desperate for a child. Except Sarah—remember Sarah, his wife? Your friend?—is the one who was supposed to give it to him.’

  Jules had dropped her head, clasping her hands behind her neck with the weight of it all. ‘I know! I know. But I can’t change that now!’

  When she looked up, it was to find Floss watching her thoughtfully, condemnation in her eyes. ‘This is going to kill Sarah. You know that.’

  Jules had known that, had lost sleep knowing it, had wished her baby away a million pointless times so that Sarah never had to find out. And while she’d also known that her confession would be met with shock and dismay, still she didn’t understand why Floss couldn’t be just the tiniest bit sympathetic, when Jules knew the grief Sarah had dished out to her over the years.

  So Jules had lashed out. ‘Why are you so worried about Sarah? What’s she ever done for you but made you hide your children away and pretend you don’t have them? Every time she looks at you, envy all but drips from her eyes. You can’t tell me you’re still friends after the way she’s treated you.’