One Summer Between Friends

by Trish Morey

  Especially when Sarah had told Floss that they were done, and that they couldn’t be friends anymore.

  Across the counter, Floss seemed to rally herself, her eyes wary. ‘Kids,’ she said. ‘Get in the car. Annie, look after Mikey for me. I’ll be there in a minute, okay?’ She passed the child on her hip to her daughter.

  ‘Lollies!’ protested the child she’d called Mikey, who’d spotted the packets in the jar and didn’t want to go anywhere.

  Floss snatched up two packets and handed them to Annie. ‘Go, get in the car, all of you.’ To Sarah, Floss said, ‘Add those to the total, okay?’

  ‘Please,’ Sarah said, ‘don’t make them go. It’s fine, I swear.’ She took a deep breath. She was older now. Hopefully wiser. Stronger than the emotional wreck she’d been then, just two weeks after yet another failed IVF attempt. She tried her hardest to find a smile. ‘So, these are all your kids?’

  Floss looked at her wide-eyed, almost guilty, and worried. Definitely worried. ‘Yeah,’ she said tentatively, her mouth twisting as if the admission was as uncomfortable to make as it must be for Sarah to receive it.

  ‘I’ve met the eldest two, I think,’ Sarah said, doing her best to keep her voice even. ‘Although ages ago now.’ She’d met number three too, although he’d been little more than a toddler, and of course, she’d known about number four. She vaguely remembered now her mother announcing some time ago that there’d been a fifth, but she’d repressed that unwelcome information, kept it buried until now.

  ‘I remember,’ said the girl, stony faced.

  Sarah winced. Of course she’d remember, because she’d been there that day. She’d heard every bitter and twisted word that had spewed out of Sarah’s ugly mouth.

  ‘Me too,’ said the boy, although his eyes were nowhere near as hostile. More like wary.

  ‘Anne, was it?’ said Sarah, looking at the mini-Floss, trawling through memory after painful memory. That was the worst of trying to forget the fact everyone else in the world was happily popping out babies—you blanked their children’s names too.

  ‘Annie.’

  Sarah nodded. ‘Annie. Of course. Great to see you again.’ She turned to the girl’s brother. ‘And, Brad?’

  ‘Brodie,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘it’s been a while. Nice to see you again, Brodie.’

  Floss finished the introductions. ‘And these two are Cameron and Ben,’ she said, ‘and this little monkey’s called Mikey.’

  ‘Wow.’ Sarah was being too cheerful, she knew, too false. But she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t stop making out like everything was perfect and that nothing was wrong. ‘And now, I suppose, I should ring up your groceries.’

  While Sarah totted up the purchases, Floss just as hurriedly packed them into a string bag. ‘So … how long are you back?’

  ‘Only six months. I’ll be gone before you know it.’

  Floss nodded.

  ‘How’s Andy?’

  Floss looked away and reached for her wallet. ‘He’s, um, good.’

  ‘Good.’

  Sarah told Floss the total and watched as she pulled out some notes.

  ‘Oh,’ Floss said, ‘you forgot to add the lollies.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘They’re on the house.’

  Floss pressed her lips together and nodded before she turned and started herding her family towards the door. She held it open while they trooped through, the younger ones bolting down the stairs to get to the van first.

  Floss turned at the door. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah.’

  Sarah bit her lip but couldn’t stop the moisture from leaking from her eyes. ‘No, I’m the one who should say sorry. I’m sorry. For everything. It’s nice to see you again, Floss.’

  ‘Yeah. You too.’ And if Sarah wasn’t wrong, Floss almost managed a smile.

  Sarah listened as the van’s engine kicked into life then let herself slump onto the stool behind the counter. God, she’d been such a bitch. So jealous and bitter and making out like it was Floss’s fault that Sarah couldn’t conceive. But Floss was at the opposite end of the fertility spectrum. The one for whom getting pregnant was as easy as breathing.

  And it had hurt so very bad for such a long time.

  But now it hurt to face up to what she had done. Sarah walked to the window and looked out at the cloud-scudded sky and the ever-shifting palms that screened the guesthouse across the road, and felt … alone.

  She’d been alone forever it seemed. She stood at the window, her mind a jumble of thoughts. She’d wronged Floss, and it had helped ease the pain to see her again. Jules had wronged her. She squeezed her eyes shut. The situations weren’t the same. They weren’t equivalent. What Jules had done to her was a thousand times worse.

  But would it help to see her?

  To talk?

  Floss hadn’t wanted to be confronted by Sarah, she’d wanted to flee, Sarah had seen it in her eyes and sensed it in her body language. And yet she hadn’t run. She’d held her ground and they’d talked. Briefly.

  Maybe she should do the same, just go and listen to what Jules had to say. Walk away again, head held high. Nothing given away. Nothing lost. After all, in Jules’s case, Sarah wasn’t the one in the wrong.

  The scent of orange on the air reminded Sarah of what she’d been doing before Floss’s unexpected visit, and she turned away from the window, her heart thumping loud at an unlikely decision made, already dreading their meeting, half suspecting she was going to regret it.

  24

  ‘This can’t go on, Mum,’ Jules said, putting a cup of tea in front of Pru. ‘It has to stop.’ It was eleven in the morning, two days after her parents’ wedding anniversary, and she’d walked in and found Pru snoring on the sofa again.

  ‘I know, dear,’ Pru said, wafting one hand in the air. ‘It will. As soon as you stop shouting at me.’

  ‘I’m serious, Mum. You have to do something about your drinking.’

  One eye blinked open and her mother ran a hand through her hair. ‘Please don’t make it sound like I’ve got some kind of problem.’

  ‘You do have a problem! Which means I have a problem, because I have to go to Sydney next week for radiotherapy, and I have to leave Della in your care for four entire weeks. I can’t have you passing out on her. I won’t expose my child to that kind of abuse.’

  ‘I’m hardly abusing her.’

  ‘But you are, if she’s seeing you attached to a wine cask from morning till night. What do you think you’re teaching her?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Pru said, sitting up, her tone firming. ‘I dragged you up all right, didn’t I, in spite of all my obvious failings?’

  ‘You didn’t have a drinking problem then.’

  ‘Della’s my granddaughter. I’m not going to do anything to harm her, am I?’

  Jules wanted to shake her. ‘How am I supposed to be sure she’ll be okay if you keep this up? You can’t go on like this.’

  Her mother dropped her head into her hands. ‘If I hadn’t lost Greg,’ she wailed. ‘If things had been different …’

  ‘But we did lose Greg,’ Jules said, thinking that it was time for some tough love and for her mother to face up to the truth that he wasn’t coming back, and that she had to live in a world without him. ‘We lost Greg. We lost Richard. They’re gone, Mum, no matter how much we wish it had never happened, no matter what either of us wish we could change.’

  ‘I know,’ said Pru, looking like a puddle of herself on the sofa as she descended into sobs. ‘I know.’

  Jules sat down beside her and wrapped her in her arms, because she hated being this hard on her mum. Even if Pru needed it, it hurt Jules too. ‘It’s okay, Mum. It’s going to be okay.’

  It was only when she’d tucked her mother up in bed to sleep it off that she saw the answering machine blinking with a message. She picked it up, thinking it might be something important. She was not prepared to find that it was Dot. She was even less prepared to find that it wa
s Dot calling to ask Pru to let Jules know that Sarah had agreed to talk to her, the sooner the better—anything to get it over with. (‘But don’t tell Jules Sarah said that.’)

  Jules sucked in air as she put the phone down.

  Help!

  25

  After Andy being away so long this time, his homecoming was like a celebration for the kids, so Floss didn’t have to work at avoiding him. But when she was doing the dishes he picked up a tea towel and then a plate from the drainer.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  She stiffened at his closeness. ‘Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘Only you seem a bit—’ he shrugged, ‘—I don’t know. Quiet?’

  ‘It’s impossible to get a word in edgeways with this lot, you know that.’

  ‘That’s true.’ He picked up another plate and started wiping. ‘So there’s nothing wrong?’

  ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind, that’s all,’ she said, hands deep in the soapy water. ‘Tomorrow’s going to be busy with six changeovers and there’s Mikey’s party to think about.’ As well as all the stuff on my mind I’m not going to tell you about.

  ‘Mikey’s birthday’s not for ages.’

  ‘It’s in three weeks, and the fundraiser the weekend before that. I’ve been asked to help out with the raffle. It’s not like I’m standing still here.’

  ‘All right, all right, I was just asking.’

  She closed her eyes and rocked a little over the sink. God, it was impossible standing next to him. How could he not smell her fear? ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘There’s just a lot on my mind.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and continued drying dishes in silence for a while, until: ‘I know what I was going to tell you. I saw Sam Rooney at the airport picking up some produce for the store. Did you know Sarah was back?’

  ‘I know. I turned up at the shop and got the shock of my life.’

  ‘Yeah? What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. She was nice. Trying too hard, especially seeing all the kids were there, but she was all right.’

  ‘Jules must be shitting herself.’

  She wasn’t the only one. If Andy had any idea what Floss had done … But the mention of Jules reminded her of something she’d heard today. ‘One of the mums at school who works part time at the museum said she heard that Jules had to go to Sydney for some tests.’

  ‘Oh? What for?’

  ‘She didn’t know. Jules didn’t say. But apparently she’s back already.’

  ‘Can’t be too serious in that case,’ he said, moving a stack of plates into the cupboard. ‘Mind you, you fuck around with someone you shouldn’t be fucking around with, you probably deserve a bit of grief.’

  Floss’s stomach churned. She swayed a little on her feet before she picked up the abandoned tea towel. ‘Tell you what, how about you go read Mikey a story, and I’ll finish these.’

  ‘You serious?’ She knew he was sizing up the rest of the dishes in the rack and thinking she was mad.

  ‘Yep,’ she said, ‘Mikey’s missed you. Go read to him and ask what he wants for his birthday, because he hasn’t told me.’

  He went, and Floss slumped against the bench, her head in her hands. What the hell was she going to do?

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she heard Annie say a few seconds later.

  She straightened slowly and turned. ‘Just thinking.’ She took in the damp coat her daughter was peeling off. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘I had to take a book over to Trent’s. He needed it for homework.’

  ‘You see a lot of Trent lately.’

  She shrugged, thrusting her hands deep in her jeans pockets. ‘He’s cool.’

  ‘Well, just make sure you concentrate on school. There’ll be plenty of time for boys later on.’

  ‘Says my mum, who got married at twelve.’

  ‘Excuse me, I was nineteen.’

  ‘But you knew Dad way before that, didn’t you? You went to school together.’

  ‘We grew up together.’

  ‘There you go.’

  ‘There you go, what?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  Floss balled up the tea towel and lobbed it at her daughter. ‘Come on, now you’re here, you can give me a hand with the drying up.’

  That night in bed, Andy threw an arm over her. And in spite of craving physical attention for as long as she could remember, Floss froze.

  ‘Are you angry with me?’ he asked, lying behind her.

  ‘Why would I be angry with you?’

  ‘I don’t know. You just don’t seem very happy to see me.’

  ‘Are you planning on making love to me?’

  He said nothing for a while. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Self-defence, really. I’d just like to know before I get all worked up and hopeful and then it turns to nothing like it usually does.’

  His thumb made small circles on her arm. ‘Well, maybe I am.’

  She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘In that case, too bad. It’s that time of the month.’

  ‘Lucky,’ he said, rolling over and turning his back to her, ‘that saves us both a heap of disappointment.’

  And Floss wondered, in the long, lonely hours afterwards, what would become of them.

  26

  It was one thing to invite Sarah to talk. It was another thing entirely for her to agree. Now Jules couldn’t claim the high moral ground (however shaky that might be), couldn’t claim that she’d tried to reach out to her old friend, only to have her efforts rebuffed.

  Jules sat in a chair on the veranda, waiting, knitting needles click-clacking, trying to look more relaxed than she felt. Pru had taken Della for the morning. Jules had wanted her nowhere near here when Sarah turned up.

  Della, the proof of her betrayal.

  Della, the child who should never have been.

  Della, who she loved more than she’d ever thought possible of something or someone you’d never before realised you’d wanted.

  She’d been shattered when she’d discovered she was pregnant. Devastated. But at that stage the fact it was a child hadn’t registered. At that stage her pregnancy had been a problem she hadn’t wanted, because she’d known what it would cost.

  Oh, Della, she thought, rubbing her forehead with her hand. If she’d had her way, Della wouldn’t even be here. It was Richard who’d insisted. Richard who’d begged her not to go down that route. God, if she hadn’t told Richard. If he’d never known and she’d gone ahead …

  So it was Richard she had to thank for Della. She hadn’t felt like thanking him then or most times since. He’d turned her life upside down and broken irreplaceable bonds. But he’d been Della’s father and she’d mourned his loss because of what Della had lost. What Jules had lost was already long gone.

  But now she couldn’t imagine her life without Della. Instead of a curse, her daughter had turned out to be a gift. A gift that had destroyed friendships, true, but a gift without equal.

  She looked down at her knitting to find her needles still. When had she stopped? She checked where she was up to on the pattern and resumed.

  She’d finished the scarf and moved on to Della’s jumper and was working on the sleeves, and what seemed a continuing saga of casting on and then casting off. Whoever had invented raglan sleeves, she’d decided, was some kind of masochist. She forced herself to concentrate.

  Knit. Pearl. Knit. Pearl. Knit two together …

  And meanwhile clouds rolled and roiled overhead, and palm fronds slapped wetly as the wind pushed its way through the rains-plattered treetops. Jules’s gut churned.

  She looked up, her eyes searching the approach to the house. Where was Sarah? Had she changed her mind? Part of her wondered why Sarah had even agreed. Jules had been prepared for Sarah to go on ignoring her. If the circumstances were reversed, Jules wasn’t confident she would have agreed to a meeting. But Sarah had. Because of the cancer? Because Sarah felt sorry for her? Or because she wanted to witness the evid
ence of Jules’s illness for herself?

  Her knitting needle stabbed at a loop, picked it up and promptly dropped it, threatening to cause a run. Damn! Jules took a deep breath. She was determined to finish this jumper for Della before she had to return to Sydney, but she was so tense. She used a crochet hook to snag the lost stitch and thread it back onto the needle like Molly had taught her. Tried the stitch again.

  She had to talk with Sarah. Explain. Apologise.

  Because if Jules didn’t try now—if they couldn’t try to make some kind of peace while Sarah was right here on the island—then it would never happen.

  27

  It was a decent walk to Jules’s house, although nothing was too far on the island, but Sarah was in no mood to rush. She’d left her bike at home. Still, she arrived at Jules’s driveway far sooner than she was ready. She took a deep breath as a pair of tourists cycled by, wobbling precariously and laughing as they waved a greeting to Sarah. But while she waved back, she couldn’t find an answering smile. Not while voices banged around in her head, asking questions that had no answers and singing sweet siren songs suggesting that there was still time to change her mind.

  God, she was tempted.

  Yet still she forced her feet up the driveway, the pavement damp from earlier rain, the clouds still hovering low like dark sentinels. The cottage was all but hidden from the road, only coming into view as Sarah rounded the curve between the kentia palms. And when it did, it was as cute as she remembered, white timbered with a green tin roof and cedar-framed windows, and wrapped with a veranda edged with green railings and posts and cream-coloured slats that matched the house. This was where Richard had come that time, to stay with Jules. This was where Sarah had sent him, practically with her blessings. And this was where her husband and her one-time best friend had betrayed her.

  It looked far too charming a cottage to be the venue for such a crime.

  Bile rose hot and sour in Sarah’s throat. She swallowed hard against its bitterness, shaking her head. ‘What the hell am I even doing here?’ she whispered, and turned to leave.