One Summer Between Friends

by Trish Morey

  Jules saw the shock on her face, and felt her pain. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I held him while he cried, I rocked him. But as a friend. And I don’t know how it changed or why, but suddenly he was kissing me and we were on the floor.’

  She paused, trying to collect herself. ‘It was all over in five minutes. He didn’t make love to me. It was grief sex, life-affirming sex—call it what you like. And afterwards, we were both mortified. We couldn’t look at each other. We knew what had happened was wrong and we thought if we just shut up about it and pretended it never happened, it would go away. Richard went away. He went home. To you.

  ‘Except, then Della happened.’

  Sarah put her face in her hands.

  ‘I told him, because I thought I owed him that much and because I wanted an abortion. I asked him to help me get to Sydney to see someone. But he begged me not to, and I couldn’t go through with it. Not after what he’d been through, even though … even though I knew it would kill our friendship.

  ‘He slept in the spare room, Sarah. He never came near me again, except when it involved Della. She gave him a reason to live. So you see, he never left you for me. It was never me. He loved Della. He delighted in her. But you were the only woman he ever loved and he thought he’d lost you. He just didn’t know what to do.’

  Sarah looked up and nodded. She sucked in a deep breath and got to her feet before reaching across the space between them to squeeze Jules’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her vision turning misty. ‘I think I’ve heard enough.’

  Jules stood there a while after Sarah had been swallowed up by the rainforest.

  Pru peeked out of the door. ‘Has she gone?’

  Jules nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How is she?’

  Jules sighed. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  52

  Sarah walked. Down past the store where Dot was happily serving behind the counter again—at least twenty-five per cent of the time. Past the museum and along Lagoon Road and the loop it made around the airport, and still she walked, until she reached the gate where the guided tours of Mount Gower began and where unaccompanied access was denied. She leaned on the gate as the sun warmed her face and the breeze tugged at her hair. The rhythm of her steps had been a gentle balm to her troubled and tangled soul.

  She’d driven Richard away. She driven herself mad in her single-minded pursuit and she’d driven away her husband in the process.

  She’d never failed at anything she put her mind to, but she’d fucked up majorly at holding her marriage together. Then again, she hadn’t even tried to save it. She’d been oblivious to the danger. Oblivious to the cracks. She who’d always prided herself on her eye for detail, which was so useful in the world of numbers and balance sheets. She’d been so obsessed with having a baby that she’d missed the signs her marriage was at breaking point. She’d let it splinter and shatter and fall to tiny shards around her, and then she’d made out like she was the victim.

  ‘I’m sorry, Richard,’ she said, looking out to the sea that had swallowed him up, and it wasn’t lost on her that, for once, she was the one uttering the words she so abhorred. ‘I’m sorry I made you feel so bad—so stuck and so unwanted. I’m sorry I did that to you. I was lost in my own orbit. If I could do anything to make up for it, I would. In a heartbeat.’

  But there was nothing she could do. Nothing that could bring him back or make things better.

  She took a deep breath of the clean, salt air and said, ‘I loved you, even if I lost sight of that. I’m glad you had six months with your beautiful daughter. She’s grown into a beautiful young girl. You’d be so proud of her.’

  And then she turned around.

  It came to her on the way back, filtering down through the flotsam and jetsam of her shattered life like the island breeze filtered through the loose strands of her hair—a sense of relief. Almost as if the oppressive weight of half a decade of bitterness and acrimony, resentment and injustice was budging. Lifting from her shoulders and sweeping clean the poison from her heart.

  Acceptance? she asked herself as she walked, questioning this unfamiliar lightness of being. But no, she’d reached acceptance before, and that terrain had been flat and dull and monochrome. This terrain was filled with colour and fragrant with scent, just like the island she was on, the green of the palms and the turquoise of the sea, the salt in the air and scent of the earth, rich and fertile. She breathed deep the fresh sweet air, and for the first time fully understood what Noah had been trying to tell her at the restaurant at Port Macquarie. That there was a time to let go, a time to move on.

  This was no mere acceptance, she knew. This was forgiveness. For Richard. For Jules.

  For herself.

  And there was one thing she could do to show it.

  Jules was surprised to see her again when she came to the door. ‘Sarah, what is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I have something I need to tell you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t worked out all the details,’ said Sarah, moisture blurring her vision, ‘but if the offer is still open, I’d be honoured … if you still wanted …’ She had to fight to get the words past the lump in her throat. ‘I mean, if you still wanted me to be Della’s guardian.’

  ‘You mean it?’ Jules’s voice sounded like she thought there had to be a catch, like there was something she was missing.

  And there was. Kind of.

  ‘But only on one condition,’ Sarah added. ‘That it’s never needed. Because nothing is going to happen to you, okay? You promise me that? Because I am never going to lose you again.’

  Jules was blinking as much as she was, and the smile through her fingers was tremulous, before she suddenly pulled Sarah into her arms and hugged her tight. ‘I’ll do my best, okay?’

  Sarah felt the arms of her friend around her and drank in the scent of Jules she knew so well, the scent she’d thought consigned to the past, and forgiveness had never smelt so good.

  53

  ‘Hey, Flossie girl,’ said Neill when she stepped into the office. ‘Have you seen this?’

  She looked over her father’s shoulder where he sat at his desk. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the summer edition of Far Flung, that holiday magazine.’

  Floss stopped, a sickening chill sliding down her spine. ‘Oh?’

  ‘That bloke who came, remember him?’

  Floss shut her eyes. Oh, yeah, she remembered him all right. She’d been trying to forget. She’d hoped he’d forgotten about the review.

  ‘He’s done a write-up. Four pages, Flossie, and loads of pictures. How about that?’

  ‘Let me see that,’ she said, trying to wrangle the magazine away.

  Neill Beckinsale was having none of it. ‘Wait your turn,’ he said, swatting her hand. ‘Sit down, I’ll read it to you.’

  Oh, god, please no. ‘Dad—’

  ‘Shh. Listen. “Lord Howe is a fine name for an island, but the islanders know a better one. They call it Halfway, because it’s halfway to heaven, and after my visit to this amazing destination, I believe they’re right. Here are my top ten reasons why—”’

  She cracked open one eye. That didn’t sound too bad.

  Her dad reeled off each point: Kim’s Lookout; Ned’s Beach; the twin peaks of Mounts Gower and Lidgbird; and on and on. Floss started to relax. Until her father got to number ten and stopped.

  ‘Oh wait—you rate a mention here, Flossie.’

  ‘Dad, how about—’

  ‘“Floss Miller,”’ her dad read, ‘“is a pocket-sized rocket who almost singlehandedly”—huh!—“runs the finest little guesthouse you could hope to stay in. Clean, comfortable and home-away-from-homely, Beached is a gem of a spot to stay. Tell Floss I sent you, I owe her one.”’

  Her father looked up, frowning. ‘What on earth does he mean by that? Why would he owe you one?’

  Floss blinked, able to breathe again, and gave her father a shrug. ‘Because we gav
e him free accommodation,’ she said. ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘Oh, righty-oh.’ Neill looked back down and smacked the pages with the back of his hand. ‘Five out of five stars, Flossie, what do you say about that?’

  Apart from it being a humongous relief? ‘It’s great, Dad,’ she said, looping an arm around her father’s shoulders as she checked out the photos. There was a selfie Matt had taken at the top of Kim’s Lookout, looking back over the island to the twin mountains at the other end. He was cute, in that lumbersexual kind of way.

  But he wasn’t a patch on Andy.

  54

  ‘Have you decided which job you want?’ Noah asked when he called from Port Macquarie on Friday night like he’d promised.

  Sarah had heard yesterday that she’d been offered the position in North Sydney, but she wasn’t as excited about it as she’d expected to be. ‘No. I keep thinking about what you said about looking for something in Port Macquarie.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to throw a spanner in the works, but something else has come up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The cop on Lord Howe who was taking long-service leave. Turns out he’s got some ongoing health issues that haven’t resolved. He’s decided to retire.’

  ‘And you’re thinking of applying?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. I’d go back in a heartbeat, but I know it’s the last place you want to be.’

  Well, that wasn’t strictly true anymore. She’d had a few days to process it, so she told him about the box she’d found, and the letters and how she’d gone to see Jules.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, when she’d downloaded it all. ‘Well done, you.’

  ‘Thanks. It feels good. Sam tried to tell me that forgiveness is good for the soul.’

  He waited a beat. ‘And me.’

  ‘Oh god,’ she said. ‘You did too. I’m sorry I didn’t listen.’

  ‘I don’t think you were in the right mind to listen then.’

  Wasn’t that the truth? How could it be that this man knew her so well?

  ‘Anyway, I’m just tossing up whether or not to throw my hat in the ring.’

  ‘Is there any point? I thought they preferred to have a family man as the permanent appointee, rather than a single man.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s a problem, all right. So I got to thinking how I might possibly become a family man. So that I might qualify, I mean.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know it’s wrong to do this over the phone …’

  Her extremities tingled. Her mouth went dry. ‘Noah Lomu, you are not making any sense here.’

  ‘Marry me.’

  She collapsed into the nearest chair.

  ‘Sarah?’ Noah said, when she didn’t respond. ‘Did you hear me?’

  Oh, she’d heard him all right. She just didn’t believe it. She swallowed. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Never been more serious in my life. I’m asking you to marry me.’

  ‘You want to marry me so you can apply for a job?’

  ‘Well, there is that,’ he conceded. ‘But what it all boils down to is I want to marry you because I love you.’

  Bam. She closed her eyes. What he was asking was too crazy to contemplate.

  ‘But I don’t have to apply for the job,’ he added. ‘I don’t want to give you a reason to say no.’

  ‘But, Noah, even if I did say yes, you’d still hardly be a family man. You know I can’t have kids.’

  ‘I know. Doesn’t matter. We’ll still be a family, just a family of two, you and me. What do you say, Sarah? Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’

  A bubble of laughter escaped her mouth. ‘You really are serious.’

  ‘You’re killing me here. What’s it to be? Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘One hundred times yes. I—’ She stumbled. These were words she hadn’t used for such a long time, words she’d thought tarnished and scrubbed from her lexicon. ‘I love you too.’

  ‘I’m getting married,’ she said to herself, testing it out loud to see how it sounded, to see if she believed it.

  She walked into the dining room where her mother and father were sitting at the table, intently poring over a brochure, mentally preparing herself to tell them the news, willing her mother not to snipe, just this once.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘Our itinerary.’

  ‘What itinerary?’

  Sam looked up, a grin from ear to ear. ‘We’ve booked a cruise on the High Seas Magic Carpet Ride. Around the world, one hundred and six days.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say what, dear.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You see,’ her father said, ‘Dot’s well and truly on the mend now, and we’ve looked around at all our friends—the ones who are still here that is—and decided that if we don’t do it now, we never will.’

  ‘But one hundred and six days, that’s what? More than three months. What about the store?’

  ‘Don’t fret,’ said Dot. ‘We’ve got that planned, haven’t we, Samuel?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘We’re going to ask Danny.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You’ve already done enough,’ Dot said, nodding. ‘You’ve done your bit.’

  ‘That’s right, lovey. You’ve put your career on hold for us once before. It’s not fair to expect you to do it again.’

  ‘But what about Silvio? You know you hate Silvio being here with Danny.’

  Her mother pursed her lips. ‘But we won’t be here, will we? We’ll be off on the High Seas Magic Carpet Ride.’

  It was impossible. Danny would never agree, and even if he did … ‘Forget Danny,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it. All you had to do was ask.’

  Her thunderstruck parents looked at each other. ‘Well, if you’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said, and left them to go and call Noah.

  55

  On Christmas Day, they all went to Ned’s Beach after lunch with their respective families: Floss and Andy with their tribe of kids, Annie just showing the promise of a little baby belly and being doted on by Trent; Jules with Pru and Della; and Sarah and Noah.

  While Pru watched over the kids splashing in the shallows and feeding the fish like Sarah and Jules and Floss had done when they’d been their age, the men gathered around the barbecue, nursing cold beers and cooking sausages nobody could possibly squeeze in, but that would probably disappear regardless.

  The centrepiece of their picnic table was the Knitivity, the secret project Jules had begun knitting while she’d been undergoing radiotherapy. She’d knitted Mary and Joseph and an even tinier baby Jesus, the Three Wise Men and the shepherds who watched their flocks by night. There were sheep too, and a donkey and a camel and, just for Della, there was an ancient horned turtle guarding the cradle, a feat that had given Jules no end of grief because she’d had to make up the pattern herself.

  Floss picked up the turtle and put it on her palm. ‘I never knew they had a turtle as part of the nativity scene.’

  Jules sniffed. ‘If they could have a lobster in the nativity play in Love, Actually, I figure anything goes.’

  Floss laughed as she put it down. ‘You’re going to be famous soon. Those jumpers of yours are being spotted all over the world. I don’t know how you keep up.’

  ‘I couldn’t do it without Pru,’ Jules said. And it was true. Knitting had saved Jules while she’d been stuck in Sydney so far from home, and now knitting was saving Pru, one jumper, one evening at a time.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sarah as Annie and Trent ran up from the beach for a drink of water. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ She dug through her bag until she found the small package. ‘Here you go, Annie. Happy Christmas.’

  ‘For me?’ Annie said.

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Wow, thanks!’ She sat cross-legged on the grass and eased off the sticky tape before peeling back the wrapping paper.

 
‘Oh my god, they’re gorgeous. Look, Mum!’ Annie held up the white crocheted bonnet with the frilly edge, the bootees laced with ribbon and the sweet cardigan. ‘They’re so tiny. They’re beautiful, thank you.’

  ‘Dot made them,’ Sarah said, maybe just a fraction too brightly but she hoped nobody would notice. ‘I was hoping they’d come in useful one day.’

  Annie jumped up to give Sarah a hug and kissed her on the cheek. So different to that first wary reunion at the store, Sarah thought, before both Annie and Trent ran back to join the others in the water, leaving the three women on the grass.

  Floss looked at Sarah. ‘Dot made those for you, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sarah’s breath hitched, and she gave a tight smile. ‘I figure I don’t need to hold onto them anymore.’

  ‘You okay?’ asked Jules.

  ‘I’m all right. It comes and goes like a wave.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess it’s something that will always be lurking in the background, I just have to learn to ride it. Accept it.’ That fifth stage of grief was a long one. But if her dad was right that, like grief, there were five stages of forgiveness, and that you had to get to acceptance before you could deal with it, before you could move on—well, if he was right, then somehow forgiveness was turning out more satisfying than she’d ever thought possible.

  She took a deep breath of the sweet scent of freshly mown grass beneath her overlaid with the tang of salt and sea.

  ‘You’re really something,’ said Jules, smiling warmly. ‘You know that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Floss. ‘Amazing.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Sarah said, shaking her head while she took in the scene around her—a scene that would have been unthinkable only six months ago—with Jules and Floss and the men around the barbecue and Pru and the kids mucking around in the water, Della squealing in delight as the fish nibbled at her ankles. ‘But I do feel whole again, being back here on the island, having you as my friends.’

  ‘Hey,’ Jules said, hooking her little finger around Sarah’s and linking the other with Floss, who quickly hooked onto Sarah’s spare, forming a wonky circle. ‘Best friends in the world, right?’