For Jack, everything had shattered the night of the car crash. In the tragedy and confusion, he’d lost what essentially was his life.
But he was rebuilding. He’d been sure of himself before, and now he was finding a new sense of surety. Life, with all it meant. Hope. A future. His feeling of entrapment had lifted. I didn’t know how it happened. I only knew it had.
And yet now the thought was with me. That maybe his freedom, his hope, his future was still dependent.
On me?
The question hit like a sledgehammer. He was kissing me and it was like no kiss I’d experienced. This seemed a seal. My life had been catapulting out of control for the last few weeks and it was as if Jack was putting out a net and catching me.
But I didn’t want to be caught. I had no place here, where everyone knew and relied on each other. Here interdependency was everywhere. I could never be … in control.
Impossible? Yes. Yes and yes and yes.
But then tonight personal control had been nowhere. Jack had cared in a way I’d never seen a man care. He’d held back and sent me in as the spearhead, subduing any ego to get the best outcome. He’d held Alice’s baby with wonder. He’d hugged Carrie.
He’d been a top city surgeon. According to him he’d been ego-driven, career oriented, but he’d changed, just like that. His kiss was saying I could, too.
This man saved turtles. He was Casanova’s adoptive dad. The night was spinning out of frame. The thought was ludicrous but … how could I not kiss Casanova’s dad?
But deep down, I was still Jennifer Kelly. I was still me. I was kissing him but there was still a part of me that was holding back. Perhaps the sensible part. His hands were on my waist and, while part of me was leaning into him, my hands were suddenly shoving back. A little at first, but then desperately.
He held me at arm’s length. He wouldn’t hold me against my will. I knew that. But to go further …
‘There’s nothing to be frightened of, Jen.’
‘Says you.’ I heard my voice wobble.
That was the least of it. My life seemed to be wobbling. Teetering towards … where?
‘It can work. I watched my grandparents enjoy a lifetime of loving commitment, to each other as well as to the islanders. It made them happy, not bound. Commitment doesn’t mean losing every scrap of control.’
‘I’m committed to Richard.’
‘I don’t think you are.’
‘I’m committed as much as I want to be.’ Giving more felt like stepping forward into a bottomless void. One huge step …
‘Jenny …’ He held me, watching my confusion as if he had all the time in the world.
He might have all the time in the world, but I had a life. Somewhere else. Didn’t I?
‘I don’t want this.’
‘You do want it,’ he said gently. ‘I can feel it.’ He stilled, watching my face. ‘We can both feel it.’
‘Jack, no.’
‘This is right. You know it as well as I do. Jen, you won’t lose control. You’ll find it.’ How well did he know me, this man? He held his hands out from his sides. ‘I swear. You do the kissing.’
‘I don’t want to kiss you.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘I’m engaged to Richard.’
‘I don’t think you are. You might be contracted to marry the guy, but you’re not engaged. Engaged doesn’t just mean wearing a ring. It means being involved. Captivated. Committed. Think about it. I don’t think you’ve been engaged with anyone. Until now.’
‘I’m not—’
‘Engaged? You are, you see. You love Muriel. You’ve fallen for Bridget and Drifter and all these ancient dairy cows. You cared about Alice and Bernard tonight. Your face as their baby cried . . . Involved. Captivated. Committed. Oh, yes, you’re definitely engaged. And now you’ve been sucked in further still. You’re engaged with me.’
‘I am not!’ It was a shout, and it scared me. Drifter, too. She whimpered and huddled behind Jack’s legs. I lowered my voice with some effort. ‘I’m going back to New York. That’s where my career is.’
‘There’s a career here. A life.’
‘The hell there is.’
‘It’s a matter of degree,’ he said. ‘I was bashing my head against a brick wall because I couldn’t have my old life, but now … I’ve lost the suits. Or most of my suits,’ he amended with honesty.
‘Exactly. You’ve lost yourself.’
‘I’m not intending to lose myself. I thought I was, but when I stopped playing the martyr, I finally saw that I didn’t need to. I can move on. And I did keep my best suits,’ he said in a tone of someone confessing all. ‘You haven’t seen them yet. Just wait. Women swoon at the sight of those suits.’
‘Not this woman.’
‘No.’ He nodded, with only a hint of that dangerous, lurking laughter. ‘I can see that about you. Not a swooner. But meanwhile … If I had help here … I’ve been searching the job market online and contacting old friends. It seems I can teach. The work I’ve been doing in the city hasn’t been wasted. If I had more time I could take medical students on isolation rotation. The universities are screaming for their students to get this sort of experience. Teaching could pay enough to employ a locum to take care of things here from time to time. That means I could take Carrie and Bridget to conferences. I can keep in touch with state of the art medicine. But you know what? Not only was that option waiting for me when I looked, I bet it’s there for you. Your work is delivering babies. Well, this place is screaming for a great birthing centre. Not just for the population here. There are so many outlying islands. So many disasters. If we ran such a centre together … Jenny, think about it.’
‘Stop it.’ I wanted to put my hands over my ears. ‘This is blackmail.’
‘I’m not blackmailing you. Jenny, I’m asking you to be with me.’ His voice was steady now. ‘I’m suggesting you stay here, and if you think that was lightly said, then think again. It took guts. But it feels right. Like chucking my suits—most of my suits. And you know what else feels right? I’m falling for you, Jen Kelly. More, I’m starting to think I want you in my bed at night. I surely want you working beside me. It’s probably too soon to say this, but maybe we have a future. You and me and Bridget and Muriel and Fraser … It’s starting to seem …’
He stopped and searched my face, but then he went on, as if the words were already there. They just had to be voiced. ‘Jenny, it might be too soon to say for sure, but we’ll never know unless you give it a chance. Unless you stay.’
I stared. I took a deep breath and stared some more.
‘This is crazy,’ I said at last. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Why should I be out of my mind?’
‘You have a second-best life,’ I snapped. ‘It’s not the one you planned. You’re stuck here and you want me to be stuck with you?
‘So tonight … Did that feel like you were stuck, or did that feel like we could do some good? Even have fun.’
‘So, given the choice, you wouldn’t go back to Sydney?’
‘Maybe I wouldn’t,’ he said evenly. ‘It’s taken me a while to see it. You’ve only had weeks.’
‘I don’t need more time. I have to go back.’
‘To a place overwhelmed with doctors. To a place where you can’t stand on a surfboard.’
‘I won’t be blackmailed!’
‘Is it blackmail to spell the truth?’
‘Stop it, stop it, stop it.’
I was way out of my depth. I backed away, blindly, but somehow I reached the back step. I fumbled behind for the latch to the door, stepping backwards into the recesses of the porch. ‘I’m engaged to Richard.’ I could hear my voice shaking. ‘My life’s in New York. I can’t … I can’t …’
‘You can’t take the last step?’ He hadn’t moved. He was letting me go. ‘You can’t be brave? I watched your face tonight and I knew how much this birth meant to you. I watch you with Bridget and I know how much she
could mean as well. Your relationship with Muriel? Who knows? And us? It’s the great unknown. But would it hurt to be brave? Would it hurt to try?’
He was smiling at me. I couldn’t believe it. How could he smile?
What did he want me to do? Fall into his bed? Fall into his second-best life?
Let myself … love?
Maybe you could, a little voice was saying. All I had to do was step forward again. Take this last step. It was easy.
It was lunacy and I wanted no part of it.
I took one more step back into the porch and closed the door. No, I slammed the door.
No!
21
lip turn n. a sharp twist-turn, dropping down the sheer face of the wave.
What followed was keeping busy. Clinics. Surfing with Bridget. Helping with the milking. Reading more letters and trying not to wake every morning looking for a lone figure surfing.
I still had to face him, though.
Lunchtime was time for Jack to start work and for me to stop. We had to do handover. The day after our … well, the day after Alice’s baby was born, as the stilted formalities of handover finished, he was right in my path, blocking my exit.
‘Scared?’ he asked and he wasn’t teasing.
I flushed. ‘Yes,’ I admitted.
‘Because?’
‘You know. Jack, you have no right to push me. I want to—’
‘Keep yourself only unto Richard.’
‘Is that so stupid?’
‘You don’t love him.’
‘Excuse me.’ I made my tone icy. ‘It’s one thirty and I told Muriel I’d be home by now.’
‘Muriel doesn’t need you. I need you.’
‘Get out of my way.’
‘Chicken.’
‘I called you that once,’ I told him. ‘And you said you’d rather be a chicken than a dead hen. You’re exactly right.’
There was nothing else to say. He moved aside.
I fled.
I surfed. I milked. I read. I didn’t do any midnight gardening.
I seemed to settle.
And Muriel was settling, too.
A week after the drama with the birth, I was eating breakfast when Muriel arrived back at the house. She was in her gorgeous bathing suit, calling goodbye to Fraser over her shoulder.
‘We were out at dawn,’ she said, scraping sand from her feet on the doormat before heading for the shower. ‘Jack was down there, too. You should have joined us. Oh, and Fraser brought us these from the post office.’ She tossed two envelopes onto the table and disappeared.
The first was the letter I’d been expecting. It was the official offer from the realtor, contract included. All I had to do was sign. I read it and didn’t seem to have the energy to go any further.
I was still staring at it when Muriel returned. She was wearing a gorgeous wrap but her feet were bare. Her hair was wet and uncombed. She looked a million miles away from the Muriel I knew.
She looked down at the contract with distaste. With its flamboyant masthead it was obvious what it was.
‘You know how much that man said this place was worth?’ I said as she poured herself coffee. ‘It’s more.’
‘This is the formal offer?’ she asked uneasily. ‘Good news?’
‘It’s a fortune.’ I started sifting through the contract again, purposely not looking up.
‘Richard will be delighted.’
‘He will be.’
‘The cows?’
‘They’ll be sent to the knackers.’
She eyed me with care. ‘What’s wrong then? Don’t you want to sell?’
I put the contract together again and set it aside. ‘Of course,’ I said at last. ‘Selling this place means we can both go back to New York. Where we belong. Right?’
There was only one answer to that, though it took a long time coming.
‘I agree,’ Muriel said and set down her coffee mug with a thud. ‘This coffee’s disgusting. Do what you want.’
She went off to dry her hair. I stared after her for a moment, and finally opened the second envelope. It was buff-coloured, marked International Postal Express. I spilled its contents onto the table.
The first thing that fell out was a photograph—Isabella holding a tiny newborn. She’d obviously just delivered—the background was a delivery room—but she was beaming and waving to the camera.
I found myself wondering who’d taken it. Lionel? Somehow it didn’t seem like something Lionel would do, but birth does change everything.
Then I turned to the rest of the contents and I stopped thinking about Lionel. I was holding a poster—a gorgeous aquamarine logo with a surfboard, foaming waves and my name, all intertwined in a design that took my breath away.
On the surfboard was a doodlebug.
My doodlebug.
This was the doodlebug I’d scribbled what seemed a lifetime ago back in Manhattan while I’d been waiting for Isabella to fix her face. It had been consigned to the trash. How had Isabella retrieved him?
Under the poster was a letter from Isabella. Written before the birth?
Maybe not.
Dear Jenny,
I know I was crazy mad last time I spoke to you. Please accept this design as a ‘sorry’ present. I know you need to stay with Muriel. I was a bit scared and, yeah, lonely, but I’m working on a plan.
My friend, Kent, is a graphic designer and I thought of him when I thought of your surf school. We did have a little help from your secretary.You didn’t think I’d seen you drawing, did you? I rang her that last day and asked her to pull your pictures out of the trash. Hehehe. Anyway, even though I was angry I’ve used this stuff to take my mind off breathing practice and general fatness and other bleh stuff over the last few weeks.
Did you know I’ve changed obstetricians—again! Lizzy, the doctor you recommended, is good like you said. She told me I’d be safer with a caesarean. But I decided to do a bit of doctor shopping and I found a really nice white-haired old guy called Sam Wentworth. He must be almost sixty (!) and he doesn’t let me call him Sam. Dr Wentworth, please!
He says I’ll be foolish to have a caesarean unless I really need to, and when Lionel phoned to argue, he told Lionel that he could only discuss my case with him if Lionel came with me.Which he won’t, because he’s Lionel. Dr Wentworth’s never in a hurry. He promises to be with me and he smiles.
And as for Lionel, that’s the next news …
Oh, stop, wait …
Well, I didn’t finish that, did I? Did you get my text? There I was, sitting in bed sipping my decaf and writing to you and suddenly whoosh, broken waters, all over my best silk sheets. My little Charlie is here!!! And I used all my own muscles!!! You’d have been so proud. Yeah, I’ve called him Charles ’cos he IS going to inherit the Clayburgh fortune, but he doesn’t look anything like his slimeball dad. Hooray!
’Cos that’s the next thing I wanted to tell you. I did it ON MY OWN, or rather WE DID IT. Me and my little fuzzball have walked out on Lionel. Tell Muriel ‘advice taken’ because I went to see the best divorce lawyer in town. I took Lionel by surprise and he hadn’t shifted assets or anything. Tell Muriel I wasn’t stupid enough to sign a prenup. I know Lionel’s been sleeping around. I guess I’d been trying to block it out, but what Muriel said made me face it. So for the last weeks while I’ve been stuck in that great Clayburgh mansion getting fatter and fatter, I did a search for proof. And guess what? His great big mahogany desk and filing cabinets didn’t even have locks. I found tax stuff even I could sense was dodgy (hooray, I copied it all). I found payments for weird stuff. I even found his last year’s diary.What I know about him now … My lawyers say he’s screwed.
So now… Jenny, about the surfing school, I was wondering … I know this is dream stuff, for the future, maybe not ever, but let me dream. Maybe I’m not a society wife anymore. I thought, if you want it publicised, even expanded, maybe I could sink some of my hard-earned (☺) cash and have a part in it.
&nb
sp; Whoops. Someone’s crying. I’m breastfeeding!!! Who’da thunk??? Gotta go.
Think about this. I know, crazy idea, way too soon and probably totally dumb but it’s making me smile just thinking about it. Let me down gently.
Btw what are the shops like there? Is there decent coffee? Shoes?
Your friend (I hope)
Isabella
I placed the letter back in the envelope. I stared at the logo for a long moment, at my beautiful, shiny doodlebug in particular, and then slid that back, too.
Then I put my head in my hands and stayed like that for a very long time. ‘Beam me up, Scotty,’ I muttered. ‘I’m going crazy. Get me out of here.’
I shouldn’t have said it.
Be careful what you wish for …
That afternoon the surf outdid itself. I collected Bridget, and Muriel and Fraser joined us. That meant two surfs in the one day for the two oldies, but, well, old didn’t seem to apply to these two. The surf was gentle. Drifter played lifeguard, making sure no sandpiper looked at us twice. Bridget was unsteady, but she was on her own board. Muriel had her by one hand and Fraser had her by the other, balancing her between them on the small waves. That took real skill—skills learned a lifetime ago and never forgotten.
And me …
I wasn’t good enough to help Bridget—I was wobbling all over the place—but I was on my feet. The confusion of the morning was forgotten. I was surfing! I should be able to bottle this feeling, I thought, but I pushed that aside as well. I needed all my focus to stand up.
And then I saw Jack.
He was striding down the path from the house, with Carrie beside him. Carrie was waving, looking excited.
But they both stopped dead as they saw what Bridget was doing. They obviously couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
I couldn’t believe it either, but distraction was disaster so two seconds later I was on my back in the shallows, spluttering seawater.
I surfaced to find the others had ridden right in.
‘Bridge!’ Jack called as the next wave ended in a rush of foam on the beach. He’d kicked off his boots, rolled up his pants and was striding into the shallows to meet her.
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