‘Right,’ Joe said and if she wasn’t mistaken there was a hint of something in his voice.
‘Dan, it’s getting on. I’d better get my car and head home.’ Anna spun around and marched up the sand. She had to get away from the handsome bad boys and the memory of what she’d done with one of them the night she’d toppled from her pedestal. The one she’d created and climbed on, the one she’d been proud to sit on her whole life. But now it was broken and she felt as if she was drifting, untethered. Who was she?
Joe watched the olive-skinned pocket rocket stomp up the beach and disappear through the dunes. As the sand flicked up behind her from her bare feet, her arms swinging fiercely by her sides, he wondered if the defeated look on her face had something to do with her bare feet. Maybe, like Samson, she had a weakness. Perhaps she was only tough when she was wearing her stilettos and was four inches taller.
‘Hey you.’
Joe dragged his eyes back to Dan, who was staring at him with a look of thunder in his eyes.
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘She’s off limits, mate,’ Dan told him.
‘What are you talking about?’
Dan crossed his arms and pulled himself up taller. ‘You think I’m an idiot? Stay away from her. She’s got enough shit to deal with without you skulking around like a dirty dog.’
Joe knew Dan’s prickliness wasn’t just about the woman who’d stomped away up the beach. He suspected that Dan still wouldn’t forgive him for what he’d done to Lizzie when they were teenagers. Joe had run off to Sydney to a job and left Lizzie alone at a time when she needed family around her. When their mother had died, Joe was building his career and although he’d made it back to see her when he could and he was home for the funeral, Lizzie had worn the burden of her illness. Lizzie had never held it against him, that wasn’t who she was. But Dan? He was another story.
‘Dan …’ Joe started.
‘I mean it. Back off.’
Joe dropped the end of his board in the sand and held on to the nose. He had to defend himself.
‘Look, mate, I know she’s married, okay? But explain this to me. Every time I’ve seen her down here, she’s been all on her lonesome. If you were married to her, would you leave her alone for two seconds? What’s up with that? Is her husband a UN peacekeeper or something? Maybe he works up in the mines and is gone for weeks at a time? Huh?’
Dan looked out to the waves. When he turned back, his mouth was a grim line. ‘Peacekeeper? Mineworker?’ he snorted. ‘Yeah, if only. He’s none of that. He’s a lawyer and a cheating prick. That’s what he is.’
Dan’s words hit Joe like a rogue wave and he almost lost his grip on the board. ‘What happened to her?’
‘Look,’ Dan shook his head as if he was shaking off any more questions. ‘It’s her story, not mine. But she doesn’t need any more bullshit from men, okay? You know what we’re like.’
The old Joe would have dug deeper to get to the truth, would have relished the story and bugger the person behind the headline. But he wasn’t that person anymore. He simply felt pained and protective at the idea that Anna had been through hell and he hoped like crazy he hadn’t made it worse. Was that why she’d walked away after their night together and also today?
Joe picked up his board and the two of them began to walk home. They stopped at the esplanade and waited for the traffic to pass. The bitumen road was searing and they hopped across quickly until they reached Dan’s front lawn.
‘You reckon Anna will be all right?’ Joe asked.
‘She’s getting there. She may be little – and eighty per cent hair – but she’s tough,’ Dan said. ‘Hey, you want to come in for a beer?’
‘Thanks, but I’ll pass. I’ve got some stuff to do.’
And things to think about.
Lizzie heard voices from outside and opened the front door to find Dan on the doorstep. He swept her up in his arms and, lifting her feet from the floor in a well-practised manoeuvre, he kissed her hard.
‘What was that for?’ she murmured, her lips still gentle on his.
‘You didn’t like it?’
‘I did like it. Big time, Big Guy.’ Dan slowly lowered Lizzie to the floor, but made sure his arms were still around her. Her golden blonde hair shone in the midday light and her eyes matched the ocean. She was really the best thing to ever happen to him.
‘Good. ’Cos I’m never gonna stop doing that, you know.’
‘You promise?’ Lizzie whispered against his stubbled cheek. ‘Who were you talking to out there?’
‘Your brother. He’s just been out for a surf. Anna and I ran into him down on the beach. Hey, did she come back here and get her car keys?’
‘Yeah and she was in a real hurry. She raced in here, grabbed her stuff and drove off in a cloud of white smoke. I barely had time to give her a goodbye hug. What happened?’
‘I’m not sure but I think it has something to do with your brother.’
‘You think so?’
‘I warned him to stay away from her, given everything that’s happened.’
Lizzie propped her head against Dan’s chest. ‘You think he’s going to listen to you? I mean, look at her. It’s Anna we’re talking about.’
Dan chuckled. ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘He’s a good man, my brother,’ Lizzie assured him. ‘Joe won’t hurt her, Dan.’
‘He’d better not.’
CHAPTER
13
Anna manoeuvred her red sports car into the driveway of her parents’ suburban home and braked to a stop. Barely a thing had changed in this house since she’d moved out, just the day before her wedding to Alex. And while it had seemed old-fashioned to have lived at home until her marriage, it had been her choice. Sure, there had been plenty of downsides but on the upside, the food had always been outstanding and the rent was cheap. That had come in very handy during her long years studying medicine and once she’d started earning, she was able to put enough money away to buy her own house.
The street was quiet and the only things she could hear were the sounds of her teeth grinding in her ears and her heartbeat throbbing in her head. It was Wednesday evening dinner and she’d decided this was going to be the night. She couldn’t hold this secret in any longer. She’d imagined the scenario over and over; what she would say, how her family would react. She’d dreamt about the fight that would follow and about being banished from the house and from those she loved the most. She desperately hoped the reality would be much less dramatic and way more sympathetic.
Before her resolve wavered, Anna pulled her key from the ignition. That’s when she saw movement at the front door. How did her mother do that? Her radar for her children was uncanny. Anna gathered her strength, hopped out of her car and pressed her car remote twice to make sure it was locked.
‘Anna,’ her mother called from the front door. ‘You’re late.’
Anna walked up the driveway, threw her arms around Sonia and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Hi Ma.’
‘I can’t believe Alex isn’t here. We’ve hardly seen him lately. He must be working too hard.’ Anna had called earlier in the day to let her mother know that Alex had a board meeting and wouldn’t be able to make it. Her mother seemed to believe her, because it had been true in the past. But his absence still irked Sonia. It had upset the natural order of things, in which the Morelli siblings and their partners should dine at the Morelli house once a week.
Her mother took her by the shoulders and stared hard at her daughter’s face. ‘And look at you? You’re working too hard, too.’ It was a familiar refrain. Her mother was about to find out the real reason for the dark smudges under her eyes.
‘You think I’m busy now. Wait ’til winter when everyone gets a cold.’
‘You need to get another doctor into the practice, Anna. It’s too much.’
Anna looped her arm through her mother’s and they walked towards the house. ‘I wouldn’t be working so ha
rd if you didn’t keep mentioning me to everyone at the Italian Club. Grace and I can barely keep up with all our new patients.’
‘So now I can’t be proud of you? You’re the best doctor in Adelaide. Of course I’m going to tell everyone to go see you.’
Anna had never been in any doubt that her parents were proud of her. There was an extra special sense of satisfaction that went along with it because she’d decided to be a suburban GP, instead of progressing into specialist training like so many of her friends from medical school. There had always been an unspoken pressure to pursue a speciality and those that did it were revered, the alpha-male smart boys and the smartest women in the room. They worked damn hard and kept at it until they had alphabet soups following their names on their business cards and CVs. It wasn’t that Anna didn’t feel smart enough or driven enough to hold her own with that crowd. She knew she could. But she’d remembered what her family had gone through in the early days of their arrival in Australia without an Italian-speaking doctor to turn to. Without someone who understood the culture, the family ties and, importantly, the language. Anna knew she made a difference to her older Italian patients, whose English was often lost as they slipped into old age and dementia.
‘Come inside. Dinner’s getting cold.’ Sonia led her through the house to the heart and soul of the Morelli’s home – the kitchen. It was her parents’ one indulgence. The room was lined with bench tops and cupboards and in the centre, like a heart, sat a huge wooden dining table. Anna could see the whole family was already seated around it, waiting: her father, Paulo; her mum’s mum, Nonna Alessio; her little brother Luca; and the youngest of the Morellis, Grace. Next to Grace was an empty chair. Alex’s spot.
‘Ciao everyone,’ Anna called as she slipped off her heels and padded in bare feet towards the table.
‘For you.’ Her father handed her a full glass of his homemade wine.
‘Hi, Dad.’ She kissed him twice. ‘Buona sera, Nonna.’ Her Nonna squeezed her cheek.
‘About time you got here. I’m starving.’ Luca stood to kiss her cheeks, bending down so she could reach him. ‘Ouch Luca, you need a shave.’
‘It’s my designer stubble,’ he replied with a grin as he sat, rubbing his palm over the dark shadow on his jaw.
‘More like designer bum fluff,’ Grace scoffed.
Finally Anna was seated. Her father at the head of the table, her brother at the other end. The four women placed two by two on either side. The empty chair next to her. Since she was a child, they’d all had their established places at the family table. She’d always sat in this very chair, which meant her view to the backyard hadn’t changed in her thirty-five years. The neatly trimmed grass led to a grid of garden beds, each hemmed by a cement path, bursting with abundant crops of tomatoes and cucumbers, zucchinis, green beans and herbs, all as lush and green as a tropical rainforest.
‘What are you waiting for? Eat!’ Sonia called and Luca lifted a huge plate of antipasti towards his grandmother. She selected some cold meats, artichoke, olives and a small wedge of cheese, then Luca passed it around and the eating began in earnest. Anna sipped her wine, glad of the reprieve from all the talking she knew would come. She simply had to tell them about Alex today, but figured such news on empty stomachs might inflame some kind of hunger-induced hysteria. Anna grabbed an olive and a chunk of bread.
‘How’s work, Luca?’ Anna asked. Her brother was a carpenter who’d just started his own business.
‘Busy as. Which is good.
‘What kind of work are you picking up?’
Luca took another slice of salami from the platter. ‘A pool house, a thousand pergolas, a couple of decks. Someone wants me to quote on building a kitchen.’ Luca threw an olive into his mouth. ‘Hey, I haven’t seen you since the wedding down in … the place where the surfers go. Where was it again?’
Anna stopped. The chunk of bread in her mouth suddenly felt like a whole loaf. She swallowed it with a gulp. ‘Middle Point. It was in Middle Point, down on the south coast.’
‘That’s it, Middle Point. Some guys I know rented a house down there in January. Raved about it.’
‘Somebody married?’ Nonna put down her fork and looked around. Her English wasn’t the best, but she knew the word marriage in six dialects and four languages.
Anna drank more wine. Here she was again, talking about the wedding. ‘My old friend from university, Nonna. Ry Blackburn.’
‘Was it a big wedding?’ her mother asked.
Anna shook her head. ‘It was good. Small.’
‘Not like Anna’s wedding,’ Nonna chimed in, proudly eyeing off her first granddaughter.
Anna struggled to smile. ‘No, nothing like mine, Nonna.’ Anna’s wedding had been a kick-arse, full-on Italian-Australian extravaganza. But all the bridesmaids and food and bomboniere and relatives and acres of silk in her pouffy gown and first dances all felt like a bad dream now. Big weddings were no indicator of future happiness. She was living proof of that. All the dreams she’d had on her wedding day had died. Perhaps there was a new law of physics yet to be defined – the chance of marital bliss was in inverse proportion to the number of bridesmaids you had.
Paolo cleared his throat. ‘Was Dan there?’ Anna could hear the chill in her father’s voice, even after all these years.
‘Yes Dad, Dan was there. He was the best man.’ And then, swiftly and subtly, and because she knew what would come next, she threw in something she knew would distract them. ‘Ry and Julia are in Italy for their honeymoon.’
The family collectively sighed. ‘Where in Italy? The north or the south?’ Sonia began clearing the small plates from the table and Grace hopped up to help.
‘I’m not sure. I didn’t get much time to talk to them at the wedding.’ Every time she mentioned the wedding she saw Joe’s face. His crinkly blue eyes and that smile that gave her heart palpitations. And why was she feeling so hot all of a sudden?
‘Where is Alex?’ Nonna called across the table and over the clatter of plates and cutlery.
‘At a meeting,’ Sonia added quickly before getting up to fetch something from the stove.
Anna took another gulp of wine. This was it. It was time to let the cat out of the bag. ‘Actually, everyone, there’s—’
‘Ta da!’ Sonia appeared at Anna’s elbow and heaved a round metal dish to the middle of the table.
The family fell silent.
Finally Luca asked, ‘What is that?’
‘It’s a wok.’ Sonia lifted the lid as if she was revealing a just disappeared rabbit in a magic trick. A cloud of steam wafted to the ceiling.
‘You didn’t cook pasta?’ Anna felt the ground shift beneath her feet. Every Wednesday since forever she and her siblings had turned up for dinner at her parents’ house. Every Wednesday it was something reliably, culturally appropriate. Something comforting and familiar.
Sonia waved a hand. ‘I thought I’d try something different. It’s Chinese. A stir-fry.’
Paolo, Nonna, Luca, Grace and Anna peered suspiciously into the dish.
‘Is that brown rice?’ Grace asked sheepishly.
‘Yes, it’s brown rice,’ Sonia answered. ‘I read in a magazine that it’s much healthier for you. Your father could do to lose a few kilos. Since he retired he’s been getting fat.’
‘Hey,’ Paolo said with a grin, leaning back and patting his stomach. ‘I thought you liked something to hold on to.’
‘Dad!’ Grace and Anna shrieked in unison. Sonia passed a serving spoon to Luca and he lumped a great dollop of rice, meat and vegetables on his plate.
Anna stared despondently into the wok. She felt tears well up and tried to blink them away. If ever she’d needed comfort food and the familiarity of all that she knew, it was tonight.
She chugged down the last of her wine and without even asking, Paolo had the bottle in hand, filling it. First, her mother at the door. Now, her dad with the wine. She knew she was loved, felt it in the depths of her soul. She hoped
it was safe to tell them. To hell with it. She placed her glass carefully at the top of her plate, picked up her fork and tinkled it against the glass, rather like people did at weddings when they wanted the bride and groom to kiss.
‘Everyone, I have some news.’ It took a few moments for the chatter and eating to stop and silence to descend over the table.
Her mother dropped her cutlery with a clatter and slapped her palms to her cheeks. ‘Oh my God.’ Sonia’s face was so expectant and she appeared to be on the verge of delirious tears. Oh no.
‘Mum wait—’
‘Are you pregnant?’
Anna felt a sharp pain behind her ribs and pressed her fingers there to stop it. This was going to be so much harder than she thought.
‘Well?’ Grace demanded, giving Anna a forceful nudge with her elbow. ‘Are you?’
Anna watched the steam rise from the wok. She grasped St Christopher and began turning it in her fingers. She’d just that second realised that their dreams of being great-grandparents, grandparents, aunt and uncle had been shattered, too. For all intents and purposes, Paolo and Sonia Morelli, once again, had three single children. Not a grandchild in sight in any of their futures.
‘No, I’m not pregnant.’
‘Oh.’ Sonia’s shoulders slumped and she dropped her eyes. She distractedly began fiddling with her cutlery. ‘It’s just that, you’re not getting any younger and you’ve been married so many years now and I thought that—’
‘Ma.’ Anna knew it had come out angry and she instantly regretted it. Wishing it wouldn’t make it true.
‘I was just saying that—’
Anna held her breath. ‘Please, let me say something. There’s something really important I have to tell you.’
‘Have you got cancer?’ Her mother asked in a shocked whisper, one hand clamped to her chest as if to stop her heart from leaping out of it.
‘What?’
‘Ma,’ Grace said, ‘She hasn’t got cancer.’ Then she looked at her sister. ‘Have you?’
‘For God’s sake. Stop everyone.’ If it wasn’t so ridiculous, Anna would have laughed herself into a giggling silence. At least now divorce might appear to be a softer blow than cancer.
Our Kind of Love Page 8
