‘Well, duh,’ Grace said, shaking her head.
‘Of course it doesn’t bother me.’ Tim threw her a sideways glance and said, ‘Mum told me that that bloke Grant Hughes was in London. Coincidence?’
‘I was as surprised to see him as Mum was when I told her he was here. It was nice working with him again. But then his son was in a car crash and Grant went home to Sydney weeks ago.’
‘So, it’s off again with him? I never did like the smarmy bastard.’
‘Tim, it was never on again. And you didn’t even meet him, so how do you know what he’s like?’
‘Didn’t need to meet him. The little bit Mum said, and the big bit you didn’t say to me, or Faith, along with never bringing him to Miners Ridge, told me all I needed to know.’
‘Whatever. To be fair to Grant, he was very kind to me when I didn’t know a soul here. If he’d hoped for something more than friendship … Well, that’s not really any of your concern.’
‘It is if you’re involved with my best mate.’
Bemused, Grace stared at him. ‘You really don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you?’
‘Quite the contrary, Grace, I think the world of you. You’ve made a huge success of your life. You have a career, you’re financially independent, and you were there for Mum and Nanna when they needed you. I guess if anything, I feel inadequate.’
Grace laid a hand on his forearm. ‘Don’t ever feel inadequate, Tim. You stepped into the breach when Luke died. I couldn’t have done that. And you stuck by Dad. I wouldn’t have done that.’
‘Luke’s death really stuffed up the family, big time.’
Grace glanced at the time. She was going to be so late into work. But this was more important.
‘You know, Tim, I’ve thought about that a lot, probably to the point of overthinking it. My conclusion? That as a family we were on the road to total dysfunction way before Luke died.’
37
Grace watched as her brother mentally chewed over what she’d just said. Then Tim slapped his thigh with the palm of his hand and jumped to his feet, startling her.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ he said. ‘Do you want coffee this time?’
‘Yes, please.’ Grace stood up, gathering the lapels of her robe together and refastening the tie. ‘I’ll see what Aaron’s up to. He’s awfully quiet in there.’ She opened the bedroom door wide enough to peer in. Aaron was sprawled out on the bed, sound asleep. She closed the door as carefully as she could.
‘Asleep?’ Tim said.
‘Out to it. Do you want some toast?’
Side-by-side they made toast with marmalade, taking their breakfast into the living area and settling on the sofa.
‘Okay, now you can tell me why you think the family was stuffed before Luke died.’
Grace crunched on a piece of toast.
‘Before I do I’d better decide when I’m going in to work. No one will be looking for me but I need to check Monday’s schedule. Now, where’s my phone?’
‘Answer me this,’ she said, when the task was done. ‘Why did you rarely visit the farm, even when you lived in Miners Ridge with that girl … What was her name?’
‘Mandy.’
‘Mandy … And why did I hardly ever go home? Mum and Luke used to come and visit us, remember? Why was that? Because Dad was such a miserable old sod, that’s why. And I couldn’t bear to watch the way he treated Mum, like she was his chattel.’
‘I don’t remember her being unhappy, not before Luke’s accident. After that—’
‘No, but do you remember her ever being happy?’
‘She was just Mum. She worked hard, no one could argue with that: four kids, shifts at the hospital, helping out on the farm before Luke and I were old enough. And then when Faith had Liam she was always babysitting him. I told Faith once that I didn’t think it was fair the way she dumped him on Mum as much as she did, that Ben should have done more when he was home.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah. You can imagine how well that went down.’
Grace closed her eyes, her shoulders slumping. ‘I should have gone home more often after Luke died, been there for Mum, for you and Faith, and for Dad, even though he didn’t want anyone. Maybe—’
‘Grace,’ Tim broke in. ‘You know as well as I do that hindsight is twenty-twenty vision. You’re not the only person who’s flogged herself for not doing more. I was there for some of the time and it was tense. Bloody awful actually. I remember how unhappy Mum was then, but she’d lost her youngest son. And Dad … Well, we know what he was like. Faith barely set foot on the place, but she always had plenty to say about what everyone else should and shouldn’t have been doing.’
‘I suppose we should’ve cut her some slack. She’d not long been married, and then they were pregnant. I think her focus was on her own family, and rightly so.’
‘Maybe,’ Tim said.
‘I just couldn’t bear going home. You thought it was tense; to me there was so much sadness, and Dad had all this anger on top of the sadness. It was too much.’
‘Like Mum says, we were all grieving but Dad acted as if he was the only one who’d lost someone.’
‘Remember Grandma Joylene?’ Grace said.
‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t very old when she died.’
‘Well, she was an old bat, a real misery guts. It was always all about her. I guess Dad didn’t know how to be any other way.’
‘We’re all adults and we have choices, Grace. You pointed that out to me.’
Grace placed her empty plate and cup on the coffee table. She tucked her feet up under her, angling herself towards her brother.
‘You know, you sound like you’re a lot closer to accepting how things have worked out than you were before I left,’ she said. ‘Maybe Mum going back to Miners Ridge was the best thing that could have happened for you, and for Faith.’
‘Yeah,’ Tim said, nodding thoughtfully.
The bedroom door opened and Aaron stood in the doorway, bare-chested and yawning, his hair a tousled mess. ‘Must have dozed off,’ he said.
Grace’s heart turned over and felt her body flush with desire. She glanced at her brother.
‘Exactly how long are you planning on staying here?’ she said.
Tim snickered, and Grace remembered that wicked sound from their childhood.
‘Two, three weeks,’ he said, wide-eyed. She kicked him and he laughed. ‘A couple of days is all. I want to get going, see some of the world.’ His eyes gleamed with anticipation. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘I bet you can’t,’ Grace said and leaned sideways to give him an awkward hug. ‘Thanks for the talk,’ she whispered.
‘Anytime,’ he said. Tim winked, and Grace wondered where this man who looked like her brother but wasn’t acting like her brother had actually sprung from.
In the end, Grace didn’t go into work at all that Saturday. She spent the day with Aaron and Tim as they hopped-on and hopped-off an iconic double-decker bus at some of London’s major tourist attractions. To wander hand-in-hand with Aaron and experience Tim’s boyish delight in everything he saw was worth the extra hours she’d need to put in the following week.
On Sunday Tim had his heart set on a trip to Brighton Beach.
‘I need to see for myself that there isn’t any sand, and they still call it a beach,’ he said.
They caught a train from Victoria Station and the cool morning morphed into a perfect autumn day.
They walked the length of Brighton Pier and ate fish and chips out of the paper, and ice cream for dessert.
‘I think I’m sunburned,’ Grace said, peering at her reflection in the carriage window on the trip back up to London.
‘Gives you a healthy glow,’ Aaron said from beside her. Sitting opposite, Tim was absorbed in whatever travel app he was reading on his phone.
They were fifteen minutes out from Victoria Station when Tim looked up. ‘I’ll head north in the morning,’ he said. ‘Spe
nd a bit of time in Scotland before the weather gets too cold.’
‘Do you need to do any washing before you go?’ Grace said, aiming for practical, when in truth she was suddenly excruciatingly aware that she’d be alone with Aaron the next day.
Sensing her tension, Aaron pressed his shoulder into hers.
‘We’ll be fine,’ he whispered, close to her ear, his breath sending goosebumps skittering across her skin.
‘Have you got a clothes dryer?’ Tim said.
‘Of course. You can put a load in when we get home.’
Aaron intertwined his fingers with hers, squeezing gently. She held onto his hand and gazed out the window as the suburbs whizzed past.
They took the Underground from Victoria, changing at Westminster. The Jubilee Line went all the way to North Greenwich and they walked from there. It was after nine when Grace let them into the apartment and they were all tired.
‘You use the bathroom first,’ Grace said to Tim. ‘Throw out your dirty clothes and I’ll put on the washing machine.’
Aaron filled the electric kettle and switched it on. ‘Tea?’
‘Yes, please.’
When Tim threw his clothes out and the bathroom door banged shut, Aaron came up behind Grace and put his arms around her. She let herself relax back against him. He was reassuringly solid.
‘We can take it as slow, or as fast as you want,’ he said, and she felt his lips move against her neck.
‘What will you do all day while I’m at work?’
‘Not a lot. Be a tourist when you’re not around. It’ll be interesting to see what my take on the place is now. But I came to see you, not the sites.’ He dropped his arms and let her go back to loading Tim’s dirty clothes into the washing machine. ‘Might have a lazy day here tomorrow. Go for a walk along the river. Have dinner ready for you when you get home.’
Grace groaned. ‘Dinner ready when I get home … That sounds like heaven.’ Imagine that, she thought, another man who cooks.
Cook wasn’t the only thing Aaron did with attentiveness and enthusiasm, as Grace learned when he met her at the apartment door that first evening after Tim’s departure.
‘Alone at last!’ he said, sweeping her into his arms and kissing her passionately. When he let her up for air she laughed. ‘And there I was feeling a bit anxious.’
‘Anxious? Why?’ He took her bag and helped her out of her jacket. He guided her through into the sitting room. A bottle chilled in an ice bucket on the coffee table.
Grace lifted up the bottle to read the label. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Champagne.’
‘I thought before we ate we needed to celebrate how far we’ve come, Grace.’ He carried two champagne flutes from the kitchen. He opened the bottle and filled both glasses, handing one to her. He raised his. ‘To the future,’ he said and they clinked glasses.
The bubbles tickled Grace’s nose and raced across her tongue. The champagne was delicious. Aaron sat down on the sofa and motioned for her to join him. When she had, he said, ‘Now, tell me what you’re anxious about.’
Grace pondered this for a moment. Then she took another measured mouthful before carefully placing the glass on the coffee table. When she reached for his glass his eyes widened. She smiled, aiming for sultry and put his glass down beside hers. She started to unbutton her blouse.
‘I learned a long time ago that it’s best to face your anxieties head-on,’ she said.
‘Sounds like good advice to me,’ Aaron replied, his smile coming slow and sexy. He opened his arms and she slid onto his lap.
38
Sarah
Tim and Aaron had been gone almost a week and I missed them both. Tim was trekking around the Scottish Highlands and Aaron was in London with Grace. I’d talked to Grace the night before and there was a lightness to her voice that I’d never heard before, even at the height of her romance with Grant Hughes.
Although Aaron hadn’t said it in so many words, I suspected he was hoping that after his visit she’d cut her overseas posting short and come home. I knew Grace better than that and seriously doubted that she would, no matter how much she missed him when he left.
Determined and strong-willed were words often associated with my eldest daughter. I’d sometimes worried that her determination stemmed from a need to be in control of everything in her life.
Sending her away to boarding school at such a young age had certainly made her self-sufficient. But even as a small child, once Grace had committed to a task or a project, she did everything in her power to see it through.
However, to my knowledge she’d never been in love before, and I suspected that that was the way things were heading with Aaron. It was more about what she hadn’t said than what she had.
And for Aaron to have upped and left, traipsing halfway around the globe to visit Grace when opportunity presented itself—this showed me that he wasn’t short on determination either. There could be interesting times ahead.
But back in Miners Ridge, tonight was the gallery’s annual general meeting. The AGM had been pushed out a week, and into October, because someone had forgotten to submit the notice to the local paper.
I was picking up Carol at a quarter to seven. We’d talked about having tea at the pub beforehand but then Faith asked me to collect Amelia and Liam from school because she had another doctor’s appointment in Clare.
By the time she picked them up them from my place just before six I was running behind.
Carol was out the front waiting when I pulled up. There was a second car in the driveway these days, Louise’s Subaru station wagon, and a bicycle leaning against the garage wall.
‘Your hair looks nice,’ I said as Carol climbed into the passenger seat. She lifted a hand to her head, flipped down the sun visor and looked into the mirror, preening.
‘Not sure if I like it or not. Haven’t had it this short for years,’ she said, screwing her face up at her own reflection. ‘But I’m so fed up with it looking like a bird’s nest. And with three of us sharing the bathroom these days …’
‘How is it going with Louise and Emma staying?’ I did a U-turn and headed back towards the town centre and the gallery.
‘As well as you’d expect, with three strong-willed females sharing a small house.’ Carol slumped in the seat. ‘You get used to being on your own, and it turns out I’ve gotten to quite like it.’
I laughed because I knew exactly what she meant. ‘Yeah, it’s nice when they visit, but nice when they leave!’
‘Speaking of leaving, have you heard from Tim and Aaron?’
‘I have,’ I said and brought her up to date with the latest. ‘Aaron and Grace are spending a couple of days in Paris the weekend before he comes home.’
Carol gave an exaggerated and guttural laugh. ‘Ah, a romantic weekend in Paree,’ she said, with a terrible French accent.
‘Something like that,’ I said, laughing.
We’d reached the gallery and I parked out the back in the small car park reserved for volunteers. There were several other cars there already.
‘Do you think Aaron’s setting himself up to have his heart broken?’ Carol said, hand resting on the doorhandle. ‘He’s been on his own a long time, and he seems quite taken with Grace.’
We got out, and I collected my handbag and the plate of sausage rolls I’d made for supper from the back seat. Some thoughtful person had turned on the outside light so we weren’t stumbling around in the dark.
‘I honestly don’t know, Carol,’ I said. ‘I worry about Grace for the same reason. She hasn’t had much relationship experience at all. And speaking of strong-willed women …’
We let ourselves in the back door and made our way to the main gallery where chairs had been set out for the meeting. A few people milled about chatting. I recognised a couple of the other volunteers.
‘Aaron’s a decent bloke and I’d hate to see him hurt again,’ Carol said.
‘Again?’
‘Oh, just the odd comments he’s
made, usually after a few beers. He comes across as extremely independent and happy, but I reckon deep down he’s lonely.’
‘And loneliness makes a person vulnerable,’ I said, and she agreed.
Several more people came in and someone called out to Carol.
‘Here,’ she said, pulling out a packet of Mint Slices from her cavernous handbag. ‘My contribution. I never bake.’
She went to help with whatever they wanted her for, and I took my plate of savouries and her sweet biscuits to the kitchen. There’d be something I could do to help prepare the supper.
There was a man standing in the kitchen, and no one else. He was making himself a cup of coffee. He turned around when I walked in and smiled.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m just helping myself, hope you don’t mind but I need the caffeine.’
He was tall and lean, around my age I guessed. He regarded me with brown eyes the colour of the coffee he was stirring. Laughter lines radiated from the corners of his eyes and his generous mouth looked as if it laughed easily and often.
He studied me and a curious tension stole through my body. I shrugged it off, put the plate of food on the bench ready for reheating in the oven.
‘I’m sure you’re more than welcome,’ I said. ‘I don’t think the committee polices who drinks their coffee. I’m Sarah Fairley, by the way.’
His wide forehead furrowed slightly. ‘Have we met before?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve only been back in Miners Ridge a few months, and I was away for many years.’
He stared at me, the coffee forgotten. ‘I know …’ he said slowly. ‘It was at the opening of my exhibition back in April. Do you have a sister?’
I choked back a laugh. My sister Kate at a country gallery opening? Not in this life time.
‘I said something funny?’
‘I’m sorry, I was rude. I was trying to imagine my sister … Never mind! Perhaps you met one of my daughters. We’re very much alike, especially Grace, my eldest. But Faith lives locally so it was more than likely her that you met.’
When Grace Went Away Page 24
