She squinted over at the clock on her DVD player. Quarter past eleven. Joe hadn’t called yet. Or maybe he had, she hadn’t thought to check. She got up and walked over to the phone. The light wasn’t flashing on her machine, but she pressed the button anyway, to hear the halted voice announce, ‘No new messages.’ Didn’t hurt to double-check. She peered more closely at the screen. There were two messages stored; she pressed the button to recall them.
‘Hello Jo, it’s me. You told me to let you know when Mum was coming and she’s flying in today, and I know you said you’d come with me to meet her, but honestly, I kind of forgot, because you never do that, and anyway, it’s Sunday so it doesn’t matter. Darren’s going to drive me to the airport and then we won’t have to park, he’ll drive around with the kids while I go in and get her. Though I’ll probably bring Caelen in with me because you know how he loves planes. Anyhow, I was thinking that because you have Mondays off you could come over tomorrow so we can talk to Mum, like you promised. Caelen will be at preschool and I know I can get Nicole, you remember Nicole, from two doors up? She has Brianna, who’s Caelen’s age, and an older boy, Jayden. I know she won’t mind watching the twins for an hour or two. Then we’ll have –’
The machine cut out, probably out of sheer boredom. Jo vaguely remembered checking the messages yesterday when she got back to the apartment, but she pressed skip when she realised it was only Belle.
‘Oh, hi, it’s me again.’ The next message started to play. ‘I always do that!’ Belle laughed at herself. ‘They should make the message space longer.’
No, they definitely should not do that.
‘Anyway, I’ll keep it short and sweet. Give me a call when you get this and we’ll organise what time to pick you up from the station tomorrow. Thanks so much for doing this, Jo, I really appreciate it.’
Tomorrow was today. Jo groaned. There was no way she was up to an intervention with Charlene today. Besides, she had to wait for Joe to call. He said he would, and she trusted him. Angie had convinced her that she had every reason to. That whatever was going on was nothing she had to be anxious about.
‘It’ll be a family thing,’ Angie had assured her. ‘You said he’s close to his family.’
‘Yeah, but I asked him if it was his dad and he said no.’
‘But he has a brother and sisters, and who knows what other family,’ said Angie. ‘Think about it logically, Jo, there’s nothing else it could be. Or maybe there is something else it could be, it could be anything really, but it doesn’t have to be something bad. He said he loved you, remember.’
Jo had recounted the phone call, verbatim, several times as the night progressed, and Angie was right, she had no reason to think the worst. He’d assured her he’d call today, he’d said he was sorry, and that he loved her. He wanted her to know that.
The phone rang, which made her jump since she was standing almost right on top of it. She snatched it up without looking at the caller ID.
‘Hello?’ she gasped, hoping she didn’t sound too desperate.
‘Jo, it’s me, did you get my message?’
Her heart sank. ‘Sorry, yes, Belle, just now, I’ve been . . . out, and . . . tied up.’
‘So, you haven’t left yet? Obviously, if you’re answering your landline . . .’
Jo took a breath. ‘I can’t make it today, Belle.’
‘Jo-o,’ she whined.
‘Listen to me, Belle. It’s not as though you gave me much notice,’ she said firmly. ‘And I have something really important I have to be here for today.’
‘Are you waiting on a delivery?’
‘What?’ Jo said, confused.
‘I just thought you might be waiting on a delivery to your flat. A new washing machine or something.’
Jo’s head was hurting. ‘I don’t need a new washing machine.’
‘No, it’s just you said you have to be there for something important, like you can’t leave the flat.’
‘It is important, and I can’t leave the flat, but it’s not for a washing machine,’ Jo sighed, collecting her thoughts. ‘I can’t explain right now, but when I do, you will completely understand.’
‘Why so mysterious?’ Belle asked, and then she gasped. ‘Omigod, does it have to do with Joe?’
‘Yes, it does actually.’ Bugger. Why did she say that?
‘Well you have to tell me now!’ she insisted.
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Come on, I’ll die of suspense otherwise.’
‘What flowers do you want at your funeral?’
Belle groaned. ‘Well how long is this going to go on for?’ she pleaded. ‘Mum’s seeing some specialist on Wednesday and she won’t tell me anything. And I’m really worried –’
Jo wasn’t going to get into this now. ‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ she blurted.
‘Tomorrow? Won’t you be at work?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Jo said, remembering. ‘But that’s okay, it’s only Tuesday, I can leave early, I’ll come down in the afternoon. I can probably get there around four . . .’
‘So you’ll stay for dinner?’
‘I suppose,’ she said weakly.
‘That’ll be so great, Jo,’ Belle gushed. ‘And you’ll tell me all about this mystery then?’
‘Sure.’
‘So give me a call, or an SMS will do, with what time your train’s coming in. But I’ll expect you sometime around four.’
‘Okay,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll let you know.’
Jo hung up the phone and gazed around the room. She had to do something. And she had to eat something more substantial than a soggy banana.
She went to the fridge and took out the stale bread; it’d be okay toasted. As she waited for it to toast, she set about cleaning out the fridge, tossing out all the old vegetables and yoghurt, along with her resolutions of eating healthy and being organised. Joe was right, she was all talk. But maybe she had to stop trying to be something she wasn’t, like he said. Because apparently, she was pretty wonderful. She smiled.
Jo had discovered over the years that one of the most effective cures for a tolerable hangover was housework, but it had to be vigorous housework. She quaffed down a couple of slices of Vegemite toast as she attacked the rest of the cupboards, chucking out out-of-date food and empty containers and broken crockery and smelly dishcloths. She put on a load of washing, and set about scrubbing the kitchen sink until it gleamed. Then she got down on the floor on her hands and knees and scrubbed it as well. Forty minutes later she was exhausted. She wouldn’t be doing that again in a hurry. Not that she’d need to, you could eat off this floor now. Why that was ever considered an achievement Jo had no idea, because the kind of person who had a kitchen floor clean enough to eat off was not the kind of person who would ever consider actually doing that.
She looked around the flat, at the layers of dust, the unvacuumed carpet . . . but Jo had had enough. Instead she walked into the bathroom and turned the taps on in the tub. The one thing, more than any other feature that had drawn her to this place, was the bathtub, something rarely ever found in a one-bedder in the city. And she couldn’t have been more appreciative of it than today. She squirted in some bubble concoction – ‘Patchouli’, according to the label – that someone had given her, probably Belle. Jo sank down into the bubbles and made a conscious effort to unwind. But though her frenzied bout of house-cleaning had occupied her physically, it hadn’t succeeded in taking her mind off Joe. In fact she hadn’t been able to get her mind off him all day. What was he doing? Where was he? What the hell was going on?
She sighed a big loud sigh, sinking further into the suds. She had to be patient, she’d find out what this was all about soon enough, and then she’d probably feel silly for having even the slightest worry, Angie had suggested. It was like when Mr Darcy was waylaid rescuing Lizzie’s wayward sister from certain ruin. Jo tried to remind Angie that Belle didn’t need rescuing from anything, and more to the point, life wasn’t like a BBC miniseries. Angie
in turn reminded her that the BBC miniseries was based on a Jane Austen novel, and that Jane Austen was in fact a brilliant chronicler of what life was like, if you took away the mansions and the women sitting around all day doing needlework and going for turns about the shrubbery.
Jo was drifting off in the rapidly cooling patchouli bubbles when she heard a buzzing sound. She started, rising up and grabbing the phone.
‘Hello?’
There was no reply. The buzzing continued. Bugger, it was the intercom. She launched herself out of the tub, creating a mini tsunami as she grabbed a towel and hurried out to the living room.
She snatched up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ she said breathlessly.
‘Hi Jo, it’s me.’
It was him, finally.
‘Oh, I thought you were going to call first?’
‘Sorry, is this a bad time?’
‘No, no, not at all,’ she assured him. ‘Come on up.’ She pressed the button to release the door downstairs and dashed back into her bedroom. She stood in front of the wardrobe for a second, catching her breath. She really would have liked enough time to pull herself together. Her hair was damp and bedraggled, her skin all ruddy, and she was still coated in patchouli froth. She quickly towelled herself off, and grabbed a sundress, pulling it over her head. She flicked her fingers through her hair as she raced out to the door, arriving as a knock sounded from the other side. She paused, taking a deep breath and straightening her dress, before she grasped the handle and opened the door.
Joe melted inside as soon as he laid eyes on her. She looked beautiful, all pink and dewy, in a flimsy white dress and bare feet, smiling up at him. His heart ached; he didn’t know how he was going to get through this.
‘Hi,’ she said, her eyes shining expectantly at him.
‘Hello.’ He stepped forward, taking her into his arms. She smelled so good. He held her close for a long time, holding onto the moment, making it last.
She lifted her face to his, angling for a kiss, and he couldn’t resist her. He met her lips in a heartfelt kiss, somehow trying to let her know that whatever happened, he loved her, and that he never intended to hurt her.
She broke away after a while, smiling up at him. ‘So, weirdly, I missed you,’ she said, almost embarrassed to admit to it.
‘Me too. You don’t know how much.’
‘Well, you better tell me all about it then,’ she said.
She slipped out of his arms and ducked behind him to close the door. ‘Can I get you something?’ she asked sweetly. ‘Actually, I think I can only offer you coffee or tea, or water, of course. Angie was here last night and we drank anything alcoholic that wasn’t nailed down,’ she grinned. ‘I think we may have tried cough medicine towards the end.’
He nodded, smiling faintly. ‘Water’s fine, thanks.’
‘Okay, have a seat,’ she chirped as she skipped off to the kitchen.
He sat down heavily on the couch. He’d been wanting to get here all day; the jet lag had finally caught up with Sarah and she’d taken herself off to bed. He’d written her a note, in case she didn’t sleep right through. Had to go out for a while. Don’t know when I’ll be back. J
Jo was walking over with two tall glasses of water. She set them down on the coffee table and planted herself beside him, one leg underneath her as she turned sideways to face him.
‘So,’ she said expectantly, ‘what’s been going on with you?’
He took a deep breath, reaching for her hand. ‘Jo, I want you to know I meant everything I said yesterday.’
She frowned, slipping her hand out of his.
‘Don’t,’ he said, reaching for her face instead and leaning forward to kiss her. Their lips touched but she pulled back.
‘Joe,’ she said warily, ‘what’s going on?’
He grabbed her hand this time and held it firmly. His heart was thumping sickeningly in his chest, reverberating right down into his stomach. ‘Sarah showed up on my doorstep yesterday.’
‘Sarah?’ she said, frowning. ‘Sarah-from-England Sarah?’
He nodded.
She looked uneasy. ‘Should I be worried?’
‘About Sarah, per se, no. Absolutely not.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Everything I told you about her was the truth, Jo. It was over between us, at least it was for me. Very definitely over. I had no reason to expect I’d even see her again, except incidentally, if our paths ever crossed, you know . . .’
She looked perplexed, as well she might. He was still perplexed and he had the whole story.
‘The thing is . . .’ He just had to say it. ‘She’s pregnant.’
Jo recoiled from him, pulling her hand away. ‘What does that have to do with you?’ she asked, but her voice was full of dread.
‘She’s nearly seven months along.’
Jo sprang to her feet, taking a few steps back. ‘What are you saying exactly?’ she cried. ‘Because you should just say it, Joe, stop dancing around it.’
He stood up to face her, his heart heavy. ‘It’s mine, Jo. Sarah was pregnant before I left England.’
Her eyes grew wide. ‘You knew?’
‘No, no, of course I didn’t,’ he assured her. ‘She didn’t find out till just before I came home.’
Jo was confused. ‘So she knew before you left?’
He nodded.
‘Why didn’t she tell you then?’
‘She was about to, when I said I was leaving. That’s why she freaked out the way she did, took it so badly. She thought if she came out with it then it might sound like she was trying to trap me, and she didn’t want it to be the only reason I stayed when I was making it pretty clear that I wanted to go.’
‘So why is she telling you now?’
‘Her conscience got the better of her,’ he explained. ‘She felt I had a right to know, that the baby should know its father.’
Jo was rubbing her temples, obviously struggling to make sense of what he was telling her. ‘So what does this mean?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said weakly.
‘Surely she didn’t come all this way just to tell you? What does she expect from you?’
He sighed as he sank back onto the couch, holding his head in his hands.
‘Joe,’ she prompted. ‘What is it?’
He lifted his head but he didn’t look at her. ‘All of Sarah’s family,’ he began slowly, ‘her friends, her whole life is in England. She has no one here in Australia . . . except me.’
Jo was staring at him, her stomach churning.
‘She knows I always wanted to settle down here, so she came out in a gesture of goodwill, to prove that she’s prepared to give it a go . . .’
He watched Jo’s expression change as the full ramifications gradually dawned on her.
‘If there isn’t any hope,’ he went on quietly, ‘for us to be a family, then she’ll go home again.’
‘She’s threatening you?’ Jo snapped. ‘She’ll take your child away if you don’t marry her? It’s not the frigging 1950s, Joe, she can’t do that. You can’t blackmail someone into loving you.’
‘She’s not blackmailing me or making threats, Jo,’ he said, trying to maintain some semblance of calm. ‘It’s just the facts. If it’s not going to work out then of course she’ll go back to England, to her family, where she has support. I couldn’t expect her to stay here. And she’d never stop me from seeing the baby as often as I want.’
‘So, okay then . . .’ said Jo.
He took a breath. ‘I don’t know how that would work, Jo, being a father from halfway across the world, seeing the child a couple of times a year. I just don’t know if I can do that.’
Jo nodded faintly. She hugged her arms to herself as she started to pace the floor again. ‘So it’s not that complicated after all,’ she said. ‘She’s having your baby, you want to be with her –’
‘No, I want to be with you, Jo. I love you.’
‘Well, I don’t even
know if I want kids, but you obviously do.’ She kept talking, kept pacing. ‘Really, this is for the best –’
‘Jo –’
‘I told you it was never going to work between us,’ she went on, a hint of hysteria creeping into her voice. ‘I’m not the girl who gets the guy, I’m the girl who gets a bit on the side. But I got greedy, didn’t I, thinking I could have a happy ending. But girls like me don’t get happy endings –’
‘Stop it, Jo!’ he cried, standing up.
She turned to look at him.
‘You think this is a happy ending for me?’ He was almost shouting. ‘Until yesterday I had my happy ending. That’s when it was simple, now it’s complicated. I didn’t sleep all night, trying to work out how I can be with you and still do the right thing by this child, who didn’t choose to come into the world, who didn’t choose to have a father who’d stopped loving his mother, who doesn’t deserve not to have a father because of that. So if you have a solution, then tell me, please Jo, I’d give anything. Because this is breaking my heart too.’
She was breathing hard, staring helplessly across at him, her eyes filling with tears. He started to come towards her, but she shook her head, turning to run into her bedroom.
Jo threw herself on the bed, burying her face in a pillow to stifle her sobs. She was not going to cry. There was no point. What good would tears do anyway? They’d only muddy the issue with emotion.
She heard him come into the room. She clenched the pillow tighter as she felt him climb onto the bed behind her, then sidle over to spoon her, his arms closing around her. Her heart was aching. For a brief, tantalising moment, she indulged in the feel of his body wrapped around hers, the comfort, the security . . .
But everything had changed. He was going to be a father. His baby had come into existence before they had even met. He was never hers to have, it had all been an illusion.
‘No, Joe,’ she said firmly, arching away from him. ‘You should go, go back to her. You shouldn’t even be here.’
‘But this is where I want to be,’ he insisted, drawing her close again.
She shoved him with her elbow. ‘We don’t always get what we want.’
Crossing Paths Page 37
