Suddenly You

by Sarah Mayberry

  Big deal. They’re not together. And she sicced some government agency on to him to squeeze more money out of him. He’s got every right to feel the way he does.

  It wasn’t as though Steve had gone looking to be a father, after all, and no one knew better than Harry how messed up and angry Steve had been when Pippa broke the news. And yet…his mate’s indifference didn’t sit well with Harry.

  But he wasn’t in the habit of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. So Pippa would have to sort her car out on her own.

  Except she didn’t.

  When he drove to work on Monday morning the car was still there, and when he drove home at the end of the day. Tuesday, same deal. Wednesday morning he kept his eyes peeled and the moment he saw her hatchback, he pulled over. After three minutes of searching an online phone directory, he realized she must have an unlisted number. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel for a few seconds, then waited for a break in traffic before doing a U-turn.

  Five minutes later he climbed the steps to Pippa’s front porch. It was only after he’d knocked that he questioned what he was doing. She was an adult, after all. She didn’t need him ordering her life or breathing down her neck.

  Too late. Footsteps sounded within the house, then the front door opened and a bemused Pippa stared at him.

  “Harry. Hi.”

  Her hair was tousled, her eyes heavy. A fluffy dressing gown swamped her body, her bare feet peeking out beneath the hem.

  She should have looked a mess—mumsy and suburban—but she looked good. Soft and warm and gently pretty.

  “What’s going on with your car?”

  She blinked and it occurred to him that he may have actually dragged her out of bed.

  “Sorry if I woke you, but you should know that the Peninsula council is all over abandoned cars like white on rice. If someone reports you, your car will be towed and impounded.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Somewhere inside the house, a baby cried. Pippa glanced distractedly over her shoulder.

  “I’m a bit slow this morning. I’ve been up since five with Alice. I only got her down again half an hour ago.”

  She backed up a step and gestured for him to follow her.

  “Come in.”

  She was gone before he could explain he’d already said what he’d come to say, neatly sidestepping her way around a detached door leaning against the hall wall before disappearing from sight. He hesitated on the threshold, uneasy.

  “Do you want a coffee?”

  Pippa’s question echoed up the hallway. He shook his head, then realized she couldn’t see him.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Harry entered the house, navigating his way past the detached door. He found Pippa cradling a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby in the bright kitchen, rocking from foot to foot as she attempted to soothe her.

  “Shh, sweetheart, you’re all right. It’s all good.” Pippa’s voice was soft and achingly tender. She glanced at him. “There’s juice, too, if you’d prefer something cold.”

  He was too busy staring at Alice to respond immediately. He hadn’t seen her since the day she was born. She’d been red and squashed-looking then, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her hands clenched into tight little fists. Now, she was pink and plump, with pale, wispy hair. She looked like Steve. Almost disconcertingly so. It was weird seeing his friend’s features replicated on a tiny baby girl.

  “She looks like Steve,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  The way she said the single word made him remember he had no business being here. Steve was his mate, after all. Harry owed his first loyalty to him.

  He cleared his throat. “Anyway. The car. You should chase up your mechanic because the council are real sticklers about towing anything that looks like it’s been abandoned.”

  “I didn’t realize. I thought I’d have a few weeks…”

  A few weeks? To do what?

  Then it hit him—her worry at the roadside, the slightly shabby house, the fact that she was a single mother.

  She couldn’t afford to get her car fixed.

  Hence her delaying tactics when he’d mentioned having her car towed, and hence her need to wait a few weeks before she had the funds to repair it.

  He glanced around the room, racking his brain for a way to offer help without stepping on her toes—because he might not know Pippa that well, but he knew she had way too much pride to ask for help.

  “Listen, Pippa, why don’t I get my dad to tow the car to your place? At least you won’t have to worry about it being impounded.”

  She was shaking her head before he’d even finished speaking. “It’s great of you to offer again, Harry, but I’ll sort it. Thanks, though. And thanks for the heads up. I appreciate it.” She glanced at the wall clock. “I don’t want to hold you up.”

  She was fobbing him off. Getting ready to send him on his way.

  “How are you going to sort it?” he asked bluntly.

  “Sorry?”

  “How are you going to sort the car when you can’t afford to get it fixed?”

  Her chin jerked with surprise. “That’s not what this is about.”

  She was a terrible liar, her eyes blinking rapidly behind her glasses.

  “So I should call A1 Towing and get them to take the car to my work and ask my boss to quote on it for you, then?”

  She stared at him, her expression half frustrated, half chagrined. After a second she shook her head. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  “I’m hoping I might have a chance of getting to work on time if we cut some of the back and forth out of the way.”

  She gave a short, sharp laugh. “You always were honest to a fault. Okay, you’re right, Harry. I can’t afford to fix the car right now. I’m scraping some money together but the gas bill came in and I figure we need hot water more than we need a car. So maybe the council will impound my car and I’ll have to live with that until I can figure something out.”

  Pippa shrugged as though she didn’t give a damn but her cheeks were pink and her shoulders tense.

  He ran a hand over the top of his head, unsure where to go now that he’d gotten her to admit the truth. If it was one of his mates, he’d simply open his wallet and offer a loan on the spot. But as much as he liked her, Pippa wasn’t really his friend and he had no idea how she’d react if he offered her money.

  “What about Steve?” Because it seemed to him that was the next natural step, no matter the tensions between them.

  “No.”

  One word, very firm.

  “I know you guys have some issues, but he’d help out if he knew you needed it.”

  “I appreciate that you’re trying to help. You’re very sweet. But I can handle this.”

  “I’ll ask him. If it’d make it easier for you to swallow.”

  He didn’t know why he was making a federal case out of it. It was her car, her life. She was free to do whatever she liked. Certainly none of it was his responsibility. So why was he offering to be her mouthpiece with his best mate?

  Pippa sighed. “It’s incredibly generous of you to offer, but you don’t want to do that.”

  “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it.”

  “I know. But it won’t make any difference. Steve won’t want to help me.”

  “Look, even if Steve’s pissed with you, he’ll step up.”

  “It’s nice you believe that, but since he’s gone to the trouble of falsifying the books for his business to avoid paying child support, you’ll understand if I don’t hold my breath on that one.”

  He was ready to jump to his mate’s defense. No way would Steve turn his back on his responsibilities. Alice was his kid, after all. His daughter.

  Something stopped him before the denial left his mouth, however.

  Maybe it was the world-weary note to Pippa’s voice and the steadiness of her gaze.

  Or maybe it was the memory of the utterly blank, disinterested e
xpression on Steve’s face Friday night.

  “Like I said, I appreciate the heads up, Harry.”

  A phone rang in the next room.

  “I need to get that. It’s probably my boss....”

  She slipped into the adjacent room. A few seconds later he heard her take the call. Harry glanced around the kitchen again, his gaze landing on a stack of textbooks on the table. He read the title of the top book—Teaching Studies of Society & Environment in the Primary School—before his attention was drawn to the large bowl in the center of the table. Filled with odds and ends, it clearly functioned as a tabletop junk drawer—and right on top was a key ring with two car keys.

  In the next room, Pippa told someone she was ready and willing to do any and all extra shifts that were on offer. He could hear the strain in her voice. The fear.

  He didn’t stop to consider it, simply pocketed the keys. When Pippa returned, he said goodbye and bowed out. Once he got to his car, he tossed her keys onto the passenger seat then drove to work.

  He’d taken them on impulse, because the idea of walking away from her when she was clearly in need stuck in his craw, and because he couldn’t see any other way of convincing her to accept his help. Maybe it had been a mistake. Maybe he’d overstepped the mark, big time. After all, he had no vested interest in her or Alice or any of it.

  But he couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said about Steve, about him having engineered his finances to minimize his child support commitments. Harry couldn’t conceive of a circumstance where the mate he knew would do that. Steve was always first to buy a round of drinks or help out a friend moving furniture or some other favor. No way could all that generosity dry up when it came to his own flesh and blood.

  Pippa must be exaggerating. It wasn’t as though things had ended well between her and Steve. She was probably bitter and angry with him. Disappointed, too.

  Except she hadn’t exactly volunteered the information. Harry had had to push a few times before she’d spelled it out for him.

  Deeply uneasy, he grabbed his phone and dialed his father at the workshop.

  “It’s me. I need a favor. There’s an acid-yellow hatchback on the Nepean near the turnoff for the winery. Can you tow it to the workshop and I’ll come by to take care of it after work?”

  “You think I’ve got nothing better to do than run around doing favors for your mates?” His father’s words were tough, but there was no rancor behind them.

  “No. Can you do it?”

  Harry half expected his father to have another go at him, but he didn’t.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Head gasket, I think. I’ll do the work if you don’t mind me using the garage tonight.”

  “I’ll make sure you’ve got the parts on hand. Who am I doing this for, by the way? Steve? That red-headed idiot?”

  “Her name’s Pippa. She’s a single mum. I’m helping her out.”

  A profound silence ensued on the other end of the line and Harry could practically hear his father’s brain grinding away.

  “She’s Steve’s ex,” Harry added.

  Just in case his father started getting crazy ideas.

  “Fair enough. I guess I’ll see you tonight, then.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t seen my bill.”

  There would be no bill. Mike Porter might look like a hard-ass, but he was the softest touch in town.

  As Harry turned in to the parking lot at work, it occurred to him that instead of pulling out all the stops for Pippa himself, he could have simply called Steve and filled him in and let him take care of things. Proving to himself—and Pippa—that she was wrong.

  If it hadn’t been for the blank look on Steve’s face the other night, Harry might have, too. But that look… that look combined with Pippa’s comments had sprouted some ugly ideas in his head, and the fact was, he wasn’t ready to have them confirmed.

  He and Steve had grown up together. Played footy together. Had their first beers, their first fights, their first girlfriends together. He didn’t want to think that his mate was capable of letting down people he should care about so profoundly.

  So Harry would help Pippa. And he would hold off talking to Steve until he’d had a day or two to digest. And he’d hope that someone, somewhere, had got it wrong.

  TWO DAYS LATER, Pippa eased back onto the couch and propped her aching feet on a cushion. Alice lay on her play mat, batting at the Fisher Price mobile Pippa had bought from the local charity shop. It was Friday night and she was exhausted.

  It wasn’t ordinary, run-of-the-mill exhaustion, either. Having no car meant everything had to be started early and finished late, which meant she was waking earlier, going to bed later. Alice’s day care might be around the corner and the gallery only a little farther than that, but when she threw in grocery shopping and other errands, plus getting to the university and back, Pippa figured she was walking more than ten kilometers a day. Great for her thighs and ass, not so great for her feet or her schedule.

  In short, it sucked, hard. And she still had no idea how she would get her car repaired. She’d managed to scrape together nearly five hundred dollars, but the two mechanics she’d called had quoted a minimum of one thousand to fix a head gasket.

  Pippa pressed her lips together, staring at her much-abused feet. There was no getting around it—she’d have to ask her mum for the money. She would pay her back, of course—but it would take time. And it was humiliating.

  Thirty-one and running to Mummy. Well done, Phillipa. Way to be an adult.

  To think that not so long ago she’d prided herself on being unconventional and marching to the beat of her own drum. Whenever one of her more conservative friends had asked if she ever worried about the future, about owning a house or being able to afford to retire or having a career, Pippa had laughed and assured them she didn’t lose sleep over that stuff because she was too busy enjoying the journey.

  What a load of old bullocks.

  She’d been off with the fairies, tripping around in a fantasy world. Alice had been a cosmic wake-up call that it was time to stop playing around and grow up—there was nothing like being responsible for a tiny, helpless human being to sort a person’s priorities out, quick smart.

  Pippa propped an ankle on the opposite knee and massaged the arch of her foot, digging in her thumbs until it hurt. Her thoughts drifted to Harry’s visit the other morning. He’d been the last person she’d expected to find on her doorstep at 7:30 a.m. Definitely he was one of the last people she would have chosen to catch her in her fluffy robe, complete with tangled bed hair and smudgy glasses. There was something very unsettling about being caught unprepared for the day by someone as dynamic and charismatic as Harry.

  Still, it had been nice of him to drop in and warn her about the council’s policy on towing abandoned cars. The bit where he’d forced her to confess that she couldn’t afford to have her car fixed hadn’t been so great, but since he’d followed it with yet another offer of help, she figured his heart was in the right place. Fortunately, she wasn’t that desperate a case yet—stress on the yet.

  That’s right. You’re only at the mooching-off-your-retired-mother stage. Mooching-off-strangers is a highlight for coming months, yet to be enjoyed.

  A knock echoed through the house. She almost welcomed the interruption, even though it meant she had to get to her feet. Anything was better than lying around brooding.

  “Ow,” she said as she started up the hallway. “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.”

  Funny how shoes that she’d thought were perfectly comfortable had turned on her after a few days of hard labor. Once she’d dealt with whoever was at the door, she would run herself a bath and soak her feet.

  She pushed Alice’s stroller out of the way so she could reach the door. Because it was clearly her lucky day, the lock stuck and she swore under her breath.

  Like the broken bedroom door, the dodgy lock had been reported to the lan
dlord, but Pippa figured both would be repaired around the same time that Dairy Queen opened a concession in hell. The pitfalls of paying low rent in a working-class suburb.

  She shouldered the door, pushing the lock up before twisting it. It gave grudgingly and she—finally—opened it to find Harry filling the frame for the second time in as many days.

  “Harry,” she said, blinking up at six foot two of solid male dressed in an old gray surf T-shirt, faded jeans and steel-toed boots.

  Why did she keep forgetting how big he was? And why did he keep turning up on her doorstep?

  “These are yours.” He caught her hand and dropped a set of keys into it. “Before you say anything, it was my pleasure. Consider it an early birthday present for Alice.”

  It took her brain a full ten seconds to process his words and understand their meaning.

  “You fixed my car,” she said stupidly.

  Sure enough, Old Yeller was in the driveway, brighter and larger than life.

  “It was no big deal. Like I said the other day, it was the gasket. A few hours and the problem was solved.”

  “But…how did you get my keys?”

  Then she remembered she’d left him alone in the kitchen while she took the phone call from her boss.

  The first emotion to hit her was shame. She’d thought she’d been doing a decent job of covering how damned desperate she was, but clearly Harry had seen straight through her. That he understood exactly how powerless she’d been to change her situation and had been moved to act was galling and humiliating in the extreme.

  Hard on the heels of shame came anger, a knee-jerk, defensive, irrational response to feeling so vulnerable and exposed. Who was he to take so much upon himself? To force his charity on her—stealing her car keys, no less—without asking if she wanted his help?

  Finally, relief hit, so profound, so all-encompassing there was no room for anything else and she clenched her jaw to stop an instinctive, deeply pathetic sob from escaping. She curled her fingers around the keys, squeezing them tight, trying very, very hard not to cry with gratitude and relief. She blinked repeatedly but wasn’t entirely successful in vanquishing the tears.

  “I don’t know what to say. You shouldn’t have. It’s too much. It’s amazing.... But it’s too much, Harry.”