‘She’s bringing lamingtons. I know I should have asked first, but it’ll be fun. How are you at blowing up balloons?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘You’re about to find out. Now I need to find Elaine. She says her Graham makes fantastic piñatas. You think Tom would like one in the shape of a horse?’
‘This is not a kid’s party,’ he snapped.
‘No,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘But if it’s the first birthday party Tom’s ever had it needs to be a good one. I think it’d be best if we both stay here on Friday and Saturday night—or at least I’ll need to stay. There’ll be stuff to organise. Patty will take care of the animals for us, then we can both take him home on Sunday. He’d like that.’
‘This is all about what Tom wants.’
‘Of course,’ she said, meeting his gaze head on. ‘What else would it be about?’
‘Lily …’
‘Dr Williams!’ Cathy, the lady who delivered ward meals, was heading toward them with her trolley. ‘This party on Saturday …’
‘You didn’t,’ Luke said, and Lily shrugged.
‘This is the Harbour. I hardly needed to spread the word myself.’
‘I’m so happy it’s happening.’ Cathy was beaming. ‘Your Uncle Tom’s lovely—and when he’s out of hospital he says I can take my little boy up to see his horses.’
‘He said that?’ Luke felt winded.
‘So of course we’ll come,’ Cathy told him. ‘I make great fairy cakes, with red jelly and cream. Would you like me to bring some?’
‘Yes, please.’ Lily said, beaming back at her. ‘Can you make lots? I have a feeling we’re going to need them.’
‘A birthday party. In your apartment.’ To say Finn was hornswoggled was an understatement. ‘I assume you’re not expecting me to come.’
‘Not if you don’t like piñatas, lamingtons and fairy cakes,’ Luke said.
‘I don’t.’ Finn surveyed his friend with care. ‘You’re letting them get to you.’
‘Them?’
‘Women.’
‘No,’ he said but he was. One woman.
‘You’re not sleeping with her,’ Finn said, and it wasn’t a question.
He sighed. Finn the omnipotent. ‘Enough with the commentary.’
‘But you’re nuts about her.’
He thought of Lily as he’d just seen her, beaming, excited, happily making Tom happy. There was only one way to answer Finn’s question. ‘Yes.’
‘You going to tell Papa what’s wrong?’
‘I suspect Papa wouldn’t be interested. Besides, you won’t tell me about your arm.’
‘It’s getting better, whereas you and Lily … You’re playing some game.’
‘We’re not.’
‘She’s only contracted here until the end of the week. Then she leaves?’
That brought him up with a jolt. After the party she’d be gone?
That’s the plan, he thought, and said so.
‘I see,’ Finn said and Luke thought he did see. Far more than he wanted. ‘Then it’s back to normal?’
‘I hope so,’ he said, thinking he wasn’t hoping anything of the sort. He should be—but he wasn’t.
‘Whisky’s a cold bedmate.’
‘Yeah,’ Luke said, and suddenly he’d had enough of this conversation. ‘You’d know,’ he said savagely and walked away.
‘I love a party!’ Ginnie was practically squeaking with excitement. To give her her due, Ginnie had taken it upon herself to visit Tom every afternoon while he was in hospital. Lily wasn’t sure how much Tom appreciated her visits, but Ginnie chatted and Tom let her, and they seemed to have formed a sort-of bond. So of course she needed to be invited. She was delighted, but she had reservations. ‘But your apartment’s so dreary. Can I decorate?’
‘Of course,’ Lily said, thinking, Hmm … Luke seemed to like grey.
‘Jungle theme,’ Ginnie said decisively. ‘What sort of cake are you getting? No, don’t worry about it, you have enough to sort. I’ll talk to Pete. And I’ll tell the guys to sort the drinks.’
‘The guys?’
‘The boys from the chopper rescue will be coming,’ Ginnie said, as if it was a given. ‘And the physios, and the nurses from Tom’s ward. Ooh, it’s just as well you have a big balcony. How many are coming from the farm?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Don’t worry, we can cope, no matter how many.’ Ginnie waved an airy hand. ‘I’ll haul Teo in. He’s head of paediatrics, you must have met him. He’s only met Tom once—I dragged him in to visit last week—but if there’s a party there’s Teo. I bet he can persuade his aunts to do some cooking. Do you think Tom would like his aunts?’
‘I have no idea,’ Lily said faintly.
‘This hospital is so good at parties,’ Ginnie declared. ‘Saving lives and giving parties.’ She giggled. ‘It’s a great mix. I couldn’t bear to live anywhere else. I’ve never really thought that Luke liked being part of it, though. Isn’t it lucky he finally has you to drag him into it?’
Friday was huge. Luke’s operating list was long already and two emergency cases stretched him to the limit. It was nine before he had finished.
He wasn’t going back to the farm. Lily would be in his apartment. Despite his fatigue it felt okay. More, it felt good. He headed back to Kirribilli, opened the apartment door—and was met by a jungle. Ferns, foliage and jungle growth was everywhere. Green netting, pith helmets, spears were hanging from the ceiling. A hulking plaster tiger was about to pounce from behind the settee.
He stood, stunned.
‘It’s from Kipling,’ Lily said happily from under a mountain of green balloons on the floor. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Kipling?’ he managed.
‘Jungle Book was Tom’s very favourite childhood book,’ she said. ‘I asked him when I was looking for a theme. Ginnie’s been helping. Do you think we’ve succeeded?’
‘Yes,’ he said, trying to get his breath back. His lovely cool apartment. A jungle.
‘You want to blow up balloons? Ginnie says we need to hang them in the foyer and on the letterboxes downstairs. Elaine was helping but Graham rang to say he knows where he can get a gorilla suit. They’ve gone to find it.’
‘Great,’ he said, and sat on the floor and started blowing up balloons. He couldn’t think what else to do.
‘You needn’t look like that,’ she said.
‘Like what?’
‘Like your life’s been taken over. It’s one party. Tom will be back at his farm next week, I’ll be gone and you can get right back to your nice solitary self.’
‘I’ve given up on my nice solitary self,’ he said. He blew up two balloons while he watched her blow up four. He thought about what he needed to say. What he should say. What he had to say. ‘Did you know you’re beautiful?’
‘So are you,’ she said, and she put down the balloon she was blowing and met his gaze, direct and true. She smiled. ‘Luke, I’ll sleep with you tonight if you want.’
If he wanted …
There was a statement to take a man’s breath away.
‘My mother rang,’ she said, dropping her gaze, tying string to her balloon. ‘She found me. She must have rung every hospital in the country. Admin has this apartment as my address so she rang here. She was almost hysterical. I’ve told her I’ll be home on Monday.’
‘No,’ he said, and it was a gut reaction.
‘I don’t have a choice,’ she said, only a faint tremor in her voice betraying emotion. ‘But I’ve been thinking. I’d really like to sleep with you before I go. It just seems … wrong not to. In so many ways we seem so … perfect.’
‘We are right.’ It was practically an explosion.
‘No,’ she said, and sighed. ‘Sadly we’re not. We have two insurmountable obstacles, my mother and your crazy idea that I need protection. But if they didn’t exist … I’d really, really like to sleep with you. That is, if you’d like to sleep with me. Would y
ou?’
And how was a man to answer that? He looked across at her, in her faded jeans and sweatshirt, her tumbled hair, her mountains of balloons.
She looked back at him, calm and sure, and there was no need for an answer.
Balloons were forgotten. Party organisation was forgotten.
Everything was forgotten but this woman. He kissed her and then he rose and tugged her up with him. He kissed her again, long and deeply—and then he lifted her and carried her to his bed.
She woke and sunbeams were drifting over her nose. She was spooned into the curve of Luke’s body. He was holding her as if she was the most precious thing in the world.
She’d never felt so alive, so wonderful, so loved, in her entire life.
The cramps had subsided. Where was stress now? She felt amazing.
She didn’t want to move.
Any minute now she must. She had a party to organise. Guests were arriving at midday. Balloons still needed blowing up.
She wasn’t stirring for balloons. She wasn’t stirring for anything.
This was an illusion, she thought, and then she thought this whole month had been an illusion. Pretending they were a couple.
The night hadn’t been an illusion. The night had been mind-blowingly, wondrously perfect.
The alarm went beside the bed. She’d set it last night when she was moving her gear into the bedroom.
Before Luke had come home.
Home. It was where she felt right now. Her perfect place.
‘You’re not a dream.’ He was awake, his hold on her tightening. ‘Whose idea was it to set the alarm?’
‘It’ll stop ringing in a minute,’ she whispered. ‘If we ignore it.’
Like the world might not intrude. If they ignored it.
‘What has to be done?’ he asked, and she outlined her list, her body not losing contact with his for a moment. Skin against skin, spooned against the man she loved.
She’d asked him to take her to his bed and she didn’t regret it for a moment. Yes, she had to leave, but for this last weekend … not to make love with him … she would have regretted it for the rest of her life.
Now she was only sorry she hadn’t relented three weeks ago.
Tomorrow she’d told Tom she’d go with him back to the farm. Then she’d return to Lighthouse Cove. But for now …
For now Luke was going through her items, one by one.
‘Balloons?’ he said, kissing the back of her neck. ‘First guests here get to blow up ten apiece. There’s nothing worse than standing around as an early guest with nothing to do. Sausage rolls? I’ll get Teo to come early; we’ll tackle them as a team. Hoovering? Why on earth would we hoover when the place will be covered with people?’ He reached over and the alarm was firmly turned off and then she was even more firmly taken back into his arms.
‘So what shall we do with all our spare time?’ he asked, and he kissed her nose, her hair, her mouth. ‘Oh, wait, I can think of something. It’s a big job, it’ll take two of us to complete, but it’s totally essential. It involves me telling you how much I love you and you listening. And then there’s a demonstration. So do I have your permission to swap your list for mine?’
She smiled. She held him close, she felt him kiss her, hold her, take her.
This had no future, she thought. There was only now.
For now, though, who could think of a future?
There was only Luke, and there was only now.
They showered and dressed—very hurriedly—just in time to let Teo in for sausage-roll making. Luke was heading over to the hospital to do a fast ward round and collect Tom. Lily was trying to remember a mental list that seemed to have vaporised.
Luke kissed her goodbye, which didn’t help at all.
‘You’re not leaving,’ he growled into her ear. ‘You’re my woman.’
My woman. The words hung.
‘I think I’m a feminist,’ she said cautiously, as Teo whistled loudly in the kitchen and pounded out pastry.
‘It works both ways,’ he said. ‘I’m your man. We’ll work it out,’ he said, and kissed her again, and then he really had to go.
She set out glasses and plates and tied balloons into bunches. She moved onto the sausage-roll assembly line. Teo joked and chatted and she joined in, but her thoughts weren’t on the party.
You’re my woman. Possession. Worry.
We’ll work it out.
How?
It wasn’t possible. Last night had been a farewell gesture, she thought, pure indulgence.
There might be one more night, but then it was over.
From the moment Luke escorted Tom into the apartment and assorted guests shouted, ‘Happy Birthday,’ the party was a success. Tom’s face said it all.
The first to greet him were his dogs. Patty had brought them from the farm, cleaned, brushed and wearing ribbons with balloons attached. They’d been subdued when Patty had brought them into this strange environment but one sniff of Tom, who they hadn’t seen for weeks, had them unsubdued. Luke had had to hang onto Tom or he’d have ended on his back under their weight.
Luke steered him to a chair and when Tom stopped laughing and emerged from under the dogs he could see who was there.
The place was packed. There were hospital people, the people he’d got to know in the last few weeks, Luke’s friends.
There was Patty, who he’d expected.
There were more.
Almost every farmer within a ‘cooee’ of Tarrawalla was here. People he waved to over the fence, kids he saw getting on and off school buses, the local stock and station agent, the guy who sold him hay.
Patty had done the rounds, letting people know, and almost always the response had been the same.
‘Tom Williams … Why didn’t you let us know he was in hospital? Of course we’ll come; what can we bring?’
In his own quiet way, Tom was beloved, Lily thought, watching people crowd round him, watching his eyes fill with tears. His neighbours had simply been waiting for permission to show it.
They were showing it now.
Luke put his arm around her waist and held her close.
‘This is some gift,’ he murmured. ‘I would never have thought of it, but it’s a miracle. How did you know he’d like it?’
‘How many people really choose loneliness?’ she asked softly. ‘You and Tom had loneliness thrust upon you.’ She smiled across at Tom, loving his reaction, loving the feel of Luke holding her even more. Even if it was transient, she was loving it. ‘Tom told me about your childhood,’ she said. ‘It sucks. I thought mine was bad, but your loneliness must have been so much worse.’
‘Yeah, but it’s long past.’
‘It’s not past. It’s holding you still,’ she said. ‘And it will until you get perspective. There’s loneliness, there’s crowding and there’s friendship. The third doesn’t necessarily mean the second.’ She took a deep breath, deliberately lightening. ‘Enough introspection. There’s work to be done. I need to take more sausage rolls from the oven and you need to make a speech.’
‘A speech.’
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘Teo says you’re good.’
‘I would have liked some warning.’
‘I’m giving you warning,’ she said. ‘Right after the smashing of the piñata, ready or not.’
He tried to figure out a speech. He moved among the crowd in his apartment, enjoying the buzz. He marvelled at Tom’s happiness.
He watched Lily.
She was wearing a simple crimson dress and crimson sandals. Her curls were brushed and shining. She smiled and smiled.
He’d asked her to move in with him. She’d refused even that, but now he wanted more.
Somehow he had to persuade this woman to marry him.
For that to happen …
First, there was the obstacle of her mother. Second, he had to figure how to relax. How to let her be her own woman. How not to watch her every moment.
He knew w
hy she’d refused when he’d asked her to live with him. He could see it; the anxiety he’d learned from Hannah would stifle her. But how to get past it? She was seeing that he couldn’t—that there was no use pretending.
He would learn, he told himself. He must.
But first … her mother.
He’d never met her but he’d imagined her.
He didn’t have to imagine her much longer.
They’d just finished smashing the piñata on the balcony. Sweets were scattering over the rail and down to the street below and kids were wondering whether they could reach street level in time to retrieve them when the doorbell went.
Luke was closest. He opened the door—and there was a woman. And a vicar.
He didn’t need to ask who they were. Some things spoke for themselves. The man was in his fifties, flaccid, weak faced, wearing a religious collar. The woman was a diminutive version of Lily.
She was tiny, with shiny, jet-black curls, exquisite make-up—and not very exquisite clothes. Clothes that said Look at me in the worst possible way.
The plastic surgeon in him noted the lines around her neck, the skin on the back of her hands, age signals impossible to hide. He also noted the flawless complexion, nary a wrinkle, and he looked for—and found—the tiny scars under her ears.
She was sixtyish, he thought, but she was aiming for thirty. Good cosmetic surgery.
I bet Lily paid for it, he guessed grimly as the woman walked in, towing her vicar behind her.
‘I’m Gloria Ellis,’ the woman said brusquely to the room at large, her gaze darting everywhere. ‘They said at the hospital that my daughter’s here.’ Luke turned to Lily, and Lily’s face had blanched white.
‘Mum.’
‘Lily.’ Gloria dropped the vicar’s hand and headed for her daughter. ‘Of all the selfish …! Do you know how long it’s taken me to find you?’
‘You rang yesterday,’ Lily said dully. The sounds of the party were fading around them as everyone realised who this was. Rumours of this woman had swept the hospital and probably beyond. Everyone knew Lily’s mother was trouble. The whole room was listening. ‘I said I’d come home on Monday.’
‘Yes, but the thing is that Lighthouse Cove is ghastly,’ Gloria told her, ignoring the people around them, focused only on her own need. ‘The things people are saying … Harold and I decided it’s impossible to stay there a minute longer, and we can’t get to Paris as we planned. So we need a nice place to stay. The girl on the switchboard at the hospital said this is a nice place.’
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