Season of Shadow and Light

by Jenn J. McLeod

  In the moonlight the car was unfamiliar, as was the tall, bulky shadow that emerged from the driver’s side to the sound of exaggerated high-pitched shushing, mingled with that familiar giggle.

  ‘Shhh, don’t wake Alice, Aiden.’ Paige was laughing as she tripped across the garden path towards the veranda saying, ‘Alice-Aiden, Alice-Aiden, Alice-Aiden. Hear that? You two are your very own tongue twister. I’m good at tongue-twisters. Ask Lance.’

  ‘And who’s Lance?’ Aiden asked.

  ‘Luscious Lance with the lovely fingers is hot. You’ve got lovely fingers,’ she said.

  ‘And you have a lovely bed with your name on it. Take it easy. Steps ahead.’

  ‘You’re not at all what I expect.’ Alice could hear Paige clearly in the still of the night. ‘You must disappoint a lot of ladies when they find out.’

  ‘Come on, watch the steps. One . . . two . . . That’s it. Careful. One more . . .’ the male voice said.

  They were out of Alice’s line of sight, but that didn’t stop the drunken giggles floating up to her room.

  ‘Oh dear, I think I might have overdone it.’

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you of the after-effects.’

  Alice had slipped on her robe, slipped into protector mode, and almost slipped down the staircase in her haste to intercept her daughter at the door. Whatever had transpired, or was about to transpire between that pair, would go no further. It couldn’t. She didn’t know a lot about Aiden, or what sort of connections he had in this town, but she now knew that should he get too close to Paige, and should their attachment grow, Alice would be forced to tell the secret.

  No!

  As torn as Alice was being so close to Nancy’s past, what she had to do was get Paige and Mati home and help save her daughter’s marriage. Paige’s family was all Alice had and Aiden’s existence could ruin everything. It wasn’t that Alice wanted her daughter in an unhappy marriage, but if after they had tried separation, divorce was unavoidable, Alice could at least control the process. Paige’s family was her family and while Robert might not be the smartest man when it came to being a husband, he loved his child and would fight to keep her in his life. Tim Brown’s desperate measures that night were proof that even the most god-fearing of men would go to any length to keep custody of their children.

  No, no, she chanted to herself all the way down the stairs. She had to stop any relationship developing between Aiden and Paige. There was no choice. It wasn’t right.

  Not right at all.

  19

  Paige

  Surprisingly, Paige slept better than she had for a long time, waking early with a foggy head but inspired to start the day. Last night had been a lot of fun, once Aiden recovered from his bad mood. The most arduous task was remembering everyone’s names, especially as most of them had real names as well as nicknames and were introduced to her with both. Paige had made up a few of her own and suspected Madam Pavlova might stay a favourite. Or the one they called GOD—an acronym for Grumpy Old Dickhead.

  ‘You’ve never heard?’ Aiden explained. ‘The more you shorten someone’s name, the more you like them. If it can’t be shortened, the next best thing is a nickname. It’s the way they roll around here.’

  When she’d mentioned to Aiden she was having a hard time remembering names, he’d laughed and suggested she couldn’t go wrong if she simply added an ‘O’ to the end of their real name, or to do what he did and call everyone mate.

  In hindsight, she should have stuck to drinking water, but the one well-earned wine after work, and the attentiveness of a man had relaxed her better than any tranquiliser. Not so the final shot of liqueur.

  She’d been returning from the bathroom to continue her conversation with Aiden who waited on the back porch of the community hall, when someone turned up the volume on the CD player and the man called Stavros invited her into the card-playing enclave under the wall fan in the back corner. He waved the bottle of clear liquid, doing a little Fiddler on the Roof impersonation while long pouring a generous shot into a polystyrene cup without spilling a drop.

  ‘One for the worker, eh?’ he said, his heavily accented voice a gravelly Zorba the Greek meets John Wayne.

  ‘I reckon the lady will pass,’ Aiden called from behind, promptly steering Paige by the elbow towards the door at the back of the hall.

  Paige dug her heels in. ‘Oh? I will, will I?’

  ‘You will if you know what’s good for you,’ Aiden said softly, clearly missing the warning in her voice. ‘If the potency doesn’t blow your head off, the taste will. First time I tried that stuff I thought Stavros must have boiled his dirty socks with a bucket of chilli.’

  Dealing with Alice’s over-protectiveness was one thing, but when a complete stranger tried it, Paige’s hackles twitched. Besides that, she had a hunch—something about the smiles on the circle of faces—that this shot Stavros waved under her nose might have been a kind of town initiation.

  She shook her elbow free of Aiden’s hold and with a defiant chin-lift turned back to Stavros and said, ‘Sure, why not?’

  The stuff can taste like last month’s milk and it won’t bother me.

  Then, to prove she wasn’t a wimpy city chick, she’d backed up for a second and even bigger shot.

  Big mistake.

  Not tasting something doesn’t stop you from chucking it up soon afterwards. Dancing in dizzying circles and shouting out the occasional ‘Opah’ for good measure probably hadn’t helped. She barely recalled Aiden rescuing her from Stavros’s gorilla-like grip, only the slap of fresh night air on her face as he held on, letting her slide down the porch’s handrail to plonk herself, moaning, on the bottom step nearest the garden bed in case she threw up again.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Aiden sat beside her and held out a glass of water.

  She groaned. ‘I sure can’t drink like I used to. Not since . . . Argh!’ Another half-groan, half-moan escaped. ‘Forget that. I’m making excuses when I should be apologising for the cow manure in the kitchen earlier. Not to mention vomiting in the esky before. I hope it was empty.’

  Aiden laughed, then swigged down some Coke and swiped the back of his wrist over his chin. ‘That certainly was a first; the crap in the kitchen, I mean, not the vomiting in the esky. Been there, done that—and worse.’

  A cautious laugh was all Paige dared.

  Aiden leaned back against the steps and lifted his butt briefly to fish something out of his pants pocket. ‘Mint Breeze?’

  She waved away the packet of gum. ‘No, thanks, I can’t taste anything anyway. Unless, of course, I need one. Can you smell my . . . ?’ She covered her mouth with a hand and puffed warm breath into her palm, for all the good such a reflex action did. ‘Hmm, maybe I’ll have one after all.’

  Aiden divvied out two strips of gum for Paige and one for himself. ‘Do you mind if I ask something?’ he started. ‘What’s with the no tasting thing? You’ve said something similar a couple of times. I don’t get it.’

  Paige tried a shrug, only her shoulders failed to lift. She wanted to find a bed and collapse.

  ‘I was sick a while back. I mean seriously sick. Not . . . you know . . .’ She hugged her stomach to fake another bilious attack. ‘Not a puke-up-in-the-esky kind of sick. It was a small stroke.’

  ‘Bloody hell! Stroke? Really? I thought only old people had those.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Obviously not. I was luckier than most. Okay, not lucky exactly. It was post-partum. I’d miscarried.’

  ‘How long ago?’ He asked without the usual awkwardness or over-played empathy Paige was used to hearing.

  ‘Two years,’ she said, imagining the guy madly trying to come up with an excuse to leave.

  ‘I’m sorry, you probably don’t want to be reminded about that.’

  ‘I’m reminded every day.’ She shrugged, despair creeping up on her, largely due to her boozy overindulgence. ‘Every day I look in the mirror and see my wonky eye, that is.’ She trie
d to make light of her condition. ‘Then, of course, there’s a dodgy leg and some serious sensory deficits; a fancy way of saying I can’t smell, and not smelling stuffs up a person’s sense of taste. My smile’s crooked, which has benefits according to my rehab guy, Lance; I walk like a wharfie with a limp, especially first thing in the morning; and makeup these days does little else but accentuate my lopsided face. So, all-in-all you could say—’

  ‘What’s wrong with your face?’

  She forced her lips into a smile, thinking he was being polite, but when she looked up at him something in his expression suggested he really hadn’t noticed anything too wrong at all. Maybe over time the drag had minimised. Maybe only Paige saw the way one corner of her eye drooped, making the other one appear larger and bulging. And when she smiled, only one corner of her mouth curved all the way. Not that she smiled much these days.

  ‘No taste or smell sounds a bit tough,’ he said.

  ‘It is when you’ve built a career around food.’

  ‘Ha!’ Aiden hooted as if she’d provided the final clue to uncovering a century-old secret. ‘Thought as much.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your knife skills. Only someone who’s worked in the industry handles a knife with such confidence. You were sounding pretty knowledgeable in the car the other day too, and you do seem kind of familiar. Have we met before?’

  ‘I don’t think so, except maybe . . .’ She sipped the water while managing a quick inventory of all the really bad restaurant reviews she’d done. Good grief! All she needed to make tonight the most humiliating of her life was to identify Aiden as the recipient of a bad write up in her review column. ‘No, we’ve definitely not met.’

  ‘But you’re a chef. That’s how you managed to julienne those carrots so perfectly and so quickly.’

  ‘Do you think I’m crazy?’ She laughed. ‘I’m most certainly not a chef. I appreciate produce too much and I’ve seen how you guys treat food in a commercial kitchen.’

  ‘I don’t get it. What else is there?’

  Typical, Paige thought. There’s only one real food job; everything else pales into insignificance. Such arrogance had always provoked her.

  ‘I’m a food editor and reviewer,’ she said, wanting to brag about her illustrious career and hopefully take her mind off the bilious sensation and the slow spinning in her head. ‘At least I was.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Who with?’

  ‘Going Gourmet.’

  ‘You’re kidding. You mean . . . ? You’re Paige’s Plate?’

  Pride rippled though her, swiftly followed by dread. Maybe she had reviewed him, or his restaurant.

  Aiden. She racked her brain. Aiden who?

  The spinning in her head increased. The effects of Stavros’s brew were kicking in again even though she’d thrown the lot up already.

  ‘I’ve heard about you, although come to think of it, nothing recent. Never had the pleasure of being on the other end of your reviews, but I know a few who were and you were spot on.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Her focus was deteriorating, both her thoughts and her eyesight. She blinked several times to try and clear the fuzz.

  ‘Your reviews,’ Aiden was explaining. ‘They were spot on. Except maybe . . .’

  ‘Except maybe what?’

  ‘I remember one.’ He laughed the way one does at a surprisingly funny joke, ‘You sure did a number on The Udder Café.’

  Despite the fogginess creeping in, Paige remembered that particular review. Unlike her usual soft, suggestive and professional approach, the young upstart brought in as a ghost writer to maintain the status quo during what was supposed to be Paige’s brief maternity leave, had thought clever equalled contentious. What had come across in his review was incompetence and cattiness—and all under Paige’s name at the time. For close to a year following her official departure—she could hardly call the process a voluntary resignation—management had continued to contract a string of wannabe journalists to keep her column alive, under her name. The strategy had worked a treat. Going Gourmet’s market position rose like soufflé, while Paige’s career and reputation was left to simmer, eventually drying up completely.

  ‘I didn’t write that Udder Café piece, by the way, and had I not been . . .’

  What was she doing by launching into more details with this man about that sad time? She normally withdrew from conversations about such things with anyone other than Alice and therapists, and always the very thought of speaking about her lost baby aloud brought tears. But for once the words didn’t make her want to break down.

  Why? was the next thought to enter her mind. What was it about this guy that made her feel the need to share her life story with him?

  ‘If you’d not been what?’ Aiden was asking, those blue eyes searching, but soft, caring.

  A little shake of her head quashed any such need to share. ‘Had I not been faced with other priorities,’ she offered instead. ‘Speaking of priorities . . . I need to get home. I’m starting to feel a little . . . strange.’

  ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you about that rocket fuel. It can have a delayed reaction.’

  ‘Oh, you’re all heart. I really think I need to go home—NOW!’

  ‘But we’re not done.’

  ‘We’re not?’ Surely he wasn’t going to make her wait until the diehards, their occasional ‘Opah’ overriding the cicadas and crickets, were finished. If so, he’d best grab that esky.

  ‘No, not until you’ve reviewed our performance tonight,’ Aiden clarified. ‘How would you rate us?’

  ‘Oh, five plates, of course.’

  He snorted a laugh. ‘See what I mean? Another spot on review by ‘Paige’s Plate’. C’mon. Let’s get you home and to bed.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ But as she made to stand, the wooziness in her head had everything spinning. ‘Whoa, maybe it’s too much fresh air.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, too much fresh air will do that to you every time,’ Aiden chuckled. ‘Come on my little Zorba. We’ll take my car, as long as you don’t go for the trifecta and throw up for a third time in the passenger seat.’ For the second time that night Aiden positioned Paige’s arm around his waist, the support of a strong man making her feel good, comforted, safe. ‘Hold tight so you don’t fall.’

  Oh, I’ll hold on, all right!

  She hadn’t thrown up in his car. Or if she had, she didn’t remember.

  Paige remembered little about the last part of the night, in particular arriving home, although there was something very familiar that morning about the loud tsk and grunt from Alice in the kitchen.

  ‘What got into you last night, Paige? Drinking that much and in your condition.’

  ‘It was only a couple and there is no in my condition.’

  ‘You threw up when you came home, for goodness’ sake,’ Alice said. ‘That has to tell you something.’

  In the toilet this time at least, she could have added. Instead, Paige opted for, ‘I know, Alice, and I’m sorry about that.’ She walked over and cuddled the woman who was her everything: mother, sister, confidante; the only person who Paige knew she could trust to never let her down. She needed that more than ever. ‘There’s a bright side at least.’ She pulled back to make the same scrunched face and shrug that she found so adorable in Matilda. ‘No sense of taste makes throwing up less icky than I remember from my twenties.’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ Alice grumbled, turning within the circle of Paige’s hug to put the kettle on. ‘Fancy not even knowing what you were drinking. Anything might have been in that concoction.’

  ‘Alice, I don’t think drink spiking is big on the list of crimes in Coolabah Tree Gully, especially with an audience, and said audience including the local constabulary. Aiden dared me so I couldn’t—’

  ‘A man dared you?’ Alice said, pushing away from her, aghast. ‘That’s your excuse? A dare? For heaven’s sake, Paige, are you sixteen?’

  ‘Okay, okay, well, maybe not so much dared me—not really.’
The cuddle was definitely over.

  Paige didn’t want to start her day on edge or arguing. She knew she’d been wrong to worry Alice. Reacting the way she had with Aiden over Stavros’s drink offer had also been childish, but Paige was more than capable of making her own decisions. For the past two years people had been tiptoeing around her condition. One over-protective Fussy Boombah in her life was enough.

  ‘And while you couldn’t smell your vomit, my dear, I most certainly could. And let me assure you, in all my years as a nurse, nothing has come close.’

  ‘That bad, huh?’ Paige sulked. ‘Stavros told me he brews the drink himself from plums. The man is a third Greek, a third Hungarian, and a third of something I couldn’t understand, so I’m guessing a homebrewed Slivovitz or Retsina?’

  ‘Spare me the details. Whatever it was, you need food in your stomach. Then we’ll have to work out how to get your car back. I suppose I should be grateful that cook was gentleman enough to bring you all the way home.’

  ‘This isn’t out of his way. He lives at the next property along.’

  ‘Which property exactly?’ Alice asked.

  Suspicion slowed Paige’s response. She didn’t want Aiden in Alice’s bad books as well. ‘Up the road. The property adjoins this one, I believe, which is how come Rebel found his way here and into Sharni’s care. The horse wandered over the paddocks one day and never left. Smart horse, if you ask me,’ Paige said. ‘Now stop fussing and remember, Aiden wasn’t the drunk one. Mind you, I feel surprisingly good this morning.’ Truth be told, the hangover probably hadn’t kicked in yet. ‘But, you’re right, as usual, Alice,’ Paige said with an exaggerated grimace. ‘Food would be sensible. Thank you.’

  She tried another cuddle, walking up behind Alice as she buttered hot toast, cradling her cheek against the older woman’s shoulder, only her body seemed tense. ‘I’m loving us being here together and last night I even felt useful and appreciated for the first time in ages.’