by Lyn Denison
“The two of you have been too close for too long. Now its time to spend some time with young men.”
“We don’t like young men,” Ashley snapped, and her mother shook her head, gazing at her daughter as though she hadn’t really seen her before.
“I can’t understand this, Ashley,” she said in despair. “You’ve never — you said you enjoyed your dates with Dean Andrews.”
Kate was looking at Ashley and saw the flash of desperation that crossed Ashley’s face.
“Oh, Mum. I told you what I knew you wanted to hear. I —”
To Kate’s consternation, Ashley began to cry. Kate wanted to put her arms around her, but Patsy’s look prevented her.
“You don’t understand, Mum. Oh, God! This is such a mess,” Ashley finished in despair.
“A mess of your own making. How could you do this to your father and me? It’s” — she shook her head — “it’s not normal.”
“Normal?” Ashley repeated angrily. “And is it normal prostituting yourself having sex with a man even when you don’t want to?”
“Ash,” Kate murmured, but Ashley’s gaze was fixed on her mother.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ashley,” Patsy Maclean said dismissively.
“Don’t I? I’ve tried a man, Mother, and believe me, I prefer women.”
Kate’s startled eyes met Ashley’s, and the other girl looked quickly away.
“Please try to understand, Mum. I love Kate.”
“Stop saying that.”
“You know, I think you’d be less upset if I told you I was pregnant,” Ashley angrily cried at her mother. “Well, would you? Would you be less angry with me if I said I was pregnant?”
Patsy Maclean ran a hand over her eyes. “Ashley, go to your room. I just can’t take any more of this tonight. Kate, I think you should leave.”
Kate stood undecided, and then Ashley sighed, her tense body suddenly slumping. She turned to Kate. “You’d better go, Kate.” She reached out her hand, rubbed it softly on Kate’s bare arm. “I’ll talk to you later.”
Their eyes met, held, and then Kate nodded. She turned and left the house to walk slowly home.
Ashley had phoned her a few days later, making vague promises about moving to Brisbane. And then had come the phone call from Ashley that had broken Kate’s young heart. Ashley had told Kate she was going to marry Dean Andrews and would Kate come to the wedding. Kate had vehemently refused, and with hindsight she’d realized from Ashley’s tone that the invitation to her wedding had been a token one.
A week later Kate knew she had to try to talk to Ashley one more time, but Ashley’s mother had answered the phone. Patsy Maclean had verified that the wedding would take place the next week and that Patsy would appreciate it if Kate would keep away and not put Ashley under any more strain than she was already under.
At the time Kate had thought Ashley’s defiant statement to her mother that she had slept with a man had been pure bravado, but when the rumors of Ashley’s pregnancy had begun circulating at her hurried marriage, Kate had begun to wonder about that and Ashley’s integrity. All she knew was Ashley’s damning silence.
And now Ashley was here, and Kate hadn’t seen her in ten years.
“You’ve painted the house.” Ashley’s voice dragged Kate back into the present. “It looks great.”
“Thank you. Aunt Jane always talked about repainting it, but she never got around to having it done.”
“I like the softer, lighter colors,” Ashley said. “It makes the rooms look bigger.”
They stood in a strained silence, and Kate’s nerve endings screamed as a mixture of wanting and wrath clutched in the pit of her stomach. How could Ashley stand there making idle conversation after what she’d done? How could she have the barefaced nerve?
“Perhaps a cup of tea would be nice.”
Kate blinked, trying to compute the words. “Tea?” Kate swallowed. “All right.” She dropped her bag onto the chair and walked back into the hallway, her muscles taut as she felt Ashley following her into the kitchen. “Unless you’d like a tamarind drink.”
“You have some?” Ashley asked in amazement. “That would be great. I haven’t had that since… She paused. “For so long.”
Since your left, Kate wanted to finish for her, but she simply nodded and took the tall jug of iced tea-like liquid from the refrigerator. She poured two tall glasses and added a liberal amount of ice.
When she turned she found Ashley watching her. Disconcerted, Kate handed her a glass, being extra careful not to allow their hands to touch.
“Mmm,” Ashley murmured as she held the glass up. “Even the smell of it takes me back.” She took a taste. “Wonderful. Remember how great it was sitting in the shady tree house on a hot day, drinking this?”
Remember? Kate wanted to shout at her. Don’t talk about remembering. You have no right after what you did. “Yes,” she said flatly, and Ashley glanced at her quickly.
Kate drew herself together. “Shall we go back into the living room?”
“Okay.” Ashley turned, and this time Kate followed her along the hallway.
And Kate found herself watching the back of Ashley’s head, the way the tendrils of her short hair fanned the back of her neck, her straight back beneath her white shirt, the way her hips moved as she walked, her shapely legs. And Kate yearned to reach out, stop her, draw her warm soft body back against hers, slip her arms around Ashley’s waist, let her hands move upward to clasp her full breasts.
Then they were back in the living room, and Kate shakily motioned for Ashley to sit down on the couch. Kate turned to move her bag so she could sit opposite Ashley on the single chair. As she picked up her bag, the paperback copy of Gold Fever fell onto the floor. Kate bent over to retrieve it and shove it back in her bag.
As she sat down she saw Ashley looking at the book. “It’s set in the Towers. Have you read it?” Kate asked.
Soft color washed Ashley’s face. “Yes, I have. What did you think of it?”
“I only started it this afternoon actually. But it’s really good so far. I didn’t want to put it down.”
“What part are you up to?”
“The heroine, Clare, has just arrived in the Towers after finding out she has family here.” This was an innocuous subject, and Kate clutched at the normality of it. “The book’s been really well researched. The journey up from Brisbane is authentic, and the description of the township at the height of the gold rush is colorful. I could almost feel I was there in the main street as it teemed with rough miners lighting their cigars with ten-pound notes.”
Kate stopped and looked across at Ashley. The ten years between might never have been. Here they sat discussing books the way they used to do. Kate’s mouth went dry, and she swallowed.
“Do you still prefer reading mysteries?” Ashley asked softly, and it seemed to Kate that Ashley might be feeling the same nostalgia Kate was.
Kate nodded. “Mostly.”
A heavy silence fell, and Kate could hear the ponderous ticking of her aunt’s old mantel clock.
Ashley’s chair creaked as she stood up. Kate tensed, but Ashley was only walking over to the sideboard, her back to Kate as she bent over to look at the photographs there: The sepia shades of her grandmother and grandfather Ballantyne in their dark, high-necked clothing so impractical for the hot, tropical north Queensland climate. Kate’s parents’ wedding photo. A head-and-shoulders shot of her Aunt Jane as a young woman, austere even then. And one of an uncertain Kate, an unsmiling ten-year-old taken not long before she arrived to live with Jane Ballantyne.
“I was sorry to hear about your aunt’s death. Mum forgot to tell me when it happened.” Ashley turned back to look at Kate. “I was going to write but, by then, well…” The end of the sentence hung between them.
“She fell and broke her hip,” Kate said quickly to fill the incendiary void. She never fully recovered from it, although she did come home from hospital. She grew
more frail and just faded away.”
“Did you — ?” Ashley looked down at her drink. “When did you come back to the Towers?”
“When Aunt Jane had her accident. She needed someone here with her. So I came home.”
“And got a job in the local library?”
Kate nodded. “Just before Aunt Jane died. I was working for the Brisbane City Council Library Service before that.”
Ashley smiled faintly. “I’m not surprised you went into library work. You always loved books.”
“So did you.” The words were out before Kate could take them back. She’d vowed not to let the conversation slide below a superficial level. “What did you do?”
“Do?” Ashley grimaced into her drink, absently swirling the ice in the bottom. “Nothing. I have absolutely no useful qualifications,” she said bitterly.
Kate looked at her, at the play of emotions that crossed her face, and something shifted in the region of her heart. In those short seconds she knew Ashley was not happy.
Ashley glanced up and her gaze held Kate’s. “A waste, wasn’t it?” she said wryly. “I became a dutiful wife and mother. In that order. Always in that order. And I wasn’t very good at either.”
Kate didn’t know what to say. “I met Jennifer yesterday.”
“She told me.”
“She … she seems a great kid.”
Ashley’s face softened. “She is that, even if I do say so myself. Jen’s all I’ve got to show for the last ten years.”
“She looks very much like you.” The words had to fight their way around a knot of pain that had lodged itself in Kate’s throat.
“Mum thinks so, too.” Ashley grimaced. “But Dean wanted a son to carry on the good name, so I failed again. And then, no more children.”
“Jennifer told me.” Kate stopped, embarrassed that Ashley would now know she had been discussing Ashley with her daughter.
“You two seem to have had a pretty in-depth conversation.”
“Not really. We just …” Kate sought the right words.
“It’s all right, Kate. I know what my daughter’s like. She’s wonderfully open and remarkably well-adjusted, considering.” Ashley made a negating movement of her head. “I sometimes wonder how that happened, how two absolutely dysfunctional people like Dean and me, managed that. But anyway,” she continued, “suffice to say Jen saved my sanity.”
She pushed herself away from where she was leaning her elbow on the sideboard. “But enough of that. Tell me about you.”
Kate shrugged. “Nothing much to tell.”
“Are you” she paused for an almost imperceptible moment — “involved with anyone?”
Kate felt warm color wash her cheeks. Rosemary Greig’s face appeared momentarily in her mind’s eye, but she blinked it away. After all, they had made no commitment to each other.
Tell Ashley you’re involved with Rosemary, self-preservation demanded. Tell her you’re happy and contented with your relationship. Tell Ashley you got over her and life went on…
“Involved? Not exactly,” she replied carefully, even as she told herself Ashley had no right to an answer.
“Not exactly?” Ashley repeated and raised one fine dark eyebrow. She walked over and sat down in the chair opposite Kate. “That’s very ambiguous.”
Kate held her gaze. “I’ve never married. I’m not engaged,” she said evenly. “But I am seeing a friend, on a casual basis.”
A heavy silence engulfed them again, and it was Ashley who broke it.
“Male or female?” she asked, and Kate’s face flamed.
CHAPTER FIVE
They stood looking at each other as Kate sought to formulate a reply to the audacious question.
“Does it matter?” she asked levelly.
“To acquaintances, I guess not. But we used to be friends.”
“Friends?” Kate bit off a sharp laugh. “Oh, yes. We used to be friends. Used to be is the operative phrase.”
Ashley sighed. “I wish …” She shook her head. “Well, as your aunt used to say, If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.”
Silence fell again, and Kate shifted in her chair.
“It’s not Phillip Walker, is it?” Ashley’s words had Kate glancing back at her in surprise.
“Phillip?”
“The friend you’re seeing on a casual basis?” Ashley elaborated.
“No, of course not. Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Mum said she’d seen you and Phillip lunching together last week.”
“I see.” Kate wondered if her first thought that Patsy Maclean might have been warning her daughter off Kate was at all paranoid. “Phillip’s my boss in a sense, and I’ve never had lunch with him. I don’t know where your mother got the impression we were going out. Actually, Phillip’s still in the middle of a divorce.”
“Is he? There’s a lot of it around,” Ashley added wryly. “You never went out with Phillip Walker after…” There was that same imperceptible pause again. “… after I left?”
“No, I didn’t. When I went to the University of Queensland in Brisbane, he went to James Cook University in Townsville. He married one of the Burtons from there.”
Ashley’s blue eyes held Kate’s for long moments. “I’m glad it wasn’t, isn’t, Phillip,” she said softly, and Kate’s heartbeats leaped in excitement at the same ephemeral concept that Ashley might still care. And then she silently berated herself for her foolishness.
“Phillip was always such a nonentity,” Ashley continued into the heavy tension that seemed to radiate from Kate. “I can’t see that he’d have changed over the years. Is he still a crushing bore?”
Kate pulled herself together. Talking about Phillip Walker forced any thoughts that Ashley still cared to the back of her mind. “Phillip a bore? Yes, I’m afraid he still is. Pernaps more so if that’s possible. Phillip’s great with numbers so he’s a good town clerk but…” She shrugged wryly.
“Well, if it’s not Phillip, who is it?” Ashley persisted.
“No one you know”
“Ah.” Ashley continued to watch Kate. “So it’s a best kept secret.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Kate’s nerves were so jumpy she had to move. She stood up and faced the other woman. “Is it that important? If you want to know if I’m a lesbian, then, yes, I am. Are you satisfied? I still prefer women. I always have.”
“I’m glad,” Ashley said softly, and Kate swallowed, sure Ashley would be able to hear her racing heartbeats.
“I don’t know why,” she said, suddenly tired of the emotion-charged conversation. “It made no difference ten years ago, so why should it be so all-important now? Unless you subscribe to the view that it’s caused by a failure to develop emotionally past adolescence. Then I guess you’d say I needed a shrink.”
“You’d be the last person I’d say needed to see a psychiatrist,” Ashley said softly.
Kate sighed. “Some people may say that’s debatable.” She shifted from one foot to the other, trying to release some of the tension that held her tautly, and she wondered if she could take much more of this. Perhaps she should simply ask Ashley to leave.
Kate glanced pointedly at the clock. “Won’t your mother, your husband be wondering where you are?”
“I told Mum I was going for a walk, which I did. Belinda took Jen and the boys out to the weir for the afternoon. And Dean, well, Dean’s not here.”
“When’s he arriving?”
“He’s not.”
Kate examined this piece of information. Something in Ashley’s tone made her feel suddenly hot, and she swallowed, trying to rein in her galloping imagination.
“Jennifer told me he was a busy heart surgeon.”
“Oh, yes, he’s busy. As a doctor Dean’s rather brilliant.” She pulled a face. “As a husband and father, well, he wasn’t so great.”
Past tense. Kate clutched at that, but for the life of her she could think of nothing to say.
“We�
��ll be divorced as of the end of the month.”
“Divorced?” Kate swallowed, suddenly numb. “I’m sorry,” she added banally.
“Are you?” Ashley was looking into the almost melted ice in her glass. “I’m not. These ten years have been pure hell.”
Kate’s mouth went dry. “I’m—” She stopped. What could she say?
“Surprised?” Ashley’s dark brows rose inquiringly. “You can’t be. You warned me that Dean and I scarcely knew each other when I told you we were getting married.”
Kate felt the familiar pain of that rejection, and anger rose inside her. “Your mother told me it was none of my business. And perhaps she was right. I mean, I didn’t really know enough about you and Dean to comment on that, Ashley. But I admit I did wonder at the time if I knew you as well as I thought I did.”
Ashley ran a hand over her eyes. “Everything was such a mess,” she began and then stopped at the sound of footsteps on the front stairs.
Kate paused for a moment after the doorbell rang before she walked out of the room to see who was calling on her. She was surprised to see Rosemary Greig standing there, a tentative smile lighting her face.
“Rosemary. Hello.” Kate quelled that same irrational guilt as Rosemary’s smile widened.
“You look surprised. Can I come in?”
Kate continued to stare at her as her brain seemed to go into slow motion, and Rosemary’s smile faltered slightly.
“Unless you’re busy or something,” she added uncertainly.
“No. No, I’m not busy,” Kate said. “But —”
They both turned as Ashley stepped into the hallway.
“Oh, I’m sorry Kate,” Rosemary said quickly. “I was just passing and thought I’d stop in. I didn’t realize you had visitors. There was no car.”
She started to turn away, and Kate took a step forward. “It’s all right, Rosemary. Come on in. It’s just an old friend.” Just an old friend? Kate could almost laugh hysterically at herself. And why was she asking Rosemary to join them?
“Sure?” Rosemary stepped onto the veranda and smiled at Ashley. “Hello. Hope I’m not intruding.”
