A Secret Shared...

by Marion Lennox

  ‘So this is partly a hospice.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ she said hotly. ‘Toby and his mother came here to heal, and that’s what they did.’

  ‘He died.’

  ‘Yes, he did, but he didn’t spend his last few days dying. He died with the sun on his face and dolphins swimming around and not a ventilator or IV line in sight. Jack, if anyone thought a last round of chemo was anything more than a forlorn hope, I’d have fought tooth and nail to get it for him. I’ve refused kids who need ongoing treatment if their doctors won’t agree to let me administer it. I can’t take kids sometimes because I don’t have the skills to treat them.’

  ‘You need me here long term,’ he said, joking, and she looked at him in the moonlight and there was no answering smile.

  ‘You’re here to be treated,’ she said simply. ‘And then I’ll let you go.’

  ‘Me? Treated?’

  ‘You’re figuring yourself out. For instance, the importance of one ant farm, for you and for Harry.’

  ‘I would have worked that out back in Sydney.’

  ‘You might not have if you hadn’t taken this time out.’

  ‘So what about you?’ he asked. ‘When do you consider yourself healed?’

  ‘I am healed.’

  ‘Says the woman who spends her nights watching soaps.’

  ‘I’m happy here, Jack,’ she said, but she knew it sounded defensive. She knew she didn’t sound like she meant it.

  But she did mean it. The work she was doing was important. She was making a difference to people’s lives. What else could she ask for?

  Release from fear? A release from the knowledge that she was still hiding?

  Release to start again, with someone like...someone like...

  ‘You’re doing an amazing job,’ Jack said gently. ‘Will you do it for ever?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Would they have trouble finding a replacement?’

  ‘What are you suggesting? That I walk away? Why would I want to?’

  ‘You might get tired of Sunrise Babes.’

  ‘How could anyone tire of Sunset Babes?’ she demanded in mock indignation. ‘We have a divorce, a sex scene and at least one catastrophe a week. That’s much more exciting than real life.’

  ‘Would you like to go back to real life?’

  His tone was gentle, and suddenly she stopped fighting to keep barriers in place. He was a friend, she thought suddenly. He’d been a friend when she’d been a student. Why shouldn’t she say it like it was?

  ‘I’ve been hiding for so many years I’ve lost count,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t know any other way. This place makes me feel safe as nowhere else does. I’m like Hobble with his malformed tail. This is my home.’

  ‘You don’t have a malformed anything,’ he said, even more gently.

  ‘But when I hear a car arriving, I still flinch,’ she said. ‘How stupid is that? When I was at university in New Zealand every time I heard a door slam in the night I’d wake in terror. I’m worse than Hobble.’

  ‘Just how badly did he treat you?’

  She gazed at him for a long moment. She didn’t talk about her relationship with Simon. Talking about him brought back the fear, brought back the terror. But Jack was asking. Jack was her friend.

  She tugged up the sleeve of her shirt, rolling it to the shoulder, and held out her arm for him to see.

  They’d done a great job repairing her elbow. All that was left was a long incision scar. The scar was neat. The scars from the cigarette burns were not so neat.

  Jack stared down at the scars for a very long time. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  ‘This isn’t the extent of it?’ he said at last, and her silence was answer enough.

  He swore. The oath was almost under his breath but its savagery was so intense it frightened her.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Please... It’s over.’

  ‘It’s not if you’re still terrified.’ He reached out and grasped her arm before she could pull the sleeve down. No. He didn’t grasp, she thought. He simply held. This wasn’t a man who grasped.

  ‘It’s not over while that bastard walks the planet,’ he said, quite lightly but the venom underneath was frightening all by itself. ‘Did he go to jail for this?’

  ‘He went to jail for fraud.’

  ‘So you never had him face justice for abuse?’

  ‘I... There was no need.’ How to say she’d have never had the courage?

  ‘There’s no statute of limitations on abuse charges,’ he said. ‘I imagine you received decent medical treatment?’

  She nodded, remembering lone visits to emergency departments over the years, trying to choose hospitals where she knew no one. Young doctors with shocked faces. Counsellors who’d told her to go to the police, to break free.

  But it would have been his word against hers in a criminal court, and she hadn’t had the courage to face him down. If there’d been outsiders who’d witnessed the beatings, if she’d been sure the charges would stick and she wouldn’t have to face him afterwards, then maybe. But it would have killed her parents to know this about the man they’d thought was wonderful, and if the charges hadn’t been proved, what then? Only when he’d robbed her mother had the cycle finally been broken.

  Jack’s expression had grown even more grim. ‘Then we can still nail him,’ he was saying. ‘Put him back in jail. Kate, you need to face this head on.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to face him ever again. He made me feel...worthless.’

  ‘While you’re running you’re still a victim.’

  ‘I’m not running. I’m safe.’

  ‘With your dolphins and your soaps.’

  ‘Jack, don’t. Please...’ She hesitated, trying to get rid of the feeling she had every time she thought of her ex-husband. He still made her cringe. He still made her feel as if she’d been a coward and a fool, and she didn’t want to go there.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked, in a desperate attempt to deflect the conversation, and she saw Jack’s brows hike.

  ‘What do you mean, what about me?’

  ‘What are you running from?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So you’re a normal heterosexual male in his mid-thirties who just broke up with his current girlfriend with apparently barely a touch of emotion.’

  ‘I’m a seething mess of conflicted emotion inside.’

  She smiled at that, but she was watching his face and saw that maybe he wasn’t joking. But this man wasn’t carrying a broken heart.

  ‘Even at uni,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘you went out with the most beautiful women, the most popular, the women who were self-contained. The women who’d never cling. I saw you go through at least half a dozen girlfriends during med school and I can’t remember any of them who seemed like they needed you. Or you needed them. And here you are, breaking up with Annalise and hiding your mess of conflicted emotion extraordinarily well.’

  ‘That’s ’cos I’m a guy.’ But he seemed uneasy. ‘You know guys don’t show emotion.’

  ‘There were lots of couples formed during med school,’ she said, still thoughtful. ‘Friends to lovers. It made sense, we got to know each other so well, but looking back...did you and I get on so well as lab partners because we knew the boundaries? I had Simon stopping me from getting close to anyone. You had your humour and your intellect and you used them as a shield.’

  ‘Is this your psychology training talking?’

  ‘Maybe it is,’ she said, striving to keep it light. But it seemed to her that strain was starting to appear around Jack’s eyes. Her faint suspicion that he had his own ghosts was starting to crystallise into full-blown
surety.

  ‘So tell me about your mum and dad,’ she said lightly. ‘Were they a happy-ever-after story?’

  ‘This is hardly appropriate.’

  ‘It’s not, is it?’ she agreed. ‘It’s just that you now know all about me and I know nothing about you. Except I know your parents were wealthy. The other med students used to talk about your dad with awe. He was a QC, wasn’t he? And you had a little sister called Beth who I know you adored. You want to fill in the gaps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Are you running from shadows, too?’

  ‘No!’

  She didn’t talk back. She simply hiked her eyebrows in a mock mirror image of his own gesture, folded her hands, looked out to sea—and waited.

  * * *

  What was going on? One minute he was probing about her past, pushing her to do something, being proactive. He was playing the male role, the protector, acting as he would have if it’d been Beth in the role of the abused.

  Suddenly she’d turned the tables.

  She was no longer pushing. She was simply...waiting.

  She was an extraordinarily restful woman, he thought, and then he reconsidered. No, she was just extraordinary.

  But she was asking him to reveal personal stuff. He didn’t do personal stuff.

  Was that why it didn’t hurt that Annalise had agreed to move from their apartment with minimal fuss? Was that why he always chose girlfriends who saw him as a useful accessory rather than the love of their life?

  Did he see them the same way?

  He’d barely thought about it until now. But maybe he had, he acknowledged. Maybe he’d thought about it and blocked it out.

  He remembered how he’d felt when Beth had met her Arthur.

  She’d come home glowing, she’d wafted round in a mist of happiness, and he remembered being...fearful. That she’d left herself exposed.

  She’d married, Harry had arrived and for the first time then she’d revealed to him how frightening it was.

  ‘If anything happened to them, I’d die,’ she’d told Jack simply. ‘Arthur and now Harry...I love them so much, they’re my whole heart.’

  ‘How can you do this?’ he’d asked. It had been a rare moment of truth between the siblings. Normally they’d avoided talking about their home life. ‘How can you expose yourself to what Mum and Dad put up with?’

  ‘Because it’s worth the risk,’ she’d said simply, and smiled down at her sleeping baby. ‘Oh, Jack, I hope you find that out for yourself.’

  And then Beth herself had died and every single one of his fears had crystallised. He’d stood at the graveside and felt empty. Dead himself. Annalise had stood beside him but he hadn’t held her hand and she hadn’t tried to take it. They’d respected each other’s space.

  Kate was still waiting. She was still watching the sea, giving him space. She was a woman who’d seen it all.

  Why not tell her?

  ‘My parents...overdid the love thing,’ he said, keeping his voice neutral. After what Kate had been through, this was no big deal. Poor little rich boy? What was he on about?

  ‘How can you overdo love?’ Kate asked, and then hesitated. ‘No, that’s a dumb question. My parents manipulated me through love. Simon swore he loved me. Love has weird guises.’

  ‘Theirs was passion,’ he said, suddenly grim. ‘They married in a storm of passion—a two-week courtship and then off to Gretna Green, for heaven’s sake, because my mother thought that was the most romantic place on earth to be married. Only it rained and the hotel had lumpy mattresses so they fought at the top of their lungs, they broke up, and then they came together again and headed for another romantic “wedding” in the Seychelles. And that was the entire foundation of their marriage. My father was a lawyer at the top of his game. My mother was an interior designer, a good one. Both of them had enormous professional respect.

  ‘Both of them used their marriage to rid themselves of stress, to shout, to fight, to break up, to passionately come together again. Beth and I were the catalysts for a lot of the conflict. Our parents were either in a passionate clinch like hot young lovers, not able to keep their hands off each other, even in front of us, or they were hurling things at each other. Their fights were vicious and real, and Beth and I were in the middle.’

  ‘Tough.’

  ‘You said it,’ he admitted grimly. ‘I hated it. Beth was four years younger than me, she was epileptic, stress brought on attacks and I seemed to spend my childhood protecting her. Maybe I did too good a job. Maybe that’s why she was able to fall so passionately in love with Arthur.’

  ‘That marriage worked?’

  ‘It seemed to,’ he admitted. ‘But it was a huge risk. Love leaves you wide open—and now she’s dead.’

  ‘Would she still be dead if she hadn’t made the decision to love?’

  He closed his eyes. ‘I know. Her death was random. One drunk driver late at night, ice on the road... But she knew the risks. When Harry was born, she made me swear I’d look after him. As if she knew...’

  ‘Every good parent thinks about worst-case scenarios,’ she said simply. ‘They talk it through, do the asking, then get on with their lives. But you...maybe love cost you your childhood, and here you are, losing again through love. Maybe you’re the one who’s scarred.’

  ‘I’m not scarred.’

  ‘I think you are,’ she said gently. ‘Almost as badly as Harry.’

  ‘Kate—’

  ‘Use this time,’ she said urgently, rising. ‘Jack, this is time out for both you and Harry. You have so much to think about. If you’re uncomfortable talking to me, then think about using Louise—she’s a competent psychotherapist.’

  ‘I don’t need a psychotherapist!’ It was an angry snap, but Kate didn’t flinch.

  ‘This is a healing place,’ she said softly. ‘Yes, we do have kids who come here when they’re dying but even in dying, the family can find a kind of peace. If you give in to that peace, that acceptance, we can help you for the rest of your life.’

  ‘It’s Harry who needs help.’

  ‘Via you. Harry needs you. Are you prepared to open yourself up to him? To anyone?’

  ‘I’ve just organised his ant farm. How much more do I need to do?’

  ‘I think you know how much,’ she said softly, and then, as if she couldn’t help herself, she raised her hand and traced the contours of his cheekbones. ‘You’re a good man, Jack Kincaid, but you do need help.’

  ‘Says the woman in hiding.’

  ‘Jack...’

  He caught her hand in his, and he held. The night was still between them. Underneath the veranda a tiny rock wallaby was snuffling through the bushes. Trusting. Here in this retreat, there was no threat.

  So why did Jack suddenly feel that there was a threat? Why did he feel exposed?

  Because of what this woman had said?

  Because of what this woman was?

  But right now his emotions were changing. Needs were changing. They’d been talking of the past, of things that had threatened them both.

  Right now was...now.

  And right now he wanted to kiss her. It was as simple as that. The conversation faded. Reservations faded. He looked down into her face and he thought what a gift had been in front of him all those years ago. He’d accepted her statement that she’d had a boyfriend. He hadn’t explored past it.

  Maybe he hadn’t wanted to explore past it. Maybe he was running as scared as Kate was.

  ‘“Physician, heal thyself”?’ he said, striving for lightness—and failing. ‘Maybe...it should read, “Physician, heal each other.”’

  ‘Jack...’

  ‘Maybe we could try,’ he said softly.

  He kissed her then, a gentle, questioning kiss that he didn�
�t understand. He’d kissed her before, with passion. Tonight passion had taken a back seat. This was a kiss of questions, an asking if things were possible, a kiss that asked where they could take things from here.

  She kissed him back and he felt the same uncertainty in her. The same need?

  The kiss went on for a very long time. They simply held, warmth flooding through, questions being asked and answered, a future tentatively opening before them. It felt right, he thought as he held her close and felt the sheer wonder of her. It felt like the beginning of something...amazing.

  She felt right. She...fitted. It didn’t make any kind of sense, but all he knew was that she was right for him.

  But when they finally pulled apart, when finally the kiss ended, as all kisses eventually had to, she backed away in the moonlight and her look was troubled.

  ‘What?’ he said, and touched her lips with his finger. ‘What, my love?’

  ‘I’m not your love.’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Neither am I an answer to your problems.’

  There was a moment’s silence. The trouble deepened. She was withdrawing, her armour slipping back. It was imaginary armour but he could almost see it.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He reached to hold her again but she shook her head.

  ‘No. Jack, I love...’ She touched her lips. ‘No, I mean I like you kissing me. I like you touching me. Our friendship goes back a long way and you know how isolated I’ve been. Maybe my reaction to you is a response to that isolation. Maybe it’s not. But you and Annalise—’

  ‘It’s over.’

  ‘That’s right, it’s over,’ she said, sounding still more troubled. ‘And isn’t that the problem?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You must see it,’ she said. She was struggling to sound calm, as if she was trying to figure things out as she said them. ‘Jack, you have a child to care for. Your girlfriend’s ditched you. You’re facing a future as a lone parent and it scares you. And now you’re kissing me.’