“What else are you going to do?” Nic exclaimed. “Cart all the furniture out yourself and tie it to the roof of the Laser? Guys are good at lifting heavy stuff, that’s what they do. And Matt’s got a truck.”
“But—”
“You can buy him a case of beer. Get over it.”
They spent the morning deciding what furniture was worth saving and what had to be tossed. Ally favored tossing the lot.
“You know, distressed furniture is dead trendy, Ally,” Nic mused. “You might be able to sell some of this.”
“This stuff isn’t just distressed, it’s suffering post-traumatic stress disorder,” Ally returned dryly. “It’ll be kinder to put it out of its misery.”
Rob and Matt had already been back and forward once to St. Vinnie’s and twice to the tip, with the truck loaded up each time. Now Matt was dropping Nic and Rob home so they could get ready for work, then he was meeting Ally back here.
They’d left her with the hard stuff, but she was the only one who could do it. Under her grandfather’s bed they had found half a dozen old archive boxes filled with papers, documents, photographs, God only knew what else. Ally carried them out two at a time and dumped them on the floor in front of the fireplace. Matt had lit the fire when they’d first arrived, to check the flue wasn’t blocked, but mostly because it was freezing. Ally started sifting through a box of old tax records. She was sure none of this would need to be kept, but she probably should check with an accountant. There were another couple of boxes, with similar bits and pieces, guarantees, old dockets, rubbish probably.
Ally reached for the next box. She opened the lid, and sitting on top was a photo of Nan as a young woman. It gave Ally a start. She sat back on her haunches, examining the picture, touching Nan’s face, remembering.
There were more photos. Another one of Nan, with Ally this time, she must have only been about ten. Then one of Ally by herself, as a fairly serious young teenager. Ally looked closely at it, but there wasn’t much light in the room. She picked up the box and carried it out near the glass doors.
There was no furniture left, so she sat on the bottom steps of the staircase Matt built. She studied the photo. She didn’t look like a very happy child. Her expression was sullen, even a bit hard. Ally sat mesmerized, sifting through the rest of the contents of the box. There were old report cards from school, Christmas cards, birthday cards, letters Ally had sent to her grandfather over the years. Not very many. Not nearly enough.
She came to a photo of her mother, Jennifer, at about fifteen. She compared it against her own photo at the same age. They didn’t look anything alike. Ally didn’t look like anyone in her family, except for her green eyes. She assumed she must have taken after her father, whoever he was.
There was an envelope at the very bottom of the box, and one last photo, of Ally, aged about three, perched up on James’s shoulders. She looked closely at her face. She was laughing. Ally felt tears spring into her eyes, and brushed them away, picking up the envelope.
The paper was a good quality parchment. There was a crest on the top left-hand corner which Ally didn’t recognize. It looked official. She slid the thick folded paper out.
* * *
The sliding doors opened suddenly and Matt walked into the room. She hadn’t heard his truck pull up.
“What’s wrong?” he said, looking at her.
“Nothing,” she sniffed, wiping her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” he repeated gently. “Something’s upset you.”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing, it’s just stupid.”
Matt sat down next to her. She was still holding the letter, and she didn’t resist as he took it out of her hand.
He started to read. “It’s from the Peruvian embassy,” he murmured. “‘Regret to inform … Jennifer Anne Tasker … reported deceased.’” Matt turned around to look at her. “Oh Ally, I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she shrugged. “I hardly knew the woman.”
“But she was your mother.”
“So? I hardly knew her.” A sob caught in her throat.
Matt put his hand over hers. “Ally, it’s okay. There’d be something wrong with you if you didn’t feel something.”
She shrugged off his hand and stood up. “Well there must be something wrong with me because I don’t feel anything. I don’t care, now I don’t have to wonder anymore. I just wish he’d told me sooner.”
Matt examined the letter. “It’s dated last October, Ally. He must have got this not long before he died. Maybe he was waiting until he saw you, face to face, to tell you.”
Ally snatched the letter out of his hand and put it back in the box. “Look, I don’t give a shit. It’s over. In fact I don’t need any of this crap anymore.”
She carried the box to the fireplace.
“What are you doing?”
She was standing looking at the flames. Matt came up behind her. “Don’t, Ally, you’ll regret it.”
He reached over her shoulder for the box, but she pushed his arm away.
“No, it’s all a fucking joke. I don’t want any of it.”
She went to empty it into the fire, but Matt grabbed hold of the box. She wouldn’t release her grip. She started to scream at him. “Let it go! I don’t care!”
Matt didn’t say anything as he prized the box out of her hands. She closed her fists and started pounding on his chest. She could hear herself screaming, but she couldn’t stop it, she was out of control.
Then she felt Matt’s arms close around her like a vise. She couldn’t thrash about anymore, but instead she felt a huge wave of grief rise up in her chest, and she started to sob violently. Her whole body was shaking with the force of it. Matt stood holding her close against him, she didn’t know for how long. Eventually her sobbing subsided into quiet weeping, broken only by an occasional, tremulous sigh.
“I’m sorry,” she said against his chest.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” He relaxed his hold on her.
“I want to show you something,” said Ally, dropping down onto one knee. She started rummaging through the box. She found the photo of her mother, and handed it up to Matt.
He took it from her, sitting down on the floor next to her. “This is your mother?”
She nodded. “They never talked about her much. I think it made them sad, but I didn’t know anything about her, or my father. I used to make up stories that they were spies, or movie stars away on location.”
Ally breathed deeply. “Then, when Nan died, she just appeared out of nowhere. She seemed like a kind of vision, sort of … ethereal. She stayed for about a week. Then she had a terrible fight with my grandfather, and she left.” She paused, staring into the fire. “I remember hating him for making her leave, and hating her for leaving me with him.”
Matt didn’t say anything, he just watched her, listening.
“Lillian told me what happened. She wanted money. That ‘ethereal’ look was the drugs apparently. She was in a really bad way. She threatened to sue James for custody of me if he didn’t give her money. Lillian said she’d never seen him so sick with fear. He was petrified, of losing me, of what would happen to me if she took me. He gave her what he could, but she kept asking for more. He eventually called her bluff and ordered her out of the house. He didn’t let me out of his sight after that. But he never told me why.”
Ally felt the tears stinging behind her eyes again. “It freaks me out sometimes, when I think about everything she did. She’s my mother. What if I’m like her? And I don’t even know anything about my father. Just some low-life one-night stand. It scares me.”
Matt shifted closer to her. “Ally, don’t make it harder than it already is. Just because he had a one-night stand with your mother, doesn’t mean he was a bad person. After all, look what he produced.”
Ally looked at him.
“I reckon,” Matt said slowly, choosing his words, “that he was probably creative. He
might have been a painter too. That could be where you got it from.”
She had never thought about that. No one had ever talked about her father like he was a real person.
“And maybe he loved your mother very much, but she took off, frightened of becoming attached, staying somewhere too long.” His voice was quiet, and he looked at her tenderly. “Maybe he would have loved her forever if she’d given him the chance.”
Ally’s eyes filled with tears, one spilling over to trickle down her cheek. Matt brushed it away with his thumb, cupping her face with his hand. He was staring right into her eyes and she couldn’t look away, she didn’t want to. He drew her face gently toward his. She could feel his breath on her skin. He was leaning in closer. Ally closed her eyes.
When his lips touched hers, she felt a shiver right down through the center of her body. She loved the way he tasted, the slight graze of his chin against hers. She brought her hand up to touch his face as Matt eased her down onto the carpet, his lips caressing hers, his tongue moving tentatively into her mouth. Ally became aware of her body responding, the gradual, exquisite arousal. She gave over to it, she wanted to experience every sensation, feel every slight quiver, the blood tingling in her veins. She arched herself against him, frustrated by the thick layers of clothing between them. She wanted to get closer, she needed that closeness. She had no one else. His lips moved down her neck and she opened her eyes, looking up at the ceiling. The heavy, dark wooden beams. Her grandfather’s room above. He was gone. Her mother was gone. She was alone. She clung tightly to Matt. Would he go too? She wanted to believe he wouldn’t. That there was someone she could count on. But he’d left his wife …
“No, stop,” she cried, unravelling herself from his arms. “I can’t do this.”
Ally scrambled to her feet and hurried out through the sliding doors. She stood there shaking, leaning against the wall, the cold air stinging her face. It was a nice idea that her father might have stayed with her mother, a fantasy that Ally had allowed herself to indulge in for a fleeting moment. But it was just that, a fantasy.
Matt appeared at the sliding doors. “Are you okay?” he said quietly.
She nodded.
“I’m sorry, Ally…”
“It’s not your fault, Matt.” She looked over at him. “I just can’t … Not now, not here.” Her mouth went dry.
He nodded. He thrust his hands into his pockets, staring down at his feet. “I have the worst timing,” he muttered.
They stood for a while, not saying anything. Ally felt cold. She hugged herself, rubbing her hands along her arms to warm them.
“You’re cold. We should go inside.”
Ally nodded. She turned to face him. “Matt, you’ve been so good to me. You’re such a good friend. I don’t want to spoil that.”
She thought he was going to say something, but then he stopped.
“I need you to be my friend, Matt.” She could trust him as a friend.
She couldn’t quite read the look in his eyes. “It’s okay, Ally. I understand.”
Two weeks later
“We can do without it, Ally. It won’t make that much of a difference.”
“It will!” Ally insisted. “This room was made for a Christmas tree, Nic. I’ve been planning it from the start. It will set the mood—you know, the twinkling lights, the smell of the pine…”
“But if it can’t be done, it can’t be done.”
Matt poked his head through the doorway. “What can’t be done?”
“You tell her, Matt,” said Nic, her hands on her hips. “She’s been ringing around everywhere trying to find a live Christmas tree, and she can’t get one. So it’s one less thing we have to worry about if you ask me. Then there’s the decorations, and lights and the rest of the crap.”
“I’ll do it, I’ve already got all the decorations.”
Tempers had been close to the surface for the past two weeks. Nic and Ally had regular head-to-head yelling matches, to the point where someone had to step in and attempt to be an impartial third party, namely Rob or Matt. What they couldn’t understand was, five minutes later, they were joking about something else and all was forgotten.
Everyone was under pressure. The women were just better at releasing it. Rob was wound up so tight he could hardly look at anyone. Nic said if he kept it up, she’d dress him up on the night of the opening and he could be Frosty the Snowman out on the front porch. It fitted with the theme after all.
“I know where you can get a tree,” Matt said tentatively.
“Matt!” Nic frowned.
Ally smiled hopefully at him.
“I have a mate…”
“Fucking mates!” Nic muttered, storming out of the room.
Ally grinned. “Could you call your ‘mate’?”
“Is this going to get me into trouble?”
“Not after it’s all set up. She’ll come around.”
* * *
Matt’s friend operated a wholesale Christmas tree farm, just outside Bowral, toward Robertson, about a half an hour away. He wouldn’t be home for the rest of the day, so he told Matt they should just help themselves.
Matt switched on the radio in the truck after they had been driving along for about five minutes without talking. Ally realized it was the first time they had been alone together since the episode down at Circle’s End.
They were getting on fine, but there was no escaping what had happened. Whenever they made eye contact, it was there. And much to Ally’s frustration, it was also there every time she closed her eyes at night. She kept remembering the way he felt, the weight of his body on top of her, the taste of his lips. Maybe she shouldn’t have stopped him. She often wished she hadn’t, imagining he was there sometimes, lying beside her in bed at night. Her hands reaching out to touch him, feeling his hands on her …
Ally squirmed in her seat, glancing across at Matt. He was watching the road ahead. The girls had asked her if she missed sex, and she hadn’t, then. Now it was all she could think about. It was like he’d opened some kind of Pandora’s box. She had not breathed a word about it to Nic or Meg, though—she would never hear the end of it.
It was way more complicated than simply sleeping with him. Try as she might, she couldn’t get past the fact that Matt had walked out on his family. Maybe there were good reasons, or maybe he had changed, as Meg argued. But Ally couldn’t afford the risk of finding out. If she dropped her guard, if she allowed herself to believe there was someone who would stay, someone who might really love her … And then if he didn’t.
Ally shivered.
“Are you cold?” Matt asked. “I’ll turn up the heater.”
She watched his hand as he adjusted the controls. She remembered that hand stroking her cheek, cupping her face. She remembered his lips against hers, how it felt to have his arms around her, his body up close against her …
“So, let’s do it.”
“Pardon?” Ally said startled, looking at Matt.
Then she realized the truck was pulled over to the side of the road, near a field of small radiata pines. Christmas trees.
She fumbled with her seat belt. “Sure, of course.” She turned to him before opening the door. “Thanks for this, Matt. I appreciate it.”
He looked at her, shrugging. “What are friends for?”
Saturday night
The first guests were due to arrive shortly. The green rooms looked sensational. The walls were deep forest, and Ally had used a special finish so they had the appearance of suede or velvet. All the woodwork was white and the floors were polished, topped with heavily patterned rugs in green, russet and ocher. On their shopping trip, Nic and Ally had found a striking pair of gilt mirrors that were perfect above the restored fireplaces.
But the pièce de résistance tonight was undoubtedly the tree. At more than two meters high, it filled the bay window. Ally had covered it in twinkling fairy lights, hand-tied red ribbons and gold baubles, as well as what seemed like hundreds of gorgeou
s wooden and ceramic traditional decorations.
“Where did you find all these?” Nic gasped after she apologized profusely and took back everything she had said the day before.
“They’re from my own collection.”
“What?”
“I’m a bit of a Christmas junkie,” Ally explained self-consciously. “I’ve got boxes of the stuff. I used to decorate my own place, and the staffroom at school, and one year I even decorated Bryce’s office, when they were having a party.”
“And then you got a life?”
Ally ignored her, looking around the room, satisfied. “Well, we did it.”
“Not yet,” said Nic, biting her lip. “Come on, one last check around.”
It wasn’t like Nic to be nervous, but Ally realized she and Rob had a lot at stake tonight, much more than Ally. They walked out to the main room. The hall had a timber-paneled dado wall that Matt had restored and extended out into the main room, to form the bar and reception desk. Because he had copied the detail exactly, it looked as though it had always been there. Ally applied the same liming treatment to the dado and the bar as she had to all the other timberwork. Working up close, she realized why Matt had such a strong reputation. She had rarely seen such workmanship.
“You know,” said Nic, “it doesn’t feel right that Matt’s not here, after everything he’s done.”
Ally had to agree. But he’d begged off, insisting he couldn’t wait tables, and his culinary skills were too limited to be of any use in the kitchen. Nic had suggested he just stand in a corner looking handsome, but Matt had declined, claiming he didn’t want to take attention away from the food.
The room was configured to seat eighty tonight. The largest single group was ten, the rest was made up of tables of fours and sixes. Ally had made gorgeous centrepieces for every table, and at each place setting there was a tiny box wrapped in red or green, tied with a sheer gold bow, encasing a single Belgian chocolate.
There was the sound of cars pulling up outside and doors slamming. Then they heard voices at the front door.
Call Waiting Page 29
