by Carla Caruso
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Sneak Peek: Second Chance
To the people of Kingston SE, South Australia – especially ex-newspaper editor Richard Peake for taking a chance on this city slicker as a cub reporter and giving me an unforgettable taste of life in a small coastal town.
Chapter One
Winnie Cherry gazed up at the giant crustacean looming as high as twelve stacked cars. A limitless expanse of blue sky, unmarked by clouds, provided a postcard-perfect backdrop. According to the internet, the Big Lobster was one of the most impressive of Australia’s Big Things – right up there with the Big Banana and Big Pineapple. To Winnie, though, the critter just looked angry: its red-orange antennae were bucked up and its eyes beady, as though it knew it would be destined for the dinner plate if it weren’t, you know, oversized and made from fibreglass and steel. But maybe her first impression just reflected her mood.
Ringing in her ears were the parting words of her Sydney housemate, Bruna: ‘Bet you’ll marry a wealthy cray fisherman and never come back.’ Of course, the life goal of Bruna, who was Eurasian – and hence insanely gorgeous – was to marry rich and divorce happy – regardless of his postcode. Winnie, however, would rather stab herself in the eye with a cray claw than put down roots in the sleepy lobster capital she’d just been banished to.
It had taken her two days just to get to South Australia’s Kingston South East – or Kingston SE for short – by car from Sydney, all the while feeling like she was headed in the entirely wrong direction. A country stint was not part of her media career plan.
The sign behind the monstrous lobster – cray – informed her its café was open for dinner at five p.m. She could barely imagine that happening in Sydney. Little wonder the car park was empty, though it didn’t help the fact she was dying of thirst The drive through the desolate landscape had left her mouth drier than the Sahara, and then some. At least the sea air lifted her hair from her shoulders and fanned the sticky nape of her neck.
Winnie twisted her mouth. Now she was here, she supposed she should do the tourist thing and take a cheesy pic, try to get into the spirit of things, maybe even confuse her brain somewhat – she’d text the photo to Bruna, pretend she was almost having fun.
Unearthing her phone from her tan handbag, Winnie held the device out in front of her, goofily grinned and pressed the camera button. Checking the screen, she saw her image reflected back. The photo looked good – her strawberry-blonde locks and tan seemed to glow in the late-afternoon sun, her dark eyes didn’t look squinty and there was no lychee-flavoured gloss on her teeth. Score.
Pity about the remote location.
Obligatory sightseeing – and photo – done, Winnie pocketed her phone and headed back to her metallic-rose Toyota Echo, sliding inside. It was already like a furnace thanks to the summer heat. Keys in the ignition, she cranked up the air-conditioner and the volume on her Fleetwood Mac CD. She blamed her hippie mum for influencing her taste in music. Besides, all the city stations had long since dropped out. It was almost like she’d fallen off the face of the earth out here.
Before taking off again, Winnie’s gaze flicked to her passenger seat and the vision board she’d fashioned from pink cardboard. Among the magazine cut-outs of things she hoped to visualise into her future life was one no-no. Beneath a pic of George Clooney with a red cross over his handsome noggin were the words: No more losing your heart over emotionally unavailable men – particularly at work. Not that she figured she’d have any problems in this postage-stamp-sized town, but it didn’t hurt to be reminded.
Also pasted on the cardboard was an image of the Sydney Harbour Bridge – the city she planned to return to ASAP – and a masthead from Panache magazine, the location of her next job, fingers crossed.
Shoving on tortoiseshell sunglasses, Winnie double-checked the address of her temporary new abode, which she’d scrawled on a scrap of paper. Darn. Looked like she’d gone too far on Princes Highway and would have to turn back.
Turning the steering wheel more energetically than planned, she hit the accelerator, the hatchback wheeling sideways. Gravel noisily flicked beneath the car as the tyres spun.
Then there was another noise – a loud expletive cutting over Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Go Your Own Way’.
Slamming on the brakes, Winnie peeked in the rear-view mirror as the car stilled. Her heart rate zoomed. Standing in a cloud of dust behind her economical little buzz-box was a guy about her age with chin-length, sun-streaked hair. His face was obscured by a bent arm, held like a shield. Sheesh. Where the heck had he sprung from? She hadn’t noticed a single car or person pass in the last ten minutes. Unless he’d come from the tractor museum next door.
A confrontation was the last thing she needed after the long trip, but flooring it wouldn’t do. With a population of about fourteen hundred, according to the sign into town, word would travel fast. She’d easily be tracked down in a pink car – they didn’t exactly appear to be the norm. Besides, it wouldn’t be ideal to make waves just yet.
Crunch, crunch, crunch. The guy edged closer on the gravel, taking his sweet time when all Winnie really wanted to do was apologise for showering him in gravel and get going again. Reluctantly, she turned down the CD as he bent to lean on the sill of her opened window. He moved to push his black shades – more likely servo specials than Ray-Bans – atop his head. From his age and stained polo, which had a fishing-hook emblem embroidered on its upper pocket, she picked him as a mere deckhand, if not an amateur, not the rich variety of fisherman Bruna prattled on about.
Woah. The sunnies were up and she sucked in her breath. He was actually quite dreamy-looking, if you liked rugged seafaring types. Up close, he had ocean-green eyes, an aquiline nose and just the right amount of sexy stubble. His fair hair looked artfully tousled, a style that would take Sydney pretty-boys hours to perfect with texturising sea-salt spray, but was no doubt au naturel. His biceps, straining beneath the polo fabric, looked like they could bench press the Big Lobster any day.
A bright red gash glared above his right eyebrow – possibly the result of an errant piece of gravel. Oops. And there was a scowl on his lips. Winnie kept her sunnies firmly on; somehow it felt safer.
‘Don’t you look in your rear-view?’ His question – in a surprisingly transatlantic accent for someone who appeared to be a bona fide local – was more an accusation.
But she was too busy watching his divine mouth forming the words to take in their meaning at first. Ack. She was doing it again: distracted by the first attractive male she saw. It had to stop.
‘I do look . . . usually. It’s just,’ she shrugged weakly, ‘the place felt abandoned.’ The car park – and the town in general. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t see you.
I feel terrible.’
‘What if I’d been an animal?’ he said, though there was less of a hard edge to his voice. ‘Or a small child?’
Winnie’s shoulders slouched. That was a low blow. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she repeated. Glancing up, she bit her lip. The cut on his forehead was beginning to look angrier than the mammoth lobster in the background. ‘Um . . .’ She fumbled in her handbag, finally producing a Gucci sunglasses cleaning cloth. ‘You . . .’ She pointed in the direction of his forehead. ‘You have a cut, I’m sorry. This might help.’
‘I didn’t think it was a tickle,’ he complained, his eyes cloudy again, but he took the brown cloth from her hand. Raising his eyebrows at the label, he looked at her as though checking it was okay to use it. She nodded and he pressed the rag to his forehead. It looked doll-sized in his big, tanned hand.
He stepped back from her car and wasn’t shy about giving her the once-over as he attended to the wound. She followed the trail of his stare as he sized her up. Darn. Her already teeny denim shorts had ridden up – almost to her floral knickers, in fact – exposing a good deal of thigh. She pulled at each hem, shifting in her seat.
Thankfully, he averted his gaze again, peeling the cloth away to assess the damage, and shook his head. ‘You city slickers shouldn’t go bush if you don’t know how to drive,’ he said quietly. ‘The sooner you’re home, the safer it’ll be for everyone.’
Huh. She hadn’t even mentioned where she was from, but it was clear she didn’t belong there. Well, fine. It hadn’t been her choice to be plucked from a perfectly good life and transported to this one-policeman town. Suddenly, all her good intentions drained away, and anger, mingled with tiredness, crashed over her like a tidal wave. His rugged good looks no longer mattered.
‘Give me two months and I’ll be gone,’ she retorted.
Defiantly turning up Fleetwood Mac once more, she put her pleather sandal to the metal, and the car careened forwards and sped towards the highway. She didn’t bother to check her rear-view a second time, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t driven over the guy’s foot or anything. The final look of shock on his handsome features, however, was seared into her brain.
It wasn’t the best of starts, but then, she’d expected as much.
Winnie peered around the antiquated unit, which was hers alone for the next two months. It wasn’t the type of digs she imagined kicking off the new year in. If only she’d left her sunglasses on.
The swirly, earth-hued carpet looked like the contents of the bathroom sink after Bruna’s enthusiastic efforts at Winnie’s farewell drinks. The fixtures paid homage to the seventies – Winnie was partial to the era’s tunes, not its decor – and the lighting was decidedly fluorescent. The exterior wasn’t much better: brown brick and bland. Being a Sunday, the real estate agent had chosen to leave Winnie’s keys in the unit’s letterbox. She shook her head. Do the same in Sydney and squatters would have moved in by the time you arrived.
Moving to the kitchen window, Winnie rested her hip against the chipped laminex bench and pulled back the dusty lace curtain. Her gaze fell on a strip of grass – presumably communal – and a rusty corrugated iron fence. Beyond was a paddock dotted with sheep, probably being fattened up for the slaughter. A crumbling old farmhouse was plonked amid the greenery close to the boundary fence.
How she was meant to feel inspired to set up a luxury lifestyle magazine in such rustic surrounds, Winnie wasn’t sure. But she only had a whirlwind two months until the launch of Beach Life then she was out of here – a self-imposed deadline. Her magazine publishing house was hoping to beat an industry-wide drop in circulations by branching out and going niche, which included starting up titles in holiday spots, intended to have city slickers pining for summer getaways. Thus Winnie had been ripped from her fashion-editor gig at a city weekly mag to head up a new glossy based in the coastal specks of Kingston SE and Robe. Her drunken clinch with the (married) executive chairman, Grant, at the Christmas office party had sealed her fate. He’d clearly wanted her as far away as possible, and had gotten his wish.
Winnie planned to ace the debut issue, take advantage of being the boss rather than a mere staffer for the first time and land a better job – back in Sydney.
Still thirsty and slightly desperate now, she held her hair off her face to one side and leant to take a slug from the kitchen tap. Yeeechh. She spat out the mouthful. The water tasted saltier than a bag of chips. It was like being in a developing country. First thing on her shopping list was a carton of coconut water, if the local supermarket even stocked it. She’d shop after she unpacked the few belongings she’d brought with her – she’d figured the less she came with, the more motivation she had to make a hasty exit. Her scant possessions included a camp bed (no way would she transport the real thing there), a beanbag she’d use as a makeshift sofa, and only one suitcase of clothes and shoes. Thankfully, the last tenant had left behind their fridge. Maybe they’d been in a hurry to leave town, too.
An old man sat smoking on the porch next door as she trekked back and forth, unloading her car. He barely grunted in greeting, let alone offered any help. So much for country hospitality. Her skin crawled. Everyone knew weirdos ran away to small towns to escape the law. Not another soul could be seen or heard at the unit complex either, despite the number of parked cars. There wasn’t even traffic noise from the highway. It was almost eerie.
On her final trip, the old guy asked at last, ‘You new around here?’
She paused, nodding, a box of crockery in hand. ‘Yes. I’ve come from Sydney. I’m heading up a new magazine here. My name’s Winnie.’
He didn’t offer his name in response. ‘Just make sure you don’t make too much of a ruckus at night,’ he growled. ‘I’m sixty-eight and I like my sleep.’
‘Okay,’ she squeaked, hurrying along again.
Safely inside – after taping up her vision board in pride of place in the bedroom – she decided she could put it off no longer: it was time to do her daughterly duty as an only child and call her mum. Adelaide, where her mum lived, had been Winnie’s home base, too, until five long years ago. The small city felt a tad daggy now – she’d moved on, in so many ways.
Her mother Georgy answered after three rings. ‘Pooh! How are you, dear?’
A grimace tugged at the corners of Winnie’s mouth. She hated the pet name, but dissuading her mum from using it would only add fuel to the fire. ‘Good, yeah. Just wanted to let you know I’ve arrived safely, so you wouldn’t worry.’
‘Oh.’ There was a beat of silence. ‘I forgot you were moving this weekend! Where did you say you were based again – Kingston-on-Murray?’
Winnie kneaded her right temple. Absent-minded was one way to describe her mum, hopeless was another. She was tired of being the parent. The pair were polar opposites – in looks and beyond. She pictured her mum, in a paint-splattered tee and retro jeans, winding a blonde strand of hair around her finger. Winnie got her dark eyes and olive skin from her mum and the tinge of ginger from her father. Though the less said about him, the better.
‘No, Kingston-on-Murray’s in the Riverland, Mum,’ Winnie persevered. ‘I’m on the Limestone Coast – the south-east.’
‘That’s right. Yes, yes . . . How was the drive over?’
‘Long and boring.’
‘Oh, I think it would have been lovely to be out on the open road. Reminds me of the car trips I used to do in my younger days – such fun. Back when it was all free love, and you weren’t picked up for minor things like smoking pot or not wearing a seatbelt. Now you’re back in the same state, love, when are you coming to visit?’
More temple-kneading. ‘Soon . . . soon.’
‘Maybe I could come visit you sometime, too.’
‘That’s not necessary. I won’t be here long enough.’
The banal chatter went around in circles for a while. Then Georgy, as usual, brought up the topic of her finances – or lack thereof. ‘Well, I got my bank statement in the mail on
Friday. Can you believe they slugged me a seven-dollar account-keeping fee because I had less than two thousand deposited last month? Talk about the poor getting poorer. Kicking someone when they’re down.’
‘Geez, that’s bad luck. Uh, look, Mum, I’d better go. I’ve still got to buy stuff for dinner tonight, but it’s been,’ Winnie winced, ‘good catching up.’
‘Okay, Pooh —’
‘See you later.’ Winnie swiftly terminated the call.
She’d helped her mum – a struggling artist in between temp jobs – out of financial binds in the past, but she wouldn’t fall into that trap again; magazine jobs didn’t pay well unless you were higher up the chain or at a bigger title. Instead, the freebie gifts and invites from public relation gurus were considered perks. And Winnie was now paying two rents: in Kingston and Sydney. Her bedroom across the border would remain untouched until she returned – further incentive to do so ASAP.
Thinking of her old apartment had Winnie checking the Facebook feed on her phone – her lifeline to the real world. In seconds, it was apparent why Bruna hadn’t yet texted back: she was busy. There was a photo of her clinking ciders with her bitchy new gay pal, Jaharn, at Hugos Lounge. Winnie knew she was being petty in labelling Jaharn like that but she’d be in the snap too if she wasn’t stuck in lobster-maiming territory.
Right, dinner. There’d be no more subsisting on carefully crafted canapés at VIP events every other night – the vegetarian variety at least. She grabbed her car keys. It took her roughly two seconds to drive up Kingston’s main strip, Agnes Street, then it was around the roundabout to Hanson Street, which was equally deserted. Winnie stopped outside the supermarket and almost whimpered. The lights were out and the door shut. It was closed. The only supermarket in town. Bye-bye late-night shopping. Didn’t anybody here work on a Sunday? She supposed she’d have to see what was on offer at the petrol station – at least it should be open.
