by Anna Clifton
But Adam knew he was not as stalwart as the average Sydney-sider when it came to Australia’s unrelenting summer heat. In fact, he had an almost overwhelming hankering at that moment to be back in England, walking along one of the quiet country lanes where he’d grown up—everything around him cool, lush and green, the freezing drizzle running down his neck in icy rivulets—it was not to be, of course. His obligations in Sydney would hold him captive for at least another couple of months before he and Pete could finally head for home.
Sighing heavily, Adam stripped off his tie. Rolling it into a ball he tossed it into his car, tore open his top button and wandered across to the school fence.
In the distance he could see Abbie.
She was chatting to two other mothers as she waited for Henry to emerge through the front doors of St James’ Prep at the end of his first official day of school. She was wearing a simple white shift dress, a pair of rubber thongs and a large straw hat. But what struck Adam was that in the stifling heat she somehow managed to look fresh and cool, when everyone around her looked hot and bothered.
At that moment the school doors opened. Teachers marched out into the front playground. Gambolling children followed behind like puppies.
Pete and Henry appeared together. They were wearing cardboard headbands around their foreheads with a bright red apple cut-out pasted on the front. Adam guessed they’d learnt about the letter ‘A’ that day.
The two boys chatted to each other as their eyes roamed the crowd of parents like spotlights. Adam could see Pete mouth the words ‘there’s your mum’ and wave eagerly at Abbie, losing himself in a rare moment of unselfconscious happiness at spotting a familiar face.
The two boys started running towards her, but moments later, as Pete careered along the path, he tripped and fell forward onto the pavement with a bone jarring crash, the contents of his open school bag spilling out around him.
Adam’s heart soared into his mouth as he started forward, bracing himself for the rest of his boy’s day that had just been mapped out. For as always, the shock of a tumble would overwhelm Pete so completely that he would be teary and fragile until bedtime.
But as suddenly as Adam had started forward, he stopped dead again. Abbie was already heading for Pete lying prone on the ground, his face buried in his hands as he sobbed inconsolably. And for some reason Adam couldn’t move another inch in his son’s direction, struck motionless by a burning need to know how the mother of Henry—the most together little kid he’d ever met—would deal with the emotional disintegration of his own child as it unfolded before her eyes.
Crouching beside Pete, Abbie took his hand gently in hers and spoke to him for a few minutes in words that Adam had no hope of hearing; they were the longest minutes of Adam’s life. Yet just as he decided he couldn’t stand back and watch his son in distress for another second, an incredible thing happened.
Pete’s bottom began to rise slowly into the air as he drew his knees beneath himself and then he stood up in front of Abbie. His face contorted as several sobs wracked his body—the usual lead-in to the hysteria that would escalate from that point. But Abbie lifted a steady finger and pressed it against her own lips as she drew in a breath. In the next instant Pete was pressing his finger against his own lips too, taking a deep breath and holding it. Then after ten seconds or so he released the breath in a rush, laughed suddenly and tumbled into Abbie’s outstretched arms.
Henry joined them as she wrapped herself around the two of them in equal measure. And as their reunion rolled out like a silent movie, Adam reeled at the visible onslaught of Abbie’s warm gift with children. But at that moment Henry and Pete spotted him. Peeling themselves off Abbie, they ran out the front gate and tore down the footpath in his direction.
Pretending not to notice them approaching, Adam waited until they were almost on top of him before he picked them both up by their waists and swung them upside down like a pair of fruit bats. Then with a wriggling, laughing boy wrapped securely under each of his arms, he wandered over to Abbie. But in spite of the boys’ hoopla she looked perturbed to see him.
“Hello, Adam,” she said frowning, avoiding his eyes as she stared out across the emptying school playground.
“Abbie,” he murmured back with the briefest of acknowledgments, doubting all over again that she’d ever agree to his friendship proposal for the boys when she could barely bring herself to look at him.
“Can we go to the beach and have an ice-cream, Mum?” Henry cried out from where he still hung happily suspended from under Adam’s right arm.
“Yes, why don’t we, Abbie?” Adam agreed, challenging her in the face of her stony reaction to his arrival. “I’ve got board shorts and towels in the back of the car. We can talk down at the beach while the boys have a swim. There’s really no need to drag ourselves into the office for this meeting of ours later, is there?”
“But I can’t talk to you at the beach, not with the boys around,” Abbie argued straight back at him, her voice edged with strain. “And I rang Justin’s secretary and made an appointment for five o’clock today, just as you asked me too. The room’s booked and everything …” she trailed off, running a trembling hand through her hair in a rare moment of visible turmoil.
“But we’re both here now!” Adam argued gently, at a loss as to why she was so hell bent on the formality of an office meeting. After all, the beach would keep the boys busy and presumably give her the time and space to say what she needed to say.
“It’s just … being all together …” she finished, and then turning her head looked off into the distance again, a picture of unhappiness.
“Well, why wait? Anyway, I have something important I need to talk to you about too,” he added, lowering the two squirming boys onto the nature strip.
Abbie opened her mouth to object but then snapped it shut again. Adam wasn’t sure whether she’d opted for silence to avoid making a scene in front of the boys or because she’d simply changed her mind. But whatever it was, a shadow of finality descended across her expression, deepening the rich golden-brown hues of her eyes.
Within minutes they were on their way to Bronte Beach in the relief of his air-conditioned car. The boys were in the back, chattering happily together. Abbie sat next to him in the front seat, twisted around so that she could ask them both about their day at school. But he could tell from her staccato voice and the quick movements of her hands that she was still very agitated.
Thankfully the traffic was light and he was soon swinging his car into the Bronte Beach car park. The boys changed in the bathrooms and then he and Abbie wandered along the promenade towards a spare bench where they sat down. From there they had a clear view of the boys as they raced down the beach, fashioned a quick sandcastle and then plunged into the sparkling blue water of the rock pool, their laughter and shouting floating across the sand.
“Thank you for helping Pete up at the school just now,” Adam began, taking in Abbie’s heart-shaped face in profile as she kept a close eye on the boys paddling towards the sea wall.
“You don’t need to thank me,” she replied with a dismissive edge. “I was there and happy to help.”
“Pete doesn’t normally recover as quickly as he did with you today.”
“Why not?” she asked in curious distraction, finally turning to him.
“He just doesn’t. In fact, it was nothing short of a miracle, if you want the truth. Normally he’d be upset for hours after a fall like that. What exactly did you say to him?”
Abbie shrugged. “He seemed to be panicking about his fall so I told him he should lie on the ground until he felt ready to get up. I didn’t think any four-year-old boy would want to lie on that hot path for too long and he didn’t. He calmed himself down and then he was fine.”
“But Pete was holding his breath …”
“That’s just something I do with Henry,” Abbie explained. “It calms him down sometimes when he feels as though he’s losing control.”
&nbs
p; “So simple,” Adam murmured in wonder.
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Anyway, Abbie,” Adam began in a more forceful voice, “you’d better tell me what’s on your mind. You look about ready to implode. Then I’ll tell you about an idea I have for the boys—I’m hoping you’ll agree to it.”
Abbie turned to find him watching her closely with those incredible eyes of his; they were like splashes of the same Pacific Ocean the boys were swimming in at that moment. Then before she knew what was happening, Adam had lifted his hand to trail some loose strands of hair behind her ear with his fingertips. His expression was distant, as though his thoughts had drifted back across many years to another time when they meant something to each other. And even though Abbie’s head told her to pull away from his fatal touch, a tsunami of sensation was already coursing across her skin in sentimental response to his small gesture of tenderness.
It would be the last once he knew what she’d done to him.
She hated herself for caring either way.
“Okay, here I go,” Abbie began, her throat hoarse as she wrung her hands together and looked him straight in the eye, “I wanted to talk to you privately at the office, just you and me, because what I’m going to tell you will shock and upset you. But as you said, we’re here now. And to be honest, I don’t think I can bear to put this conversation off a minute longer anyway.”
“What is it, Abbie?” Adam asked, a wary edge creeping into his voice.
“God, I wish more than anything else in the world that I didn’t have to tell you this,” Abbie almost moaned, wondering whether she might be caught up in a bad dream that would end at any moment. But in dreams you couldn’t smell fresh, salty air and pungent seaweed. Nor could you feel the warm breeze as it kissed your cheek and played with your hair. No, there was no doubt about it—her conversation with Adam was no bad dream. But it was definitely a conversation that would soon turn nightmares into reality.
“You see, after you left me and returned to the UK, I discovered I was pregnant.”
“I know that,” he replied with a cautious edge to his voice. “Justin told me. Henry’s father didn’t want to be involved with the baby …”
But Abbie was shaking her head.
“No, that’s not right. Justin never knew the truth because I kept it from him. The truth was there was no man after you—no man at all …”
Adam’s upper body jerked violently and his eyes switched towards the two boys climbing on the rock wall edging the sea pool. In morbid fascination Abbie watched on as stunned recognition lifted his facial features and then gradually turned them to stone.
He straightened next to her, and climbing painstakingly to his feet, walked very slowly to the edge of the promenade. Henry spotted him immediately and waved from where he was standing on one of the rocks at the edge of the pool.
Abbie got up, and unsure what on earth she would do next, walked to Adam’s side. But as she did, he turned on her with eyes that were ice blue with anger, his voice soft and measured like an iron fist in a velvet glove.
“You are telling me that Henry is my son.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“No doubt about it?”
“None at all.”
“And the birth control …”
“Didn’t work, despite …”
“So then why don’t you enlighten me,” he interrupted with a near snarl. “What reason can you possibly give me to explain why you’ve kept Henry from me until now?”
Abbie didn’t reply. She was too busy battling an almost overwhelming urge to turn and run away so that she wouldn’t have to endure another moment of his loathing. But she owed him her presence, and any answers she could offer him. And that was the very least she owed him after what she’d done to him.
“The thing is, Adam,” she said, barely able to manage more than a whisper, “when I discovered I was pregnant you were still a mess after Ellen’s death. And you and she had this incredibly high profile marriage—the scandal of a baby would have blown your reputation to bits. And no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t see that there was any room in your life for me, let alone …” But Adam held up his hand to stop her.
“So I’ve lost more than three years of Henry’s life because you felt entitled to keep him from me. And you made that decision all on your own. God, what kind of a woman are you?”
She watched him in tortured anguish, knowing there wasn’t a single thing she could say to defend herself. All she could do was try and explain her motives, yet she knew they would come out sounding hopelessly weak and completely pathetic, no matter how she packaged them up.
“I’m so sorry,” she blurted miserably, her take-it-on-the-chin veneer beginning to crumble fast in the face of his growing revulsion for her. “I don’t know what to say that can explain or excuse what I’ve done.”
Abbie released a violent sob in a sudden outbreak of guilt and remorse, but she didn’t turn away. She remained where she was, staring hard at Adam’s rigid expression, like a sculpture in its tense immobility. Clearly unable to stand the sight of her for another instant, he tore his haunted gaze from hers and turned it towards Henry, still playing happily on the rocks in the distance.
At that moment Adam took a step forward and dropped himself from the promenade and onto the sand below. He made his way across the narrow stretch of beach and in his full suit, walked straight into the sea in Henry’s direction without a moment’s hesitation.
Only when he was knee deep did he appear to wake up out of his stupor and realise what he’d done. But instead of walking back out again, he dropped himself down to sit waist deep in the shallows and drop his face into his hands.
How Abbie wished she could do or say something to help him, but she couldn’t move a muscle. And even if she could, she’d already done too much—Adam would want nothing from her now.
In the end it was Henry who acted.
Noticing the fully clothed man being buffeted in the chest by gentle waves, he left Pete immersed with the sea life they’d found, jumped into the water and dog-paddled his way across the pool. Adam was oblivious to his younger son’s presence until he’d sat down next to him, his warm, wet body pressing up against his father’s saturated cotton shirtsleeve.
Only then did Adam drop his hands from his face to look down at Henry. Abbie could see her little boy talking to his father and placing a hand on his knee to comfort him. With that, Adam lifted his arm to wrap it around Henry’s shoulder.
The two of them sat in silence for upwards of five minutes, watching Pete fossicking on the opposite rock ledge, oblivious to the catastrophic news that had his father besieged in a world of grief over the loss of his younger son’s first years of life.
But then Adam enclosed Henry in both of his arms, pressed his lips against the top of the little boy’s head, climbed to his feet and walked purposefully out of the water.
“My car keys are up on the bench where we were sitting,” Adam tossed at Abbie as he walked past where she stood statue-like on the promenade. “Take the boys home to your place. You’d better keep Pete for the night too.”
And with that Adam headed for the road and didn’t look back.
“Is Dad really mad at us?” Pete asked uncertainly as he and Henry appeared at her side, staring after Adam’s hunched and lonely figure as he disappeared across the park.
“No, honey,” Abbie replied. “Adam’s not upset with either of you. He’s upset with me.”
“Boy, you must have done something really bad,” Pete suggested, looking at Abbie with fascination in his wide, brown eyes. “He walked into the water with all his clothes on! I’ve never seen Dad do anything like that before!”
“I did do something really bad. I didn’t tell him something important that I should have told him long ago.”
“Is that why he’s so sad?” Henry asked.
Abbie nodded as she fought for air. Because the two little boys at he
r side had seen within moments what it had taken her years to finally work out: her secret would crush their father completely.
Chapter Five
“Hello, darling! What are you doing prowling around the house like a caged lion?”
Maeve McCarthy’s eventual appearance at her front door took Abbie by surprise, even though she’d been pacing the living room for well over an hour, willing her aunt to come home from her cards night as soon as possible.
Nothing had eased Abbie’s frantic worry about Adam since he’d walked away from her at the beach that afternoon.
In a mortified daze she’d managed to herd Pete and Henry under the beach shower and into his car for the trip home. Then finding her house empty as the three of them burst through its front door, she’d set about getting both boys into hot baths and pyjamas. An early dinner was next before putting them into her bed in front of the television as a special treat. By the time Maeve finally walked through her door, both boys were sleeping peacefully, exhausted from the excitement of their big day.
“Maeve, thank goodness you’re home! Do you mind if I leave the boys with you?” Abbie babbled helplessly as she fell upon her aunt in relief. “They’re asleep upstairs and I have to find Adam. I’m not sure what time I’ll be home.”
“Pete’s here, is he? Yes, of course you can go, but what’s wrong, darling? Is everything all right? Will Adam be back to get Pete tonight? This is all very confusing!” Maeve declared finally, running a suspicious eye over her wild-eyed niece, clearly wondering how her nervy mood and the last minute sleepover were fitting together.
“Yes, I know it’s confusing, but do you mind if I don’t try and explain now? It’s a long story and I really need to go.”
“All right. That’s fine. Don’t forget your umbrella …” Maeve called out from behind.
But Abbie barely heard her. Nor would she have cared about an umbrella if she had. She was already sprinting up the street to cover the short distance between her home and the one Pete had volunteered was his and Adam’s when they’d driven home from the beach earlier that evening.
