by Nicola Marsh
Her mum bustled about the kitchen as she always did, though rather than plonking her favourite chipped enamel teapot on the table, she carefully placed her good china one down, the teapot she’d only ever used for ‘fancy’ guests.
Right then it hit her. She’d become a guest in her own home—the place she’d grown up, the place she’d always felt safe, the place where she’d first dreamed of a life far, far away.
‘Don’t stand around, love. Tea’s getting cold.’
Just like that, the tears started, a tiny trickle which soon became a cascading waterfall, while great sobs racked her body as she collapsed into her mum’s open arms.
‘There, there, love. This has been a long time coming. Let it all out.’
She did, crying bucket-loads for the lost years while her mum rubbed her back in small, soothing circles as she had when she’d broken her arm jumping off the shed roof as a kid.
After what seemed like an eternity, her sobs petered out, and she pulled away, dashing a hand across her stinging eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Mum.’
‘Don’t worry, love. Nothing a good cry can’t fix.’
‘But it’s been so long…’ She trailed off, her throat clogged with emotion at the depth of love she glimpsed in her mum’s eyes.
‘We knew you’d come back eventually.’
Patting her shoulder, her mum picked up the teapot and filled china cups to brimming, adding a dash of lemon to hers, just as she used to.
‘I wasn’t going to, you know.’
Her mum’s hand stilled, and the teapot wobbled before she carefully placed it on a coaster. ‘Then what changed your mind?’
‘Blane. He’s back in my life. And he said some things about the past that got me thinking.’
Picking up her tea, she took a sip, savouring the strong tannin mingling with the tart lemon. She hadn’t had tea since she’d left here, deliberately turning her back on her roots, desperate to shrug off a past that had dragged her down. Or so she’d thought.
‘Go on.’
Her mum offered her a plate of Anzac biscuits, and she shook her head.
‘I need to say this, to get it off my chest. I’ve spent a lot of years resenting you and Dad for not supporting my dreams of moving to Melbourne, for manipulating me.’
Sipping at her tea, she forced herself to raise her gaze and meet her mother’s unwavering one.
‘I blamed you for holding me back, thinking you were control freaks for doing what you did. But it took Blane’s objectivity to make me realise perhaps you did it out of love. That I was your only child; maybe you wanted to hold on too tight.’
Taking a deep breath, she ploughed on. ‘Guess you didn’t understand that I loved you both so much that even after I’d left town I would’ve always visited. I wouldn’t have forgotten you.’
Reaching over, she grabbed her mum’s hand and squeezed tight. ‘Leaving Rainbow Creek was never about escaping you. You and Dad were great parents. I just wished I’d told you that the night we had our big row rather than saying half the things we said. I’m sorry.’
Tears shimmered in her mum’s eyes, and, with a shock, she realised she’d never seen her mum cry. Not once.
In all the years growing up, her mum had been incredibly strong: working manic hours at the coffee shop, always putting a decent meal on the table, helping out at the school, never complaining about her workload.
How had she repaid her? By blaming her for something that wasn’t entirely her fault.
‘We’re the ones who owe you an apology.’
Taking a tissue out of the gigantic pocket on the front of her apron, her mum blew her nose loudly before continuing. ‘You’re right. I was a control freak. I didn’t want you to leave, so I manipulated the money situation. What you don’t know is why…’
Her mum trailed off, looking older, frailer than she’d ever seen her. Raising stricken blue eyes to hers, she continued. ‘I was like you once. Pie-in-the-sky dreams of the big city; I couldn’t wait to escape my mum’s clutches. But, unlike you, I was stupid enough to run away to Melbourne with barely a cent to my name. I fell for the first guy who looked my way and ended up pregnant—and alone when I told him.’
Camryn’s sharp intake of breath hissed dramatically through the kitchen as she looked, really looked, at the woman she thought she’d known all these years.
‘I told my mum, and she didn’t want a bar of me, wanted to teach me a lesson; then I miscarried, also alone, and it was the worst experience of my life.’
As if the pea-soup fog that occasionally blanketed Rainbow Creek in the winter had lifted the blurred edges from her eyes, she suddenly saw everything in crystal-clear clarity.
‘That’s why Nan left all her money to me. And why you didn’t want me to go to Melbourne on my own. That’s it, isn’t it?’
She didn’t need her mother’s mute nod to confirm what she already knew. It had never been about her folks trying to hold her back. It had been about two parents being protective, willing to do whatever it took to hang on to their only child.
‘Your father wanted you to have the money when you turned eighteen, but I didn’t. He doesn’t know about my past. He doesn’t know that the reason it took so long before I was ready to start a family was because of the miscarriage and the hash I made of my life back then. And I wanted to shield you from all that, to hold on to you for as long as I could. I was stupid and selfish, and I’m sorry, love. For everything.’
Shaking her head, she enveloped her mum in a hug. ‘We made a right mess of things.’
‘That we did, love.’
Feeling as if a ten-tonne weight had lifted off her shoulders, she pulled back, smiling for the first time in ages. ‘You do know this means I’m not moving back. But I plan on not being a stranger.’
Raising her cup of tea in her direction, her mum chuckled. ‘You’re always welcome. You always have been. This is your home.’
Home.
Why did that word conjure up visions of a huge house perched on a cliff, a house filled with precious, all-too-brief memories of a man she could never forget? ‘You were right about Blane, too. If he’s back in your life, he obviously was true to his word when he told us back then that he’d always love you, that he was only leaving for your own good.’
Camryn blinked, wondering if she’d heard correctly. Her mum had only ever criticised Blane, from the first moment she’d brought him home.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d spoken to him, that he’d said that?’
Not that it would have changed anything back then. She’d been so young, so idealistic, and she’d had so much anger against the guy who’d captured her heart before breaking it. Hearing he’d left for her own good would have merely exacerbated her fury at being ditched.
Her mum frowned, and her lips puckered in the disapproving ‘prune face’ she remembered from the rare detention note she’d brought home.
‘Because I’d already blurted out the truth about the money in that God-awful argument, and you wouldn’t have believed anything else I had to say.’
Her mum’s lips compressed further. ‘I made so many mistakes. I should’ve told you the truth a long time ago.’
She smiled, raising her teacup and gently clinking it with her mum’s.
‘Here’s to burying the past, digging up the future, living in the here and now.’
At the tinkle of fine china touching, she knew that was exactly what she had to do, tell Blane the truth, no matter how much her heart ached at the enormity of it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BLANE strode along the riverbank, whistling an old Eagles tune and scanning the dappled shadows for Cam.
The Rainbow Creek Motel hadn’t been anything like Hotel California, but what it lacked in ambience it more than made up for with its functional rooms, which enabled the two of them to lose themselves in each other’s arms all night.
It had been incredible. It was as if stepping back in time to where they’d first
met had helped them reconnect on so many levels.
‘Hey, you.’
Her soft voice startled him as she popped out from behind a towering eucalypt, her French braid unravelling, her olive top blending with the bush surrounds.
‘Hey, yourself.’
He reached out to her, taking her hands in his, caressing the backs of them before raising a hand to trace the contours of her beautiful face.
‘I have to admit, you were very mysterious about having me meet you down here, but now that we’re here…’ He glanced around, the tranquillity of the sluggish river bubbling over flat-bed rocks, the buzz of lazy dragonflies and the far-off caw of a magpie beckoned like a peaceful oasis. ‘I think you’re a genius. It’s very secluded, perfect for—’
‘Ssh.’
She planted a swift, scorching kiss on his lips, the kind of kiss to give a guy very firm ideas of what he’d like to do with his wife in all this isolated bushland.
However, before he could deepen the kiss, she broke away, her mouth twisting in a grimace, the devastation in her eyes scaring the hell out of him.
‘What’s wrong?’
He reached out for her, but she held up her hands to ward him off as a strange sense of foreboding stole through him.
She hadn’t asked him down here to indulge in a bit of afternoon delight. Far from it, if her rigid back, clenched fists and clamped lips were any indication.
Tugging on the end of her plait, she slowly raised her eyes to meet his, wide and beseeching and clouded with agony.
‘I need to make you understand,’ she said, her voice soft and tremulous.
‘Understand what?’
‘Why I’m doing this. Why we can’t be together. Why—’
‘Hold on a minute and back up. What do you mean we can’t be together?’
He couldn’t comprehend it let alone believe it. One moment they were planning to move into the house at Barwon Heads in a few weeks, the next she was ending it?
‘I can’t give you what you want,’ she blurted, her anguish audible. ‘I’ve seen the way you are with your nieces and nephews. I know how much you want kids, no matter how much you say I’ll be enough for you. And after that night in the hospital, I know I can’t go through any more procedures. I’ve been through too much already, and I can’t face any more…’ Her words petered out as she sank onto a nearby log, dropping her head in her hands.
‘We don’t have to go down that route. We can adopt. We can—’
‘No.’
Her head snapped up, her eyes bleak. ‘I’m going away. To Europe. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and I think now is a good time.’
She was running away, just like he had years earlier.
Maybe she was scared of how fast this had all happened, maybe she didn’t fully trust him yet, but she was running nonetheless.
‘I think you’re using the kids issue as an excuse,’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck till it hurt. ‘But if you need to go away, take some time to think things through, go ahead.’
‘I don’t need to do any more thinking.’
Her almost whisper had him dropping to his haunches to hear her, to be near her, to reach out and touch her in a world dangerously close to spiralling out of his control.
‘Don’t do this, Cam.’
He touched her leg, his heart sinking when she flinched away.
‘I have to. It’s the only way.’
She’d tugged so much on her plait it had unravelled, and her hair fell forward, shielding her face from him. But he didn’t need to see her expression. He could hear how much she was hurting, could see it in the defeated slump of her body.
‘Why are you really doing this?’
He had to ask, had to get answers to the questions swirling around his brain, no matter how much he wouldn’t like her response. ‘I need to know.’
Slowly, painfully, she lifted her head, pushing her hair back with a shaky hand. ‘I can’t be the wife you want me to be.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
She shook her head, trying to hide the shimmer of tears, but he’d already seen them, already felt them like a kick in the guts.
‘I’m going away so you can get on with your life.’
He wouldn’t give up on them, not when every word she uttered, every anguished line of her body told him she didn’t want to do this.
‘You are my life, Cam. It’s as simple as that.’
Bundling her into his arms, he didn’t let go, not when she stiffened, not when she tried to push him away. Instead, he cradled her close, gently shushing as the tears tumbled down her cheeks and drenched his T-shirt, rocking her back and forth until her sobs subsided.
When she’d finally quietened, he leaned back, tilting her face up.
‘I’m not a fool. I know you don’t trust me enough to believe me when I say kids aren’t an issue as long as I have you. I know you’re pushing me away out of some misplaced idea that I’ll be happier that way. But I won’t be, not unless you’re with me.’
His jaw jutted, as if challenging her to argue with him. He expected it, would take great delight in shooting down each and every crazy argument she threw his way.
To his surprise, her face softened. ‘Want to know why I brought you here?’
He didn’t need her to tell him. He remembered every twig, every rock, every leaf of this place. It was where they’d first made love, where he’d asked her to marry him.
It was a special place, their place, a place made for magic, a place where anything could happen.
‘Tell me,’ he said, slowly strumming her back, knowing every dip and curve intimately.
The small smile he’d glimpsed playing about her mouth while she’d darted a glance around the riverbank vanished.
‘Because this is the place it all started. And this is where it has to end.’
‘Cam—’
‘No, let me finish.’
She placed her palm against his lips, dropping it quickly when he kissed it. ‘I believed you when you came back into my life and told me why you’d walked out on us. You said you’d put my dreams ahead of your own. Well, I’m returning the favour.’
‘But that’s crazy! My dream is you.’
She shook her head, her bereft expression cutting straight to his heart and cleaving it in two.
‘I’m just a part of it. Your dream is for a family, a family as great as your own, a family filled with kids and love and laughter, and I want that for you. I want it for you so badly.’
Clutching at his T-shirt, she hauled him close, her face mere millimetres from his.
‘I love you. I’ve always loved you, and that’s why I have to do this. I need you to understand. I need you to let me go.’
He didn’t have time to respond. She crushed her lips to his in a shattering, heart-rending kiss that reached down to his very soul, leaving him yearning and devastated and vowing he’d never let her go no matter what.
Wrenching her mouth away, she hugged him close, burying her face in the crook of his neck, nuzzling him like she’d done many times before.
‘Take your trip, take as long as you like, but know this, Cam. I can’t let you go. I’m going to fight for us, for as long as it takes.’
He sensed her smile against his skin and wanted to leap up and swing her around in victory. Instead, he held her upper arms and set her back from him.
‘That’s right. Do what you have to do. But when you get back, I’m going to be waiting for you.’
Cupping his cheek, she murmured, ‘You need to follow your dream.’
‘I am.’
He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, hungry gazes locked, hers stubborn, his hopeful, and as the sun set over Rainbow Creek, he hoped that when she took this trip, she wasn’t taking his hopes and dreams for the future with her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CAMRYN strolled over the ancient footbridges in Venice, she sighed over dusk in Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tow
er, she marvelled at the British architecture along Oxford and Regent Streets, but it wasn’t until she reached Rome that the futility of what she was doing struck with a vengeance.
She’d deliberately distanced herself from Blane for three months, hoping her actions would speak louder than her words.
He hadn’t believed her when she’d said they were over. He wouldn’t accept her returning the favour he once did her, so she’d done the only thing possible and stayed away despite every cell of her body straining to board the first flight back to Melbourne after his first call. And his second.
It had shattered her completely to ignore his attempts at contact, but she’d had to do it in the hope he’d move on. And now?
Looking around, watching a handsome Italian man in a designer suit strolling hand in hand with his equally gorgeous girlfriend across the piazza, she knew this wasn’t enough.
Beautiful cities steeped in culture had acted as a suitable distraction for a while, but no amount of statues and paintings by the masters or concerts by virtuosos could eradicate the great, gaping hole in her life without Blane by her side.
She’d tried, she’d really tried to do the right thing and set him free, but the thought of him waiting for her, the memory of the many times he’d told her she was enough for him, had reverberated around her head endlessly until she kept coming back to the same conclusion. She had to return home. To her husband.
Decision made, and feeling more energised than she had in months, she sipped on a deliciously frothy cappuccino, eager to return to her hotel and send Blane an email. She was going home to be with the man she loved.
Unable to keep the smile off her face, she drank quickly, glancing at her watch and trying to figure out the time difference between Rome and Melbourne, fervently hoping he’d be up so she wouldn’t have to wait too long for a reply.
However, as she finished her cappuccino, her stomach roiled unexpectedly, and she stared into her cup in disgust, wondering if the milk was off.
‘Signorina? Is everything all right?’
Forcing a smile for the elderly waiter when in fact she wanted to make a bolt for the Ladies, she said, ‘I’d love a glass of water, please.’
