Nina knew then what she had to do.
At Templeton Hall, Gracie had decided to go for a walk. Automatically, she found herself going through the garden and down the long driveway towards the main road. She made slow progress, having to stop every few metres or so to push a broken branch out of the way. She tried to mend a piece of the fence, twisting the wire until she realised it needed more than her strength to do it.
She stopped and looked back at the Hall now, ignoring the unkempt garden beds and the un-pruned trees around it, focusing just on the building, on its graceful lines and the shifting colours of the stone. She had been so happy during the years they lived here, counting down the hours until the front door opened to their weekend visitors, showing groups around, asking her father all the family history, imagining and revelling in her own place in that long, unbroken story. It had never seemed like work to her, not like it had to Charlotte, Audrey and Spencer. And every career guidance book she’d ever read had mentioned that it was a lucky person who managed to find work doing a job they loved, not just to make money.
Was it just a coincidence that the many jobs she’d tried doing after the accident involved working closely with people: the charities; the volunteering? Or that her study had focused on history, the stories behind the dates and the buildings? Had they all been attempts to relive the happiness she’d felt here as a child, in her job as a tour guide?
Perhaps. But since she’d been back here, since she’d seen Tom again, something had shifted in her thinking. Reality had replaced the layers and layers of stories she’d built up in her imagination. Not just about the Hall, but about Tom too. She now knew one thing for sure. She still loved him. She’d known that the moment she saw him again. But she now knew something else too. He was happy without her. He had recovered. Moved on. He was successful, in his work, with Emily. She couldn’t think beyond that any more, even if she still wished in her heart that their reunion had been so different. She now had something to move on from herself, facts about him rather than the unknown. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d longed for all these years?
So why did she still feel so bad? As if it was all still unfinished?
She walked on, pretending to herself she was just meandering, knowing in her heart where she was going. To Nina’s house. She came close enough to see that it was occupied. By a family with several children, by the looks of the swings in the garden, the array of small colourful T-shirts and dresses on the clothesline. She heard voices, and as she watched, a mother and two little kids came out onto the verandah, collected what looked like a handful of dolls and then went back inside. Gracie had hoped it would be empty, that she could go right up to it again, and say a kind of farewell to that house as well.
She had no choice but to keep walking. Before she knew it, she was at the yabby dam. The drought had been bad in Victoria in recent years, there had been terrible bushfires too, but there must have been rains in the area recently. There was more water in the dam than she ever remembered as a child. Standing on the edge, looking across to the other side, she saw a pile of wood and tin. She couldn’t believe it. The remains of Spencer and Tom’s half-built raft was still there, now covered in dirt, coarse grass growing through the rusting sheets of corrugated iron. The sight made her laugh out loud and then it made her want to cry.
She knew in that moment that she couldn’t stay at the Hall any longer. It would have been hard enough even if she hadn’t seen Tom. But this was more proof. Everywhere she went, everywhere she looked, she would be reminded of him.
She’d be letting Hope down, but of all people, she hoped her aunt would understand. She would still meet Hope at Melbourne Airport as arranged, still drive her up to the Hall, organise any supplies she needed, but she couldn’t stay here for the week, when everywhere she looked reminded her of everything she needed to forget.
She’d walked a short distance from the dam back towards the Hall when she realised she was carrying something more than memories. It was in her jacket pocket. The whistle Tom had given her. She was near the actual spot where he’d first given it to her, the day she’d played hide-and-seek, the day he came looking for her. He’d told her all she ever needed to do was blow it and he’d come and rescue her.
She was crying as she lifted it to her lips. The noise she made was a feeble, strange one, more a squawk than a whistle. It made her laugh a little, even through her tears. That would teach her to be so melodramatic. What did she expect – one loud whistle and he would appear over the horizon, arms outstretched, telling her all was forgiven?
Now was the time to finally do it. Get rid of it. It was her last link with him. And what better place to leave it than the dam, where she’d first decided all those years ago, when she was eleven and he was twelve, that she just might have a little crush on Tom Donovan.
She returned to the dam, stood at the edge of the water, held the whistle in her palm and squeezed it one more time, running her thumb along the inscription. Then she threw it away with as much force as she could.
She looked down. Her hand was still clenched. The whistle was still there. She couldn’t get rid of it, no matter what memories it brought back, good or bad. She knew that even more surely now.
She held it safely in her hand the whole walk back to the Hall.
In Brunswick, Nina had never felt so alone, or so wretched. Once, she could have rung Hilary, confident of the comfort and sympathy of her support and advice. Or she could have rung Tom, always revelling in even a brief exchange with her son, her brave strong clever son. Not this time. The two people she loved and cared for most in the world were the two people who were now the angriest with her.
Telling Hilary what she had done with Gracie’s and Tom’s letters had been hard. Telling Tom had been a hundred times worse. It had taken three attempts before she was able to find the right time and conditions to talk to him. This wasn’t a conversation for him to have in the cricket ground press box, or when he was at his computer, on a deadline. She knew how hard he worked when he was away, how important it was to him. She’d waited until he was back in his hotel room. She didn’t waste time on general conversation. She got straight to the point as soon as he answered.
‘Tom, I need to tell you something.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that.’ His voice was relaxed, easy.
Ten minutes later, once she had finished telling him everything, his tone was like ice. There was no anger, no shouting. Just questions. Where were the letters? How many had there been? Where had Gracie sent them?
Then the hardest questions of all.
‘Why, Nina? Why did you do this to me? To Gracie?’
‘I was trying to protect you.’
‘Protect me from Gracie? She would have helped me, not hurt me.’
‘I know that now too. But at the time, Tom, I was so worried about you, so …’
She couldn’t tell him the rest of it. She couldn’t tell him about what had happened with Henry, when Henry was still married to Eleanor. He was thinking badly enough of her as it was. That would destroy their relationship forever. He didn’t give her the chance to say any more, in any case.
His voice was hard and cold. ‘I have to go.’
‘But what will you do —’
He didn’t answer. He’d hung up on her.
At first she just cried. Not just about Tom hanging up, not just about the hurt, the anger she’d heard in his voice. She cried for herself, for Nick, for her ruined, pointless life, for the wrecked relationship with Hilary, for the mistakes she’d made and kept making all her life. For the one thing, the one person, who’d given her a sense of accomplishment. Tom. He’d given her life meaning, and look what she’d done to him in return.
Her tears subsided eventually. The house was almost silent, just the humming of the refrigerator, the ticking of the kitchen clock. She stayed where she was, lying on the sofa. More thoughts were coming into her mind now. Uncomfortable thoughts and feelings she’d managed to ignor
e for eight years.
Had everything she’d done with the letters been for Tom’s sake? To protect him? Or had Hilary been right? Had she done it all to protect herself just as much?
She made herself remember the confrontation with Eleanor in the Rome hospital. Both of them in shock, their children hurt. Nina had been jetlagged, reeling, unable to believe that all that was happening was real, enduring that long plane journey fearing the worst news would be waiting her arrival. Seeing Tom in bed, his face bruised and cut, his body motionless, trying to understand what she was being told in broken English, the terrible, shocking news that her strong, athletic son would never walk again.
And then seeing Eleanor again, afterwards. The other woman was so calm. Controlled. The winner of that mothers’ game of chance – her two children also in the car, yet Nina’s only son was the one injured. Injured because of Gracie’s driving. Injured because he’d become involved with the Templetons. Terrible, angry, distressing thoughts filled her head as she sought out Eleanor. She’d forgotten about Henry in that moment, her focus solely on Tom, on the hopelessness of his situation, the hardships ahead, getting him home, having to tell him he would never walk again, that his life of promise and health had ended.
At first there had been sympathy, understanding between the two women. But then the anger had spilled out of Nina, an urge to hurt, to strike back. She’d heard herself talking about Henry, telling Eleanor that she had slept with him, wanting a reaction, wanting her to feel even the smallest amount of pain in return. It worked. Eleanor’s expression changed in an instant. All sympathy disappeared. Nina recalled raised voices, anger, accusations, denials, a moment of shared tragedy suddenly twisting into other, darker areas, her own shock and fear crystallising into fury against not just the accident, but against Henry, Eleanor, Gracie, all of the Templetons.
It was that same fury that helped her keep going in the difficult times that followed. Her love for Tom was the bedrock, her reason to stay strong, but her anger towards the Templetons gave her extra adrenaline, extra purpose. She punished herself with the memory of Eleanor’s face, any time a part of her mind turned to thoughts of Henry. Deep inside, she’d still been waiting – hoping – for him to get in touch with her. Wanting – needing – him to express his sorrow over Tom. Wanting more of the feelings he’d given her, physically and emotionally. But there’d only ever been silence.
When the letters from Gracie started arriving, she had no compunction about reading them. There were letters from Gracie to her too, begging forgiveness. Nina threw those away as well. All to protect Tom, she told herself at the time. It was the easiest thing in the world not to tell Tom about the letters. There was no longer room in their lives for any of the Templetons. Henry had chosen to step back from her, and she – and subsequently Tom – could do the same. She invented a conversation at the hospital in Rome with Gracie and reported it back to Tom without guilt or hesitation, telling him that Gracie didn’t want anything to do with him. If Henry could hurt her with his silence, she too could hurt Gracie.
There it was, the truth. She’d finally admitted it to herself. She had kept Gracie’s letters from Tom as a payback for the pain she was feeling herself – her hurt at Henry’s silence, her anger towards Eleanor, that her charmed children and their charmed lives had emerged unscathed from the accident. She’d taken Tom’s letters to Gracie too, there in his hospital room, knowing that she wouldn’t post them. It was for the best, she’d told herself. Not just for her, but for Tom as well.
Yet Gracie’s letters had kept coming, week after week. Nina finally sent a two-line note to Gracie herself. She’d written it at the end of a terrible day at the clinic. Tom had been in distress all day, new pain meaning more tests, meaning constant movement. By the end of the day he’d been crying with frustration, Nina fighting back her own tears, wishing there was something she could do to stop him hurting. Arriving home to find yet another letter in Gracie’s familiar handwriting waiting, she had lost her temper. She’d vented all her anger and helplessness on that letter, tearing it into the smallest of pieces, then doing what she had vowed not to do. She’d written back to Gracie. Her pen had nearly gouged a hole in the page as she wrote the words. She posted it that night. The next day she could barely remember what she’d written, but it worked. Gracie hadn’t written again.
Nina had one period of soul-searching about her decision, as the months had passed, as she’d realised the reality of what lay ahead. At the end of another difficult day for Tom, a day of more pain and disappointment, she’d searched for something that might make him feel better. Gracie had come to mind, suddenly. She’d made herself ask him the question. Did he want to get in touch with Gracie again?
He’d said no, immediately. He’d been so definite. She’d taken that as proof she’d made the right decision, that she’d done the right thing, for her and for Tom. She’d decided then that the only way forward was for her and Tom to become a unit again, the way they’d always been, the two of them against the world. She directed all her time and energy towards him. She only allowed people she was sure could help him into their lives. Stuart Phillips and his family. The doctors in the small rehabilitation clinic in Melbourne. All of them doing what they could to prepare Tom for his new, changed life.
Then came the day of the miracle, as she still thought of it. The latest in a series of tests showing something new, something positive. There would still be many months ahead of difficult rehabilitation, but there was now real hope.
Over the next year, Tom’s determination to walk again had stunned his doctors, Nina knew that. He stunned her too. She’d feared he had slipped into depression, his moods so changeable. The hope brought a new mindset. Tom became focused, driven, single-minded. He would walk again. Nothing would stop him. He poured his new energy and determination equally into his rehabilitation exercises and his journalism studies.
It took some adjusting on her part. She’d built her life around him again, as she had done when he was young. There were many fights, Tom snapping at her when she went to pick up after him, began to make his bed, tidy his flat. I can do it, Nina.
Hilary helped her through that stage. Hilary had always been there. ‘You have to let him be independent again, Nina. Imagine how he’s feeling. He’d resigned himself to a life needing other people around him. Now he’s back in charge of his own body again. You have to give him space.’
That was more than six years ago now. It hardly seemed believable. Tom was now not only walking with barely a limp, but working full-time, travelling constantly, not playing cricket but doing the next best thing, watching it, reporting on it. And there she was, fulfilled in her own work – most of the time, at least. The school where she was now head of art was a small, alternative one, the children urged to express their creativity, art considered as important as maths and science. They had both moved on, hadn’t they? Left the Templetons far behind them?
Except they hadn’t. Nina knew that now. Inside, had she always longed for something like Hope’s letter to arrive? Something to happen to force her to confront everything she felt about the Templetons once and for all? Her own guilt about Gracie’s letters. Her feelings about Henry. Her jealousy of Eleanor.
Her jealousy of Eleanor. There it was. Another uncomfortable truth. Because that had always been the case, she realised now. Even before she’d had the brief liaison with Henry. She’d always envied Eleanor’s life, with her big happy family, her charming husband, her fulfilling and successful work life, even her elegance and poise.
That day in the Rome hospital, she’d seen a crack in Eleanor’s perfect facade, but then it had sealed shut again, as she so coolly dismissed Nina, ridiculed anything Henry might have said to her, painted herself as a sophisticate with an open marriage, Nina as the gullible other woman. Even amidst the shock about Tom, Nina had felt humiliated, embarrassed, ashamed of herself. Had that also been a factor in not telling Tom about Gracie’s letters? Getting back at Eleanor through he
r daughter?
All of it was true. She could try to forgive herself, try her best to understand why she had done what she’d done, but she couldn’t move past the facts. It was Gracie and Tom who’d been the innocent victims of all of these hurts and lies, both caught up in the fallout from their parents’ messy, complicated lives. She could never make it all right again, give Gracie and Tom back those lost years. How could she ever explain? What could she ever do to make them forgive her? As for Hilary … could her sister ever forgive her?
Alone in her living room, more alone than she’d ever felt, Nina realised she had no way of knowing.
In Perth, Tom was pacing his hotel room as he spoke on the phone, hoping his editor back in Melbourne would agree. The next flight to Melbourne was in two hours’ time. The flight took almost four hours. It would take him at least ninety minutes to drive there from the airport. If all the connections worked, if there were no delays, he could be back at Templeton Hall within eight hours.
‘I can’t explain, Jim, but it’s important. Really important.’
‘So is this match, Tom. What can be so important that you suddenly need a day’s leave?’
Just say yes, Tom urged under his breath. ‘I’ve spoken to Neil already. He said he can cover for me.’
‘It’s hard enough getting copy out of Neil as it is. Seriously, what’s so important?’
Tom could have lied, could have said there’d been a death in his family, but there’d been too many lies already. He told the truth. ‘The woman I love is in Melbourne for just another few days. If I don’t go and see her now, I might blow it forever.’
There was silence and then his editor started to laugh. ‘You’re joking me.’
‘I’ve never been more serious.’
‘Tom, impressive and all as love’s young dream is —’
At Home with the Templetons Page 46
