At Home with the Templetons

by Monica McInerney

  ‘You ruined everything, Henry.’ She was speaking through her tears. ‘You ruined everything.’

  They were still standing like that, in each other’s arms, when the door opened. It was Spencer, carrying a backpack, looking as if he hadn’t slept for days.

  ‘Mum, Ciara’s kicked me out. Is it okay if —’ He stopped and looked from his mother to his father. ‘Mum and Dad? Wow. Are you two back together again?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Where could Gracie be? Tom thought, as he knocked on the front door of Templeton Hall for what felt like the hundredth time. He’d knocked on the back door, each of the lower windows, the stables apartment, then returned to the front door, but there was no answer. He’d started to worry when he first realised there was no sign of a car, but he’d convinced himself that perhaps Hope had taken it somewhere. Or they’d both driven into Castlemaine for something. An hour later, he was still there, still waiting, still knocking.

  Only then did he remember. He still had Hope’s number. He reached for his phone and dialled. It rang eight times before a haughty, slurred voice answered.

  ‘Who is this? Have you any idea of the time?’

  ‘Hope, it’s Tom Donovan.’

  ‘I don’t care who it is. How dare you ring me in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Hope, this is Tom Donovan calling from Templeton Hall. In Australia. Aren’t you here too?’

  A long, dramatic sigh. ‘No, sadly I’m not, Tom Donovan. I am, however, in a private hospital in London with a broken leg and I don’t mind telling you I’m extremely pissed off about it.’

  Was she drunk? Stoned? She was definitely slurring. He tried again. ‘Hope, I’m at Templeton Hall —’

  ‘You are? I’m glad someone is. It’d be a ghost town otherwise. Or do I mean ghost hall?’ She started to laugh.

  ‘Hope, please!’ He had to speak up to be heard. ‘I’m looking for Gracie. She’s not here.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘How should I know? She could be in Timbuktu by now.’

  ‘Please, Hope. Where is she?’

  ‘No need to shout, Tom Donovan. I don’t know, I told you. She didn’t specify …’ it took her several tries to say the word properly, ‘where she was going next.’

  ‘When did she leave here?’

  ‘God knows. I’m all mixed up with the time difference. At least Gracie rang at a respectable hour.’

  ‘What did she say to you, Hope? When Gracie rang you, what did she say?’

  Another sigh. ‘She rang me to tell me she’d decided she couldn’t stay at the Hall on her own, too many memories or some such thing, at which point I told her that alas, I wouldn’t be arriving there myself now either, at least not until this stupid leg of mine had healed. Still, what’s a few months’ wait in an international expansion plan? It will all work out, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Hope, please. Where did Gracie go?’

  ‘I. Don’t. Know. She. Didn’t. Say. Aren’t you listening to me? All she said was that she was going to drive back to Melbourne, find a hotel —’

  ‘There are hundreds of hotels in Melbourne. I’ll never find her.’ Tom was thinking aloud.

  ‘You could always ring her, I suppose. Ask her which one she’s staying in.’

  ‘You have Gracie’s number? She has a phone?’

  ‘Of course she has a phone. Of course I have her number.’

  Tom’s hands were shaking as he wrote down Gracie’s number. After a hurried goodbye, he took a moment to compose himself. With hands still shaking, he dialled her number.

  Gracie was walking in the Botanic Gardens in the centre of Melbourne. She’d found a small hotel around the corner and booked in for four nights. She’d at first considered changing her flight and returning to London immediately. What was the point of staying here now that Hope wasn’t coming? But Hope hadn’t seemed to care whether she stayed on or not. In fact, Hope with her broken leg had sounded suspiciously carefree, as if she’d either hit the bottle again or taken far too many painkillers.

  ‘Live it up, Gracie,’ she’d slurred. ‘Go and see Audrey and Bip-pie in Auckland if you want to. On me. Within limits. Keep receipts. See you when you get back. Sorry about the wasted trip. We’ll do it again some day. Don’t know when, don’t know where —’

  She was still singing when Gracie hung up.

  The phone in her handbag rang again now. Gracie took it out, hoping it wasn’t her aunt changing her mind. It wasn’t Hope. Gracie didn’t recognise the number.

  ‘Gracie speaking.’

  ‘Gracie, it’s Tom.’

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gracie, where are you? Where exactly are you?’

  ‘I’m in Melbourne. In the Botanic Gardens.’

  ‘What can you see?’

  She looked around her. ‘A pond. A café. The main gate.’

  ‘Gracie, stay there, would you? Don’t move. Please, Gracie. Stay right where you are.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have to talk to you. I’m on my way. I’ll be there as quickly as I can. Ninety minutes. Two hours at the most.’

  ‘But aren’t you in Perth?’

  ‘I was. Now I’m at Templeton Hall.’

  ‘Templeton Hall?’

  ‘Gracie, please, don’t go anywhere. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  He hung up before she had a chance to ask anything more.

  An hour later, Gracie hadn’t done what Tom asked.

  Please, Gracie. Stay right where you are, he’d said. She hadn’t stopped moving since he called. So far she’d changed tables in the small café four times. She’d been across to the gate of the gardens three times, checking the road in both directions. Which way would he come from? How long would he be? How could she just stay still and wait?

  She had to check the call log on her phone to confirm she hadn’t imagined it. Forty minutes after his call, a beep on her phone alerted her to a text message:

  I’m not far away now. Please, Gracie, wait for me. Tom

  Her head was filled with questions. What did he want to tell her? How had he got her number? Would Emily be with him again?

  Exactly ninety minutes after he’d phoned some sixth sense made her look towards the gate. It was him. She didn’t move from her table. She waited, watching. His limp was more obvious now. He didn’t have the stick with him. He was wearing a blue T-shirt, dark jeans. His hair was tousled.

  He looked beautiful.

  She stood up as he came closer. Neither of them was smiling.

  The moment he reached her he leaned down and kissed her on the lips.

  ‘Tom!’ She stepped back, shocked. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What I wanted to do at the Hall the other day. What I’ve wanted to do for eight years.’

  ‘But Emily …’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  She stepped back further. ‘If you think I’ll let you cheat on her —’

  ‘She won’t mind, I promise you. She’s busy enough with her husband and baby son.’

  ‘You’re having an affair with a married woman?’

  ‘No, Gracie.’ He laughed then. ‘Emily and I are just friends. That’s all we’ve ever been. I’m friends with her husband too.’

  Gracie wanted to start this all over again. Nothing was making sense. ‘But I don’t understand. How can you be engaged to her one day and not the next?’

  ‘It’s a long story. A short story.’ His smile vanished. ‘Gracie, I didn’t even think to ask you or Hope. Are you married? Engaged? Seeing anyone?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not.’ He looked as if he was about to kiss her again. She had to slow this down. ‘Tom, what’s going on?’

  ‘What should have gone on eight years ago.’ He took her hand, led her back to the table, sat opposite her. He didn’t let go of her hand. His expression was serious. ‘Gracie,
I spoke to Nina last night. I know everything now. About the letters you wrote to me after the accident. The letters she never passed on to me.’

  Gracie went still. ‘You didn’t get my letters? Any of them?’

  He shook his head. ‘She threw them away, Gracie. All of them. And that wasn’t all.’ He told her about Nina’s other lie. The fabricated conversation, that Gracie had told her at the hospital in Italy that she’d decided she could never see Tom again.

  Gracie went pale, then red, then pale again. Shocked, she took her hand from his, sat back in her chair. ‘But I didn’t even see Nina at the hospital. And I would never have said that. I’d have done anything to see you, anything to help you.’

  ‘I know that now. Eight years too late, but I know it now.’

  There was suddenly so much to say but no way to begin. A long moment passed as they just looked at each other.

  Gracie spoke first. She knew her voice was strangely polite, her expression wary, cautious. It was as if this was now their first meeting, that the reunion at the Hall with Emily by his side hadn’t happened. Above them, the sky was threatening rain. There were other people at tables a short distance away. Yet it felt as though they were alone, as though the next few minutes could change the rest of their lives. She searched for something to say, even as a hundred questions crowded into her mind. She wanted – needed – to know every detail of the last eight years of his life.

  She had to start somewhere. ‘How are you, Tom?’

  He gave the briefest of smiles, as if he understood all that lay behind those four words. ‘I’m fine, Gracie. I’m good.’

  There was too much distance between them. She wanted to reach across to him, to take his hand again, to touch him, but it wasn’t right, not yet. ‘What happened, Tom? After the accident? With your back? With your life? With you?’ Once she’d started, she suddenly couldn’t seem to stop. ‘Have you been a journalist long? What paper are you with? Do you travel a lot? Do you live here in Melbourne?’

  He smiled, laughed even, and shook his head. ‘No, Gracie, please. You first. What happened to you? What have you been doing? Are you still living in London? Did you go back to university? How is your family?’

  She shook her head, unable to even begin to answer. All she had been doing for eight years was missing him. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She hurriedly brushed them away. ‘Why, Tom? Why did Nina do it to us?’

  His smile disappeared. ‘I don’t know. I don’t care.’

  ‘You don’t care?’

  ‘All I know now is I don’t want to see her again. I can never trust her again. How could I? How can she have done that to you, to me? Lied to us. Not just once, but again and again, telling me you didn’t want to see me, telling me she had posted my letters to you, that —’

  ‘Your letters to me? You wrote to me too?’

  He stared at her. ‘Of course I did. Of course.’

  There was silence again, as they could only look at each other. When Tom spoke again, his voice was quiet. ‘Gracie, the letters you wrote to me. What did they say?’

  Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘That I loved you. That I missed you so much. That I was so sorry about the accident. That I knew it was my fault but I would have done anything, anything, I could to change it or help you. I must have written dozens of times. Hundreds. I don’t know for sure. I wrote for six months, until I got Nina’s, the one —’

  ‘Nina wrote to you? From Australia?’

  Gracie nodded.

  ‘What did she say, Gracie? Please, I have to know.’

  ‘She asked me … she told me to stop writing. That you could never forgive me.’

  A flash of anger again. ‘I? I could never forgive you? But there was nothing to forgive. It was an accident, Gracie. It wasn’t your fault. I always knew that.’

  ‘Nina meant you and her. The two of you. And it was my fault, Tom. It was.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault and it had nothing to do with her. It was you and me, Gracie. Us. Between us. She had no right.’ He stood up then, his hands clenched on the table in front of them.

  This time Gracie didn’t hesitate. She reached for his hands, held them tight for a moment. Again, that feeling that her next words were so important, that they could change all that lay ahead of them both. ‘She did, Tom. She did have a right. She’s your mother.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Gracie, you’re wrong. How can you even try to understand what she did to us?’

  She had to try, even if she was still reeling from seeing him, from what he had told her. She told him the truth. ‘I have to, Tom. I have to try and understand it. I have to believe she did it because she thought it was the best thing for you. Otherwise it hurts even more. Makes even less sense.’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t make sense. How can it? Gracie, she kept us apart for eight years. It would have been longer, it could have been forever if Hope —’ He broke off then, running his fingers through his hair. As she watched, as she stared up at him, his eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘It’s too much, Gracie. Seeing you again. Nina’s lies …’

  She moved then, closing the gap between them, straight to him, putting her arms around him. The feel, the warmth, even the smell of him was so instantly, gloriously familiar. ‘It’s okay, Tom. It’s okay.’

  He spoke into her hair, his arms tight around her too. ‘How can it be? She took eight years from us. Nothing can ever excuse that, or change that. Nothing.’

  She held him closer, told him again that it didn’t matter, it would be all right, everything would be all right. They were both crying now. If anyone was watching, they were oblivious. The rain was falling. They didn’t feel it.

  ‘It’s all right, Tom. It’s all right now. It is.’ She said it again and again, holding him, feeling his arms holding her so tightly in return. A minute passed, two, three.

  He moved back from her, just slightly, enough to be able to look down at her. ‘Gracie, how can you be so sure? So calm? Aren’t you angry with her too? You must be. You have to be.’

  She shook her head, gazing up at him, her eyes still bright with her tears. ‘Tomorrow I might be. Tonight I might be. But how can I be angry now?’ She reached up and touched his face. ‘I can’t tell you how many times I wished that I would be here like this with you, close to you, touching you. Holding you.’ Her arms tightened around his back, and she felt the strength of his body through his T-shirt. ‘And now I am. You’re here. We’re here together.’ She smiled then. A big beautiful smile. ‘It’s all right now, Tom. It wasn’t, but now it is. Now it will be. Can’t you see that?’

  He laughed then, actually laughed, shaking his head as he gazed down at her, his face filled with love and something else – a kind of wonder. He tightened his arms around her. ‘Gracie, I’m sorry. That deserves an answer, a proper answer, but I have to kiss you again first. Just for a second.’

  He leaned down and kissed her for more than a second.

  She felt it immediately, that slow molten feeling in every part of her body, stronger than ever. It was a shock to step back from him, to realise they were in public, that people were watching, that the light rain had become heavier, that it was now coming down in torrents around them.

  His house was only ten minutes’ drive away. Her hotel room was closer. They went there. There was more talking to be done, eight years worth of talking to be done, but the moment they came into her room, to see the rain falling through the trees outside, to see the glow of her bedside lamps, the bed warm and inviting with its red covers, they moved back into each other’s arms. The talking could wait.

  Less than twenty-four hours later, they were both at Melbourne Airport. Tom was catching the early flight back to Perth. Neither of them had slept much. They had made love, talked, laughed, cried, held each other and made love again.

  He had offered to stay longer, to resign, to never write a word about cricket again if that was what she wanted, but she insisted he go back to Perth. She knew where he
was now, he knew where she was. She wasn’t going anywhere. She would stay in Australia for as long as she could. And while he was in Perth there was something she’d decided to do. Something she had to do.

  As she stood in Tom’s arms at his departure gate, he told her again, as he’d told her since she made the suggestion, that she didn’t have to do it, on her own or at all. Nina was his mother.

  ‘I need to see her, Tom. I have to. And I think it might be better this way.’ Gracie felt strangely sure of it.

  In the night, their bodies entwined, words and kisses being exchanged in turn, they’d spoken again and again about what Nina had done. Each time, they’d asked the same question. Why?

  ‘She said she did it to protect me,’ Tom said, his voice soft in the darkness. ‘She was worried I’d be hurt even more. She thought it was for the best.’

  Gracie was still more confused than angry. Perhaps the anger was still to come. ‘But she knew me. She must have known I would never hurt you. That I loved you.’

  Wrapped in each other’s arms, it felt miraculous to talk of their love again, to know that the eight years’ separation hadn’t changed how they felt.

  ‘Are you sure you want to see her?’ Tom asked once more, as they stood at the gate. ‘You don’t have to, Gracie. I mean it. I’d understand it if you never wanted to speak to her again.’

  ‘I need to, Tom. I need her to tell me why she did it.’

  ‘Wait until I get back. Wait until we can go together.’

  She shook her head. ‘If I don’t go and see her as soon as I can, then I think I never will.’

  He touched the side of her face, kissed her again. The softest of whispers in her ear, ‘I love you, Gracie Templeton.’

  She didn’t need to tell him how she felt. She’d told him over and over during the night. But she told him again now too.

  She stayed at the gate until Tom had gone from sight. He’d be back in three days’ time and she’d be there waiting for him. Now, though, she needed to make a phone call. It was early but she had to do it now. She took out her mobile and dialled the number Tom had given her. Her heart was thumping. It rang once, twice, a third time before it was answered.