by Trish Morey; Day Leclaire; Natalie Anderson; Brenda Jackson; Ann Voss Peterson
The Mercedes ate up the bitumen as it headed westwards past Parramatta on the long straight highway that he’d once known so well.
With every passing kilometre, his gut twisted tighter. With every passing kilometre, it felt as if the intervening years were peeling away. And with every landmark he recognised, it felt as if the past was sucking him further and further back, into a life he’d long thought forgotten. The highway was upgraded, the buildings more modern, but still the memories piled upon him until it felt as if he were drowning underneath them.
They passed the cheap second-hand car lot where he’d bought his first set of wheels. Even now, cosseted in the luxury of his Mercedes E-class Coupe, it was impossible not to remember the excitement of the youth who had scraped together the deposit on his first car.
It had been riddled with rust, had a dodgy clutch cable and faulty lights but that car had signalled he was going places. And he had. Twelve months later he had moved on, never to return.
Not that he’d had any reason to. His grandparents had gone. His mother had gone. He’d left the past behind, neatly packaged in a box marked Do Not Open.
He mentally shoved the box aside lest he further disturb its dusty contents and stole another glance at the woman alongside him. She sat tense as a bowstring with her hands firmly clutched around the straps of her bag, as if she might somehow still protect the purse that was no longer there.
With her face angled away, he could just see the tilt of her nose, the high line of her cheekbones and the curve of her lips. And from this angle it occurred to him that she was almost pretty, in a sad, neglected kind of way. Or maybe she had been pretty once, but it had prematurely slipped away under a baking western suburbs sun and the constant battle to survive. But he’d be damned if he was going to let her merely survive for the next six months.
‘I think we both know you’re going to need my help with this baby.’
He was looking straight ahead, changing lanes in preparation for the turn he knew was coming up soon but still he was aware of the exact moment her eyes fell on him. Somehow he could feel their cool blue gaze washing over his skin.
‘I know. I’m sorry. You’re right.’
The simple declaration was the first surprise. The fact that she didn’t argue the second. But it was the apology that surprised him even more, especially given the way he’d assumed the worst of her from the start.
‘I want this child,’ he said, his voice lacking the heat that had been the hallmark of their earlier meeting but threaded with a steel-plated determination that surprised even him as he ground out the words. ‘And I will not see you go without while you do this.’
In his peripheral vision he picked up her quaking nod. But it was more the sigh of acceptance he sensed that told him what she thought before she spoke. ‘I’m so glad you want this baby.’
He half wondered why it was so important to her. But then, he didn’t understand why this baby and what happened to it was so important to him. Once upon a time he’d been happy that Carla had never managed to conceive, resigned never to having children of his own because he was so angry with her and what she’d done to herself, so angry that she could have left a child motherless by virtue of her own self-destructive actions.
So why did he feel so strongly about it now?
Other than it was his child. It existed. It belonged with him.
And the woman alongside him was making that possible.
God, but he’d been hard on her. But he’d had to find out. Had to test her. ‘I’ll speak to my lawyers. There has to be some kind of precedent for this kind of thing. They’ll work something out.’
He heard her breathe in. Wondered if she was going to argue again. Then she huffed out a wary, ‘Thank you. Maybe that would be helpful.’ Some new quality in her voice alerted him and, curious, he glanced her way. The frown was gone, from what he could see, her lip liberated from her teeth and, if he wasn’t mistaken, there was almost the hint of a smile at her mouth.
He turned his eyes back to the road though his attention stayed firmly with what he’d witnessed. It was the first time he’d seen her face come anywhere near a smile. He wasn’t entirely sure she knew how to. And while the business part of his brain told him it was only because he was insisting she take his money, his gut was not so convinced.
Whatever the reason, the expression took years off her.
He glanced again, not sure if he’d imagined it, and, as if sensing his gaze, she looked around and for one solitary moment as their eyes jagged and caught it was still there on her lips, until she blinked, her eyes filling with confusion as the smile slid away.
‘Oh,’ she said, jumping when she saw where they were, ‘you have to turn right at the next intersection,’ even though he was already in the slip lane indicating for the turn.
What was happening to her? Angie pushed back in her seat and took a deep breath, suddenly too warm despite the air-conditioned interior. It was because of his eyes, she realised.
Because for the first time he’d looked at her as if she wasn’t something he might find on the bottom of his shoe. He’d looked at her as if he was actually seeing her—the person—and it had thrown her, that was all. Coming on top of learning that he definitely wanted this child, of course it would throw her.
‘Where exactly do you live?’ he asked as the turning lights went green.
She gave him the address, expecting him to ask her for directions, surprised when he didn’t, but he looked so deep in thought as he drove—more than a mere frown tugging at his brows—that she didn’t offer. Besides, there was plenty of time before the next turn.
‘We’ll have to meet again to sign some kind of agreement,’ he said a little while later, his rumbling voice sounding distant, and, when she turned to look at him, his gaze was still firmly fixed on the road ahead, his expression still tight. Even the fingers that until now had seemed so relaxed and composed on the steering wheel were curled tightly around it. And then he turned to her, blinking as he focused, and Angie got the distinct impression that while he’d been telling her one thing, his mind had been miles away. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘It will be drawn up to protect your interests too.’
She wasn’t even sure what her interests would be but for some strange reason she trusted him. ‘I understand.’
‘Will your husband be able to join you next time?’
Shayne? She looked away, suddenly nervous again. ‘Does he need to be there?’
‘Of course. The way I understand it, as birth mother, this child will be legally yours, regardless of where the embryo originated. As your husband, any agreement to hand over the child will no doubt require Shayne’s signature too.’
Angie’s spirit slumped. Damn. Why—just when it looked as if things were going to work out—did something have to go wrong? How was she ever going to convince Shayne to help her with this when he’d been so opposed to what she was doing from the start? She sighed. She doubted he’d even take her call. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘If it’s a problem, I can send out a car for you, so you don’t have to catch the train.’
‘You don’t have to—’
‘After what happened today, no more trains. It’s not safe.’ He looked across at her. ‘Understood?’
‘Now, hang on,’ she started, her concerns about Shayne giving way to irritation. No matter what they agreed between them about the future of this child, there was no way he could tell her how she was going to get from point A to point B. Especially since Shayne had taken the car when he’d gone. ‘What if I don’t have a car?’
‘You don’t?’ He sounded incredulous, and then, in the next breath, took hers away.
‘Then I will have one delivered tomorrow. I do not want you walking around this area either.’
‘No! You can’t—’ But she didn’t finish what she was going to say, not once she’d looked around and realised he’d taken the first two turns into her suburb without her telling him
which way to go and was already signalling the turn into her street and pulling up alongside her house.
‘How did you…’ But he was already out of his seat and halfway around to her door.
She didn’t wait for an explanation. She was already getting out of the car, determined to say her goodbyes here, before he got closer to her house. If he thought her pitiful already, what would he think if he knew the full extent of her pathetic circumstances? It was inevitable he’d find out some time—she could hardly keep it a secret for ever—but damned if she wanted him to find out today. She was too emotionally wrung out to take any more of his contempt today.
For a big man, though, he moved fast. She was barely out of her seat and he was there, hemming her in between her open door and the force field of his presence, blocking off the promise of escape.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said. ‘Bye.’ But he made no move to let her go and there was no stepping around the barrier he made with just his sheer physical presence.
‘Maybe I can meet your husband now, if he’s home.’ It wasn’t a question.
She clutched her bag to her chest, shook her head. ‘He’s not.’
An eyebrow arched in question. ‘How can you be so sure?’
She looked longingly towards the house. It wasn’t much to look at but it was almost all hers and right now she yearned for the sanctuary its walls would provide. ‘He…he never gets home before five.’ Though it had been closer to nine, she remembered with a touch of bitterness, before he’d walked out on her completely, claiming he was working overtime while all the time he’d been out with the new office assistant. How naive she’d been!
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, wondering at the tension around her eyes and mouth and the bright spots of colour in an otherwise pale face, worried she might be about to faint on him again.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, at odds with her increasingly edgy body language as she shifted nervously on the spot and tucked wayward tendrils of hair behind her ears. She was smiling, if you could call it that, her lips drawn tight, her eyes so falsely bright that he wondered again if she wasn’t hiding something. ‘Thanks again for the lift. I won’t hold you up any longer.’
‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow,’ he said, moving aside to let her pass, and within seconds she’d scooped the mail from her letterbox and was halfway across the dust-bowl of her front yard, the wave from one hand her only response.
He waited there while she let herself into the house, saw her look over her shoulder one last time before disappearing inside. Maybe she was just embarrassed. Looking at the house, he could understand why.
The building was low and squat, perched meanly over what had once been a lawn before soaring summer temperatures and water restrictions had killed it off. He knew exactly what the house would look like on the inside because there were street upon street of them, all with slightly different frontages, half with the driveway on the left, half on the right, but all based on the same two or three basic floor plans. He could still see it now. Just inside the front door would be a lounge room along with a rudimentary kitchen and bathroom. There would be three bedrooms, one slightly larger passing for the master bedroom, one half the size of that and just big enough for a single bed and chest of drawers. The third would be half that size again, no more than a storeroom really.
Even now, thirty years on, he remembered the feel of those walls pressing in around the dreams he’d dreamed in his small fold-out bed.
Even driving through the suburb made him feel claustrophobic—the very sameness of it all, the dreariness of design, the street after street of untended gardens and poorly maintained paintwork—almost as if whatever dream the occupants had once had, had died a slow and painful death.
He’d done well to escape it.
He’d worked damned hard to escape it.
Which made it all the more ironic that this was the first place his child would live. Thank God that, unlike him, it was never a place his child would experience first-hand.
But it didn’t stop him feeling sick to the stomach at the thought of leaving his child behind now. The birth could not come soon enough.
How many months to go?
How many months when she would be living in a suburb he’d sworn he would never set foot in again? He didn’t even want to think about the danger of everyday life out here. Break-ins, school arson and street violence, the suburb made an art form of urban unrest. What kind of environment was that for his baby to develop in?
No kind at all. And it rankled that he should be given this gift of an unborn child, only to have to worry about whether mother and baby survived long enough for him to take the child.
Incubator and baby, he corrected himself as he turned the key in the ignition, the Mercedes purring into life. He couldn’t actually bear to think of this woman as its mother.
It was wrong.
She might be pregnant with his child, but this woman was simply a caretaker for the next however months. She would never be his child’s mother.
Never in a million years!
CHAPTER FIVE
ANGIE slumped against the closed front door, tension draining from her body as she sighed with relief. After what felt like the longest day of her life, after an impossibly draining few hours with an impossible man, finally she was free. Outside, she heard his car engine purr like a jungle cat into life, then the smooth sound of it accelerating away.
Another sigh of relief. He was gone.
And yet still she was unable to get the picture of man and machine out of her head. She shouldn’t have looked. She’d tried to resist. But the temptation to steal just one more glance had been too much.
So she’d peeked over her shoulder and seen him standing there alongside that car of his, watching her, his arms crossed, his eyes shaded by dark glasses that may have covered his eyes but did nothing to hide the intensity of his expression.
So intense she’d had to catch her breath as sensation had skittered up her spine. The sleek black car looked like sin. Its owner had looked even more dangerous. More potent, reminding her of some of the ads in the motoring magazines Shayne had sometimes pored over, except the car would be positioned strategically at the very edge of a cliff top or on a highway next to a rolling surf beach, places that matched driver and machine for pure unbridled beauty. Not places like Spinifex Avenue, with its drab houses and front yards filled with dead gardens and rusting car bodies.
Whoever Dominic Pirelli was and wherever he came from, he did so not belong here.
With a sigh, she pushed herself away from the door and through the near empty lounge room to the kitchen. She dropped her bag on the table, snapped on the kettle and flicked through the mail while she waited for the water to boil. Great. All window envelopes—electricity, rates and… Her heart tripping faster in her chest as she recognised the name of the legal aid office Shayne was using. What did they want now? She tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter, scanning its contents, her mind refusing to believe what her eyes were telling her.
She collapsed onto one of the two remaining mismatched chairs, gutted that he could do this to her. He’d already taken the car and most of the furniture. He’d told her he’d wanted nothing else but a divorce from her ever again.
She read the letter again, slower this time in spite of a heart beating like thunder that sent panic coursing around her body, but the words remained unchanged, their meaning starkly clear.
Shayne wanted a property settlement agreed as quickly as possible. Only now he was claiming half the house—the house that had been her mother’s pride and joy, the house her mother had left her in her will. Her house.
And if he got that, there was no way she could pay him out without selling and then where would she go? Where would she live?
What the hell was she supposed to do?
Dominic reached an intersection, knew he should turn right for the highway but inexplicably turned left instead, wending his way through streets marked
with signs long past their use-by date. He didn’t need them anyway. He’d escaped his past a long time ago, he’d thought, but his past was still there, buried deep inside that box, waiting for the opportunity to burrow its way out.
His heart hammering, he slowed as he passed a tired shopping centre where all the windows wore security grilles and where half the shops were empty, feeling a strange lurch in his gut to see the laundromat shabbier but still open for business. His mother had found him crying in there, hiding behind the row of machines, bleeding from the split in his ear where a rock had caught him and from where he’d slid on gravel and taken the skin off both knees. He’d been ashamed he’d run. Ashamed he’d been caught. But most of all he’d been ashamed he’d cried.
And right there on the floor of the laundromat, amidst the steam and the hum and clang of a dozen machines, his mother had hugged him tight and cried right along with him. She would make it better, she promised him. She would take him away from his horrible school and the bullies who hated anyone who was good at anything. She would buy them both a house by the sea like Nonna and Poppa always talked about buying, somewhere he could be happy.
And his tears had dried as she’d woven her magic promises and spun a golden future for them both that he would dream about every night in bed, just waiting for the day, because his mother worked so hard and he knew she would shift heaven and earth to make it happen.
The shopping centre fell behind, his car seemed to be on autopilot, unravelling the years as it wended its way through the suburb until he was there, crawling along the narrow street to number twenty-four, more afraid now of what he would remember than what he would find. He turned up the airconditioning, his palms sweaty against the wheel as he passed the tiny playground where his poppa had watched him play when his mother was working, his poppa busy carving a piece of wood he’d pull from his pocket. He remembered watching the shavings curl as he worked the tool through the wood, creating another tiny masterpiece. And he remembered running back to the house at dinner time, and the smell of rich tomato dishes that met him, and Nonna in the kitchen wearing a white apron and letting him stand on a chair and taste the minestrone from what seemed then like a massive wooden spoon.
