Starting Over

by Susanne Bellamy

  ‘Yeah, well, he was nearly seventeen.’

  ‘Pets are part of your family. It’s hard when you lose one you’ve known most of your life. Please—can I buy you a drink? We could go to the pub if you like or—’

  ‘Now is not a good time, Serena. Look, I don’t care why you were photographing my work. It’s not important.’

  ‘Of course it’s important. It’s what has driven you to work so hard all these years, isn’t it? And you need to be paid for your work to pay off your loan to save your family farm.’

  ‘This is family business, okay? It’s not your problem.’

  She recoiled with a hissed intake of breath and her knuckles turned white on her phone.

  ***

  Paul winced. Could he be more of an insensitive clod? If he was right, Serena was searching for the missing part of her family. Hayden had flung the same words at him when he’d told his big brother to mind his business. But that was different. They were family and family looked out for one another.

  Who did Serena have? He opened his mouth to apologise.

  She found her voice before he did. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude in your affairs.’ Head held high, she walked quickly around the far side of the bench and pulled open the door.

  ‘I didn’t mean—dammit, Serena.’

  Hand on the doorknob, she looked back at him, her green eyes moist and her cheeks pink. ‘It’s fine, Paul. I crossed a line into family territory. Your family, not mine. It won’t happen again.’

  She turned away but paused and spoke over her shoulder. ‘I’m really sorry about Jack.’

  The door closed behind her. Seconds later, her car engine started and the crunch of tyres faded along his gravel driveway.

  It was no good berating himself for hurting Serena. He’d done it and it couldn’t be undone. But he could press on with his enquiries on her behalf. A man-to-man chat with Uncle Josh was called for. Paul had failed Hayden by not being there in the right way, but he’d be damned if he’d fail Serena in this.

  He went in search of his wallet then headed up to the Ace in the Hole.

  His uncle was leaning on the bar chatting with Max Dooley. The barman set a schooner in front of Josh and looked at Paul. ‘Same for you?’

  Paul nodded. ‘Thanks. Josh, I’ve been looking for you.’

  Josh raised his glass in a salute to his nephew before downing a third of it in one go. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Thirsty work talking up the co-op. If you’re shouting, I’ll have another.’

  Paul caught Max’s eye, raised a finger and pointed at his uncle.

  ‘Okay, Paulie, spill. Which one are you worrying about now?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Boy, you’re like a sheepdog rounding up your flock and keeping them safe. I saw you with young Serena at the farm, remember? You like her, and—’

  ‘How did you—?’

  ‘I can read you like a book. You try to make things right for everyone else and put your own concerns to one side. This morning at the mill, Hayden stomped off with a face like thunder. You looked like you’d been given a dose of castor oil. So—is it Hayden or Serena that has you chasing me down now?’

  Max set two beers on the counter and wiped a cloth over the neighbouring stretch of bar. ‘I’m betting on the sheila having a grip on his balls.’

  Josh chuckled. ‘Nah, he’d be wearing a grin from here to next Christmas if she had. Got your Y-fronts in a twist about something though.’

  ‘Sheesh, can it, the pair of you.’ He drank his beer, relishing the bitter slide over his tongue.

  ‘Oi, Max, two more here, mate.’ On the far side of the bar, Herbie sat with a group of mill workers.

  ‘Why aren’t you sitting with them?’

  ‘I figured you’d run me to earth here sooner or later. Gonna tell me now Max is busy?’

  ‘I’m worried about Hayden—and Serena.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll get a couple of whiskies and you grab a table out of the way. Big ears and bigger mouths on some of these blokes.’

  He chose a table in the darkest corner, one where a light had blown above the alcove, and slid along the bench.

  Josh set a glass of whiskey in front of him and sat in the opposite chair. ‘Woman trouble usually means a man needs something else to warm his night.’

  ‘Shit, Josh, what’s that? A triple?’

  ‘You look like you need it.’ Josh sipped his whiskey and released a sigh of pleasure. ‘Nothing like good whiskey to solve your problems. Right, which one shall we tackle first?’

  Josh had guided him through a range of teenage problems. Mostly his advice was good, but when it came to women, Paul added more than a pinch of salt.

  ‘Let’s start with Serena. I know there’s more to her coming to Mindalby than just designing for the festival. In fact, since dinner at the farm, I’m pretty sure she’s looking for her father. Are you her father?’

  ‘Whoa, Paulie, I don’t kiss and tell.’

  ‘That’s not an answer, unless you mean you did kiss—know—Dawn back in the Byron Bay period?’

  Josh sat back in his seat and sighed. ‘I wish I’d been that lucky. If Serena were my daughter, I’d be a happy man, but no. Dawn was friendly—’

  Paul raised an eyebrow. ‘When you say friendly—’

  ‘Sadly, not that friendly, at least not with me. Nor your father, if that’s what you’re thinking—although I doubt he’d remember. High as a kite he was.’

  Nor your father—not that friendly—nor your father. Josh’s words ran around Paul’s brain in a happy refrain. Tension leached from him and he leaned across the table.

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Yep. He passed out and I kept an eye on him until daylight. Makes a change, hey, me being the responsible one? Anyway, young Dawn was curled up sound asleep near the campfire all night. She was lovely but she wasn’t interested in me in that way. And the next morning, Jake and I drove away.’ Josh raised his whiskey glass to the light, turning it around in his hand as though admiring the contents.

  ‘Did you really think your father had been unfaithful to your mother? Is that what this is about? If you think your father would chase a bit of skirt just because I do, you’re way off course, Paulie. No woman ever tempted Jake once he met your mother.’

  ‘In the context of Serena, I stopped thinking rationally.’

  ‘In the context of women, no man thinks rationally.’

  Paul swirled the whiskey in his glass and sipped. A burst of peaty goodness filled his mouth and ran down his throat. Serena wasn’t family. Not half-sister, not even cousin.

  Now all he had to do was ask her forgiveness for today’s stupid comment and—

  Until he’d found an answer to his brother’s dilemma there could be no and. Family had to be his first priority. ‘Thanks for that, Josh. Now all I have to do is arrange a break-in.’

  Josh’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm. ‘Put that thought out of your head right now. You won’t help Hayden by going to jail for illegal entry.’

  ‘That cotton is rightfully his. Unprocessed, he doesn’t owe the mill a cent, but the administrators won’t release it.’

  Josh’s grip tightened. ‘He’ll get it—soon. The co-op will see to that. Sit tight. There will be a final meeting of creditors before much longer. Then you’ll put the co-op idea in front of those finance people, there’ll be a vote, and voila.’

  ‘But will it be soon enough? Hayden’s on the edge now. I know Penny Fordham is positive the accountants—and the bank—will be satisfied. I just want to make sure—’

  ‘Hayden will be fine. You sort out your situation and let him get on with managing Carey Cotton. You put him in charge of it when you chose to open the saddlery, remember?’

  How could he forget? Guilt gnawed his insides like a rat. Maybe it was time to step back and give his brother the right to do as he chose with what Paul had given up.

  ‘You’re right. Thanks for
reminding me. And for letting me bend your ear.’

  ‘And the whiskey. Reckon another shot would go down a treat. Your shout.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dawn Quinlan sat beside him on the sofa, curiosity in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Paul, but Serena has gone back to Sydney.’

  He thought some details followed but the blood roaring in his ears drowned out everything else. Serena was gone. It was his fault; he’d pushed her away with insensitive comments about family and belonging, and she’d slipped out of his door, and out of his life.

  All he wanted was to hold her; to tell her they had a chance now he knew she wasn’t related to him. But the moment she’d mentioned Jack, the raw loss of his passing overwhelmed Paul and he’d snapped at her in the worst possible way. He could atone by helping her find her father. It was on top of his list, right up there with helping Hayden save the farm.

  Except that, in trying to help, he’d made things worse. Hayden had rejected his offer of help, and Serena had left town.

  With a herculean effort, he met Dawn’s concerned gaze. ‘Did she say if—when—she’s coming back?’

  ‘Not a word, but I know she intends to meet up with Max Zinsky. I wouldn’t be surprised if—ah, but I shouldn’t talk out of turn.’

  Bile rose in his throat. He’d left it too late. Let his mouth get away from him and she’d turned to Zinsky. Breathing through his mouth, he wondered how much to reveal to Dawn. What would she think of his suspicions about Serena’s father? How would she take his poking his nose into her family business?

  The irony didn’t escape him.

  ‘I wanted to let her know I’ve spoken to my uncle and my father about—’ He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘What I mean is, now I’m certain we’re not related, I wanted to take her on a date, you know, to like … start again. Fresh, without that hanging over our heads.’

  Dawn appeared genuinely perplexed. ‘Wherever did you get the idea you and Serena were related?’

  Heat rushed through him, from the tips of his ears to the soles of his feet. That whole mess had begun at dinner when she’d mentioned the Byron Bay music festival. When his father and uncle rhapsodised about the gorgeous redhead they’d met there.

  In putting two and two together he’d made five, but he was convinced her reason for choosing Mindalby for a holiday revolved around her father.

  ‘When Serena mentioned the music festival, Dad and Uncle Josh both remembered you, what you looked like, right down to your name. And I know when her birthday is.’ The more he tried to explain, the more he tied himself in knots.

  Oh, God, he’d got it all wrong, hadn’t he.

  Dawn’s eyes opened wide. ‘And you assumed one of them fathered my daughter. Well, at least that explains Serena’s recent behaviour.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—well, maybe I did, but to be fair, Dad denied it when I asked him outright.’

  ‘I’d like to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation.’ A hint of coolness dropped into her voice and she sat ramrod-straight.

  He’d be lucky if she didn’t show him the door straightaway.

  ‘My apologies, Dawn. I should have known better, but Dad had this gap in his memory about the night they met you. Uncle Josh has since supplied the missing pieces.’

  Dawn sighed and clasped her hands loosely in her lap. ‘Maybe I should be cross, but I’m not. Even in the late eighties and early nineties a free attitude to love happened at the festival, and I was quite prepared to give it a go, but once I met the man who is Serena’s father, I didn’t want anyone else.’

  ‘So you do know who her father is?’

  ‘Yes, and no. We were young and excited, and we thought it was liberating to use pseudonyms. I had no idea what Starman’s real name was, but he was the sweetest, kindest, shyest man.’

  ‘Serena must take after you. She’s not shy and she’s positive about everything.’

  Dawn raised an eyebrow, but a smile tugged up the corner of her mouth. ‘Like a breath of spring with the promise of summer heat?’

  ‘Yeah.’ That was Serena to a T. But would he get the chance to taste her heat, her passion?

  The idea came to him in a flash. He’d drive to Sydney, tell her what he’d found out from Josh, and pray like crazy she’d give him—them—a chance. That’s all he wanted.

  But he couldn’t leave. Not yet, not before Carey Cotton was released from the mill yard, and a down payment made on the seeds for next season. He owed a duty to his family and to Hayden. But this time, he wouldn’t take his responsibility as a member of the Carey clan too far.

  This time, he’d hand over control to where it belonged—to Hayden.

  Maybe the same applied to Serena. If he hadn’t poked his nose into her life, if he’d stepped back and not tried to help when she hadn’t told him what she was doing, they might even now be driving up to the lookout.

  Forget foot-in-mouth trouble; he needed to stop trying to control everything when life was so unpredictable.

  There was one more thing he wanted to do though.

  One thing he needed to do to make up for his intrusion into Serena’s life. The only thing that might make things right again.

  ‘You said you don’t know … Starman’s real name. Maybe I can help you find him. Is there anything else you remember about Serena’s father?’

  Dawn’s gaze narrowed, intensifying like a laser beam, stripping away the last of his protective shell. ‘Why is finding my daughter’s father important to you?’

  ‘It’s important to Serena. That makes it important to me.’

  ‘I couldn’t ask for more for her.’ A faraway look softened Dawn’s eyes before she turned to watch the flames flickering in the open fireplace.

  ‘A few of the group I fell in with were on their way home to Mindalby from a conference in Brisbane. They left mid-morning.

  ‘Starman arrived after lunch on the second day. He’d missed the others in Brisbane, so when he found he’d missed them again, he said it was fate and decided to stay for a couple of days before he caught a bus. It might have been his smile, or his voice when he sang with me, or his sense of humour—any number of things about him.’

  Dawn’s voice slipped into a soft lilt as she shared her story and Serena’s past, and Paul fell under her spell. ‘I fell in love with him, and I fell into his bed. He was tall, slim, fair-skinned, but with calluses that showed he worked with his hands. He wore his hair in a Mohawk. I remember—’ Dawn covered her mouth, and her gaze darted around the room. ‘Oh—I remember he said that Mohawk, and the fact he’d come in on a flight from Bali, were the reasons he was pulled off the line for a thorough search in customs. I guess that’s why his friends thought they’d missed him at the airport.’

  ‘Was he Australian, or had he passed through Bali on his way to Australia?’ If he was a different nationality, that would narrow Paul’s search immensely. He ran through the migrants in town: there was the big Danish bloke who lived the other side of Wooroorogan National Park. He discounted the Vietnamese family who ran the restaurant and those who were relative newcomers to the district.

  Dawn went still. She pressed her lips together and shook her head slowly.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘This has gone on long enough. I—think I may know who he is now, but I have to talk to him first. I—will you see yourself out? Oh, and don’t worry about Serena. I’m fairly certain she’ll be back.’

  ‘If she didn’t say how can you—’

  ‘Know? I’m her mother. She’ll be back.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hallway lights reflected off a paint job that was new since Serena had lived in this apartment block. It was the last place she’d expected to find herself again—ever—and yet, here she was.

  She needed to see Max before she talked herself out of her plan. Doubting she’d have the courage to do this again, she took a deep breath. Half-shutting her tired eyes against the glare, she se
nt up a silent prayer as she raised her hand and knocked on the door. Please let him be home.

  Seconds ticked by.

  Serena straightened her jacket and smoothed her hair.

  Gritty-eyed after the drive from Mindalby, she questioned her decision to come to Sydney. Paul had been clear; he wanted her to butt out of family business.

  And out of his life?

  Better to cut ties before she got closer to him. And his family. After all, she and her mother had all the family they needed with just the two of them. Although—

  That look between Dawn and the woodworker had promised so much more. Remembering her promise, she tapped out a short text to her mother: Arrived safely. About to put plan into action. Wish me luck. S. xx.

  She raised her hand and knocked again. The door opened a crack and a distinctly female eye checked her out. Heavily made-up, with smudges of mascara beneath the lower lashes, it suggested she’d been interrupted at play.

  A hitherto unsuspected sense of grim satisfaction filled Serena.

  ‘Hello, I need to talk to Max.’

  ‘And you are?’ The voice was bored and cigarette-husky.

  ‘Serena. He knows who I am.’

  ‘Send them away, babe, and come back to bed.’ Max’s post-coital voice reached her ears from the bedroom deep within her old apartment; their apartment before he’d called it quits on her. She waited for the old feeling of loss.

  There was nothing but a whiff of stale cigarette smoke as the woman unlatched the door and let Serena in. ‘Come on in. I’m going anyway. I’ve got to work tomorrow.’ She was of average height with bleached blonde hair, and wore lipstick-red satin lingerie that left little to the imagination. Adjusting her boobs in the bra cups, she strolled into the bedroom. The back and forth lilt of Max cajoling and the woman’s firm refusals filtered through the partly open door.

  Serena sat on the brown suede lounge they’d bought together when she first moved in with Max. The colour had never appealed to her but Max liked what he called its understated elegance, so she had given in and accepted his choice. Looking around the apartment now, there was nothing that suggested she had ever lived there. No soft furnishings or piles of cushions like she’d bought for her tiny bedsit. It was as if Max-and-Serena had never existed as a couple.