Someone Like You

by Victoria Purman

  ‘And there’s an even bigger secret I need to share with you all. If it wasn’t for Dan and me, it’s highly likely these two would still be single people, driving each of us crazy. Dan and I were partners-in-crime. Matchmakers actually. If we hadn’t pushed them together, right here in this pub, on a cold, winter’s night last year, who knows what would have happened? But it did happen and we couldn’t be more thrilled for our best friends, could we, Dan?’

  He felt her arm tighten around him and the words she spoke were only for him. ‘We make a great team, don’t you think?’

  How did she do that? How did Lizzie know to keep talking until he could breathe again? Until he’d stopped shaking. She’d made sure all the attention was on her so no one would notice the sweat on his brow or the tremble in his hands. She’d seen him about to crash and had stepped right in to save him.

  She’d saved him.

  He knew she’d been beating herself up about the night of the accident, blaming herself for not saving him that night. But she’d just done it.

  Dan leaned in close to speak directly into the microphone. Her perfume, flowers, invaded his senses, calmed him as he reached right into Lizzie’s personal space to show her that he was never leaving it. To claim her for good.

  He cleared his throat. ‘To Ry and Julia,’ he called out. People echoed the toast with hearty cheers and whistles. And then it came back to him. Clear. Calm. Words he’d been waiting to say for months. The most important words he would ever say.

  ‘And to the one, the only, my partner in crime, Elizabeth Blake.’ Dan raised his glass. ‘To Elizabeth.’

  ‘To Elizabeth!’ An echoing cry went up.

  The one and only, he realised.

  The one.

  And in that moment he finally knew the truth. He had fallen in love with Elizabeth.

  An hour later, the sun had dropped below the horizon and a cooling breeze swayed the strings of party lights decorating the canvas umbrellas. The handsome waiter brigade had finished, the platters of food were long empty, and the party section of the celebrations was on in earnest. Disco songs thumped through the crowd and some extremely ill-advised dancing was happening on the makeshift dance floor in the middle of The Market.

  A bride and groom were in each other’s arms, slow dancing to their own tune, seeing no one but each other.

  A honey-skinned, glossy-haired woman was shaking everything she had, to the wide-eyed fascination of the tall ex-journalist dancing with her.

  And a very handsome man was on his way to a blonde-haired bridesmaid with an offer he hoped she wouldn’t refuse.

  When Lizzie saw Dan approaching, her heart catapulted somewhere out into the huge dark southern sky.

  ‘Last dance.’ He held out his hand. ‘You promised.’

  She’d been chatting with Harri, gossiping about the wedding guests, but when she saw him, she had to work hard to breathe.

  Lizzie placed her hand in his with no hesitation. With a backwards smile to Harri, and a laugh at Harri’s knowing wink, Lizzie followed Dan to the dance floor. He obviously had an arrangement with the DJ because, with a quick nod, the disco faded out and in its place an old Sinatra song, cool and jazzy, began to drift over the crowd. The crooner was singing effortlessly about having someone under his skin. Lizzie figured it was the perfect soundtrack for dancing with the thirteen kinds of handsome Dan McSwaine.

  Oh yeah. Thirteen. Not an unlucky number at all.

  He’d pulled her in tight, one hand around her waist, the other holding her hand up and out to the side, like real dancing. It felt romantic and unreal, dancing in the moonlight, the jazzy music all around her, Dan in his tuxedo shirt and the taste of delicious champagne still on her lips. She relaxed into his arms, resting her cheek on his chest as they swayed to the music, and then inched one hand up high, from his shoulder, to his neck, to tease the hair sitting on his collar. She let her eyes flutter shut, and breathed in the scent of him, something spicy from a bottle mixed with something all him, something all-man and Middle Point.

  In a perfect world the night would never end.

  ‘Dan,’ she sighed against him. Slow-dancing couples, each moving slowly to the hypnotic strains of the music, surrounded them but all she could see and feel was him. It felt too good to be in his arms and she didn’t want to have to give it up. Ever.

  ‘Yeah?’ he murmured in reply.

  ‘We did it, didn’t we?’

  Lizzie felt the chuckle in his chest, his hard muscles moving under her cheek.

  ‘We’ve done a whole lot of things, Lizzie. I’m thinking of one thing right now, as a matter of fact.’ His arm was tighter around her and he pressed himself against her. ‘Which one are you thinking about?’

  She remembered everything. How they’d argued. Flirted. Pushed the bride and groom together. Roamed the streets of Middle Point at night holding hands. Shared sizzling sexual chemistry. Created The Market. Made love. Fought. Run from each other.

  And kept secrets from one another.

  That had to change. Right this minute. If she was to have any hope of hanging on to this, of creating her own happy ever after, she had to tell him the truth about who she was and why.

  ‘Everything Dan, I’m thinking about everything.’ She reached up as tall as she could so she could whisper in his ear. ‘Everything I want. Everything I want to do.’

  She felt him shudder and he groaned. ‘Bloody hell.’ He sounded like he was straining for control. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  She found his eyes and nodded. Dan grabbed her hand and led her from the dance floor.

  CHAPTER

  32

  They made it across the road and onto the lookout over the Point before Dan pulled Lizzie in tight, wrapped her in his strong arms and kissed her until she was breathless. The power of it buckled her knees. Melted her legs. Had her heart beating loud and fast like a throbbing bass beat in a rock song. He held on to her like he’d never, ever let her go. Could she hope he’d keep holding her when he knew her secret?

  When she dragged her lips from his, regained some strength in her legs, Lizzie found his hand.

  ‘Let’s sit for a minute,’ she said and led him to a simple, worn wooden bench and they sat beside each other, close, thigh pressing against thigh, hand in hand. The bench had been built at the top of the Point to take in the spectacular views along the jutting Fleurieu coastline, along sandy kilometres to the west and south to the Coorong. But at night, it was all a dark mystery, with only the sound of the rhythmic and relentless crashing of waves the only clue what lay below. Dan moved one arm behind her on the backrest and Lizzie moved into him, resting a hand on his leg, wanting his warmth in the cool evening breeze.

  They sat like that for a moment. Lizzie was still feeling a little light-headed from the champagne, exhausted from the wedding and nervous as hell about being out here, finally, alone with Dan.

  She went over in her head what she had to say to him, and it felt like standing on the edge of one of the nearby cliffs. As if she was about to leap off into the darkness. It was a risk she had to take. Would this truly be the first day of the rest of her life?

  The end of ordinary and the beginning of spectacular?

  Before she could start, Dan whispered into her hair. ‘Tell me how you knew.’ There was a hesitation in his voice that she hadn’t heard before. ‘When I was making the best man speech. Trying to make the best man speech. How did you know what was happening to me?’ Dan shifted, turned his body towards her, so he could search her face for answers. ‘How did you do that?’

  So she wouldn’t have to pretend she hadn’t seen the look of sheer terror on his face when he’d stood with the microphone in his hand. She didn’t have to gloss over the fact that her heart had ached for him, just as much as if it had been happening to her.

  The guardian angel of Middle Point turned her eyes to his. ‘I saw it in your face. I’ve spent a whole lot of time looking into those green eyes of yours, Dan McSwaine. And I
recognised what it was.’

  His hand slipped from her shoulder, down the fabric of her capped sleeve to caress the goosebumped skin on her arm.

  ‘God, Lizzie. You saved me.’

  She shook her head a little. ‘It was a magic trick. I distracted you until it passed, that’s all.’

  A car drove by behind them, its lights flickering in the dark. Voices and music floated across to them from the wedding.

  ‘Panic attacks?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Too many to count,’ Dan said into the wind. ‘Since the accident.’

  Lizzie moved her hand from Dan’s thigh to his waist and could feel the muscles bunch and move underneath.

  ‘It’s no surprise, really. After what happened.’ When you nearly died. When I nearly lost you.

  Dan stared out into the inky night. ‘You know, when I bought the house down here, I told everyone in the city that it was because I was going to be working on Windswept and it was close. They believed me when I said it would save the drive up to Adelaide every day. I spun them some bullshit that it was a good property investment, that I could flog it off in a few years for triple what I paid for it.’

  A bitter laugh was on his lips. ‘All that was a pile of absolute, steaming horseshit. You know why I moved to Middle Point, Elizabeth?

  She could see by the look on his face that she didn’t need to answer.

  ‘I came down here to hide. Not a bad place for it, huh? Sleepy coastal town, quiet streets. No nightclubs. No pressure. Nothing to tip me over the edge. And all that was rolling along fine except…’

  Lizzie snuggled her face into his neck, savouring the warmth there and the smell of him. ‘Except for what?’

  ‘You. You came knocking on my door, the guardian angel of Middle Point, with eyes so big and blue they can make a grown man weep. How could I say no to you?’

  Her heart swelled. ‘You did, if I remember correctly. When you slammed the door in my face. You were like the wild man of Borneo.’

  There was the hint of a smile in his voice. ‘The what of who?’

  ‘Your long hair, your beard, your attitude. Wild. Dangerous. Like a bear with a thorn in his side.’

  ‘Tell me something,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘Why didn’t you give up when I was such a rude prick to you?’

  Lizzie shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be a very good guardian angel if I gave up so easily, would I? I had a clue what was going on with you, even back then. I thought I’d better cut you a bit of slack. You deserved it.’

  ‘I didn’t realise just how much the accident had screwed me up until Anna turned up here in Middle Point before Christmas. She helped me see it. She’s an amazing doctor.’

  Lizzie blinked. ‘Anna is a doctor?’

  ‘Yeah. She has her own practice up in Adelaide. That’s why I spent so much time up there with her. Jesus, Lizzie, I know you must have thought that I was with her. But I couldn’t tell you the truth about who she was because I would have had to come clean about all this stuff, too. And I wasn’t ready. I still had some things to work through. She helped me with that.’

  Dan was right, she thought. Anna was amazing. In a whole range of ways that Lizzie hoped to get to see for herself. She tightened her grip on Dan.

  ‘I’m so glad she was able to help you.’

  ‘I spent months and months feeling like I didn’t want to be a part of the world anymore. Could barely get out of bed. Until you came bursting into my house and my life. The reason I wanted to feel better was you, Elizabeth.’

  ‘Dan…’

  ‘That future that Ry and Julia have created for themselves, after today? The bit where they have a life together? I want that too. And I want it with you.’

  Lizzie blinked in confusion. ‘But just before…you said you were done waiting for me.’

  ‘Yeah, I am. I’m done waiting for you to need me, so I’m coming after you. But I had to tell you what’s been going on with me. I figured you needed to know before I could ask you to share the future with me. I want to be fair to you.’

  ‘Oh, Dan.’ She knew exactly who he was. He was, pure and simple, the best man she had ever met.

  ‘I thought I was over it. I’ve been feeling pretty good lately, like the old me. But today? What happened in there?’ He gestured back at the stone building behind them. ‘I’m not so sure. Maybe I’ll never be over it. I don’t have a fucking clue.’

  He stopped, his voice hoarse with the emotion of being so honest. ‘But I can’t let it trap me. I want to get on with my life and fill it with things that make me happy. And I’ve worked out there are three things that make me happy, in no particular order. One, working with Ry, that’s a no-brainer. Two, living in my crappy little beach shack in Middle Point.’

  ‘You really love it here?’ Lizzie asked, her heart in her throat.

  ‘I do. This place gets into your head. Under your skin. And the third thing…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You, Elizabeth.’

  His words went round and round in Lizzie’s head. Did Dan really want a life with her? Have that happy ever after that Joe had been talking about? That she’d always been too scared to wish for? Maybe this was going to be the first day of the rest of her life, after all.

  Except for one thing.

  It seemed it was the night for coming clean. It was time for her confession. She took a deep breath, settled herself. She let the lapping of the water and the breeze across her face calm her, the squawk of an unseen gull overhead keep her in this place, this safe place – home – rather than take her back to that dark, cold night on a south London street.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  Lizzie wiggled herself out of his arms, moved away from him. She needed to stop the physical contact if she was to tell her story.

  ‘I heard every word, Dan. And before you say anything else, there’s something I need to tell you.’

  Dan moved towards her, moved to grab her arm. ‘You’re scaring me now. What is it?’

  Lizzie took a deep breath, hoping it would give her the strength she desperately needed to help her find her story after so long.

  ‘I haven’t been honest with you either,’ Lizzie said, her voice thick with the emotion that was still so raw after all these years.

  ‘You’re not secretly married, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  His face was stony. ‘Tell me you’re not sick.’

  ‘No, nothing like that. You asked me, the day Harri broke her hip. You asked me what happened to me. And I couldn’t tell you. But I need to now. If you want me, there’s a part of me you need to know about. Something big happened to me, a long time ago, and I’ve just started to realise, in these past few months, that I’ve let it keep me locked away here in Middle Point, in my small life. I’ve been too afraid to dream big dreams for myself.’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he said fiercely, turning to wrap an arm around her. She brushed him off.

  ‘I’ve only ever left Middle Point once. As soon as I’d finished high school, I left Julia behind for her last summer here before she went off to Melbourne, and I flew off to London for my grand adventure. I wanted to escape this place and see the world.’ She managed a sad smile. ‘God, I had way too much confidence for an eighteen-year-old girl from a small town like this. I’d worked for years to save up for the airfare from my part-time job as a cleaner at the caravan park and I left, planning never to look back.’

  ‘You? Who loves Middle Point like it’s your firstborn?’

  ‘I know, right? I found a job the second week I was in London and I was off. It was brilliant. I moved into a share house south of the river with five other people from all over the world.’ Lizzie took a deep breath. ‘And then I met Billy at the pub I was working in.’

  Dan shifted slightly and she could feel the tension in him but she didn’t stop. ‘He was one of those ridgy-didge English boys, which was the main attraction, I guess. The complete opposite of the surfer dudes I’d grown up with. He was pa
le and funny and he tried to convert me to soccer. And he hated it when I called it that. “It’s football, Lizzie, the real football, not your Aussie Rules shite.”’

  ‘What did he do to you, Lizzie?’ Dan’s voice was tight and sharp.

  ‘We’d been going out about three months. Three months and one week.’

  Lizzie stopped. Found the strength she needed. ‘He only lasted one week after I was attacked.’

  CHAPTER

  33

  Dan leapt to his feet. He took in a huge breath and linked his fingers together on top of his head. Lizzie felt a shiver rise in her belly, tried to breathe away the nausea she felt there. There was a reason she didn’t like talking about London. She still felt sick to the stomach and it was fifteen years ago.

  ‘Fuck,’ Dan exclaimed into the dark night. Then his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. ‘You were attacked?’

  Lizzie squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to see his face. ‘I was on the way home from a shift at the pub and I’d just jumped off the Vauxhall bus at the end of my street to walk home.’ Her voice was a whisper, fighting with the sea breeze to be heard.

  The exact details were still cloudy in Lizzie’s mind, like a television signal breaking up in bad weather. She had to really concentrate to get everything in the right sequence so it made sense. She didn’t remember every detail anymore. Perhaps because it was so long ago; maybe because her subconscious mind had tried to save her from the worst of it. Sometimes it felt like a lifetime in the past, other times, not.

  ‘There were two of them. One smelled of garlic and he was the one who grabbed me from behind and pulled me backwards. I cracked my head on the ground when he dropped me. Then another guy had his hand on my throat.’

  Lizzie’s hand flew to the neckline of her bridesmaid’s dress, as if she was still protecting herself.

  ‘They’d pulled me into a side street. The bricks were grey and it was dark. I was kicking and scratching at his hands. I couldn’t breathe. One guy started ripping at my clothes.’

  Lizzie stopped to breathe away those scarring memories. She slowly opened her eyes and looked for Dan. He was watching her, listening. Even in the moonlight, she could see the muscles in his jaw flicker.