Erin dropped her head onto the steering wheel and closed her eyes as she summoned the energy to get out of the car.
She hated this place.
Gran hated this place.
It wasn’t that the nursing home was terrible. In fact, as far as nursing homes went, it was rather nice: the grounds were immaculate, the staff were friendly, and the rooms were clean and modern. She didn’t hate it, just what it represented.
She’d been coming here for the last week and each day was worse than the one before. Her grandmother, Evelyn Macalister, had always been such a proud, independent woman. It was hard to watch her now, trapped inside a withering body, slowly losing her memory. Up until recently her gran at ninety-two had still been doing her own housework, until Erin finally convinced her to get some help and arranged for a local lady to come and clean her house once a week. However, a nasty fall had sent Gran into hospital and then to the nursing home for medical treatment.
If that hadn’t been enough to deal with, the doctors had diagnosed Gran’s occasional bout of forgetfulness as rapidly progressive dementia. Now she was confined to a bed and forgetting everyone and everything around her a little more each day.
A week ago the nursing home had called to inform Erin that Gran had suffered a fall and that they hadn’t been able to reach Erin’s mother. Erin had dropped everything in Sydney and headed up to Tuendoc, relieved she’d arranged to be listed as an emergency contact given her mother’s habit of disappearing without letting anyone know. Erin’s mother, Irene, or Serenity as she now preferred to be called, owned a private health retreat in far northern New South Wales. She was also the benefactor of a foundation to protect orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra, and she went off overseas at the drop of a hat, rarely informing Erin when she was leaving. Erin often only found out her mother was away if she happened to ring her from some remote corner of the world. And this time, despite having tried all week, Erin had so far failed to locate her.
Erin gathered the photo album from the passenger seat and locked the car. Visits were getting harder. While her grandmother had seemed her same old self when Erin had first arrived, she’d been rapidly deteriorating ever since, sinking into a deep depression. She wanted to go home to her beloved farm and the house she’d lived in for the last sixty-five years.
Erin could understand Gran’s love of the old house at Tallowood. The lowset, sprawling weatherboard, surrounded by verandahs on all sides, was in need of a new coat of paint, but it still looked as neat and tidy as the day her grandfather had built it. Gran always took great pride in the gardens, and the yard was chock-full of old-fashioned plants not often found in modern gardens—tall brightly coloured sweet peas and snapdragons, hydrangeas with their bright blue and purple clusters of flowers, and Gran’s favourite: roses, every colour and scent under the sun. Tallowood was where Gran needed to be.
Erin had spoken to the doctor about getting her released, happy to take care of her for as long as she needed to, but the doctor explained that her grandmother’s hip was too badly broken and she would require high-level care for quite some time, so going home wasn’t an option for now.
So Erin had to find different ways to occupy Gran and take her mind off her surroundings. Yesterday Gran had been talking about Pop, as well as a few people Erin didn’t know, and she’d seemed happy all of a sudden. It had been good to see her looking more positive and to hear her talk about the old days.
Over the years Erin had heard bits and pieces of what life had been like for Gran as a young girl, but she hadn’t truly appreciated these stories. It had always seemed as though Gran would be around forever—her father had lived to be ninety-nine and her two older brothers had both made it into their late eighties—but over the last few days Erin had come to realise that her grandmother might not have much time left. She wanted to find out everything she could about Gran’s life before the opportunity was lost forever.
It was hard to take in, though. Gran had always been there for her. All through Erin’s childhood, while her mother had been busy building up her business, she had spent school holidays in Tuendoc. Gran had always given Erin her full and undivided attention, something she’d rarely experienced with her mother, and Erin had always treasured that.
Her mother had been a strong role model, as had Gran in her own way. Erin’s grandfather had died before she was born. There were no cousins, no brothers and sisters. Now, with the thought of Gran leaving her, Erin realised she was running out of family.
She’d always thought she’d marry and have lots of children because she hadn’t wanted any child of hers having the lonely time she’d had. But those dreams had come crashing down in her mid-twenties when doctors had discovered the ovarian cysts. She’d had multiple operations and then contracted an infection that had caused such damage she’d had to have one of her ovaries removed. She’d been told that the degree of scarring meant she was unlikely ever to conceive. No longer able to dream of a house full of children, she’d thrown herself into her career instead.
That was when Phillip had come along.
She met him one evening at a friend’s dinner party. He was a university professor twenty years older than her, attractive, charming and intelligent, and he made her feel special. When things started to look as though they might become serious, Erin was surprised when he refused to take her usual brush-off. And when she eventually came clean about her infertility, he didn’t blink an eyelid.
They were happy together; their life was full and they had everything they needed. Well, almost everything, but Erin was too afraid to continue wishing for the one thing she wanted more than anything: a baby of her own. Instead they had holidays overseas, lazy weekend sleep-ins, two incomes and careers they both loved. However, after the death of Phillip’s older brother a few years into their marriage, Phillip tentatively broached the subject of IVF. Erin tried not to get her hopes up with each attempt, but time after time it failed and each time a little piece of her heart died. Eventually, when she couldn’t take any more cycles of hope and then despair, Erin refused further treatment.
Then everything started going pear-shaped. Phillip became distant and their relationship began to change. It was all so pathetically clichéd, really; the professor and his attractive assistant having an affair. The affair was bad, but it was nothing compared to the soul-crushing sense of betrayal that followed Phillip’s confession on the night he walked out of their apartment.
‘She’s having your child?’
Phillip ran a hand through his usually impeccable head of hair and began to pace. ‘I didn’t mean it to happen like this, Erin. But I’m fifty years old, and now that Charles has gone I’m the last of my line. Don’t you understand?’ he said, his eyes imploring. ‘My branch of the tree ends with me. This is my only chance to have a child. Dakota has given me that opportunity.’
She could see. She did understand, but it still hurt like hell to have the man she loved, the man she’d made a life with, suddenly decide he needed to trade her in for a younger working model, named after a state that had four dead presidents carved in a rock.
She wished she could say she’d walked away with her head held high, that she’d stayed composed and dignified. But she hadn’t. She still cringed when she recalled how terrified and pathetic she’d been. ‘I don’t care about the affair. I forgive you. I’ll do anything,’ she’d pleaded. ‘We still have our name on the list for adoption, it could still happen for us.’
‘No, Erin, I don’t want to adopt,’ Philip said. ‘You’re missing the point. I don’t want my family name to die with me. I want my own child. My own blood.’
It wasn’t fair! She wanted her own child too.
Erin stood staring on in shocked silence as her husband packed a bag and walked away with a woman half his age who was having his baby.