From the outside, the house was dark and quiet. At the door, Lisa removed her boots and tip-toed inside, carefully turning the door handle until it closed with a soft click. But as she walked further down the hall, she stopped. Voices, coming from inside their living room. It was nearly 11 pm. Surely everyone was asleep? She would kill Scott if he’d let the girls stay up this late on a school night, and less than two days out from Jamie’s wedding. The last thing she needed to deal with was over-tired, hyper-excited little girls. The emotion levels would be off the charts!
She strode into the living room, ready to admonish, and stopped at the couch.
Her husband was snoring softly, the TV remote hanging loosely from his hand. She glanced briefly at the screen. NCIS was it? One of those cop shows that he claimed to enjoy but almost always sent him to sleep within twenty minutes.
Gently removing the remote from his grasp, she felt a wave of love for her husband. He was such a good man. A decent and kind man. She wished her parents had met him. They would have approved. Scott and her dad could have gone to the rugby together, and talked cop shows. Every Tuesday night of her childhood, her dad had commandeered the TV remote to watch The Bill—his favourite TV show, despite Lisa and Jamie’s claims that police with silly hats and no guns were ‘lame’. Scott loved the show too. He would have been like the son her father never had, not that he ever expressed a particular desire for one. But still, a sonin-law would have added an extra dimension to her parents’ lives, as would the addition of grandchildren.
Tenderly, Lisa pressed her lips against Scott’s forehead. She hated the idea of not telling him about Igor Ivanov, but it would only be for forty-eight hours. After the wedding, she’d tell him everything and they’d decide what to do, together.
Scott snuffled and blearily opened his eyes. ‘Hey, you’re home. How did it go?’
‘All fine.’ She patted his shoulder. ‘Everything all right here?’
He yawned. ‘Just the usual Melbas. Eight of them tonight, from memory.’
She and Scott had a running joke that every night at bedtime their children staged more farewells before bed than the famed Dame Nellie. The excuses were many and varied—water, extra hugs, another kiss, a scary shadow, another wee, a strange noise, itchy pyjamas, too hot, too cold, a very important story that could not wait until the morning. The list was endless and now, Scott and Lisa simply referred to them collectively as the Melbas.
‘Might just go check on them and then head up to bed.’ Lisa rose.
‘I’ll join you.’
Helping him up, Lisa kept hold of her sleepy husband’s arm as they walked back down the hallway to the girls’ room.
‘Bit like practice for the wedding.’ Scott started humming a wedding march. He’d volunteered to walk Jamie down the aisle.
‘Make sure you go nice and slow and keep a good hold of her. She’s just as likely to trip in those crazy high heels. I remember my feet after our wedding. They were killing me, and my shoes were flat! I really don’t understand why women put themselves through the agony.’
‘And that, my darling, is one of the reasons I married you.’ Scott squeezed her arm. ‘You are a podiatrist’s dream come true.’
They stopped at the door, the light from the hallway spilling into the room and illuminating the three small bodies before them.
‘Is it considered poor form at a wedding for the flower girls to completely steal the show?’ Scott inclined his head towards the three white dresses, hung up on the outside knobs of the girls’ wardrobe, pressed and ready to be worn for Saturday.
‘Being outrageously cute is fine, I think, but if they start a brawl over who gets to hold the rose petals, that’s another matter.
In the bedroom, Scott kissed each of the girls in turn—Ava, then Jemima, then Ellie. Lisa followed suit and paused in front of Ellie’s assembly certificate, stuck with blu-tack to the wall above the girls’ chest of drawers, where they tended to put up all their awards.
‘We stuck it up tonight.’ Scott adjusted the doona around Ellie. ‘She was so proud of herself. So different to the scared little girl we met at the party.’ He stood, still with his eyes on Ellie. ‘It was the right call, Lise, to look after her. You were right.’
‘I hope so,’ Lisa began. ‘I mean, I still don’t quite know how this is going to end …’ With a Russian mafia boss on our doorstep?
‘Whatever happens, I think we’ve done a good thing, and Ellie’s been good for our family. I don’t know what I was so worried about.’
Quickly, Lisa switched off the hall light, casting the room into darkness that covered the rising flush in her cheeks.
Just forty-eight hours, she told herself. Then, you tell him everything.