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The next morning, I lay in bed clutching the quilt cover to my chin. The news of Josh's gorgeous and kind hearted ex-girlfriend arriving back in town swirled around my head with no place to land. Not even the sound of birdsong outside our window or the light playing across our bedspread was enough to cheer me.
"Molly?"
I jumped a foot as Josh grumbled from the other side of the bed. "You're talking to yourself."
"No, I wasn't. You must have been dreaming. Go back to sleep."
I heard him sigh heavily and pull back the covers. "I'm not going back to sleep. It's seven o’clock. Besides, you only talk to yourself when something's on your mind, so why don't you save time and just tell me?"
He sat on the edge of the bed waiting for me to go on, but I felt quite frozen with where to start. There was no way of asking your current boyfriend why he didn't tell you his ex-girlfriend was back in town without sounding whiny and interrogative. Plus, what if I didn't get the answer I wanted?
After some time, Josh pulled on his baggy jeans and a flannelette shirt. He then matched them with a pair of pilled socks and shuffled out to the kitchen. In moving back to the country Josh had slipped from the crisp shirt and suits of his city investigative work to standard country boy fare of jeans, Blundestones, untucked shirt and a ripped cap that had seen better days back in 1984. Don't get me wrong, he still looked good. In fact, I'd quite taken to the flannel. Even the woollen jumpers and the stubble he wore gave him a slightly rough, roguish look.
"Tea?" he called back over his shoulder as I followed him out to the kitchen. A kitchen that brought me joy even in the most uncertain of times, of which this was definitely one of them.
I nodded to the tea and sat down at the table, another small pleasure that had been one of many in moving to Cameron Valley. The cottage that was included as part of Josh's police posting was fitted out with original furnishings that had been there since the fifties. When Josh had first shown me the place online, he had nervously told me we could update the cottage as much as we liked. "We can rip the kitchen out, start again, modernise it a bit."
"Don't you dare!" I'd squealed back at him, sternly telling him to advise the agent not to change a thing. It had sealed the deal for us to move here in the end, and I hadn't regretted that decision. I had spent many happy months tidying the place up while keeping its original character intact. And when I'd finished on the inside, I moved outside and resurrected the garden into something more attractive than overgrown weeds and broken rocks. I'd found a speckled path that led from the verandahed front door to the heritage gate. Once I'd unearthed that, the rest of the garden had opened up a hidden plethora of native flowers and shrubs.
"Well? How did you go?" Josh pulled me back from my view of the garden and placed a cup of tea in front of me. "What trail-blazing happened at the CWA last night?"
"Oh, you know, this and that." I fiddled with the tag of my tea bag. "Bradley performed Jolene, Lana got drunk and Geoff nearly threw up one of Gemma's cakes."
"So, just your standard CWA meeting?"
That was what I loved most about Cameron Valley, Josh joked a lot more. He laughed and enjoyed life a lot more. It was like all the past life stress of the person I had fallen in love with had been taken away, and I got to fall in love with him all over again. His brow furrowed now though as he peered out the window.
"Dennis?" I hedged.
"He's got no pants on again. Number one, he must be cold, but also I can't have a pantless man wandering around out the back of my house and the police station. Makes me look like I'm not doing my job." Josh banged on the window and waved at Dennis. He opened the window and yelled, "Put some pants on, Dennis!"
"Good morning, Sargent Baker!" I heard come back through the window.
"Put some..." Josh started to yell. "Do you know what? I can't deal with that right now, it's too early. Tell me what else happened last night."
"There was one piece of news."
"Oh yeah?"
"Apparently, Pippy Henderson is coming back."
"Oh."
I watched his tea bag dunking slow as he tried to dunk and think at the same time.
"I...had...heard she was coming back."
"And you didn't think to tell me?" All hope of not sounding whiny and interrogating was out the window with pantless Dennis. "That your ex was arriving back in town, the other half of – what did Lana call it? The golden couple?"
"That was just a nickname."
"Yeah, well, Pat said she was quite beautiful. Stunning was the word she used, actually. Just would have been nice to know your stunning ex-girlfriend was lobbing back in town."
I took a gulp of tea to slow my flow of words, but ended up burning my tongue. Tears pricked my eyes as uncertainty seized me and then turned to anger at my body betraying my emotions.
"Molly." Josh reached over and grabbed my hand. "She was my girlfriend when I was a teenager. I'm thirty-three now. I'm sure you had boyfriends when you were that age. I'm assuming I don't have to worry about them? Or do I?" He raised his eyebrows in mock fear.
"Well, no actually, I had a very large overbite and a lazy eye, so not a lot of boyfriends for me."
Josh sputtered into his tea. "A lazy eye? How did I not know this about you?"
"I had corrective surgery on the eye and the jaw in year eleven. It's not something I choose to relive, funnily enough. Anyway, I'm not worried. I just felt...out of the loop."
"Fair enough. I'm sorry. Mum only told me the other day and I should have mentioned it but to be honest, I forgot all about it."
I looked at him doubtfully. Really, Mr Investigator, who barely forgot any sort of detail?
"Come here," he said, lifting me up and wrapping me in his arms. "Don't worry. You'll like Pippy, she's nice."
"So I heard," I muttered, not enjoying the uneasy feeling taking up residence again in my stomach.