‘So the big question is: do we do the good bit first or the bad bit second?’ Brix asked a few weeks later, holding Jaydah’s hand as they sat in a café on Albany’s main street, trying to ignore the Christmas carols. How many times did a bloke have to listen to ‘I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas’ anyway?
‘What’s the good bit?’
‘We’re going to find you a wedding ring.’
Her lips curved in the slightest smile and he was glad he’d been able to distract her. She’d been so nervous since he’d met up with her that morning in the café.
He didn’t blame her for the nerves. Fronting a Magistrate’s Court to take out a Violence Restraining Order against your dad took guts.
‘I don’t want to do the bad bit at all. I’m peaking about the bad bit.’ She shuffled the papers that had been laid across the table, neat handwriting all over them; a paperclip attaching photographs to the affidavit and VRO application.
He didn’t need to read what she’d written or see the photographs of her whipped back even though they lay right there. If he never saw those welts across her back again, it would be too soon, and he didn’t want to read about what she’d been through. It was bad enough hearing it from her lips. Seeing it written down in her sloping handwriting in plain black and white was worse.
He squeezed her fingers. ‘You’ll be fine. I’ll come in with you.’ He stifled a yawn. He’d been up since 4 am to drive across from Margaret River so he could do this with her today.
‘I don’t think you can come into the court with me. That’s what Lynne Farrell said.’
He nodded agreement because he couldn’t argue. Jaydah said Lynne was the expert. He hadn’t quite worked out the woman’s exact title, and JT had been a bit vague about which government department she worked for but he’d assumed it must be one of the domestic abuse helplines. Jaydah had confidence in Lynne, and that was enough.
Lynne told Jaydah that once the VRO came through, she’d coordinate with police about the timing of it being served on Keith.
He’d breathed a sigh of relief at that. Keith was such a crazy bastard, a little assistance from the boys in blue on Christmas morning to make sure Jaydah and Rosalie got out safely would be welcome.
He leaned across the table, pulled her forehead to his and rested there. ‘So if I can’t come in with you I’ll wait while you’re in there. I’ll be there when you come out.’
They held the pose until she checked her watch, already twitchy. ‘We should go. Lynne said I had to make sure I get the affidavit signed first and she said we could have a while to wait at court.’
She picked up another paper which listed available Justices of the Peace in Albany.
‘Come on then.’ Brix stood, keeping hold of her hand. ‘We got this.’
* * *
If Brix was honest (and he was) there really wasn’t much about ring-shopping … make that shopping of any kind … that could be considered a good bit. Especially when that shopping had to happen in the manic Santa-vibe of Albany two weeks out from Christmas.
JT was moody, subdued after her session in the Magistrate’s Court where they’d sat for close to two hours while a world of people young and old, men and women—some better dressed than others, others barely dressed at all—dribbled in, drifted out.
The outcome was positive, though. They had what they wanted. The Magistrate had granted them a Family Violence Restraining Order against Keith Tully that would keep him away from Jaydah and Rosalie, and from the Chalk Hill Bowling Club and from Whale Rock Winery once they moved there.
Jaydah had already been in touch with Lynne to let her know.
‘I thought you’d be in a better mood,’ he said once, as she pushed through the door of yet another jewellery store filled with watches and rings and mannequins wearing any multitude of gold and silver bling. He’d barely had a chance to get his sunglasses off and let his eyes adjust to the light in the store before she’d whooshed out of the shop again.
‘None of these are right for me. I knew the second I set foot in the place.’
On that, he had to agree, but they’d been in most of the bigger jewellery stores by now. Brix pulled his sunnies from the top of his head to cover his eyes and scanned the street. ‘That little vintage place the celebrant told me about is just around here somewhere, I think.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s not important.’ She checked her watch. ‘I should get back.’
She’d told him that she’d told her dad she had a doctor’s appointment in Albany and because she had to go there, a dentist check-up too, and when Keith asked what was wrong with her that she needed a doctor, she’d said, ‘Women’s issues, Dad,’ and it shut him up. Probably the only excuse that could.
‘Let’s just check. It’s just around the corner.’ He led the way, and JT followed a half-step behind.
The shop window brandished a stack of pretty boxes he didn’t think would ever actually hold anything, a candelabra, and a mannequin without its head swathed in something that looked like a white lace tablecloth. The other window held a small penny-farthing type gold-painted bike and more pretty boxes and a ladder climbing nowhere but up the window—one of those old wooden ones like Nanna Irma used to use when she picked fruit out of the mulberry tree.
It was cooler in the store than in the early afternoon December heat, with a step down onto a plush green carpet that smothered the sound of their steps. The owner glanced up, held his gaze, and smiled.
‘No Christmas carols?’ Brix said to her.
‘Not in my shop. They’re banned.’
‘Good for you. I’m all carolled out.’
‘I’m still carolled out from last Christmas,’ she said.
Jaydah prowled the store with a little more interest, checking some crystal-covered boxes and picking up a lampshade with a black base.
‘Can I help you at all, or are you okay browsing?’ the shop owner said.
‘We’re fine—’ Jaydah began before Brix cut her off. ‘A friend of mine said you have some nice rings here.’
‘We do.’ She left the counter and bustled across to a shelf, bringing with her the scent of the incense she’d been burning. Brown sugar. Vanilla. She was a biggish woman, hips swinging under a bright green dress, and she looked happy in her skin. He liked her.
Jaydah trailed them, drawing up to Brix’s left shoulder as the shop’s owner unlocked the glass cabinet and stepped back.
A silver ring with twin rivers of blue stone—some opal maybe?—caught Brix’s eye as if he’d been a bowerbird.
Jaydah’s silky hair tumbled over her arm as she leaned closer into the shelf and raised her hands to pick up the tiny box. She’d grabbed the same ring he’d seen.
‘What’s the stone in this one?’ she asked.
‘It’s an opal,’ the lady said.
‘I love the colour. Is the band silver?’ Delicately, Jaydah picked the ring from its cushion, twisting it in the light.
‘It’s white gold,’ the lady said.
‘Can you tell us something about it?’
‘Well … I found it in Darwin when I was up there in November. I went to an eco-friendly candle-making exhibition there.’
‘Do you make candles?’ Brix asked.
‘Me? No! I was up there on a cruise,’ she said. ‘The candles were at a stand at the Twilight Markets.’
‘So you found the ring at the market?’ Jaydah said, and she moved to put it back because she’d already seen the price, and so had he. It was hard to miss the way the black writing bobbed about on the price tag and even though he thought the ring was Jaydah’s style, he wasn’t paying that much for something made by a candlemaker at a Darwin market.
‘No! Sorry, I’m not telling the story very well, obviously.’
They blinked at her but said nothing and the store owner started again.
‘I went to the candle-making exhibition and I got talking with this lady who’d come to the conference from Tasmania. She sells her candles at the Salamanca Markets.’ She glanced between Jaydah and him expectantly.
‘I’ve heard of them,’ Brix said, because it seemed she wasn’t saying anything more without some type of acknowledgement about the markets. They must be a big deal.
‘So she had the ring with her, and she was on the way to a jeweller in Darwin, which is where the ring was made originally.’
‘Right,’ Brix said. This was turning into a long story.
‘Turns out her son proposed to his girlfriend at the Crocodile Park in Litchfield National Park earlier in the year. She said yes, and they bought the ring. But when they got all the way back to Tassie—they travelled in a four-wheel-drive and a tent the whole way, would you believe,’ she leaned in conspiratorially. ‘Just quietly, I think that might have been the problem. There’s nothing like six months in a tent to work out if you’re meant for each other or not. Anyway, apparently by the time they got all the way back to Tasmania, the girl didn’t want to marry him anymore. She wouldn’t even get on the ferry in Melbourne. She said Tasmania was too small and she gave him back the ring.’
‘Jesus, the poor bloke,’ Brix said. ‘So the ring got back to Darwin with the candlemaker lady.’
‘Yes!’ The store owner beamed. ‘I only saw it because I bought a candle and she had the ring in her money pouch and when she pulled out my change the ring fell out on the table. I saw it straight away and I thought it was stunning. I commented on it, and she told me the story. She was going to take it back to the jeweller the next day and see if they’d buy it back. She figured they’d know exactly the quality, you know?’
‘I know,’ Brix murmured.
‘I had a feeling about it, and I always follow my gut. I said to her that if I met her at the jeweller’s and paid her the same as what the original jeweller offered her, would that be okay and would she sell it to me?’
Jaydah slipped the ring on her finger, testing the size.
‘Maybe it’s because the colour is so much like the oceans around here. Just such a clear aquamarine. I was sure that the perfect couple would walk in one day and just see it and love it. That’s why I wanted it.’
The ring really was pretty. The blue gave it a cold fire that suited JT, and the double white-gold band twined through the blue gave it strength.
Jaydah held her hand to the light, making the blue fire dance. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think it’s you,’ he said simply. ‘And I think we should buy it.’