Sweet Wattle Creek, 1986
It seemed impossible that there was only one week to go to the big day—the Centenary of Sweet Wattle Creek.
The anticipation I’d been feeling leading up to the event seemed to have taken a dive. Or maybe it had just dropped down to a faint simmer, like a pot that has gone off the boil. I was tired, and I’d had a cold that had put me in bed for a couple of days. There was so much to do with the Herald, and Tim needed me to work longer hours, and …
Oh, I had plenty of excuses.
It was true though, that over the past days, there’d been more than enough work at the Herald for even the worst of workaholics. With a real-life celebrity coming to boost sales, Tim had pulled out all the stops. As well as the normal day-to-day running of the paper, he’d been working late at night, trying to get Bill Shaw’s ‘Recollections’ ready for publication. As he said, it seemed the perfect time to launch them into the world, and I knew he felt he owed Bill for bequeathing him the business.
I’d reminded him to pass on anything he found about Belle or the wedding dress, but I had my doubts that in his current sleep-deprived state he’d remember.
At least the baby was finally beginning to settle into a routine. Just as well, with Maureen busy too, getting her cafe ready for the influx of tourists. Dillon and I, with help from Christy, had taken on babysitting duties when we could.
My son and Christy seemed to spend a lot of time together doing homework or watching tellie. Dillon said her boyfriend had dumped her and he was standing in until she found another. From the looks I’d caught Christy giving him, I wondered if he really was just a stand-in. Anyway, I had decided I wasn’t going to worry.
I was too busy to worry. I’d written the article about the wedding dress, using all we’d found out since the morning the cardboard box appeared on my doorstep. I knew it wasn’t the complete story, but we weren’t going to discover anything more before deadline.
‘This is great!’ Tim was very complimentary when he read it. ‘You’ve really tugged my heartstrings. I want to offer it to some of the nationals. What do you say?’
He was grinning. My surprise turned to a sense of pride for a job well done, but a heartbeat later I was in a panic. What if Walter saw it? What if he came looking for us? I talked myself down. My name was different. He wouldn’t, couldn’t know.
‘Soph?’
I forced a laugh. ‘It’s okay. I just … thank you, Tim, that would be … Do you really think they’ll want it?’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Want it? Let me see. Young soldier dies on the Western Front and the dress his fiancée was to wear at their wedding, made by a famous couturier, who is also his mother, turns up in a country town, where his fiancée is forced to relocate after her father kills himself during the Depression. Not to mention Miss Gwendolyn South’s involvement. I think we’re pretty safe they’ll want it, Soph.’
I laughed again, properly this time.
‘Good publicity for the book,’ he added, as he walked away.
I opened my mouth, closed it again. I’d pushed the book idea to the back of my mind. It would never happen, I knew that now. It had only been a fantasy.
Just as Ian had been a fantasy. A very persistent fantasy.
After trying to call me at work, or turning up and being told I was sick—which was true—or I was busy—which was also true but it hadn’t stopped me seeing him in the past—I’d hoped he’d get the message. It seemed not.
As I left the Herald, still walking on air after Tim’s praise, he bailed me up in the street.
‘I know what you’re doing.’ Ian’s voice came from behind me. He sounded pissed off and I didn’t blame him. I felt as if I’d been wounded, as if my heart had jumped out of its proper place and was flopping about like a landed fish. But I couldn’t dwell on that. So I straightened my shoulders and turned around to face him, telling myself that I had to be cold and heartless, for both our sakes.
Facing him was worse. The fish in my chest gave an almighty shudder. I had to squeeze my hands into fists to stop them reaching up to touch him.
He took a step closer and I swear his aftershave made me dizzy with longing. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ he repeated softly. ‘I didn’t think you were a coward, Sophie.’
That hurt but I let it go. He didn’t understand.
‘Do you really believe I would hurt you? I understand there’s something … someone. I’d be an idiot not to. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t ask questions, because I hoped there’d come a time when you’d trust me.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said dully, trying not to feel like that spy in a Cold War movie. ‘You’re wrong, Ian. I just … I don’t want a relationship. I told you that but you weren’t listening.’
His laugh was humourless. ‘Fool yourself if you want to,’ he said, ‘but don’t think you can fool me.’
He walked back the way he’d come, and he didn’t trip over a single thing, which made my heartache just that much more painful. I took a breath, and then another one, and turned. And very nearly ran into Dillon.
He’d just got off the bus and was still in his uniform, his satchel slung over one shoulder, books dangling precariously. He was watching me, but he looked down as soon as I caught his gaze. Without speaking, we began to walk together.
I didn’t want to talk about it, but I could sense him working up the courage to say his piece. It seemed cruel to cut him short, even when I knew what my answer was going to be.
‘Mum, are you sure? He seemed like a nice bloke, you know. He’d probably be okay.’ He made an awkward gesture. ‘I mean, if you told him about …’
‘And then what?’ I tried to sound calm and knowledgeable, and not like I was about to cry. ‘He starts to think we should go after Walter, and not hide. Because hiding is for cowards, right? Or he gets careless and Walter finds out, and then Walter hurts him. And then he hurts you and me.’
Dillon was silent.
‘It wouldn’t be fair. Ian is a nice bloke, and he deserves to find someone without a Walter hanging around their neck. If I’m mean to him now it’s going to save us all a lot of heartbreak in the future.’
‘If you say so,’ he muttered, sounding unconvinced. Maybe a year had been long enough for him to begin to forget what it had been like? Memories blur and fade. That was a good thing, too, as long as he remembered enough not to begin to get complacent. Because Walter was still out there, searching, and I knew it.
I accepted I was grieving for Ian and the relationship we might have had, in an ideal world. He and I together had seemed like a pretty good team as we worked towards our goal. Now, without him, I found I didn’t really have the same sense of dedication.
It wasn’t until I’d had to break away from him that I’d realised how deeply I’d invested in Ian and the possibilities he represented. I’d thought I was being so careful, so clever, and it was only now I understood how stupidly, how heavily I’d fallen.
* * *
‘Is this Sophie?’
The voice was familiar, the tone hard, as if I’d done something wrong. At first I struggled to place it. And then I recognised it. Miriam. I put on my business voice, light and upbeat.
‘Hi, Miriam. Are you ringing about the wedding dress? I sent you a copy of the article. Thank you so much for the information you supplied. I did a mention for you, and —’
She cut me dead. ‘What’s going on, Sophie? Ian says you won’t talk to him. I don’t consider that cool. I’m not often wrong about people and I thought you and he were pretty close, or could be.’
I reminded myself it had taken guts for her to call, even if it was none of her business. ‘He had no right to discuss me with you. There are reasons and … I’m sorry, Miriam, I can’t talk. I can’t.’ My voice broke and I held my breath, hoping she hadn’t noticed.
She had. Or at least she’d noticed something, because when she spoke again she sounded less aggressive. ‘I’m bringing the wedding dress up to Sweet Wattle Creek in the next few days. Can you talk then?’
‘It isn’t possible, Ian and me. Please don’t try to understand, Miriam. I wish I could tell you. I wish …’
I hung up, and stared at the wall. That went well, I thought with grim sarcasm. If there was anything designed to draw in a woman like Miriam I had set the trap perfectly. What now? Leave town?
It was an option, but the Centenary was upon us and I couldn’t walk out on Tim after all he’d done for me. And why should I run? I would just say ‘No’, and keep saying it, until they accepted I meant it.
And there was the problem. I felt the shift inside me, the betraying quiver of hope. And I knew then that whatever I was saying on the outside, inside it was a completely different country. Amazing how stupid I could be. How deluded. Because how could everything possibly turn out all right?
* * *
It had been a hellish day and I was glad to see home. My legs were aching and I remembered I hadn’t been running lately, not since I’d had the cold. I needed to be strong, I knew that, but I seemed to have lost some of my fight. I wanted to curl up into a ball and weep for myself and my lost happiness and all my dreams gone up in smoke.
My misery lifted a little as I reached our gate and I saw Dillon sitting on the front step with Smithy beside him, and Christy leaning against the wall behind him. It looked like a deputation. I even smiled. Like some old Western movie, with the sheriff and his deputy come to make an arrest. Complete with dog.
Smithy bounded up to me and I told him what a fine dog he was, and then he ran back to Dillon and licked his face. Dillon pushed him away, and it was so unlike him that I stopped dead on my way down the path. Christy met my eyes and pulled a face, and it was a warning.
‘What is it?’ I asked, and the fear in my voice made it tremble.
Dillon reached down and picked up the newspaper that was folded on the step beside him. He held it so tightly that I heard the paper tear, and then he thrust it out to me.
I took it very carefully.
‘I’m so sorry, Sophie.’ Christy’s voice came from far away, chock-full of misery. ‘I told Dad not to do it, that you wouldn’t like it, but he went ahead anyway.’
I was looking at my face on page four of one of the big national newspapers. It was right beside my story about the wedding dress, about Belle and Charlie. Tim had been true to his word about getting me into the dailies.
‘Can you tell … I mean, does it look like me?’ I asked stupidly.
Dillon’s expression said it all. The photograph was the one Tim had taken in the office while I was at my desk, catching me by surprise. I’d been positive it would be so bad no one would recognise me, but I’d been wrong. My hair might be dyed blonde instead of brown, but the short cut I’d stuck with as much as possible since I left Brisbane had grown out more than I’d realised, and was beginning to curl in the old way. I’d always loved my curls. I wasn’t wearing the closed expression I was used to seeing when I looked in the mirror. The wary look. And my face had begun to fill out again as I regained some lost weight, my cheeks softer and rounder, my lips fuller instead of a hard, straight line. There was no doubting it was me.
I swallowed the fear that was threatening to choke me and shook my head. ‘This doesn’t mean he’ll see it. It doesn’t mean he even cares. I’m sure it’ll be all right.’
‘It’s in all the newspapers, Mum. It’s in the Brisbane Courier.’
Smithy whined and wagged his tail, and even he had a worried expression. I sat down beside Dillon, giving Smithy’s ears a pull. I could feel Christy hovering behind me and the fact that she was there, that she knew, was something I didn’t want to go into just now. Although I knew I’d have to, and soon, but Christy knowing seemed small fry in the face of this disaster.
‘We’ll just have to deal with it,’ I said firmly, sounding as if I was in complete control. ‘If he comes … if he threatens us … we’ll just have to deal with him. We have friends here, Dillon. We’re safe here.’
‘We thought we were safe in Brisbane but we weren’t,’ he muttered. His face was tight and angry, and his eyes looked as if he was trying not to cry.
‘That was different.’
It sounded lame and he didn’t bother to answer.
I sucked in a breath. ‘Things are different now, Dillon. What happened before … it won’t happen again. If he comes then we’ll stand up to him.’
‘Mum, he’s dangerous,’ Dillon said, and his voice broke a moment before my heart. ‘He’ll kill us. He said he would and now he will.’
‘You need to call the police,’ Christy said, and she was sobbing, her pretty face almost ugly with fear and grief. ‘Sophie, you need to call them. Now!’