GIAN DI LUZIO and Kit McConnell were getting married this afternoon. Pete had cleared his schedule as far as possible, but there was always the danger of running behind and finishing late.
His senior receptionist, Angela Meredith, had already presented him with a couple of patients she thought he would want to squeeze in, and she’d been right. Angela had good diagnostic instincts. He saw one of the squeeze-ins and sent the man straight off to hospital with suspected heart trouble, then had to spend longer than scheduled on another patient, whom he’d wrongly anticipated would be routine.
The waiting room looked more crowded every time he went out to pick up his next file. Then came a few easy cases. The three-year-old with the rash didn’t have impetigo. Forty-five-year-old Sarah Lessing’s mole did look nasty, but only because it had got scratched recently. It didn’t need a biopsy. Next, a middle trimester prenatal visit took just a few minutes.
The waiting room didn’t look so frightening any more. Then Angela’s alert diagnostic instincts came into play once again and she intercepted him, with her hand held over the mouthpiece of the phone, before he called in his next patient.
‘Claire,’ was all she said, in the carefully neutral undertone she always used for his ex-wife now.
Claire often phoned him at the surgery, and almost always on the subject of the girls, but she usually picked her moments better than this. She usually needed time to talk, too, or she wanted to get out of a prearranged interval with the girls.
‘I can’t take them this weekend after all,’ the story would go. ‘Can they stay on with you? Mum’s got a gastric upset, and the real-estate agent has scheduled three sets of people to come through the house.’
She’d put their marital home on the market and applied for a full-time course in Canberra. He hadn’t come to terms with this last reality yet—that Jessie and Zoe would be living four hours’ drive away in just a few months’ time. Instead, he had put off any concrete plan for a move of his own, and always agreed at once to any proposed change of plan for the day, only too glad to spend more precious hours with his daughters and avoid yet another packing of their well-travelled overnight bags.
This phone call today, when he had a good friend’s wedding to attend a few hours from now, was one of the few occasions when he wouldn’t welcome taking the girls.
‘I’ll take it inside,’ he told Angela, and she nodded and switched the call through to the phone in his office.
‘Help, Pete!’ Claire squealed into the phone as soon as he spoke her name. ‘Zoe fell off the climbing set and she’s done something to her arm.’
‘Broken?’
‘I—I don’t know. She’s just holding it against her body and crying. She won’t show me. I think it must be, but I can’t see, and I’m all shaky.’
‘Can you drive?’
‘Yes. Yes, I can do that.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I have to calm down a bit, don’t I?’
‘Bring her in, and I’ll take a look.’
‘It was all my fault. I wasn’t—’
‘Don’t think about that now. Just get here as soon as you can.’ He looked at his watch. A quarter to four. If she hadn’t got around to making Jessie and Zoe an afternoon snack yet, and that was likely…‘Grab a couple of muesli bars for them, Claire.’
‘I don’t think I have any.’
‘Something, then. Something quick. Cheese sticks? Banana? Cake?’
‘I—OK. Yes. There must be something.’
‘Something quick,’ he repeated, then could feel her getting frazzled down the phone. She didn’t think ahead, and then panicked at small, practical suggestions like this. He shouldn’t have said anything. He almost barked at her, Forget it! But he didn’t want her to feel inadequate, so he told her more gently instead, ‘If you don’t have anything to hand, don’t worry. Just come straight in.’
He fitted in two more patients between ending the call and seeing Claire and the girls walk through the door. Jessie had a big bag of corn chips in her hand, and was feeding the odd one to Zoe, in between swallowing handfuls of them herself. Zoe obviously felt too miserable to be hungry.
As Claire had said, she cradled her arm against her body like an injured animal, and still had tears of pain running down her face. Pretty convinced that the arm was indeed broken, Pete took all three of them straight into his office.
‘Now, where does it hurt, darling?’ he asked.
He expected her to point to an area between wrist and elbow, where most children’s arm fractures occurred, but instead she touched her shoulder. ‘Up the top,’ she said.
The humerus? An unusual break. It would need the confirmation of an X-ray, but even if it was broken, this particular kind of fracture couldn’t be put in a cast, short of encasing Zoe’s entire shoulder and half her chest in plaster.
A broken humerus could be an indication of non-accidental injury. He didn’t suspect that in this case, and wouldn’t have believed it without absolute proof, but he had to ask. ‘How exactly did it happen, Zoe?’
‘I was playing on the climbing set.’
‘In the garden at Mummy’s?’ He knew Claire’s answer to this already, of course.
‘Yes.’ Zoe nodded. ‘And my foot got caught when I jumped down, and I was hanging, then I fell on my arm.’
He felt a wash of relief that he fought to keep from showing. He hadn’t suspected Claire. She could be vague and diffident and disorganised with the children, yes, but never cruel or hot-tempered. All the same, Zoe’s convincingly clear-eyed and simple account, so different from the coached and rehearsed stories he’d heard from frightened abused children a couple of times in his career, took away a terrible, illogical fear.
‘It’s all my fault,’ Claire said.
He touched her arm. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t.’
‘I was inside the house, talking on the phone. I wasn’t watching them.’
‘You can’t sit and stare at them constantly while they play, at their age. The garden’s safe from any obvious dangers. This was just one of those things. You’ll have to take her up to the radiology clinic across from the hospital for an X-ray, but I’m going to go with what I suspect and put it in a sling now. That’ll ease the pain, and I’ll give her some paracetamol as well.’
He looked at Claire. She was shaky and pale.
‘Angela will make you some tea. Jess, do you want to watch me make a sling for Zoe’s arm, or will you go and play toys in the waiting room?’
‘I’ll sit with her,’ Claire said promptly. She just didn’t function well in this kind of situation.
Zoe had stopped crying. ‘Is it not hurting so much now?’ he asked her.
‘Not so much,’ she answered.
‘That’s because you’re holding it nice and still, and the sling and the medicine will help, too.’
‘Will I have to have an injection?’
‘No, sweetheart, and the X-ray won’t hurt either.’
He drew up a dose of liquid paracetamol in a plastic syringe and Zoe sat obediently still while he squirted it into her mouth. It had a strawberry flavour, and most children liked it enough to refrain from fighting and spitting it out.
He buzzed through to Angela, and asked her to make Claire some tea, with milk and sugar, then folded a big square of gauze into a firm sling and gave Zoe an orange lollipop from the secret stash of bravery awards in his desk, kept for just such occasions as this.
He sent her out to lick it in the waiting room, while she watched her sister play. She had become much more cheerful already.
Meanwhile, Angela had her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone again, and that this-is-a-call-you’ll-want-to-hear-about look on her face.
All right, what now? The waiting room had begun to resemble a peak-hour city train station again.
‘Hit me with it, Angela,’ he said. ‘What emergency is this?’
‘No, you’ll like this one,’ she answered. ‘It’s Rebecca Childer. Alethea is home from Royal Children’s, and doing well.’
‘That’s great!’
‘Rebecca is wondering if you’d like to see the baby this afternoon if she brings her in. Apparently you’d told her ages ago that you wanted to see her as soon as they got back. She sounds…’ Angela searched for the right word ‘…keen.’
‘Does she?’ He caught his receptionist’s sub-text. Don’t say no. ‘Tell her, yes, I’d love to see Alethea.’
Only I’d rather it wasn’t this afternoon.
Angela smiled, satisfied. Just who was in charge here, anyway? Pete wondered briefly.
‘Claire, can we talk?’ he said to his ex-wife, and she must have read an ominous meaning into his words which he hadn’t intended, because her face went tight and her nod was a jerk of tension, as if she were a puppet and an unseen hand had just pulled a string.
When the two of them were shut in his office, he tried to stay positive and reassuring, but he had that crowded waiting room out there, and Rebecca on her way in with her fragile little heroine. He just didn’t have a lot of time for this.
‘Now, they’ll have to take the sling off again for the X-ray, of course,’ he said. ‘I’ve written out the form, and booked her in. Four-fifteen, which is…’ he looked at his watch again ‘…soon. But at this time of day, they’re probably running a bit late.’
Aren’t we all?
‘They’ll help you put the sling back on,’ he continued, ‘but you may have trouble with it over the next few days. Kids can’t keep still. It’ll work loose, or something. You can buy shaped slings at the pharmacy, and I’d suggest doing that today, because you’re bound to need it. You can also pick up some over-the-counter pain medicine that’s a little stronger than what you’d have at home. Talk to the pharmacist.’
Nothing too onerous in any of that, he thought, and looked at her, waiting for a nod, or a question, or—
‘I can’t do this, Pete,’ she said.
‘Yes, you can,’ he coached her patiently. ‘She’s stopped crying. She’s OK.’
‘No. I mean all of it.’ She waved her hands. ‘I’m not good with them. I never was. I’m supposed to be, because mothers just are, and I’ve been trying. I kept thinking if we could sort out our marriage, at least you were around, too, but we couldn’t manage that in the end and—Today seems like the last straw. I hate this! How terrible would it be if I don’t take them to Canberra with me when I move? If I left them here with you?’
Her face was tight, pleading for reassurance and agreement. Her hands were screwed up so tight that her nails had to be gouging into her palms, and her knuckles were white. It had cost her so much to say this, and to understand her own feelings in the first place.
How terrible would it be?
A sudden crystal clear light flooded the whole landscape of Pete’s life. His marriage. Claire. The girls. His agonised sense, lately, that he ought to move to Canberra, too. His failed attempt at a relationship with Emma, which still ate at him every time they met.
And he thought, Of course! Is this why it’s been so hard for Claire to come up with a consistent plan? It is! This has been a huge part of the problem all along! She’d been impossibly torn between what she thought she should feel, and what she really did feel, and she hadn’t been able to admit it, even to herself.
‘It wouldn’t be terrible, Claire,’ he answered, his voice rough with urgent sincerity. ‘It’s probably the best decision you could make, the absolute best, and a courageous one, too.’
‘I want to see them, have them for holiday visits, phone them and send them presents and put their paintings on my fridge and boast about them to my friends and all of that,’ she answered, fast and shaky, as if she still had to convince him. ‘But I just can’t have them. I panic. I do it wrong. I’m not good for them, and they’re not good for me in the long run. They need to live here, with you.’ She blinked tears from her eyes.
‘We’ll talk about it some more when I’ve finished for the day,’ he told her gently. Mentally, he waved goodbye to Gian’s and Kit’s wedding, doubting he’d get there at all. ‘We’ll meet at your house and give them an early meal in front of a video while we get the practical stuff sorted out. I think this is the best decision you’ve made, Claire, and I support it fully.’
‘I just couldn’t admit it to myself.’
‘Because mothers aren’t supposed to feel that way. Mothers cop too much flak!’
‘Half the time from themselves!’
‘Things are going to seem clearer for both of us now.’
‘Tell me again about what I have to ask for at the pharmacy. Write it down.’
‘No, tell you what, I’ll phone Trevor White—you know, the pharmacy in Hill Street, on the way to your place—and he’ll have the right sling and the right medicine ready for you when you get there.’
‘Thanks, Pete. Thanks for everything.’
Claire and the girls left for the radiology clinic. Pete saw another patient, and then a series of cooing exclamations just beyond his office door told him that Rebecca and her baby had arrived. He went out, and the first person he saw in his waiting room was Emma.
She hadn’t caught sight of him yet, because she was too busy cooing at the baby in Rebecca Childer’s arms, but Angela met him with a beaming smile.
‘You’ve organised quite a reunion,’ he drawled at her.
He wasn’t angry. Not really. But he’d geared himself up for seeing Emma at the wedding, not here. Claire had just dropped a bombshell on him which they hadn’t had time to talk through, and he probably wasn’t going to make it to the wedding now. It left him feeling…out of step somehow.
He hadn’t even glimpsed Emma this week, hadn’t spoken to her at any length since Lachlan Hancock’s birth, and didn’t want an unsatisfactory five minutes with her now. He wanted much more, or he wanted nothing. He thought, without having time to think, that Claire’s decision might have opened a whole new world of possibilities, but did Emma still want any of them, after more than six weeks of awkwardness and silence? And was he at the point where he could ask?
He didn’t want to get this wrong. The time they’d spent together weeks ago no longer seemed quite real, after the distance and sense of failure that they’d endured since.
‘Yes, well, Susan brought Rebecca and Alethea in, of course, so she’s here,’ Angela said. ‘And then Rebecca had said to me over the phone that if any of Alethea’s nurses wanted to see her and were around, she’d love them to come in, too. I didn’t want to disturb you again, and I was sure you wouldn’t mind, so I made a couple of calls, and here we are.’
She waved an arm around and he saw Sue North and Jane Cameron as well, flanking Emma on each side, although he hadn’t even glimpsed them till Angela had mentioned ‘nurses’.
‘Nell Cassidy’s still caught up at the hospital, unfortunately, although I did phone her, too,’ Angela added.
‘Dr Croft!’ Rebecca exclaimed, and Emma looked up at once, giving him an uncertain smile that caught at his heart and tore strips off it. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d moved on in her heart. He’d given her so little—so little shared time to remember, so little of the future to count on.
He came forward, pretending that Alethea was his only focus. ‘Is this our little trouper?’
‘Would you have recognised her?’ Rebecca asked, grinning. She held the baby out to him, and he took her carefully into his arms.
‘No, I wouldn’t!’ he said.
Still small for her age, Alethea nonetheless looked like a real baby now, her bones healthily covered in baby fat. At just over three months, and the veteran of two major operations, each lasting hours and involving, he guessed, around eight or ten highly qualified people, she was awake and alert and smiling.
This was that delightful stage he remembered Jessie and Zoe going through, when a baby’s heart belonged to the whole world, and she’d smile at everyone in sight. Alethea had a little fuzz of golden hair beginning to grow, and plump cheeks as smooth and soft and pink as strawberry ice cream, and Rebecca was obviously intensely proud of her.
Also, to be honest, she’d grown used to the attention and the praise for her little heroine. Well, anyone who’d been through what she had deserved to glow and gloat.
‘She’s gorgeous. She’s fabulous,’ he told her truthfully.
‘She is, Rebecca,’ Emma murmured.
Pete held the baby, and the crowd of interested onlookers pressed Emma close against him. She felt the fuzz of hair on his forearm tickling her own bare skin, and the aura of warmth and strength he so unconsciously and effortlessly gave off.
‘She gave us a terrible scare, and she got her picture in several newspapers,’ he said, smiling down at the baby, ‘But we’ve forgiven all that now, haven’t we, cutie, because you’re doing so well!’
Emma tried to focus on the baby. Alethea did her best to be fascinating. She waved her little arms. She dribbled a little from those pink lips with their pale sucking blisters still apparent. She smiled again.
But all I’m really thinking about is Pete.
He had that soft, smiling expression on his face that good men got when they looked at babies, and he radiated a certain pride and satisfaction, too. He’d earned this right, since he’d played such an important part in the successful diagnosis of Alethea’s heart condition.
In the weeks Emma had seen so little of him she’d forgotten…foolishly forgotten…just what an overwhelming effect he had on her. Just how easily his smile made her heart turn over. Just how much she wanted to touch him, hold him, feel the gift of his body heat wrapped around her, and hear the dark lick of his voice speaking words meant only for her.
She knew she would see him at the wedding tonight, but perhaps she shouldn’t have responded to Angela Meredith’s phone call just now. It was too hard to see him like this! She could easily have pretended another commitment.
Another patient arrived. Even allowing for those who were here to see Pete’s practice partner, Lauren Dempsey, the place was crowded. Pete must be running behind. The wedding was at six, and he was obviously also thinking about how time was passing. He held the baby for another minute, then said to Rebecca and her mother, ‘If you have any questions or concerns, please, don’t wait. Get on the phone straight away. Even if it seems like just a sniffle or a degree of fever.’
‘I will, I promise. Are these all your patients waiting, Dr Croft?’ Rebecca asked him.
‘Not all of them. But if I don’t call the next one in soon, they’ll switch doctors and I’ll have none! I’d better let you get her home.’
He handed the baby back to her carefully, looked at his watch, then looked at Emma. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. He took in a breath, and she waited. She didn’t want much. Just a word or two. If he’d been about to say something to her, however, he must have changed his mind. Instead, he turned to the reception desk to pick up his next file.
Sue asked Emma if she wanted to go for a quick coffee, but Emma said no. It took considerable time and effort to do justice to the Paris dress.
And all of it is for Pete, she realised, not for Kit and Gian, as it should be. Which is probably crazy and doomed to disaster, because he didn’t say a word about the wedding, or anything else.
Gian and Kit had chosen the rose garden at Kingsford Mill for their ceremony and the large function room there for their reception. At this time of year, a six o’clock garden wedding meant balmy temperatures and late golden sunshine and flowers in bloom. Emma had seated herself with the other guests in time to see Gian striding into position, looking rather on edge and flanked by his brother Marco as best man.
Neither had Pete, but his presence wasn’t crucial to the event, and Emma tried not to dwell on the fact of his absence. He’d get here soon. How she’d deal with it, she didn’t know.
A white car pulled up at the kerb, and here was the bride, with her father to walk her across the grass to the arch of climbing yellow roses where Gian stood, her mother waiting to fuss over her dress and Bonnie to act as an endearingly confused and exuberant flower girl.
Kit looked fabulous, and Gian seemed hardly able to breathe as he gazed at her. Nell sniffled into a handkerchief and muttered darkly about how silly it was to react this way and when would she learn a little good sense? Caroline luxuriated in her teary state, enjoying every second of it, but in between the two of them, Emma stayed dry-eyed.
This lovely wedding didn’t make her want to cry, it just settled a hard, hopeless lump deep in her throat, and she hated the way she felt. What, couldn’t she enjoy her friend’s happiness, purely because one other guest was late?
The civil marriage celebrant pronounced Gian and Kit to be man and wife, and they signed the register. Uniformed waiters served cocktails on the terrace while the bridal couple and their immediate family posed for photographs against the background of blooming roses.
No Pete.
Emma talked to Caroline and Nell and some of the other guests. Caroline’s son brought his mother a glass of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray and earned a fond squeeze. ‘I’d rather you didn’t do that in public, Mum,’ he told her.
‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ she said. ‘If only there were more men like him!’
‘You can give that stuff a rest, too,’ he growled, but he was grinning with an endearing mix of awkwardness and pride at the same time.
Everyone moved inside, where a band had begun to play. The three-course meal came in stages, with breaks for dancing, speeches and toasts. The extensive Italian contingent refused to allow this to be a staid occasion. If the atmosphere even hinted that it might fall flat, forks began to tap insistently against glasses, a signal to the bride and groom that they were expected to kiss, and they happily obliged.
No Pete.
Emma knew he wasn’t on call. She’d heard his practice partner saying something to Angela about covering this weekend. So why wasn’t he here? Kit and Gian must have noticed. They’d probably said something to each other about it. Or perhaps he’d phoned Gian with an explanation. She wasn’t going to ask.
He’d looked at her this afternoon in his waiting room. He’d been about to speak. And then he hadn’t. Now he wasn’t here. No reason to think his absence was anything to do with her. No reason to assume she was that significant in his life any more. Maybe this was why his absence hurt so much. Because she wasn’t involved.
The cake arrived, wheeled in on a trolley draped in pristine white cloth. The two-tiered construction was covered in rolled fondant icing and decorated in dark pink ribbon and delicate lace patterns of palest rose. The white satin bow on the knife handle almost hid Kit’s hand, and when Gian closed his hand on top, their two sets of fingers made a seamless whole. They pressed down on the knife, and everybody clapped and cheered.
Including Pete.
When had he appeared? Just now, as far as Emma was concerned. He stood on the opposite side of the room, and if he’d seen her, he wasn’t looking at her at this moment. She flushed at once from head to toe, and wished she had Caroline and Nell here for camouflage. No, for protection. But they’d moved closer to Kit and Gian, and were talking to Kit’s parents.
Now he’d seen her. The band had begun to play again, and couples crowded onto the floor. Pete moved in her direction, his intent so apparent and strong that he only narrowly avoided several collisions with the dancers. Unconsciously, Emma moved toward him, so that when he reached her she was on the dance floor, too.
‘Where have you been?’ she blurted, unnerved by the way his gaze had fixed on her.
‘With Claire.’
Her heart sank. Always with Claire! And what had she been so foolishly hoping? That weddings were contagious, or something? That an expensive gown from Paris would get the perfect romantic scene that it deserved?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wanted to be here. I am here now, at least.’ His arms had wound around her, softening her will to resist. ‘It was important, though.’
‘It always is.’ The bitter phrase escaped her lips and soured the shape of her mouth, she could feel it.
‘We’ve solved things now.’ He began to pull her into a slow dance, although she scarcely realised she was moving. ‘We’ve realised what was wrong.’
‘You’re back together,’ she guessed aloud. She lifted her chin and nodded brightly, as if she’d been expecting this news, as if it didn’t tear her heart open with one agonising slash while her feet twittered to and fro, vaguely in time with his.
He froze.
‘No! Hell, no! Not that! I’ve realised…and Claire has, too…what was stopping us from making any progress with decisions about custody, that’s all. All?’ He repeated the word. ‘It was getting in the way of everything, Emma, and the fact that we’ve dealt with it now, and understood it…’
‘I don’t understand, Pete. You’ll have to…’ she took a jagged, painful breath, and tried to laugh ‘…speak slowly and in monosyllables, or something. I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘She didn’t want the girls. That was the problem. She thought she ought to want them, and have them with her, because mothers are supposed to, but she was terrified of it. Zoe broke her arm this afternoon, you see…’
‘Oh, no!’
‘She’s fine. But something suddenly clicked for Claire when she found herself handling the accident so badly, and she understood what’s been tearing her up all along. She couldn’t handle the girls, so she kept reaching out to me, wanting me in her life in some way to take the pressure off. As soon as she could finally admit it, to herself and to me, the solution was clear. The girls will stay with me, full time and permanently.’
‘You won’t move?’ Emma blurted.
‘I won’t move. Claire will have them to visit in the holidays, of course, and come and see them for the occasional weekend, but she won’t have them with her for any length of time. She never wanted our marriage, not really, even from the beginning. She just wanted me because she was terrified of being a parent alone.’
‘That’s great, Pete, to get it settled, and to understand,’ Emma told him, because she knew it was.
He’d been hoping for this for so long—a permanent, workable solution that didn’t hurt his darling girls. And she could see in his face how much it meant to him. There was a new clarity in his golden-brown eyes, and the tight little knots at his temples and around his mouth, which she’d thought were a permanent part of the shape of his face, had softened out of existence.
He looked several years younger, and yet at the same time even stronger and more mature. He looked like a man who had the hope of happiness, and who knew he’d earned it…
Until he frowned.
‘I won’t blame you, though, if you think this has all come too late,’ he said.
‘Too late?’
‘For us, Emma.’ Pete searched her face. ‘It’s been a mess. Terrible timing. Other priorities. I shouldn’t have pretended we were just friends. That was a mistake.’
‘I pretended it just as much.’
‘I was the one who blew the illusion out of the water at the wrong time.’
‘Claire’s visit spooked me,’ she admitted. ‘A lot of things spooked me. It always seemed that you were finding it too hard to get out of each other’s lives, and I wondered if that meant there was something left between you after all, much more than you admitted.’
‘No. It was only ever the girls. Only Claire’s ambivalence, and then the shock of her illness. I’ve been very clear in my feelings for a long time. First, that our marriage was a mistake from the beginning. And lately…’ He stopped speaking, and his dance steps slowed.
The band began to play ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ at a seductively slow tempo, with the lead singer wringing every drop of poignant emotion from the words. Several feet from them, Nell suddenly exclaimed, ‘Oh, God!’ in a choked voice. ‘They’d have to play this, of all things, wouldn’t they?’
‘Nell?’ Emma said. She remembered that Nell had always had problems with this song, but typically she had never explained why.
‘Leave me alone! This is my problem. Stupid ghosts from the past. Get on with it, you two.’ She gave them a pained, upside-down smile. ‘I mean it!’ She turned abruptly and headed in the direction of the ladies’ room.
‘Does she?’ Pete murmured. ‘Mean it, I mean.’
‘In that tone, yes.’
‘I’ve always liked this song, actually,’ Pete said. His arms tightened around Emma, and he’d stopped even pretending to dance. He was only swaying, and holding her. ‘Covers how I’ve been feeling lately, too. So clear, and so simple. No sunshine when you’re gone, Emma. That lovely warmth. That heat.’ His mouth brushed hers, making her pulses leap instantly. ‘All the sunshine when we’re together, and none of it when you’re gone. And I want the sunshine. I want you in this dress. Wanted it the day I first saw it. I want you out of it, too. And I can offer it now. I can offer you everything you deserve. My heart. My life. My girls to love. If you’re still interested, that is.’
‘Oh, I’m interested,’ Emma said. ‘I’m fascinated. I’m eager and ready and—I love you, Pete.’
‘I love you, too. Feel what it’s doing to me just to say it.’ She could. He was holding every muscle so tight he was almost shaking. ‘I love you, Emma.’ He kissed her sweetly, not caring if anyone was looking on. ‘I can’t ask you to marry me yet. It wouldn’t be fair. It’s too soon, and we both need time. But I’m giving you fair warning.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Oh, yes! Somewhere a few months down the track, when you least expect it, probably at sunset, I’m going to produce a big bunch of roses and go down on my knees and—’
‘Could there be a red Ferrari involved as well, perhaps?’ Emma suggested, hugely encouraged by the mention of roses and sunset.
‘A red Ferrari?’
‘Roaring up my driveway, with you at the wheel.’
‘Oh, there could, yes,’ he agreed.
‘Drowning out the sound of the violins on my stereo.’
‘I’m really getting the picture now. There definitely could.’
‘And it might even just happen that I’m wearing this dress.’
‘OK, now you’re cheating. I can arrange the red Ferrari—I’m sure there’ll be a luxury car rental place in Sydney that handles them—but I can’t arrange this dress without tipping you off as to my intentions.’
‘Never mind,’ Emma said. ‘Just kiss me, and we’ll worry about the rest of it later.’
Two months later, as it turned out, on a hot February Friday, just as the sun had sunk to the horizon and a cool evening breeze had freshened the air. Emma stood on her front lawn, wondering why the sprinkler hadn’t come on when she’d turned the tap. Looking along the hose, she found a kink, and heard, at the same moment, the throaty growl of an expensive car cruising down her street.
Not yet having correctly identified the sound, she glanced up, pulling the hose in her hands to straighten the kink. Water filled the air around her as the sprinkler spurted into action, drenching her at once and making rainbows of misty spray in the air, just as she caught sight of the car.
Red. Open-topped. Loud. With the familiar shape of a particular man at the wheel, and two little girls shrieking in excitement in the back seat.
With her wet coral pink T-shirt and black bike shorts clinging closer to her body than her Paris dress, Emma began to laugh.
Her future had just roared into the driveway.