‘I could put some more on?’
I smile through the tears welling up in my eyes. ‘Yeah. Let’s do that.’
My camera stays on the floor where I left it. I don’t have the will or inclination to play with it now.
Chapter 25
I’m sitting on a yellow swing in a park full of purple and pink wildflowers. A black and white magpie is singing in the background and I sense that it’s early morning. I’m in a playground I recognise in the Adelaide hills, but it’s different. Not quite the same. I hear my husband walking through the grass behind me and I smile and turn my face up to the sun. And then he’s in front of me and I open my eyes to see Richard standing there, holding the hand of a little boy. My son. And he looks like Ben. I wake up with a start.
My family – minus Mum, of course – leave on Saturday afternoon. Richard and I see them off at the airport before heading to Nathan and Lucy’s for a drink before dinner. I’m glad of the distraction because I always feel morose when Dad and the girls fly home.
‘I’m so sad you’re leaving,’ I moan to Lucy. We’re sitting on the decked terrace in the back garden. The boys are inside talking shop.
‘Aah,’ Lucy says. ‘We’ll be back before you know it.’
‘Will this renovation really only take six months?’
‘Hopefully,’ she replies. ‘We’ll have to get cracking on it straight away. I can’t wait. Obviously I’ll miss you lot,’ she adds. ‘But it’ll be good to spend some time with my mum.’
I take a sip of my rosé and dig into the salted macadamia nuts. ‘Do you have many other friends over in the UK?’ I haven’t really spoken to Lucy much about her life on the other side of the world. I don’t know why. I guess it’s because I left it all behind.
‘I have a few,’ she says. ‘They live in London mostly, but I’m hoping they’ll come down occasionally to Somerset where we’ll be staying with my mum, and Nathan and I will get up to see them, too.’
‘Do you miss them?’
‘Of course. But you can’t have everything, can you? I chose Nathan, and everything else has a knock-on effect. We’re lucky that we can spend time in two countries.’
I vaguely remember knowing that Lucy had a boyfriend when she met Nathan. Now I’m curious about him. ‘Do you ever hear from your boyfriend before Nathan?’
‘James? No, not any more. He harassed me for a while after we broke up, but he had to call it quits after I found out more about the lies he’d been telling me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Screwing around with women, taking drugs . . . Loads of things, but they were the ones that bothered me the most. That, and the fact that so many people knew the truth about him, yet I’d been with him for years and was completely clueless. I felt so stupid. And the worst thing was, I didn’t find out everything at once. I used to hear dribs and drabs from people at his work and my work, since a friend of mine was going out with a colleague of his, and it was horrible – horrible! – not being able to get over him once and for all because some new shitty thing would always come along and make me feel like crap again. I know that no one likes to be the bearer of bad news, but I wish everyone had sat me down and told me everything they knew in one go.’ Her hazel eyes are sparking as she remembers.
‘That sucks,’ I murmur, knowing my words can never fully sum up the extent of her ex-boyfriend’s betrayal.
‘It all worked out for the best in the end.’
I smile. ‘It did. You and Nathan are perfect for each other.’
She laughs. ‘I wish someone could have told me that two years ago. On paper it looked like we were anything but!’
I stare at her, bemused.
‘James and I seemed like a match made in heaven, whereas Nathan’s two years younger than me, and when I met him he was a bit of a surf bum,’ she explains.
She glances inside and I follow her gaze to see Nathan and Richard huddled over some architectural plans around the coffee table.
We turn back and laugh at each other. ‘Not any more.’
‘I expect they’re looking at the plans for Somerset,’ Lucy muses, tucking her long chestnut hair behind her ears.
‘Do you like working with Nathan?’
‘I love it. Considering I thought my job in PR was the best job in the world, I should miss it more. Maybe if I didn’t get to do the odd freelance job I’d find it harder.’
Lucy’s old boss in London still gives her the occasional gig when she’s over there and she also put her in touch with some PR friends of hers in Sydney.
