Sighing softly, she made her way to the driver’s side and got in, clipped up her seatbelt, and pushed the start button. Her passenger was still fiddling with his seatbelt and the warning alarm on the dashboard began to ping. It would increase in volume and intensity with each passing second if she moved the car an inch, so she sat and waited.
‘It’s an awkward one,’ she finally said, leaning across him, taking the seatbelt from his hands, and clicking the latch plate into the buckle. ‘There. All done. Which way?’
‘I could’ve done it.’
‘Yes. But you’re in a hurry, remember. So…?’
‘Humph! That way.’ He used his thumb to point behind him over his shoulder. ‘You need to turn the car around. Look out for traffic. And don’t go speeding. I might be in a hurry, but I’d like to get there alive.’
Lara was in the middle of a three-point-turn but that last comment made her stomp her foot on the brake and she clenched the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white.
‘What’s the problem now?’ he moaned.
Lara sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes tight for a second before slowly turning her head to look at him.
‘My parents died in a road traffic accident on my sixteenth birthday, so if you don’t mind, I’d rather you didn’t make comments like that.’
His jaw dropped ever so slightly but he quickly snapped it shut and then he studied her face for a second or two until she looked away.
‘How was I supposed to know?’ he mumbled. ‘But I’m sorry for your loss. When you said they were dead, I didn’t realise…’ He coughed loudly. ‘Well. Not much I can say, is there? No fool like an old fool. They say time heals, but it doesn’t, does it? I lost my darling wife, Bonnie ten years ago, and it still cuts like a knife.Anniversaries and birthdays are the worst. And Christmas. Used to love it. Now I hate it. What about you?’
‘What?’ Lara glanced at him trying to comprehend the change in his demeanour.
‘What hurts the most?’
‘All of it. It’s been almost fourteen years but sometimes it feels like yesterday. I still want to call them and tell them when something good or bad happens. I can think of them and smile, most of the time now, but you’re right about the knife. It stabs you in the heart when you least expect it.’
‘Like just now.’ He screwed up his face with an expression of regret.
‘Yes. Like just now.’
Each of them sat in silence for a moment.
‘Might be wise to move your car,’ he whispered.
Lara took a deep breath and continued the manoeuvre.
‘Your birthday must be difficult,’ he said, as soon as she was heading back in the direction from which she came.
Lara’s laugh was mirthless. ‘I don’t celebrate it. I try to forget it’s happening. I do everything I can to find a distraction.’
‘When is it?’
‘A few weeks away.’
He nodded sagely. ‘That explains it.’
‘Explains what?’ she asked, shifting in her seat.
‘The cottage.’
‘The cottage?’
‘Why you bought it without seeing it. But why this one?’
She sucked in a breath. ‘My parents and I came to Bluewater Bay for a holiday in the last two weeks of August. Two months before they died.’
‘Ah. I see. Then I wish you well.’
