Читать книгу Summer in Sydney - Fiona McArthur - Страница 21

IT WAS a row. Her first row in more than a decade. It was the one thing she tried to avoid and there was no one home so she fled to her room because that was what she did, Ruby realised.

Avoid ed.

Hid like a wounded cat and licked her wounds till she was ready to come out.

Except she didn’t want to come out to the wreckage she was surely creating.

To repeating A and E or to have thrown it in.

But how could she go back there now, after the way she had spoken to Cort?

He wasn’t or ever had been boring.

‘Men!’ Ellie stood at the door, already back from her date. Clearly the latest love of her life had been relegated to history, but unlike Ruby she wasn’t curled up on the bed because Ellie just moved on, determined to find the true love of her life.

Ruby had just lost it.

‘What happened with Cort?’

‘I said the most awful things …’ She told her friend some but not all of them.

‘It’s called a row,’ Ellie said, but it was far more than that.

‘I found out …’ But she couldn’t tell her, couldn’t reveal the part of Cort that he clearly didn’t want anyone to know, and round and round things went in her head, even after Ellie had gone to bed. When Jess came home, she tried talking to her too, but it was hard when she couldn’t tell her Cort’s truth.

‘I’m going to ring Adam.’ Giddy from way too little sleep, Ruby stood up.

Jess, of course, should have suggested she check the time difference, but Jess had an agenda of her own and gave a nod of encouragement, even went and got her the phone. Ruby dialled her brother’s number but, of course, got a recorded message.

‘You didn’t leave a message.’

‘What’s the point?’ Ruby said. ‘Adam won’t tell me anything. I’m going to bed.’

But ten minutes later she heard the phone ring and Jess laughing and talking, and because it was the landline that had rung she knew who it was.

‘It’s Adam,’ Jess said as she knocked on her door. ‘And he’s not best pleased—it’s four a.m. in South America apparently!’

‘Thanks,’ Ruby said when Jess hovered and rather reluctantly handed the phone then dragged herself out the door.

‘Do you ever look at the clock, Ruby?’ Adam asked, because she did this all the time.

‘No. Anyway, I never know where you are to work out the time difference.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Adam asked, because he could tell by her voice that something was.

‘Nothing,’ Ruby said. ‘I just need to ask you something. It’s just a friend of mine, well, she’s got mixed up with Cort Mason. Apparently you know him.’

‘And this friend wants to know more?’ Adam asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Nice guy,’ Adam said.

‘That’s it?’ Ruby said, and when Adam was less than forthcoming she pushed a little harder. ‘My friend knows about his wife.’

‘Really?’ Adam said. ‘I’m surprised he told her.’

‘He didn’t,’ Ruby said. ‘She found out.’

There was a long pause.

‘Adam, please.’

‘Is this for you, Ruby, or your friend?’

She paused, because Adam didn’t gossip, even to his sister. ‘Me,’ she finally said, and waited through the longest pause.

‘You and Cort?’ She heard the incredulity in his voice.

‘Please,’ Ruby said.

‘Okay, but there’s not much to tell. He took a job in Melbourne some years back. I think he worked at the Children’s Hospital and she was a paediatrician. I don’t know much, we just emailed now and then, just that there was an accident in Queensland on their honeymoon. Beth got a nasty head injury, it would be four or more years ago now. She ended up in a nursing home.’

‘And he moved to Sydney?’ She couldn’t believe he’d just leave her.

‘After a year or so—he’s always back there, visiting. Like I said, we don’t go out when I’m back, because if Cort’s on days off then he’s down in Melbourne. I offered to go once when I was down in Melbourne, but he didn’t want me to see her like that.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘What he did he say? About her, I mean?’

‘I don’t know …’ Adam wasn’t the type to replay conversations in his head, let alone to anyone else. ‘We just play golf … Look, Ruby, there’s no hope with Beth. I mean, I’m glad Cort’s trying to move on, because I do know there’s completely no hope …’

‘Beth died,’ Ruby said, and closed her eyes as Adam went quiet. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

‘Ruby, I’m in the middle of the jungle. Like I said, we’re not that close—I don’t think anyone is with Cort.’

She put down the phone and padded out to put it back in its charger, and there, of course, waiting, was Jess.

‘How’s Adam?’ She didn’t await Ruby’s response. ‘Did he say when he was coming home?’

‘When does Adam ever really say anything about anything? Honestly …’ She looked up at her friend, who carried a torch for her brother, and even if Ruby loved him, she felt it only fair to warn her, properly this time. ‘I can see why Caroline broke up with him.’

‘Caroline?’

‘His fiancée,’ Ruby said, and saw Jess’s jaw tighten. ‘She really thought she’d change him, that somehow Adam would open up. She just didn’t get that he’s …’ She closed her eyes, because Adam was a whole lot like Cort. ‘He’s an emotional desert. He is!’ Ruby said, when Jess refused to buy it. ‘He was in bed with the next one a week after Caroline … and the next and the next … There is no deeper Adam,’ Ruby reiterated, because there wasn’t. Nice clothes, nice car, lots of women—they were all there waiting for him whenever he returned. It really was just as simple as that with her brother, and she didn’t want him breaking her best friend’s heart. Except Jess refused to hear it.

‘Just because someone doesn’t spill out their heart, Ruby, it doesn’t mean they don’t still have feelings.’ Jess would not be swayed. ‘We all hurt, Ruby.’ Jess huffed off to bed, no doubt to stick pins in a little doll she’d name Caroline. ‘We just all have different ways of showing it.’