Читать книгу Summer Beach Reads - Natalie Anderson - Страница 38

HE’D finally got his fantasy moment there in his pristine white bed, unlacing Shirley hook by hook as though she were some medieval maiden, burying his hands in layers of fabric and stripping it back. Kissing the colour right off her mouth and revealing the pink, pure lips beneath.

The whole gondola thing had been a travesty. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time but he’d come across as a sap and a soft touch, telling her about his work for the dolphin mob. Thank God she hadn’t pressed him regarding the growing list of others.

How would he explain that he had besmirched his soul in seducing her and now he scrubbed it clean again helping a raft of new clients? They bought him perspective. And balance.

A good balance.

He still struggled with the lingering sense that there was something extra wrong about the time he spent with Shirley; that it had just been too fast for him to believe she wanted this as much as he did, so it was probably just as well that weeks passed between them seeing each other. And it was probably just as well that the list was nearing an end for her.

A dark shadow took him.

He stared at www.remembermrsmarr.com on his laptop, at his own listings and at hers she’d added back when he’d challenged her to. Shirley had had a seven-tick head start even before he’d started trying.

He ticked off ‘Hunt for a dinosaur fossil’ on the live site. That only left the three unachievable ones. Everest, a grandchild and being touched again. It was odd imagining that his mentor—the woman who’d insisted that Plato’s intellectual love was the purest—had secretly wanted to be loved again. Touched again. And all the while she’d had a small, vulnerable girl right there just begging to give her as much love as she needed. And to receive it.

But this dinosaur trip into the desert meant their achievable list was done. No more list, no more reason to be together. No more together, no more sex. No more sex, no more precious glimpses deep inside the mind and soul of the most intriguing woman he’d ever known. And if he was getting intrigued and habituated …

Probably just as well it was over.

‘Hey.’ Shirley pushed into their tent, two coffees in hand, looking earthy and radiant.

Nearly over.

He had one weekend. One last opportunity to be greedy. He wasn’t going to wish that away until he absolutely had to. He hastily unchecked the box.

She sank down, cross-legged, next to him and passed him a steaming mug. ‘Freshly brewed.’

Coffee only came one way on this expedition—hot and strong. But it had been months since he’d craved something fancier. Barista-made had lost its charm. Plain and strong would do him just fine.

‘Thank you.’

She was back to being Shirley again, regular make-up and a more moderate selection of clothes without a buckle or hook in sight if you didn’t count her laced-up trainers. He loved to spend time with this Shirley. Though he couldn’t say he didn’t love it when Shiloh made an impromptu appearance in their limited together time, too. The wilder the better.

‘What are you doing?’ She leaned over to glance at his screen.

He tipped the screen towards her. ‘Visiting the list. You haven’t updated.’

Her eyes briefly flicked to the corner of the tent. ‘No. I’m keeping track in my notebook.’

He tipped his head. ‘Privately?’

She studied the floor and then lifted green eyes to his. ‘I think it should always have been private. It should never have mattered what everyone else was doing.’ She took a breath. ‘I’m sorry I pressured you into it. That was unfair.’

Her unrealistic expectations seemed like eons ago. And totally irrelevant now. He wanted to say without that we never would have met, or something equally corny. Wanted to, but he didn’t. He reminded himself that the past months had probably been all the better for being temporary.

‘Are you kidding?’ He kept it light. ‘If not for you, I would never have detached my retinas or frozen my butt off in the desert.’

She smiled. ‘It’s lovely out here, though, despite the cold. So incredibly vast. Can you imagine how much life is buried in ancient sediment here?’

The ancestors of eagles, enormous wombat third-cousins, a sea-floor full of marine fossils from back when the desert plain they’d pitched their tent into had still been ocean floor. The team had uncovered lots of ancient bones, but none of them dinosaur.

Yet.

The museum had willingly taken on two unskilled assistants for the long weekend and even been kind enough to find them tasks to do that felt meaningful. They weren’t. Everyone seemed to know that but they were entirely prepared to fake it out of consideration for their guests. This time, no one knew she was Shiloh and no one knew that he was loaded. As far as the museum team was concerned, they were just hopeless enthusiasts.

We can always do with enthusiasm, the project director had kindly told Shirley when they’d applied. And she’d glowed. There was a lot to be said for kindness.

And for Shirley glowing.

‘What time are they heading out?’ he asked.

‘As soon as everyone’s caffeine ratio is optimum. Mornings seem to be expedition time and afternoons are for analysing results.’ She rummaged around, tossing things onto her air mattress. Their air mattress, since it was a double and since they were back in ‘list time’. Short grabs of heaven every few weeks. Little contact in between.

The perfect set-up.

Shirley’s mattress pile grew. A spare shirt, camera, notebook, drink bottle, insect repellent, sunscreen. Everything a girl could need for a day in the desert.

‘Be right back.’ She bent and crawled out of the tent and he took the chance to watch. He’d grown really fond of that rear end really fast. He hooked the fly sheet with his boot and pulled it back to see where she went as he sipped his coffee. The latrine tent. Dug way out in the distance, necessarily.

His own pack was already loaded up so he grabbed hers and started stuffing the piled-up items into it as well as taking a couple of snack bars from the container she kept perpetually handy. The notebook slipped off the pile as he packed and fell open at an oft-thumbed page.

Her list.

He stared guiltily. Cross-through after cross-through mocked his still poor effort. She had thirteen of the fifteen items. Worse than he’d realised. She’d even crossed the dinosaur one off already.

His belly looped back on itself.

Hang on … Thirteen? When only twelve were achievable?

He traced the page with his finger and then slid to a halt at the mystery tick-box. He stared.

Be transported by a touch.

His first reaction was an insanely powerful surge of self-satisfaction. His touch had transported her. His touch. Impossible to know exactly when she’d ticked that but there’d been a whole lot of touching going on since their first night on the Paxos. Then the gondola day. And the previous two days.

And then … right behind the conceit came a wave of dread.

That wasn’t the tick of someone who was casual about their time together. That wasn’t the tick of someone who was content to let weeks pass between encounters. Or who’d be unfazed about moving on when the time came.

The wave of dread solidified.

That was the tick of someone for whom their encounters had been meaningful. Enough to tick a box on a list that had taken on religious significance for her. That tick meant something.

Not something … everything.

He shoved the notebook and pen in on top of the snack bars and zipped the pack up, then sat back and stared at the brown swirl in his cup. Was it a mistake to have let himself believe she was in the same class of woman as the others in his past? Easier, faster women. Or was it just blind wishful thinking on his part? Maybe he’d just seen what he wanted to see?

Wouldn’t be the first time.

‘Taking up reading coffee grinds?’ she joked, ducking back into the tent. She saw her packed bag. ‘Oh, thank you.’ She threw it over her shoulder, bent and kissed his cold lips and ducked back out again. ‘I’ll see you by the truck.’

Confusion roiled.

Her demeanour was relaxed enough. Her kiss, easy. She wasn’t fawning or clinging. In fact she’d just ditched him for more interesting people, as far as he could tell. Nothing about her actions betrayed the glaring tick in that very significant box.

Unless … Was she so desperate to finish the list that she’d thrown in a near-enough-is-good-enough tick? Or maybe she was a good compartmentaliser: transportational sex in one department and the real world in another. Or maybe she’d only slept with him in the first place to get the tick.

No.

Just … no.

He took a deep breath and tossed his remaining coffee out of the tent door. Maybe he was making much more of this than it was worth. Her actions had to mean more than what she wrote down in private.

In her notebook …

Which was virtually a diary …

He straightened outside the tent, and intercepted Shirley’s glance from across the campsite. It was a smile, small and private, much like any other she’d tossed at him on any of their adventures. Yet it suddenly took on so much extra meaning.

Was it the smile of someone harbouring a secret?

Was it the smile of someone trying very hard not to liberate a much bigger, more gushing one?

Was it the smile of a woman who knew that their time was very soon to be over? A weaning-off kind of smile.

Or was it just the smile of someone quietly excited about the day and trying to be cool in front of the experts?

Hell.

He snagged his backpack and hauled it out of the tent after him.

And this was why ignorance was bliss.

It might have been one of the coolest things she’d ever done but it was also one of the dullest. As one half of the least experienced duo on the expedition, Shirley couldn’t have expected to be in charge of anything exciting and, to be fair, the scientists alone were doing their fair share of grunt work, too. They stood as a group at the base of sheer rock face in an ancient eroded gully.

‘This was once a cave system,’ the head palaeontologist told them, ‘before it all tumbled in and wore away to become the plateau we see today. So there’s a decent chance of finding a few bits of interest.’

Hopefully that was palaeontologist-speak for ‘dinosaur’.

That helped motivate her as the hours passed and teams of them spread out over parallel search vectors and combed the desert floor, literally, for anything of note. At first the pressure of not knowing what might be ‘of note’ and missing something significant crippled her, but as hours passed with no one calling for professional opinions Shirley relaxed and let herself just drift, eyes firmly down, looking for anything that just didn’t look quite right.

It gave her lots of time to glance at Hayden one vector over and worry about what was wrong with him.

He’d barely spoken to her the entire drive out here. Lots of smiles—carefully neutral and thin—but not a whole lot of substance. And they never reached his eyes. She’d surveyed the past few days in the same way they surveyed the ancient cave floor, segment by segment with a mind for the smallest out-of-place detail. He’d been fine for the first two days, as chatty as Hayden ever got, and focused on the stories told by the museum team of their past trips.

But come the dawn of day three and he had become a different man altogether, distracted, uncommunicative, hollow.

Anxiety burbled close to the surface. Why was her go-to response to assume something was wrong? That she’d done something wrong? Perhaps he had some kind of threshold for living rough and he’d reached it. Or three days was too much living out of tins and gas cooker coffee. Maybe he was more accustomed to finer comforts than he’d realised.

Those were all much better options than the lingering concern that it might be her.

Or them.

‘Nothing?’ she asked, loud enough that he could hear.

He glanced up. Shook his head. Then went back to studying the earth. Clearly still distracted.

She swallowed the little hurt and the frown and redoubled her efforts on the earth as she walked forward at a speed akin to continental drift.

Rock. Tussock. Earth. Rock. Earth. Bone … She stopped and bent lower, examined it. Nope—too bleached and surface dwelling for something older than a year. That much she had picked up from the professionals.

Tussock. Earth. Rock. Odd-shaped rock …

She paused again, bent. Gently dusted some dirt away from the edge of this particular rock. Rocks, she’d discovered, tended to be roundish or sharpish. A sharp rock with rounded bits in it was noteworthy. A rounded rock with a sharp bit in it—like this one—was equally interesting.

‘Eric?’

She called their floating expert over. He finished marking a site several vectors away and jogged over to her. ‘Whatcha got?’

She pointed to her feet. ‘Weird rock.’

‘Excellent,’ he murmured, forgetting her presence already. ‘We love weird.’

He dropped a circular frame around the rock and stabbed a small red flag into the earth nearby. He pulled out a sand sieve and started to trowel the dirt around the rock into it, shaking the balance free off to one side.

Her job was to continue onwards.

She glanced up and caught Hayden’s sideways look. He returned his gaze to the earth.

‘Is everything okay?’ she suddenly asked, surprising herself as she started forward again.

‘Yep.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Good.’

‘Hayden, you’re way too surly a human being to pull off a convincing “chipper”.’

He paused to stare intently at the dirt and Shirley got the feeling it was faked. He struggled with something.

‘This is our last list item together.’

Her heart emulsified into soggy goo. That he was keeping track. And that he cared. ‘Yeah, it is. I didn’t think you were aware of it.’

A dark flush stole up his neck. ‘I have a numbered list to keep me aware.’

Oh. Right.

He cleared his throat. ‘So what happens now?’

God. What a horrible place to be having this discussion. Forced to remain ten feet apart and surrounded by others with varying degrees of good hearing, including Eric, who was only a few feet behind her, albeit fully absorbed with the excavation of her rock.

She took a breath. ‘What do you want to happen?’

‘We sort of fell into it,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how we fall back out of it.’

Fall back out.

She did her best not to stumble on the disappointment. He wanted to end things. Just when she thought they might have moved past the whole friends-with-benefits thing. Of course he did. Why had she expected any differently? Tightness in her throat translated audibly in her voice, but she’d be damned if she’d let him see how deeply she was affected. ‘How do you usually extricate yourself from unsatisfactory relationships?’

He looked up.

She looked down.

‘It’s not unsatisfactory, Shirley—’

‘Sorry.’ She smiled thinly. ‘Maybe I should have said “past their use-by date”?’

His lips thinned. ‘Ordinarily, we’d have established that upfront.’

‘So this must be awkward for you then. Most inconvenient.’

‘Shirley—’

‘Though we kind of did, right?’ she barrelled on. ‘While the list was ongoing we could be … ongoing.’

He frowned. ‘And you’re fine with that? Now that the achievable list is over?’

She tossed her head back. ‘Sure.’

‘Meet my eyes when you say that.’

She forced them to his. Glared. Could he hear Shiloh in her tone? ‘Get over yourself, Hayden.’

His own narrowed slightly, clouded. ‘Okay then.’

‘You don’t think this would have been a better conversation to have tomorrow? We have tonight to get through yet.’

‘We’ve managed worse.’

True.

Behind her, a throat cleared. She turned and stared at Eric, confused. How could she have forgotten he was there? He held a partially hacked away chunk of rock in his hands.

‘Shirley, I’m going to take this back to Dave at the van. I think you might have something here.’

Really? ‘Okay. Bye. Should I just keep going?’

What an inane thing to ask. And why wasn’t she more excited? Maybe she’d just found a species no one else had ever identified.

‘Yeah, you should keep going—’ the bearded Eric laughed ‘—maybe you’ll find more.’

He whistled through two fingers and one of the team marked their progress in the ground, then stopped scanning the dirt to meet him just outside the search zone and examine the rock. They hurried together to the van.

She turned back the way she’d been going. Hayden stared at her. ‘What did you find?’

She shrugged. ‘Dinosaurus shirleii.’

He smiled despite himself and despite the tension of moments ago. Then it turned into a wry chuckle before he returned to ground-scanning, shaking his head. ‘You’re impenetrable, Shirley. Nothing touches you.’

Not if she didn’t let it, no.

The day stretched out with a few promising finds, and then dinner stretched out with more than a few fascinating discussions around the fire afterwards. Her weird rock turned out to be more fossil than rock—a fifty-thousand-year-old middle toe of something called a Thunderbird.

‘Dromornis stirtoni,’ their project leader helpfully added. ‘The biggest bird in Australia. Three metres tall.’

‘Rare?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Reasonably common.’

Of course it was. ‘And not a dinosaur?’

‘About one hundred million years too young for that. But Stirton’s Thunderbird was a contemporary of the woolly mammoth, if it’s any consolation.’

Shirley was struggling to feel consoled by anything much at all this evening, but that piece of news did at least rouse a comment from Hayden, who’d been silent for the best part of the night.

‘Are you saying that Big Bird and Mr Snuffleupagus were hanging out even in the pleistocene?’ he said.

His dry question caused a moment of stunned silence amongst the learned group who would have been forgiven for believing up until now that he was mute, but then they burst into laughter. Even Shirley had to fight the twitch of her lips.

She didn’t want to find him funny. She didn’t want to find him clever or witty or sharp. Or still the most interesting brain in the room even when it was full of bigger brains. She did better when he was being surly and stand-offish. It was easier then not to love him.

She lifted her eyes and sighed. She didn’t quite manage to cover the appreciation in her glance. Hayden’s lips thinned.

Great.

She turned back to the conversation.

The moon climbed higher and then between one conversation and the next it seemed to cross half the sky.

‘It’s late,’ the project leader finally said, tipping the last of his coffee in the fire. ‘I’m to bed.’

Shirley glanced at their distant tent again and knew she’d have to return there eventually. Staying up all night had occurred to her, but she was already wearing every layer she’d brought with her and it wasn’t keeping the cold out any longer.

She shivered even in front of the fire.

‘Come on, Shirley. Let’s get you warm,’ Hayden said.

Let’s … How cosy that sounded.

‘I’m fine.’

‘’Course you are. For a snowman.’ He stood. ‘Come on.’

They left the lingerers to deal with the fire and headed slowly back to their tent. Every heavy footstep bought her seconds of reprieve. At last the moment of truth …

She turned to face him. ‘So, now what?’

His brow furrowed as he lifted his eyes. ‘Now we sleep?’

‘Is that all?’ Or was it just a euphemism?

He grew cautious. ‘Do you want that to be all?’

No. But it had to be. ‘You sound surprised.’

He stared at her thoughtfully. ‘I believed you when you said you knew we’d be over after this trip.’

‘I do know.’

‘So I didn’t expect our final night together to old anything other than a vague poignancy of parting.’

Vague poignancy … That was something, right? She took a breath. ‘It doesn’t.’

Blue eyes challenged her. ‘Liar.’

‘I’m not lying.’

His gaze grew acute. ‘Then why is tonight any different to any other night we’ve shared if it has no other meaning? Why can’t I draw you into the warmth of that bed, the warmth of my arms and body, and farewell you slowly and thoroughly, like a goodbye should be?’

It literally hurt to push words past her constricted larynx. ‘Because we’re done. We decided that out at the ridge, today.’

‘We confirmed this trip would be our last,’ he allowed. ‘We’re not done until I drop you back at your front door.’

She stared. ‘Seriously? Down to the wire? Just so you can get one more roll in the hay?’

‘This isn’t about sex.’

She snorted. ‘Of course it is.’

‘This is about us meaning more to you than something casual. Because if you truly didn’t care then you wouldn’t have any concerns about sleeping with me now.’

Every muscle squeezed. He was way too close. ‘No. This is about you wanting to milk a good thing for every drop.’

And she’d been beyond foolish to ever set herself up for this.

His expression grew dangerously blank. ‘You think I’m hard up for female company, Shirley?’

She’d never asked him if he was seeing anyone else. She’d never wanted to know. Because asking meant trusting his response and somewhere way deep down inside that she never looked she feared she couldn’t trust him. Not with her heart.

‘I’m sure there’s a queue waiting for their chance at a rich, handsome man, no matter how damaged.’

He pursed his lips and nodded. Then he spoke. ‘Casting stones, Shirley?’

To look at him—his casual stance, his even colour—you’d think he was supremely unconcerned by this awful discussion. But the vein pulsing high in his temple said otherwise.

He was bothered.

She just didn’t know by what.

She held her ground. ‘I’m not damaged.’ Not to the same degree.

‘Oh, please … Look at the extremes you’re going to in order to please a woman who’s been dead for a decade. Your career choice. Your choice in men.’

‘What men?’

‘Exactly my point. And when you did finally relent to one, it’s casual and commitment-free. You’re hiding from the entire world one way or another.’

‘Pot, meet kettle.’ Shirley glared. ‘For someone who hasn’t left his cottage in two years or had a steady relationship ever you’re very fast to spot deficiencies in others.’

‘I know why I went underground. Can you say the same? Why hide behind the job? The crazy outfits?’

Really? Now even her clothes were a crime? She threw her hands in the air. ‘It’s fashion, Hayden. It doesn’t mean I dally in self-harm or dance around naked in a circle of stones when the moon is in its zenith.’

‘It’s a mask. And it fits you so well you’ve forgotten you’re wearing it.’

She locked eyes. ‘I’m having no problem right now understanding why commitment-free seems attractive …’

‘Come on, Shirley, ask yourself. Why do you do all of this? What are you protecting yourself from?’

She stopped, dead. ‘What?’

‘How many close friends did you have growing up?’ he challenged.

The rapid subject change threw her. ‘A few.’ Two. Two tenacious girls who never had been able to recognise subtext. They stayed with her, no matter what.

No matter what you did to ditch them, a voice whispered.

Or maybe test them.

She frowned.

‘What do my friends—’ or lack thereof ‘—have to do with anything?’

‘It’s indicative of you avoiding opening yourself up to people. What is it that you think they’ll find if you let them in?’

Insufficiency. Her mind immediately filled in the blank. Someone who is somehow sub-par.

Her bunching muscles forced her to shove that away and focus on the man in front of her. ‘I’m confused, Hayden. A few minutes ago you were the champion of keeping things light, now you’re criticising my lack of commitment. You can’t have it both ways.’

Like white blood cells rushing in to swamp an open wound, excuses clustered around her vulnerable heart, making a prickly shield for it. She wanted to be sorry she’d ever agreed to sleep with him in the first place. But she couldn’t. He’d moved her in too many ways. But she certainly could be damned sure it never happened again.

‘This whole conversation is only reinforcing my decision to end things now,’ she said as she started stuffing her belongings into her two backpacks.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Packing. I’m not staying here.’ With you.

‘Where exactly do you plan on going? We’re in the middle of the desert.’

He had a point. She hardly knew the museum crew well enough to crawl in with one of them. The back seat of the troop carrier was looking pretty good at this moment. ‘Not your problem.’

‘Shirley—’

She spun around on him. ‘I found a dinosaur fossil.’ Or close enough. ‘So the achievable list is now complete.’ She flat-lined her hands in front of her. ‘We’re done.’

‘You’ll freeze out there.’ His voice dropped. ‘You can’t leave.’

Damn him for being right. Her hand stopped, mid-stuff. ‘I can’t stay.’

‘Why?’

Her chest rose and fell with alarming regularity. Why couldn’t she be more like the women in his past? Why couldn’t she just enjoy a good physical send-off? Why did she want tomorrow to never come?

‘Because it feels wrong,’ she whispered.

‘You offered a no-strings, casual relationship, Shirley. I just took you up on it.’

Yeah, well … that was before her feelings had changed. Although … maybe they hadn’t changed at all. Maybe she’d had them all along and just saw them clearly now. Because even though she had all the reason in the world to despise him right now, she couldn’t help but be drawn to his sheer presence, still. It was galling.

Lord. Had she fallen for him that very first day? Or had she just never got him out of her system from when she was fourteen?

She lifted her chin. Tired of subterfuge. ‘Are you really that much of a machine, Hayden? You have no other feelings complicating things at all?’

His face became a mask. ‘That’s not what we were about.’

‘And so you won’t miss me? You won’t wonder what might have been?’

He didn’t answer. But he looked like he wanted the answer to be nope.

‘And will you still be doing that in twenty years? Thirty?’ she prodded, desperate to even up the emotional score. ‘Is that how you plan to end your days? Alone?’

His tan turned slightly sallow under the lamplight. ‘If I play my cards right.’

‘You don’t want that.’ Surely?

‘Not everyone wants the picket fence.’

‘Or do you imagine you don’t have to worry about forever?’ she persisted. ‘Do you truly think that you’ll exit this world early in a blaze of glory? Like Leonidas? Or will you just avoid any kind of emotional connection until the end?’

‘That’s the plan.’

She stared at him, utterly lost. Heartsick. ‘Why?’

‘Because it’s what I want.’

No one wanted to be alone. Not really. Then a thought popped into her mind. ‘You said you knew why you went underground a few years ago. Is it connected?’

‘I said I knew. I didn’t say I was planning on sharing.’

Her confidence shrivelled. She could have argued that, Lord knew she wanted to. But she was too tired. Tired of thinking about him. Tired of hurting. Her soul ached.

She went back to stuffing her bag.

‘Shirley. We’re adults. I’m sure we can share a bed without mauling each other.’

‘That’s not what I’m worried about.’ She’d take his arm off if he made a move on her. ‘Given how I feel right now, I can’t promise not to suffocate you in my sleep.’

He laughed. He actually laughed.

Maybe he was a machine.

Her badly packed belongings weren’t fitting in as they had on the journey out. She kept shoving them down into unseen air pockets. Jerky and strong.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You stay here and I’ll go sleep in the truck.’

She turned heavy eyes up to him. ‘You think your freezing point is lower than mine?’

‘Oh, there are people who would assure you that I’m already sub-arctic.’

‘Here. You’ll need this,’ she grunted, and tossed a sleeping bag at him. He stumbled backwards half out of the tent to catch it like a marked football and then lifted bemused eyes. Had he not expected her to agree? She lifted her chin. ‘Unless that was just lip service?’

A curious expression crossed his face and he backed fully out into the cold. ‘Thanks.’

‘See you in the morning, then.’ She smiled brightly and then zipped the tent closed in his face.

And then sagged down onto the air mattress.

He was right. They were as damaged as each other.

To please a woman who’s been dead for a decade.

Harsh, ugly words. But were they true? Was that what she was doing? Pleasing her mother? She thought back on how desperate she’d been to cling to something stable in the awful, disruptive weeks right after the funeral. The list had been like an anchor then, giving her something tangible to focus on. As though as long as the list endured so did her mother.

Then, as she’d crossed from child into young woman, as she’d trained for the gruelling marathon, she’d realised that it was more about honouring her—just as Hayden had pledged all those months before. The list wasn’t going to bring her, or Shirley’s old life, back. It was just something she could do. And had continued to do to completion on principle.

At least she’d believed it was principle.

To please a woman …

She’d certainly spent the better part of her childhood pleasing her mother. Studying hard, doing all her chores without reminder, keeping out of the way when she had students around. Making sure her mother never had cause for complaint. Because she held enough things against her daughter as it was: her father’s departure, her failure to find someone else in her life—

Shirley frowned.

—her inability to apply for exciting jobs overseas, her inability to move to a more upmarket district outside Shirley’s school zone. Now that she thought about it. She’d cried-poor Shirley’s whole life, despite having a crowded wardrobe and the best magazine subscriptions. She’d rarely gone out to dinner or the theatre or even a movie with friends. I can’t afford it she would say on a sigh. Not with Shirley’s school fees. Yet they’d been able to afford cable TV and a gardener and cleaner once a week.

She’d been fourteen when her mother had died. She’d only ever seen her through a child’s eyes. And of course she saw an accomplished, popular, beloved teacher and mother. Maybe she would have seen a bad money manager if she’d been old enough to understand what she was seeing? Maybe her mother had actually been lousy at friendships and that was why she’d surrounded herself with a revolving door of students who adored her, but she’d rarely gone out with any of her peers. Maybe she’d been loath to give up the stability of tenure and her home to chase new experiences but hadn’t been able to admit that to her colleagues. Maybe her husband had left because their marriage had failed, not because Shirley had been born.

Shirley stared at the fabric wall of the tent.

Maybe a whole lot of things weren’t as they seemed. How many times had her mother used the single-mother excuse to disguise her own failings? And how many times had she willingly let those excuses settle onto tiny, anxious shoulders?

More important, how much of her mother’s denial had she inherited?

Her stomach churned, just like it had when she was little.

She was still trying to please her mother. Every time she worried about the list, about doing it right, about doing it fast enough or slowly enough, about doing it the way her mother would have wanted, it was as if she were still here, judging Shirley’s performance. Finding her wanting.

And she was still six years old, trying to make up for all the trespasses she sensed but barely understood.

Her mother hadn’t been a saint or a legend or an oracle. She had just been a flawed human being who’d had trouble with friendships and taking risks and who’d used the nearest justification to excuse it. At the expense of her daughter.

Something shifted deep down inside her, clicked into place so perfectly and comfortably it could only be rightness. And, as though in shifting it had uncovered a tiny drain hole in her soul, years of hurt and bewilderment started to drip away, leaving a lightness behind.

Damn Hayden Tennant.

What else was he right about, then?

Did she hide behind Shiloh so that no one could reject her or find her thoughts and opinions wanting? Did she avoid forming relationships? She had a raft of online acquaintances and faces to nod and smile at when she met them at public events. Media she knew. Contacts she cultivated. People she liked to sit with at tables who all knew her as Shiloh. But no real confidantes. No one she’d feel comfortable calling up for a chat. Or drinks. Or a movie.

No one to call to wail that her time with Hayden was over.

No one she’d let see her without make-up.

Her father had left because she cried too much.

Her mother had blamed her for everything wrong with their lives. And then she’d died.

Trouble making friends.

Abandonment and judgement of one sort or another everywhere she looked.

Had she come up with as many clever life strategies as her mother to avoid having to engage with people? To avoid taking personal risks?

Had it made her crawl inside herself and let nothing out?

Shirley forced herself to her feet, turned off the lamp and crawled onto the airbed, still dressed.

But she had let something out. She’d fallen for Hayden, unwound for him, incrementally. Given him a space for his toothbrush in her heart. She’d found, in him, her intellectual match and maybe her spiritual match too. Two damaged people grasping each other in the darkness.

Only she hadn’t realised it was dark.

And he wasn’t so much grasping as holding her at arm’s length. Long, rigid, determined arms.

Deep sorrow congealed in her gut. And now he wanted out. Whatever he needed to make him want to stay, she lacked it. She’d thought this connection they had would be enough to ride out the obvious disconnect between them.

But it wasn’t.

The high-tech properties of the sleeping bag did their job, slowly forming a warm blanket of air around her. Her muscles relaxed. Her goose bumps eased. Her eyes grew heavy.

Yet they didn’t close. Not quite.

She stared into the thick black of the night around her and waited for morning.