The House at the Bottom of the Hill (23 page)

Sammy poured more wine into Charlotte’s glass then her own. ‘That’ll be something to do with his mum taking over Cuddly Bear. Gemma probably feels pushed out, especially if she has to leave town with her mum.’

‘I didn’t realise the toy shop was up for sale,’ Charlotte said.

‘Gemma’s mum is getting divorced and moving to the city,’ Daniel told her. ‘Gemma doesn’t want to go and her mum doesn’t want anything to do with the shop, that’s why it’s hardly ever open for business.’

Charlotte had only been into Cuddly Bear’s once—to get a better understanding of why the townspeople thought her yellow weatherboard would interfere with the lemon and royal-blue colours of the toy shop. ‘It’s a shame it hasn’t been trading well.’ Another loss for the town.

‘Josh’s mother, Pat, will get it up and running again,’ Ethan said. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘And Josh will be run off his long legs,’ Sammy said. ‘Keeping the craft centre going, working for his mum in the toy shop at the weekends and for Dan in the evenings.’ She looked at Charlotte with an apologetic smile. ‘I don’t think he’ll have much time for the jobs you want done at the B&B.’

‘We’ll all help, somehow,’ Ethan said as he stood, picked up a carving set and sliced into the meat.

Daniel drummed the fingers of his free hand on the table. ‘Shouldn’t someone nip out and tell the lovebirds dinner’s ready?’

Sammy held up her hand. ‘We wait.’

‘But it’s going cold,’ Daniel said.

‘We wait,’ Charlotte said.

Dan looked at Ethan. ‘What am I missing?’

‘Does it matter? We’re not in charge, remember?’

Daniel indicated Lochie with a nod. ‘This poor little guy doesn’t know what he’s got in front of him. Why don’t you let me put him to bed, Sammy? I can tell him a story—one about how to handle women.’

Sammy tutted. ‘As if you’d know. Anyway, we have to wait until he goes well and truly under, otherwise it’ll take me an hour to get him back to sleep.’

Daniel sighed. ‘How am I supposed to hold him and eat?’

‘I’ll cut your food up for you.’

‘That’s overwhelmingly generous of you, Charlotte,’ Daniel said. ‘Wanting to make me look vulnerable in front of everyone?’

‘No problem.’ Charlotte couldn’t hold her grin. ‘Let’s call it a fringe benefit to add to your not inconsiderable mediation charms.’

‘Well, Miss Simmons, I’m sure by the end of the evening I’ll have thought of a way to repay you.’

Charlotte bet he would. She laughed, then stopped when she caught Sammy’s analytical gaze. Ethan had paused too, studying her, the carving knife stilled mid-air.

‘This mediating thing is doing wonders for you both,’ Sammy said.

Fortunately the door opened and everyone’s attention went instantly to Julia and Ira as they stepped inside.

‘Sorry to keep you all waiting,’ Julia said, looking like an enchanted cat.

Ira moved to the table, nodded at everyone and held his hand out to Daniel. ‘Ira Maxwell.’

Daniel lifted his free hand and shook Ira’s. ‘Dan Bradford, I own Kookaburra’s. Good to meet you, Ira. Come in for a beer one night. On the house.’

‘Thank you, Dan.’ Ira sat next to Julia and picked up his napkin.

‘Can we eat now?’ Daniel asked.

‘How’s your dog?’ Ira asked Charlotte as Ethan put slices of lamb onto the plates and Sammy took the lids off the hot vegetable dishes. ‘Lucy, is it?’

‘She’s fine. How do you know Lucy?’

‘She popped into the surgery this afternoon. I checked her collar to see who she was.’

Lucy had run all the way to Burra Burra Lane? Lucy got out of the B&B more times than Houdini had got out of a straitjacket but she hadn’t known the dog wandered this far.

‘She often joins me on the hill when I’m out running,’ Daniel said.

Charlotte took a laden dinner plate from Sammy. Despite the chatting around the table and the anticipation of a wonderful meal, a barrenness settled inside her. The dog wasn’t hers to keep and the kind-heartedness around the table wasn’t hers to bask in. The growth of the town wasn’t hers to remark on. The man next to her would become a memory. The experience of a comfortable moment with them all would be short-lived, because in a month or so, she’d be gone.

Dan glanced at Red but she didn’t catch his eye. Dinner had been excellent, both helpings. The second one easier to eat because Sammy had put Lochie to bed. He flexed his shoulder slightly. The kid had been in the crook of his arm for so long, he kind of missed him.

He glanced around the table and listened to his friends talk. Laughter and gentle ribbing had flowed all evening. But not so much from Charlotte. He didn’t think she’d gone quiet because she felt out of it, and he didn’t think anyone around the table had noticed she’d withdrawn a little. Especially around the time the renovation plans for the B&B had come into the conversation for a second time.

He lifted his glass and gave her another look. The fun had left her. He sensed it easily enough and wasn’t perturbed by his ability to read her any more.

‘That was the best cheesecake I’ve eaten,’ Charlotte said to Sammy. ‘Did your mother teach you how to bake?’

They’d been talking about the McLaughlin River and how good Sammy was getting at casting a line and catching a brown trout. The unexpectedness of Charlotte’s question made Sammy pause, and Ethan too, Dan noticed.

‘No,’ Sammy said. ‘My mother didn’t teach me to cook. She’s a little difficult, but as the years go by, she’s getting warmer. I taught myself, but I’m not up to your standards.’

‘What about you, Ethan?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Do you cook? Did you mother teach you how to look after yourself in the kitchen?’

Ethan smiled. ‘My mother was a fantastic cook but I didn’t pick up all her skills in the kitchen, no matter how much she tried to teach me.’

‘Was? Your mother died.’

‘Yes,’ Ethan said quietly. ‘A long time ago.’

Charlotte turned to Sammy. ‘What about your father?’

Sammy’s widened eyes showed surprise at the fast-fired question. ‘He died when I was three years old.’

Charlotte took her focus to Ethan. ‘And yours?’

It wasn’t a cold charge in the air but a wary one. It bristled like the brush of an echidna’s quills as it crept beneath the footings of a tin house. Sammy went quiet. She had her smile in place but its effervescence didn’t bubble in her eyes.

Dan glanced around the table. Ira and Julia had the look of wondrous new love on their faces. Charlotte’s remark hadn’t affected either of them.

Ethan picked up the napkin from his lap and held it in his hand on the table. ‘I hope I don’t appear rude by not answering your question, Charlotte, but I don’t talk about my father. Not in public.’

Now Julia’s interest perked up. She looked at Ethan, a query in her eye that had nothing, so far as Dan could tell—because it wasn’t there long—to do with any knowledge she might have about Ethan’s response. It was more like an understanding of a situation. Something long-lived. Something not spoken of. What had Charlotte done? What was he missing?

Julia picked up the bottle of merlot and topped up her wine glass. ‘You know, you should ask Charlotte to cook up some of her fancy pastries for your restaurant, Dan.’

‘Good idea,’ Dan answered quickly, because he didn’t like the feeling of discomfort around the table that Charlotte’s enquiries had produced. ‘Want to do that?’ he asked her with a smile, looking at her and willing her, silently, to catch his gaze.

She turned to him slowly and the sensitivity in her eyes tied his heartstrings into a knot. ‘Sure,’ she said, her voice soft but toneless. ‘Good idea.’

Whatever it was she’d done, she was shocked by the response, the atmosphere she’d created. She looked across at Ethan and smiled. A tender smile, a smile that asked forgiveness. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Maybe we’ll talk about it another time.’

She turned to Ira and asked him a question about his journey from Queensland as Ethan’s brow furrowed. He was still for so long Dan almost knocked his beer over on purpose to break the executioner’s look on his friend’s face but Sammy moved first, scraping her chair back and bumping into Ethan’s shoulder.

‘I’ll get coffees,’ she said chirpily. The shoulder bump woke Ethan from whatever darkened thoughts had been in his head. He straightened in his chair, caught hold of Sammy’s hand and kissed it. She patted his shoulder lightly.

A show of love and unity. Not unusual from either of them, but there was an unspoken thread of a story in this one. What had Charlotte done to Ethan by asking about his parents?

After late-night murmurs of thanks, kisses on cheeks for the women and handshakes for the guys, Ira set off down the drive towards the unit by the surgery and Julia got into her car, waving to Dan as he escorted Charlotte to her 4WD.

Charlotte unlocked the car, threw her handbag onto the passenger seat and stood quiet for a moment, her gaze following Julia’s sports car. When the taillights rounded the bend from the driveway onto Burra Burra Lane, she turned to Dan.

‘I’m a bit tired tonight.’

Code for not getting together. ‘Yeah, me too,’ Dan said as she got into the driver’s seat. ‘Drive safely.’ He caught the door as she was closing it. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

She paused, staring out of the windscreen, then sighed softly. ‘It’s hard to keep secrets in this town, isn’t it?’

Dan bent to her. She’d said that once before. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s scaring you?’ She had locks on her doors and windows. ‘What are you running from?’

She looked at him, her eyes wide and vulnerable. ‘Nothing. I’m trying to get somewhere.’

‘Do you want to tell me?’ He should have insisted on driving them both tonight. That way he could have kept her at his side. Her fear was becoming his. ‘It has to do with Ethan.’ Pointless making it a question, everyone had felt the undercurrent around the table after her keen questioning.

She nodded, turned it into a shake of her head. ‘I don’t know.’

He nudged the door open wider and hunched down, on eye level with her. ‘We’ve got a thing going on, Charlotte.’ He indicated both of them. ‘You and me. Don’t you think I’d listen?’

‘I won’t bring you into anything.’

‘I’m not asking you to, I’m saying—why won’t you tell me what your problem is?’

She shook her head, decisively this time. ‘I made a mistake tonight, I’m sorry about it but I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘I know about the bad dreams you have.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The night before we got together, when I took you home.’ She sat as though trying to hold herself together. Fragile and lost. ‘And you talked about a monster.’

No response, apart from her lips compressing. Dan stood and clenched his hands to fists so he wouldn’t drag her out of the vehicle and pull her against him. ‘I want you to talk to me. Really talk to me.’ She was going to drive off alone and she didn’t want to see him later. She’d be in the house on her own with some nightmare hovering in her mind, making her sleepless and restless while he sat in his back room in the bar, awake and listening—in case she changed her mind and knocked on his door. In case Lucy barked. In case she needed him.

She shook her head and stared ahead, hardly breathing.

Stubborn as all hell. Dan took hold of the door. ‘Drive carefully. I’ll be right behind you.’

She nodded, pulled the door closed, fired the engine, hit the headlights and drove down the driveway, leaving him with worry in his gut, tension in his shoulders and a heart full of something he hadn’t sampled before. Helplessness.

Charlotte parked the 4WD in the carport behind the B&B, got out, beeped the lock and walked swiftly to the laundry door. She didn’t look as Daniel drove his car down Main Street, halted when he reached her house, then turned into the alley at the back of the bar.

Her hands trembled as she took the keys from her bag. Lucy padded forwards from her bed and waited patiently as Charlotte struggled with the lock on the flyscreen. Stupid lock had jammed. Like her brain tonight.

Had Ethan known about Charlotte’s mother and what happened to her? Had he known about Charlotte? If he had, and if he was her half-brother, he’d ignored her. He hadn’t come forwards to claim her from the foster care the authorities placed her in.

Now she’d never know. She could no longer ask anything of anybody. She’d spoken out of turn and too soon. Couldn’t swallow her words or take back her imprudent outburst. She wouldn’t be in Swallow’s Fall long enough for the impact of lost friendship to hurt, but she had a feeling the void would follow her for the rest of her life.

Whether she deserved the desolate feeling inside her or not, tonight, just tonight, she wanted to be wrapped in the comfort and safety of Daniel’s arms. All night.

Through the dream and into the daylight.

D
an leaned his elbows on the bar and re-read the article from the British newspaper. This one had been written about a month before Charlotte had won over the big execs, and was giving him cause for real concern.

Dan’s unease heightened. They’d certainly thrown the works at Charlotte and he understood now that she hadn’t won anything: she’d lost her home and a part of herself, and had been left with nothing but a healthy bank balance. A glamorous yacht without a mooring. Maybe that’s why she was so tense all the time and hadn’t let anyone know how wealthy she was. The reporter who’d written these articles appeared to be a journalist with a conscience, but Dan couldn’t imagine what the big execs might have found on Charlotte and the article wasn’t giving him any answers.