The Sun in Her Eyes (39 page)

‘Let’s go and say bye,’ I urge, grabbing his hand and leading the way.

Liz and Dad are staying in a swanky city hotel, so Ned and I kiss them goodnight and take our leave, knowing we will see them before they set off on their honeymoon to Kangaroo Island on Monday.
We’re heading back to London via Malaysia for a short holiday of our own.

The two of us walk back to Dad and Liz’s house in the cool autumn air, Katy still fast asleep beneath her blanket.

‘Did you have a nice time?’ I ask.

‘Yeah.’ He smiles warmly. ‘I like your Aussie friends.’

‘Aah, that’s nice. I wish we didn’t live so far away.’

Hmm, to think that earlier I deemed the distance a good thing.

‘Would you ever want to move back here?’ Ned asks casually.

‘I don’t know. Maybe we could consider it one day, when Dad and Liz are older. Not yet, though. I’d miss our friends in England too much.’

‘Me, too,’ he says.

When we’re back at the house, Ned goes to brush his teeth while I do my best to transfer Katy into the cot beside our bed. She wakes up, just as Ned is returning.

‘Bummer,’ he mutters.

‘I’ll feed her,’ I decide. ‘I might be able to settle her again.’

‘Okay.’ He flops onto the bed.

I carry her out of the bedroom and into the living room, shushing her while I get myself ready.

As I cradle her tiny head while she suckles, my heart expands with love.

I adore this quiet time with her, when it’s just the two of us. The love I feel for my daughter is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, tenfold. I was taken aback by the intensity
of my emotions after she was born. I thought I would die if anything happened to her, and I knew I would kill to protect her. If Ned is my world, she is my universe.

She falls asleep on my chest, and I nearly nod off, too. I have to force myself to my feet, burping her over my shoulder as I return to our room.

Ned is flat out on his back, snoring lightly. I smile at him as I gently place our baby into her crib, with Lambert at her feet.

Lambert has been through the wash a few times, and I was slightly horrified the last time we were in Brighton when Ned’s mum unwittingly attempted to remove the fingerprint stains with
Vanish. She was put out when they stuck – not much defeats her. She’d be even more perturbed if she knew what they were.

But some things are meant to remain.

I bend down and kiss my sleeping daughter’s face, unable to resist stroking her baby-soft head with the tips of my fingers before retreating.

‘Goodnight, little lamb,’ I whisper in the darkness. ‘I love you.’

Be good.

Huge thanks, first of all, to my readers. Sometimes I find it tricky to keep on top of social media with deadlines looming, but I’m always smiling from the moment I start
checking out your messages on Twitter (@PaigeToonAuthor) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/PaigeToonAuthor), so please keep them coming.

Because I wanted to say more than a simple thank you for all of your support, last year I came up with the idea of launching a unique book club for my readers. It’s called ‘The
Hidden Paige’ and it is free to join, so do sign up at paigetoon.com if you haven’t already. There will be more exclusive short stories coming from me this year…

Thank you, yet again, to my amazing editor, Suzanne Baboneau. I’d like my readers to know that you are largely responsible for their enjoyment of my books! I love working with you –
and indeed, the whole team at Simon & Schuster. Thank you in particular to Jo Dickinson, Emma Capron, Elizabeth Preston, Sara-Jade Virtue, Ally Grant, Nico Poilblanc, Hayley McMullan, Gill
Richardson, Rumana Haider, Sarah Birdsey, and Melissa Four for another beautiful cover design. Thanks also to my copy editor, Mary Tomlinson.

Heartfelt thanks to my agent Lizzy Kremer, her assistant Harriet Moore, and the team at David Higham Associates. Not only did Lizzy come up with the title for
The Sun in Her Eyes
, but
without her, this book would not be anywhere near the book that it is. I am grateful to her in so many ways.

In order to write
The Sun in Her Eyes
, I had to research everything from strokes to wineries, teaching and advertising, so I have a lot of people to credit.

Thank you first and foremost to Ali Murray from Stroke Association. Ali is the Information, Advice and Support coordinator for Cambridgeshire, and she gave up a lot of her very valuable time to
enlighten me about stroke survivors and the challenges they face. Please visit www.stroke.org.co.uk if you would like any more information, but I urge you to remember the FAST test:
F
ACIAL weakness (Can the person smile? Has their mouth or eye drooped?),
A
RM weakness (Can the person raise both arms?),
S
PEECH problems (Can the
person speak clearly and understand what you say?),
T
IME to call 999. The faster you act, the more of the person you save. Thanks also to Ali for recommending the book
My Year
Off
by Robert McCrum – a very insightful first person account about what it was like to have a stroke in his early forties.

A big cheers to Mark Stalham for sharing his remarkable knowledge about winemaking with me (over a very nice bottle of Black Craft Shiraz, I might add!) and also to his wife Katherine for
helping to double check I’d got my facts straight.

Thank you to my old pals, brother and sister team extraordinaire Dr Adam Nelson and Dr Sophie Nelson for assisting with further stroke research and Royal Adelaide Hospital details. I owe you a
drink when I’m next Down Under!

And speaking of drinks, thank you to my brother Kerrin and my sister-in-law Miranda Schuppan for their exceptional Adelaide bar research – M, I’m just sorry you couldn’t quaff
alcohol at the time. FYI, the bar Amber goes to early on in the book is called Udaberri on Leigh Street and apparently it’s great, but I didn’t mention it by name because of my
fictional use of Brettanomyces!

Thank you to all of my friends for allowing me to witter on about my books, but especially author Ali Harris, Angela Mash, Annabel Diggle, Katherine Reid and Katharine Park. Thanks also to my
oldest friend, Jane Hampton, for her feedback on an early draft of this book, and double thanks to K-Reid for helping with proof-reading.

Thank you also to Ben Southgate, Nicola Farrance-Burke and Sarah Sarkozy for their help with various things. And a little shout out to Ellie Pennell, who entered a competition via ‘The
Hidden Paige’ to see her name in print – I hope it made you giggle, Ellie!

Finally, thank you to my parents, Vern and Jen Schuppan, my husband Greg, and my adorable little children Indy and Idha. Greg, you help me in countless ways and always have, and as for the rest
of my family, thanks for just being there.

Please turn over to read

a short story I wrote for The Hidden Paige

In autumn 2014, I wrote a chapter of
Thirteen Weddings
from another character’s point of view and emailed it out for free to the members of my unique new book
club, ‘The Hidden Paige’.

As readers of
Thirteen Weddings
will know, Chapter 5 features Lily and Ben from
Pictures of Lily
and Alice and Joe from
One Perfect Summer
. I asked some of you to vote
on whether you’d most like to hear from Lily or Alice, and the former just pipped the latter to the post.

My publisher very kindly agreed to print this 7,000-word short story on the following pages for those who hadn’t signed up to ‘The Hidden Paige’ in time, but please visit my
website paigetoon.com to become a member if you don’t want to miss out on my free short stories in the future.

I loved touching base with Lily, Ben, Alice and Joe again, and I hope you enjoy this snapshot into their future lives, too. So, without further ado, here’s
When Lily Met
Alice
…

www.paigetoon.com

#thehiddenpaige

I wake up alone. It’s the early hours of the morning and Ben is not in bed beside me. This is not
that
unusual, considering, but I know I won’t get back to
sleep without checking on him.

I sit up in bed and slide my feet out onto the cold floorboards, then find my dressing gown from behind the door and slip my arms into it, tying a knot across my no-longer-flat stomach. I pad
quietly out of our bedroom and into the hall. The lights are off in the kitchen, so I take a left and head for the living room, coming to a sudden stop in the doorway.

My husband is fast asleep on the sofa, lying on his back with his bare arms cradling a tiny bundle to his chest. This is the third morning in a row that I’ve found him here.

‘You need your sleep,’ he told me yesterday morning when I berated him for not just bringing her into bed with us when he heard her crying.

‘So do you,’ I pointed out.

And now here he is again,
and
he has to work again today.

My heart goes out to him. He must be cold. It’s late March and the nights are drawing in, especially here in the Adelaide Hills. We still haven’t upgraded the heating in our home,
which once belonged to Ben’s grandmother. She practically raised him, and left this house to him when she died. We’ve been living in it for about three years now, but we can’t
afford much on his keeper’s salary or my part-time junior keeper wage. If only I could make more of a living as a photographer.

‘You can’t expect it to happen overnight,’ Ben keeps telling me.

Still, I wish it would.

I walk back down the hall and into the spare room, dragging the blanket off the end of the bed, before returning to the living room with it. Quietly making my way over to Ben, I lay the blanket
across his sleeping body. He stirs and his eyes open, even darker blue than usual in this dim light. Poor thing, I can see now how red they are.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,’ I whisper, squeezing onto the sofa beside him and touching my hand to his warm, stubbly face. ‘You look exhausted,’ I add with
concern.

‘I’m oka–’ His sentence is cut off by the violence of his yawn. His broad chest rises and falls, the bundle moving with it. But still, she sleeps.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ I murmur. ‘Let me take her so you can go back to bed.’

He shakes his head and smiles up at me, sleepily. ‘I’m alright. How was your night?’

‘Better,’ I tell him with a nod. I slept badly the night before.

‘What’s the time?’ he asks.

‘Six.’

‘Lily, get back to bed!’ he commands in a loud whisper.

‘No, I’m awake now. You should go.’

‘I’ve got to be up in an hour anyway,’ he says, never one to complain.

‘I love you,’ I tell him, bending down to kiss him.

‘Mmm,’ he murmurs against me, the vibration tickling my lips. I deepen our kiss and he returns my gesture with increasing passion. I really want him to put his arms around me, but he
can’t because they’re otherwise engaged. It’s very frustrating.

‘Do you think she’ll transfer?’ I ask impatiently against his hot mouth.

‘Let’s try,’ he replies with his own sense of urgency. He sits up, still cradling the bundle to his chest.

I’m rigid with tension as I watch him put her down. Her eyes open and she lets out a squeak.

No, no, NO!

He glances up at me, his face filled with regret and apology as she continues to cry.

‘I’d better feed her,’ he says.

NO!

But I just nod, the disappointment crushing. A mean part of me wishes he’d let her cry, but I know that’s not Ben.

If this is what he’s like with a two-week-old infant koala, what’s he going to be like when I give birth to an actual human baby in five months’ time?

‘Do you think someone else might like to take the joey tonight?’ I ask him later, over breakfast. I try to keep my voice sounding casual so he doesn’t think
I’m a complete hussy who wants him only for his body. God, I really do want his body, though.

He cocks his head to one side. ‘Mike and Janine are still on holiday until Wednesday, but I suppose I could ask Owen.’

‘Yes! Surely he’d love that?’ Owen is quite new so he should be overjoyed at the prospect of having a baby koala all to himself.

‘I don’t know,’ Ben replies with a shrug. ‘We’ll see.’

He finds it hard to relinquish responsibility for the tiny orphans who are brought into the conservation park where we work. This little joey was knocked off her mother’s back by a car
while crossing the road. The mother was killed and her daughter was badly hurt – Ben was worried he’d have to euthanise her – but she’s improved over the last couple of
days. I know he’ll struggle to give her up to Owen. And now I feel bad for asking him to. At least she’ll soon be well enough to be relocated to the hospital room at work with the other
hand-reared infants.

‘What time’s your lunch break today?’ I ask, changing the subject and reaching across to adjust the collar of his dark-green polo shirt. He’s wearing khaki-coloured
shorts and brown boots. Soon it will be too cold for anything but trousers, but the weather is supposed to be nice today. Yesterday it rained practically from dawn till dusk.

‘I’m doing the dingo talk at 11 and then I’m on koala duty all afternoon, so I’ll probably have half an hour or so from noon. You planning on coming in?’

‘Yes. I want to take a few more website pics while the weather’s nice.’

I’m helping to overhaul the conservation park’s website. I’m not getting paid for the photographs I’m taking, unfortunately, but I don’t mind when it’s
something I enjoy doing so much.

‘You really want to come in on your day off?’ Ben asks worriedly. It’s Sunday. Not that that makes any difference when you’re a keeper. The weekends are our busiest days.
‘Don’t you think you should rest up a bit?’

‘I’m fine,’ I reassure him with a smile. Sometimes it’s like he thinks I’m going to break. ‘I’ll go back to bed when you leave,’ I say, although
actually, I’m more likely to tidy the house.