With This Fling... (12 page)

Charlotte hadn’t refused him in haste—she’d thought about his offer, thought hard about where their fledgling relationship might lead and what he could give her that she wanted. Her conclusion had been a valid one.

Not enough.

He’d heard that tune before. He knew all the words.

This time round, they hammered home hard.

He went to Borneo. He stayed the week and
decided he had all the skills required to do good work there—if he had a mind to. Living conditions would be perfectly adequate. The seafood was exceptional. He’d be on the water a lot, and that always endeared a project to him, for the water was his home. He knew of half a dozen funding opportunities coming up. He should have been busy writing and sending out proposals.

And yet … a week passed, and then another three, and he still hadn’t written an outline for what he wanted to do in Borneo.

He tried telling himself it was because the PNG data had proved so richly rewarding, and he’d been distracted by that, and by all the research papers to be had from it. He even wrote some of those papers and was pleased with his efforts. Dr Grey Tyler was doing good work—work that, when reviewed and published, should make finding grant money for future projects easy.

Six months was all he’d allowed himself when it came to mining the PNG data for papers and two of those had already passed. He needed to get another project in place soon or he’d be out of work.

Being out of work held no appeal whatsoever.

Neither, he finally admitted to himself, did
spending the next three years in a tiny fishing village in Borneo.

Something else, then. Something fascinating and captivating and a little more civilised would surely command his attention sooner or later.

And he wasn’t talking about Charlotte Greenstone.

With Greyson—and Gilbert—out of the picture, Charlotte attempted to settle back into her normal routine with joy, and, if not joy, then at least some measure of contentment. Alas, embracing her inner contentment really wasn’t going so well.

Restlessness plagued her. She couldn’t settle to her work.

For the first time in five years, the congestion of inner city Sydney got on her nerves, and the charm of her nose-to-girder view of the Harbour Bridge, and the vibrations that shook the windows with every passing passenger train, wore thin.

Life didn’t shine so brightly these days. Emptiness had crept back into her life and this time it stayed. Dreariness and weariness had crept in too—ugly unwanted companions that she couldn’t seem to shake.

Crankiness … Heaven help her, she had a short fuse these days.

The Mead had requested a meeting this morning to discuss a dig he was keen to find funding for. No guesses required as to whose job that would be. Following that, she had two undergraduate lectures scheduled for ten and twelve, and a doctor’s appointment to go to in the afternoon.

It was seven a.m. and all Charlotte wanted to do was crawl back into bed and relive a morning or two when she’d woken up in a strong and loving man’s arms and been treated to coffee in bed and pancakes with syrup, and a day of sailing and sunshine that she’d never wanted to end.

‘Damn you! ‘
she muttered to the man who’d given her that day.
‘A curse on you, Greyson Tyler.’
A really good curse, for having the temerity and the God-given
attributes
to worm his way into her psyche and stay there.

Greyson the gone—be he in Borneo, PNG, roasting over hot coals … wherever.

Gone.

Charlotte’s meeting with Harold Mead didn’t start well. She was ten minutes late, the smell of the coffee he handed her made her want to throw up, and there were two other suits in
the room—one of them the head of university finance, the other one the Dean of Geology. She smelled collaboration and coercion and they came through on that in spades. A joint dig involving every geologist, archaeologist, and currently aimless dogsbody on the payroll of three different universities. Charlotte would not be in charge, of course. She wouldn’t even be required to step foot on site, if that was her preference. Nor would they utilise her field expertise, nor, by extrapolation, did they intend to credit her with any of the research.

No, Charlotte’s sole task was to shake the loose change from the private sector in order to fund the project.

She declined. Politely.

She damn near resigned. Not so politely.

‘Charlotte, I don’t know what to do with you,’ Harold Mead told her after the other two had left, his frustration and disappointment clearly evident. ‘You won’t commit to any field work, you pick and choose which projects you’ll support with no clear research direction that I can discern, you
say
you’d like to move into project set-up and administration and yet here I am offering that to you on a plate and you refuse. What exactly is it that you
want?’

‘How about we start with some small level of
input
into the projects the Greenstone name is
expected to sell,’ she countered hotly, knowing her words were unprofessional but powerless to stop them tumbling out. ‘An assurance that my experience might, at some stage, be
valued
when it comes to modifying a project plan, and not swept aside because I’m young and female and couldn’t possibly know better than you.’

‘Sometimes you don’t,’ said the Mead curtly.

‘And sometimes I do,’ she said. ‘You want to know what I
want?
Fine. I’ll have a proposal on your desk tomorrow morning, outlining my thoughts on project funding and administration in detail. I suggest you look it over rather closely, see if you can bring yourself to accommodate at least
some
of my suggestions, because if not I’ll be moving on and taking my family name and my cashed-up connections with me.’

Two lectures, a salad sandwich, and a hasty drive through the city centre later, Charlotte arrived at the Circular Quay surgery near her apartment. Twenty minutes after she took a seat in the waiting room, the doctor called her in.

The affable doctor Christina Christensen sat her down, looked her over and asked her what was wrong. ‘Lethargy, loss of appetite, and a tendency to get a wee bit emotional over the strangest things,’ she said.

‘What kind of things?’ the doctor asked as she reached for the blood pressure bandage.

‘Well … this morning I was howling along to a piece of music,’ said Charlotte.

‘It happens,’ said the doctor. ‘You should see me at the opera.’

‘It wasn’t that kind of music.’

‘What kind was it?’ asked the doctor.

‘Beethoven’s Ninth. Seriously, I’m getting more and more irrational of late. Short-tempered. Opinionated.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Cross,’ said Charlotte.

‘You already said that.’

‘It probably bears repeating.’

‘Tell me about your appetite,’ said the doctor as she pumped up the pressure wrap around Charlotte’s upper arm to the point of pain and then abruptly released the pressure.

‘What’s to tell? It’s gone.’

‘Any uncommonly stressful events surrounding you lately?’

‘That would be a yes,’ muttered Charlotte. ‘But I’m either getting on top of them or coming to terms with them.’

‘Lucky you,’ said the doctor. ‘Your blood pressure’s fine. How much weight have you lost?’

‘A couple of kilos in the past couple of weeks.’

‘Scales are over there,’ said the doctor.

And when Charlotte stepped on them and the readout settled, ‘You’re a little lean, but nothing to worry about. Periods regular?’

‘I’m on the pill,’ muttered Charlotte. ‘I went on them
because
of irregular periods.’

‘Any chance you could be pregnant?’ asked the doctor, gesturing for Charlotte to return to the patient’s chair.

Charlotte didn’t answer her straight away. She was too busy counting back time and fighting terror.

The doctor opened a desk drawer and pulled out a box full of little white individually wrapped plastic sticks. She set one on the desk in front of Charlotte. ‘Ever used one of these?’

‘No.’
Hell,
no.

‘Bathroom’s two doors down. Pee on the window end, shake off the excess moisture, and bring it back here.’

‘I really don’t thin—’

‘Go,’ said the doctor gently. ‘If it comes up negative, I’ll order you some blood tests to see if there’s another reason for the changes you’re describing, but first things first.’

Right. First things first. Nothing to panic about.

Charlotte held to the ‘first things first’ motto all through the long walk to the bathroom and through the business with the pregnancy-kit stick. A blue line already ran across the window of the stick—that was good, right? It was the crosses you had to worry about.

‘Just pop it on the paper towel there,’ said the good doctor when Charlotte returned. ‘It’ll only take a couple of minutes.’

Longest two minutes of Charlotte’s life.

The doctor chatted. Inputted data into Charlotte’s patient file. Asked her if she was currently in a steady relationship and whether she’d been considering motherhood, of late.

‘No,’ said Charlotte, and, ‘No.’ While another little line grew slowly stronger and transacted the first.

Eventually the doctor looked down and then back up at Charlotte, her gaze sympathetic. ‘We can do it again,’ she said. ‘We can take a blood test to confirm, but I think you’d best brace yourself for unexpected news.’ The doctor’s smile turned wry. ‘Congratulations, Ms Greenstone. You’re pregnant.’

Charlotte sat unmoving, her gaze not leaving that terrible little stick.

‘I want to see you again in a few days’ time,’ continued the doctor. ‘We’ll talk more then. About options. What happens next. Until then,
take it easy, don’t skip meals, and be kind to yourself.’ The doctor studied her intently. ‘Do you have anyone you can talk to about this? Family? Friends? The father?’

Charlotte didn’t answer straight away. Mainly because her gut response had been no. There was no one to talk to or turn to. No one at all.

‘Charlotte, do I need to refer you to a counsellor?’ Dr Christina Christensen’s eyes were kind and knowing. She’d probably seen this response before. ‘I can pull some strings and get you in to see one this afternoon, if need be.’

What was the doctor saying now? Something about a counsellor? Charlotte stared at her uncomprehendingly. She had no words. There were no words for this.

‘Charlotte.’ The doctor’s voice was infinitely gentle. ‘I’m going to make an appointment for you to talk to a family counsellor this afternoon.’

‘No!’ Another emotional outburst in a morning filled with them. ‘No,’ she repeated more calmly. ‘I’m fine.’ Not shattered, or terrified beyond belief. ‘Pregnant, right? But otherwise fine.’

The doctor sat back in her chair and steepled
her fingers, her gaze not leaving Charlotte’s face.

‘I have people I can talk to,’ said Charlotte next. ‘I do.’ Imaginary Aurora. Back from the dead, fictional ex-fiancé Gil.

‘Your call on the counsellor,’ said the doctor. ‘But I still want to see you in three days’ time. Make the appointment on your way out.’

Charlotte made the appointment and made it to her car. She didn’t make it home to her apartment. Instead she drove to Aurora’s and went to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea, black because there was no milk in the house because she’d cleaned out and turned off the fridge, and sugared, because there was sugar in the cupboard and sugar was good for shock. She sat in Aurora’s conservatory-style kitchen and stared out over the gardens to the harbour beyond and tentatively tried picking her way through her chaotic emotions.

A baby. Dear God, a baby to love and to care for. Loneliness in exchange for motherhood. A child to teach. A child who would learn what she had learned, what everyone learned eventually. That life was glorious and unexpected and too often brutal. A child who had no one. No one but her.

Only that wasn’t quite true, for this was Greyson’s child too.

Greyson the magnificent, with his loving family and his travelling life.

What now? What on earth was she supposed to do now?

I miss you, Aurora. I wish you were here. I wish …

A memory started forming; a vivid picture in her mind. A lamp-lit private library and an overstuffed leather armchair. Aurora in her thirties and Charlotte at five. A leather bound children’s picture book rich with story and life. Aurora’s fine voice; such a marvellous sound.

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride …

Drawing her knees up to her chest, Charlotte wrapped her arms tightly around herself, and wept.

‘You need to be at work,’ said Millie two days later, while sitting in Charlotte’s sunny apartment kitchen beneath the bridge. The bridge still loomed large and the windows still shook when the trains went by, but those things had ceased to annoy her. These days Charlotte was all about simply being grateful that she owned her own homes, that she didn’t need to work to support herself, and that when it came to the
things that money could buy, neither she nor this baby would ever go without.

Reason had returned to Charlotte, or, if not reason exactly, at least a functioning awareness of how fortunate she was. She had an education and a great deal of wealth. She had stability and a good life.

She even had friends who cared enough to call in on their way home from work, seeing as Charlotte
hadn’t
been in to work these past few days. Millie was here, bearing flowers and cake, and Charlotte was ridiculously glad of her company. Grateful that Millie had thought enough of their friendship to drop by. Glad that Millie brought with her gossip from work.

Charlotte had almost tendered her resignation the afternoon she’d received news of her impending motherhood but she’d dredged up a thimbleful of professionalism from somewhere and put together a ‘Greenstone Foundation’ proposal instead and emailed it off to the Mead.

A proposal that—the more she thought about it—didn’t really require the university’s participation at all. One that outlined her preferred project set-up, co-ordination, collaboration, and financing practices. One that granted the university beneficial ties to the foundation and in return requested that the university provide her with a management assistant. Preferably
one eager to travel with or without her to dig sites in order to oversee operations. Preferably one who’d worked outside the academic arena and had real world skills in place as well as the necessary archaeology qualifications. Preferably Derek.