A Shot at Freedom (17 page)

Chapter Thirty

Brooke

Dana emptied the contents of Brooke’s nail polish bag out over her bed. The bottles clinked against each other as Brooke helped her spread them out. She took Dana’s hand in hers and examined her nails, neatening the cuticles and filing them into shape.

“There’s too many colours to choose from,” Dana moaned, picking up a bottle of sky blue.

“That’s a bit old,” Brooke said. “I’m just keeping it because I want to look for something like it.”

“I can’t believe you’ve collected so many.
” Dana interrupted the manicure to check out Brooke’s nails. “When was the last time you did yours?” She dropped Brooke’s hand.

“I know. They’re disgusting. Not much point though is there. I’m shoving my hands in these dirty
rubber gloves all day. Hardly need to be elegant.”

“You should come out more you know.”

“I’m fine here, Dana.”

“Work isn’t everything.”

“I’m here for a different reason. I was looking for someone and I found him. He’s coming over here to live with me until we work out what we need to do.”

“Get him a job. There’s always something coming up.”

“He’s in hospital at the moment, he needs time to recover.”

“Wouldn’t he like to come and meet us all
?”

“He keeps to himself.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

Brooke couldn’t help smiling at the way everyone assumed it was about sex with her and David. She shook her head
. “No, we grew up together. It was as good a time as any to leave home, so we left together.”

“I’ve never been friends with a guy before. They always want sex. I bet your guy wants it from you.”

Brooke laughed. “David’s never tried anything.”

“Have you ever wanted him to?”

Brooke shook her head, fishing through the colours, pulling out a pale green, shaking it and offering it up to Dana.

Dana grabbed it
. “I love it. I love green. I’ve never seen it on fingernails though.”

“Try it if you don’t like it we can try something else.”

“You should come out tonight.”

Brooke shook her head.

“It’s New Year’s. You can’t sit home by yourself.”

“I’m happy to hole up with a book. I’m buggered from work. It’s all still new to me.”

***

David

David leaned into the phone at the nurses’ station, waiting for his mother to pick up.

“Mum?”

“David. I heard from the Jensens you’d been in a fight.”

“I’m okay. I was just calling so you wouldn’t worry. One of the nurses here has been hounding me, saying mothers worry and all that.”

“I knew you would call if you really needed me.”

“Yeah
,” David said, knowing that was the one time he couldn’t call her. There would be nothing she could do to help him. “I’m going to live with Brooke on Hampton Island.”

His mother breathed a sigh down the phone. “I’m so glad, honey. Really glad.”

“I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing.”

“I know it sounds selfish, and the
Jensens want her home, but from where I’m sitting I’m happy knowing you have somebody. Everyone needs someone to look out for them.”

***

Brooke

Out on the veranda, Brooke was barely able to hear David pick up as the cicadas reached a crescendo in the fading light.

“Hello?”

“Hey David, it’s me.”

“Hi me.”

“Any news.”

“Not long now. I’m walking around a bit now. My back is still sore but nothing came up in the x-ray. They keep telling me that it will take time and rest.”

“Are you still planning on coming over here?”

“I won’t leave the hospital without you beside me. How’s that?”

“I really want to believe you.”

Chapter T
hirty One

Brooke

Brooke rolled a rack of saucers into the dishwasher and slammed the handle down, turning to tackle the growing pile of coffee cups.  The backs of her legs ached and it felt as though an axe had been lodged in between her shoulder blades.

It was
10:36, three minutes since the last time she looked at the clock. Time was crawling. David had called her the day before. The doctor had given him the all clear. David was willing to come and live with her. Still, she couldn’t help imagining turning up at the hospital to find an empty bed. Thoughts can be fickle, persuading anyone to change their mind.

There w
as twenty-three minutes left of her shift.

***

David

David sat rigid in his chair holding a copy of the timetable in his hand.
There was a bus that would take them straight through Airlie to Shute Harbour. Brooke peeked through a gap in the curtain. With a sigh, her face collapsed and eyes rolled, as she bent down to give him a hug.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, glad you’re here.”

“I thought you looked a bit, I don’t know, mad.”

“No, a bit crazed. All I’ve been thinking about is you not being here.”

***

Brooke

A wide expanse of blue opened up in front of the bus. Brooke felt David’s leg shift beside her. She
kicked his bag back under the seat, resting her feet on the seat in front.

As they drove through the main street,
David nodded towards a group of backpackers drinking outside a bar and grill. “That’s the pub I worked at.”

“You were working?”

“Nights.”

“For money?”

David shook his head. “For a room and a hamburger mainly.”

“Do you have any money left
from the beginning?”

“I needed it
all. I spent it as I…”

“It’s just if you have any left, you know, it would be a help if we pooled everything in together.”

“I don’t have anything, Brooke.”

Brooke sat back in the seat and took in the passing rainforest.

“Brooke, if it’s too much to have me with you–”

“No. It’s not that. I just thought you might have had some money left if you had food and a place to stay.”

“The guys that beat me up took my money.”

Brooke turned back to him.

He looked away.

She took his broken wrist in hers. “
Money’s not an issue. I get paid soon. I can bring food back to the room from the staff dining hall. We’re going to be fine.”

***

David

At the marina, David led the way off the bus
, already worn out. His back still stiff, he angled his body to look around him, rather than twisting his neck. He saw Gloria immediately, up on the cliff top. She waved to him, and stood, ambling along the ridge, negotiating the stairs. From the distance she appeared tiny enough to be a child.

“I have to get you a ticket,” Brooke said, fishing in her purse for cash.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll wait here,” he replied, strolling over to the white wooden fence, near the jetty. The instant Brooke disappeared into the queue, he strode through the car park. Gloria bounced out from behind a tourist bus and dragged him in between a couple of vans.

“Take my phone
,” she said pressing it into his good hand. A folded hundred dollar bill was also with it.

“I won’t need it.”

“I want you to have it. I’ll tell everyone I lost mine, get a new one and text you when I have my new number. Only answer a call from the new number I give you, don’t want Chas calling me on my old number by accident and have your stupid voice on the other end sayin’
Hi
.”

David pushed it back at her.

Gloria forced the phone and the note into his pocket. “By the way, she’s beautiful.” She pushed him back out into view, and disappeared.

He caught sight of Brooke spinning in a slow circle, tickets in hand.

“Brooke,” he called, stepping up to her. “I thought I left something on the bus.”

“I bought you a ticket,” she muttered, avoiding his gaze.

“You didn’t get one until you knew I was actually coming, huh?” he teased.

“Not funny,” she snapped. “You said you were going to stand over there
at the fence.”

“
I told you I thought I left something on the bus.”

She looked down at his empty hands.

“But I didn’t,” he said.

***

Brooke

By the time David edged into bed beside her, fresh from a shower, he reeked of toothpaste and deodorant. She pushed him, unable to stop giggling
. “You stink.”

“I couldn’t help it. It’s been a long time since I’ve had deodorant
. Thanks for buying me some.” He smirked.             

She turned
towards him, snuggling into his shoulder. “Who are you trying to impress?”

“I was born impressive.” She felt him inch
back, fidgeting in an obvious attempt to encourage her to make space.

“I’ve given up more than half the bed
,” she said.

He lifted the sheets.

She looked down at the way their bodies were crammed into the bed.

“Your legs have gotten long,” he said, snapping the sheet back.

Brooke clutched the sheet to her chest. “Legs don’t get long all of a sudden. They’re long all along.”

“Your boobs have gotten big.”

She slapped at him, her mouth an astonished ‘O’, “David!” She couldn’t help smiling and slapped at him. “It’s not nice to notice things like that.”

“It’s hard not to notice when they’re right there
freakin pressing up against me like that.”

“If it’s so tough
, go sleep in Dana’s bed.”

“She might come home.”

“She hasn’t slept there the whole time I’ve been here. I don’t even know if that bed’s been used.”

“Why don’t you test it out then?”

“I’m comfortable here. You’re the one with the boob issue.”

He lifted the sheet again. “Well, look at them. You’re on one side of the bed and they’re right here on mine.”

She slapped him again. “Nobody’s that big.”

He raised his eyebrows.

Her insides swished, and she burrowed under the covers, glad the lights were out. “We weren’t apart for that long you know,” she murmured.

When nothing more was said, she lifted her chin above the sheet, and could tell by the way he looked at the ceiling making slow deliberate blinks that he was thinking about that time
he’d left her.

He started laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

Still laughing, he rolled to face her.

Startled, she fell back, flattening herself against the wall.

His laugh sputtered to a wheezing halt. He pulled her to him.

“Huh?” she said wriggling her squashed arm free.

“For God’s sake, just shut up.”

With her free arm, she tentatively touched his back, then his neck and hair. She felt him fall into her. Their faces were nose to nose on one pillow. At first their eyes were wide. She couldn’t stop staring into the endless pupils, like tunnels, hiding thoughts behind twists and turns.

Their breath was in sync. She was eager to breathe in his unwanted air, detecting unspoken secrets hidden under the disguise of toothpaste.

“I didn’t leave to hurt you,” he said.

“There’s nothing funny about that day, then, because it hurt like hell.”

Chapter T
hirty Two

David

“Do you have to work again today?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“When do you get a day off?”

“When they tell me I can
have one. I fit in with them.”

“So you don’t know.”

“I’m rostered for a day off on Thursday and I’m not on again until the dinner shift on Friday.”

“I’m bored, Brooke.”

“What would you do if I was here?”

David shrugged. The ache in his back had him laid out most of the day. It hurt to draw. It hurt to walk.

“Exactly,” Brooke replied to his silence. “You need to lay out flat. Take things slow.” 

***

Brooke

“Mum?”

“Brooke. What’s happening?”

Brooke shifted the phone from her ear and considered hanging up. “Just wanting to say
we’re okay.”

“How’s your job?”

“Fine. Fine,” she sighed, then laughed. “It’s a bit different to working for Dad at the hotel. A bit more full on.”

“Are the people nice to you?”

“Not like at the hotel. But then I’m not the boss’s kid up here. I’m just like everyone else.”

“You can always come home. We’re waiting here for you.”

“David and I want to make a go of it.”

“His
mum’s facing a sentence for his dad’s death. Does David know that?”

Brooke sat in silence, remembering all the times she’d caught her mother slipping back home through the paddocks from seeing
David’s dad. It was strange. She hadn’t been feeling that angry about it lately. It was becoming a plain old memory, just there, no emotion attached. “I’ll mention it to him tonight.”

Her mother filled
more empty air between them. “There’s no point in fighting about things anymore.”

“I’m not fighting anyone Mum.”

“I don’t know how any of this happened. I keep racking my brain for one thing I could have done differently with you and there probably isn’t any answers to that.”

“David told me that his
dad always told him that he loved you but that the two of you couldn’t be together because of David and his mum.”

“Do you know the story?”

“I just want the truth.”

“I think you think it was some kind of soap opera. It never was. I have always cared about
Toby…Mr Banks…David’s dad. I have. But there was never anything between us. I just wanted him to be happy. I wanted to be happy. When we were young, every time it looked like we would get together, he would do something stupid, usually with alcohol. He drank even when he was a kid. A happy drunk to start with, but it always turned out badly.”

“You didn’t end up together because he got David’s mum pregnant?”

“It was the last straw.”

“I’d never turn my back on David.”

“Brooke, really think about it. What kind of life would I have had if I had married David’s father?”

Brooke sat down on a bench among some fronds on the resorts gravel path. She had a few minutes before her shift was due to start. “
Did you marry Dad for money?”

“What? No.”

“Did you love Mr Banks but want him to be successful like Dad?”

Brooke could he
ar her mother on the end of the line. She let the silence float between them, believing her mother would fill it with wasted words, skirting around reality again. But something different happened.

“
You hit the nail on the head Brooke, Toby Banks was to me, what David Banks is to you.”

A sharp intake of breathe
brought a stabbing pain through Brooke’s chest.

“Are you still there, Brooke?”

“So I’m right.”

“Sometimes the one you think you love is the very person you can’t spend your life with. Look what happened to th
at family. That could have been my life.”

“Wouldn’t it have been different if he married you? Mr Banks could have been happier. You could have been happier.”

“That would just be a fantasy. Toby would have found some other reason to drink if he had married me. I want you to know I’m happy with your father.”

“
But I’ve never heard you laugh, Mum.”

“I worry your future is going to be like me. I worry that you are following me.”

“But making different choices. Maybe my choices are better.”

Dead air can feel really thick sometimes.

“Your father and I are going to counselling. We’re making it work. We’re married. He was always there for me. Always. It was never about money. And it was about never letting me down.”

“What’s counse
lling going to do? David’s dad is dead. David’s mum is going to jail. David and I need space from all your crap. How is your stupid counselling going to fix that?”

“That’s hardly fair.
”

“Exactly, none of it’s fair.”

“There’s more to a relationship than love, Brooke. That’s all David will ever offer you, especially with
a d-grade education. And if he can’t get over his stuff, you might end up just like me anyway. It might be you who never cracks a smile. My only mistake was continuing to care about what happened to Toby Banks. I knew how good he really was. I could look past the drinking. I knew him longer and better than anyone.”

“Did you ever sleep with him, Mum?”

“I’ll answer that if you tell me if you’ve slept with David.”

“That’s a no-brainer
. Despite all the country gossip, David and I are just friends.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way, for both your sakes.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to make me ask that question again. Who on this planet has to talk to their mother about her sex life?”

“I’ve only ever been with your father
, Brooke.”

“I am stuck on David in a way that is far deeper than sex Mum. I can’t breathe without him.”

“Brooke it really doesn’t have to be that way. I can help you if you come home.”

“I like it like th
is. And I know now he feels the same about me.”

Brooke hung up, not wanting to cry, not wanting to show any weakness to her mother. She stood up, pocketing her mobile, and walked through the resorts glass doors, into the dining area.

“You’re late,” Julie said hooking an apron around Brooke’s neck. “The plates are piling up at a rate of knots. And you deserve it.” Julie swivelled Brooke around to face her. “You’re crying.”

Brooke nodded.

“Throw yourself into those dishes. Work off the tears, but if you ever want to talk, I’m always here.”

***

David

When he could lie there no longer,
David rose off the bed. He rummaged through his bag for his sketchbook and flipped through it, reaching for a blue and red pencil. He made a sketch of his broken wrist, until his back ached forcing him to retreat back to the bed.

He rested only long enough to feel his mind fix on the rumblings in the bar down the hill. The sun was setting. It was getting late. He would make his decision before the bottl
e shop closed.

He settled himself back at the table and picked up the red pencil.
He needed to settle his mind.

***

Brooke

All Brooke could manage was a shower. The flatette
looked like a bomb hat hit it, but David was waiting for her in bed and she missed him. She climbed in between sheets, she’d changed only that morning, sensing David wake.

“Sorry,” she said.

“S’okay,” he muttered.

She turned on her side, and drew a thin pillow onto his
good arm, nestling in as he lay flat on his back, taking up most of the bed. She ran her fingers along the elastic of his boxers. He gently took her hand and guided it to the good side of his chest patting it.

“I called Mum today.”

“Yeah?”

“Hm.”

“Are you thinking of going home?”

She lifted her head and looked at him
, smiling. “As if.”

“It might be easier on you. You have something to go home to.”

“I’m not having this conversation with you ever again. Last time it led to you taking off.”

“
So what did you talk about?”

“It was interesting really. She kind of backed up everything you said
in the hospital about her and your dad.”

“Did you doubt me?”

Brooke shook her head. “I doubted her. But both of you say that there was no affair. And she’s really concerned that you and I will get all hot and heavy. She doesn’t want me to have sex with you. Well, really she probably doesn’t want me to have sex, but especially not with you.” She felt David stir under her palm, but decided not to say anything else just to see whether the conversation would end or drift over to something else.

“Did you tell her I’d be shit in bed if I tried anything on right now?”

“Nope.”

“Do you really think parents spend much time worrying about their kids’ sex life?”

Brooke shrugged. “It’s definitely keeping Mum up at night.”

“She should take comfort in the fact that if we were ever going to do anything we would have done it by now.”

“I can’t even believe that I had a conversation with her about it – her having sex, me having sex–” Brooke started laughing. “There’s got to be some kind of rule.”

David’s body shook under her, and she smiled.
“I haven’t seen you laugh in a while.”

“Neither of us ha
s done much of that,” he said lifting his broken hand up to his temple. “Ow, my head.”

“Do you need a pill?”

He shook his head. “I’ve taken a couple.”

“Mum said something else.”

“What?”

“She said your Mum is going to be sentenced this week.”

“Really. I spoke to her this week. She didn’t say anything.”

“I’m glad you spoke to her.”

“They’ll go light on her. She was defending herself.”

Brooke shrugged. “I hope so, too.”