Selling the Drama (26 page)

Toby stared down at the photo in his hand,
the grainy image barely distinguishable, yet entirely obvious at
the same time. What an incredible sight. The beauty of that little
shape. It was stunning. And doing things to him that he could not
have possibly anticipated. Checking the post mark on the envelope,
he could see Charlotte had sent it to him on the same day she had
gone to have the scan done. Pulling out the piece of notepaper she
had included in the envelope, he reread her neat cursive
writing.

Everything looks good and is the way it should be. I
didn't ask if we're having a boy or a girl, preferring to wait and
see. I figured you probably didn't care either way.

It was no less than what he deserved, but it
still hurt like hell to read. Shoving it all into his pocket, he
got up off the bench and entered the room where he was to undertake
his final exam for his law degree. It was a bittersweet day.

It had been a particularly gruelling day at
work and Charlotte was longing for nothing more than a hot shower
and a cup of tea with an entire packet of shortbread fingers on the
side. They had become a little vice to her of late. Totally
controllable of course. She could stop eating them at any time, if
she wanted to that is, which at present, she did not.

She came to a dead stop in the doorway of
her bedroom, not fully believing what was spread out before her.
"Mum!" she bellowed. "Mum!"

"What is it?" Iris said, walking calmly up
the hall to stand beside her.

Charlotte turned to face her mother,
disbelief meeting serene. "Where is my bedroom?"

Iris pointed to the ceiling. "Upstairs
darling. I swapped us. You'll need more space when the baby comes
and I don't want to be up there anymore. Your room is fine for me,
it has a bathroom attached and a nice view of the pool. It's
perfect."

Charlotte turned back to her room, which was
now not her room, with despair. "You moved all my stuff?"

"Yes. I didn't want this to be a bother for
you."

Turning back to her mother, Charlotte gazed
upon her face with concern. "Mum, you know you're being weird,
right? First the trees, now this." Charlotte gestured through the
door to make her point.

Iris nodded. "Yes, I know. But I'm slowly
letting it go, so I promise that the weirdness will be whittled
away to nothing by the time your baby arrives. But you'll have to
humour me for just a little bit longer as I have some fishing rods
to dismantle and some very well organised nuts, bolts, and nails to
mix up."

Charlotte reached out and cupped her
mother's face, sadness welling forth. She stroked the soft cheek
with her thumb, catching the tear that had escaped from her
mother's eye.

"Mum, he's not coming back." As much as it
pained Charlotte to acknowledge this, it was futile to keep hoping.
He had been gone without a trace for a year. He would have been
back by now if he was going to return.

Iris smiled softly. "Hope springs eternal.
You never know, Charlotte. One day he might just turn up out of the
blue. And I'd hate for him to think I hadn't thought of him while
he was gone." She pulled away from Charlotte then and slipped back
down the hall.

Charlotte looked back once more at her
former room before turning on her heel and heading upstairs to her
new abode. It was all set up for her, complete with a pretty white
cot and matching change table in the corner.

"Oh Mum," Charlotte whispered, sadness and
excitement intermingling at the sight of it.

"So, this is your idea of a great
sacrifice?" Ellie stood before him, a sneer on her face. "You're so
noble." She fluttered her hand over her chest with an exaggerated
air.

"You know you actually weren't invited
today? Jake and I are quite able to pack and load this stuff up
ourselves." Toby wished Ellie's phone would ring with an emergency
at work, or that a bolt of lightning might just randomly pierce
through the ceiling and knock her for six. Because putting up with
her for the entire fucking day? Hell, that lightning could strike
him and he would be happier than enduring her wrath.

"Play nice, children," Jake warned from
across the room.

"Only for you, honey," Ellie replied, in a
sweet bull shitting voice while glaring daggers at Toby. "I'll pack
Charlotte's stuff," she hissed at him, picking up a box on her way
out of the room.

Toby waited until she had gone before
calling over to Jake, "She'd better not tell Charlotte what I'm
doing."

"Nah, she's good for it."

"How can you be so sure?" Toby did not trust
Ellie to keep his counsel about anything. The girl was a snake
waiting to strike. He had always had a weird feeling about her;
turns out instinct was a powerful thing. The irony of course was
that she could probably say the same thing about him.

Jake looked over at him. "Did you catch that
new chunky gold bracelet hanging from her wrist? I am not above
buying her silence."

Toby shook his head at that and fell into a
rhythm of packing. He was lucky with Jake. Things could have gone
very sour between them, given Jake's status as Charlotte's best
friend's fiancé, not to mention his quite dramatic defence of her
in the wake of Toby's monumental stuff up. And they probably would
have, if left up to Toby to salvage. But Jake was loyal to the end,
and he was around within a week of slamming Toby and near on
choking him, bitching about money and some douche at the academy as
though nothing at all had gone down between them. Toby was so
grateful to not be on the outs with every single human being he
knew, that it took him all of five seconds to roll with it and move
right on.

"So, this is it, hey? Leave behind the big
smoke and the potential big bucks for provincial life?" Jake yanked
on the tape and stuck the top of the box down firmly before moving
on to start another one.

"I'll need to come back for six weeks next
year to do my Advocacy course for the bar, but other than that,
yeah, all over down here. I've got two weeks off before I start as
a Judge's Associate." Toby gestured to Jake for the roll of tape,
his own box now full. Jake lobbed it to him.

"Justice in the far north." Jake looked over
at him with a grin. "Guess it's the tropics for both of us," he
remarked casually.

Toby glanced up. "What?"

"I got Innisfail. I start next month."
Jake's face was split wide with a grin. "Seems like we're all going
home."

"That's fantastic! I'm so happy for you, I
know you wanted to get closer to home." Toby was pleased for Jake,
if not a little for himself as well. Knowing Jake would be within
driving distance was a real boost for Toby in his current state of
indecision.

Ellie chose that moment to make her
appearance back in the living room. "Don't be too excited, it also
means I'm close enough to keep tabs on you and that makes my turn
around time for kicking your arse all the more quicker if you mess
with my Charlotte in any way I consider inappropriate, fuck
stick."

"Ellie," Jake warned. "You promised."

"I promised to keep my mouth shut to
Charlotte about him moving up there uninvited. If you wanted me to
be nice to him as well then you should have bought me the matching
necklace to this bracelet. Live and learn, Jake baby." Ellie
reached over and snatched the roll of tape from Toby's hands.

"Extortion is against the law," he told her
with a smirk, knowing better than to goad her, yet unable to help
himself.

She glared at him. "So is abortion." She
flipped him her middle finger before turning to saunter out of the
room.

"Bada-bing," Jake added with a shake of his
head. "Shit, she's beautiful," he muttered as an afterthought.

Toby declined to make any response to that,
thinking he would gladly take a slit throat over a day with Ellie
when it was next offered.

Swimming had become her thing, a form of
exercise, a form of relaxation, a form of getting a break from her
mother. There were several perks attached. Charlotte also figured
that with twenty laps twice a day, she might make up for all those
packets of shortbread fingers she was demolishing at every
opportunity. Swimming was the only time she allowed herself to
think of Toby. To dwell on what had happened between them. To
sometimes regret leaving him, while at other times to feel resigned
that it was the only thing she could have really done.

They had only been apart for six weeks, yet
with her body changing rapidly as the baby grew within her, it
seemed like so much longer. She had not heard from him at all since
mailing him the ultrasound photo, even his daily email had ceased,
and she supposed that was probably her fault given the note she had
included in with the picture. She had been unable to help herself
though. Getting the scan done alone had been like a physical blow;
lying there, looking at the image of their baby on the screen
without him there to hold her hand and marvel over what they had
created. He was more than one thousand kilometres away, and while
she accepted responsibility for that, even if she had stayed in
Brisbane with him, she could not help but think she would have
still been lying looking at that screen alone. Because he did not
want what was pictured there. Nothing appeared to have changed on
that score. And as each week passed by with nothing more than his
stupid little 'how are you' emails, nothing looked as though it
ever was going to change.

Charlotte emerged from the depths, breaking
the surface near the stairs. She climbed out of the pool, water
streaming off her, adjusting her bikini top which seemed to have a
mind of its own about where it wanted to sit on her body. She
looked down at her belly as the baby shifted around inside of her,
evidence of the movement clear on the surface of her skin.
Laughing, she patted the area where there was the most kicking.
"Are you swimming too?" She talked to her belly constantly now,
having read about how a baby can recognise its mother's voice from
inside the womb. Raising her head as she stepped down onto the
path, she was met with the sight of Toby standing by the pool gate,
her towel hooked loosely over his arm. She paused as he grinned at
her.

"That bikini is way too small."

Charlotte blushed as he checked her out from
head to toe and then back up again.

"I love it," he said, with a heartbreaking
grin spreading over his face.

Walking forward, she took her towel from him
and wrapped it around her body tightly. "What are you doing
here?"

"Making a choice." Pushing off the pool
fence, he turned and walked off towards the house, calling over his
shoulder, "I hear we've got the upstairs now. Sweet."

As the back door slammed behind him,
Charlotte realised she had been completely duped by her mother with
regards to the bedroom swapping.

Iris stepped out from the yard shed, her
wide straw hat wedged firmly onto her head. She picked up her
gardening bucket and sauntered towards Charlotte. "Good swim,
darling?"

"You led me to believe you didn't want the
upstairs anymore because Dad was no longer here."

"Darling, what are you suggesting?"

Charlotte rolled her eyes. "Toby is
here."

"Yes, I let him in. He looks well."

"I didn't look at him."

"I'm sure you didn't. I have gardening to
do, was there anything else you needed?"

"Some consideration, but with none of that
forthcoming, I guess you're good to go." Charlotte brushed past her
mother, bristling at the sound of her laughter tinkling through the
yard.

She spoke to him from behind the closed door
of the bathroom where she was unfortunately taking off that bikini.
"Why aren't you staying downstairs in your old room?"

"Because Iris said that was set up for
Jenna," Toby called out to her.

"What's wrong with the guest room?" She
opened the door, stalking out past him only to come to a stop in
the middle of the room, her eyes drifting down to the pile of bags
sitting on the floor at the end of the bed.

"She told me that was for guests and that
I'm not a guest."

"Why can't Jenna use the guest room and you
use your room?" Charlotte argued.

"Because Jenna isn't a guest either."

Charlotte turned to face him then, a look of
irritation fixed upon her face. "What are you really doing here?
Having a quick pit stop before embarking on your brilliant
career?"

He shook his head, ignoring her sarcastic
tone. "I'm moving in. I've taken a position here in Cairns and I
start in two weeks. I have all of our stuff outside in a trailer I
rented. I broke the lease on the flat."

Charlotte swallowed deeply, seemingly at a
loss for words for a few moments. "Well," she eventually said, "all
of that is very out of character for you. I think your plan just
buckled under the strain of all those changes." She looked down
then, her gaze trained to a spot on the carpet she began working at
with her toe.

"I threw the plan out. The plan sucked."

"That's very dramatic. So is breaking the
lease on the flat actually. You forfeited the bond?"

"Every cent."

"Idiot." She looked back up at him then, a
smirk playing at her lips.

"You've pegged me there. The biggest idiot
of all time." Toby approached her cautiously, his hands coming to
rest either side of her belly. "I'm sorry. It's not enough, but I
am, and it needs to be said. I'm worse than an idiot. Worse even
than that." He leaned in, pressing his forehead against hers, their
eyes connecting. "I can't live without you, Charlotte." He
swallowed deeply, overcome by all that he was feeling combined with
the weight of his remorse. "I don't want to live without you."

She stared at him as he slid his hands over
her belly, yet she made no move to step away. She seemed to be
expecting something more, and as he felt a shifting, a bump and
what seemed like a roll, he knew then that she was not waiting for
more from him. She had been waiting for this. She must have known
the baby would move beneath his hands. Giving into the tears that
had filled his eyes, he fell back onto the end of the bed, drawing
Charlotte towards him. He pressed his lips to her belly, resting
them there, as though he might be able to kiss their child through
the layers of fabric and skin. Charlotte allowed him to weep
against her, standing in front of him wordlessly, her hand trailing
gently through his hair. Sometimes, there aren't words to convey
all of the emotion contained within one moment. Sometimes, it's
better to just let things lie. Sometimes, you just need to break
the plan, accept the changes, and breathe together.