Temporary Intrigue (28 page)

The door slid shut on his words.

She was halfway across the foyer when her phone rang. Seeing Josh’s name she snapped it into answer mode and began speaking immediately.

“Look, Josh, let’s get something clear. I appreciate very much what you did for me last night but that’s where it ends. I don’t care if your wife’s in Canada or Siberia or Bullamakanka, married men aren’t my scene. And by the way,” she went on, disregarding whatever he was trying to say, “don’t expect me back at work. As I’m apparently causing problems you have to
cover
for, I know you won’t miss me.”

As she took a breath, his voice cut in.

“You have to listen to me. I’m not letting you go like this.”

“You don’t have the option.” Her tone was glacial. “I’m letting
you
go!”

She cut off the call. Her fingers shook only slightly as she keyed in a number.

“Sandy,” she said when her friend answered, “can I still get on that flight to Queensland with you this afternoon?”

****

She had cried her heart out only twice before, and on each of those occasions she’d had to do it alone. When her mother was killed, she had wanted to seem strong for her father. When her father died, she’d needed to be strong for Shane. But now, while she wept for this new loss, she at least had Sandra to comfort her.

When she had no more tears left, she sat on the balcony of their twelfth floor hotel suite on Queensland’s Gold Coast, staring drearily at the magnificent view of blue ocean and white sandy beaches.

“I suppose he was just amusing himself with me,” she said, when Sandra emerged onto the balcony with a mug of freshly made coffee for her. “She’s probably coming out here to join him.”

“It doesn’t look good,” Sandra admitted, pushing a box of tissues along the low table in front of Dimity to make room for the mug.

“And
he
had the nerve to be angry!” Dimity recalled yet again the scene in the corridor that she had described to Sandra during the flight. “I’ve never seen him like that.”

“Do you think he’s been waiting for the right time to tell you? He was hinting about something, wasn’t he?”

Dimity took a sip of coffee without tasting it. “How hard is it to say ‘I’m married’?”

“Could be very hard if he’s worried about the reaction.” Sandra grinned. “You can be pretty scary, sometimes.”

“As if he’d be scared of me!”

“Don’t underestimate yourself. Did he talk much at all about his life in Canada?”

“Not a lot. More about his childhood than anything.”

Sandra glanced at her watch.

“I have to go to a workshop. Will you be all right?”

Dimity nodded.

“Thanks for listening. Sorry I’m such a wet blanket.”

Sandra bent down and hugged her.

“Don’t be an idiot. I’ll take you out to lunch when I get back.”

Left alone, Dimity stared unseeingly at the ocean. Her mobile was turned off. Even Shane didn’t yet know where she was staying. She didn’t want contact with anyone except Sandy while she tried to make sense of what had happened.

This was different from the times when she had felt angry with Josh on the surface while knowing that the essential bond between them remained strong. Now, beneath the hurt and the anger, there was nothing but a terrible emptiness.

It was an emptiness born of the realisation that the place in his heart she had begun to think was hers had belonged all the time to someone else.

She was appalled at how much she minded the thought of another woman being loved by him, sharing intimacies with him.

The terrible irony was that it had taken this awareness of loss to make her understand how much she loved and wanted him. Even more terrible was the fact that she had recognised it when she heard Gail say the words ‘your wife’ to him.

Without knowing it, she had been imagining
herself
as his wife. Hearing the role accorded to someone else had hurt her more than she could have believed.

For two days she left the suite only when Sandra virtually dragged her out for meals that she ate with no appetite, hardly noticing the holiday crowds around them. At night she lay awake, paced, stared at whatever was on television, turned the pages of books and magazines – anything that helped in any way to distract her from the excruciating heartache inside her.

This stabbing, relentless anguish, so real it seemed physical, was something she had never experienced. The intensity of her desire for Josh was such that she could hardly restrain herself from contacting him, demanding an explanation that would put things right.

But that was not possible. He had left her with nowhere to go and only pain for company.

On the second night she rang Shane, feeling guilty on top of everything else for having abandoned him so soon after the revelation of Leigh’s murderous intentions.

He sounded calm and resolute.

“I probably needed something like this to make me get my tail into gear,” he said. “I’ve sponged off you long enough. It’s time I started looking after myself.”

“What are you going to do?” The alarm in Dimity’s voice made him laugh.

“Nothing drastic. I’m moving into a furnished flat in town tomorrow. I’ll be able to walk to the Global from there. Malcolm wants me to start work on Thursday.”

“Will you be able to manage on your own?” Illogically, now he was doing what she had wished he would, Dimity felt even more abandoned. “You know I’ll be there for you if you need anything.”

“I know that. I’ve always known it. But it’s going to work both ways now. We’ll be there for each other.”

Her little brother could still surprise her. Perhaps she had been in danger of stifling him when he really needed to be liberated. By running away, she had inadvertently given him the space he needed for some rapid growing up.

The hardest part of rearing children is knowing when to let them go.

She didn’t blame her father for making her feel responsible for Shane, and she never would. But now it was time to let him go.

And now she knew that Josh loved someone else, she also had to let him go.

Dimity swallowed.

“Of course we will,” she said into the phone. “So it sounds as if you’ve been busy.”

“Flat out.” Shane paused. “Josh came round last night.”

Her heart gave a sickening lurch.

“Really?”

“He was checking that we were okay. I told him you’d gone to Queensland. He hasn’t been in touch?”

“I’ve had my phone off. Needed to chill out. We’ll be back on Saturday. I’ll come and play big sister, make sure I approve of your living conditions.” Chattering on, she steered him away from the one subject she most wanted to talk about.

She was starting to say goodbye when he suddenly cut in.

“There’s one problem–”

“What?”

“Pets aren’t allowed at the flat. If I pay you for Bert’s food, do you mind keeping him for a while?”

When the call ended, Dimity was smiling for the first time in days. Some things never changed.

****

After they returned from Queensland on Saturday morning, Sandra drove Dimity to town to collect her newly repaired car. With a rather tentative foot testing the brake pedal, Dimity then headed home to unpack and throw her washing in the machine.

Delighted to have company again, Bert was even more elated with an early meal and a long walk around the neighbourhood. Much to his disappointment, however, they didn’t venture onto the reserve.

It was early evening when Dimity, now more confident with the car, returned to town to visit Shane in his small but comfortable flat, an easy walking distance from the hotel.

Somewhat to her surprise he seemed to be having no problem working with Malcolm.

“Maybe he’s more a man’s man,” she wondered aloud. “Although he certainly doesn’t appeal to J– some men.”

“He’d like to be a ladies’ man but he said he’d have to settle down. His fiancée read him the riot act about playing around.” Shane chuckled, apparently not noticing her mid-sentence stumble.

“I don’t like her chances. But you seem to be thriving on the work. I’ve never seen you look better.” There was also, Dimity thought, watching him make coffee for them in his tiny kitchenette after her tour of inspection, a hint of new maturity about him.

“Wish I could say the same for you. You look as if you’ve had too many nights out on the town while you were away.”

“How did you guess?” She forced a laugh so patently artificial it drew a perturbed glance from Shane.

“Are you going to keep on with the temping?” he asked when they sat down with their coffee.

“No way!” Dimity grimaced at the thought. “I’m going to see a financial adviser next week to make plans for getting my gallery off the ground.”

“Good idea. I wish I’d given you more support when you first started talking about it.”

“It wasn’t the right time.” She smiled, feeling slightly guilty for not telling him she had decided about the financial adviser only thirty seconds ago.

Seeing Shane settled had somehow marked a new chapter in her life. It was time to move on.

Or so she told herself.

“Josh said he’d be going back to Sydney when the convention ended yesterday. Did he get in touch before he went?” Shane asked with apparent casualness.

The world stopped for an instant.

He’d left. Now there was no chance she would ever see him again.

Which was how it had to be, of course.

“Not that I know of.” She matched Shane’s offhand tone. “I’ll catch up with messages later.”

Shane took her out to dinner and they talked about their respective futures while the pain continued to twist like a knife inside her.

For someone who’d been so recently betrayed, Shane seemed to have recovered quickly. She wished she could say the same about herself.

****

No matter how bleak her mood, how cheerless her circumstances, she had always been able to paint. Thankfully, this still applied. After another near-sleepless night she spent Sunday in her studio, working until early afternoon on a bushland scene in which a flock of brightly coloured rosellas camouflaged themselves among the sun-dappled leaves of an enormous gum tree.

It was going well, she thought, eyeing the result with detached interest when she finally decided to call it a day. Hard work definitely helped. It hadn’t cured her misery but it had muted it.

The important thing was to keep going.

She walked Bert and, when she returned, scoured his kennel and swept the veranda. Before darkness fell she had also weeded the garden, cleaned the new kitchen window that had been replaced while she was away, and vacuumed and washed the car. Finding some home-made pumpkin soup Shane had left in the freezer, she put it in the microwave to defrost.