A Case For Trust (28 page)

Brax nodded and released the documents into Matt's hand. He turned to Pippa.

‘I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, Philippa. I'm afraid because your mother died intestate, your father would have received the rights to all her property.'

‘It doesn't matter. Anything left of hers is mine now anyway. I'm glad to know how she died, and that she was happy and excited about starting a new life.'

Matt made an odd noise in the back of his throat and exchanged a look with Brax, which Pippa couldn't read but she thought looked … severe? A warning? But Brax was holding out his hand to her, shaking hers, seeing them out of his office.

At the elevator she stood silently beside Matt and sensed his eyes travel over her face.

‘You okay?'

She nodded her head, knowing she wasn't, not knowing how to say so. Something in her face gave her away. Matt gathered her in his arms and rocked her a little, releasing her only long enough to usher her into the lift when the doors opened, then hugged her close again. She felt his lips brush the top of her head and nuzzled closer to his chest, inhaling his familiar scent. It had been weeks since she'd held him, felt like years since the betrayal and anger and desolation had forced her away from him. She'd forgotten that along with the raging desire between them that had made her feel so sensual, there was also this comfort that, despite their history, despite everything, always made her feel so safe.

The lift doors opened to the carpark and Pippa had to force herself forward, out of his arms. He didn't comment at her withdrawal, simply opened her door. When they were both settled in the car, she found her voice.

‘Thank you. It doesn't really change anything, but it feels better to know more about what happened to her. And you don't have to worry I'm deluding myself. I know what it means that she was travelling south.'

‘She was coming back.'

‘Yes. That's why the letter was still in her handbag, not even in an envelope. She changed her mind. She always came back. She never could leave him. She'd tried before but she never got far. He told her for years she was useless, hopeless, stupid, ugly, repulsive. Sometimes she remembered she wasn't, but it never lasted. She'd make some insignificant little mistake, forget some little detail, and next thing you know she'd be beating herself up harder than he ever did. I used to hate her for it, but she couldn't help it. She was always talking about leaving him, but she never meant it.'

‘I think she meant it this time. It takes some planning to organise a bank account in a different identity.'

‘No. I think I know who Patrice Carolyn Barker was. She was Aunty Patsy when I was little, a school friend of Mum's. It must have been her debit card Mum had in her wallet.'

‘That's a little … unusual. Was she helping your mother, do you think?'

‘I guess she must have been. I didn't know Mum was still in contact with her. Dad hated Aunty Patsy, wouldn't let Mum invite her to our house, wouldn't let us phone her.'

‘Would you like me to try and find her? We have her name; if she was a school friend of your mother's we have her birth year, give or take.'

‘I don't know. It was all such a long time ago. She could be dead by now.'

‘Could be. But if she was your mother's contemporary, she's not that old. Let me try and find her. Even if she can't tell you anything more about what happened, wouldn't it be great to connect with somebody who knew and cared about your mother?'

It would. She hadn't realised she'd spoken aloud until Matt abruptly spun the wheel and made a swift U-turn.

‘Where are we going?'

‘To my office. If you want to find her, don't you want to find her now?'

***

The foyer of Matt's law firm was all white marble, white leather lounges and overblown white gardenias in oversized white ceramic pots. Pippa clocked the decorating choice automatically and registered her first smile of the day.

‘White for purity, truth and integrity, right?'

Matt grunted, and led her down a corridor still buzzing with busy-looking professionals. One or two smiled at her; most seemed to recognise Matt's purposeful stride and tried to convey their own purposefulness a little more blatantly. His office was at the end of the corridor, and Pippa barely had time to register its dark timber and deep grey carpet—she was being introduced to a young man who gestured with the files he was juggling his apology for not offering her his hand.

‘Simon's my clerk,' Matt said. ‘For now, anyway. Are those the Consolgard files?'

‘Yep. I'll check they're in order and get them away tomorrow with the rest.'

His tone implied a question, but Matt simply held the door expectantly, closing it after Simon departed. He gestured to Pippa to sit, and she perched on the edge of one of the deep bucket seats in front of his desk.

Matt had spread the documents from the public trustee across his desk and was silently typing, occasionally glancing at one of the papers before returning to the keyboard. No input seemed to be required of Pippa, and after a few minutes she sank back into the engulfing, fine-grained leather and let her mind wander.

It took some time before she realised where it had wandered, until she realised she was staring, not thinking, just staring. Staring at Matt. Beautiful, beguiling, bedevilling Matt. She ripped her eyes away and looked instead at the city night unfolding outside his office window, but inexorably her gaze returned to the man in front of her, his furrowed, fierce brow demanding answers of the screen in front of him, his fingers—those lean, clever, loving fingers—striking again and again at the keyboard, like an adder, like a dagger, stabbing and urging and yanking the truth from the recalcitrant vaults of digital archives.

The last time she'd had the unfettered luxury to gaze at him like this, he'd been in her bed. His censorious, forbidding brow relaxed in sleep. His fingers easy, tender, resting on her waist. Those long legs, currently splayed below the desk, instead wrapped around—

‘She's in Buderim.'

Pippa wrenched her eyes to his face, saw jubilation there. Triumph. After so very long, she wasn't sure it even mattered any more, but Matt's victorious smile at locating Aunty Patsy drew an answering smile from her.

‘You found her. In Buderim?'

‘In a retirement village there. I have an address, and what looks like the village office number, probably. Would you like to do the honours?'

The icy charge started somewhere below Pippa's shoulder bones and shuddered into goosebumps on her arms. The honours? No.
No.

‘It's late.'

‘It's not that late. There's likely somebody in the office around the clock, an on-call manager or caretaker. They could find her for you—put your call through to Patrice's unit.'

If she couldn't force the lump past her throat she would choke. Pippa coughed, struggled to drag air into uncooperative lungs. Matt squatted beside her chair, took her hands in his, was smoothing them as his murmurs soothed her panic. When she didn't resist, he eased onto the vast seat beside her, lifted her a little, slid her into his lap, wrapped his arms around her.

‘You're frightened of what she'll tell you.'

Pippa nodded miserably and burrowed her head deeper into his chest. His fingers, gentle now, fleeting, barely felt, were tracing her hair behind her ear.

‘Do you think she could tell you anything worse than you've imagined over the years, sweetheart?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Yes, you do. What's the scariest thing she could possibly tell you?'

‘That I was right,' Pippa whispered. ‘That I was right to blame my mother. That she was weak, and she didn't love me enough to take us away from him. That she was selfish; she ran away and she left me there with him. That I was right to blame her. That I was right to hate her.'

Matt was silent for long moments.

‘I can understand why you might have believed that when she died. They're very natural things to feel, to think, when you're a child, when you've just lost your mother. And you might have blamed her, but I don't believe you ever really hated her.'

Pippa sobbed into his shirt. ‘I wasn't a child.'

‘You were
her
child.'

‘But I was old enough to know better than to blame her. He was a monster. No woman should have to live with that kind of abuse. He was so clever. He separated her from her family, from Aunty Patsy, from anybody who would have helped her. She had nobody. And she did the best she could. And I think what I hate most is not that she ran away, but that she came back. Why did she come back?'

Her entreaty coloured the breaths between them.

‘I don't know, sweetheart. But I think there's every chance she was coming back for you. Perhaps she decided you were safer with her, even sleeping in the back of a car, than waiting for her to find you both a new home. She'd made plans, and she had money. She had a car. She had help. I can't help thinking this time she was making the break. But you know what? Even if she
was
coming back to your father, she was a step nearer—several steps nearer—to leaving him completely. It's nobody's fault she died; certainly not her fault. Certainly not yours. Perhaps we'll never know what was going through her mind that night. But if Patrice has any more answers for you, you owe it to yourself and your mum to find out, to know your mum a little better, to understand her a little more. Don't you think?'

‘Yes. Okay.'

‘Okay? Good girl.'

Pippa felt Matt brush a whispering kiss on top of her head. She knew she should move, that that was her cue to unfold her fingers from the shirtfront she'd been clutching, to wrestle herself out of the haven of his lap and back into reality, on her own two feet. But god, she was so tired, and his arms were so warm. He wasn't pushing her away; his hand had started a slow, rhythmic stroking of her hip; anchoring, not seducing, calming and comforting. After a few minutes, she felt him reach one arm across to the edge of his desk, and resented the momentary loss of heat. Then he was back, arms wrapped round her again while he manipulated his mobile phone. Then he was talking quietly. Then he seemed to be waiting. Another voice, his calm response, and then he was holding the phone out to her.

‘Aunty Patsy? It's me. It's Pippa.'

***

In the hours since she'd left her front kerb, it felt, Pippa's world had shifted on its axis. So the miniskip bin with its sad pile of rubbish brought her up short, reminded her forcefully of all the things in her life that remained unresolved. But they would wait. Matt's reassuring bulk a step behind her was all she was prepared to think about tonight.

He took the door key from her unresisting fingers, led her past her bedroom and the half-packed boxes, past the half-empty living room with its couches covered in rolls of tape and scissors and stuffing paper, into the only room in the house that didn't yet look like chaos. He shut the bathroom door behind her, leant over the bathtub and flicked the taps on. Almost immediately the tiny room started to fog, and Pippa watched him numbly, wordlessly as he appropriated her bath salts and dumped a generous third of a bottle into the tub. He added a capful of bubbles for good measure, then left her briefly, returning with an overfull wine glass which he placed, gently frosting as its chill collided with the steam, on the bench at the head of the bath.

‘Clothes off.' His tone was soft but all brisk efficiency. Pippa obeyed, her fingers trembling with want. They'd never shared a bath. After the shocks of the day, she desperately wanted to sink into the rapidly foaming water, and into him. Into his strength. Into his passion. Into his hands, and his lips. The water was still flowing from the taps, but she dropped the last of her clothes to the floor and stepped gingerly into the bath. It was like a fragrant, silky welcome, its warmth perfectly easing taut muscles as she all but collapsed into its length.

Matt was standing beside the tub, watching the water gushing, not looking at her.

‘Aren't you coming in?'

He looked at her then. Sighed a little, sat on the side of the tub. ‘I don't think so.'

‘Oh.'

If he wasn't joining her, Pippa's nakedness suddenly became a matter of embarrassment. She tried to brazen it out. ‘I guess you have somewhere to be. I've taken up a lot of your time today. Thanks …' she trailed off, running out of courage, uncertain where the day's events had left them. If it left them anywhere at all.

‘I don't need thanks, and I don't have somewhere else to be. But you've had a big day, and you need rest, and if I get in that tub with you, rest is the last thing you'll get.' He handed her the wine glass and she sipped it slowly, savouring the sudden shock of crisp, cold flavour. Matt's gentle care of her was lovely, but not what she wanted. Not now. And if he didn't want her, why was he still there? Why had he come to her in the first place? But he
was
there, and she wanted him to stay, so she let the questions die and sipped again at her wine.

‘What do you think you'll do with the money? It's not enough to save the house.' His fingers were trailing in the water. Abruptly he shook his hand free of bubbles, reached across and turned off the taps. The room was abruptly silent.

Pippa tried to break it lightly, but even to her own ears, her voice was brittle.

‘No, it won't save the house, but it will still go a long way to …' she trailed off again. The money her Aunty Patsy had kept for her all these years, her mother's money, would help her start again. It would cover the bond and the first few months' rent on a flat, when she found one that suited. It would mean she didn't have to leave Brisbane, not just yet. She wouldn't have to sell the ute, or her tools, so she'd still be able to work. If she could find a few small commissions, if Marissa was able to persuade the insurance company to continue her liability cover while they investigated her case, she might even be able to keep her business afloat instead of having to look for a job. She'd half-expected to hear from Marissa today. They should have received an answer from—