At Home With The Templetons (56 page)

Yes, it had been a very satisfying night, he decided an hour later as he shook hands with the last of his guests and returned to give the maitre d’ a handsome tip. Unfortunately the tip took the last of his cash, and his taxi fare, but a walk to his hotel in Belgravia would do him good. He was quite sure that by Monday morning two and possibly three of the potential investors at his table would be in touch to say they were prepared to back his latest venture.

Why had it taken him this long to realise that the real money and real success lay not in the small items of life -antiques, jewellery, even cars - but in the solid concrete of property investment? And everyone knew that China was where the action was these days.

There would be obstacles, of course. The upfront construction expenses would be the biggest. But it was always about risks, wasn’t it? That’s what made it all so exciting. Who would ever have thought, for example, that he would make such a success of that vintage car business in the States? In the past decade, that had been by far his most successful enterprise. Even now, it still made an annual profit that quite frankly astonished him.

Reaching the hotel, he nodded good evening to the receptionist and took the stairs rather than the lift to his second-floor suite. Every bit of exercise helped. Letting himself into his room, he was pleased to see his personal mobile phone lying on the side table. He’d realised in the taxi to the restaurant that he’d left it behind, but knowing punctuality was all-important to Chinese businesspeople in particular, he hadn’t gone back for it.

Four missed calls. He smiled as he listened to the first two messages, both from Adele, his girlfriend of almost two years now. A Harvard graduate, fluent French, Spanish and Japanese speaker and CEO of her own corporate translation company, Henry was growing very fond of her indeed. He’d been concerned that at thirty-nine she was too young for him - it hadn’t been much fun explaining who Procol Harum were - but the positives about her certainly outweighed the negatives.

Her messages were warm, flirtatious, slightly bossy, a reflection of all he liked about her. He didn’t need to call her back, she said. She was just reminding him of the dinner engagement they had the following night with possible new clients for. her company. She’d collect him at the airport and they’d go straight on to the restaurant.

The next two messages were surprising. They were from Eleanor. It was years since she’d called him directly, even though his lawyers always ensured she had his contact numbers. Her voice was cool, her message brief. ‘Henry, can you call me please?’ No mention of the children. A good sign or not?

He rang the number she’d left immediately. No answer. Just her recorded voice calmly asking him to leave a message.

‘It’s Henry. Are the children all right? I’m in London on business. Please ring me as soon as you get this.’

He waited for her to call back. Nothing. It wasn’t until well after midnight

and after two large whiskies that he managed to sleep.

home in Brunswick, it took Nina twenty minutes before she found it. The tin biscuit box was at the back of the hall cupboard under an old suitcase, behind the ironing board. She had moved it many times over the years but this was the first time she’d considered looking inside.

The lid opened more easily than she expected. The box was packed with paperwork: letters, faxes, postcards - twenty, perhaps even thirty items, all addressed to Nina. Most of them were in Gracie’s handwriting.

They weren’t the letters Gracie had written to Tom. Nina had thrown them out as quickly as they’d arrived. Day after day they’d come, redirected to her from all over Victoria, from the cricket academy in Adelaide; even the police sergeant in Castlemaine. Nina had felt like she was under attack from Gracie, under attack from the whole family, Eleanor’s words still ringing in her head, mingling with the shock and anger she felt every time she looked at her poor broken Tom. All her humiliation about Henry had come flooding back as well: his promises, his sweet-talk, how easily she had fallen for it, fallen into bed, fallen for him. Each time she’d thrown away one of Gracie’s letters she hoped it would suppress some of that self-hatred. It hadn’t. All it had made her feel was even more protective of Tom, determined to do whatever she needed to keep him from any more pain.

She still felt the sting of Hilary’s fury at her in the airport the previous day. Her sister had phoned her that morning from Cairns too.

‘Have you rung Tom yet? Has he rung you? I won’t lie to you, Nina. I left him a message last night. You have to sort this out while Gracie is still in the country.’

‘Hilary, you have to understand. It’s nothing like the time I told him about his father ‘

‘No, it’s not, because I understood your reasons that time. But to do it to him twice, Nina? To lie to your son twice, to try and wreck his life again? You had no right.’

‘It was so complicated. The accident, all that happened with Henry, with Eleanor ‘

‘What happened to you had nothing to do with Gracie and Tom. And yet you interfered. Overstepped. Lied to him, to Gracie too.’

‘You didn’t see him that day, in that hospital in Italy -‘ ‘No, but I saw him when he got home. And I saw him as recently as this week. He’s still not right, Nina, and you have to fix it, fix this whole situation, while you can.’

‘He’ll hate me.’

‘That’s what’s stopping you? That makes it even worse. It’s still all about you, not him.’

‘I have to think about it. I have to work out the right way to do it.’

‘You’ve got until tonight or I’m ringing him and telling him the whole story myself. I’m not giving you any more excuses, Nina. He might be your son but he’s also my nephew.’

‘You can’t.’

‘I can and I will.’

It was only in the past hour that Nina’s anger towards her sister had subsided enough for her to be able to think clearly. Now she just felt -what? Guilt? Or something else? Could it be relief? A strange relief that this was being forced out into the open at last?

In her heart, she’d always known it would come to this one day. That Gracie would turn up or Tom would go looking for her. But how to tell him? Where to start? How could she face his reaction? His anger? She already knew the first question he would ask her. Why? She could guess his second question, too. What had she done with Gracie’s .letters?

It was so long since she’d opened this box, but perhaps, just perhaps, she hadn’t got rid of every single one of them. If she could even give him one, eight years too late, but one at least, perhaps it would be a starting point. She took the box out into the living room, sat on the sofa and started to sort through it. An hour later tears were streaming down her face. She’d stopped trying to wipe them away. There hadn’t been any of Gracie’s letters to Tom in the box. But there had been all of the younger Gracie’s letters to her, from the first postcard she’d sent when the Templetons arrived back in London from the Hall, to the note Gracie had sent just before Tom arrived on his big solo backpacking trip. So many others in between, too. Eight years of Gracie’s life, hopes, dreams and worries, written on page after page and sent to her friend Nina in Australia. There hadn’t just been letters from Gracie in the box either. There were letters, faxes and emails from Eleanor. A thank-you letter from Charlotte in Chicago. Even several faxes from Henry. Proof in writing of the relationships she’d had with all of them. There was even a print-out of an email the then nineteen-year-old Tom had sent her during his first trip to London.

But it was Gracie’s letters that affected Nina the most. How could she have forgotten what Gracie was like? She had turned Gracie into some kind of monster, a stalker, hounding her son. The real Gracie was there on each page, her spirit, her personality, her intelligence, her big heart obvious in every line, as her handwriting changed from that of a young girl to a teenager to a young woman. Her affection for Nina and for Tom obvious in every single line. That was the real Gracie. The Gracie who had fallen in love with Tom. The Gracie Tom must have loved in return.

The Gracie Nina had hurt so very badly.

Nina was still on the sofa, surrounded by the letters, when her phone rang. She looked at caller ID. It was Tom. She couldn’t talk to him yet. She wasn’t ready. She had to take this slowly, make only the right decisions this time. She let it go to voicemail, waited, then replayed his message.

‘Nina, it’s me. I’ve had a message from Hilary, telling me she thinks I should go back to the Hall and that I should ask you why.’ He paused. ‘So this is me asking why.’ Another pause. ‘Okay, I’ll call back later. Or you can try me. Bye for now.’

Nina knew then what she had to do.

At Templeton Hall, Gracie had decided to go for a walk. Automatically, she found herself going through the garden and down the long driveway towards the main road. She made slow progress, having to stop every few metres or so to push a broken branch out of the way. She tried to mend a piece of the fence, twisting the wire until she realised it needed more than her strength to do it.

She stopped and looked back at the Hall now,

ignoring the unkempt garden beds and the un-pruned trees around it, focusing just on the building, on its graceful lines and the shifting colours of the stone. She had been so happy during the years they lived here, counting down the hours until the front door opened to their weekend visitors, showing groups around, asking her father all the family history, imagining and revelling in her own place in that long, unbroken story. It had never seemed like work to her, not like it had to Charlotte, Audrey and Spencer. And every career guidance book she’d ever read had mentioned that it was a lucky person who managed to find work doing a job they loved, not just to make money.

Was it just a coincidence that the many jobs she’d tried doing after the accident involved working closely with people: the charities; the volunteering? Or that her study had focused on history, the stories behind the dates and the buildings? Had they all been attempts to relive the happiness she’d.felt here as a child, in her job as a tour guide?

Perhaps. But since she’d been back here, since she’d seen Tom again, something had shifted in her thinking. Reality had replaced the layers and layers of stories she’d built up in her imagination. Not just about the Hall, but about Tom too. She now knew one thing for sure. She still loved him. She’d known that the moment she saw him again. But she now knew something else too. He was happy without her. He had recovered. Moved on.

He was successful, in his work, with Emily. She couldn’t think beyond that any more, even if she still wished in her heart that their reunion had been so different. She now had something to move on from herself, facts about him rather than the unknown. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d longed for all these years?

So why did she still feel so bad? As if it was all still unfinished? She walked on, pretending to herself she was just meandering, knowing in her heart where she was going. To Nina’s house. She came close enough to see that it was occupied. By a family with several children, by the looks of the swings in the garden, the array of small colourful Tshirts and dresses on the clothesline. She heard voices, and as she watched, a mother and two little kids came out onto the verandah, collected what looked like a handful of dolls and then went back inside. Gracie had hoped it would be empty, that she could go right up to it again, and say a kind of farewell to that house as well.

She had no choice but to keep walking. Before she knew it, she was at the yabby dam. The drought had been bad in Victoria in recent years, there had been terrible bushfires too, but there must have been rains in the area recently. There was more water in the dam than she ever remembered as a child. Standing on the edge, looking across to the other side, she saw a pile of wood and tin. She couldn’t believe it. The remains of Spencer and Tom’s half-built raft was still there, now covered in dirt, coarse grass growing through the rusting sheets of corrugated iron. The sight made her laugh out loud and then it made her want to cry.

She knew in that moment that she couldn’t stay at the Hall any longer. It would have been hard enough even if she hadn’t seen Tom. But this was more proof. Everywhere she went, everywhere she looked, she would be reminded of him.

She’d be letting Hope down, but of all people, she hoped her aunt would understand. She would still meet Hope at Melbourne Airport as arranged, still drive her up to the Hall, organise any supplies she needed, but she couldn’t stay here for the week, when everywhere she looked reminded her of everything she needed to forget.

She’d walked a short distance from the dam back towards the Hall when she realised she was carrying something more than memories. It was in her jacket pocket. The whistle Tom had given her. She was near the actual spot where he’d first given it to her, the day she’d played hideand-seek, the day he came looking for her. He’d told her all she ever needed to do was blow it and he’d come and rescue her.

She was crying as she lifted it to her lips. The noise she made was a feeble, strange one, more a squawk than a whistle. It made her laugh a little, even through her tears. That would teach her to be so melodramatic. What did she expect - one loud whistle and he would appear over the horizon, arms outstretched, telling her all was forgiven?

Now was the time to finally do it. Get rid of it. It was her last link with him. And what better place to leave it than the dam, where she’d first decided all those years ago, when she was eleven and he was twelve, that she just might have a little crush on Tom Donovan.

She returned to the dam, stood at the edge of the water, held the whistle in her palm and squeezed it one more time, running her thumb along the inscription. Then she threw it away with as much force as she could.

She looked down. Her hand was still clenched. The whistle was still there. She couldn’t get rid of it, no matter what memories it brought back, good or bad. She knew that even more surely now.

She held it safely in her hand the whole walk back to the Hall. In Brunswick, Nina had never felt so alone, or so wretched. Once, she could have rung Hilary, confident of the comfort and sympathy of her support and advice. Or she could have rung Tom, always revelling in even a brief exchange with her son, her brave strong clever son. Not this time. The two people she loved and cared for most in the world were the two