Our Kind of Love (3 page)

And telling Grace meant she’d have to tell her whole family and that would be another circle of hell to endure and more failure to admit. Her parents had almost four decades of marriage behind them. Her grandparents had been married for sixty-two years before Nonno died. Anna had always thought she’d be just like them and had imagined herself at their age with grandchildren of her own to smother with love. That dream had disappeared from her life too. She knew that after the shock and the disbelief and the tears, would come the advice from every single one of them. Loud and extremely forthright advice. Anna felt empty at the thought. It wasn’t advice she needed. It was the loving and non-judgmental arms of those she loved the most. And she wasn’t sure she would have it. That doubt, that uncertainty about how they would react, was paralysing because Anna knew that it she didn’t have that support, she might not get through it. The idea that she might be alone in her journey through heartbreak to the other side of her marriage was almost too much to bear.

‘Anna?’ Grace regarded her with narrowed eyes. ‘You’re off with the fairies today.’

Anna pulled a smile from somewhere. ‘I’m fine.’

She needed the familiar routine of work and the inevitable cavalcade of patients to help her get her through the day. Maybe that way she wouldn’t have time to think about cheating husbands and telling her family about her failure as a wife. Or about sexy men at weddings.

‘You want a café latte?’ Grace asked.

‘Make it a double espresso,’ Anna called as she walked into her consulting room. She would need at least one caffeine hit to get her through the morning.

Twenty patients later, Anna dropped her head to the desk, rested it on her crossed arms and let out the breath she’d been holding since 9 a.m. when her patients had swarmed through the front door like bees. She’d suppressed all her doubts and misery and had seen them all with her usual smile and professionalism. She’d written blood pressure prescriptions, completed two Pap smears, found a potential case of diabetes and diagnosed an ear infection in a six-month old. Her Nonna’s next-door neighbour, Señora Farina, had shuffled in with vague complaints of headache and tiredness. She’d been in once a week since her husband had died six months before.

Anna knew that if she had a cure for the loneliness of widows, she’d be rich.

She lifted her head and repositioned herself in her chair, leaning back against the black leather and linking her fingers over her stomach. What about the loneliness of the cheated on? The separated? The childless? That’s what she was now and it was a whole new and scary road for her to navigate. While she would never be truly alone – what Italian could? – Anna knew that loneliness was something else altogether and it had already hit her. When she’d arrived home from Middle Point on Sunday, the day after the night of her disgrace, the stark emptiness of her house had still been a shock. There was always noise with Alex; news on the radio, the television blaring. She’d spent the night before surrounded by loved-up couples and happiness and music, promises and new beginnings.

And she’d driven home to a mausoleum. The king-sized bed was exactly as she’d left it, its sheets stretched to within an inch of their life, so pristine and tight a twenty- cent coin could have bounced off them. Positioned at each side, like ears, sat two squat Asian-style wooden side tables, decorated with matching lamps and artfully arranged books at perpendicular angles. They were actually art. Purely decorative. Anna hadn’t had time to read a book for pleasure in about a decade.

When she’d begun unpacking her weekend bag, hanging things in the walk-in robe, the emptiness hit her. There was a great gaping space where Alex’s suits had always hung on pressed-to-perfection display. His sparklingly polished black shoes were, of course, gone. So were the professionally ironed shirts he’d lovingly organised into plain white, striped and coloured sections.

Now there was silence and an empty space in the wardrobe. Part of her wished she’d taken to his suit trousers with a sharp pair of scissors. Anna had seen that in a movie once. But she was a good girl and good girls didn’t do such ridiculous things. And anyway, revenge like that was never as satisfying in real life as it was portrayed on the big screen; it sat inside you and metastasised, grew into a ball of hatred that only withered, taking you with it.

Anna had been there and done that since she’d found out about his cheating. She’d already obsessed over every stupid detail of Alex’s numerous affairs: where, when, how, what was the first lie, what was the last. Whether the trip to Sydney for work last August had been real or not. Which of the many, many women he’d taken with him. His new haircut and the way he’d become fixated with it. His emotional distance. Only in hindsight did all the pieces fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. And once she’d obsessed and nitpicked over every piece, once she’d seen the whole picture, she’d broken it into pieces and put it back in its box. Where she hoped like hell it would stay.

A ping from her computer alerted Anna to a new email. She pulled her chair closer to the monitor and peered at it. There was nothing in the subject line but she could see it was from Alex.

Can we meet for a coffee? When would be a good time?

Anna’s fingers flew over the keyboard.

When hell freezes over
.

She pausing and then deleted it, replaced it with a curt:

I’ll let you know. I have patients. And I would like your keys to my house
.

With a furious poke at the return key, Anna’s message zipped off into cyberspace. She wasn’t being melodramatic. It was her house. She’d owned it outright when she’d married Alex. When she was in her twenties, her parents had convinced her to sink her savings into real estate. She’d done as they’d wanted, she was a good Italian girl after all. And now? She loved them all the more for it. It would make the separation so much easier.

And the divorce?

She’d have to think about that later. Much later.

Her phone buzzed. ‘Yep.’

Grace sigh was heavy down the line. ‘It’s Mum.’

‘What does she want?’ Anna sighed back.

‘What do you reckon?’

Anna reluctantly lifted the receiver to her ear and crossed herself for the lies she was about to tell.

‘Hi Ma. How was your weekend?’

‘You should have been at Luca’s birthday lunch. Did you and Alex have a good time at the wedding?’

Anna pinched the bridge of her nose, felt her chest constrict. Fudged her answer. ‘It was lovely.’ That part, at least, was true.

Sonia Morelli tut-tutted down the line. ‘Who gets married in a hotel? And so far away. I don’t understand it.’

Anna steeled herself with a deep breath and kept breathing in until she felt it right down to the bottom of her rib cage, until the lower lobes of her lungs were filled with oxygen, and she tried to find some patience.

‘Ma, it’s not a hotel. It’s a beachside pub and Ry owns it. He and his wife love Middle Point. It makes sense if you know them.’ Not that Anna did all that well. Their lives had gone their separate ways since university, even more so after she’d married Alex, but Ry had called her late last year to enlist her help with his best friend Dan McSwaine. It had taken Dan months to get over his injuries from the shocking car accident he’d been in, and even longer for the emotional scars to heal. She was proud that she’d been able to help Dan with that, and help him get well enough to realise that he loved Lizzie Blake. She was genuinely happy for him that his life was regaining its equilibrium.

Just when hers was spinning into space like a rogue satellite.

‘I wish you’d been there for lunch. Your Nonna is driving me crazy.’ While her mother talked, Anna checked her emails, the afternoon’s appointments and the latest online edition of a respected medical journal. She liked to call it family multi-tasking.

‘So. I’ll see you next Wednesday,’ her mother said in a rush.

‘Sorry, Ma. What?’

‘For dinner. I’ll see you and Alex on Wednesday night, as usual.’

Oh shit. Anna knew she had to make a choice, one that would send her straight to hell if she wasn’t on the fast track in that direction already. She could either lie to her mother now, or later. She would tell her mother, of course she would, just not today and not over the phone. When she was feeling stronger. And braver. ‘Sorry, Mum. Alex has a work dinner but I’ll be there.’

‘A work dinner on a Wednesday? Who has a work dinner on a Wednesday?’

‘Lawyers do, Mum.’ Anna needed to distract her mother, and fast. ‘So what are you cooking?’

‘A surprise.’

‘I’m sure it will be delicious,’ Anna tried to sound excited about the prospect. She was done with surprises. She wanted her mother’s comfort food – home-made pasta and fresh ciabatta, tomato sauce made from last year’s crop and fresh basil from the garden.

‘See you Wednesday, then.
Ti amo
.’

‘Love you too,’ Anna replied.

Yes. She was definitely going straight to hell.

CHAPTER
4

‘The most complicated thing in the house is the coffee machine. The rest looks after itself.’

Joe regarded the silver appliance with trepidation. It was built into the pristine white cupboards of Ry and Julia’s kitchen and it looked angry, hissing steam and gurgling. In Joe’s former life, the one in which he lived in Sydney and had both a high-flying newspaper job and a wife, coffee came in takeaway cups on the way to work or was delivered to his desk by a newsroom minion. He wasn’t sure if he knew how to drive one of these beasts. Or if he even wanted to learn.

‘Just push the button here and it’ll do the rest. Okay?’ Julia gave him a wry grin.

She got a shoulder bump in return. ‘Is a coffee really worth all this trouble?’

‘God, don’t let Ry hear you say that. He loves this machine almost as much as he loves me.’

‘I don’t believe that for a second.’

‘So,’ Julia checked once again. ‘You think you can remember that while we’re away, Joe?’

Joe shrugged. ‘Jools, I get it. It’s a coffee machine, not a nuclear reactor.’

‘Okay. But I’m warning you,’ Julia leaned in close and looked up into his eyes. ‘This is Ry’s pride and joy. If anything happens to it while we’re away, you’re a dead man.’

Joe had jumped at the chance to house-sit Ry and Julia’s beach house while the newly-weds honeymooned in Italy. Their three weeks of loved-up travelling meant that he could feel slightly like an adult again. He would be able to move out of his old bedroom in what was now Lizzie’s house and take every advantage of this magnificent beachside home, with views on a clear day up and down the coast, from the Coorong to Victor Harbor. It also meant he could get out of Lizzie’s hair and give her some space with Dan, without being the protective older brother looking over her shoulder. He owed her that much, after bunking in with her for the past few months. Truth be told, he was over living with his little sister and had been looking forward to the alone time himself.

He took another look around the beautifully appointed home, which reminded him of a Sydney harbourside pad in more ways than one. Water views, all mod cons, bright and white and airy. He could get used to this life, for sure. If only he had the bank balance that came with it.

‘Hey.’ Ry descended the open staircase and tucked a small leather rucksack over one shoulder. ‘You talking about me?’

Julia looked up to her husband. ‘I was just saying how lucky I am to have married you, Ry.’ She shot a wink at Joe. ‘You got everything?’

‘Bags are already in the car. Wallet. Passports.’ Ry took Julia in his arms and pulled her in tight. ‘Wife.’ He planted a smacking kiss on her lips. ‘I’m good to go.’

Julia released herself from her husband’s arms and threw hers around Joe.

‘Thanks for this, Joe.’

‘Are you kidding?’ He shared her affectionate hug. ‘The pleasure’s all mine. I left Middle Point twenty years ago to get away from Mosquito. Living with her again is not quite what I had in mind for this stage of my life. So thanks.’

‘Thanks, mate.’ Ry shook Joe’s hand firmly. ‘Enjoy.’

‘Look after Lizzie,’ Julia called.

‘Will do,’ he replied. ‘Just go ahead and have a great honeymoon. Don’t worry about a thing.’

Joe watched Ry and Julia walked to the door arm in arm. When they were almost at the threshold, he called out after them.

‘You did leave the number of a plumber in case I bugger up the coffee machine, didn’t you?’

Ry’s back stiffened and he turned. ‘You’re joking, right?’

Joe chuckled ‘Get out of here. Enjoy. Eat lots of Italian food for me. The desperate, unemployed and suddenly single bloke from Sydney who’s stuck here in Middle Point.’

Julia laughed and looked back at Joe. ‘Pull the other one. Since when were you from Sydney?’

‘What do you mean? I’ve lived there for almost twenty years.’

She shook her head. ‘Nice try. You can take the boy out of Middle Point but you can’t take Middle Point out of the boy. You were born and bred here, Joe Blake. You can try and hide it all you like but we won’t let you forget it.’