Someone Like You (29 page)

Ry looked to the cheering noise come from the television. ‘Gold for Australia, that’s another wicket down. He’s all right, Dan, give him a break.’

Dan got defensive. ‘Why should I? Why do I have to like the bloke?’

Ry chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t get between Lizzie and her brother, if you know what’s good for you. He’s her family.’

And all she has left
.

Dan had lost interest in the match by the first ball of the fourth over. After that, it became nothing but a visual jumble of blokes playing a bit of bat and ball. He didn’t care if Australia was thrashed.

Every thought in his head was about Lizzie. He felt further apart from her than ever. Given what he’d just found out about her brother, how could he tell her what he’d been through, what he’d been battling? How could he add to the burdens she already had? Dan understood family and what that meant. Ry had dropped everything after the accident, had done what families are supposed to do. Lizzie was doing the same for Joe. It’s what people did for each other. And if Joe was brave enough to talk to his sister, all power to him. Maybe he was a bigger man than Dan had realised.

He knew all about keeping secrets and hiding the truth. Hell, until New Year’s Eve, he’d still believed that some things were best left unsaid. His plan to change that was now hanging in the air like the freeze-framed shot of a ball about to leave the bowler’s hand. If the image remained static, no one would ever know the outcome of that delivery. It could hang there for eternity. No resolution. No one would ever be out. No score would ever be recorded from it.

He’d wanted to be honest with Lizzie. To tell her the truth. He’d wanted her to see him for who he really was. The man he’d become, for better or worse. A man with more baggage than a Qantas flight to London.

She was right. Their timing was terrible.

After a week of sisterly rebukes for his secret squirrel behaviour, Lizzie forgave Joe. Not that it was easy, mind, but after they’d talked it through she understood his reasons. Some blokes don’t like to talk about stuff, he’d told her, don’t like the idea of eviscerating themselves just to satisfy other people’s expectations of what sadness and grief should look like. When she’d asked for the umpteenth time how he was doing, Joe had given her a stern big-brother lecture.

‘I’m feeling like crap actually, Mosquito, and I’m allowed to feel like crap. I’m unemployed, my wife left me for my best friend and I’m sleeping in a single bed in my childhood bedroom. How the fuck do you expect me to feel?’

She’d stopped asking after that. He had a point, after all, the smug shit that he was. It turned out that he’d only told her the truth on New Year’s Day, just before Dan had come over, because he’d had a call from Jasmine. She’d just told him there was no chance of reconciling, that she was moving in with his best friend. His ex-best friend.

And thinking of that night made her think of Dan. Again. Raking over the coals of that evening was turning out to be torture. She’d wanted so much to spend it with Dan, drinking that beautiful champagne together, flirting and fucking. Oh, God yes, she’d planned on fucking him. The scorching kiss out front of the pub on New Year’s Eve had whipped her senses into a frenzy which had buzzed through her body for the twenty-four hours after that, making her skittish with expectation and giddy with the thought of his hands on her, and hers on him.

But hearing Joe’s news had evaporated all that sensation. She’d been transformed from potential sex goddess to concerned sister in one sentence.

Four times in the past few days, Lizzie had picked up her phone and scrolled down to Dan’s number. And four times, she’d chickened out.

Of course she’d wanted to be there for Joe. Unlike her, he’d at least opened up to someone about his pain. Maybe it was the fatal Blake flaw, she wondered, the compulsion to keep secrets until they buried you with their weight and their guilt.

There was something else she shared with Joe, besides their blue eyes. Listening to Joe unburden himself, talk about his pain and his heartache, meant her secret had uncloaked itself, knocked at the door of her throat, tried to force its way out, to finally be spoken. The secret she’d kept hidden since London, because she’d learned from bitter experience that telling someone, someone important, simply drove them away. The secrets she’d hidden since she’d fallen apart and put herself back together again in Middle Point.

Saying it out loud would mean reliving it. It would mean explaining why she’d run home and had never left again. Why she’d never been brave enough to have any ambitions that didn’t involve this life, this house and her job at the pub.

Had it helped Joe to talk about his pain? It was too early to judge. If she revealed hers, would the burden be lifted from her shoulders or magically erased from her life? Would it mean it had never happened? (For that’s what she really wanted). Would it help others forgive her, those she’d hurt by keeping it secret?

She’d not thought about this chain of damage for years, not until Dan’s accident and not really until Joe’s confession.

Was she as brave as Joe? In her private moments, when she was in bed late at night, the cool of the sheets on her limbs, the gusting southerlies rattling the windowpanes and fluttering her curtains, she tried to imagine telling the story again.

Was she strong enough this time to cope with the consequences?

The weather in Middle Point during January veered from eye-poppingly blazing hot, to cloudy and wet, often within twenty-four hours, but the locals took it in their stride. Usually it was cooler down on the coast than it was in Adelaide, which is what had attracted holidaymakers for more than a century to the small towns along the Fleurieu Peninsula during summer holidays.

No matter the weather, when it was peak season, the pub was busy and that meant Lizzie was busy. The added attraction of The Market every Sunday morning had seen more and more people coming to Middle Point. There were now twice as many stalls as they’d started out with, which thrilled Lizzie to her toes, and the breakfast trade had started well and was growing, too.

It hadn’t been a challenge for Lizzie to keep her distance from Dan. She spent most of her waking hours at work and he hadn’t shown up there. She hadn’t forgotten his parting words to her:
You know where I am. And I’ll be waiting
. She knew exactly where he was and she needed him like a pub needs beer, but she couldn’t summon up the courage to say it to his face. Saying she needed someone, needed him in particular, came with all sorts of complications. Lizzie had learned not to need people. She’d never had a father to rely on. Her mother and grandmother had died. Joe had left Middle Point and so had Julia. Other people she’d relied on had abandoned her, too. What was the point? From a very early age she’d learned to stand on her own two feet. Needing people only hurt too much when they let you down.

As the days wore on, Lizzie grew progressively more tired and sick of herself. Joe had reverted to the archetypal cynical journo and was now regularly on his soapbox, with her as a reluctant audience, railing against love and commitment and all that went with it. It was all an excruciating irony for Lizzie, given that she was soon to be the bridesmaid at her best friend’s wedding, the embodiment of love and commitment between two people.

She glanced around at the packed front bar and was relieved it was her time for a half-hour lunch break. The bride-to-be was parked at a corner table over in the dining area, her laptop open in front of her, typing furiously. Lizzie walked over and sat opposite, placed her octopus salad on the table, and began picking at it in a desultory fashion.

Julia tore her eyes of the screen and looked over the table at her friend. ‘We’ve made a decision, Lizzie.’

Julia’s smile would have been infectious if Lizzie wasn’t so shattered. She crunched on her baby spinach, speared chunks of her octopus and managed an absent-minded smile between bites. ‘That’s good.’ Lizzie had propped one elbow on the table and rested her chin there, barely finding the energy to chew.

‘Ry and I have decided where the wedding will be.’

‘Nice.’ Lizzie took another bite, completely oblivious to the silence of Julia’s scrutinising gaze.

‘We’re going to go with a nude theme.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Ry’s going to parachute in wearing nothing but a smile.’

‘Great.’

Julia reached over and touched her friend’s hand. Lizzie startled and looked up through heavily lidded eyes.

‘Right. That’s it.’ Julia slammed her laptop shut and reached for her mobile.

Lizzie dropped her fork with a clatter, felt the guilt battle with the fatigue. ‘Sorry, Jools, I wasn’t paying attention.’

Julia pressed her phone to her ear, her cheeks ruddy with anger. ‘Go get your things,’ she instructed Lizzie. ‘Ry, it’s me. You need to find someone to take over at the pub for a couple of days. I’m taking Lizzie home. She’s exhausted.’

Lizzie held up a hand, waved it at Julia. ‘I’m okay, Jools. Stop it. I just need a coffee. Or three.’

‘Okay. We’ll wait ’til you get here.’ Julia jabbed the screen and dropped her phone on the table. Then she turned her attention to Lizzie. ‘Have you realised how hard you’ve been working? When’s the last time you had two consecutive days off?’

Lizzie stopped, let her mind whir back over the past few weeks, and it took a few moments to realise it had been around the day the two of them had gone wedding dress shopping in Adelaide. A month before.

‘I thought so,’ Julia said through gritted teeth. ‘You can’t remember, either. You’ve been doing your new job, working on the renovation, running The Market on Sundays, coping with tourist season. And on top of that, you’ve had Joe.’

Julia hadn’t added Dan to that mix, Lizzie noticed. She blinked the thought of him away.

‘I’m going to look after you, Lizzie. It’s about time somebody did. As soon as Ry arrives, I’m taking you home and forcing you to rest.’

Lizzie didn’t know where they’d come from but she felt tears in her eyes.

‘I am going to force-feed you chocolate and wine and make you watch at least three decent rom-coms. Per day. Total R&R.’

It was a miracle to Lizzie that her best friend knew exactly what she needed. She managed a smile. ‘You’re so bossy.’

‘And from now on, the wedding planning is out of your hands. I shouldn’t have asked you, with all that you’ve got on your plate. How crazy was I?’

‘No, don’t do that,’ Lizzie exclaimed. ‘I’m as excited about the wedding as you are. It’s no trouble, really.’

Julia shook her head, adamant. ‘You are officially relieved of wedding duties. As of right now.’

Lizzie signed. ‘As much as I love the summer, I’m kind of looking forward to when the school year starts so all this craziness will slow down.’

‘Ladies.’ Ry appeared by Julia’s side, kissed her warmly. ‘I was on my way. What’s going on?’

‘You,’ Julia jabbed him in the chest, ‘are working my best friend too hard.’

Ry pulled up a chair, sat down and searched Lizzie’s face. ‘It has been kind of busy, hasn’t it, Lizzie?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s the season, Ry. That’s why no one down here on the south coast takes holidays this time of year. We usually wait until the middle of winter and then find somewhere warm. With no people.’

Ry shook his head. ‘Julia’s right. This has been a bit of an experiment, our first summer. I know you’ve taken on The Market as well and our numbers are looking sensational. What do you say we get someone in to help? Maybe an assistant manager?’

Lizzie nodded. ‘That sounds great, Ry.’

‘Good. I’m taking over now so go home.’ He shooed the two women out of the pub and towards his car.

Home
. Lizzie thought about what home was as her own came into view. She’d barely seen it lately and missed it terribly. Of course, when she’d been home, to fall into bed and do almost nothing else, Joe had been there, taking up too much space for one person. He’d been a total misery guts. At first, she’d been full of understanding, sympathetic utterings and bottles of whisky. But her patience had begun to wear thin. So something crappy had happened to him. He wasn’t the first person in the world to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous…she was too tired to remember the rest.

Lizzie pushed open her front door to find Joe stretched out on the sofa. She heard Julia behind her swearing under her breath.

‘Hey,’ he said, barely looking in her direction.

‘Right. That’s it.’ Julia was in full she-wolf mode.

Julia pointed at Joe. ‘You. Sydney. Grab a change of clothes and an overnight bag. I’m going to introduce you to the pleasures of beachfront living, from my spare bedroom.’

‘Huh?’ Now she had Joe’s attention.

‘Lizzie needs some peace and quiet and she’s not getting it with you here.’

He sat up slowly, a scowl on his face. ‘Are you kicking me out?’

Julia rolled her eyes at Lizzie. ‘Not surprised he’s a journalist. He catches on fast, doesn’t he? Yes, Joe, I’m kicking you out. I’m looking after my best friend, who’s been too busy looking after you and everyone else to realise that she is about to drop from exhaustion.’