When Only Diamonds Will Do (13 page)

‘At the end of the term. We’ll have to decide what school to send him to in the district.’

She nodded. ‘There are several.’ And she found herself thinking out of the blue not so much of Darcy but, no doubt prompted by him, about being a mother herself, about starting a family. Probably a good idea not to leave it too long, from Darcy’s point of view if nothing else.

She glanced at Reith. He was piloting the chopper himself on this occasion and concentrating on his flying.

‘How do you feel about more children?’ She put the question into words.

He glanced at her. ‘I don’t think we need to rush into it. What do you think?’

‘Hmm,’ she temporised, ‘perhaps not.’

‘We’ve only just got Darcy more or less sorted,’ he added. ‘We haven’t even got him home yet.’

Kim stared straight ahead and wondered if she was imagining it, an undertone in his voice, a rather stark undertone that meant—what? That he wasn’t that keen on having more children ever?

Then he was talking to an air-traffic controller through his mike and she was left thinking it was strange that they’d never discussed it before. Come to that there was quite a lot they’d never discussed. In fact, she mused, you could say their relationship was more like an affair from that point of view, couldn’t you?

But she said no more and they flew home. And, despite the things they hadn’t discussed, Kim found herself concentrating on the high points of the half-term weekend and feeling contented, with little inkling that it was to be short-lived.

The next morning Reith had an early appointment and would be away overnight. She gave him a quick kiss and told him to be back soon.

‘No, you don’t,’ he told her. ‘I need to be properly farewelled.’

She looked up at him, her blue eyes alight with laughter. ‘You sound like some potentate.’

‘Not at all,’ he denied and put his arms around her.

‘You’re certainly well-dressed enough to be one.’ She stood back a bit and studied his beautifully tailored navy blue suit with a navy waistcoat over a pale blue shirt and a lavender paisley tie and matching handkerchief
in his breast pocket. Then she looked at him with a question mark in her eyes.

‘A board meeting,’ he supplied. ‘Then lunch.’

‘No women at either, I hope!’

He frowned. ‘Probably. Why?’

‘I don’t think I should let you loose. They’ll probably keel over in the aisles for you.’

‘Kim—’ he looked at her askance, as if not sure whether to take her seriously ‘—that’s highly unlikely.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said airily. ‘I had it once on good—make that
very
good—authority that you were the most gorgeous, sexy man in the room—or words to that effect.’

He blinked. ‘When?’

‘The fashion parade.’ She described the scene for him.

He started to laugh. ‘Well, that explains it,’ he said, still grinning.

‘Explains what?’ Kim raised her eyebrows.

‘You were exceedingly angry with me that day. Remember?’

‘Mmm …’ She looked somewhat rueful. ‘You’re right. At the time, the fact that some exceedingly glamorous female thought you were God’s gift to women did not appeal to me in the slightest.’

‘You don’t think it was a bit unfair to blame me?’ he queried, his eyes wryly amused.

Her lips twitched. ‘Not at all. OK—’ she leant against him, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him lingeringly ‘—off you go.’

He went but not before returning her kiss with extreme
thoroughness so that she was both thrilled and shaken in roughly equal proportions, and quite distracted for the rest of the morning.

But part of her distraction, she felt, came from some curious mood swings. One moment she felt on top of the world, the next she could be deeply emotional. Only the day before, she’d discovered a dead bird in the garden, a colourful parrot that must have flown into a high wire and broken its neck. She’d wept as she’d buried it and been sad for hours.

Was it all to do with being deeply—and she couldn’t doubt she was—in love? Was that why colours seemed brighter and small tragedies seemed darker?

Her mother came to morning tea that day.

Kim had never fully explained her marriage to Fiona. All the same, she’d assumed that her family understood there had been some sort of quid pro quo involved, although she’d subsequently refused to discuss it with any of them. How could you explain to your family that you’d been blackmailed into marriage on their behalf?

But now she could see that her mother was less troubled by it; in fact lately Kim had got the impression that she would like to give them her blessing.

It wasn’t Reith that their discussion turned to, though, over Mary’s special carrot cake and herb tea—it was Damien.

‘I
SEE
so little of him,’ Fiona said sadly.

Kim stirred her tea. ‘He ignored me at the races. He was with a very exotic-looking blonde. Is he serious about her?’

Fiona shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He hasn’t said and needless to say, I haven’t met her.’

‘At least bloodstock should suit him,’ Kim murmured after a thoughtful pause between them, and was horrified to see her mother wiping away a tear. ‘You’re really upset about Damien—I wish there was something I could do.’

‘In the end, all you really have is your family,’ Fiona wept. ‘I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way.’

Kim took herself for a ride after her mother had gone. It was a cool day, cloudy but with occasional patches of sunlight. The Darling foothills lay like sleeping behemoths on the western horizon beyond the dun winter paddocks.

As Mattie cantered towards a shallow creek, then splashed across, it seemed as if the birdsong, the thud
of Mattie’s hooves, the reins between her fingers and the creak of her saddle were the limits of her world.

She pulled up and dismounted alongside a huge gum tree with a water trough for stock beside it and a hitching post. There were also several tree stumps that made good seats.

She sat down on a stump after she’d let Mattie have a drink and tied her loosely to the hitching post. She stripped off her gloves and got up again to pull a slim plastic bottle of water in a padded container out of her saddle pocket. It had been iced water, it was now chilled water. She sipped as she sat back down on the tree stump and thought—
think, Kim!

There’s got to be something I can do to get Damien back. But how? And what would Reith think?

It struck her again that she still found Reith hard to read at times. Since the night they’d first made love there’d been no explanations—well, she herself had stopped him from explaining anything that night. But since then they’d said nothing about how they felt about each other, other than in a physical context. They hadn’t discussed their life, they hadn’t made any plans excepting his plans for Darcy, although now she did have the distinct impression he wasn’t that keen on having more children.

But when he wasn’t home, she went about her life much as she had ever since their marriage.

She spent the usual amount of time at Balthazar, in her garden, she entertained.

She had not, she realized suddenly as she watched Mattie switching her tail to discourage the flies, other
than her quiet joy in their closeness, considered whether she would love Reith Richardson for ever, whether he loved her madly, as opposed to desiring her madly.

She’d lived from day to day, in other words, almost as if in a bubble, a bubble she shouldn’t test or probe too much in case it burst on her …

But surely mending some fences with her brother couldn’t burst the bubble? No, she wouldn’t allow it to. She wouldn’t allow Reith to dictate a stance to her on the subject of her brother. She would explain her mother’s hurt, her own hurt, come to that. They may not have been that close but he was still her brother, he’d taught her to ride and, come to think of it, he’d vetted her boyfriends once she’d got to high school. Maybe it was a habit he hadn’t got out of, she thought with a grimace.

In any event it saddened her, suddenly and tremendously, she realized, to think of Damien cut off from his family. And she was going to have to do something about it.

Later that day, dressed in a dark, warm but stylish trouser suit and with a small overnight bag, she got out her car. To his delight, Sunny Bob was invited to accompany her, and they set off for Perth.

The apartment was still being renovated, but that suited her. She didn’t feel like encountering Reith until she’d laid her plans.

She booked into a handy motel, one that took dogs, then drove into the city centre, where Damien had an apartment.

She parked her car as close as she could get to the
building, which was not that close, but she decided a walk would help her crystallize her thoughts and decide what she was going to say to her brother.

A couple of hours later, she strolled back towards her car, marvelling at the revelations that had come from her meeting with Damien.

At first he’d been prickly and defensive and obviously not that happy to see her. Then, when she’d refused to take offence, he’d poured them both a drink and with a sudden harsh sigh, had told her that for most of his life he’d been trying to live up to their father’s expectations of him as a wine-maker, when his heart wasn’t in it. And then along had come Reith Richardson, who’d exposed not only his deficiencies as a wine-maker and a businessman but had married
her
.

‘He made me feel so stupid,’ he’d confessed.

‘Deliberately?’ Kim had enquired with a frown.

‘No, not really,’ Damien had conceded, ‘but I could see the sheer acumen and the drive in him that I wouldn’t ever have. Not unless it had to do with horses. And, on top of being about to lose Balthazar and Saldanha to him—well, I’m sorry, Kim—’ he’d looked directly at her ‘—but there seemed to be only one way I could go and that was to hate him and try to belittle him through his background—or lack of it.’

She stopped walking and shook her head, still absolutely amazed at the complexities life threw up. She’d never imagined her suave, worldly brother—or that was how she’d seen him—could feel so inadequate. But at least she was several steps closer to reuniting the family. If only she could explain it all to Reith now …

She started to walk again and what she least expected to see was Reith coming out of a luxury hotel lobby with a woman beside him.

Not any woman, she saw, as she edged into the shadows along the inside of the pavement, but Chilli George.

A taxi was waiting at the kerb and Reith opened the door and gestured for Chilli to get in but she didn’t, not immediately. She picked up Reith’s free hand and placed it over her breast, and for a long moment both of them seemed to be etched in stone as they stared into each other’s eyes. Then Reith took his hand away and Chilli got into the limo. Reith waited for it to draw away from the kerb before he turned and went back into the hotel.

Why didn’t she just confront Reith? Kim wondered.

She’d gathered herself together after the little scene outside the hotel and she was back in her motel.

She’d brewed herself a cup of coffee but she wasn’t sure why. Drinking coffee was the last thing she felt like doing. In fact the thought was thoroughly nauseating but what she really wanted to do—scream, shout, throw things, even smash things—was not permissible.

How
could
he?

When their marriage appeared to be going so well, when Darcy was coming to live with them, how could he be with another woman, but especially Chilli, she thought furiously, who had a reputation for chasing men?

And from fury she went to sorrow and found tears rolling down her cheeks.

Darcy—how would Darcy react? Would he go back
into his shell if she and Reith broke up? she wondered as she tried to stem her tears with a tissue.

Would it come to that?

But how could she go on with him if she could never trust him again?

She got up suddenly with a hand to her mouth, then rushed to the bathroom where she was sick.

Emotion, she thought, as she rinsed her mouth and studied her pale, mascara-streaked face in the mirror.

Or …?

She whirled on her heel and ran to find her purse. She dragged her diary out of it and, with trembling fingers established, to her disbelief, that her period, which usually came and went like clockwork, was two weeks overdue. How could she have forgotten? Because she’d been so over the moon and in love? But how could it have happened?

She cast her mind back and it nearly broke her heart to recall the one time she’d had unprotected sex with Reith—a joyful coming together that had taken them both by surprise and then, she’d reassured herself, it wasn’t the right time of the month for her to fall pregnant. So much for that theory, she thought. This was the reality and the shock of it was huge.

So that was why she’d been so uneven lately, so up, so down over nothing sometimes. Starving sometimes—she’d eaten two slices of Mary’s carrot cake that morning—then unable to face food.

She sank into an armchair, mentally reeling from the impact of two huge revelations, then sat up precipitously. Was that why he didn’t want any more children?
Did
he view their marriage more as an affair, outside of which he could pursue another life?

Was it because of wretched Chilli George that he didn’t want her, Kim, to have children? She covered her face with her hands and thought, distraught, that any woman other than Chilli George would not be quite so bad, but knew immediately she was kidding herself.

‘Oh, Reith,’ she whispered aloud, ‘how could you do this to me? But don’t think I’m going to take it lying down!’ And she crossed to the phone.

She was on the other side of the continent from Saldanha and Balthazar, from her parents, from Damien and, most especially, from Reith.

Most especially Reith because that hurt the most.

She’d hired a car and hunted around for accommodation that took pets, not that easy to find, so she’d kept driving. And, on a whim, she’d taken the car ferry across Moreton Bay, off Brisbane, to Russell Island, where, by chance, she’d found a house for rent where
Sunny Bob was welcome. It was also fully furnished and well-supplied with linen and everything she could need.

She’d paid the bond and a week’s rent in advance and been invited to move right in with no further questions asked.

‘You’ll love it,’ she’d been assured. ‘Just watch out for the sandflies.’

Bearing that warning in mind, she’d stopped at the supermarket for some insect repellent as well as some essential supplies.

She’d been almost dead with tiredness by the time she’d let herself into the house and she hadn’t taken much notice of it or the surroundings. She’d put the cold stuff in the fridge and collapsed on a sofa in the lounge.

She’d slept for hours.

Two days later, she was not only more alert, but she knew a bit more about her surroundings.

Her house was perched on a cliffside. The cliff ran down to what looked like a river but was called the Canaipa Passage and was the body of water that ran between Russell Island and North Stradbroke Island.

North Stradbroke rose across the water, uninhabited, opposite her house, and the birdlife was amazing. There were Brahminy kites with their deep bronze backs and wings, their snowy heads and their high free calls. There was a pair of White-breasted Sea Eagles that lived in the dark green jumble of foliage on a huge tree across the Canaipa. There were cormorants and shags, pelicans that paddled past, egrets and herons and black and white oyster catchers with their red beaks
and legs. Thanks to a coffee-table book about Moreton Bay and a pair of binoculars, she was able to identify most of them. She could also see fish jumping in the water and wallabies foraging on the opposite shore.

She could identify the mangrove trees that lined the shores on both sides of the passage. And, despite her precautions, she’d received a couple of sandfly bites and found them almost intolerably itchy.

Life on Russell Island was easy-going and laid-back. A lot of the locals had boats and were keen fishermen. And she’d walked as she tried to come to terms with what she’d done. What she’d lost.

She’d sent a couple of text messages, one for her parents assuring them she was fine, one for Mary Hiddens saying the same. Then her phone had died and she realized she didn’t have the charger with her.

On the night of her second day, a full moon rose over North Stradbroke Island and the colours of its great blood-orange orb and then, as it got higher, the pearlpale radiance of the light it shed had been little short of miraculous.

All the same, Kim had found herself sobbing suddenly because it was all so beautiful and she was so alone and so devastated.

Sunny Bob put an anxious paw on her lap and she wrapped her arms around his neck and wept into his fur.

‘The thing is,’ she told him as she sat up and fished in her pocket for a tissue, ‘I don’t know if I did the right thing. I came away because I just couldn’t bear to go back to the old hostilities that existed between me and Reith. But is that cowardly? Am I hoping in my heart
of hearts that, despite all the precautions I took—and the fact that this is probably the last place he’d come looking for me—he will look?’

But why was he a womanizer anyway?

Her tearful thoughts slipped back to the night of Pippa Longreach’s barbecue, the night she and Reith had first made love, but, before that, he’d told her why he was the way he was, then he’d demonstrated how implacable he could be.

How his mother’s defection and his father’s own brand of implacability and cynicism had shaped him. And through that confession she’d come to understand a little better the complex person who was Reith Richardson. It had to explain why it was hard for him to let anyone get too close. He’d even acknowledged that his first marriage had suffered from the exclusion zone without altogether acknowledging it.

Was this his way of maintaining that zone? By letting no one woman get too close to him?

She sat back and Sunny Bob settled at her feet.

‘Anyway, lovely as it is, I can’t sit around on Russell Island twiddling my thumbs for ever. What was I thinking?’

She answered her own question after a while. ‘Not straight, just not able to face Reith.’

As for rushing into hasty decisions—was that what pregnancy did to you?

She got up and wandered out onto the deck.

Sunny Bob heaved a sigh but got up and followed her.