mind went over all fuzzy, as her memories skipped and tumbled back through the years to the last time that name had been foremost in her mind…
She stood, sheltered, hidden by a weeping willow, a good twenty metres behind the congregation at the edge of the cemetery, feeling like Alice gone through the looking glass.
In her pale pink sundress and her borrowed tweed coat, her pink headband holding back her mass of curls, which had gone wild in the drizzly Melbourne weather, she felt out of her depth, like a kid playing dress-up, hoping the adults wouldn’t notice she didn’t really belong.
The hundred-odd people huddled together against the cold were a who’s who of the Australian social set. Even she, a girl from the bush, recognised the multitude of television personalities and politicians alike. They were all dressed up in glamorous black, in hats, in designer sunglasses. The only hat Laura had ever owned was a twenty-year-old Akubra of her father’s, bumped and bruised by years of wear while working the land.
Standing apart from the throng, she clutched a letter in her cold hand: a letter laboured over, cried over, written longhand, on stationery she had received a couple of years before on her sixteenth birthday. Fairies danced in the top corner of the page and hid behind toadstools along the bottom rim. She hadn’t really paid attention when writing on it; she had only given in to the burning need to get her despairing words onto paper.
She rested a protective arm across her flat belly. It would not be flat for much longer. Talk between the young mothers in Tandarah came back to her. Stretch marks. Bladder problems. Varicose veins. She was eighteen, for goodness’ sake! How had her life turned so completely in the last two months that she had ended up here?
But what choice did she have? What with both her parents gone, these people were the only family her child would know—this overwhelming, well-to-do, influential, formidable group of people standing watching over the casket of heavy wood that contained their son, their brother.
Through gaps between the sea of black coats, Laura watched as the casket slowly sank into the rain-drenched ground. From nowhere, the disturbing strains of a solo violin wafted over the gloomy scene, and her heart grew so heavy with sorrow she could barely breathe.
Will. Dear, sweet Will. He had been so unassuming. So gentle. So uncomplicated. One would never have guessed that he came from such a family. But in the last few days she had found out the truth of it. She had read the small notices of condolence in every newspaper in the country. Devoured them. Clipped them and kept them in a precious shoebox beneath her bed back home. Somehow it had helped her live outside of herself, outside of the poignant realisation that she was pregnant, and that the father of her unborn child had been killed before he even knew.
Laura made an effort to place as many of the mourners as she could—anything to take her mind off the weight in her heart. The violinist had to be one of the sisters—Jen. The younger of the sisters, Samantha, was very pregnant herself, and married to a television actor. Will’s parents, the elegant couple standing either side of the minister, were award-winning film-makers.
But where was the elusive elder brother? The one Will talked about more than the rest. Ryan. The workaholic perennial wanderer, the oft-published, world-renowned economist who travelled the world at the whim of foreign governments in order to advise them on economic policy. Will’s hero.
The family moved forward, each to throw a blood-red rose atop Will’s coffin, but no young man came forward with Will’s sisters and parents. As far as Laura could tell, illustrious big-brother Ryan was not there.
She had come this far, catching a bus, a train and a tram, alone, to get there, to be present when her young friend was lowered into the ground. Ryan Gasper had the means, the money, and the time. How could a man not move heaven and earth to be at his own brother’s funeral? And how could Laura bring her only child into a family such as that? So scattered. So civilised. So impenetrable.
Laura looked to the letter in her hand, now crunched into a tight ball in her shaking palm. She smoothed it out again and slipped it deep into the pocket of her borrowed coat. She would post the letter on the way back to Tandarah, and then it would be up to them to make the next move.
‘Until then,’ she whispered, her words forming a cloud of steam in the chill winter air. ‘I think it’s fair to say it’s just you and me, possum.’
Eighteen years old, and all alone in the world bar the tiny speck of life inside of her, Laura turned and walked away without looking back…
Ryan watched Laura’s warm, open face slowly crumble and turn paper-white. She didn’t move, didn’t blink, and didn’t even seem to notice when the pink overalls left her limp hand and fluttered to the dusty ground.
‘You’re Will’s brother?’ she whispered, her previously chirpy voice now thin and faraway. Wisps of dappled hair had fallen from their restraint and curled across her forehead. Without all the bluster and noise she suddenly looked very frail. Delicate. And terribly young. He took a step her way, for fear she might swoon.
‘Ms Somervale?’
She made no move, as though she had not heard him.
‘Laura? Are you all right?’
When she swallowed, her lips trembled. Then her haunted gaze locked in on the letter in his still outstretched hand. Her hand flew to her mouth and her teeth clamped down on the length of her index finger. Ryan knew not if she was stopping herself from crying out or biting down hard to cover up a deeper pain elsewhere inside of her. And then, just when Ryan was about to reach out and gather her against him—anything to stop the unnerving trembling that he had caused—she did the incredible: she managed to muster up a smile.
‘You’re Will’s brother,’ she repeated, and this time it was a shaky statement, not a question. ‘Ryan. The economist, right? I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you. Will never did carry pictures of any of you. And you weren’t at his funeral.’
Did that mean she had been? He’d had no idea. His family must not have either. Astonishing. She had been in their midst all those years before, and none of them had known. ‘Ms Somervale, I’m not here to cause you or your…family any trouble. I’ve come because…’
Why had he come? To find the child she had written to the Gaspers about in her letter? Absolutely. But after that he was running on gut instinct alone.
He reached down slowly, so as not to startle her, and picked up the pink overalls. ‘I need to know, Ms Somervale.’ He handed them back to her and saw understanding dawn upon her face.
She took a great breath, as though gathering her scattered trains of thought, nodded, and her bottomless golden eyes fluttered back up to meet his. ‘The Upper Gum Tree,’ she said, coming out of some sort of trance. ‘The hotel in town where you met Jill Tucker. Six o’clock tonight.’
Before he even had the chance to ask her what made the Upper Gum Tree at six o’clock so special, a voice called out from deep within the cottage.
‘Mu-u-um!’
‘Coming, possum!’ she called back, her flashing eyes begging that he keep his attention on her and nowhere else. But it was a hopeless demand as suddenly the owner of the pink overalls and the shouting voice came skipping out of the cottage.
The crackling record, the whisper of the breeze, even the vibrant vision of a barefoot Laura Somervale slipped away as every ounce of Ryan’s being focused on the little girl. She had Laura’s oval face, healthy glow, and dishevelled curls. But the Gasper traits were unmistakable. The intelligent blue eyes. The square jaw. Even the way she bit at the inner corner of her mouth was a habit his sisters had never overcome.
There was no longer any doubt in Ryan’s mind. Laura Somervale had given life to his brother’s child.
The little girl was holding a crayon drawing in her hand, and she stopped short when she saw that her mother was not alone. ‘Mum?’ This time her voice was not so resolute.
Laura’s glance flicked towards the little girl, her voice neutral.