Yet he expected that of Georgia. He pushed the uncomfortable thought aside. She had always been there for him. Until he hadn’t been there for her. But Nina needed him. And he needed Georgia.
‘That doesn’t make me an expert on babies,’ she said.
‘More of an expert than I am,’ he said. ‘I’d never even held a baby until the social worker handed Nina to me two days ago.’ He’d been petrified he’d drop her, despite the social worker’s reassurance.
‘I’m one ahead of you there,’ Georgia said with a wry twist to her mouth. She’d used to tell him she was the ‘afterthought’ in her family—eight years younger than her youngest sister, ten years younger than her oldest. They were both married with kids. She’d done a lot of babysitting. If anyone knew how to look after a baby, it was her.
‘That’s why I thought—’ he started.
‘Don’t you have a girlfriend?’
‘No.’ The relationship with Angie had burned him too badly to even contemplate dating.
‘There must be someone else who could—?’
‘There’s no one else I would trust.’
She sighed, took a step back from him against the stack of boxes in the middle of her living room. Pushed her fingers through her riot of dark chestnut, wavy hair. ‘That’s not fair, Wil. After all this time you can’t just rock up here and—’
‘I’ve been a bad friend, I know,’ he said. Wil didn’t expect her to disagree and she didn’t.
‘I... We... Your friends thought you’d dropped us because when you struck it so rich with your inventions, you wanted to leave us behind.’ She looked up at him, her eyes huge with undisguised hurt and bewilderment. He hated that he had hurt her.
‘That’s not how it happened at all,’ he said. How could she have thought that of him? Yes, he had made a lot of money but it hadn’t changed things, hadn’t changed him. He clenched his hands into fists by his sides. He never wanted Georgia to think badly of him. ‘I felt obligated to do what Angie wanted. She was jealous of you. Thought the others looked down at her.’
By the time he had realised Angie had purposely alienated him from the friends he cared most about, it had been impossible to make amends to them.
‘That wasn’t true,’ Georgia said.
But she didn’t quite meet his eye. None of his friends had liked Angie. If only he’d listened to them, instead of being swept along on an ill-founded urge to be some kind of white knight and rescue her from the effects of her troubled past.
‘Fact was, Angie didn’t like me seeing you. Didn’t believe in platonic friendship between a man and a woman. No matter how many times I assured her we were just friends, that we could all be friends. That there was no reason for her to be so jealous.’
‘No reason at all to be jealous,’ she echoed. ‘We rode horses together. Saw indie bands that no one else liked. But there was never any romance.’
‘Angie didn’t believe me,’ he said. Instead she’d screamed awful, ill-founded accusations he had no intention of sharing with Georgia.
‘And after your marriage ended? Still no word from you.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘I didn’t want to admit what a mistake I’d made by marrying her.’
Georgia would never know how many times he’d got as far as the last digit in her phone number before hanging up. How many times he’d driven past this apartment, slowing down only to accelerate away at the thought of confessing what an idiot he’d been to be taken in so thoroughly by Angie. Because to do that would have meant revealing the truth about those hidden years of his life. And not even the comfort and understanding he might have got from his long-standing friend Georgia had been worth that.
‘Really,’ she muttered. But the icy edge to her voice was melting.
‘I’m sorry, Georgie. If I could go back and change things I would.’
She blinked rapidly, something she’d always done when she was thinking deeply about something important. Finally, she spoke. ‘I’m not one to hold a grudge. I see things must have been difficult for you. And now—’
‘You’ll come with me to pick up Nina? That is, if you don’t have a boyfriend who has claims on your time.’
‘No. There’s no one.’
‘What about Toby? I thought for sure he’d have a ring on your finger by now.’
‘We broke up a year ago,’ she said, tight-lipped.
Good. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to be polite. He’d been convinced she’d marry Toby. He cursed under his breath. If he’d known Toby was going to exit her life, he mightn’t have made that rash decision to marry Angie.
She gestured around her. ‘I’m in the middle of moving house. The landlord has put the apartment on the market and I’m going home to my parents’ until I find a new place. There are boxes still to pack, cleaning to be done. I—’
‘I’ll pay for packers, movers and professional cleaners. Please, Georgie.’
She paused, looked up at him with an expression he knew of old, halfway between exasperation and affection, then sighed. ‘For past times’ sake,’ she said. ‘No, for the baby’s sake. Unless you’ve changed a lot in the two years since I last saw you, I’m not so sure you’d know which end was up on a seven-month-old baby.’ Her smile—that lovely smile that had always uplifted him—danced around the edges of her lips.
Wil didn’t realise he’d been holding his breath until he let it out on a whoosh of relief.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
Now that Georgia was back in his life, he wouldn’t let her go again too easily. No matter what it took.
SO MANY TIMES during the years of her friendship with Wil, Georgia had escaped the city with him to head for the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, to ride horses or bush walk. Only never with a rearward-facing baby car seat installed in the back seat of Wil’s car. Or four large packets of disposable nappies stacked next to it. ‘Just in case they’re all needed on the way home,’ Wil explained.
Georgia laughed. ‘Unless the baby has a particularly explosive digestive system, I very much doubt that.’
He scowled in a way she well remembered. ‘I told you, I know nothing about babies.’
She almost said, You’ve got a lot to learn. But Wil seemed only too aware of that. She almost asked if he was nervous about collecting the baby, but the tight set of his jaw and the way his hands gripped the wheel so his knuckles showed white gave her the answer.
‘You’ll learn quickly,’ she said instead, making it her mission to encourage and support him as she’d always done as his friend. And avoid jokes about dirty nappies. He was facing completely new territory without much of a map to guide him. She fought the urge to reach out and place her hand over his to reassure him, but that had never been the way with them. No touching.
‘I guess I’ll have to,’ he said.
Her friend had come back so unexpectedly into her life. She was churning with curiosity about what had happened in the two years since she had seen him. So many questions clamoured to be asked. But now wasn’t the time to ask them.
Wil was essentially a very private person. It took time for him to confide in his friends. Things must have ended badly for him to have been so estranged from Angie he hadn’t even known she was pregnant.