he’d meant to get a haircut but when was there ever time? Then he decided he was staring at her and wondering about haircuts when he should be pouring whisky.
He turned on his heel and headed for the living room. He poured two decent tumblers, decided ice was for sissies and headed back to the kitchen.
She was still on the floor.
‘You want to sit at the table?’
‘If I get up I might never get down again.’
‘The fridge can wait. You’ve done so much cleaning I’m feeling like a—’ He hesitated. He didn’t know what he felt like, he thought. Out of control? Yeah, maybe even more out of control than when his house had been full of dirty dishes.
‘You must really miss your wife.’
He’d reached down to give her a hand up. He stilled and Shanni stared at his hand, shrugged and heaved herself up. He shook himself.
‘Sorry.’
‘Hey, don’t apologize. I only lost my boyfriend and I’m doing dumb things, like not contacting my parents and making sure they hadn’t changed the locks before I come all the way to Australia.’
‘They’ve changed the locks?’
‘And put in tenants,’ she said grimly. ‘You’d think a daughter would know.’
‘You’re not close?’
‘See, there’s the thing,’ she said, sitting at the table and taking her first sip of whisky. She wrinkled her nose in appreciation. ‘I thought we were. I phone once a week. You’d think changing locks would be something they’d mention.’
‘I…I guess.’
‘Sorry.’ She took another sip. ‘We were talking about you. Your wife.’
‘You lost your boyfriend?’
‘He didn’t die,’ she said darkly. ‘More’s the pity.’
‘Right,’ he said, distracted. She looked really cute when she talked darkly. ‘So you just lost him?’
‘He went to bed with a model.’ She glowered some more. ‘In my bed. And then when I threw ice water over the pair of them he went out and spent our shared credit card to the hilt, and he isn’t even sorry.’
She glowered at the absent boyfriend and model. ‘But we’re talking about you. You and the five kids and the dead wife and Social Welfare. I’ve never seen such a mess.’
‘Thank you.’
She blinked. Then she put the whisky very carefully on the table.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a long day. I landed in Sydney at five this morning. I took a cab to my parents’ and found they’d absquatulated. So I took my dad’s car and drove to my girlfriend’s apartment, to find a bedsit smaller than a shoebox. Then I remembered Ruby’s letter and rang you and asked if you still wanted a housekeeper, and you said yes, it’d be fine if I came straight away, so I ended up here. To find you’d absquatulated as well.’
‘Absquatulated?’ he said, distracted.
‘Taken yourself off to points unknown, generally leaving a mess behind. My mother’s a linguistics professor. Get over it.’
‘Right,’ he said, feeling dazed. ‘I didn’t…absquatulate.’
‘You just went to sleep.’
‘I’ve said I’m sorry.’
‘The kids were terrified. They were thinking they’d get carted off to care.’ She wrinkled her nose some more, perplexed. ‘See, that’s the part I don’t get. Why is Welfare so interested in you? Have you done something awful? I mean, today was appalling, but that sort of mess happens in the best families. If I told you how many times my parents forgot me…Anyway, that’s beside the point. I understand your wife dying was awful but Social Welfare isn’t usually a monster.’ She paused, thinking things through.
‘You know, unless things are really dire, the authorities don’t take kids from parents. I can’t see them dragging children off to foster care just cos their dad went to sleep in the sun after a night with a sick baby.’
‘No. I…’
‘So have you done something ghastly? I mean, not that you’d confess. But I’ve been scrubbing the fridge and thinking that I should just leave. Except that I’m broke and I don’t have anywhere to go. Except Aunt Ruby’s.’
‘You don’t want to go to Ruby’s?’ He was having trouble keeping up.
‘Ruby has macramé meetings in her kitchen every weekday morning. She’s offered to teach me. And she says she has to get your permission anyway if she wants to have me for more than just a couple of weeks. Which is weird.’ She hesitated. ‘But you’re sidetracking me. I keep thinking of Wendy. Wendy like she was when I arrived. Terrified. Expecting the worst. There must be something horribly wrong for her to look like that. I don’t know what it is, and maybe I should leave, but I’ve decided I need to figure it out. Because now I’m hooked. If you’re hurting these kids I’ll—’
‘You’ll what?’
‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘I can’t figure out why they’re terrified. Because the way you cuddle Bessy…You even seem nice.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You know what I mean. You look normal.’
‘Yet I was a fifteen-year-old in a pinstripe suit when first you met me.’
‘You’re distracting me.’ She looked at his whisky glass. He looked at it too.
‘You do think I’m a drinker.’
‘Hey, I just wondered. I mean, if I had five kids and a dead wife I might crack as well. And it would explain.’
‘It explains nothing.’
‘Then you need to give me some other explanation,’ she said. ‘Because I want to know why your kids are terrified.’
He stared into his whisky glass.
‘Tell me or I retreat to macramé.’
His eyes flew to hers. He expected to see laughter, but he didn’t. She was deadly serious.
She really cared, he thought. She was worried about these kids.
The sensation was so novel that he blinked.
‘There’s a simple explanation,’ he said, meeting her look head on.
‘Which is?’
‘These aren’t my kids. They’re nothing to do with me. Until twelve months ago I’d never seen any of them before in my life.’
CHAPTER THREE
THERE was a long pause. Shanni had pulled open the fire door of the oven, to let the warmth of the flames give comfort to a kitchen that was only just warming up. The fire crackled behind them. He should put music on or something, he thought inconsequentially. The atmosphere was too intimate.
Maybe music would make it worse.
‘They’re not your kids,’ she said at last. She wasn’t taking her eyes off him, seemingly ready to judge by how he looked as well as what he said.
‘No,’ he said. There was nothing else to say.
‘I did wonder,’ she said mildly. ‘They don’t look like you. They keep forgetting to call you “Dad”. And they didn’t know if you had Abba.’
‘Abba?’
‘Never mind. I thought maybe they’d been calling you “Pierce” and you’d made them change for the welfare people.’