I’ll eat at the club, not we’ll eat at the club. Okay, then. No ambiguity there. It wasn’t an out-and-out surprise to Raf that he wasn’t invited and part of him recognised that his father wished to spend time with his buddies like he’d always done, but just one night, an invitation to join him at the fishermen’s club, might be nice.
Really? You’ve got as much in common with your father’s mates as a steak at a vegetarian’s picnic.
Raf straightened up and glanced at his father but Mario ducked his gaze. Once father and son had been the same height, but since Mario’s stroke, Raf was now the taller. ‘It would have been helpful if you’d mentioned your plans to me this morning,’ he said, pitching for a light tone.
Mario shrugged. ‘Freeze the calamari.’
His temper sparked. ‘Jeez, Dad, you’ve never eaten frozen seafood in your life.’
Mario’s brown eyes flashed in his jowly face. ‘Maybe I want to start. You’re not my keeper, Rafael.’
‘No.’ He deliberately closed his mouth hard to prevent himself from saying anything more. He wasn’t his father’s keeper but right now he was his carer. A job fraught with more unexploded mines than the fields of Cambodia. It made the taking of his medical IT company public and its subsequent sale look like a walk in the park. ‘Do I get to take a shower first?’ he asked, hating that he sounded like the petulant teenager he’d been twenty-three years ago.
‘Suit yourself. I told them I’d be there at six.’ Mario’s four-pronged cane thumped against the faded linoleum as he turned towards the door that led to the living room.
As Raf made his way to the bathroom, he heard the blare of the television and the sounds of a soccer game. Situation normal. It was just another happy day at Casa Camilleri.
Meredith checked her watch. Damn it, she was going to be late. Again. It had taken longer than anticipated to open all the lovely presents her colleagues had showered her with, including the cutest selection of baby clothes and the generous gift of a baby car seat. Lee and Emma had helped her load everything into the car and she’d raced home in an attempt to rescue her hair. It had been a bad move because now there was no way she was going to be able to fight her way down Brunswick Street with its heavy traffic and trams, and arrive at Le Goût on time.
Although Richard had carte blanche with his parents to arrive late, that courtesy wasn’t as easily afforded to Meredith. As her mother-in-law, Linda, often said, surely, as a GP in an inner-city practice with six large hospitals in a five-kilometre radius, most emergency patients bypassed the clinic.
They did and, truth be told, most days Meredith ran late at the clinic because she didn’t want to rush her patients. At home she ran late because even though she and Richard had a cleaner come in once a week, the bulk of the domestic tasks fell to her. Raised on a dairy farm, where either the cows or the farm machinery had the uncanny knack of causing chaos at inopportune moments, she’d come to believe that being ten minutes late was considered on time. Linda wasn’t of the same opinion. Meredith knew the look that would dart across the restaurant at her as she walked in late—the one that said Richard could have done better.
She sighed. Stop it. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t gone to one of Melbourne’s elite private schools or that she hadn’t studied medicine at Melbourne University. It was Linda’s issue, not hers, and to keep the peace she hadn’t objected when Linda had mentioned she already had the enrolment forms for Melbourne Grammar on her desk and that Derek, Meredith’s father-in-law, had the application form for the Melbourne Cricket Club on his. Both were ready to be lodged the moment the sex and the name of the baby were announced.
As far as Meredith was concerned, she and Richard had years ahead of them before they had to worry about schools. The baby kicked again and she put her hand on the foot that kept digging her in the ribs. ‘You telling me you’re starting to feel squished in there, Sprocket? Sorry, but I need you to stay put for another six weeks.’
Feeling the cloying tendrils of fatigue starting to pull at her, she didn’t dare sit down to put on her shoes in case she gave in and didn’t stand up again. As much as she appreciated Linda and Derek insisting that Richard’s absence was no reason for them to cancel dinner plans, the idea of slumping on the couch and eating a green curry from the Thai takeaway down the road was very appealing. ‘Come on, Merry, you can do this,’ she told herself as she took one final glance in the mirror—lipstick on, hair mostly under control, clean black dress. ‘You’ll do.’
She picked her keys up from the key dish and then remembered her phone was resting on the charger. She doubled back to the kitchen to retrieve it and as she picked it up, the doorbell rang. Her heart skipped in delight. Despite Richard being adamant he couldn’t cut a day off the snow trip and that he’d be home tomorrow night, he’d known that she and his parents had been disappointed he was missing this long-anticipated dinner at the popular restaurant. Turning up unannounced and making it to dinner after all was just the sort of surprise Richard would pull.
She slipped her phone into her handbag and rushed back to the front door, letting her excitement take control. Oh, how she wanted to find Richard on the other side and not a power company or a cable television salesperson. Turning the deadlock and the door handle in tandem, she opened the door. Neither Richard nor a sales person stood on the tiny veranda of her inner-city terrace house. Disappointment sank through her like a stone.
‘Dr Dennison?’ a young police officer asked quietly, her expression serious.
‘Yes.’ She was used to the police ringing her doorbell, given that out of all her colleagues she lived the closest to the clinic and the police station. If there were any out-of-hours problems with the clinic security system or if there was a break-in, the police knocked on her door. She instantly thought that Olivia had probably drunk one glass of champagne too many at the baby shower. ‘Did Olivia set off the alarm system when she was locking up?’
The policewoman shot a confused glance at her male partner. His shoulders rose almost imperceptibly. The policewoman looked back at her. ‘May we come in?’
Come in? She checked her watch again. ‘I’m already running really late for dinner so how about we go straight to the clinic and I’ll override the security, okay?’
The policewoman shook her head slowly. ‘We’re not here about a security system, Dr Dennison.’
‘Oh?’ She stared at the officers in their distinctive blue uniforms with all the necessary accoutrements from holstered guns to radios. Her brain snagged on the motto, Tenez le droit. Why French? With a shake of her head she marshalled her thoughts. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Please, may we come in?’
Had she forgotten to pay her speeding fine last month? Did they send the police to your door for that sort of thing? She automatically stood back from the doorway to allow the officers access and they crossed the threshold before standing uneasily in her living room. She was struck by how their black heavy-duty work boots seemed glued to her polished Baltic pine floorboards.
‘Is this going to take long because if it is I really should call my in-laws and let them know I’ll be even later for dinner than I already am.’
The officers sat down. ‘Can you please sit down?’
For the first time, confusion gave way to something akin to fear and like an obedient child she sat. ‘What’s going on?’
The policewoman set her cap on the coffee table. ‘Dr Dennison, is Richard Nichols your husband?’
‘He is.’ Merry’s breath hitched in her throat as her hand gripped the arm of the couch. ‘Why?’
The policewoman swallowed and her tongue moistened her lips. ‘I’m afraid there’s been an accident and your husband—’
‘What sort of an accident?’ She heard her voice loud and strident bouncing off the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, only it