Bella's Run (39 page)

For the next few weeks Bella buried herself in her work, trying to put the pregnancy out of her mind. She organised Landcare meetings across the area, drew up flyers and sent them off to her boss for printing and distribution. She worried over her rusty facilitation techniques and fussed over her meeting-planning notes. But at random moments the realisation she was actually having a baby would hit her again with a jolt. She tired easily, and needed a nanna nap after lunch to get through the rest of the day. Her belly was rounding out and the butterfly movements inside her tummy were becoming stronger. They caught her unawares at the most inopportune moments, reminding her of the little person growing inside her.

She found a spare day and drove herself to Narree for the ultrasound Dr Weir had requested. And it was there that she came face to face with her future. In her belly. She was going to give birth to a new life.

She was amazed, as she sat in the ute after the scan, staring at the little black-and-white photo. The blurs and blobs, which vaguely outlined the shape of the body, showed a little baby with an arm in the air like it was waving.

‘Hello, Mum!’ it seemed to say.

‘Hello, little one,’ she whispered back as she gently put the photo in her purse. Humming quietly, she drove out the hospital gateway, her mind already on how she would manage it all.

Her first thought was that she was
not
going back to Warren. She needed more than just playing second fiddle in someone else’s band. She certainly didn’t desire to be the trophy wife; she wanted a life for herself.

Secondly, she didn’t want to live in the city. She was a country girl. Her baby would not be brought up in a concrete jungle, with no paddocks to run, play and laugh in. Bella knew she could go home to Merinda, or Maggie would have her up here. But a better plan was to get a place of her own somewhere close to her family; she was sure they’d help her cope. Much better to be a happy single mum in the country than a miserable married one living in the big smoke.

As she pulled the ute up in front of a women’s clothes shop that stocked maternity wear, her thoughts turned to how she would support herself and the baby. She could get more contract work and operate from home; she knew her qualifications were good for that. And the Landcare work she was doing was working out well, so that should stand her in excellent stead.

Yep, Bella decided, she’d cope – her and the little one. She wondered whether it was a girl or a boy.

Chapter 37

Warren appeared early one Friday evening, just as Bella was coming up from the paddocks where she’d been fixing a leaking stock trough.

‘Oh shit!’ she muttered to Turbo as she watched his Mercedes turn into the drive. ‘Here comes trouble. Just when life was getting peaceful.’ Bella parked the motorbike, unchained Turbo from the back carryall and went to meet her ex-fiancé at the garden gate.

‘How did you find me?’ was her opening line, as Warren slowly got out of the car.

‘I just rang the shop. A young lass called Shelley told me where you were.’

At that moment an old Land Rover rumbled to a halt behind Warren’s car.

Turbo went nuts with excitement and raced to piss on the leg that appeared. A boot came flying from the cab, sending Turbs rolling across the grass.

‘Get out, you little bugger,’ came a gruff elderly voice as Wes Ogilvie exited the cab and walked over to Bella and Warren.

Standing just over five-foot-six, he nearly met Bella eye to eye. His strides were held up with blue baling twine, and a saggy shirt strained across his protruding stomach. Stains marked the place where his belly button would have sat if you could find it. Bella could make out tomato sauce, greasy butter and Vegemite.

Warren looked the old bloke over with apparent disgust.

‘Gidday, Hells Bells,’ drawled Wes. ‘Brought you some milk for them poddy calves. The mail’s ’ere too if you want it. Gidday . . . ?’ He nodded to Warren, expecting to be introduced.

‘Oh, Wes, this is Warren. Warren, Wes lives down the road.’

Wes went to put out his hand, but then stopped as he looked at the dirt covering his palm. He spat into it before rubbing it down the side of his strides, then had another go, thrusting it towards Warren. ‘How do ya do?’ He smiled a gummy grin and Bella realised with a gasp that he’d left his teeth behind . . . again.

Warren gingerly grasped the tips of the old man’s fingers and then retreated. Wes looked him and then the shiny Mercedes over in disgust. ‘Don’t they know how to shake a man’s hand properly in the city?’

‘Yes, they do have some funny ways, Wes,’ Bella broke in quickly before Warren had time to answer. She guided the old man to his Land Rover, grabbed the drum of milk out of the back and took the bundle of mail Wes held out to her. Turbo had slunk around her heels, and he took a last dive at Wes’s leg.

‘Get out, ya mongrel bastard!’ The boot flew again but missed its target. Turbs moved fast when Wes was around.

‘See ya, Hells Bells. I’ll catch you again in a few days. There’s a postcard from ya folks in the mail. Sounds like things are goin’ bonza.’ He revved up his old ute and slung out of the drive.

Bella walked over to Warren, who was still standing by the gate with a horrified look on his face.

‘You know, he’s probably the richest man in Tindarra. Probably all of Burrindal too.’ Bella watched as Warren stood up straighter, a gleam coming to his eye as he tracked the Land Rover going down the road. ‘Of course, it’s all in land. Wes reckons you can’t go wrong with land. Not like shares, debentures or global investments.’ She widened her eyes in innocence.

Warren gave a very English ‘Hrruph,’ and walked to the back of his car. He pulled a leather suitcase from the boot.

Bella looked at the case with dismay. ‘You’re staying here?’

‘Well, of course, Bella. You
are
my fiancée, for heaven’s sake!’

‘That wasn’t what I said in the note I left you.’

‘No,’ agreed Warren, a placatory hand in the air. ‘But now you’ve had your little fling in the bush, I thought you’d be ready to come back home with me.’ He beamed.

Then, for the first time, he seemed to take in what she was wearing and the wrench she was wielding in her fist. His expression became slightly unsure.

Covering her sky-blue cotton drill shirt were fine splats of mud, and she was soaking wet from her waist to her toes. The leaking pipeline that supplied water to the trough down near the river pump hadn’t wanted to play ball, but she’d persevered and won the battle. She’d cut out the section that leaked and found two joiners in the shed. It might have taken her most of the afternoon but they’d been installed and she was damned proud. She’d done it all by herself!

And now here was Warren suggesting she come back and be a decorative feature hanging from his arm.

No way, José! Not for this little black duck
, said Patty’s voice inside her head.

Bella turned and walked off towards the house with Warren following closely behind. She climbed the steps to the verandah and then turned back to the man on her heels. ‘You can stay in Maggie’s front room, but when you leave, it’ll be on your own. I’m not coming back.’

‘You really plan to stay
here
?’ Warren said, throwing his free arm around to encompass all the space, and the mountains hunched in the night’s shadow with eucalypts on their slopes. ‘Out in the boondocks, going no place? I thought more of you, Bella, I really, truly did. I thought you had ambition and drive, a passion to make it big . . . with me.’ He sounded incredulous.

Bella stood silent and looked at him. She wondered how on earth she could have thought herself in love with this man. He just didn’t get it. And he never would. He didn’t see the bush as freedom, the room to breathe and live a healthy, wholesome life. He saw it as chains and shackles, a road to nowhere, the death of all aspiration.

‘I’m staying here, Warren.’

He lifted his head slightly in challenge. ‘I’m not moving to the bush.’ The final word was twisted in abhorrence and he took a step back.

‘I’m not asking you to,’ was her gentle but firm reply.

‘So, what now? Are we engaged or not?’

‘No. We’re not. I’m sorry.’

Warren ran his hand through his hair. He lifted his face and stared hard out at the shadowed hilltops then down at the verandah boards, shoving his leather-clad toe into the worn and frayed coir mat outside the door.

‘Right. Well then. I guess it’s over.’ Warren took a moment and then looked up. Bella was shocked to see his eyes were glassy. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now. Obviously I’ll not stay long.’

The next day dawned clear and Bella was out of the house before breakfast. She didn’t want to face Warren after the stand-off last night. He’d come to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee, declined her offer of a meal before stating he wished to catch up with Trinity.

‘I have a brilliant business proposition for him. How long will it take me to get to Ben Bullen Hills from here?’

‘An hour or so through the bush, but I’m not sure you’d want to travel those rough tracks in the Merc,’ said Bella, with a doubtful shake of her head. ‘Trin and Caro will be down in Burrindal on Sunday for the rodeo.’ She mentally slapped her forehead. Damn it! Why did she say
that
?

‘Good. I’ll stay until then.’

And that was the last she saw of him for the evening, although she heard the clacking of a keyboard behind the closed door for half the night.

When Bella finally made it back to the house after checking every other stock trough on the property for leaks, it was lunchtime. Warren still hadn’t appeared in the warm, homey kitchen. Worried, she peeked into the front room to see him snoring peacefully on top of the fully made-up bed. The screen on his open laptop blinked blindly. She nudged the mouse sideways and an email flashed onto the screen.

Just loved our time at the Versace. When’s our next opportunity for a ‘takeover bid’?

Larissa xo

Warren’s oh-so-capable assistant.

The worst thing was Bella didn’t feel a thing. They were welcome to each other. How wonderful that freedom was. She didn’t owe the bastard a jot.

The afternoon passed peacefully as Bella worked on her Landcare -facilitation notes. She was making a casserole for their tea when he finally emerged from his room. Looking cool and calm, he stood in a Lacoste shirt and pressed slacks, a picture of urbanity in an otherwise functional country kitchen.

The kettle on the old combustion stove hissed merrily.

‘Would you like a cuppa?’ she asked.

‘That would be nice,’ he replied formally as he took a seat on the kitchen stool.

Bella couldn’t help but compare him to the last man who’d sat on that seat. Warren was prim, uncomfortable and unsure, whereas Will had filled in the space contentedly and looked like he belonged there.

Warren crossed one knee over the other and then, swelling his chest as he spoke, said, ‘I haven’t slept all day, you know. I’ve been working on my laptop.’

For the first time, Bella felt sorry for him, that he thought he had to justify his time spent on the weekend.

‘I’m well aware of that, Warren; I could hear the keys clicking all afternoon.’ Bella didn’t mind lying either.

She moved around the kitchen to make his coffee as he liked it: strong, straight black with two sugars.

‘I’ll just go lock up the chooks and feed the dog, and then I’ll serve our tea. Is casserole on toast, okay?’

‘Perfectly.’

And they lapsed back into an uncomfortable silence.