Handle Me with Care (26 page)

The Friendship Tree

Is running away ever the answer?

Tamara Harding left the UK to join family in Australia, but more importantly, to put ten thousand miles between her and her ex, Bradley Cox. She is soon drawn in to the small community of Brewer Creek where she becomes the coordinator for an old fashioned Friendship Tree – a chart telling people who they can call on in times of trouble. 

As she vows to start over, she meets Jake Manning – and life gets more complicated than she could ever have imagined. Jake is the direct competitor for the family business, and a man with a dark secret, and Tamara struggles to fight her attraction to him as she deals with secrets of her own and an ex who refuses to give up. 

When danger descends on Brewer Creek in the form of Jake’s own past, Tamara soon realises the Friendship Tree does a lot more than organise fundraising events and working bees; it has the power to unite an entire town. But will Tamara see past the complications and allow herself a happy ending with Jake? Or will she run away again?

Chapter One

Tamara Harding wondered how she had managed to get roped into this when she had only been in Australia for ten days. She looked down at the friendship tree – a hand-drawn, landscape-oriented picture that held the details of every resident who shared the Brewer Creek postcode. Her task, as co-ordinator, was to update and redistribute the tree. 

“I think there are already some updates waiting for you,” her mum explained. “I know that Jake Manning’s details still haven’t been added, and he’s been in town for a while now. I’ll leave you to it.” Katherine Harding kissed her daughter’s cheek. “I’ll see you after work.”

Tamara waved as she watched her mum head off to her part time job at the local post office, but her smile soon faded when she thought again of Jake, the man who had come to town and set up a second veterinary practice. Tamara was fiercely protective of her stepfather, Bobby, and suspected that the new competition in town was making more of an impact than he was willing to let on.

The warmth of the tangerine sun that hung in the sky filtered through the fly-screen door as Tamara looked out over the garden, the orchard, and the paddock. She glanced back at the picture of the friendship tree which had been maintained in Daphne Abbott’s miniscule Mrs-Pepperpot-style handwriting. It had a thick trunk and sprawling branches heading up towards the top of the paper. More branches spread from those, holding up boxes containing the names and contact details of Brewer Creek’s residents.

When Daphne had handed over the reins of the friendship tree to a still jet-lagged and bleary-eyed Tamara, she had done so with a look that left no doubt about the high standards expected of her from now on. But Tamara was ready to rise to the challenge; sitting around gave her too much time to dwell on the reasons why she had left London. Focusing on something new, like the friendship tree, would help her to settle in and feel a part of this town.

With her work hat on, she decided that her first task should be to bring this friendship tree into the twenty-first century. She booted up the computer in Bobby’s study, and as the machine whirred into action she leant back in the leather chair and gazed out of the window. This sleepy town was as far removed from the London lifestyle and her job as a Public Relations Account Executive as you could get, but it also had the added bonus of being ten thousand miles away from Bradley Cox.

And that was exactly why she had come.

Since Bobby and Katherine Harding emigrated eight years ago, visits had been few and far between, with Tamara visiting Australia once and her parents making the trip home twice. The original plan had been for them all to emigrate as a family, but when Tamara’s career took off in her early twenties she had made the heart-wrenching decision to stay in the UK. It had been her best friend Beth who had supported her in the early weeks when Tamara wondered whether she had made a mistake in staying put, but then Bradley came on the scene and everything in her world had been rosy… for a while. 

Tamara studied the friendship tree with its scribbled alterations: one resident had married and changed surname; another had left the area; another looked as though he had moved with the times and added a mobile phone number. Daphne had also scribbled job descriptions: Bill “GP”; Derek “Mechanic”; Matthew “Dairy Farmer”; Len “Local Pub”; “Plumber” against a man named Flynn on the highest branch. She had never seen anything like this before. In the block of flats where she’d lived in England, you were lucky to know anyone else’s name let alone their personal details.

Tamara found an image of the outline of a tree with a wide canopy and saved a copy onto Bobby’s computer, then she added boxes to the branches and transferred all the details from Daphne’s diagram. Once they had been triple-checked, she bumped up the number of copies to forty-five – the exact number of squares that she had on the tree to represent each property – and left the printer to do its thing. 

Since her arrival on Christmas Eve, Tamara had functioned in a jet-lagged haze, falling asleep on any unsuspecting couch and fixing snacks in the middle of the night. But today her body seemed to have adjusted. Today was the first day that she could fully appreciate how different life was in this town, compared to London. She poured a glass of orange juice and looked out at the waxy sheen of the tops of the trees, the pineapple-like trunks, the rambling open spaces with an infusion of greens, mustard-yellows, and reds injected into the landscape. Her mum’s Instagram photographs simply hadn’t done Brewer Creek justice. It was a small town nestled in the Central Coast of New South Wales, and the feeling of space along with the vast expanse of seemingly limitless blue sky left Tamara satisfied that she had made the right decision.

Tamara checked her watch and quickly calculated the time difference, then reached for the phone and waited for the international call to click through. She hadn’t spoken to Beth since she left the UK, and it was lovely to hear her voice again. They chatted about the perils of jet lag, sun versus snow, the latest night out in the trendy London bars that Tamara hadn’t thought she’d ever miss until now. They joked about being thirty and living with your parents all over again.

“Bobby painted the annexe, so at least I’ll be semi-independent in there,” said Tamara. “I’ve been roped into organising a friendship tree for the town, too.” She explained the intricacies. “I thought that sort of thing went out with wind-on cameras.”

“Hey,” said Beth, “
never
underestimate the power of the friendship tree.” 

“That’s true. We probably would never have been friends if it hadn’t been for the one at school.”

“Exactly,” said Beth, not bothering to conceal a yawn. “So come on,” she groaned, “tell me what the weather’s like? Do I really want to know?”

“It’s sunny, twenty-five degrees and climbing.”

“Oh be quiet,” said Beth.  “I’m so jealous! Surprise, surprise, it’s freezing here. It snowed on New Year’s Eve, too, not a bloody taxi in sight…”

Tamara wondered whether Beth had bumped into Bradley on New Year’s Eve – they frequented many of the same bars and pubs. Did he even know yet that she had left the country? Somehow she had successfully avoided all contact with him since that awful night when she had realised she needed to get away once and for all. 

As though reading her mind, Beth asked, “Have you heard from Bradley?”

The breeze outside picked up, and the rustling of plants and trees instilled a sense of calm in Tamara. “Not a thing,” she said.

“Good.” Tamara could imagine Beth’s trademark glossy red lips and her serious frown, her razor-cut bob as she recited her sermon. “No offence, Tamara, but it’s a good thing you’re there, away from him. It’s time to think of your own needs for a change.”

“I know.” Tamara still didn’t understand how it was possible to love someone one minute and be so wary of them the next. Leaving the UK had felt like ripping off an extraordinarily stubborn plaster: quick and hugely painful, but ultimately for her own good. Leaving Bradley, with his classic dark hair and film star good looks, had been the easy part; the part that made sense. Leaving the solidity of her close friendship with Beth, which had stood fast for more than twenty years, had been the hardest thing of all. 

“Promise me something, Tamara?” Beth’s tired voice came from the other side of the world. “If Bradley does get in touch, be careful. He seems to know how to wangle his way back in every time.”

“I know what he’s like.”

To Beth, Bradley was a manipulative arsehole; to Tamara, he was a thirty-year-old man who had lost his way in life’s maze, and at every turn he seemed unable to find his way out. Leaving him hadn’t been easy. He had been through his own hell with his family, and until Tamara came along it had all been bottled up tighter than a jar of pickles. His past didn’t excuse his behaviour, but it did give him a complexity to his personality which Tamara had tried her best to understand.  

When they ended their call Tamara wondered briefly how long it would be before Bradley heard on the grapevine that she had left London. It was highly unlikely that he would jump on a plane and follow her. A London boy through and through, even the thought of relocating to the south coast last year when Tamara was head-hunted by an up-and-coming PR firm had rattled him.

She picked up the printed copies of the friendship tree and left them in a stack on the hutch in the hallway before trotting upstairs to get ready for the day. Unlike the world of PR where everything had to be done yesterday, the distribution phase of the trees wasn’t urgent, and thanks to modern technology she was probably already well ahead of the game.

“Good morning, Bobby,” she called chirpily as she passed the bathroom.

Bobby poked his head around the door, one half of his face freshly shaven and the other covered in the whipped-cream-like shaving foam. “Good morning, love.” He still held the razor in his hand, a towel slung over his shoulder on top of a black dressing gown. “Were you talking to yourself again?”

She gave him a playful shove which barely registered with the tall, solid man whose head skimmed the door frame. Quite by chance, Bobby Harding had the same emerald green eyes as Tamara and Katherine, and aside from the fact that she always called him Bobby it was only Tamara’s cocoa-coloured skin – a blend from her London-born mum and her biological, Nigerian father – that gave away the fact that he was her stepfather.

“That was Beth on the phone,” giggled Tamara. “She says hello, by the way.”

“Ah, that explains it. So I don’t need to call the men in white coats yet then?”

“Not yet.”

“So what’s the news from London? Any snow there yet?”

“A bit on New Year’s Eve apparently.”

Bobby leaned against the door jamb, unconcerned that Tamara had interrupted his shave. “Still feeling a bit homesick, love?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s only been a couple of weeks. People go on holiday for longer than that.”

He ruffled her shoulder-length, wavy hair with his free hand. “I know, but moving around is hard; I’ve done it enough in my time to know that you’ll have some ups and downs. Remember this is your home for as long as you need.”

Tamara hadn’t revealed the reasons behind her sudden relocation to Australia; as far as her parents were concerned, she was here on an open-ended visit and nothing else.

Bobby caught the trickle of white, watery liquid that began creeping down his throat. “I’d better finish up. Those trashy UK magazines that you were after are still in the car, on the passenger seat.”

“Thanks, Bobby.” Tamara trotted downstairs in her pyjamas and slipped on a pair of flip-flops at the back door. Getting ready could wait; celebrity gossip and problem pages couldn’t.

Outside, she aimed the remote at the small red hatchback to wake it up. She leant over to the passenger side to grab the pile of glossy magazines, but as she pulled her body back out she felt a firm hand swipe across the bare skin of her shoulder blades.

She screamed. The pile of magazines launched like confetti in the air as she clasped her chest, gasping for breath as she turned to meet the person responsible. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“Whoa, take it easy,” said the man. He held up his hands as though he was the victim rather than her. “You had a spider on your back,” he said matter-of-factly.

Tamara spun round on the spot like a dog chasing its own tail. Her arms chopped through the air like blades on a windmill as she attempted to detach any cobwebs that might still be lingering. Oh God, was there something in her hair? She swished at that, too; she felt itchy all over.

Cornflower-blue eyes looked down at her, a hint of amusement disguised beneath a wide-brimmed Crocodile Dundee-style hat, and a smile played on the man’s smooth, pale pink lips which were surrounded by a light layer of manly stubble.

“G’day, I’m Jake Manning.” A hand extended towards her as she looked up at him, moving into the shade created by his body so that she wasn’t squinting in the sun. 

“Tamara Harding.” She found the warmth of Jake’s rough, hard-working hand, which dwarfed her own and contrasted against her dark skin.

She bent down to gather the magazines from the dirt below and took one from Jake when he crouched down to help her. Suddenly aware of her barely-there pyjamas, she folded her arms in front of her chest when she stood up, using the magazines as added protection. She locked eyes with him, unsure whether she was more embarrassed by how little she was wearing, or the fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous and totally unexpected.

The corners of Jake’s mouth curved upwards and parted enough to show a row of neat teeth. “Spiders sometimes sneak in that gap around the door frame,” he said, gesturing towards the car. “Huntsmen aren’t poisonous, but they could give you a nasty bite.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to remember that.”

It was still early enough in the morning for the air to carry a chill despite the glow of the sun and the promise of an Australian summer’s day, and Tamara felt her body showing outward signs of being cold. She hugged the magazines even tighter against her chest.

“I’m here to see Mr Harris’s horse,” said Jake, the same persistent grin on his face as he pointed to the fields running adjacent to the Harding property.

“Well don’t let me keep you.”

“Don’t let me keep you either.” He tipped his hat, smirked at the picture of Jennifer Aniston on the front cover of the magazine. “You look busy.”