Mango Kisses (21 page)

‘Parents!’ cried Marianne scathingly. ‘They’ll ruin your life if you let them.’

‘Your parents never stopped you doing what you liked,’ interrupted Tiffany. ‘And mine didn’t either. They were very encouraging.’

‘Only because you did exactly what your dad wanted. Swotted at school, went to uni, studied the right subjects and got a job in the same field as he did.’

‘I wanted to do those things. He didn’t make me!’

‘Are you sure?’ Marianne stared at her and the sudden antagonism in her eyes sent a hot shiver of surprise down Tiffany’s spine. ‘What about poor Hugh? He was a miserable kid if ever there was one. Couldn’t wait to escape from those expectations. I know exactly how your brother felt. I was always terrified of your father, Tiff. He always made me feel as though I wasn’t measuring up somehow. That I wasn’t using my God given brains for good — like being interested in art and partying was evil.’

‘The way I imagine you party he was probably quite correct,’ said Baron raising both eyebrows and smirking.

‘That’s exactly what my parents did to me,’ said Fleur, ‘except I wasn’t strong like you, Marianne. I couldn’t defy them. And we were poor. That’s why I’m managing that motel. Money.’

‘I can’t believe you’d say that about my father, Marianne,’ said Tiffany.

Marianne leaned forward and her dark eyes flashed in the coloured lights. She looked alarmingly like a gypsy delivering a curse. ‘It’s true. Your father never said anything directly but he made his opinion pretty clear. My parents might have been strict about some things but they never told me what I could or couldn’t do as far as a profession goes.’

‘They were just glad you survived adolescence,’ threw in Tiffany caustically. But Marianne laughed and the gypsy was replaced by the happy-go-lucky girlfriend of old.

‘Absolutely. My mum despaired of me when I was a teenager but she’s proud of what I’m doing now.’ She grinned at the two men. ‘She secretly wants me to marry a nice Greek boy and have ten kids, of course, but she’s learned not to say it.’

Baron picked up the bottle to refill glasses but Tiffany put her hand over hers. ‘One of us has to stay sober enough to drive.’

‘And that would be you, of course,’ said Marianne.

‘I’m staying with Baron tonight,’ said Fleur.

‘What about the motel?’ asked Tiffany.

‘I’ll be back tomorrow. It can look after itself for a night.’ Fleur rolled her eyes and grimaced at Baron who smiled sympathetically.

‘It’s obvious you hate the place. You should move to Sydney,’ announced Marianne. ‘Do you have any friends there?’

‘One or two.’ Fleur sipped her refilled champagne flute. ‘Gerry and Matthew are in Darlinghurst.’

‘I stayed with them, remember, the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, when Gerry fell off the float and we all spent the night at St Vincent’s in the casualty waiting room? The looks he got — must have been the feathered G-string and body glitter.’ Baron hooted with laughter.

Marianne cut in decisively. ‘Ring them tomorrow and tell them you’re moving and you need a place to stay for a few days. It’s pointless putting it off. I’ll get on the phone to some people I know and organise a gig for you.’

‘What? You can’t do that!’ Tiffany thumped her fist on the table. ‘You can’t just organise people’s lives for them and tell them what to do. How dare you, Marianne?’

Fleur looked from Tiffany’s furious face to Marianne’s astounded one. She reached out and patted Tiffany’s hand gently. Hands were one thing, Tiffany noticed irrelevantly through her rage, that a man couldn’t disguise. ‘Tiffany, thank you for your concern but I think Marianne is right. I’ve dreamed about doing the big move but I’ve never been brave enough and now someone whose opinion I value has confirmed it.’

‘Marianne’s opinion? You value her opinion?’

‘Yes I do but not just hers. Yours. You said you liked my voice and that’s important to me.’

‘But Fleur...’ Tiffany’s own voice trailed away, seeing the hope and excitement in those pale blue eyes.

‘I have to give it a try, Tiffany.’ Fleur squeezed her hand. ‘Sometimes the staying is worse than the going — worse than the unknown.’

She nodded slowly. She could understand that. Her try with Miles had sputtered and died in a shrivelled heap, but who’d be to say Fleur wouldn’t succeed?

‘If you need any financial advice, call me.’ The rage sputtered and died too and joined the shrivelled remains of her attempt to connect with Miles. ‘Any help at all. Call me.’

Conversation was non-existent on the drive home. Marianne tapped along to the CD she’d stuck in the player as soon as they’d hit the road. Driving with gritted teeth, Tiffany tried to ignore the jarring hip-hop beat and tuneless thumping smashing itself against her eardrums for the whole of the hour-long trip. So intense was the chill radiating from Marianne slumped against the passenger door, that she entertained herself by visualising icicles forming on the car’s interior.

Finally the motel sign loomed out of the darkness. She pulled up outside Marianne’s room and tossed the car keys into her lap.

‘Goodnight.’

‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ said Marianne.

‘Drive safely.’ Tiffany opened her door and stepped out. Marianne followed, slamming her own door with a crash that echoed off the walls of the sleeping building.

‘You really despise me, don’t you?’ she yelled. ‘Deep down you think you’re better than me. Better educated, smarter, better parents, better job, better everything than dumb old Marianne the drunken, partying slut.’

Tiffany turned her back and headed for her room. If there’d been a manager in residence he would have been out to complain about the noise. Or come to think of it, no, he wouldn’t. Her damn key had disappeared into the depths of her bag.

‘You’ve about as much compassion and human warmth in you as...as...as that stone over there.’ Tiffany heard Marianne’s agitated footsteps chasing across the gravel and the clip-clopping on the concrete walkway behind her. ‘You know what your trouble is, Tiff? Do you know?’

‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’ Found it. But the hand holding the key shook so much she put the key back in her bag and clutched the bag to her stomach. She turned to face Marianne, who hadn’t finished and was ready to let fly with another blast.

‘You’re terrified to show your emotions. You’re scared to show you care about someone, as if it’s demeaning to the perfect image you’ve created — the perfect empty image. Guys know that straight away about you. That’s why you can’t ever keep one. You spent your whole life measuring up to your dry-as-dust father’s idea of a perfect daughter.’

‘At least I don’t go charging round telling poor confused people how to fix their lives. You know nothing about Fleur’s real situation, nothing at all and yet you blithely tell her she’ll be a star. Well, what if she’s not? What if no-one’s interested in her? It’s bloody hard to break into that scene and Sydney’s an expensive place to live. What if she ends up with no money, no home, no job? Will you help her out then? Will you give her a bed?’

Marianne’s eyes narrowed and she hissed, ‘At least she’ll give it a go. She won’t die wondering. You heard what she said — she wants to be a singer, it’s always been her dream. What’s your dream, Tiff? Yours, not your father’s. Have you got the guts to change your life and follow a dream? You must have some fantasy in that dull, conservative, repressed little brain of yours. I give up, I really do. I’ve tried my best since we were seventeen to open you up. God only knows why I bothered.’

She spun away, took two strides and then said, ‘And the answer is yes. I will offer Fleur a room if she needs one, for as long as she needs it. But she won’t because she’ll find her own way. I only made a suggestion. I can’t force her to leave this dump but she sure as hell didn’t need much of a prod.’

‘Here.’ Tiffany, fumbling with her bag, tried to abstract her arms from the sleeves of Marianne’s flimsy black blouse. She wrenched it off and hurled it in the general direction of her ex — very ex — best friend. ‘Take this.’

Marianne scooped up the pitiful little garment. ‘You should keep it,’ she said. ‘You never know, you might need to look sexy one day, and you won’t have a clue how to go about it because I sure as hell won’t be there to borrow from.’

Chapter Eleven

Tiffany gave up on the pretence of sleep. She must have dozed off sometime after she’d crawled into bed at two twenty-five but now, at five in the morning, her eyes opened and refused to close again. To lie sleepless for over two hours was unthinkable. She never did that. But the way her body felt when she sat up, as though it was filled with wet sand, made her rethink. And as for her eyelids, a face full of beach sand couldn’t have done a better job.

She dragged on navy blue track pants and a t-shirt, pulled on the matching zippered top and went out for a run, or a shuffle if her legs wouldn’t work properly. She passed Marianne’s BMW with barely a glance. That friendship had died a death and probably just as well, long overdue. They had absolutely nothing in common.

Tiffany began a steady jog towards the town. Cool, fresh, eucalyptus-laden air acted as a tonic, fired up her brain cells and energised her legs. Early morning mist shrouded the gums, eerie in the semi-darkness. The sun wasn’t up but there was plenty of twittering and squawking from the birds invisible in the surrounding treetops.

Her pounding feet sounded loud in the stillness, her breathing harsh in her ears. She reached the beachfront and ploughed down across the sand to the hard surface close to the water’s edge. The mist clung to the trees and the shore. The ocean was clearer, stretching away in a slowly undulating dark grey mass. Rosy pink light over the headland declared the sun was about to make an entrance.

And what a spectacular entrance it was. Tiffany stopped and watched spellbound as the pink deepened to rose and shafts of gold arrowed out into the lingering grey. The palest blue ventured along the horizon heralding another clear, bright, spring day.

‘Fantastic, isn’t it?’

Tiffany jumped.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you.’ Miles smiled at her apologetically but there was tension in his eyes, a wariness. He stood a few feet away but seemed much farther.

His actions implied Marianne might be right. Had her father unwittingly trained her to remove any trace of emotion from her soul? Was she really genetically incapable of sharing her feelings with anyone? If so, she was doomed to a life of emotional solitude.

Huge tears sprang to Tiffany’s eyes and she was powerless to stop them. They seemed to come from nowhere, completely unrelated to anything. They ran down her cheeks like gigantic watery boulders in the first, soft rays of the morning sun.

Miles watched in amazement, then alarm, followed by an overwhelming rush of tenderness. He didn’t think, he didn’t utter a word. He stepped forward, closed his arms around her and held her against his chest. To his astonishment she rested her head against his shoulder and sobbed. He tightened his grip.

He wasn’t sure how long they stood there. It could have been a day or an hour or just two minutes. Eventually the sobbing subsided and she sniffed once or twice before raising her head slightly.

‘I didn’t sleep at all last night.’

‘Neither did I.’

Tiffany straightened suddenly, almost crunching her head into his chin.

‘Marianne detests me,’ she said. ‘I never knew. I’ve known her since we were seventeen. She never said anything. Until last night when...when...’ More shuddering engulfed her.

‘You’ll sort it out,’ he said. What did he know about girls’ fights? ‘You’ve been friends for too long to let a little argument ruin your friendship.’

‘She hates my father.’

He couldn’t help with that one.

‘She thinks I’m cold and have no feelings.’

That, he could help with. The evidence was in his arms right now.

‘She’s wrong.’ Miles lifted her chin with his fingers and wiped her cheeks gently with his thumbs. He wanted to kiss those soft and tear-swollen lips so much it hurt but he wasn’t sure of the timing, didn’t want to spoil such a perfect and probably unrepeatable moment. Her tears had nothing to do with him, there was no telling how she’d react.

Tiffany gazed at him but doubt hovered. ‘You think that too, don’t you?’ she said softly. More tears rolled down sparkling in the slanting rays of the sun.

Miles smiled. ‘Given the current situation, no.’ His arms rested on her shoulders, hands lightly clasped behind her neck. Did she notice?

‘Oh.’ She wiped her eyes hastily with the backs of her hands. ‘I’m overtired. I don’t usually cry.’

‘Nothing wrong with crying,’ Miles murmured. He’d almost but not quite done it in front of her just two nights ago. ‘Especially if you’ve just had words with your best friend.’

He rested his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t pull away, but stared out at the ocean where the spectacular dawn show was taking place. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Yes. It happens every morning for free and hardly anyone sees it.’

‘You do.’

‘Try to. You do too.’

‘Only sometimes.’ Tiffany smiled but it looked forced. ‘I suppose you want to go for your swim.’

Reluctantly he let his hands fall away from her body. ‘I suppose you want to continue your run.’ Tiffany glanced away at the horizon and bit her lip. He saw the slight hesitation and plunged. ‘We could have breakfast afterwards. At my place.’

‘I was going to come over anyway and finish that report,’ she said. She met his gaze firmly. ‘I want to leave tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Sandbagged, pole-axed, kneecapped and kayoed.

She nodded.

‘I thought you weren’t going to do anything until Monday.’ Impossible to keep the despair from his voice.

‘I’ve changed my mind. I want to go home.’

‘Did Marianne have anything to do with it?’
Damn her.
She was like a tropical cyclone, hot, steamy, lots of air blasting around, and leaving a trail of destruction behind her when she departed.

Tiffany licked her lips and sighed again. ‘A bit.’

‘A lot!’

‘No. A bit!’ She glared at him. ‘Go and have your swim.’