The Ripple Effect (12 page)

The waitress brought his coffee and toast, thick, plump with dried fruit and dripping butter. Kavita would not be impressed despite her allowing him chocolate biscuits. Shay grinned to himself as he imagined her face. Butter was on her evil list but he’d grown up with it. When he was very small he remembered a cow living in the paddock across the back fence from the house. His Mum used to milk it. Big dishes of milk sat in the fridge waiting for the cream to rise and form a thick skin to be skimmed off. They’d have fresh cream on top of their apple crumble dessert but Mum churned most of it into butter.

As kids they’d burned off the calories and the fat tearing about on their bikes, riding the horses that belonged to friends from properties out of town, playing tennis, swimming in the river and generally behaving like hooligans. There was no doubt he’d been very, very lucky big Stan Brookes had such a soft heart for a frightened little boy.

A shadow fell across his table. Shay looked up, his mouth full of delicious, buttery raisin toast, his mind full of memories. William Paice stood staring down at him with a look of pain and anguish. He held a rolled up rubber mat and wore a floppy white towelling hat, grey track pants and t-shirt.

“Good morning.” He made it sound as though the morning was anything but good.

“Good morning.” Shay swallowed his mouthful quickly.

“Am I to assume you’re here to see my daughter?”

“Please, sit down,” said Shay, conscious of the woman at the next table eyeing them curiously.

Paice hesitated, then dragged a chair from the table. He placed the mat on another chair and waved away the waitress as she approached. He leaned forward.

His eyes bored into Shay’s.

“I think you should know,” he said, his voice quivering with barely suppressed rage, “That thanks to your ill-judged approach, Joelle has completely the wrong idea about your interest in her.”

Shay licked his lips. “I’ve done nothing that might encourage her to think I may be interested in her in any other way than as a friend,” he said, knowing it sounded stiff, awkward and very unconvincing. And it wasn’t strictly true. After he knew her identity it certainly was but he couldn’t deny to himself that initial rush of attraction. From both sides.

“For heaven’s sake, Brookes! What’s the girl supposed to think with a good-looking young man like you sniffing about?” Paice sat back in tight-lipped fury.

“I told her I wouldn’t be seeing her again after that one cup of coffee together.”

“And what are you doing here today?”

Shay sighed. He picked up his coffee and replaced it undrunk. “She phoned me,” he said. “Last Monday. She’s confused by your attitude—yours and Mrs Paice’s. I had to admit I’d been to see you. I don’t like being implicated in your lie, Mr Paice.” It was his turn to glare into the other man’s eyes.

Paice ran his hand over his face and emitted a sound resembling a groan. His cheekbones stood out gaunt and angular in a face ravaged by the recent illness and now furrowed by anxiety and uncertainty.

“Does she know?” he asked almost in a whisper.

“No. I think that information has to come from you. I kept my part of our agreement, Mr Paice.” Shay leaned forward to emphasise his words, keeping his voice low and private. “It wasn’t easy.”

The woman was pretending not to watch, but she glanced their way constantly, sucking up potential gossip.

“Thank you for that, at least.” Paice leaned back in his chair and stared at the table with blank eyes.

“I never wanted this to cause so much trouble,” said Shay. “I never expected…”

“We thought we were doing the right thing,” murmured Paice as though he hadn’t heard. “Natalie wanted her to feel she was completely ours and vice versa.”

“It’s obvious she loves you both very much.”

A smile flicked on and off but never reached the eyes. “Joelle is an absolute treasure. I never believed I’d love a child so much. I feel no differently about her than my other girls.”

“You won’t lose her,” said Shay.

“Are you sure about that, Dr Brookes?” Paice scooped up his mat. “Meditation is supposed to make things clearer and calm your mind. Teach you to let go.” He laughed in a self derisively way. “I mustn’t be doing it properly.”

“Yoga?” asked Shay.

“Yes, it was recommended after I had the cancer op. Help the body heal itself.”

Shay nodded. “Keep at it. There’s a lot in that mind/body approach to healing. Our bodies are amazing machines and we don’t understand half of what really goes on.”

It was Paice’s turn to nod. “You didn’t answer my original question,” he said as he tucked the mat under his arm. Sounding immensely weary now, the intense fury had gone. “Are you here to see my daughter?”

“In a manner of speaking,” replied Shay. “I’m here because she insisted I come with her to visit you and get some answers to both our questions.”

“And you agreed?” The voice rose again.

Shay regarded him steadily. “I want the same answers, Mr Paice. You forget I’ve wanted to find my sister my whole life. She’s a missing part of me as I am of her. You can’t expect me to turn my back on her now when I’ve finally found her.”

The other man’s lips tightened in a white line. A muscle flicked in his jaw. He gazed around vacantly at the other customers then his attention swung back to Shay.

“When were you planning to ambush us with this visit?” he asked harshly.

“Joelle said I should meet her when she closes at one and then go straight to you.”

“She wasn’t even going to warn us?”

Shay shook his head. “I don’t know. I told her you’d be angry she became involved in something I insisted was between you and me.”

“She’s stubborn.”

“Yes. I couldn’t say no. You must see that.”

Reluctantly, Paice nodded. He stood up. “I’d better go home and warn Natalie.” He turned, took a couple of steps then spun about and came back. “I don’t suppose you would consider leaving without meeting her?”

Shay shook his head slowly. “I don’t think she would let that pass, Mr Paice. She’d want to know why and she has my surgery number.”

William stared into Shay’s eyes for a long moment. The realisation of defeat was clear, the fear of losing the love of his treasured Joelle, the fear of admitting to her the lie.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Mr Paice made no acknowledgement. He turned and wandered away down the pedestrian concourse. Shay watched the forlorn elderly figure clutching the blue yoga mat, until the white hat disappeared in the crowd.

His coffee was lukewarm. His raisin toast unfinished with the butter congealing slowly. He opened the newspaper, but his eyes skimming the black and white pattern of print and the coloured photos deciphered nothing.

Perhaps he should leave. The Paice’s had been a very happy family until he came blundering in with his assumption of a God-given right to claim his sister. His parents and Olive had warned him but he wouldn’t listen.

But what about Joelle? What would she think if he just failed to appear? She wasn’t the sort of girl to let it slide. She’d keep picking away at her parents and she’d phone him again at the surgery with more questions which this time he’d be very hard pressed to answer.

Damn William and Natalie Paice. They should have told her years ago. What the hell were they thinking? Shay folded the paper into a tight wad and left it on the table, then strode into the café and paid. He needed to walk and think. It was noon. He had one hour to decide what to do.

William had no idea how he was going to tell Natalie what was in store for them this afternoon. Should he call in to the shop and try to dissuade Joelle from pursuing the matter? He dismissed that notion almost immediately as serving no purpose. Causing a scene in her workplace wasn’t the right approach. He knew his girl well enough to know Brookes was accurate in his assessment. She wouldn’t be fobbed off.

He walked in a kind of daze, threading his way through the languid Saturday crowds, pausing to cross the road, moving forward when the pedestrian lights changed to green, his mind writhing with slippery eel-like words and phrases. Words he knew, however they were arranged, would become as vicious and violent as any physical attack when spoken to Natalie.

She had to understand it was time to face up to the mistake they’d made. They needed to believe the job they’d done of raising Joelle would prove resistant to the coming strain, that her love was resilient. That theirs was unconditional.

William stopped. His feet had taken him to his car without any conscious effort. He unlocked the door and threw his mat on to the rear seat with a measure of mild surprise that he’d reached his destination on autopilot. He glanced at the dashboard clock. If Joelle and Brookes came straight from the shop at one o’clock, he had about one hour in which to prepare Natalie.

She was nowhere to be seen when he entered the cool of the house via the back door. He dumped his towelling hat and mat in the laundry as he passed.

“I’m home,” he called.

“In here,” came the reply from the depths of the house.

Natalie emerged from the bathroom wearing yellow rubber gloves and holding cleaning equipment. “How was your class?”

“I don’t know whether my body is designed to bend in the directions yoga requires,” he said.

“It will make you more flexible.”

“Why don’t you come with me?”

“I like something more vigorous at the gym, you know that.” She pulled off the rubber gloves one by one. “Lunch is salad. Ready in five minutes.”

“All right,” said William. “I shall go and mess up your nice clean bathroom by washing in it.”

Natalie kissed his cheek as she passed. “A woman’s work is never done.”

When William returned, Natalie had plates and dishes on the table along with a pitcher of chilled water. She poured him a glass as he took his place, and began spooning tabouli on to her plate.

“I saw an advertisement in the paper this morning for a Persian carpet sale. You know? One of those warehouse ones? I thought perhaps we could go this afternoon and see what they have. To replace the hall runner. It wasn’t a good buy that one we’ve got, was it? It’s already wearing thin. Too cheap. Good ones last decades.”

Natalie looked at him with raised eyebrows waiting for his response. Since his recovery she’d put the idea of his possibly premature death from her mind. He knew she did it deliberately, this planning and talk of the future—the purchase of a carpet which would last fifty years when he may only last one or two. If she didn’t acknowledge that fact it might go away.

He didn’t care about hall runners. Other things were more important.

William said, “Joelle is coming this afternoon to see us.”

“Oh, did you see her in town?”

He licked his lips. “No, I didn’t see her, I saw Shay Brookes.”

“Ah mon dieu,” she whispered. Only in moments of extreme duress did she lapse into her native language. Her hand flew to her mouth. “But…is he coming here too? After we asked him not to?”

Despite her shock, her relatively subdued reaction encouraged William to say, “They’re coming to see us together. We can’t hide from it any more, darling. We have to tell her the truth.”

None of the fireworks he’d expected had ensued. Perhaps she’d come to the same realisation he had but she gave one last despairing throw.

“It’s too late.”

William shook his head. “It’s too late not to tell her. We must.”

“She’ll hate us.”

“She might for a time but she won’t in the long term. We’re her family. She knows we love her and we know she loves us.”

“Are you convinced of that, William?”

“Yes,” he said hoping he sounded more definite than he felt. “We must stick together and keep our cool whatever she says. We mustn’t become angry and we must try to explain to her why we kept this a secret for so long.”

Natalie took a sip of water. William cut a piece of cheese and ate it although he had rarely felt less like eating. His stomach had turned to a solid lump of concrete. He wanted Natalie to think he was confident and unconcerned about the coming trial. He took a slice of bread and began building a sandwich of cold beef, lettuce and tomato, concentrating hard to counteract his weak and shaking fingers.

Try to explain? Why on earth had they kept the secret for so long? Why had Natalie always so vehemently opposed telling Joelle of her origins?

At one twenty five, Joelle walked with Shay up the front steps of her parents’ house. The hairs on her neck prickled, but she couldn’t see anyone watching through the big front windows. Anyway, they didn’t know she was coming and they certainly wouldn’t expect Shay to be with her. Good thing they were home. She hadn’t thought of that minor detail until too late, until she’d been sitting rigid with nervous excitement beside Shay in his car. Hadn’t considered the possibility that they might be out.

Dad had his yoga class in the morning. They didn’t go out much on Saturdays. They said the Point was too crowded at weekends and they preferred shopping during the week. It was a fairly safe bet they’d be home.

Shay was even better looking second time around. There was always the chance that on second viewing an attractive man would develop one or two deficiencies initially overlooked—a weak chin, large ears, squinty eyes, too short, too skinny, unattractive hands, unwashed hair. Shay had none of those defects. Shay had perfectly formed ears, eyes, chin and hands. His body was plain gorgeous and this time he’d worn jeans and a t-shirt which moulded themselves to muscular thighs and shoulders. His arms had a sprinkling of dark hairs on brown skin, he smelled good and his hair shone in the sun.

Sigh. Love at first, second and every ensuing sight.

Joelle pulled her key from her bag and allowed her arm to brush Shay’s. He moved aside smartly and said, “Sorry.”

She smiled up into his face making sure she caught his eyes. “No problem.”

Why was he being so ultra polite and careful? Surely he’d got the message loud and clear? She couldn’t be much more obvious short of jumping on him and kissing him. Any other guy would have sent her a few message received signs by now. Was he shy? Maybe he wasn’t sure of himself around women. No, he’d been flirty enough when they first met. In that case…