Tim, meanwhile, moved closer to Griff. Out of the corner of his mouth, he said, ‘Eva Hennessey’s not likely to be there.’
Griff stiffened, and was immediately annoyed that the mere mention of Eva could still raise a reaction. It really shouldn’t matter if he ran into a girl he’d known a million years ago.
The reaction didn’t make sense. Sure, Eva had been his first girlfriend, but he’d eventually got over the shock of her leaving town so abruptly. It wasn’t as if he’d been planning to marry her straight out of high school and settle down in the Bay. He’d had big plans for his future.
He’d carried on with his life, with university and his subsequent career. And in the past two decades he’d had more than his fair share of relationships with glamorous, beautiful, passionate women.
He supposed it didn’t really make sense that he wanted to avoid Eva, but he’d moved on, so why ask for trouble?
‘Of course she won’t be there,’ he said, pleased that he managed to sound offhand. He added another nonchalant shrug for good measure, but he bit back the other comment that had sprung to mind—that Eva Hennessey was far too busy and world-famous to come back for such a piddling, unimportant event.
‘Well, Barney’s already put his name down, haven’t you, Barnes?’ Tim called to their mate, who was retrieving an inflatable ball that had bounced out of the pool.
Barney sent them a thumbs up.
‘And I reckon it’d be a blast for the three of us to go back to the Bay,’ Tim persisted. ‘You know, just the Three Amigos, without the women and billy-lids. Like the good old days.’
Griff was about to respond in the negative, but Tim stopped him with a raised hand.
‘Just think about it, Griff. We could stay at a pub on the beachfront, catch a few waves, even do a little snorkelling and diving on the reef.’
Well, yeah.
Griff couldn’t deny the great times he and these mates had enjoyed as teenagers, lapping up the free and easy outdoor lifestyle of a bayside country town.
Griff’s family had moved back to the city as soon as he’d finished school, and he could barely remember the last time he’d donned goggles and flippers to dive into the secret underwater world of coral and fish.
But there’d been a time when he’d lived and breathed diving...and surfing. Throughout his teenage years, he’d spent a part of every single day at the beach, in the sea. And every night, in bed, he’d listened to the sound of the surf pounding on the sand. The rhythm of the sea had been as familiar and essential to him as the beating of his heart.
By contrast, these days, the only water he saw was when he was rowing on the Brisbane River, which was usually flat and brown and still.
But the sea was different. And the Bay was special.
More to the point, these two mates were important to Griff. Amanda wasn’t especially fond of them, but she did have a tendency to be slightly snooty. She preferred mixing with Griff’s barrister colleagues and their partners, whereas Griff knew that these guys kept him grounded. Tim worked in a bank and Barney was an electrician and, between them, they provided a good balance to the eminent judges and silks who filled Griff’s working life.
He’d be crazy to let the haunting memory of one slim, dark-haired girl with astonishing aqua eyes spoil the chance to go back and recapture a little of the camaraderie and magic he’d enjoyed in his youth.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said cautiously.
He was rewarded with a hearty and enthusiastic back-slap.
* * *
Eva stared at the doctor in dismay as two words echoed in her head like a tolling funeral bell... Hip replacement...hip replacement...
It was the worst possible news. She couldn’t take it in. She didn’t want to believe it.
A few days earlier, during a rehearsal of The Nutcracker, she’d landed awkwardly after performing a grand jeté, a demanding movement that involved propelling herself gracefully into the air and doing the splits while above the ground. Eva had performed the move thousands of times, of course, but this time, when she’d landed, the pain in her hip had been agonising.
Since then, the hip hadn’t improved. She’d stayed away from rehearsals, claiming a heavy cold, which was something she’d never done before. Normally, Eva danced through every painful mishap. She’d danced on broken toes, through colds and flu, had even performed for weeks with a torn ligament in her shoulder.
Such stoicism wasn’t unusual in ballet circles. A culture of secrecy about injury was a given. Every dancer was terrified of being branded as fragile. They all understood it was a euphemism for on the way out—the end of a career.
This time, however, Eva found it too difficult to keep hiding her pain. Even if she faked her way through class and rehearsals, by the time she got home she could barely walk. So she’d seen an osteopath. But now, to her horror, the doctor had shown her disturbing results from her MRI scan.
She’d never dreamed the damage could be so bad.
‘You’ve torn the labrum,’ the doctor told her solemnly as he pointed to the scan. ‘That’s the ring of cartilage around your left hip joint. Normally, the labrum helps with shock absorption and lubrication of the joint, but now—’ He shook his head. ‘The tear on its own wouldn’t be such a great problem, but there are other degenerative changes as well.’ He waved his hand over the scan. ‘Extensive arthritic inflammation of the whole joint.’
Arthritis? A chill washed over Eva. Wasn’t that something that happened to elderly people?
‘I strongly recommend a complete hip replacement. Otherwise—’ the doctor sighed expressively ‘—I don’t really see how you can avoid it.’
No, please no.
On a page from his writing pad, he wrote the names of two consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeons. He handed the paper to Eva.
Sweat broke out on her skin and she swayed a little dizzily in her chair. A hip replacement was a death knell, the end of her career. The prospect filled her with such desolation that it didn’t bear imagining.
It would be the end of my life.
‘Aren’t there other things I can try?’ she asked in desperation. ‘Besides surgery?’
The doctor gave a shrug. ‘We can talk about physiotherapy and painkillers and diet. And rest,’ he added, giving her a dark look. ‘But I think you’ll find that the pain will still be too severe, certainly if you want to continue dancing. Ballet requires movements that are very unnatural.’
Eva knew this all too well, of course. She’d spent a lifetime perfecting the demanding movements most people never even tried. Pirouettes and adagios and grand allegros en pointe all made exacting demands on her limbs and joints, and she knew she was only human. She was at the wrong end of her thirties and there was a limit to what she could expect from her body. But she couldn’t give up dancing.
Not
