to be feeling good about this, wasn’t he? He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, watched her write ‘Mum’ in the sand. ‘Mum,’ she said to Sam, pointing.
Sam leaned over with his hands on his pudgy knees and solemnly studied the squiggles she’d made in the sand. ‘Mumumumum,’ sang Sam.
‘That’s right, clever clogs, you can read!’ And she gave him a big squeeze that he wriggled out of and scooted off down the beach.
‘Tell me about Sam’s father,’ Leo said, as they followed along behind.
She looked up suspiciously, her eyebrows jagging in the middle. Where was this coming from? ‘Why?’
‘Who was he?’
She shrugged. ‘Just some guy I met.’
‘You don’t strike me as the “just-some-guy-I-met” type.’
‘Oh, and you, with your vast experience of women, you’d know about all the different types, I guess.’
‘Stop trying to change the subject. This is about you. How did you manage to hook up with such a loser?’
She stopped then, her eyes flicking between Leo and Sam. ‘You don’t know the first thing about me. And you certainly don’t know the first thing about him. He just turned out not to be who I thought he was.’
‘I know that he was a fool to let you go.’
Wow, she thought, forced to close her eyes for a second as the tremor rattled through her, where did that come from?
‘Thanks,’ she said, still getting over his last comment. ‘But it was me who was the fool.’
‘For getting pregnant? You can’t blame yourself for that.’
For ever imagining he was anything at all like Leo. ‘No. For believing him. He was an interstate consultant who visited every couple of weeks. Always flirting. We worked late one night, he invited me out for a drink afterwards’—and he had sexy dark hair and olive skin and dark eyes and I wanted to pretend…
‘And?’
She shrugged. ‘And the rest, as they say, is history.’
‘You told him about Sam—about the pregnancy?’
‘I told him. I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing him again, but I thought he had a right to know. He wasn’t interested as it happened. He was more interested in his wife not finding out.’
‘Scum!’ he spat, surprising her with the level of ferocity behind the word.
‘It’s not so bad. At least I’ve got Sam. And it got me motivated to start my own business.’ She caught a flash of movement in the crystal clear water, a school of tiny fish darting to and fro in the shallows. She scooped up her son and ventured to the water’s edge, careful not to disturb them. ‘Look Sam,’ she said, ‘fish!’
And Sam’s eyes opened wide, his arms pumping up and down. ‘Fith!’
She laughed, chasing the fish in the shallows even as she envied her young son his raw enthusiasm. She envied him his simple needs and pleasures. Why did it have to become so hard when you were a grown up, she wondered, when the world spun not on the turns of the planet and shades of dark or light, but on emotions that made a mockery of science and fact and good sense.
Wanting Leo was so not good sense.
Loving him made even less.
Maureen was wrong. She had to be.
The mood at dinner was jovial, the conversation flowing and fun. Only Leo seemed tense, strangely separate from the group, as if he’d already moved on to the next place, the next deal. The next woman. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, on the way back to their bure, his hand like a vise around hers. ‘Do you want to go take a walk first?’
Hannah had taken Sam back earlier and by now he would be safely in the land of Nod. They didn’t have to rush back if he had something on his mind.
He blew out in a rush. ‘I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight,’ he said almost too quickly, as if the words had been waiting to spill out. ‘It’ll be better that way.’
And she stopped right where she was and refused to move on so he had no choice but to turn and face her. ‘You’re telling me that after three nights of the best sex of my life, on the last night we have together, you’re going to sleep on the sofa? Not a chance.’
He tried to smile. Failed miserably. ‘It’s for the best.’
‘Who says? What’s wrong, Leo? Why can’t you tell me?’
‘Believe me,’ he snorted, ‘you really don’t want to know.’
‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know. What the hell changes tonight? The fact you don’t have to pretend anymore?’
‘You think I ever had to pretend about that?’
‘Then don’t pretend you don’t want me tonight.’ She moved closer, ran her free hand up his chest, ‘We’ve got just one night left together. We’re good together. You said that yourself. Why can’t we enjoy it?’
He grabbed her hand, pushed it away. ‘Don’t you understand? It’s for your own good!’
‘How can I believe that if you won’t tell me? What’s wrong? Is it the dreams you’re having?’
And he made a roar like a wounded animal in distress, a cry that spoke of so much pain and anguish and loss that it chilled her to the bone. ‘Just leave it,’ he said. ‘Just leave me.’
He turned and stormed off across the sand towards the beach, leaving her standing there, gutted and empty on the path.
Maybe it was better this way, she thought, as she dragged herself back to the bure, forcing herself to put on a bright face for Hannah who wasn’t taken in for a moment, she could tell, but she wasn’t about to explain it to anyone. Not when she had no idea what was happening herself.
She checked Sam, listening to his even breathing, giving thanks for the fact he was in her life, giving thanks for the gift she’d been given, even if borne of a mistake. He was the best mistake she’d ever made.
And then she dragged bedding to the sofa, knowing from the previous night Leo was more likely to disturb her if he tried to fit onto the sofa than because of any nightmare he might have. At least she knew he would fit on the big king sized bed.
She lay there in the dark, waiting for what seemed like hours, until at last she heard his footfall on the decking outside. She cracked open her eyelids as the sliding door swooshed open and she saw his silhouette framed in the doorway, big and dark and not dangerous, like she’d always seen him, but strangely sad. He crossed the floor softly, hesitating when he got to the sofa. She could hear him at her feet, hear his troubled breathing.
Come to me, she willed, pick me up and carry me to bed like you have done before and make love to me.
And
