ever, he signed over rights to access to his kids and was heard of no more.’
‘Which left Claire alone.’
‘Yeah.’ He stared into the middle distance, remembering her terror. Remembering his own fear. ‘She had irreversible pulmonary hypertension, a contraindication for a heart transplant, but a transplant did end up buying her enough time to think about the boys’ future without her. While she was ill her parents took her and the boys back into their home. She had enough time to accept the boys could never be happy with her parents as sole carers.’
‘Why not?’ Weirdly, once again she seemed detached. The way she was, he wouldn’t be surprised if she produced a clipboard from her beach bag and started taking notes.
But her detached manner helped. He found himself wanting to outline the events that had propelled him here.
‘Her parents are…overpowering,’ he told her. ‘Because we’d been friends for so long I already knew that. Claire had been pushed as a child, really pushed. Ballet, piano, violin, gym—polo, for heaven’s sake—and she was expected to be brilliant at everything. To be honest, I suspect that’s why she fell for Creepy Steve and the other creeps before him—it was a dumb attempt to rebel. I gather, after she fell ill, the relationship with her parents grew more strained. Anyway, even before she had the transplant she knew the odds—she knew she wasn’t going to be around long-term for the boys. In the end she was desperate for me to have some influence in the way they were raised—so she asked me to marry her and adopt them.’
What followed was silence. Normally friends or colleagues jumped in at that point in the story. Not Rachel. She seemed to be taking her time to think it through.
‘That was some ask,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t imagine how it made you feel.’
‘We were good friends,’ he said diffidently. ‘And it wasn’t as if marrying and settling down was my style.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I worked, I surfed, I had fun. Family wasn’t on my radar. And we thought—Claire and I both thought—that it’d be simple enough. If by some miracle she survived long-term then we’d divorce. If she died, then her parents would do the hard yards of parenting—they saw the boys as their responsibility and had already made it clear that’s what they wanted. I’d just be around on the edges, giving them another long-term person for security, but with enough legal authority to step in if her parents pushed too hard.’
‘Still, it’s a big deal.’
‘You wouldn’t have done it?’
‘You said marrying wasn’t your style. It’s so far off my radar it’s another world. That kind of involvement—any kind of personal involvement—isn’t my scene.’
‘Really?’ He eyed her curiously and once again that sense of a clipboard between them came into his mind. ‘Yet last weekend you were there for me.’
‘There wasn’t a choice. Not that I minded. It was a finite commitment with the end in view. What you’re describing… Long-term involvement seems a given.’
‘There was no way I thought it’d interfere with my Friday nights though,’ he said with another rueful look down at his beer. ‘But look at me now.’
‘So what happened?’
‘She died,’ he said simply. ‘She tried for another transplant, which went horribly wrong—she was never going to be strong enough to deal with it and she knew it, but her parents were fighting with every means they had. When it was over the boys stayed living with them and I tried to take up where we’d left off, seeing them occasionally, taking them to soccer. Only it didn’t work. The kids got quiet. You know the rule in Emergency? Triage? A kid comes in screaming its lungs out and a kid comes in limp and silent. Which one needs attention? The limp one every time, and they were limp.’
‘So…a problem.’
‘Claire had given me custody in her will,’ he said. ‘She didn’t think I’d need it. All she’d asked is that I accept the power to override her parents if they did anything I knew she’d hate. So I kept hanging out with them, being a mate rather than a dad. But the months wore on and they kept getting quieter. I knew things weren’t right, but I couldn’t nail it.
‘And then one night I went around and they’d just brought their school reports home. School reports for kids. Henry was in infant class. You know the kind of report? Henry: A+ for finger painting, A+ for tying shoelaces. But Kit, who was two years older, had a slightly more precise report. Kit is struggling a little. B-for reading. The housekeeper let me in, and I could hear a row. I walked into the study and Claire’s dad had them lined up, waving reports in his hand and blasting Kit. Almost spitting into his face. “You let a five-year-old beat you. What are you? A pansy? You take after your no-good father. No grandchild of mine lets a five-year-old beat him, you good-for-nothing little…”’
He fell silent, remembering the sick horror as he’d realised what had to be done. By him.
Friday nights were the least of it.
‘They’d been authoritarian with Claire in her childhood,’ he said, speaking almost to himself rather than Rachel. ‘That’s why she worried, but she knew they loved her, and she thought they loved her boys. But when she died… I think their grief has left them a little unhinged. It doesn’t help that the boys all have Steve’s red hair—they look like him. I’m no psychologist but it seems there’s a part of them that can’t bear the boys to be…not Claire? I looked at them that night and saw no softness, only determination that the boys fall into line. And the things the old man said when I tried to defend them… It was almost like he was blaming the boys for her death.’
‘So you stepped in.’
‘It couldn’t continue,’ he said heavily. ‘They were determined to keep control, but I had the authority and I had them out of the house almost before they realised what I was doing. That night we sat up and watched dumb movies and ate junk food and didn’t talk about report cards once. I had a one-bedroom hospital apartment. They slept on the floor and I didn’t hear a complaint. I was then hit by a battalion of lawyers, plus Charles and Marjorie practically hounding the boys. Losing control was unthinkable. They were at the school gates, demanding the boys come home with them. They were calling me everything under the sun…’
He broke off. It was too much to recall—his struggle to explain that if they’d just back off, give the boys a bit of space, let them be kids, then things could work. His realisation that it wasn’t going to happen. The acceptance that his life had to change.
‘In the end I knew it’d never work,’ he said. ‘I started looking for another apartment, but when the old man hired a couple of thugs to collect the kids from school, thugs who were prepared to see me off with force, I just…’ He stopped, closed his eyes, then forced himself to go on. ‘I quit at the hospital. I knew this place was here. My grandparents built this house and it still belonged to me. I knew Shallow Bay could use any doctor they could get, so here we are.’
‘Safe,’ she said softly, almost a whisper.
‘Not quite safe,’ he told her. ‘Charles and Marjorie have applied for custody. Claire’s death might have left them a little unhinged, but as blood relatives they have a case and they’re powerful. They say their daughter was mentally unfit when she signed the adoption papers. I’m single, I work long hours, I need to use childminders. Regardless, my lawyers tell me they have little chance unless
