go when you left our school?’ he asked. ‘You just seemed to disappear.’
Zoe felt a stab of pain that he didn’t seem to remember their last meeting. But if he wasn’t going to mention it she certainly wasn’t. Even now dragging it out of the recesses where her hurts were hidden was painful.
She poured beer into her glass. Took a tentative sip. Cold. Refreshing. Maybe it would give her the Dutch courage she so sorely needed to mine her uncomfortable memories of the past. She considered herself to be a private person. She didn’t spill her soul easily.
‘I won a scholarship to a private girls’ boarding school in the eastern suburbs. I started there for the next term.’
‘You always were a brainiac,’ he said, with what seemed to be genuine admiration.
Zoe didn’t deny it. She’d excelled academically and had been proud of her top grades—not only in maths and science but also in languages and music. But if there’d been such a thing as a social report card for her short time at Northside she would have scored a big, fat fail. She’d had good friends at her old inner city school, an hour’s train ride away, but her grandmother had thwarted her efforts to see them. The only person who had come anywhere near to being a friend at Northside had been Mitch.
‘I had to get away from my grandmother. Getting the scholarship was the only way I could do it.’
‘How did she react?’
‘Furious I’d gone behind her back. But glad to get rid of me.’
Mitch frowned. ‘You talk as though she hated you?’
‘She did.’ It was a truth she didn’t like to drag out into the sunlight too often.
‘Surely not? She was your grandma.’
Mitch came from a big, loving family. No wonder he found it difficult to comprehend the aridity of her relationship with her grandmother.
‘She blamed me for the death of my father.’
Mitch was obviously too shocked to speak for a long moment. ‘But you weren’t driving the car. Or the truck that smashed into it.’
He remembered.
She was stunned that Mitch recalled her telling him about the accident that had killed her parents and injured her leg so badly she still walked with a slight limp when she was very tired or stressed. They’d been heading north to a music festival in Queensland; just her and the mother and father she’d adored. A truck-driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and veered onto their side of a notoriously bad stretch of the Pacific Highway.
‘No. I was in the back seat. I...I’m surprised you remember.’
He slowly shook his head. ‘How could I forget? It seemed the most terrible thing to have happened to a kid. I loved my family. I couldn’t have managed without them.’
Zoe shifted in her seat. She hated people pitying her. ‘You felt sorry for me?’
‘Yes. And sad for you too.’
There was genuine compassion on his handsome famous face, and she acknowledged the kindness of his words with a slight silent nod. As a teenager she’d sensed a core of decency behind his popular boy image. It was why she’d been so shocked at the way he’d treated her at the end.
As she’d watched his meteoric rise she’d wondered if fame and the kind of adulation he got these days had changed him. Who was the real Mitch?
Here, now, in the aftermath of an earthquake, maybe she had been given the chance to find out.
WERE THERE ELEPHANTS in Bali? There were lots of monkeys; Mitch knew that from his visit to the Ubud area in the highlands.
He’d heard there were elephants indigenous to the neighbouring Indonesian island of Sumatra that had been trained to play soccer. But he would rather see elephants in their natural habitat, dignified and not trained to do party tricks.
Whether or not there were elephants on Bali, there was an elephant in the room with him and Zoe. Or rather, an elephant in the pool. A large metaphorical elephant, wallowing in the turquoise depths, spraying water through its trunk in an effort to get their attention.
Metaphorical.
Zoe had taught him how to use that term.
The elephant was that last day they’d seen each other, ten years ago. He’d behaved badly. Lashed out at her. Humiliated her. Hadn’t defended her against Lara’s cattiness. He’d felt rotten about it once he’d cooled down. But he had never got the chance to apologise. He owed her that. He also owed her thanks for the events that had followed.
Zoe hadn’t said anything, but he’d bet she remembered the incident. He could still see her face as it had crumpled with shock and hurt. He mightn’t have been great with words when it came to essays, but his words to her had wounded; the way he’d allowed her to be mocked by Lara had been like an assault.
Now Zoe sat back on the lounger next to him, her slim, toned legs stretched out in front of her. He didn’t remember her being a sporty girl at school. But she must exercise regularly to keep in such great shape. It seemed she hadn’t just changed in appearance. Zoe was self-possessed, composed—in spite of the fact they’d just experienced an earthquake. Though he suspected a fear of further tremors lay just below her self-contained surface.
‘I want to clear the air,’ he said.
‘What...what do you mean?’ she said.
But the expression in her dark brown eyes told him she knew exactly what he meant. Knew and hadn’t forgotten a moment of it.
‘About what a stupid young idiot I was that last day. Honest. I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see you.’
Mitch was the youngest of four sons in a family of high achievers. His brothers had excelled academically; he’d excelled at sport. That had been his slot in the family. His parents hadn’t worried about his mediocre grades at school. The other boys were to be a lawyer, an accountant and a doctor respectively. Mitch had been the sportsman. They could boast about him—they hadn’t expected more from him.
But Mitch had expected more of himself. He’d been extremely competitive. Driven to excel. If his anointed role was to be the sportsman, he’d be the best sportsman.
The trouble was, the school had expected him to do more than concentrate on soccer in winter and basketball in summer. With minimal effort he’d done okay in maths, science and geography—not top grades, but not the lowest either. It had been English he couldn’t get his head around. And English had been a compulsory subject for the final Higher School Certificate.
His teenage brain hadn’t seen the point of studying long-dead authors and playwrights. Of not just reading contemporary novels but having to analyse the heck out of them. And then there was poetry. He hadn’t been able to get it. He hadn’t wanted to get it. It had been bad enough having to study it. He sure as hell hadn’t
