sand back to the house with Rufus, who had a piece of driftwood in his mouth in the hope one of them would throw it just one more time. ‘I need this time here away from it all, Caro,’ she said in a heavy voice. ‘It’s not just about the…the incident. Breaking up with Anton was so unexpected. I feel such a fool for not seeing that coming.’ It wasn’t quite the truth but Fran was so tired of being badgered by her friends and family about her decision to leave medicine.
Caro stopped halfway up the path, seemingly to catch her breath, although Fran suspected she had done it for the sake of her damaged leg. It had been weeks now since the cast had come off and her limp was no better. She tried to disguise it as much as she could but there were days when it ached unbearably.
Today was one of those days.
‘Honey, I hate to be the one to say this but I never really thought he was the one for you, as in The One,’ Caro said. ‘And I know for a fact Mum and Dad felt the same. You only went out…what, once a month, wasn’t it?’
Fran tightened her mouth as she held her sister’s gaze. ‘It’s not that I was in love with him or anything but do you have any idea of how I feel now he’s shacked up with his pregnant radiologist lover?’
Caro pushed her tongue into her right cheek for a moment. ‘Well, let’s hope she sees through him sooner than you did,’ she said as she started up the path again. ‘She ought to, being a radiologist and all.’
In spite of the blow to her pride over Anton’s rejection, Fran couldn’t hold back a small smile as she helped her sister over the rough steps to the top. Caro’s dry sense of humour had often helped her over the last few months. The irony was she had always been the happy-go-lucky one with a ready smile in the past, but now she was…well…realistic. Three years working in the department of emergency medicine had seen to that, and the last three months in particular.
‘Oh, darn it,’ Caro said as she opened the fridge once they were inside the house. ‘I forgot to get more milk and that strawberry yogurt I love. I swear it’s pregnancy hormones or something. I keep forgetting the simplest things.’
Fran picked up her purse. ‘You stay here and have a nap while I pick them up,’ she said. ‘There are a couple of things I want from the store in any case.’
‘Are you sure you’re not too tired?’ Caro’s gaze dipped briefly to Fran’s leg.
Fran made a show of searching for her keys rather than see the pity in her sister’s eyes. ‘I am not the least bit tired,’ she said, and once the keys were in her hand she pasted a bright smile on her face. ‘I might even stop for a coffee at that little café you pointed out the other day.’
Caro’s face twisted in disgust. ‘Ew, coffee. Don’t mention the word. I can’t believe that was the first thing that turned my stomach. I used to be a five-a-day drinker before I got pregnant.’
This time Fran’s smile was genuine. ‘I’ll bring you back something you do crave, like chocolate, OK?’
Caro beamed. ‘You’re a honey.’
The drive into the tiny town of Pelican Bay was as picturesque as any Fran had been on, even though she had travelled around most of Australia and had gone on several trips abroad. The deep turquoise of the bay fringed by the icing-sugar-white sandy beach never failed to make her breath catch in her chest. The deeply forested grey-green hills that were the town’s majestic backdrop added to the area’s exquisite beauty.
Unlike the busy and crowded resort towns and fishing ports further up and down the coast, Pelican Bay had somehow retained its atmosphere of old-world charm. It had a village-like feel. Here people didn’t walk past you without making eye contact; instead, they stopped and talked about the weather or where the fish were biting—everyday, inconsequential things that made you feel a part of the community even if you were just visiting for a short period. Now that she was here, Fran wondered why she hadn’t visited more often. But, then, as Caro had mentioned earlier, Fran’s work had always come first—she had lived for work, not worked to live.
The general store on the main street was exactly that: general. It had everything from fishing bait to locally grown fresh basil. The shelves were stacked with well-known city brands but also local goods, such as home-made preserves and chutneys and relishes. Every Friday there was a cake stall, where home-baked goodies were sold to raise funds for the local primary school where Caro’s husband Nick was one of only three teachers.
Once Fran had made her purchases and exchanged more than a few words with seventy-year-old Beryl Hadley behind the cash register, she made her way back out to her car. After the old-fashioned and yet surprisingly efficient air-conditioning inside the store, the heat of the late October afternoon was like being slapped across the face with a hot, wet towel. In what had seemed just a few minutes, some angry bruise-coloured clouds had gathered in a brooding huddle over the hills, casting a shadow over the bay that was as dark as it was menacing.
The gathering storm had whipped up the water of the bay into thousands of galloping white horses, each one grabbing at the bit to get to the shore first. Even the gum trees lining each side of the road were almost doubling over as the wind thrashed at their spindly limbs, arching their spines and making them creak and groan.
Halfway back to Caro and Nick’s house the rain started. At first it was just a few plops on the windscreen, but within seconds it became a wind-driven downpour. Fran tried to keep track of the winding road but it was like looking at everything through an almost opaque curtain.
She slowed down to take the next bend but a large black and chrome motorbike suddenly appeared from a side road. She slammed on the brakes, her heart juddering to a stop as the stability control device on her car prevented her from going into a tailspin.
The bike and its rider somehow managed to stay upright, although Fran watched with saucer-wide eyes as it did a slow-motion spin, round and round until it came to a shuddering stop, facing her like a sleek black wolf staring down its prey.
Fran’s fingers were so tightly clenched around the steering wheel she had to unlock them one by one, her heart still pumping so hard and so fast she saw bright dots like miniature diamonds darting past her eyes. There was a roaring in her ears and her stomach felt like it had been scraped out with a super-sized soup-spoon, the hollow, sinking feeling making her feel jittery and nauseous. She was shaking all over, a fine sheen of perspiration already trickling down between her breasts and between her shoulder blades as adrenalin continued to surge through her.
She watched as the motorcyclist swung one long leg over his bike and pushed it to the side of the road, the pelting rain bouncing off his head-to-foot black leather gear like small pebbles thrown at the pavement.
Fran felt her fear switch places with anger. She wasn’t going to wait for him to come to her. She moved her car off the road and, unclipping her seat belt, shoved her door open and went stomping…well, not quite stomping, more a firm right step and then a sort of left leg drag towards him.
‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’ she shouted above the roar of the rain and the whipping wind. ‘You could have killed us both!’
The man didn’t remove his helmet. Instead, he lifted the visor to reveal startlingly ice-blue eyes, the outer rims surrounded by a much darker blue, as if someone had taken a felt-tip marker and carefully outlined his irises. His eyes were fringed with ink-black thick lashes, and from what Fran could see of the length of his strong, forceful-looking nose, it looked like it had been broken at least once.
‘You must have
