the visiting overseas registrar that the whole department promptly fell in love with.’
‘Good times,’ Sav said softly, and she nodded, dragging her eyes up to meet his.
‘Very.’ Isla gulped, terrified of saying the wrong thing, pushing too hard, not wanting this fragile moment to end, relishing this tiny, unexpected tender moment. But just as the past caught up, just as she glimpsed again the man she had once known, the shutters snapped closed, just the briefest of kisses brushing her cheek as he took a step back up the stairs. ‘You’d better go.’
‘Bye,’ Isla said quickly, darting out of the door, trying for both their sakes to escape the horrible gap in their conversation, the parting ritual that had fallen by the wayside fourteen months ago.
Drive safely.
They’d always said it, always hugged each other at the door as one of them had been leaving, whispered the words to whoever had been driving. But like so much else it was another thing out of bounds.
Sav, no doubt, felt he’d lost the right to say it, Isla thought as she climbed into her car and started the engine, and in turn how could she say it to him? Sav would take it as a warning, an accusation even.
It hadn’t been his fault.
None of this was anyone’s fault, Isla knew that, knew that, knew that!
She had told herself over and over and had begged, begged Sav to accept that fact.
‘The wrong place at the wrong time’ had been the coroner’s exact words.
No one could have foreseen, least of all Sav, that the car heading towards them had been a time bomb about to explode. Even the poor driver couldn’t have known that as he’d headed along the dual carriageway, the heart attack he’d been dreading since his last cholesterol check was about to ensue, that in a split second two families’ lives would impact with a force that was devastating.
That two families’ lives would be torn apart for ever.
She’d been playing tennis.
Trembling fingers pushed the key into the ignition as for the millionth time the day replayed itself in Isla’s mind, the engine idling as she relived the awful events that had brought her to this point.
Sav had taken a long overdue morning off so she could take an extra tennis lesson. Wow the ladies with her fabulous serve at the comp that weekend!
Had she really been that shallow?
Isla could still see the ball thudding onto the line, hear the kookaburra’s laughing in the treetops, feel the hot midmorning sun blazing on the back of her neck as the police car pulled up, a blue and white car out of place amongst the four-wheel-drives, a stir of interest rippling through the quiet suburban setting. She could feel her hand grip tighter on her racket as two officers got out, could still recall with total clarity the horrible shiver as someone pointed her out to them, taste the bile in her throat as they walked over, her legs dissolving as the news, however gently delivered, hit its mark. That while she’d been hitting a bloody ball over a net, her husband lay trapped in the mangled wreckage of his car, that even now, as strong hands guided her to the waiting vehicle the emergency teams were trying to extricate him.
‘Casey?’
The single question that no one would answer, the appalling wait in some hole of a room as the twins worked innocently on at school, pacing like a caged animal, desperate for answers but silently praying they wouldn’t come.
She could still hear her scream as the doctor came in, feel her friend Louise’s arms around her, even remembered feeling vaguely sorry for Louise that she’d had to arrive at that point, had to witness her friend literally collapse in a heap.
Checking her rear-view mirror as she pulled out of the driveway, Isla’s eyes fixed for a second as they always did on the empty seat, almost willing Casey’s cheeky smile to fill the mirror, for that permanently chocolate-covered mouth to blow her a kiss just as he always did.
Had.
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