me, the better.’
Georgia’s blue eyes widened. ‘You mean you intend to bring Nina up by yourself?’
‘She’s my responsibility. I’m heading up to the Blue Mountains to pick her up and take her home.’
‘Whoa.’ Georgia put her hand to her forehead. ‘I’m reeling here. You’re going to be a single dad?’
‘I’m her father. She’s my flesh and blood. There is no choice.’
‘You’re sure Nina is yours?’
‘Have I done a DNA test? No time for that yet. But she’s mine all right. Looking at her is like looking into a miniature mirror. The social worker from the hospital laughed when she saw me. “No doubt about this little one’s daddy,” she said.’
Georgia nodded thoughtfully, as he had seen her do so many times. ‘That’s reassuring. And she must be very cute if she looks like you. But have you really thought this through?’
‘She’s my child and I will do my duty by her.’
He’d been orphaned at five years old. His time in foster care had marked him for life. No way in the world would any child of his go through what he had gone through. But he couldn’t tell Georgia that. For all the years of their friendship he’d never told her—or anyone from his ‘new life’ in Sydney—the truth about his childhood back in Melbourne. He’d made no secret that he’d been adopted. But as far as his university friends were concerned he’d been adopted at five by his wonderful parents. Not at fourteen years of age. Not after having found himself in a heap of trouble for doing what he’d thought was the right thing.
‘Good for you,’ Georgia said. ‘But it won’t be easy. I guess you know that.’
‘None of it will be easy,’ he said. ‘Which is why I’ve come here to ask you for your help. I need a friend—’ She started to protest but he spoke over her. ‘I know I probably don’t deserve your friendship, not after those years of radio silence. But I’m asking you anyway, Georgie. For moral support. Please come with me to Katoomba. Today.’
Her eyes widened and she frowned. ‘Me? Why?’
‘You know about kids. You teach elementary school. You have nieces and nephews by the bucketload.’ He didn’t want to sound desperate. But none of his friends had started families yet. Not that he would expect them to put their own lives aside and rush to his help.
Yet he expected that of Georgia. He pushed the uncomfortable thought aside. She had always been there for him. Until he hadn’t been there for her. But Nina needed him. And he needed Georgia.
‘That doesn’t make me an expert on babies,’ she said.
‘More of an expert than I am,’ he said. ‘I’d never even held a baby until the social worker handed Nina to me two days ago.’ He’d been petrified he’d drop her, despite the social worker’s reassurance.
‘I’m one ahead of you there,’ Georgia said with a wry twist to her mouth. She’d used to tell him she was the ‘afterthought’ in her family—eight years younger than her youngest sister, ten years younger than her oldest. They were both married with kids. She’d done a lot of babysitting. If anyone knew how to look after a baby, it was her.
‘That’s why I thought—’ he started.
‘Don’t you have a girlfriend?’
‘No.’ The relationship with Angie had burned him too badly to even contemplate dating.
‘There must be someone else who could—?’
‘There’s no one else I would trust.’
She sighed, took a step back from him against the stack of boxes in the middle of her living room. Pushed her fingers through her riot of dark chestnut, wavy hair. ‘That’s not fair, Wil. After all this time you can’t just rock up here and—’
‘I’ve been a bad friend, I know,’ he said. Wil didn’t expect her to disagree and she didn’t.
‘I... We... Your friends thought you’d dropped us because when you struck it so rich with your inventions, you wanted to leave us behind.’ She looked up at him, her eyes huge with undisguised hurt and bewilderment. He hated that he had hurt her.
‘That’s not how it happened at all,’ he said. How could she have thought that of him? Yes, he had made a lot of money but it hadn’t changed things, hadn’t changed him. He clenched his hands into fists by his sides. He never wanted Georgia to think badly of him. ‘I felt obligated to do what Angie wanted. She was jealous of you. Thought the others looked down at her.’
By the time he had realised Angie had purposely alienated him from the friends he cared most about, it had been impossible to make amends to them.
‘That wasn’t true,’ Georgia said.
But she didn’t quite meet his eye. None of his friends had liked Angie. If only he’d listened to them, instead of being swept along on an ill-founded urge to be some kind of white knight and rescue her from the effects of her troubled past.
‘Fact was, Angie didn’t like me seeing you. Didn’t believe in platonic friendship between a man and a woman. No matter how many times I assured her we were just friends, that we could all be friends. That there was no reason for her to be so jealous.’
‘No reason at all to be jealous,’ she echoed. ‘We rode horses together. Saw indie bands that no one else liked. But there was never any romance.’
‘Angie didn’t believe me,’ he said. Instead she’d screamed awful, ill-founded accusations he had no intention of sharing with Georgia.
‘And after your marriage ended? Still no word from you.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘I didn’t want to admit what a mistake I’d made by marrying her.’
Georgia would never know how many times he’d got as far as the last digit in her phone number before hanging up. How many times he’d driven past this apartment, slowing down only to accelerate away at the thought of confessing what an idiot he’d been to be taken in so thoroughly by Angie. Because to do that would have meant revealing the truth about those hidden years of his life. And not even the comfort and understanding he might have got from his long-standing friend Georgia had been worth that.
‘Really,’ she muttered. But the icy edge to her voice was melting.
‘I’m sorry, Georgie. If I could go back and change things I would.’
She blinked rapidly, something she’d always done when she was thinking deeply about something important. Finally, she spoke. ‘I’m not one to hold a grudge. I see things must have been difficult for you. And now—’
‘You’ll come with me to pick up Nina? That is, if you don’t have a boyfriend who has claims on your time.’
‘No. There’s no one.’
‘What about Toby? I thought for sure he’d have a ring on your finger by now.’
‘We
