don’t.’
He opened his mouth as if to launch into a story, then shook his head. ‘We won’t talk about it tonight. That’s not why I came. I really just wanted…’ he paused, then looked straight down into her eyes ‘…to be with you, Aimee.’
‘I’m glad,’ she managed breathlessly. ‘Come through, and I’ll make the tea.’
The mood had changed, but it was just as pleasant. They sat at the big kitchen table, talked about all sorts of things and drank their tea, warming their legs and hands in front of an old-fashioned electric fire.
It was the kind, at least fifty years old, that was shaped like a fireplace and had fake coals lit from beneath to make them ‘glow’, and was so ugly and silly that it had acquired the status of an antique by this time, and Aimee was perversely fond of it. It had once belonged to her grandmother. She liked it for practical reasons, too. A July night in Sydney could be chilly.
Marshall seemed to appreciate it. He stuck his bare legs out until they were so close to the heat that they practically sizzled, and when he finally looked at his watch and took note of the time his jaw dropped. ‘It can’t be ten!’
‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘But it is. I’ll drive you home.’
‘No…’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘I won’t be annoying and argue the point,’ he conceded. ‘A ride home does sound a lot more pleasant than a jog, now that my legs are so warm and relaxed.’
They went out through the lounge room side by side, and there wasn’t quite enough room as they passed the sideboard. He bumped it, and the glasses and china inside it rattled.
So did the half-empty wineglass she’d put down on the top of it two hours ago.
‘Oops.’ He reached a hand out to steady the glass and noticed the wine still sloshing inside. There was a tiny pause, then he said lightly, ‘You never finished it.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she answered him. But it came out just a little too hastily, and then she only made it worse by adding self-consciously, ‘I don’t often drink alone.’
‘Oh, no, I wasn’t suggesting…’ He didn’t finish the sentence, and there was a tinge of awkwardness in the atmosphere.
Why did I say that? Aimee scolded herself inwardly. I don’t often drink alone, but saying it only made it sound as if I did.
The moment passed as she reached the front door and opened it to let in a draught of chilly air.
‘Brr!’ Marshall said. ‘Definitely too cold for running shorts!’
They talked about the weather for the whole car journey to his place. Only five minutes between their two houses, so it wasn’t so disastrous a subject, but Aimee still felt an odd discomfort and disappointment. Was she still smarting over that silly exchange about the wine?
Surely not! What was it, then? It had something to do with the wine.
Outside Marshall’s gracious old house his kiss was brief and he didn’t ask her in.
Driving home alone, Aimee probed at what she felt in the same way that she might have probed at a sore tooth with her tongue, and finally concluded in her mind. It’s still early days. That’s what rattled me about him noticing the wine. For a moment there, he did wonder, and it’s early days in what’s going on between us. We’ve both lived full lives before this.
She thought about her twenty-six year marriage to Alan. It had been a relatively happy one. She’d entered into it with too many stars in her eyes, of course, at the age of twenty. Then they’d weathered some disappointments, disagreements, coolnesses, ongoing differences in outlook that they’d never really addressed. That sort of thing changed a woman’s perspective, influenced the person she became.
Neither of us comes without baggage, Aimee realised. We both have children. Previous marriages. Past grief. Complicated finances. It wouldn’t take much, at this stage, to make the whole thing seem wrong, or just too hard.
Letting herself into her house, she saw that the ‘on’ light was still glowing on her sound system. She turned it off. No more dancing tonight. Time to go to bed.
‘SORRY…I’m going to interfere, Dad,’ Rebecca said.
‘Go ahead,’ Marshall invited.
He’d known this had been coming when she’d suggested they have lunch together, but he’d accepted her suggestion with an innocent face and had proposed the local Asian noodle house. Now Rebecca was toying with a plate of Pad Thai and making a very obvious effort to be calm and pleasant.
He waited as she gathered her thoughts, and wondered with a distant sort of curiosity about how he was going to react to what she had to say.
She was still struggling.
‘It’s about Aimee, isn’t it?’ he prompted helpfully.
‘Yes.’ She looked up. The noodles were still untouched. ‘And it’s not that I don’t like her. You know that. She seems very nice and, of course, I’ve known her for longer than you have, since we met when we were both working at Southshore Health Centre.’
‘But,’ he supplied, still helpfully.
‘Just…be careful. Perhaps you don’t need me to say it. Probably you don’t. You’re an experienced, sensible man.’
‘Thank you!’
‘But I know how hard it can be when two people are working together. Harry and I nearly didn’t reach the finish line a couple of times. Well, more than a couple! And it’s not as if you’re two carefree young lovers, who—’
‘We’re not lovers at all,’ Marsh cut in deliberately, feeling a sudden need to assert himself. He wasn’t a fool when it came to human relationships, and he was a private man. This was his business.
His daughter’s uncomfortable shifting in her seat and sudden apparently starving attention to her noodles gave him a pinch of satisfaction. Rebecca had made her case, he now considered.
‘I take your point, Rebecca,’ he went on, making a conscious effort not to increase the gulf in understanding between them. ‘And, of course, you’re right. To a certain extent. Yes, we have more issues to consider at this point in our lives than a couple of twenty-year-olds. But I hope, as you say, that we have more good sense as well. I’m not sure what’s happening yet, and I don’t want office memos to be issued on the subject.’
‘Of course not! I won’t say a word. Even to Harry, if you don’t want me to,’ she promised extravagantly.
‘I’d prefer that, yes, at this stage.’ He nodded, and saw her eyes widen a little.
She hadn’t expected him to take her up on that overenthusiastic offer to keep a secret from her own husband, but
