Ecco!’
He drew a tall, brightly painted pole from along the floor of the canoe. The boat wobbled horribly as he rose to his feet, balancing the timber across him like some kind of trainee circus performer and then lowering it into the water on one side. Somehow they stayed upright.
‘Is it long enough? This channel looks awfully deep.’ It had to be for some of the enormous pool toys moored to every jetty.
He slid it into the water. ‘We’ll find out.’
It was, though Hayden’s prowess in the field of gondoliering left a lot to be desired. Fortunately his prowess in other fields more than made up for their slow progress. They splashed on in silence for a few minutes and Shirley let herself enjoy the view. Both in the boat and out of it. Hayden’s muscles bunched under his T-shirt as he propelled them along, his locked thighs holding him steady in the little boat.
She let herself look her fill. Everything around them went kind of … glazy.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Shirley,’ he warned after a silent moment. ‘It’s just a canoe.’
Whoops. What had she failed to disguise? She caught his eyes. Held them. ‘You built it with your hands.’ For me. ‘That’s not nothing.’
His snort was about as graceful as his boat. ‘I did that to get laid. I knew I couldn’t show up empty-handed and expect you to invite me back into your bed.’
No. She knew him well enough now. The defensive tone stood out in mile-high fluoro. He’d done it for her. To please her. A warm rush started at her toes and worked its way upwards. But pressing the point wasn’t going to help matters.
‘How kind that you were willing to wait for an invitation,’ she teased.
He smiled, infuriating in its confidence and seat-squirmingly uncomfortable in its sexiness. ‘Lip service. I know how I affect you.’
Yes, he did. More fool her. And he was affecting her right now. To the point that she wanted to do something about it. Something they weren’t going to be able to manage in his terrible gondola.
So she changed the subject instead. Big time. Desperate times, desperate measures.
‘How old were you when your mum died?’
Hayden dropped his chin, didn’t answer, just kept punting them along. For the longest time. ‘What makes you think she died?’ he eventually said.
She shook her head. ‘What you said just before you met Twuwu, about your parents sitting there together being the least likely thing you could ever imagine. And then at the gorge, you said that we were a decade too late for her.’
‘It’s not really something I talk about,’ he said.
None of your business, in other words. She’d been telling other people straight for long enough to recognise from the hip when she saw it. And to accept it. It wasn’t reasonable to be offended by it. Even if it also hurt.
‘No. Okay.’
Splash, splash … They drifted on, a dark, heavy cloud suddenly hanging over Hayden. She distracted herself looking at the McMansions lining the canal side.
He cleared his throat. ‘There was a reason I was so gutted when we lost your mum.’
We. She would have liked that sentiment at the time; it would have made her feel less alone.
‘It hit me extra-hard because I was grieving for two mothers.’
Her stomach tightened. ‘Did yours go that same year?’
‘Three years before. Just before I started coming to your house on Saturdays.’
Shirley realised what a jerk she’d been, assuming his anguish at the funeral had all been for effect. ‘You hadn’t grieved?’
‘Not properly. There were … reasons for that. But it all kind of caught up with me at Carol’s funeral.’
Where did a girl begin to undo that kind of mistake? ‘I’m sorry that I judged you for not starting the list.’
He shook off the dark cloud. ‘Their deaths motivated me. It reminded me that you can’t rely on anyone but yourself. I set up Molon Labe the next year. Started small, building a client list, making my own way.’
She stared at the darkening waters that rolled in huge swells past the boat. ‘And your father?’
‘He’s still around. I see him about once a year when he wants money.’
Her chest squeezed as tight as his voice. ‘God, Hayden …’
‘It’s a small price to pay. Literally.’ He glanced at her sideways. ‘What about yours?’
Her father? The man who’d left them when she was small. ‘No idea. I don’t remember him.’
Didn’t let herself, anyway. Though she’d found a photograph amongst her mother’s things and kept it. Just because.
‘Carol only spoke of him once. Sounds like a man unsuited to settling down.’
A man just like Hayden? Was she really that much of a cliché? Falling for a man like her father? ‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘You’ve never tried to find him?’
She looked up. Her chest pressed in. ‘He knew where we were all that time. He lived there, too, when I was a baby. Until he left. And we were doing fine. Mum finished her PhD at night, then she went back to work as soon as I was at school full-time. We got by.’
‘What about her funeral. You didn’t send word?’
‘I sent word.’ She dropped her eyes. ‘He just didn’t come.’
‘That’s …’ A lost-for-words Hayden was a rarity. ‘He had no contact after he left?’
The pressing against her lungs became crushing. ‘He’d made his choice. He left because of me; he was hardly about to ask for weekend visitation.’
Hayden stopped, turned towards her. ‘Who says he left because of you?’
She studied the sparkling water. The poling stopped.
‘Shirley?’
‘He wasn’t ready for fatherhood. And I wasn’t a quiet baby.’
‘But who says that?’ He pushed them along again. ‘If you were so young, how do you know that’s true?’
She blinked at him. ‘Mum said. Now and again. When she was mad or upset.’ Or wanting to dent Shirley’s embryonic spirit. ‘Sometimes she’d talk about how much she loved him. Other times she’d talk about how he wasn’t cut out for parenthood. Or how maybe if I’d been quieter … happier …’
‘She blamed you for his leaving?’
‘She
