with Shirley’s school fees. Yet they’d been able to afford cable TV and a gardener and cleaner once a week.
She’d been fourteen when her mother had died. She’d only ever seen her through a child’s eyes. And of course she saw an accomplished, popular, beloved teacher and mother. Maybe she would have seen a bad money manager if she’d been old enough to understand what she was seeing? Maybe her mother had actually been lousy at friendships and that was why she’d surrounded herself with a revolving door of students who adored her, but she’d rarely gone out with any of her peers. Maybe she’d been loath to give up the stability of tenure and her home to chase new experiences but hadn’t been able to admit that to her colleagues. Maybe her husband had left because their marriage had failed, not because Shirley had been born.
Shirley stared at the fabric wall of the tent.
Maybe a whole lot of things weren’t as they seemed. How many times had her mother used the single-mother excuse to disguise her own failings? And how many times had she willingly let those excuses settle onto tiny, anxious shoulders?
More important, how much of her mother’s denial had she inherited?
Her stomach churned, just like it had when she was little.
She was still trying to please her mother. Every time she worried about the list, about doing it right, about doing it fast enough or slowly enough, about doing it the way her mother would have wanted, it was as if she were still here, judging Shirley’s performance. Finding her wanting.
And she was still six years old, trying to make up for all the trespasses she sensed but barely understood.
Her mother hadn’t been a saint or a legend or an oracle. She had just been a flawed human being who’d had trouble with friendships and taking risks and who’d used the nearest justification to excuse it. At the expense of her daughter.
Something shifted deep down inside her, clicked into place so perfectly and comfortably it could only be rightness. And, as though in shifting it had uncovered a tiny drain hole in her soul, years of hurt and bewilderment started to drip away, leaving a lightness behind.
Damn Hayden Tennant.
What else was he right about, then?
Did she hide behind Shiloh so that no one could reject her or find her thoughts and opinions wanting? Did she avoid forming relationships? She had a raft of online acquaintances and faces to nod and smile at when she met them at public events. Media she knew. Contacts she cultivated. People she liked to sit with at tables who all knew her as Shiloh. But no real confidantes. No one she’d feel comfortable calling up for a chat. Or drinks. Or a movie.
No one to call to wail that her time with Hayden was over.
No one she’d let see her without make-up.
Her father had left because she cried too much.
Her mother had blamed her for everything wrong with their lives. And then she’d died.
Trouble making friends.
Abandonment and judgement of one sort or another everywhere she looked.
Had she come up with as many clever life strategies as her mother to avoid having to engage with people? To avoid taking personal risks?
Had it made her crawl inside herself and let nothing out?
Shirley forced herself to her feet, turned off the lamp and crawled onto the airbed, still dressed.
But she had let something out. She’d fallen for Hayden, unwound for him, incrementally. Given him a space for his toothbrush in her heart. She’d found, in him, her intellectual match and maybe her spiritual match too. Two damaged people grasping each other in the darkness.
Only she hadn’t realised it was dark.
And he wasn’t so much grasping as holding her at arm’s length. Long, rigid, determined arms.
Deep sorrow congealed in her gut. And now he wanted out. Whatever he needed to make him want to stay, she lacked it. She’d thought this connection they had would be enough to ride out the obvious disconnect between them.
But it wasn’t.
The high-tech properties of the sleeping bag did their job, slowly forming a warm blanket of air around her. Her muscles relaxed. Her goose bumps eased. Her eyes grew heavy.
Yet they didn’t close. Not quite.
She stared into the thick black of the night around her and waited for morning.
Ziiiiiip.
The sound morphed, in her dream, into the long, teasing tug of a dress zip lowered by warm, exploring fingers. She wriggled against the pleasant sensation.
But then came a rummaging, a huff, a sigh, and those sounds struggled to find a logical place in her subconscious.
She stirred. Turned.
A dark shadow sat hunched in the camp chair in the corner of the little tent silhouetted by the high moon outside.
‘Hayden?’ It was only as she whispered his name that the memory of their conversation just hours ago returned. She stiffened.
‘I’m sorry, Shirley,’ he whispered. ‘It’s freezing out there. The truck’s door seals are shot. I’m going to wait out morning here.’
In a chair? Wrapped in a sleeping bag? Watching her sleep?
She rolled back over. ‘Suit yourself.’
Silence.
Then a heavy breath.
She rolled back over. ‘Were you hoping I’d relent and let you in?’
His low voice smiled. ‘Kind of, yes.’
If he’d denied it she would have left him there to freeze. But the smile she could hear in his voice said so much about his amazing ability to compartmentalise his emotions. He was who he was. It wasn’t his fault he was built differently inside to everyone else. He hadn’t invited her affections or been dishonest with her. He was just a leopard with very definite spots. Not at all interested in changing them. Not for her.
Plain and simple.
He’d only called things as he’d seen them.
She rolled away from him again but spoke softly. ‘Fine. Get in.’
The bed lurched before she’d even finished the sentence and Hayden tossed the second sleeping bag over them both, taking care not to touch her. But his cold radiated every bit as much as her warmth and she felt it across the gulf of inches between them. She slid her leg across to touch him experimentally with her toe.
‘Oh, my God, Hayden …!’
