one thing, shutting friends out is another,’ her mother insisted.
‘Mum, I’m not intentionally doing that. To be honest, as pathetic as it sounds, I don’t have the energy to get dressed and make conversation.’ She could have added that she didn’t have anything to make conversation about. No one she knew had children. Right now, that was all she had to talk about. When had she last managed to stay awake to see the end of a TV show? Ditto for reading. She’d been on the same chapter of the same book for over three weeks. Within minutes of settling down, she nodded off. Night after night.
A basket of washing waited on the steps. Sure, it was clean, but there was more waiting in the laundry. Newspapers for recycling were lying by the back door and Lucy’s half-finished school project was scattered over an entire end of the kitchen table. Everywhere Rosie looked there were half-completed tasks, testament to her difficulty in getting on top of things. She couldn’t blame the children’s interruptions for a lot of it, although having Charlie home sick for the past two days with yet another bout of tonsillitis hadn’t helped. What she needed was another pair of hands and, failing that, a better system.
‘Honey, I’ve got to dash but ring me if you change your mind. I can head back in an hour or so after I’ve done my errands,’ her mum said.
She wouldn’t change her mind, she already knew that. Besides, Ally’s idea of an evening out would last into the early hours of the morning. Rosie couldn’t have asked that of her mum even if she’d wanted to.
Besides, who could go out socialising when there was a mountain of washing to do and nothing to talk about? And right now, she decided as she waved goodbye to her mum, if she gave in to demands and let the twins watch their favourite DVD, she had a precious hour to tackle folding the laundry.
Well into the hour, she realised she’d thought about nothing except a certain doctor in boardshorts, her mind leaping from question to assumption to imagery, all focused on him. It was the longest stretch of worry-free time she’d had since moving to Sydney from Canberra.
None of which left her any wiser about what she really wanted to know: would she see him again?
Or had walking away been the biggest mistake made by any single girl in Sydney this weekend?
On Tuesday morning, Rosie dropped Lucy at the school gate with ten minutes to spare and treated herself to a mental Woo-hoo! It felt like a major achievement and gave her a spark of hope that her attempts over the last few days to start developing a better time-management system were paying off. She watched as Lucy waited for a friend then gave one final wave to Rosie before she disappeared through the school gate, chatting happily.
She checked Charlie still had his seat belt on before pulling into the traffic.
‘Do you think we’ll make it in time?’ she asked. Charlie’s specialist appointment was in half an hour and, even though the clinic was in Bondi, Sydney traffic wasn’t the best at this time of the day.
In the mirror she watched as Charlie shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dr Masters will still see me if we’re late, he’ll probably be running behind anyway,’ he told her.
He had a point, but she didn’t want to arrive late, particularly when the specialist was fitting Charlie in as a favour. ‘Have you thought some more about having your tonsils out? Dr Masters might suggest it today.’
‘I don’t want them out.’
Ah, so he hadn’t budged. With Charlie’s history of recurrent tonsillitis, it was only a matter of time before his tonsils had to come out. She was convinced these infections were exacerbating his other speech problems.
‘There’d be no more sore throats, and you wouldn’t have to miss so many Nippers’ trainings.’ Junior surf-lifesaving was one activity Charlie loved. She suppressed a twinge of guilt that she was using it to convince him to have the operation. ‘Remember, I had my tonsils out when I was your age and I can still remember how much better I felt afterwards.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t like jelly.’
‘What do you mean?’ She glanced in the rear-view mirror to see Charlie pull a face.
‘You told me you had jelly and ice cream in hospital. I don’t like jelly.’
Who would have known jelly and ice cream would be a deal-breaker, not a deal-sweetener? ‘They won’t force you to eat jelly. Let’s see what Dr. Masters has to say,’ Rosie said as she pulled into the clinic car park, hoping she’d solved the jelly objection. What would he think of next?
The specialist suites were part of the Bondi Paediatric Medical Centre, a clinic Rosie had heard of but never visited. Charlie had been here before, but that had been with his parents. She pressed the button for the lift and looked around the ultra-modern foyer. There was a café on one side of the lifts and a pharmacy on the other. The building itself looked new, and the foyer and café were both brightly decorated in primary colours. Signs pointing down a corridor indicated directions to Physiotherapy and a hydrotherapy pool. The tenant directory beside the lift listed Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, General Practitioners and Psychology. There was a constant stream of families through the door.
Rosie and Charlie squeezed into the lift with a dozen other people and popped out at the third floor in front of the reception desk for the specialist suites. The girl directed them to the waiting room at the eastern end of the building and Rosie wasn’t surprised to find the area had a magnificent view over the famous beach. Charlie immediately made himself comfortable in a bean-bag chair positioned in front of the enormous glass windows and settled down to watch the weekday surfers carving up the water.
Rosie flicked through a pile of magazines, all current issues, but the lure of the morning sunshine bouncing off the water was too enticing and she gave up on the magazines, instead choosing a chair where she could watch the beach too.
Movement to her left caught her attention and she turned to see a family coming through a doorway. The mother and daughter didn’t hold her attention but the man behind them was a different story.
Nick.
The attraction she’d felt on Sunday had been strong, so strong she’d let her imagination run off in all sorts of directions. She’d entertained the possibility he’d be married with children but, still, her disappointment when she saw him with a family of his own surprised her.
From the safety of the anonymity of a crowded waiting room she let her gaze linger. There was no harm in looking. Or, at least, no harm in looking if no one knew.
Nick was dressed far more smartly than the other day but looked just as handsome. His dark grey trousers with a fine pinstripe and a crisp white cotton shirt looked simple but expensive. Quality. Style. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his forearms and face were tanned golden brown. She sighed, daydreams of time with Nick fading into nothingness in view of the woman at his side.
He came to a stop just past the doorway and the woman and child continued on, saying thanks. He looked around the waiting room and at that moment Rosie realised he wasn’t part of the family. This was his workplace. Visions of going with him, wherever he wanted, surged through her mind again. It was madness. Wholesale craziness. She knew that.
But it was a madness that left her tingling in such a delicious way it left her in no doubt that guardian aunt was not the only side of her still alive and kicking. She was still a woman, with desires and wants and needs, even if they had almost no chance of being satisfied in the
