Home Before Sundown (2 page)

‘My niece will be here soon.'

‘And you'd like me to leave.'

‘I think it would be best, Michael. Bella's bound to be upset.'

Michael Allingham downed the last of his scotch, set the crystal glass on a silver coaster on the coffee table and, with an easy familiarity, stretched his arm along the back of the sofa, not quite touching Liz.

She'd welcomed his visit as a pleasant interlude after a hectic day of trying to reach Bella, of cancelling concert commitments – accompanied by her agent's anguished wringing of hands – and then packing for Australia.

‘So,' Michael said. ‘Here we go with yet another goodbye.'

Liz gave a soft laugh. ‘At least we're used to goodbyes.'

His fingers skimmed the back of her neck with the delicious, feather-light touch she knew so well. ‘But this time you're not just zipping off to the continent for a night or two. Australia's such a damn long way from here.'

‘I haven't been back there in ages.'

‘No. Not since I've known you.'

‘Three years.'

‘Best years of my life.'

Liz closed her eyes before Michael could see her reaction. It bothered her that he seemed to care so much. Too much.

Then she felt his arms around her, his warm lips on her neck, on her chin, her mouth. They kissed hungrily, as they always did. But this evening their kiss was still gathering steam when Liz pulled back with a sigh. She had to call a halt.

She really didn't want Michael to be here when Bella arrived. The explanations could be awkward and that was an extra difficulty she didn't need tonight. Not when she and Bella were already so dreadfully upset about Peter's heart attack.

‘Yes, yes, I know. I'm leaving.' Michael got to his feet, turned to the large mirror above the mantelpiece and checked that his tie was straight. He ran a lean hand down his business shirt, smoothing it and making sure it was tucked neatly into his dark trousers.

Liz walked with him to the front door.

‘I really am very sorry about your brother, Liz, but I'm sure the Aussie outback breeds them tough.'

‘Of course it does. Look at me.' She managed a small smile.

‘I hope he's in much better shape by the time you arrive.'

‘Thanks. I'm going to stay positive.'

But it was so hard. She couldn't bear the thought of Peter being so ill. It didn't seem possible that her horse-riding, cattle-wrangling big brother was now clinging to life by a fragile thread.

‘You'll have to try not to worry,' Michael said.

‘Easier said than done.'

‘That's true. Still . . . '

‘I know. It's good advice.' If for no other reason, Liz would have to be strong for Bella's sake.

Retrieving his coat from a hallstand, Michael shrugged into it and Liz opened the front door, letting in a blast of cold air.

‘I hope it doesn't snow tonight.' She peered out into the chilly darkness. ‘The last thing we want is to find Heathrow closed.'

‘You're worrying again.'

‘No, I'm not. I'm stopping, right now.'

‘Good girl.' Dropping a final kiss on her cheek, he stepped into the cold night. Wind whipped at his coat collar as he turned and went down the steps.

Liz closed the door quickly, as she always did. She never liked to watch Michael hurry home to his wife.

Bella shivered on the front steps of the house in Godfrey Street as she pressed the doorbell. Throughout the journey from France and across London, she'd been hanging out for this moment. She just wanted to see Liz.

Liz was family.

The door opened, spilling light into the frosty gloom. And there was her aunt – tall and bony, with haywire dark curls, and as elegant as ever in a long red woollen dress.

‘Darling.' Liz held out her arms.

‘It's so good to see you.' Bella stumbled forward and burst into tears.

‘Sorry.' Bella reached into her coat pocket for tissues. ‘I'm okay, really. I just can't bear to think of him––'

‘I know, I know, darling. But we must believe he'll pull through again.'

‘Yes.' Bella nodded, blew her nose, took a deep breath and smiled. ‘It's so good to see you.'

‘You, too.' Liz smiled fondly. ‘Come on through. Dump your stuff anywhere for now. Would you like some supper? I thought something light. Soup perhaps.'

‘Soup would be perfect.'

Bella adored Liz's tall, narrow house with a kitchen in the basement and bedrooms at the top. The street-level sitting room was gorgeous and gracious with Tuscan-pink walls and pale carpets that were a perfect foil for the beautiful artwork and furniture, including Liz's grand piano in the far corner.

The house seemed perfectly right for her aunt, a home in the truest sense. And Liz had managed this without the usual accessories of a husband or children.

Bella hoped to feel settled and at home, somewhere . . . one day . . . She had no idea where it would be, but the longing nagged at her again as she followed Liz downstairs to the dining room, next to the kitchen, where they ate chicken soup with thick pieces of toast for dipping.

‘This is divine,' Bella said.

‘Yes, it's yummy, isn't it? I didn't make it of course.'

Bella grinned. With so many fabulous stores conveniently close on the King's Road, her aunt managed to throw together wonderful meals and dinner parties in a blink, despite her demanding, high-powered life as a concert pianist. All Liz had to do was buy pre-prepared gourmet food and heat it up. It was another of the many wonderful advantages of
not
living in the North Queensland outback.

They voted to go to bed early to try to catch a few hours sleep before the taxi arrived. Nevertheless, hot chocolate and a bedtime chat had become an essential first-night ritual whenever Bella stayed at Godfrey Street. And Liz cherished this time with her niece.

Now Bella was sitting in bed in borrowed pyjamas to save the hassle of unpacking. With her face scrubbed and her light brown hair brushed and shining and tumbling about her shoulders, she looked much younger than her twenty-three years.

Twenty-three
. Where on earth had the years gone? Liz had been in her thirties when Bella was born and she could so vividly remember Peter's excited phone call to tell her that her niece had arrived.

She's the prettiest little thing, Liz. We're calling her Bella Elizabeth.

She'd been incredibly touched that Peter and Virginia had given their daughter
her
name. She'd tried not to let it influence her emotions, but she'd always felt especially close to Bella and she'd been delighted when the girl had chosen to come abroad.

‘It didn't feel selfish before,' Bella said, snapping Liz out of her reverie.

‘What's that? What didn't feel selfish?'

‘Being over here and staying away. It felt important to me. The right thing to do.'

‘It
has
been the right thing for you, Bella. You mustn't feel guilty now just because your father's ill. You'll drive yourself crazy with that kind of thinking. I'm sure you did the right thing coming over here. You needed to do it. I felt the same at your age.'

‘But you came here to study music.'

Liz shrugged. ‘I might have left home with slightly different goals, but in our own ways we both needed to escape.'

‘Escape?'

The very thought seemed to appal Bella.

‘It's not a crime,' Liz said defensively. ‘It's perfectly normal for young people to stretch their wings and leave the nest.'

‘Yes, well . . . I wanted to broaden my outlook.' The girl sounded self-righteous now.

‘Very commendable.'

Bella smiled as if she knew she'd been caught out, but then a hunted look came into her clear green eyes and Liz realised, with some dismay, that her niece's reasons for living abroad were probably as complicated and fraught as her own. And by staying away they'd probably both avoided facing up to their pasts.

The cabin lights were dimmed and while a few fortunate passengers slept, others watched movies on tiny screens or tried to read. The flight attendants made a final round of the cabin with bottles of water, then vanished. A long, long night in the air stretched ahead.

Liz was a seasoned traveller and managed to sleep. Bella tried valiantly to follow her example, but she probably tried too hard. Neither the glass of wine with dinner nor the monotonous hum of the plane's engines could soothe her. Inevitably, her mind turned to worrying about her dad . . .

Please, please be okay.

She remembered his face – the affectionate sparkle in his grey-green eyes when he smiled, the shape of his hands, squarish and rough from hard outdoor work. The warmth of his voice with its slow Gulf Country drawl . . .

His deep, belly-rumbling laugh . . .

One of her earliest memories was of being up in the saddle in front of her father with his arm holding her safe against him. Amazingly she could still recall the solid strength of his body against her back and the thrill of being so high off the ground, the perfect combination of feeling secure and excited at the same time.

Her father was a good man . . . quiet . . . slow to anger, gentle . . . but strong.

Oh, help.

She mustn't start blubbing on the plane.

You have to be okay, Dad. I really need you to be okay. Please, please . . .

With an effort, Bella switched her thoughts from her father to Anton. But she'd barely begun to recall all the things she liked about her French boyfriend when, out of the blue, she thought about . . .

Gabe.

Thud
.

She always reacted badly whenever Gabe Mitchell snuck into her head, which still happened far too frequently.

She couldn't believe he was muscling his way in now, shattering her pleasant thoughts of Anton. Although the sad truth was Gabe was always there, lurking. A ghost from her past. An unhappy dream that wouldn't let go.

Despite time and distance and Bella's best efforts to forget, her mind was like a scratched CD, stuck in one spot, recalling memories from their past. She'd known Gabe all her life, so there were happy, funny memories from childhood, blissfully romantic ones from later, and then the distressing memories, including that stupid night at the Gidgee Springs ball. And its heartbreaking aftermath.

She'd relived those events over and over.

The memories arrived at the worst possible moments, throwing up sickening reminders of the disdain and disapproval in Gabe's watchdog grey eyes.

There's nothing for you here. I haven't got time for you and your nonsense.

Now, as their plane sped homewards, Bella couldn't deny that Gabe Mitchell was a major part of the reason she'd stayed so happily overseas. Putting herself in a different hemisphere had been the surest way to get over him.

And yet here she was on her way home almost two years later and still having to work hard to erase him from her memory.

With next to no success.

Damn it.

For pity's sake, she'd already wasted a good chunk of her life on the guy. She'd expended far too much energy on girlish yearning and hoping and dreaming. Annoyingly, those childish dreams about a girl's first love were the worst kind. The most poignant and lasting. The ones that cut the deepest.

Which was probably why she still regularly woke in a cold sweat, believing that she'd wrecked her life.

So. Bloody. Ridiculous.

A groan broke from Bella. She couldn't believe she'd let it out, it just slipped from her and her aunt stirred beside her.

‘You all right, Belle?'

‘Yes. I'm fine,' she whispered, shooting a quick glance around the nearby passengers, hoping she hadn't disturbed them. ‘Sorry I woke you.'

‘It's okay.' Liz leaned closer and said softly, ‘Try not to worry too much, darling.'

Bella nodded, yawned and closed her eyes with fresh deter­mination. Even if she couldn't sleep, she was not going to waste another millimetre of headspace on useless memories. In reality she'd moved on ages ago, and since she'd left Australia she'd changed in just about every way possible.

Why wasn't that easier to remember?

Arriving in Singapore was a boost. There wasn't enough time to leave the airport, but Liz and Bella definitely felt as if they were a big step closer to home. They only had to look out through the terminal's windows to see walls of bright-pink bougainvillea and palm trees waving against a sultry blue sky.

The smell of spice hung in the air, too, and people were dressed for the tropics in cottons and linens with lots of white and bright splashes of lime or orange, colours not regularly seen in wintry London.

Bella put a call through to her mother, but couldn't get an answer, so she tried Luke.

‘Hey, Bellaroo!'

It had been such a long time since she'd heard her brother's cheery voice, or the nickname he'd given her when they were kids. She couldn't help smiling.

‘How's the flight?' Luke asked. ‘Where are you now?'

‘Singapore.' She was almost too scared to ask, ‘How's Dad?'

But the news was good, or better, at least. Peter was still in intensive care, but his condition was a little more stable. He was holding his own.

‘That's a relief,' Bella said. ‘And I guess we'll see you in another twelve hours or so. We have to change planes in Brisbane.'

‘Have a safe flight, Bells.'

In the plane again, the northern coastline of Australia eventually appeared as a line on the horizon, shimmering in a heat haze.

Looking down as they sped on, cruising above the red plains of the Northern Territory, Bella saw the tiny dots that marked the rooftops of a remote homestead and its outbuildings, and then the snaking line of trees that followed the course of a creek over endless, pale paddocks.

‘Mullinjim would look just like that from the air,' she said.

‘Mmm,' murmured Liz, casting a hasty sideways glance at the view.

‘How long is it since you've been home?'

‘About three years.'

‘No, I mean
properly
home to Mullinjim.'

‘Oh.' An anxious smile twisted Liz's mouth. ‘I – I'm not sure.'

Her aunt's evasiveness was puzzling. ‘I can't ever remember you coming to Mullinjim, actually. We've always gone to Townsville or to Brisbane to see you.'

‘I've always been busy with concerts and commitments. The chamber music festival. That sort of thing.'

Bella shrugged, accepting this excuse, although she still found it puzzling that her aunt hadn't been to her home in something like thirty years. She could remember her mother muttering about it and her dad defending his sister's absence, and she'd sensed it was a bit of a sore point between her parents. She knew her dad must have missed Liz. He was very fond of her.

Bella couldn't imagine being away from the bush for so long. This morning, she was feeling sentimental about it after just two years.

When she was little, her ambition had
always
been to live forever on a cattle station, just as her family had for four generations. But she hadn't wanted to simply look after the homestead and become a gracious hostess like her mother. She'd wanted to work with the cattle.

Unfortunately, running Mullinjim had never been an option. Her father was a traditionalist and he'd always been adamant that the cattle business would be Luke's responsibility. Growing up, Bella hadn't been too worried. She'd been confident that she would eventually marry a cattleman and––

Bloody hell
.

She was
not
going to let her mind wander down
that
dead-end track again.

‘That's a dark scowl,' Liz said, watching her.

Bella manufactured a quick smile. ‘Thinking about something I'd rather forget.'

‘Well, I've been thinking too,' said Liz. ‘I've been thinking about Zoe. I guess you might meet her at some stage.'

Zoe was Bella's half-sister who'd turned up, out of the blue, at the Mullinjim muster last year, shocking the whole family with the revelation that Peter Fairburn was her natural father.

‘Well . . . um . . . yes.' Thinking about Zoe would certainly have been a more relevant occupation for Bella than dragging her mind through her past mistakes yet again.

‘I suppose Zoe might be at the hospital,' Liz said.

‘Might she?' Bella realised she should definitely have given this more thought, and now she felt an unwelcome spurt of jealousy. This other girl, who was also Peter Fairburn's daughter, could also lay claim to her father's heart.

‘It'll be weird to meet her,' she said, but in the next breath, she realised that she wanted, very much, to be mature and sensible about meeting Zoe.

Bella had always been a bit of a princess in her daddy's eyes and in the old days she might have resented Zoe's arrival. She would have seen Zoe as dangerous competition.

Now Bella liked to think – no, she was
quite certain, wasn't she –
that she'd changed a great deal since she left home. She wanted people back home to recognise how strong and together she was now. And what better way to prove it than to accept her new half-sister without a fuss?

‘Everyone in the family seems to really like Zoe,' she said. ‘Even Mum. And if Mum can like her, I guess I will, too.'

Liz nodded and smiled her approval.

‘You've actually known Zoe for ages, haven't you?'

‘I haven't seen her in years,' Liz admitted. ‘But she was always a great kid.'

It had been quite a coincidence, actually. Liz had explained it all to Bella over coffee and hazelnut crepes during one of her quick trips to France. Apparently, long before Bella was born, Liz and Zoe's mother had been best friends when they were both music students in Brisbane, and Liz had actually been the one who introduced Zoe's mother to Bella's dad – long before he'd become her dad, of course.

Now Bella shrugged. ‘Luke says Zoe's great. And Mac McKinnon obviously thinks she's fabulous, since he married her. And I can't get too upset when she's a part of Dad's past, from the time before he met Mum. It's not as if he was cheating on Mum or anything.'

‘That's true,' Liz agreed, but her smile wobbled, then faded quickly, and Bella had the distinct impression that she'd said something wrong.

*

‘A word of advice,' Liz said much later, after they'd landed in Brisbane and made the dreary trek through customs and were finally,
finally
on a domestic flight heading north again to Townsville.

Bella smiled. ‘You know I nearly always listen to your advice.'

‘Yes, but do you follow it?' laughed Liz.

‘I came to Europe, didn't I?'

‘You did indeed.'

‘Best decision I ever made.'

‘I'm glad, darling, but . . . the thing is––' Liz was quite serious now. ‘You might find that coming home can be a bit tricky.'

‘Tricky emotionally?'

‘Exactly. It's very easy to be swept back into the old life and to lose sight of your goals.'

Is that why you've stayed away from Mullinjim?
Bella wanted to ask, but she didn't push. She understood what her aunt was saying. From the instant she'd decided to head for home, she'd felt a lurking fear that coming home might somehow result in her calling a halt to her overseas adventures.

‘But we can't be selfish,' she said, already torn between duty to her family and a strong desire to continue on with the fun and excitement of her new life. ‘Mum's going to need support. And we have no idea what Dad's going to need.'

‘Of course, Belle. I'm not saying we shouldn't do everything we can to help. I'm planning to give Virginia and Peter all the support I can.'

Liz paused, frowning, as if she was choosing her words carefully. ‘I just want you to be
aware
. It's easy to be caught up in everything at home. This might sound a bit callous, but when I've come back in the past I've found it helpful to have a kind of pre-planned exit strategy.'

‘Mullinjim's hardly Afghanistan, Liz.'

But Bella didn't have to think about this for very long before she realised it was sensible. Reassuring, too. ‘I guess I do have a kind of strategy in place. I've given my word to Anton that I'll definitely be going back to France.'

‘Have you now?' Liz smiled and seemed pleased.

Bella didn't mention the gold chain and charm she'd left behind with Anton. Her sophisticated aunt would almost certainly think that was an overly romantic gesture.

‘So, why don't we make a pact?' Liz asked.

‘What kind of pact?'

‘We'll help in any way necessary for as long as it takes, but we'll both fly back to Europe when this is over.'

Bella smiled. ‘Sounds perfect.'

To her dismay, as she said this, her thoughts shot straight to Gabe Mitchell. She had no idea why. When she'd shaken the outback dust from her heels, she'd known that Gabe was past tense.

No. Longer. Part. Of. Her Life.

‘You have a deal,' she told her aunt, defiantly sealing their exit plan with a high five.