Home Before Sundown (26 page)

As the taxi pulled away from Heathrow, Liz looked out of the window, hoping to find a patch of blue overhead, but the London afternoon was cold and cheerless, the skies leaden and thick with scudding clouds.

Pedestrians, huddled in overcoats and scarves, hurried along rain-slicked pavements, gripping umbrellas that they would almost certainly have to open before they reached home.

‘How dreary,' she sighed.

The cabby scowled at her in his rear-vision mirror. ‘What do you expect coming to London in December? We'll probably have snow any day now.'

‘Of course,' Liz said soothingly. ‘I live here and I love it. But it's just so different from where I've been.'

‘Where's that?'

‘North Queensland.'

The cabby rolled his eyes, clearly unimpressed, of course he had to have the last say. ‘Well at least you won't have to worry about sunstroke and crocodiles now you're home.'

Home.

They sped onwards and Liz leaned back against the padded seat, easing her shoulders, trying to relax. The cabbie was right. London was her hometown, had been for thirty years.

Familiar blocks of offices and flats flashed past. Ancient stone walls, grey church spires, and amidst all the grey, the welcome splashes of colour from red buses and bright neon lights. Bricks and mortar. Bitumen and stone. Christmas trees winking in shop windows.

No gum trees. No red dust. No barbed wire or cattle. Instead there were traffic jams. People everywhere like ants.

But she
did
love London – she'd spoken the truth. She loved this city's concert halls and its overpowering sense of history, loved its diversity and its busyness. She even loved the ugly bits.

And yet . . .

No. There could be no
and yet
 . . .

She would allow no regrets. No nostalgia for her family or for the dazzling blue skies and heat and endless bush. No longing for campfires on riverbanks or for a certain tall, rangy cattleman.

Just the same, Liz couldn't help thinking about the first time she'd seen the
grandfather
climbing down from his truck. Almost immediately she felt the sting of their parting. And then piercing despair.

Oh, Jack.

How could these feelings be happening to her now? Why these inexplicable longings? She and Jack weren't even lovers. They'd shared
one
kiss. How, after all the men she'd known, could this one man have made such a deep impact? After such a brief acquaintance?

It wasn't meant to be.

I have to let it go.

The irony was that after her conversation with Matthew Oakley, she no longer felt as constrained by the choices she'd made so long ago. If only she'd talked to him
before
she met Jack and not after she'd said goodbye.

At last the cab turned into the King's Road and Liz drew a deep breath, fixed on a smile. After the long, wearying journey, she was almost at her final destination. As soon as she'd dumped her bags in the house, she'd grab her coat and head out to buy something delicious to heat up for her supper. Or she might even eat out. Why not? It would be the perfect welcome home treat.

She was very glad her agent hadn't made his usual offer to ferry her from the airport. She couldn't think of anything more exhausting than being fussed over and having to talk business tonight. Evan's news could wait till the morning.

Evan didn't ring the next morning, which was probably just as well, given Liz's jetlag. She spent the day in a tired, headachy daze. She flipped through her mail – oodles of Christmas cards – but she wasn't in the mood to read them. She did a little shopping and rested on and off, but despite her deep exhaustion, she couldn't fall asleep. She checked her emails and phone messages twenty times at least.

Nothing from Evan.

When there was still no news from her agent the next morning, she felt the first pricks of panic. After all, he'd insisted that she must hurry back. But she refused to descend to the lowly depths of sitting by the phone, biting her nails. She would beard the lion in his den.

Dressed in her favourite outfit – an elegant, Grace Kelly-style dress, teamed with an ankle-length black fur coat and two-toned high heels, Liz felt much better. Evan was easily intimidated and today she would play the diva to the hilt. Why the hell not? She'd certainly earned the right.

‘Liz, darling, how wonderful to see you. You look marvellous. Fabulous. Such a glow about you. It must be all that Australian sun.'

Liz wished she could say the same for Evan.
Anaemic
was the first adjective that sprang to mind. Squirming was the second.

It wasn't a promising start.

She sat without waiting for his invitation and as she crossed her long legs, her fur coat parted with a luxurious and satisfying
hush.
The look she gave Evan may have been just a tad haughty.

He hovered by his desk, his smile flickering on and off like a faulty fluorescent tube.

‘So, Evan, darling.' Liz began confidently, but then her gaze lifted to the poster on the wall behind him and the rest of her prepared speech skated clear out of her head.

The poster was enormous. At least two metres tall. Black and white, with all the drama and nostalgia of a forties movie poster, it showed a young man seated at a shiny, black grand piano. Liz instantly recognised the shaggy hair, the designer stubble, the sleepy-lidded eyes and sexy, lopsided smile.

She frowned. ‘Why do you have a poster of Fergus Cooke on your wall? Why would you want––'

She hadn't finished her question before she guessed the unpalatable answer.

She shivered. ‘Bloody hell, Evan, don't tell me you're Fergus Cooke's agent?'

His Adam's apple bobbed in his scrawny neck.

‘Don't tell me.' She didn't even try to keep the outrage from her voice. ‘Don't tell me
you
gave that
boy
my job?
My
gigs?'

An awful sense of betrayal slithered down Liz's back and spread over her like a cold and clammy second skin.

‘How could you, Evan? After all these years?'

‘Liz, it's okay.' Evan was a pale shade of green as he slid into the chair behind his desk.

‘
Okay
? I've worked so bloody hard. I've practically worn myself to a shadow. I've helped you earn your penthouse, one performance at a time. Thirty years of building my name and you turn me over for an upstart who's been here five minutes.'

Evan was probably helplessly in love with Fergus, but Liz bit back the urge to mention this. She wouldn't sink that low.

‘I've found work for you, Liz.' Evan was at his laptop now, eyes bulging, scrolling madly. ‘Five nights in January at St Martin in the Fields. Schubert and Mendelssohn. A concert at Wigmore Hall in March.'

‘What about Paris?'

Evan winced. ‘Couldn't pull that off, I'm afraid.'

‘Venice?'

Even gulped and shook his head. ‘But there's so much other work.'

‘What kind of
other
work?'

He lifted his small white hands, palms up. ‘Ballet companies, choirs, operatic groups. They're all crying out for good pianists.'

‘Accompanists at rehearsals?'

‘Yes. It's quite good money.'

‘I gave up that work fifteen years ago.'

She was a concert pianist. A soloist. Just two years ago she'd been a star attraction at the BBC Proms.

‘Changing times, Liz.'

Changing times? Or a two-timing agent?

Liz was trembling with anger. ‘I rushed back here, Evan. You made all kinds of promises. You assured me that if I jumped on the next plane, everything would be fine. I left my grieving family.'

‘I'm sorry, Liz. Honestly, I tried.'

Bullshit
as her dear brother would have put it. Liz was shaking. Furious. And tired. Also scared.

Just the same, she sat very still, holding her head high, determined to cling to her dignity. ‘Email me those dates and contacts,' she said with icy poise, then she rose and deliberately looked down her nose at her agent. ‘Thanks for sparing me the time out of your busy schedule, Evan.'

‘Don't be like that, Liz. I'm working really hard for you. You're still the most fabulous pianist on my books. I'm looking at Vienna and Prague.'

Her response was a brief smile. ‘Have a happy Christmas, won't you?'

She sailed out without waiting for his response, but she was remembering the many Christmases he'd sent her Krug champagne.
In deepest gratitude
.

Times had changed.

Indeed. After three decades of gruelling hard work and sacrifice, Liz Fairburn had reached the pinnacle of her career only to be passed over.

Left on the shelf.

Put out to grass.

Shafted
.

So not the way she wanted to end her career.

Downstairs on Great Chapel Street the day had turned bitterly cold. Liz pulled up her coat collar and headed towards Oxford Street, huddled against the biting wind. She wished now that she'd arranged to meet a friend for lunch. She needed to vent.

She checked her phone, scrolling through her list of contacts, but none of her busy friends would be free at such short notice and she realised she'd never felt quite so desolate and alone.

What was she going to do with the rest of her life?

She was supposed to have worked out the answer to this while she was in Australia, but she'd been distracted by everything else that had happened there.

Now . . . she felt lost and . . .
old
.

Her parents and her brother were already dead and she was facing a lonely old age. When she considered her future and possible retirement, she felt extremely under-prepared.

Wandering aimlessly, she reached Selfridges, where she was tempted to console herself with the purchase of a wonderfully bohemian Isabel Marant skirt. But she knew self-indulgence wouldn't work for her today, so she bought a sensational pair of pink skinny jeans for Bella instead. She knew her niece's size. She'd already bought Bella a black pair by the same designer and they would be a perfect Christmas gift, even if they arrived a little late.

Then she went searching for a gift for Virginia.

*

By the end of the day Liz was quite laden with packages, so she took a taxi home. It was already dark, of course.
Sod English winters
.

As the cab turned into Godfrey Street, Liz saw snowflakes dancing in the glow of the streetlights. Unfortunately she was too out of sorts to feel any of the usual excitement about the possibility of a white Christmas.

Bah, humbug!

Admittedly, as soon as she let her friends know she was home there would be party invitations . . .

Perhaps she would soon slip back into a semblance of her old life . . . and it was always possible that today's blow to her ego was another life lesson she'd needed . . .

But surely she'd had enough of those already.

The cab pulled up at her door. She paid the driver and gathered up her parcels.

‘Blimey it's a cold 'un,' the cabby said as she opened the door and an Arctic wind gusted up the street. ‘Good weather for penguins,' he called after her as she hurried up her front steps.

She wished she'd had the forethought to extract her door key from her handbag while she was still in the taxi. Annoyed, she juggled parcels, feeling with gloved fingers for her keys. Somewhere in the middle of her efforts, a small box slipped from her grip and bounced down the steps to the footpath.

Damn.

Finally she got the door open, switched on a light, dumped her parcels in the hall and turned to hurry back down the steps to rescue the rather expensive gift box of spices and teas.

There was a man on the footpath and he'd beaten her to it. Already he was bending down and scooping it up.

‘Oh, thank you,' Liz called to him in case he was planning to run off with it. ‘So kind of you.'

Was it her imagination or was there something familiar about him?

Snowflakes floated onto her black coat as she hurried down the path. His coat, as he straightened, was also sprinkled with white.

Her heart skidded against her ribs. It wasn't. It couldn't be. Her mind was playing tricks.

‘Can I carry this inside for you?' he asked.

‘Jack?' she whispered. ‘Jack Roper?'

He chuckled. ‘Well, I'm certainly not Jack the Ripper.'

‘I'm completely undomesticated,' Liz warned Jack as they sat at the small table in her black and white tiled kitchen, dipping crusty bread into deep bowls of steaming potato and leek soup. ‘I didn't make this soup. I'm afraid I'm not likely to slave over a hot stove now that I'm back in London. Not with Marks & Spencer just around the corner.'

She felt it was important to set Jack straight about her shortcomings. She was still trying to assess this astonishing development, still seesawing between joy and dismay that he'd come all this way when their parting had been so unhappy. And so very definite.

‘Why apologise? I can't think of anything better,' Jack said, tucking into her soup with gusto, giving a nod that took in her cosy kitchen and the snowflakes swirling past the glass doors that led to her handkerchief-sized backyard. ‘Especially on a cold winter's night.'

He smiled at her, deepening the creases around his eyes and rekindling the fizz of excitement that had begun when she discovered him at her front gate.

They hadn't jumped into bed like young lovers, but Jack
had
accepted her invitation to stay the night and somehow Liz couldn't imagine him sleeping in the guest bedroom.

So far they'd had a sedate drink in the sitting room while Jack informed her that Alex was spending Christmas with his other grandparents. In turn, Liz had confessed about her upsetting day with Evan.

It was then that Jack had gallantly invited her out to dinner. Liz knew he'd wanted to cheer her up, but she'd also known that he had to be dead-tired after his long journey and she'd suggested a hot bath and supper at home.

‘Sounds perfect,' Jack had said gratefully.

So here they were.

And because she couldn't hold back a moment longer, she said, ‘I hadn't expected to tell you this, Jack, but after my breakdown at Peter's funeral, I saw my baby's father.'

Jack's eyes widened.

‘I caught up with him in Brisbane before I left.'

There was a long moment before Jack spoke. ‘How did the meeting go?'

‘Very well, thanks. I told Matthew everything and it was a shock, of course. We both had a bit of a wobbly moment, but after a meal and a bottle of wine and a long talk, I knew I'd done the right thing. I felt cleansed and . . . ' Liz paused, searching for the right word. ‘I think I felt restored.'

‘Catharsis.'

‘Yes. It was so good to finally take the lid off that horrible guilt.' She sighed. ‘I'll never completely forgive myself.'

Reaching across the table Jack covered her hand with his. ‘You don't have the monopoly on guilt, Liz. Look at the way I ignored Alex's musical talent for almost twelve months.'

‘Alex will be fine.'

‘And we'll be fine, too,' Jack said, letting his hand stay there, holding hers.

We?

Liz's heart gave the most incredible girlish flutter. ‘Perhaps you'd better tell me why you're here.'

He smiled. ‘Can't you guess?'

‘I'd rather know for sure.'

‘I haven't been able to stop thinking about you. I can't forget what you said on the day of your concert.'

‘Was that before or after I kissed you?'

‘What do you think?' He smiled and his grip on her hand tightened. ‘After you comprehensively kissed the hell out of me.'

The gruffness in his voice caused the most delicious pang in Liz. ‘I'm afraid you'll have to remind me,' she prompted. ‘What did I say?'

‘You told me that you had to go back to London, but that didn't mean we had to close the door straightaway. We could consider our options.'

How confident she'd been that day, riding on a post-performance high.

‘And so . . . ' said Jack. ‘That's why I'm here. I'm planning to revisit those options.'

Even before he finished the sentence, he was out of his chair and drawing Liz to him and his arms felt strong and warm and safe. Masterful and sexy.

And this time, when they kissed, it was Jack who took charge and Liz felt her heart floating to a completely new level of happiness.