North Star (5 page)

The woman's eyes narrowed and her lips puckered. Kate could almost hear the cogs turning in the woman's head as she processed this piece of information for repetition at the earliest opportunity.

Kate grabbed a skirt and blouse at random and shoved them at Georgia, propelling her towards a curtained change room. ‘Go try these on while I help your brother.'

‘So you're back in town then,' the woman persisted.

Kate glanced at the name badge on the woman's ample bosom—Trudy. Why the store felt they needed a name badge in a town where just about everyone's family could be traced back to the original settlers, she had no idea.

Kate didn't consider herself a local, and although her family had a long history with the town, she'd never lived here long enough to be counted as one.

‘We're just out here to get Henry's estate in order.'

Trudy draped one arm across the top of a clothes rack and eyed Kate hawkishly. ‘You should make a tidy profit out of that place. It's a big property.'

Kate said nothing, hoping the woman would take the hint and drop the subject. She scanned the shorts and shirts to find the right size for Liam. ‘Here we go, try these on, sweetie.'

‘So you and your husband will be in town for a while then?' Trudy prodded.

Kate was saved from answering by Georgia's indignant cry. ‘You have got to be kidding me.'

‘What is the problem now, Georgia?' said Kate, pulling aside the change-room curtain.

‘I'm not wearing this.'

‘There's nothing wrong with it.' Actually, it had been a good guess with the sizes. Her daughter, for once, was wearing clothing that fitted.

‘It's all . . . baggy, and look how long this stupid skirt is.'

‘Good grief, it's all the way to mid-thigh.' Kate's sarcastic tone did nothing to mollify Georgia's outraged sense of fashion. Even the blouse was a good fit, Kate thought; the buttons were not straining across Georgia's breasts, as was her usual style these days.

‘Great, that's you sorted. How's it going in there, Liam?' She peeked behind his curtain.

He was already back in his street clothes, and he handed Kate a bundle of scrunched-up shirts and shorts, then moved away to browse the small selection of toys at the front of the store.

Turning a bright smile towards Trudy, Kate handed over the armful of uniforms and herded a sulking Georgia towards the checkout.

‘Are you paying by cash or credit for these, dear?' asked Trudy after she'd tallied up their purchases.

Kate glanced at the total and did a double-take. ‘I don't suppose there would be any second-hand uniforms around?' she asked, wishing she'd investigated that option first.

‘I guess you could always check at the church goodwill store, but they're only open every second Tuesday.'

Kate felt a surge of offended pride at the thought of using goodwill, and then firmly clamped down on the emotion. There was nothing wrong with living within your means, and right now goodwill was within their means.

‘Look, darl, why don't we just open a store account for you? You don't have to pay for them now,' Trudy said, already reaching for a form and a pen.

‘It's not that I can't pay for them . . . it's just that we've had so many unexpected costs involved with moving and . . .'

Trudy waved a manicured hand in the air. ‘Don't worry about it. Here you go, I've written it all up, you just sign here and we're all square.'

‘But you don't even know us,' Kate protested.

Trudy arched an eyebrow. ‘It's not like I don't know you're good for it. You're sitting on a goldmine.'

Kate bit the inside of her lip. For years she'd refused to have a credit card: Andy couldn't be trusted around them, she'd learnt that the hard way. But if the kids were going to start a new school, she didn't want to make it any harder for them by insisting they wear second-hand uniforms. Quickly, before she could change her mind, Kate signed the paperwork and pushed it back across the counter.

‘You look a lot like your mother,' Trudy said, studying her face. ‘I knew Eve when she was young too. Such a shame.'

Kate picked up the bags and practically dragged Georgia and Liam from the shop. She didn't speak until they were in the car and she felt her daughter's gaze on her. ‘What?' Kate asked, glancing over at her.

‘What did that woman mean when she said it was a shame about your mother?'

Kate felt her stomach tighten. ‘That she died, I guess.' In some ways it was a blessing that neither her parents nor Andy's were around. As much as the kids had missed out on having grandparents, they thought it was quite normal that no one ever really talked about them. The few times the children had asked about Kate's mother, she'd just told them that Eve had been very sick and had died. She'd never known how to explain to them that their grandmother had killed herself. That little piece of advice wasn't included in any of the innumerable parenting books that lined the bookstore shelves—she knew because she'd checked.

‘How come we never met your grandfather, Mum?'

Kate glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw her son's watchful face staring back at her expectantly. Why was it children always managed to hone in on the subjects you
didn't
want to talk about?

‘Henry Campbell wasn't a very nice person.'

‘Why? What did he do?' Liam asked.

Where did one begin?

‘He was a miserable old man.' She knew it was a weak explanation, but now was not the time for bringing out the family skeletons. ‘Some people are just like that. He had a hard life and it made him a very unhappy person. We didn't get along and I thought it was better that you two didn't meet him.'

‘Nice of you to give us a choice, as usual.'

Kate shook her head in wonder. Where did teenagers learn how to do that? They knew the
exact
place to strike for optimum impact. And Georgia didn't stop there. She decided it was her cue to start complaining about the uniform again.

Her tirade continued right up until bedtime, and there were very few places to retreat to in a motel room. Someone should make forced proximity to an angry adolescent a form of punishment, Kate thought as she climbed into bed. She felt absolutely wrung out.

After a frosty breakfast and an even frostier car ride, Kate pulled up in front of the high-school gates.

‘No way. Don't even think about coming in there with me, Mum,' Georgia said in abject horror as Kate made to undo her seatbelt. ‘It's bad enough I have to go to this reject school with all these hillbilly hicks, but I am
not
walking in there with my mother like some sad loser!'

‘It's your first day in a new school, how will you even know where to go?'

‘I'm old enough to figure it out by myself. God, I'm so sick of you treating me like a baby. When will you realise I'm practically an adult?' And with that she jumped out of the car and slammed the door behind her.

Kate felt like crying. Her child was hurting. She knew that beneath the attitude Georgia was a scared little girl putting on a tough face to walk into a new school all alone. Kate wanted to wrap her daughter in her arms and hold her tight. Forcing the ache in her heart away, she put on a brave smile for Liam. ‘Ready, matie?' she asked when they pulled into a parking spot near the primary school.

He didn't answer, and right then Kate was almost grateful for that. She wasn't sure her fragile heart could handle an anguished eight-year-old right now.

Liam's teacher turned out to be a lovely woman who looked as though she'd been teaching forever. She had a kind smile and handled Liam's reluctance to leave his mother's side with a gentle firmness that made Kate fall instantly in love with her.

Kate hugged her son to her tightly and then stepped back, plastering the brightest smile on her face that she could muster, and promised him she'd have a yummy afternoon tea waiting for him after school.

She made it to the car before she broke down. Great hulking sobs racked her body as she started to release some of the pain and anxiety she had carried for so long. She put her face in her hands as she wept, only half-aware that she was visible to anyone who walked past the car.

Suddenly the driver's door was thrown open and Kate sat up with a jolt.

‘Kate, what's happened? Where are the kids? Are you hurt?' It was John. He ran his hands over her lightly to make sure she wasn't injured.

Kate shook her head, trying to catch her breath to speak, but the tears just kept coming. ‘I . . . I'm f . . . fine,' she managed, swiping angrily at her tears.

He jogged back to the police vehicle and returned with a handful of tissues. He crouched down beside her as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

‘Tell me what happened,' he instructed.

‘Nothing happened,' she said when she was finally able to speak. ‘It's the kids' first day at school.' He stared at her as though she were crazy. ‘I know, I'm overreacting, it's just that—' She started to cry again and dabbed uselessly at her eyes. ‘I can't seem to do anything right. I'm making them start a new school where they don't know anyone. They're being dragged halfway across the country,' she sobbed, ‘and they hate me.'

‘Your kids do not hate you, Kate. They may be angry and upset about moving here, and no kid likes starting a new school, but they will survive, and by this afternoon they'll be telling you about all the new friends they've made today and you'll have been worried about nothing.'

Kate looked at him briefly before blowing her nose again. ‘I would love that to be true, but unfortunately you have no idea what my children are like.'

‘Tell me,' he said calmly.

Kate sniffed and looked around self-consciously; she was in the car, bawling her eyes out, with a policeman crouched at her feet.
Way to fit in discreetly in a new town
, she thought miserably.

‘I'm sorry to have caused a big scene. I'm okay, really,' she said, taking a deep breath. The last thing she needed was to have a police officer thinking she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. ‘It's just been a very stressful few weeks.'

John wasn't buying it. ‘I'll feel better if I know you're really okay, so humour me and let me get you a cuppa and something to eat, okay?' he said, standing up and carefully closing her door.

She considered driving off, but the thought that he might put on his sirens and book her in the main street stopped her—she couldn't cope with any more publicity—so she gave a jerky nod, waited for him to pull out, then followed him.

Kate winced slightly as he pulled into the police station. This would surely get around town in a flash.

The station smelled of paper and ink and floor wax. Kate trailed John out the back to a small room that served as a tearoom.

‘Okay, start from the beginning, tell me why your kids are going to have trouble fitting in here,' John said as soon as the two of them were seated at the table with a cup of coffee.

Kate let out a long breath. ‘Well, there's my delinquent daughter, whom you've already picked up trying to buy alcohol within minutes of arriving in town,' she started dryly. ‘She's actually the main reason we're here. Back in Sydney, the police picked her up very early one morning outside a train station. She was with a group of other kids, most of them drunk or stoned.'

Georgia, so Kate later discovered, had apparently been climbing out of her bedroom window for weeks before she'd been caught, and had been wandering the streets at night with a gang of kids from her school. Discovering that while she thought her child had been safely tucked up in bed she'd actually been out on streets most adults wouldn't dare walk down at night had been a terrifying wake-up call.

‘She was hanging around a boy called Snake. He was nineteen and had a police record. I don't know how far she'd gotten into drugs and drinking, I suspect she was still only experimenting, but I was at my wits' end trying to think of how I could keep her away from all of that.'

She picked at the chip on the handle of the ceramic mug. ‘I had to work two jobs, so I wasn't around anywhere near enough, and we lived in a crappy area because, thanks to my gambling ex-husband, I was completely broke and couldn't afford a decent place to bring up the kids.' Kate stopped abruptly, realising to her embarrassment how much she'd revealed to a relative stranger.

‘It's okay, Kate. I have a feeling you haven't been able to talk this stuff over with anyone before, am I right?'

She shook her head. She couldn't actually remember talking like this with anyone in a very long time. The friends she'd made over the years were really only acquaintances, women who had kids who went to the same school or played in the same sports teams. They were friends she shared the sports-kit washing with, not her personal demons.

‘You can talk to me, Kate. I think you need to,' he said, leaning back in his chair.

‘Underneath that tough act, I know Georgia's a good kid, she's just a bit lost and confused.' Kate's voice wobbled but she took a sip of coffee and got it under control. ‘Liam's the opposite. Since his father and I divorced, he seems to have lost all self-confidence. He won't sleep at night unless the light's on, he was getting bullied at his old school, he will barely let me out of his sight. It just breaks my heart to see him so miserable.'

‘Do they still see their father?' John asked carefully.

She shook her head slightly. ‘I had to take out a court order against him.'

John sat a little straighter in his seat. ‘He's abusive?'

‘He's not, but the people he seems to attract are.' Kate saw his confusion. ‘My ex-husband has a gambling problem. He was always a bit of a gambler, nothing too serious, until a few years ago when he lost his job and had trouble finding another one. The longer he was out of work, the more depressed and irritable he got. Eventually he just gave up looking for work. He used to tell me he was job hunting and then go to the pub and bet on the TAB all day. We ended up with huge credit card debts. It was horrible,' she said, recalling the sick feeling of those days and almost tasting the bile in her mouth.

‘We'd worked so hard to buy our house. We pumped everything into the loan and had it paid off in twelve years. It was such a great feeling.' She glanced up at John with a small spark of pride. ‘All the scrimping and scraping was worth it to know that we owned our house outright.' She smiled a little as she remembered, but it soon slipped and she blinked quickly to stave off tears.

‘He'd started borrowing from loan sharks. I have no idea where he found them, but they weren't too fussy about lending him the money he couldn't get legitimately without needing me to co-sign. By the time I found out the extent of the debt he'd gotten into, it was out of control. We sold the house to pay off the debts and moved into a dingy little apartment and tried to start all over again.'

‘You didn't leave him straightaway then?' John asked.

Kate shook her head. ‘It put a strain on an already shaky relationship. I found it hard to trust him after that, but he seemed so remorseful. He promised to get counselling and I really wanted to believe him, you know?' She looked up, searching John's eyes for a moment before shaking her head once more and dropping her gaze back to the table. ‘I guess it makes me the bigger fool for thinking I could believe him, but we were married, and you have to make sacrifices sometimes.'

John didn't comment, and Kate realised he was simply allowing her time to collect her thoughts and continue.

‘Eventually it just got too hard. The kids were miserable, I was tired and worried sick about how we were going to make it to the next pay cheque . . . and he was still gambling whenever he had the chance.' Her voice sounded empty of emotion. ‘I filed for divorce, got a second job and life was almost normal for a while.

‘Then one weekend when he had the kids, he was attacked by two men who came to collect money he owed them. Luckily, the kids were asleep and didn't actually witness it. They were brought back to me by the police, and I took out a restraining order and immediately applied for sole custody, which the court approved, thank God. I couldn't risk the kids being near him when he was dealing with people like that.'

‘So the kids know about his gambling?'

She shook her head. ‘No, I've told them that he isn't well and that he needs to get help, and that until he does he isn't capable of taking care of them.' She saw his eyebrow arch in surprise and gave a sigh. ‘How do you explain an addiction that turns the man they love and worship into such a selfish, lying manipulator? They don't see him the way he is when he's gambling, they only see their dad, the man who showers them with gifts when he's on a winning streak. They don't see the damage he's done to our lives. Trying to explain it does nothing but make me out to be the bad guy who took them away from their father.'

‘So you just let them think it was your fault?'

She gave a tired shrug. ‘They'll figure it out soon enough, but for now I just want them to be kids without having to worry about their father's addiction to gambling.'

He whistled softly. ‘You've had a tough run.' He observed her for a moment then said, ‘You've done a good job with those kids, despite everything. They'll settle in, you'll see; it's just going to take a little time.'

‘I hope you're right. Georgia thinks we're only here until I can get Henry's house on the market. Short of tying her up and putting her in the boot of the car, I didn't think there was any other way I could get her to come.'

‘You did the right thing,' he told her confidently.

‘Thank you,' she said, glad to be reassured, even if it was by someone she barely knew. ‘I bet you're happy you decided to turn down the street by the primary school this morning,' she said with a sheepish smile.

‘Actually, I am,' he said seriously.

Kate took a hasty sip of her coffee to hide her discomfort. ‘So now you know all about me,' she said, ‘and I know nothing about you.'

He gave a slow, sexy grin and Kate felt her cheeks grow warm.

‘What would you like to know?' he asked.

‘What are you doing all the way out here?'

He shrugged. ‘It's what the police force does to you if you ruffle too many feathers.'

She raised an eyebrow but he didn't elaborate, and she wasn't game enough to ask him to.

‘My parents keep asking me the same question,' he said, ‘although they've pretty much given up on me by now. Thank goodness I have five sisters to deflect their attention.'

Kate almost choked on her coffee. ‘You have five sisters?'

‘Yep. I'm the youngest of six. I think Dad had just about given up hope.'

‘Well, you should have women pretty well worked out by now,' she commented.

‘Yeah—don't talk to them when they're premenstrual and learn to get up early to grab the first shower or you won't get in the bathroom for the rest of the morning.'

Kate smiled and allowed herself a brief moment to enjoy the company of a handsome man without the burden of responsibility. ‘I'd better get going,' she said after a moment. ‘I'm meeting Larry Bilco in twenty minutes.' Rising from her seat, Kate placed her cup in the sink and turned to find the police officer watching her with open interest.