The Right Time

 

Dianne Blacklock has been a teacher, trainer, counsellor, checkout chick, and even one of those annoying market researchers you avoid in shopping centres. Nowadays she tries not to annoy anyone by staying home and writing.
The Right Time
is her seventh book.

 

 

www.dianneblacklock.com

 

 

Also by Dianne Blacklock

Call Waiting
Wife for Hire
Almost Perfect
False Advertising
Crossing Paths
Three's a Crowd

DIANNE
BLACKLOCK

 

 

First published 2010 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney

Copyright © Dianne Blacklock 2010

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

Blacklock, Dianne.
The Right Time/Dianne Blacklock.

ISBN 978 1 4050 4004 4 (pbk.)

A823.4

Typeset in 12.5/14 pt Bembo by Post Pre-press Group
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

 

These electronic editions published in 2010 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

 

The Right Time

Dianne Blacklock

 

 

 

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To my family

I'm so glad this book has actually made it into your hands – it was touch and go for a while there. You see, I rather boldly booked a holiday a couple of months before my deadline, and no sooner was that confirmed than I was offered a spot as guest author on a Pacific cruise, due to leave six days after my return from the first holiday. But it was an offer I couldn't refuse, so I decided I would just have to write while I was on the cruise.

Therefore, I must acknowledge Gabbi, Anna, Andrew, Zac, Alicia, Sarah, Nathan and a host of others who made it impossible for me to spend any time at all working in peace in my cabin. It is certainly no thanks to them that this book is finally in print! (But thank you all for a great holiday!)

As you may imagine, a stressful few months followed, and so I'm grateful to my boys, Zac, Pat, Dane and Joel for their longsuffering love and support. And also sincere thanks to Diane, Desley and Elizabeth, who put up with more than their fair share of whingeing.

At times like these I'm lucky to have a phenomenal publisher, Cate Paterson, an exceptional editor, Julia Stiles, and the support of the most marvellous Louise Bourke, who takes such care pulling everything together and keeping it on track, despite my tardiness.

Finally I want to take this opportunity to specially thank the absolutely fabulous Jane Novak, who has been my publicist since the beginning, but has lately moved on to bigger and better things. Jane has boundless energy and good humour in any situation, and never made me feel that traipsing around with me was just her job. I'm going to miss her.

Wishing you all the very best for a wonderful future, Jane.

‘Oh not just yet, thanks, I'm waiting for my sisters,' Ellen told the waitress who had come to take her order.

It occurred to Ellen that she had spent a good deal of her life waiting for her sisters. As the eldest she supposed that was her lot in life. Waiting for them to be born, waiting for them to start walking, talking,
relating
. Waiting for them to start school . . .

Then waiting for them to get ready for school every morning. By the time Evie started, Eddie was on his way, so the task of getting the girls ready and out the door fell squarely onto Ellen. Emma was the worst, preening herself in the bathroom for ages, even in primary school. And Liz was just perennially disorganised. She could never find her hockey stick, her flute, her debating notes . . . She did so many extracurricular activities their mum was always threatening to make her quit something. Only that was never going to happen. Liz was far too bright for their ordinary little public school, but their parents didn't believe in private or selective schooling, so the best way to deal with their prodigy was to keep her busy.

It wasn't so bad being the eldest though. Ellen knew people who complained about being the so-called test case for their parents – they were harder on the eldest, the younger ones got to do things sooner, you had to pave the way. But Ellen didn't mind all that. Her parents hadn't been so hard on her, and she was well aware of the privileges that came with her position. Not only was she held in her parents' confidence, she enjoyed a level of rapport with them that the younger ones were not likely to experience, and there had never been any shortage of attention. Even after her siblings had come along vying for their share, Ellen had always been the first to do everything. She had always had the most photos taken, always had both her parents there in the audience on presentation day at primary school, right through to graduation day at uni. By the time Liz had started scooping the prize pool, Ellen hadn't felt any rivalry at all; in fact, from her lofty position she had even been generous with praise. Her sister's considerable achievements
hadn't detracted from the fact Ellen had still been racking up firsts – graduating from high school, attending her formal (which, incidentally, was the first thing to get Emma's attention), and starting university.

She had also been the first to get married and have a baby, though unfortunately not in the customary order. Ellen had not graduated before the wedding, and while the ceremony did come first chronologically, five months later she had presented her parents with their first granddaughter, and a couple of years later, their first grandson.

Emma was still waiting for Blake to propose, but Ellen certainly wasn't holding her breath. Liz was patiently waiting for the ever elusive day when Andrew would leave his wife, but Ellen wouldn't hold her breath for that either. So it was Evie who had been next to follow Ellen down the aisle, marrying her childhood sweetheart when she was barely out of childhood herself. And although she started popping out babies straightaway, it still meant that Ellen's two didn't have cousins until they were in primary school.

The mere thought of her children now brought back the pain. She hadn't expected it to be so physical, it felt like she'd pulled a muscle in her chest. This week had been the hardest week of her life, Ellen was sure nothing came close. Not even when Kate had had her first bout of croup and Ellen had been convinced she was going to choke to death right there in her arms. Or when Sam had fallen through a glass door and needed sixteen stitches. Since they were born, Ellen's every waking moment had been about protecting them from harm, or sadness, or distress. Of course she had learned pretty quickly that this was impossible, but at least she could buffer it. Being the cause of it was something she had never imagined possible.

Now Ellen had to break it to everyone else. Over and over. She thought she had prepared herself, but in some ways telling people felt harder than actually going through with it. She wished she could just release a statement like a celebrity or a politician, and then leave everyone to gossip amongst themselves, construct their theories and form their own version of what happened. That's what they were going to do anyway, no matter what Ellen told
them. But still she had to go through that process of telling them. Over and over.

So that was why, after her children, her sisters were going to be the first to hear the news. Whatever they thought in the privacy of their own minds, they would still be her best advocates, they would be on her side. Even Emma, in her own way.

Evie was first to arrive at the café, Ellen spotted her flushed but smiling face searching for her through the front window. While the other sisters had remained firmly anchored to the inner west suburbs of Sydney, Evie's husband, Craig, felt no such attachment. He was not about to live in a ‘pokey old house', so after they married they had moved out past Parramatta to what had been a new subdivison at the time. So even though she had the furthest to come and three kids to organise, along with a husband who wasn't much better, Evie was on time. She would have been up at the crack of dawn, thrown on a load of washing, dropped Jayden to cricket and arranged for someone to bring him home, organised Tayla's activities – though, being January, Ellen supposed dance classes and the like were suspended, but for a ten year old that kid had a busier social life than most adults. That would leave only four-year-old Cody for Craig to ‘look after'. Evie had probably made separate lunches for everyone the night before – something special, because she would be feeling guilty about going out and leaving them all for a few hours on a weekend. She would have done her utmost to ensure nothing would be a hassle for Craig, and if she'd had any inkling that it was likely to be, she would have made arrangements for his mother to come over to ‘help' or, in other words, take over for the day.

Evie's smile broadened when she caught sight of her sister, and she waved excitedly. Ellen watched her as she bustled through the door, pink-faced and breathless, and then proceeded to bustle in and around the tables and chairs towards her. Evie was a bustler; she never simply walked, she always kind of trotted everywhere, always on the go. Despite this she had never really lost her puppy fat, except for a brief period in her teens, the result of some crazy unsustainable diet, the kind that only self-loathing adolescents and supermodels would be desperate enough to undertake. That was around the time she started going out with Craig, from the
nearby boys' school. They became engaged when Evie was in her final year of a childcare diploma at TAFE, and married six months later. Evie started eating again at the reception, and thus began her grand obsession with food. Her life was ruled by one overriding philosophical question – to eat or not to eat – and she spent her days counting calories, grams of fat or carbohydrates, or whatever was the unit of measurement du jour.

She bustled over to the table, squeezing past chairs, apologising profusely to anyone who made eye contact with her.

‘Hi,' she beamed, lurching at Ellen to hug her. ‘It's so good to see you! I was thinking the whole way here that we really don't see enough of each other,' she added, pulling back to look at her sister. ‘I know we're all busy, and we don't live so close now, but we really ought to make an effort to get together more often.'