Morgan's Law (19 page)

‘He was forever coming to my rescue when we were kids, dragging me out of some fight or showdown at school. He was the Robin to my Batman.' Tash went quiet for a moment, lost in her memories of happier times.

The bang of a tray on the bar made Tash jump. She blinked rapidly, then collected her thoughts. ‘Once we get Negallan back on its feet, my next crusade will be bringing in a better system of dealing with mental health in rural communities. We can't allow this to keep happening to families. For too long it's been hidden away and not spoken about. We need to be honest with each other and to work together to stop this terrible epidemic.'

Sarah covered her friend's hand with her own. ‘If anyone can do it, Tash, it'll be you.'

Tash nodded and Sarah was pleased to see that some of the tension she'd been carrying over the last few days seemed to have lifted. And just in time too—the next week was going to be stressful enough for Tash and her committee as they launched the shareholder drive.

Seventeen

‘You don't understand, dear, I need my own private bathroom.'

Sarah's hand froze on the banister as the voice in the bar floated out to her. ‘No freaking way,' she murmured in disbelief. She had to be hearing things. Forcing one foot in front of the other, she rounded the doorway and stopped to stare at the woman by the bar. ‘
Mum?
'

Jocelyn turned and relief lit up her eyes. ‘Sarah! Thank
God
.' She walked over and hugged Sarah carefully, mindful of her long nails and perfectly made-up face, before stepping back to make sure her linen pant suit hadn't creased. ‘I was worried we wouldn't find you.'

Sarah hardly registered the ‘we' until she saw who was standing behind her mother. ‘What are
you
doing here?' she asked, her voice cool.

‘Hello, Sarah,' said Giles, stepping forward shoulder to shoulder with her mother in a manner that suggested they were a united front against a common enemy.

‘Now, Sarah, don't be cranky. You weren't listening to reason, and when Giles came all the way to Sydney to see you, I realised how ridiculous this whole venture of yours really is.' Jocelyn turned to Giles and patted his cheek fondly. ‘It was my idea to bring him out here. We thought between the two of us you might finally listen to reason and come home.'

Sarah was fuming. How dare Giles turn up uninvited on her mother's doorstep! She had no doubt he would have been hoping to win her mother's sympathy with his dash across the globe to beg for forgiveness; she couldn't believe her mother could be so gullible as to be taken in by it. ‘Well, I'm sorry that you've had a wasted trip.'

‘I think we should go somewhere and have a long chat about this, Sare-Bear,' Giles said in a tone that she'd once mistaken for caring but now realised was merely condescending.

‘Don't call me that, Giles. I'm a grown woman in case you hadn't noticed. And quite frankly, I have nothing to say to you that I haven't already said.'

‘Sarah, really. The poor man has travelled all the way from London to see you. The least you can do is hear him out.'

‘No, Jocelyn, she's right,' said Giles nobly. ‘I made a terrible mistake and she has every right to be disgusted with me. I'm disgusted in myself. I didn't expect this to be easy. I just wanted to be able to apologise in person.'

Looking at the man she'd lived with for the last year, she wondered at what point she'd stopped loving him. As embarrassing and hurtful as it had been to walk in on him with another woman, something told her that her reaction wasn't based on betrayal as much as it was hurt pride. The initial anger she'd felt when confronted by Giles and the woman that night had long since dispelled. The humiliation had stung for a lot longer, but even that seemed somewhat insignificant now that she was actually face to face with the man. She thought she'd feel a lot more upset than this the first time she saw him again.

‘We've had a terribly long trip,' said Jocelyn. ‘We had to leave at some ungodly hour of the morning to catch a plane, then we had to drive the rest of the way. I need to freshen up and have a lie-down.'

Closing her eyes briefly to count to ten, Sarah gave an irritable sigh and looked over to where Tash stood behind the bar, staring in bemusement at the new arrivals. ‘Fine. We can meet up over lunch. That gives you an hour to rest.'

‘Now, about that room.' Her mother turned back to face Tash, a determined gleam in her eye.

‘Here's your room key.' Tash held out the key and smiled politely, giving no indication that there was an issue with the shared bathroom facilities.

‘Come on, Mum, I'll take you up,' Sarah jumped in quickly before Jocelyn could make a scene about the accommodation. ‘The rooms are lovely.'

As Sarah hustled her mother up the wide staircase, Jocelyn clicked her tongue in exasperation. ‘Really, Sarah, what could you possibly be thinking? You've been out here for weeks. I'm seriously concerned you're having some kind of nervous breakdown.'

‘I'm fine, Mum. It's just taking longer than I expected. And then the car broke down.'

‘Well, that's the other reason I suggested to Giles we come out. You should be thankful the man is so deeply in love with you he's willing to make such a fool of himself over you.'

‘Funny how it slipped his mind there for a while.' Sarah slid the key into the lock and pushed open the door to her mother's room. ‘It's good to see you, Mum, but you shouldn't have brought Giles along.'

‘Men will always do stupid things, Sarah. It's in their nature. The secret is knowing which ones are worth a second chance.'

‘And what makes you think Giles is worthy of a second chance?'

‘You're not getting any younger, Sarah. You've invested two years in this relationship and Giles is too good a catch to toss back out there. Do you really want to start all over again?'

There
was
that. Until this moment she hadn't given that part of her life back in London a single thought. No, it wasn't a prospect she looked forward to. She'd often listened to other women complaining about how difficult it was out there on the dating scene, and she'd been happy that her comfortable relationship with Giles had saved her from having to go through all that again. Getting back out into the dating market had been the last thing on her mind since she'd been back in Australia.

‘Let him grovel for a while, dear—it'll do him good to have to face up to what he's done—but then put it behind you,' Jocelyn said, squeezing her daughter's hand gently.

‘Now, let me get some rest—if I can. Honestly, what kind of accommodation has shared facilities?'

Sarah was tempted to point out that had her mother been here a few days earlier she would have been sharing the
facilities
with a bunch of maintenance men as well, but she wisely kept her mouth shut. She didn't want to add any more ammunition to her mother's arsenal of reasons why she shouldn't have come here.

There was no point putting it off. Giles was not going to go away before she heard him out, so she might as well get it over with. She found him seated downstairs at a small table, a glass of beer in front of him, and for a minute she almost felt sorry for him. Dressed in his trendy slip-on shoes, tailored pants and button-up shirt, he couldn't be more out of place if he tried. It was strange that she'd somehow grown accustomed to men in dusty work boots and dirty jeans.

He moved to stand as she approached and Sarah waved him back to his seat.

‘I'm a fool,' he blurted, his gaze holding hers as she sat down across from him. Sarah arched an eyebrow to tell him she wasn't about to argue the point. ‘I know I hurt you, Sarah, and nothing I say will change what I did. I just need you to know I'm sorry.'

‘Giles.' Sarah stopped and gave a long sigh. ‘I really wish you hadn't gone to all the expense of flying over here.'

‘You weren't taking my calls. What else was I supposed to do? I'd hurt the woman that I love, of course I was going to follow you.'

‘Come on, Giles, you must see that our relationship wasn't the stuff of fairytales. If you had to have an affair to find some excitement, it's a pretty good indication something wasn't working. Why didn't you just tell me?'

‘When would I have done that, Sarah? I had to practically book an appointment to see you.' Giles said. ‘It takes losing something to make you realise how much it meant to you.'

‘Maybe it was all for the best. It made my mind up about coming out here, and this is something I needed to do.'

‘You can't just throw away two years together, Sarah.'

‘Why not? You did.' She saw him flinch and realised she felt no satisfaction at scoring the point. In fact, she felt . . . nothing. He was right. Before she left she'd hardly been around to have a relationship with her house plants, let alone a man. It didn't excuse his cheating, but it did open her eyes to the fact that she had played a part in their relationship breakdown. ‘I'm sorry you wasted your time, Giles.'

‘You just need some time to think it over. Maybe after we leave here and drop your mother back in Sydney, we could go away for a few days and see if we can recapture what we once had,' he suggested.

‘That's not such a bad idea, Giles,' Jocelyn interjected as she walked towards them.

Sarah watched as her mother settled herself in the other seat at the table, sending an encouraging smile across at her.

‘I'm not going back with you.'

‘Rubbish. Your car's undriveable. Of course you're coming back to Sydney with us.'

‘No, Mum. I'm not. I have things to do here. I've agreed to help with a project to start a cotton-growing cooperative here in town. I've already promised to help out until the car's fixed.'

Her mother stared at her. ‘What on earth do you know about starting a cooperative, darling?'

‘Nothing,' Sarah said, trying to remain calm. ‘But they've asked me to help with the promotion and the advertising, and that's what I've been doing.'

‘They can't expect you to be doing all this for free, surely? You don't owe these people anything, Sarah. You have a life to get back to.'

‘Mum, I've given my word. I'll wait for the car to be fixed and then I'll come home.'

As her mother opened her mouth to protest, Sarah swiftly cut in. ‘I thought maybe since you're here we could go out and you can meet Gran's brother, Albert. He
is
your uncle, after all.' A flash of alarm crossed her mother's face and Sarah withheld an irritated sigh. ‘Come on, Mum, don't you want to see where Gran grew up? Albert asked about you, he'd love to meet you, and Burrapine is just beautiful.'

Jocelyn squirmed uncomfortably. ‘I don't think that's a good idea. As I said before, Sarah, these people could be anybody.'

‘What's it going to take before you accept it, Mum—a DNA test?'

‘At the very least. Oh, for goodness sake, Sarah,' Jocelyn said impatiently, ‘the last thing these people want is some stranger turning up claiming to be related to them. If your grandmother wanted us to meet them, she would have introduced us to them when she was alive. Seems to me, keeping it a secret was her way of saying we should just stay away.'

‘I don't know why she kept it a secret, but I think she must have known that for some reason it's okay now or she wouldn't have sent me out here to uncover all this.'

‘But that's just the point, darling. She didn't send you here to uncover it. She sent you here to scatter her ashes, and that's it. So you need either to do as she asked or to forget all this rot and come back home.'

And that was Jocelyn's whole philosophy on life. It was either black or white. You didn't think a decision to death; you just made a choice one way or the other and moved on. Unfortunately for Sarah, though, all she saw at the moment were varying shades of grey.

Eighteen

Tash joined them for dinner that night and Sarah was touched that her friend had gone to such an effort to impress her mother. A table had been set up on the verandah complete with candles and crystal wineglasses.

They started with drinks downstairs and Sarah did her best to be hospitable despite the fact that she was seated at a table with her recently
ex
-boyfriend and her overbearing mother, surrounded by a roomful of curious onlookers. Just as she thought the moment couldn't get any more uncomfortable, Adam Buchanan walked through the door.

Memories of their last encounter flooded her mind: Adam's warm lips on hers, his muscles taut beneath his shirt . . . Silencing a groan of despair, Sarah reached for her wineglass and took a hefty swig.

Catching his eye across the room, she responded to his wave and told herself she had nothing to feel defensive about— she and Giles were not a couple and, even if they were, she'd done nothing to feel ashamed of. She ignored the little voice that scoffed rudely inside her head at that thought.

She forced herself to stay calm; it wasn't as though he would come over and interrupt what was clearly a private gathering, she reassured herself. With a sinking sensation she saw Adam was making his way across the room towards them and frantically racked her brains for a way to introduce them.
Hi Adam, this is my mother and my
ex-boyfriend who I have only recently stopped living with.
No, that sounded stupid . . .
Please meet my mother and
Giles . . . a friend who until recently I was shacked up with
for a year!

Then he was standing there, his steady blue eyes watching her with a hint of curiosity and something she couldn't quite decipher.

‘Adam. Hello.' She hoped she sounded calmer than she felt, but judging from the speculative glance her mother was sending her way, she doubted it. Suddenly her brain went blank. Panicking, she sent a desperate look at Jocelyn, who stepped in smoothly.