The Trouble With Choices Read online

  Nan, on the other hand, beamed with delight. ‘Well, this is a pleasant surprise. First Beth and Siena drop by, and now you, too. I’ll make us all some tea.’

  Hannah blinked, wincing when she saw Siena sitting on the floor and sorting through a box of tired handmade decorations that dated back to when the girls were in primary school, and were way past their use-by date. ‘You called me,’ she said. ‘You asked me to come and help put up the Christmas decorations.’

  Nan snorted. ‘I did no such thing. You must have dreamed it. But now that you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful.’

  Nan took herself off to the kitchen, while across the lounge room, Beth rolled her eyes sympathetically. ‘She phoned me, too. Don’t ask, I have no idea.’

  Hannah turned on her sister, keeping her voice low. ‘And you still think there’s nothing wrong with her?’

  ‘Hey, she’s fine. A little absent-minded, maybe.’

  ‘Come on, Beth, surely you can see she’s not right. She rang us both and forgot—seriously? Who does that?’

  Beth frowned, throwing a glance over her shoulder at her daughter, who was still sorting, oblivious to the conversation. ‘Do you really think something’s wrong?’

  ‘I think we should at least get her checked out.’

  ‘Hey, Aunty Hannah,’ said Siena from across the room, ‘did you see MasterChef the other night?’

  ‘No, I missed it,’ she said, picking up a tangle of tinsel to try to find the ends. She didn’t feel the need to add that she’d missed it because she’d been tucked up in Declan’s big bed recovering from some pretty dynamic sexual gymnastics. Or that watching the evening light paint the bush and the vine-planted hillside in a golden-red wash as her body hummed its way back down to earth was really the only thing she’d been capable of.

  ‘It was really good,’ the girl continued, ‘only Harry’s favourite team got eliminated. He thinks they might come back, though.’

  Hannah’s ears pricked up. ‘Who’s Harry?’

  ‘Nobody in particular,’ said Beth.

  ‘Harry comes for dinner,’ Siena offered, ‘and we watch MasterChef together.’

  Hannah looked at her sister. ‘Since when? Something you’re not telling me, little sister?’

  ‘Only by ten minutes,’ Beth reminded her. ‘And there’s nothing to tell. Harry’s the groundsman at school. Dan got him to do some cleaning up when that tree came down in the driveway. That’s all.’

  ‘And so now you have him over for dinner and a spot of telly? That sounds cosy.’

  Beth was shaking her head. ‘Don’t go making anything of this. I’m a rusted-on spinster, same as you.’

  ‘He is nice, though,’ said Siena, sorting through baubles.

  ‘And that’s the end of it,’ said Beth.

  Nan bustled back with a tray of tea and rattling cups and saucers. ‘Isn’t this nice,’ she said. ‘Clarry’s out in the garden, I’ll tell him to come in for tea in a moment.’

  Nan was pouring the tea when there was a knock on the door and Sophie poked her head inside. ‘Wow, what is this? A little Faraday family reunion?’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Hannah. ‘You got a call to come around, too?’

  ‘No,’ said Sophie, brandishing an egg carton and looking confused. ‘I just dropped around to get some eggs.’

  ‘You see,’ Nan said. ‘I told you girls you were dreaming.’

  Nan was barely out the back door when Sophie looked from one sister to the other. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Hannah thinks something’s wrong with Nan. She thinks we should get her checked out.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, I was worried,’ said Hannah, recounting her earlier visit. ‘But Beth said I was imagining it and she’s the paramedic, so—’

  ‘Hey, don’t use me as an excuse. If you thought she needed to be checked out, you should have done something about it.’

  ‘Do you think something’s wrong, too?’ Sophie asked Beth.

  ‘I don’t know, but it just seems odd that she’d call us both and not remember.’

  ‘Alzheimer’s?’

  ‘God, I hope not.’ Beth shook her head. ‘I didn’t think she was that bad, but …’

  ‘What are you whispering about?’ Siena called from across the room, where she was lining up decorations on the floor.

  ‘What you’re getting for Christmas,’ Beth replied. ‘So stop listening or you’ll jinx it.’

  The girl huffed, muttering something about grown-ups as she flounced out of the room. ‘I’m going to get the eggs.’

  ‘So, what do you want to do?’ said Hannah. ‘I can make an appointment for her, but I can’t see us getting her into a specialist before Christmas.’

  Beth nodded. ‘Make an appointment, doesn’t matter if it’s not until the new year, and meanwhile we’ll all enjoy Christmas. I mean, she might be getting a bit forgetful, but what can happen between now and then?’

  34

  Nick

  ‘Can you make Sophie see sense?’

  It had taken more courage than Nick had imagined possible to front up to Sophie’s big brother to enlist his help. But apparently, sheer frustration with a woman could blind a man to any risk of personal injury.

  ‘So, let me get this straight,’ Dan said, sitting at his kitchen table, a frown dragging his brows together. ‘Sophie’s having a baby and you’re the father.’

  Nick’s risk-assessment meter rapidly escalated into the red zone. ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Well, I’d heard Sophie was expecting and your name was being bandied about by Han and Beth. I didn’t want to pay too much attention to gossip.’

  Nick swallowed. ‘It’s true.’

  Dan crossed his arms, his eyes firmly fixed on the table. ‘And so, I guess it’s also true that this all happened the night of our wedding?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So,’ Dan said, on a long sigh, his eyes rising from the table to meet Nick’s, ‘not to put too fine a point on it, I ask you at the wedding to look after Sophie—’

  ‘I was looking after Sophie.’

  ‘Right, because the next thing is, she’s pregnant.’

  ‘Okay, so it happened. I’m not backing away from that. I’m not pretending we didn’t spend the night together. But I’m trying to be the responsible party here.’

  Lucy put a coffee in front of each man before she unpeeled Dan’s arms and found herself a seat in his lap. ‘I think it’s great. Our kids will grow up together. They’ll be cousins and best friends.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Nick said, wanting to hug Lucy for changing the direction of the conversation to something positive. ‘Our kids will grow up together, but she hasn’t thought about Min at all, hasn’t thought about anything beyond raising this child as a single parent—as the only parent. I thought you might be able to talk some sense into her.’

  ‘You’re expecting me to talk some sense into one of my sisters?’

  ‘Somebody has to,’ Nick said. ‘Somebody has to make her see that she can’t have this baby in a bubble, that it doesn’t work that way.’

  ‘And you have no long-term plans with Sophie that you might have this conversation yourself?’

  ‘After Penelope you’d think I’d be making long-term plans with anyone? Are you kidding me?’

  ‘Well, Sophie might have one or two things to learn, but as far as I can tell, she’s no Penelope.’

  Nick knew that for a fact. He had first-hand experience of the differences, not to mention a pretty fair idea of who’d come out on top in a contest. But that didn’t mean he was about to jump headlong into another permanent relationship on the basis of a coming child. He’d made decisions about hanging around once before on the basis of an unexpected pregnancy, and while he loved Min to death, he’d learned that love for a child didn’t depend on him sharing the marital bed with the mother. In fact, it could be a whole lot healthier for everyone if you weren’t.

  ‘Sor
ry, Dan, I like Sophie, but I’m not about to offer marriage, even if I thought she’d say yes.’ And given she was on this independence kick and that she’d seemed appalled when he’d actually confessed he wouldn’t mind a replay of their night together, that was hardly on the cards. ‘But that’s not to say that we can’t sort out this shared parenting thing between us and make it work—if she just gives me a chance to be involved.’

  Dan grunted. ‘See how it goes—who knows, she might come round to thinking the right way all by herself—but if not, I’ll talk to her,’ he promised.

  35

  Beth

  The MasterChef finale didn’t disappoint, with Harry’s favourite contestant—who’d been reinstated, just as he’d expected she would be—up against Siena’s in the final challenge.

  Beth’s living room might have been mistaken for a showdown at the Adelaide Oval that night, the whoops and cheers loud and no doubt ringing across the valley as each competitor completed their challenges, the tension palpable before the final, drawn-out, nail-biting reveal.

  Beth was the most torn of all. She didn’t have a horse in this race, but she wanted both Siena and Harry to win, because they both had so much emotion invested in it, and the excitement was contagious.

  In the end, it was Siena’s champion who triumphed, sending Siena to her feet, cheering.

  Harry cheered with her and then they slapped hands as the champagne corks popped while the credits rolled. ‘Your favourite deserved to win,’ he said. ‘No doubt about it.’

  ‘But yours was so good,’ said Siena. ‘She made the best Bombe Alaska ever.’

  Beth was impressed. She was pretty certain her daughter would never know what a Bombe Alaska was, if it weren’t for shows like MasterChef.

  They had ice-cream (without the flamed meringue topping) for dessert to celebrate, spilling out onto the verandah to enjoy the warm December weather, Siena and Harry taking a long time to perform a post-mortem on the finale. Beth listened to the to and fro, thinking how nice it was that there was another voice here, and that she didn’t have to be the one paying attention to what her daughter said every minute of the day.

  She didn’t even miss her studio on nights like this. It was just so nice to be.

  The conversation changed direction. Something about school finishing up soon and the summer holidays being upon them, and was Siena going away.

  Beth pricked up an ear, heard her daughter say they never went away for holidays, but they were having Christmas at the beach this year.

  ‘I can’t imagine anything nicer,’ Harry said, ‘it sounds perfect.’

  Beth felt a sudden stab of guilt, because he lived alone and, as far as she knew, had no family. She was suddenly compelled to sit up and say, ‘It’s just a picnic, really. Something different for Nan and Pop.’

  ‘They’ll love it,’ he said, without a hint of expecting to be invited to join their family Christmas. But why would he expect an invitation, Beth rationalised. And why should she feel guilty? It wasn’t like he was family.

  ‘It’ll be different,’ she said, trying to make light of it. ‘We’ll probably all come home sunburnt and itching with our bathers full of sand and determined never to do it again.’

  ‘I won’t,’ declared Siena. ‘I think we should go to the beach every year.’

  ‘No,’ Harry said, ‘your mum’s no doubt right. If you went every year, you’d soon get sick of it.’

  Beth sent a smile of thanks to this big bear of a man, who seemed to instinctively know the right thing to say to Siena. And unexpectedly, she wished that she could invite him to join their Christmas, if only so he wouldn’t have to spend it alone. But knowing that if she did, it might give him the wrong signals entirely.

  He was far too nice a man to do that.

  36

  Sophie

  Sophie was determined to manage this pregnancy her way, but she wasn’t completely heartless. If Nick was serious about being kept abreast of the baby’s progress, then okay, she could live with that. Her upcoming twelve-week scan would soon put how serious he was to the test.

  He didn’t answer the phone, so she kept her message brief and businesslike and left it up to Nick if he wanted to attend or not. He’d be busy in the orchard this time of year, she knew, so she’d understand if he couldn’t make it, but she would meet him at the clinic if he could.

  He called back within five minutes saying he’d be there.

  He even offered her a lift. But no, she didn’t want to be picked up. It was enough that she was agreeing that he come, surely? She didn’t want them to look like a couple any more than they already would.

  On the day, she arrived five minutes early for the scan. Nick was already there, seated in the crowded waiting room, half-heartedly leafing through a women’s magazine. He stood but she waved him down, doing her best to put a lid on the irritating buzz she felt at seeing him, and went to the counter to register. This wasn’t exactly a date. It wasn’t like he was here to see her.

  There was nowhere she could sit but beside him, which started her wishing she was here alone, after all. ‘Hi,’ she said, feeling strangely nervous. Which was daft when she’d slept with the guy, but this was a whole new experience and she was pretty sure that no dummies guide to the aftermath could have prepared her for this.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

  ‘Horrible, if you must know. I’ve drunk the equivalent of Sydney Harbour. So if they’re not on time, this waiting room is going to be awash with yachts and ferries soon. You might want to grab a life jacket while you can.’

  He had the nerve to laugh.

  ‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘it’s not funny from where I’m sitting.’

  ‘Ms Faraday?’ a clinician called.

  ‘Bingo,’ she said, wincing at the need to pee as she got to her feet. ‘We’re on.’ She sensed Nick’s hesitation. He was still sitting down. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Are you sure? You don’t want me to wait?’

  ‘Don’t you want to see your baby?’

  He was up in a heartbeat, his smile so warm and real she had to look away, because it wasn’t about her and it wasn’t for her. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and she was beginning to understand how much this meant to him, and guilt piled on guilt that she’d ever imagined she could exclude him.

  Ten minutes later, she was lying on the table with Nick sitting by her side.

  ‘First off, I’ll do the measurements,’ the sonographer explained, lifting up Sophie’s shirt to expose her bump, ‘and then I’ll turn the screen around so you can both see. Okay, here comes the gel, it might be a bit cold.’

  It was, but it was Nick who said, ‘Wow,’ his eyes firmly fixed on her belly. ‘That’s coming along.’

  ‘Almost one-third along,’ she replied, feeling exposed and trying not to feel vulnerable. The last time he’d seen her this undressed, she’d been at her slimmest, and she’d thought, her hottest. It was wrong to worry what he thought about how she looked now. It was pointless to crave his approval, but she already felt unusually big and awkward, her body doing all kinds of things according to a pre-set plan she had no control over.

  But she saw no revulsion in his eyes, only something that looked like wonder as they traced the clinician’s hand across her bump.

  It seemed to take forever, the sonographer turning the transducer this way and that, frowning a little as she concentrated hard on her task, clicking on her keyboard here and there to take measurements. All the while, the silence in the room stretched out. Sophie just wanted her to be done so they could see how the baby looked, grab a picture, and she could go pee, but the sonographer kept going, asking Sophie to move position a couple of times to get a clearer shot.

  Finally, she looked up from her screen. ‘Will you excuse me a moment? I just have to consult with the doctor.’

  Chills went down Sophie’s spine. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be right back, I promise.’ The door closed behi
nd her and she was gone.

  Sophie blinked up at Nick. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ said Nick, but he didn’t look too confident.

  ‘Then why would she go? The last time the sonographer didn’t go out to consult with anyone, she just turned the screen around after ten minutes to show me. Lucy said the same thing happened at her scan a few weeks back. This is a test for abnormalities. They don’t go out of the room to consult with someone else if there’s nothing wrong. There’s something she doesn’t want us to see.’

  ‘She said not to worry.’

  ‘How can I not worry?’

  ‘Hey,’ he said, and he wrapped his large hand around hers, squeezing her fingers. ‘We’re in this together, okay? Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it together.’

  He had no business to be holding her hand. No business at all. But she felt shaky and afraid, and his hand was warm and strong and she felt secure with her hand in his. Safer, and so she left it there.

  And something about that connection made her need to confess. She looked up at him, trying to put on a brave face but knowing she was failing miserably. ‘When I first found out I was pregnant, I wanted it to go away. I willed it to go away. But what if something’s wrong, now? What if I wanted it so bad, I made something happen?’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ he said. ‘Don’t think like that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t work that way. You can’t make bad things happen just because you wished for something different.’

  She sniffed and confessed something she’d never have expected to. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

  He nodded, his jaw set hard. ‘So am I.’

  ‘I’m sorry to keep you,’ the sonographer said, returning with a similarly white-coated woman. ‘This is Doctor Jameson.’

  ‘Ms Faraday,’ she said, before turning to Nick.

  ‘Nick Pasquale,’ he said. ‘I’m the father.’

  ‘I just need to have a look at some pictures here,’ she said, as the sonographer got back to work on Sophie’s tummy. ‘It won’t take a moment, I promise.’