One Summer Between Friends Read online

  But then, she’d never wanted kids, either. Never planned on having them, and never understood how some women rushed headlong into motherhood without a second thought, like it was an inevitable part of life or like they didn’t have a choice. Jules had never felt the urge to breed. Weren’t there enough people already on this planet, let alone this island? And with all that was wrong in the world, all the predictions of doom and gloom, why would you bring children into it?

  But then she’d had Della, and somewhere along the line her daughter had done what Jules had thought unimaginable. Della had turned her into a mother.

  Now it was no longer enough to drift through life, satisfied with scraping through Year 12 because it was all she’d thought she’d ever need here on the island with only herself to take care of. Her daughter deserved more. Better. Especially given she was growing up without a father.

  Maybe it was time she stopped thinking about it and did something about it. She’d look into administration diplomas by correspondence, after Della had gone to bed. There had to be something she could find that would earn her some extra money.

  A car pulled up outside, doors slamming over the sound of the wind. Voices, and the sound of a child running. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost think—

  The museum door flung open.

  ‘Mummy!’

  ‘Della,’ Jules said, opening her arms for her daughter, who had her favourite bear wedged under her arm, to hurtle into them. ‘Hello, this is a surprise.’

  Her mother appeared behind Della, pushing the door closed against the weather as she stamped her feet on the mat. Pru Callahan huffed out a breath. ‘Well, it’s certainly wild and woolly out there.’

  Jules stood, her daughter’s hand in hers. ‘What brings you both here? It’s only fifteen minutes until I finish. Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, no, nothing’s wrong,’ said Pru, waving her concerns away. ‘It’s just that I had to go out for something. I thought that I might as well drop off Della on my way, in case you turned up and I wasn’t there.’

  Jules’s eyes narrowed, her senses prickling. ‘What did you suddenly have to go out for in this weather?’

  ‘Onions,’ her mother said. ‘I was short on onions.’ Her lips pursed tight.

  ‘And you couldn’t have just called me to pick some up on the way?’

  Pru smiled too brightly. ‘I didn’t want to bother you, dear. And I didn’t think you’d mind me dropping Della off here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jules, ‘it’s so inconvenient and all, living—what? Seven hundred metres apart?’

  ‘Exactly. So now you don’t have to bother. I knew you wouldn’t mind.’ Pru leaned down to give her granddaughter a kiss. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Della. Be good for your mummy.’

  ‘I will, Nana,’ Della said, winding her thin arms around her grandmother’s neck for a squeeze. Then she asked if she could go and see Horny, and darted off once she had her mother’s approval to see her favourite exhibit. The dramatic bones of the long extinct armoured turtle, with its horny skull and spiked tail, were captured as if in mid growl.

  ‘You shouldn’t let her call it that,’ said Pru once Della was out of earshot.

  ‘Why not? It’s got horns. Besides, Della gave it that name.’

  Her mother’s lips tightened into a thin line. ‘Well, I’ll be off then.’

  ‘To fetch your onions.’

  Pru gave a weak smile and turned. Jules watched her go. Onions, my arse, she thought. She didn’t believe it for a second.

  3

  It was 3.45 when Frankie called to say the partners were ready for her. Sarah’s breath caught, the summons to the boardroom like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. The waiting was over. It was happening.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Frankie, giving Sarah a thumbs up as she headed to the rarefied air of the partnership floor.

  The boardroom had been fitted out sometime in the eighties, with black leather and chrome directors’ chairs, a smoked glass table and beige vertical blinds to screen the glass walls. A dusty artificial plant languished in the corner. Sarah had no doubt that the current fashion for retro was going to give this particular look a wide berth. If she was promoted today, she’d put a boardroom makeover at the top of her to-do list.

  ‘I suppose you’re wondering why we asked you here,’ old Gerard Fortescue said as he welcomed her to the table where the three principals of the chartered accounting firm to which she’d devoted her entire working life sat. Philip Robbins and Simon Lancaster smiled at her encouragingly, nodding like reporters during a television interview.

  Sarah took her cue from them, and smiled back—if they were smiling and nodding, that had to be a good sign, didn’t it?—before giving the obligatory response: ‘Yes, I did wonder.’ No point telling the others that Gerard had all but given the game away hours ago.

  Philip cleared his throat, twirling a fountain pen in his hands. Twenty years younger than the seventy-something Gerard, but rapidly assuming the self-assured mantle of elder dinosaur, he leaned back in his chair and said, ‘Tell us, Sarah, how long have you been with us at Fortescue, Robbins and Lancaster?’

  Sarah tried not to let her impatience show. Clearly they were intent on making her work for this. And even though they were all still smiling at her, she tried hard not to get ahead of herself. Crushed hopes were a fact of life in the dinosaurs’ club that was this accounting firm, a world where diversity and equality hadn’t yet squeezed in through the seals in the glass walls.

  Until today? Please let today be the day things changed. She deserved it. She knew she did.

  ‘Seventeen years,’ she answered, before adding, ‘eighteen next January.’ Might as well pile it on thick and make them see how much she deserved this promotion. ‘I joined as a graduate accountant, earned my chartered accounting qualification, and I’ve worked here ever since.’

  ‘And you seem to have a good rapport with the clients—and the staff too, for that matter.’

  ‘I’d certainly like to think so.’

  More nodding. More fountain pen twirling. Vague murmurings and eye glances.

  Simon said, ‘We knew you were the right person to ask.’

  Sarah held her breath, fruitlessly willing her heart to slow the cartwheels it was turning in her chest. Surely this time …

  ‘As you’re probably aware,’ Philip said, removing his glasses, ‘Gerard is thinking of pulling back from the coal face. That’s going to create quite a vacuum at the top.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, licking lips suddenly, impossibly dry.

  ‘And so, the three of us got together and decided that perhaps this was time for a little cultural change at FRL.’ He smiled benignly. ‘I don’t think any one of us would argue that it’s not before time.’

  Gerard guffawed, the white shirt covering his pot belly shuddering under his clasped hands.

  ‘Which is where you come in,’ said Simon, leaning towards her, forearms on the table, hands clenched, making her every last nerve quiver in anticipation. ‘We respect the relationship you have with the staff and clients, Sarah, and we trust your opinion. So with that in mind, we want to get your thoughts on Dillon Crombie.’

  Sarah blinked, her quivering nerves scrambling into a sudden U-turn and colliding into each other in confusion. ‘Dillon?’ she managed in what sounded like a squeak. ‘What?’

  ‘You see,’ Philip said, ‘a partner under the age of thirty—nobody could accuse us of being stuck in the Stone Age then.’

  ‘A partner? Dillon?’ But Sarah suspected nobody heard her over the chortles and the chorus of ‘Hear, hear’.

  ‘And he’s on top of all the social media,’ Simon said. ‘He did an excellent job on—what was it? Twitter?—during the last inter-firm golf day.’

  Philip nodded sagely. ‘Not to mention golfing off a nine handicap. Most competitive we’ve been since Richard left.’

  Sarah blinked, not just at the firm’s sudden embracing of social media, but because m
ention of her bastard ex put him right back in her head, telling her she’d been stupid to ever think she’d get promoted by this lot. And maybe you shouldn’t think ill of the dead, but sometimes it was impossible to think nice thoughts of them, especially when it looked like they’d been right all along.

  She shifted in her chair, keeping her features neutral, rather than displaying the increasingly gutted feeling gnawing at her insides. But that was the trouble with experiencing such a jubilant high: the low following it was so much deeper. And the stupid thing was that she knew that the magic never lasted. That it could turn to despair. Look at Richard’s proposal. Look at learning she was pregnant. Why had she imagined today would be any different, when neither of those had ended well either?

  ‘So,’ she said, needing to put a lid on the tidal wave of the past before it overwhelmed her, ‘why do you need me?’

  ‘Because you’ve been on the office floor so long,’ said Gerard, without a hint of irony. ‘You’ve got your finger on the pulse. This is a big change to how we usually do things. How do you think promoting Dillon to partner will go down with the staff?’

  They had to be kidding. Surely they were kidding? But no, nobody was laughing. Instead they were watching her intently. Waiting for her to tell them what a stroke of genius this was. She crossed her legs, clasped her hands over her knees and sniffed. ‘Well, perhaps it’s not such a big cultural change, is it? It’s not like you’re promoting, say, a woman.’

  The three men blinked at each other, until the light dawned and, almost as one, they looked suddenly aghast.

  ‘No, no, Sarah,’ said Philip, with a pathetic little laugh. ‘You don’t think—surely you don’t think we’re overlooking you?’

  ‘Oh dear, it’s not like that at all,’ Simon added, appearing decidedly earnest. And shifty, as he glanced at the men seated either side.

  ‘That never even entered our heads,’ said Gerard, and for the first time, Sarah actually believed one of them. He frowned. ‘Is there a problem, Sarah? We thought you were content, beavering away running the superannuation section.’

  What he meant was she’d been here so long they considered her part of the furniture.

  ‘Oh, no problem,’ she lied, crossing her legs and parking her clenched hands over her knees. ‘No problem at all. In fact, I’m sure that someone who can tweet like a champion and tee off like a pro has exactly the qualities this firm needs in its next partner. Nobody could possibly accuse Fortescue, Robbins and Lancaster of being a bunch of dinosaurs then, could they?’

  Much shaking of heads and grunting ensued, until Simon twigged, and his head suddenly angled towards her, his eyes narrowing in question.

  But Sarah was already up and out of her chair. ‘If that’s all then, I really should get back to work.’

  She left with a bad smell clinging to her clothes: the rank smell of crushed hopes and shattered dreams. But there was no shedding the scent just yet, because when she stepped out of the boardroom, there he was. Dillon, waiting to go in. Dillon, the wunderkind with the social media skills and the enviable golf handicap. Not to mention the requisite pair of Y fronts.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said with that bloody bleached-tooth smile and easy charm, ‘we have to stop meeting like this.’

  Sarah didn’t make a habit of snarling, but it took everything she had to turn her lips into something approaching a smile. ‘Dino, I suspect you might be right.’

  His smile slipped. ‘Dino?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Dillon,’ she said. ‘I was a few million’—years—‘miles away.’

  Sarah dropped her mobile phone onto her desk and flopped into her office chair. So that was it. No just deserts. No smashing the glass ceiling. No promotion to partnership. Nothing but ‘we thought you were content’. And was she content? Hell no.

  There was a brief knock and Frankie stuck her head into the room. ‘How’d it go?’ she said, and in the next breath, when she’d had time to take in Sarah’s expression: ‘Shit,’ she said, leaning back against the door to close it. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Gerard is leaving, like everyone’s been expecting.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they’re offering Dillon Crombie a partnership.’

  ‘What?’ Frankie pushed herself away from the door. ‘And not you? Dillon’s barely out of short pants.’

  ‘Closer to thirty, by all accounts.’

  ‘Still, he’s only been at the firm about ten minutes.’

  Sarah shrugged. ‘More than a year.’

  ‘And that makes him more qualified than you?’

  ‘He also tweets a mean inter-firm golf day. How does one compete with that, exactly? I don’t even like golf.’

  ‘They’re idiots.’

  ‘Yeah, well, they’re partner idiots, so they get to call the shots. Thing is, Frankie, I’ve been hanging out for this promotion for the last three years. I really thought this was it. I just don’t know where to go from here.’

  ‘Well, I hate to say this because I’d hate to see you go, but you need to find somewhere else, somewhere they might actually appreciate you and your expertise. Let this lot try to figure their way around the minefield of the superannuation provisions without you.’

  ‘I should,’ she said, gnawing on her bottom lip, wishing she felt more confident about the idea of applying for jobs, but she’d scored this one after an information session she’d attended at uni. Looking back, it had been a kind of speed dating event between an auditorium full of accounting firm representatives and a queue of hopeful soon-to-be graduates. She’d earned herself three offers from which she’d selected FRL. She’d never had a real job interview before. She’d never even had to knock up a CV. God, maybe she was the dinosaur …

  But she could hardly stay at Fortescue, Robbins and Lancaster. Not now. She had to do something.

  Her father’s request from yesterday drifted into her mind like a seaweed-choked net drifted down from the surface of the sea. Your mother thought you might be able to do it … come home for a while …

  She swallowed. Just because she’d missed out on this promotion didn’t mean anything had changed. She could hardly swan off now when she still had a mortgage to pay.

  ‘Are you going?’ Frankie said.

  ‘No.’ Because it was more than being in close proximity with her mother for six months. It was about lies and hurt and betrayal and the evidence of all three, and she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to face up to it all. ‘I can’t.’

  Frankie angled her head. ‘But they’ll be wanting to make the announcement at the meeting and if you’re not there …’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Because she knew the moment Dillon’s promotion was announced, every female employee would turn to Sarah for her reaction. She was supposed to be a role model to them, encouraging them to do their best. And she’d tried to be. But what kind of role model got rolled by a guy a decade her junior? If she didn’t go, people would think she was hunkered down with a box of tissues, mopping up her tears and licking her wounds.

  ‘Let me know,’ said Frankie. ‘I better get back to reception. Will you be okay?’

  ‘Thanks, Frankie, but I’m pissed off, not suicidal.’

  ‘Good thing too.’

  ‘Besides,’ Sarah said with a weary smile, ‘I wouldn’t give the bastards the satisfaction.’

  Frankie punched the air. ‘Atta girl!’

  Frankie wasn’t gone ten seconds before Sarah was on her feet, too restless to sit, wandering the confines of her office. It didn’t take long, there wasn’t a lot of space between the desk and bookshelf and filing cabinet. God, she’d been a fool to believe it might actually happen today, but then, she’d been a fool to think it would ever happen. Richard had tried to tell her, but she’d believed that if she kept her head down and did her work, sooner or later the cream would rise to the surface and she’d be rewarded.

  Idiot.

  Therapy, Sarah told herself as she stirred the pasta sauce for the lasagne late that evening,
the kitchen smelling of garlic, herbs and tomatoes. After what had happened today, after the crashing disappointment of a decision that had gone the wrong way, after the humiliation of fronting up to the promotion announcement, she badly needed some therapy. The afternoon’s meeting had been every bit as excruciating as she’d known it would be, especially when she’d gone to fill her glass and found Dillon standing next to her at the bar and she’d had to find a smile and congratulate him. Not that she hadn’t had plenty of practice hiding what she really felt over the years. Putting on a brave face. Smiling when the inner fabric of your world was being torn apart and all your hopes and dreams shattered along with it. She’d become a master at putting on a mask and hiding what was going on inside. She just hadn’t been expecting to employ those skills today. She’d been so damned sure.

  And so damned stupid to tell her father that she was being made a partner. How the hell was she going to tell him the truth without him thinking that meant she’d be going home after all?

  The sauce simmered on the stove. Her mother’s words simmered in her head. You can catch up with your old friends again. It’ll be lovely.

  Lovely.

  As if all Sarah had been waiting for these last five years was an opportunity to reconnect with Floss and Jules.

  Okay, so the three of them had been inseparable as kids. They’d ridden their bikes to a tiny school where shoes were optional and friends were just as likely to be your cousins, whether once, twice or three times removed. After school they’d search for fragments of coral in the nearby lagoon overlooked by the slumbering giants of Mount Lidgbird and Mount Gower, or they’d ride their bikes to Ned’s Beach and feed the trevally and silver mullet and bright blue parrot fish swirling around their legs, their meaty, slick bodies surprisingly warm.

  They’d been inseparable in spirit, even when Sarah had taken off to Sydney and boarding school to complete her higher school certificate while Jules and Floss had finished their schooling by correspondence, preferring to stay on the island. But Sarah had still come home and they’d spent every holiday together, the long summer breaks filled with the promise of tomorrow.