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She shuddered as she shook the memory away, and concentrated on what Alex Attwood, the team leader, was saying.
‘Oliver, Kate and Clare, you’ll all be working with Angus tomorrow. Clare, I know you’ve settled into your flat, so maybe you could show Oliver where his is. Did I tell you he’s taking the other flat in Rod’s house?’
Of course Alex hadn’t told her! Excited as she’d been at coming back to Australia and getting a job in such an elite unit, she’d still have remembered if someone had said, Oh, and a chap called Oliver Rankin will be living next door! Not only remembered, but packed up and left.
No, she didn’t run from men any more, but she’d have had time to at least think about this situation, to prepare herself.
To prepare Emily?
Oh, sweet reason, what was she going to do about Emily? For one crazy moment she thought of phoning the school and asking if they could take her as a full boarder rather than a weekly one, but it was hard enough on both of them to be separated five days a week.
Alex had turned to Oliver, and was explaining. ‘The flat I arranged for you is in my father-in-law’s house just down the road from the hospital. Rod Talbot, my father-in-law, is in a wheelchair so he has the ground-floor apartment and has turned upstairs into two small but comfortable flats. Of course, you don’t have to stay there. Once you get to know the area, you might find somewhere that suits you better. Because of the proximity to the hospital, the flats are easy to let—not that Rod needs the money.’
‘Rod Talbot?’ Oliver repeated, his voice stirring so many memories in Clare’s body she found herself shivering. ‘Is he the writer?’
Alex nodded, and while Oliver talked about how much he enjoyed Rod Talbot’s books—Oliver having time to read?—Clare muddled over the other information she’d received. The bit about Oliver being in the other flat in Rod Talbot’s house—the flat with the door right opposite her door. Oliver living so close, sleeping so close…
A tremor of memory ran through her body before she brought her mind firmly back to the major problem.
Oliver spending his weekends next door to her and Emily!
Once again her reaction was flight. They’d go back to the States; she’d always find work there. But she steeled herself against such weakness—flight wasn’t an option. She wasn’t an emotional young woman any longer; she was a grown-up, mature—a qualified and respected career woman with an important position in a team that saved children’s lives.
Even if she did feel like a teenager right now, with all the confusion and angst and dreadful insecurity that came with the transition from child to adult.
The meeting was breaking up, the anaesthetist from the second team taking the new surgeon off to the child-care centre. Dear heaven, had Oliver married again? Would he have children?
No, he’d been adamant about that, about never having children. That was why they’d split up. To a certain extent Clare had understood, because it had been soon after he’d found out a little about his own past, found out his life had been built upon a lie.
Thinking about that time—how hurt Oliver had been—diverted her thoughts from Oliver’s marital arrangements, although if there was a wife, what would she think about Em?
It was all Clare could do not to wail out loud. How could this be happening to her? And now, when both she and Em were so excited to be back in Australia?
She pulled herself together with an effort.
Best not to think about Em! Not here, not now…
And it was useless to be speculating about Oliver’s marital state, let alone whether he had children or not, although Rod had told Clare hers was the larger of the two flats, so a wife and children could hardly fit into the other one.
This realisation made her feel a little easier for all of five seconds, until it occurred to her he could have left his wife and kids—if he’d weakened on the children stand—in Melbourne while he settled in.
‘Clare.’
Her name in his voice, a sound she’d never thought to hear again. No-one said her name as Oliver did! And no-one else, with just that one word, could send those stupid shivers down her spine.
After ten years?
It was unbelievable.
She’d heard of muscle memory—sportspeople talked about it. Was there such a thing as nerve memory, that every nerve in her body remembered…?
He was close now, waiting for her. The composure he wore like a well-cut suit to hide the emotional Italian inside him was so familiar she wanted to reach out and touch him, to feel the warmth of the man beneath that cool facade.
Was she mad?
Touching Oliver would be disastrous—had always been disastrous!—because one touch had never been enough.
She dug through her memory for an image of that last morning, not long before Christmas, when, all composure gone, fury and resentment had flared from his body and burnt in his eyes. That was the Oliver she needed to keep in mind.
Which was okay as far as resisting his appeal went, but what about the rest? What about Emily?
Clare felt physically sick, nausea spreading through her body. How could this have happened? She pulled herself together with a mammoth effort, hoping outwardly at least she might look composed.
‘So we’re to be neighbours,’ she said, offering a polite smile, while her bewildered heart beat a wild tattoo inside her chest, and her thoughts ran this way and that like mice in a maze.
‘It seems that way.’
Were his words strained? Was Oliver feeling the same mix of disbelief, and confusion—and surely not excitement?—as she was?
Of course he wouldn’t be. For one thing, Oliver didn’t do confusion.
Her heart skittered again but this time it was nothing to do with excitement—more like dread and fear and trepidation. She had to say something.
‘I did write to you, you know.’
It sounded pathetic but at least it caught his attention.
‘When?’ he demanded, his voice hard and tight.
So hard and tight the tiny bit of courage that had prompted Clare to tell him faded, which meant the next words came out all breathless and confused.
‘End of January, and again later in the year.
‘You wrote to me at the end of January? Wasn’t that a bit late, considering it was before Christmas you walked out? I’d definitely moved on by then, physically and emotionally.’
Pain stabbed through Clare’s body at the last words, but what was he saying?
‘You didn’t get any letters from me—then or later?’
Glacial green—that’s how Oliver’s eyes could look…and were looking now.
‘No.’
He shook his head to emphasise the word and, knowing he would never lie to her, Clare felt a stab of deep resentment—not to mention pain—as she realised he didn’t know about her pregnancy. He didn’t know he had a daughter, a daughter who would be right there in the flat next door to his come Friday!
She had to tell him!
Easy enough to have the thought but how to do it?
And when, and where?
This was hardly an appropriate time or place and, what’s more, he was talking to her again, saying something, although with the wild furore going on her mind it was a struggle to make out the words.
Forcing herself to focus, she realised his conversation was nothing more than the polite inquiries of old acquaintances catching up.
‘But a perfusionist? What made you change course? What happened to life on the stage?’
Clare cast an anxious glance behind him, but there was no-one nearby to overhear an almost honest answer.
‘Long story short, I moved to Queensland and studied science. I met a perfusionist who used to work with Alex when he was in Melbourne. I learnt more about it and decided it was the dream job as far as I was concerned. I began my studies in Brisbane, then went to Chicago to get more qualifications and experience, and here I am.’
Oliver knew he was staring at her, replacing his mental image of a twenty-five-year-old soap-star Clare with this more mature adult version—more mature, and even more beautiful. And the reaction in his chest was an ectopic heartbeat, nothing more. Ectopic heartbeats happened to some people all the time, and most people some time in their life.…
But if he read the signs correctly, she was feeling even more strain at this unexpected meeting than he was.
‘Alex was saying we’re going to be neighbours.’
Could he really be having this stilted conversation with Clare? Clare who had laughed and loved and thrown herself into life with enormous energy and enthusiasm? Thrown herself into their relationship, making every moment they were together special and intense.
Until the day he’d told her he didn’t want a baby and, unable to believe he’d never mentioned this before, unable to even discuss it with him, she’d walked out.…
And he’d let her go, furious at her lack of understanding of his situation—his feelings in all of it! How could he have contemplated fatherhood when he didn’t know who his own father was, didn’t know himself? And how could he have considered marriage when his closest experience of it—his mother’s three attempts—had been so disastrous?
He was reminding himself of this justification when Clare spoke again.
‘You were saying you’ve read our landlord’s books?’
‘There’s no need to sound so surprised,’ he grumbled, memories of the past bothering him more than he’d thought possible. ‘I’ve time to read these days.’
She smiled at him and he felt his heart miss another beat. Frequent ectopic heartbeats might be indicative of a problem of some kind, his medical brain told him.
‘You didn’t have time for any relaxation back then,’ she said.
Except with you, he thought but didn’t say, for there was a barrier between them, like a glass wall through which he could see and hear but not touch. Not that he would touch her, of course. No matter how much his fingers tingled at the thought.
Of course there’d be a barrier between them. It had been ten years; they’d split up. There were issues—wasn’t that the word people used these days? So many unresolved issues it was more like a brick rampart than a glass wall between them.
Back to the present!
‘My car’s illegally parked downstairs. Can I follow you to the flat?’
‘You can give me a lift.’
The moment the words were out of her mouth Clare regretted them. She needed to get away from Oliver, not spend more time with him, especially not more time in the privacy a car offered.
She needed time to think things through, to work out how on earth she was going to tell him about Emily.
Not that he deserved to know! He hadn’t wanted a child.
The tiny whisper from one corner of her brain was tempting, but she slapped it down. Of course he’d have to know, and now they’d come together, didn’t Em deserve to know her father? Hadn’t Clare always told Em that one day they’d find him so she could meet him?
But ‘one day’ in Clare’s mind had been when Em was eighteen or so—an adult who would understand the traumatic period of time that had been Clare’s pregnancy, not to mention the aftermath of Emily’s birth!
She should have directed him to the flat; it was just down the road. But here he was, saying he’d be delighted—ever polite, Oliver Rankin—and putting out a hand to usher her towards the door.
She moved, just in time to avoid contact with him, but knew that as well as the Emily problem, she had to sort herself out, to strengthen her body against the insidious physical weakness just seeing him again had caused. There was too much at stake for her to be distracted by attraction.
‘I need to speak to Alex about something, so I’ll meet you downstairs. The easiest way is to take the blue exit from the car park. I’ll be down there near the gate in five minutes.’
Alex was still at the front of the meeting room, stacking some papers he’d spread out earlier. What excuse could she give? What question could she ask?
Had he noticed her hesitation that he looked up?
‘Everything all right, Clare?’ he asked. ‘Emily settled in at school?’
‘Just fine and dandy, and yes, she loves it,’ she replied, hovering by her chair while Oliver left the room. But Alex’s question had reminded Clare that Alex and Annie knew Emily, and Rod knew Emily—it wasn’t as if you could keep a nine-year-old a secret.
Clare dropped her briefcase, which gave her an excuse to sit down. Knowing she couldn’t just sit, she leant down to retrieve the leather case, fiddling with the catches on it while she tried valiantly to regain the poise on which she prided herself, the composure she’d fought so hard to achieve!
‘I only know of Angus from his colleagues, but Oliver worked with us earlier this year,’ Alex was saying. ‘He’s a fine surgeon, and if Angus is even half as good as people say he is, we’ve got a team that you’ll discover is every bit as good as the ones you’ve already worked with. At least, I hope you find it that way.’
Clare smiled at him. He was so nice! He and Annie, his wife, had invited her and Emily for dinner the previous Saturday, and seeing their relationship—the obvious love they felt for each other—had left Clare wondering why relationships worked for some people and not for others.
Her body tightened at the memory…
Ached…
* * *
Oliver eased his car out of the parking space, thankful he hadn’t been clamped. The signs to the blue exit were clear and easy to follow, but it took some manoeuvring to reach it. Clare came hurrying towards him, the movement blurring her image so he saw the beautiful girl who’d first caught his attention—the girl he’d thought was his for ever—running eagerly to meet him.
He couldn’t fool himself about ectopic heartbeats any longer; his body was reacting to this bizarre reunion, to her presence, although that could be explained away as well. It was a while since he’d had a relationship with a woman, put off women by the words of his most recent lover who’d informed him he was nothing but an empty shell of a man, with no understanding of love whatsoever.
The woman Clare, not the girl he’d known, climbed into the car and pointed ahead.
‘We go through the lights and straight down that road across from the park. I think most of the team seem to live along here, though maybe not the nurses, who’d be local Sydney people. It’s such a pleasant walk to work I haven’t considered buying a car yet.’
I, not we, Oliver thought, then he had to ask.
‘You’re on the team list as C. Jackson? You never married?’
He sensed her withdrawal and knew the glass wall was very definitely back in place.
‘Once, for a very brief time. It was a mistake,’ she said lightly, turning to look out the window at the houses they were passing. ‘We’re four more down, the house with the red door. There’s a common foyer on the ground floor, and stairs up to a landing. The two flats open off that. They’re fully furnished and very comfortable but I guess Alex already told you that.’
She might as well have said, Mind your own business, changing the subject from marriage to accommodation so swiftly, yet the thought of Clare with someone else had sent a shaft of pain through his belly.
Ridiculous, of course; he’d been with other women.
