Matilda Next Door - Kelly Hunter Page 0,33

and sweets was with Maggie for her homestead B & B. Now it’s wedding functions and plated desserts for three hundred people.’

‘Does it make you happy? Your work?’

‘Yes.’ No second guesses. ‘Doesn’t run to Harrods sheet sets or Mercedes four-wheel drives—which I truly cannot accept as a gift—but I’m happy with it. If nothing else, London showed me just how much I value my friends, my family and the life I’m living. I can’t complain about that.’

‘But you are still on holidays. Technically. And you’ve no burning desire to return to London? Because there’s a first-class airfare with your name on it, if you do want to head back there and finish out the month.’

‘No.’ She tried to summon the enthusiasm she’d once had for London adventures and came up empty. ‘I’m done.’

‘Your room here’s booked for the next three days,’ he told her. ‘You could stay on.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged as if he didn’t quite know the answer. ‘Self-interest is part of it. You could help out with Rowan. Keep her with you when I take Joe to the hospital tomorrow. I wouldn’t say no.’

‘Oh. I guess self-interest is all well and good.’

‘Making amends is part of it, too. If you stay on and have fun in Melbourne, I won’t feel quite so bad about derailing your holiday.’

‘Oh, I think we both know I wasn’t exactly having a ball over there.’

‘But you might have a ball here. You don’t know yet. Use me and Joe and my … Rowan as a familiar base to strike out from.’

It was starting to sound tempting. ‘How many extra days did you say you’d booked the apartment for?’

His smug smile shouldn’t have been so endearing. ‘However many you want.’

*

The next few days passed in a blur of window shopping through the alleyways of Melbourne, babysitting Rowan whenever Henry and Joe were both at the hospital, and bringing back luscious takeaway meals for everyone to share. Both apartments Henry had secured had balconies that overlooked a leafy green park, and as far as Tilly was concerned those balconies became her favourite places to be. They ate there as a group and caught up with the doings of the day. It wasn’t a farm kitchen table, but it was close.

Rowan hadn’t taken too well to jet lag or the change of hemispheres. She had a tendency to sleep during the day and stay awake at night. Joe went to bed at around eleven, and Henry kept Rowan with them until then, but if she fussed after that both he and Rowan would like as not end up in Tilly’s apartment so Joe could get some sleep.

They’d set her living room up as baby HQ.

It had made sense at the time.

It made considerably less sense that her late-night disaster times with Henry and Rowan were the very best part of her day.

She had to leave, and soon, because this was not her family. Henry was not her beloved, Rowan was not her baby, and getting too attached to them would only set her up for a world of hurt.

‘I’m thinking I’ll head off tomorrow,’ she said at dinner on Sunday night and stopped the chewing dead. Grandfather Joe said nothing.

Henry swallowed hard and reached for his beer. ‘Any particular reason why?’

‘Homesickness?’ She tried it on for size and found it a fair enough fit. ‘Not that I haven’t enjoyed this, or London.’ She cast a quick glance in Joe’s direction. ‘Which I enjoyed immensely.’ Still rocking that lie.

Henry’s level glance challenged her need to do so, but he kept his word.

‘You guys have everything under control here,’ she continued. ‘Beth’s improving every day, yay, and I really should be moving along.’

‘You underestimate your contribution here,’ said Joe finally. ‘It’s been our pleasure and our very good fortune to have you stay on this long.’

Tilly smiled. ‘Always the flatterer.’

‘It’s the truth.’ Henry, for whom the truth was sacrosanct, was a little harder to dismiss.

‘I’ve enjoyed it too, don’t get me wrong. But if anything, this trip has taught me that Wirralong’s my home, and I need to get back to the big blue skies and an open horizon and the way it makes me feel.’

Henry pinned her with his overwhelmingly intense gaze. ‘How does it make you feel?’

‘Fed.’ She couldn’t explain it any other way. ‘I’ll take the bus.’

‘Why take a bus when you have a car?’

‘Because that’s not my car. Henry, we’ve had this conversation.’

‘You should both go,’ said Joe. ‘Nothing to do here but wait until Beth’s