Matilda Next Door - Kelly Hunter Page 0,41

work and progress. He’d take Rowan with him when he left, leaving Tilly free to make her deliveries and get on with her day. She’d then see him again around dinner time when she headed over to Red Hill to spend the night.

Not that Tilly needed to spend the night on Rowan’s account anymore.

Henry and his daughter had bonded.

As a package deal, they made her heart sing. As individuals they each brought something to her life that had been missing.

She didn’t care that her mother thought she might be moving into a relationship too quickly.

She ignored those niggling doubts that said Henry would tire of Wirralong sooner rather than later.

Tried not to notice the way he emerged from his office in the evenings, eyes bright and energised by his contact with his colleagues in London.

Actuarial analysis, he called it. She’d looked it up and was none the wiser. Using mathematical models to help global corporations and governments make decisions, he told her next, and she could tell his thirst for knowledge had never faded.

Strike one against compatibility, but he could woo her onto the verandah of an evening with fresh pâté that he’d cadged from Maggie and good wine that he had no problem procuring, and he never made her feel intellectually inferior, even though she knew she must be.

He presented her with a voucher for private cooking classes with a Hilton Hotel sous chef who was visiting Melbourne next month. Came home with an opal bracelet he’d bought in town, but not from any shop, no. He’d heard at the Post Office that his grandmother’s friend Maureen Buchannan was years behind on her land rates and facing eviction and so was trying to sell off her jewellery in a last-ditch attempt to pay her debts.

He’d paid thousands of dollars for a sweet little opal triplet bracelet, nothing more than a tourist trinket, and when Maureen had asked who it was for he’d said Tilly, so now she had to have it or let him be called a liar.

And then somehow a silver brooch with a deep blue oval opal at its centre had joined Maureen’s bracelet and the brooch was no trinket. It glittered with magic and a life all its own, and it looked old, very old, and very expensive. To go with your blue scarf, he’d said, and wouldn’t tell her where it came from, only that no one in Wirralong had ever worn it. Those were the things he did, and how could she not be impressed by him? Fall for him. Champion him.

*

‘Do you have time to take a drive with me and Rowan this morning?’

Henry had been uncharacteristically sombre at breakfast. Out of sorts since his meeting with London colleagues last night. ‘When?’

‘Now?’

Now meant five am. The light was on in the kitchen, but it wasn’t yet light outside. ‘Where?’

‘Just up to the top of Red Hill.’ The jagged, rocky outcrop after which the property was named.

Again, she had the feeling there was something off about his request. ‘Why?’

‘Amanda was cremated overnight. There weren’t many people at the service. No family. A couple of work colleagues, a couple of neighbours. And I wasn’t there and neither was Rowan, and it doesn’t feel right. I thought I might light a fire, say a few words or more likely no words. But do something to mark her passing. Even if it’s too little, too late.’

She hadn’t even thought about Amanda’s funeral arrangements or what might still need doing back in the UK. Too busy being in love with her life. ‘Of course I’ll come.’

They piled into the 4WD in silence and Henry drove and was quick to put the radio on.

Tilly had questions, a million of them now that her happy mindless bubble had burst. ‘Have you been in contact with Amanda’s family over in the UK? Did they arrange the funeral?’

‘Amanda had no family. Just an ex-husband. I arranged the funeral.’

Tilly frowned. ‘Amanda was married?’

‘By the time I met her, she’d been divorced for several years. In her will, she left her ex a lump sum equal to the amount of money she took with her out of the marriage. She called him a good man, just not the right man, and credited him with helping her realise her potential. The rest went to Rowan. Her ex was at the funeral. Her ashes will come to me. I’ve left her flat and contents as is for now. I’ll have to do something with them eventually.