Matilda Next Door - Kelly Hunter Page 0,42
Put stuff aside for Rowan. Sell the flat or let it out. A decision for another day.’
All these decisions he’d been making and she hadn’t even known.
He knew all there was to know about her, but it didn’t go both ways.
Now was not the time to grow insecure. Now was definitely the time to keep her frailties to herself.
She was on her way to a funeral, for God’s sake.
*
They saw out the dawn up on Red Hill, with a tiny campfire burning eucalypt twigs and tea tree. Tilly set about rimming the fire with the smoothest rocks she could find. Busy work, because she didn’t know what to say to the man who stood silent and brooding, a baby in his arms as the sun rose over the horizon.
One of them should say a few words, Tilly thought, but she’d never known Amanda, and Henry offered none. When the fire had gone out and Tilly had covered it too in a heap of pretty stones they tromped their way back to the car.
The trip back was a silent one, but for his muttered ‘Thanks’ as they pulled up outside the homestead.
But when she made to take Rowan with her for the morning, he shook his head. ‘I’ll keep her with me today.’
‘I can stay too if you like?’ She wanted to stay. She wanted to take him back to bed and lie him down and make him forget all about Irish Amanda, mother of Rowan. Remind him that there was a here and now, and breath and life. Love.
Love standing right there in front of her and she owed his presence to a dead woman who would never watch her baby grow.
‘No.’
She couldn’t bear to leave with his last word to her being no. ‘I haven’t been thinking very clearly. You’ll have to go back to London soon, even if only to sort stuff out.’
‘I know.’
She would offer to go, but she didn’t want to hear another no. She nodded instead. ‘It’d be good if you could bring a photo back. Of Amanda.’
‘I don’t want to.’ Gravel from the depths of his soul.
‘For Rowan. In the years to come.’
‘Then I’ll box them up and she can have them in the years to come. She doesn’t need photos of the dead now.’
‘Will you come by later this morning?’ She knew she sounded needy. She ought to have kissed him—or not—and be heading for her car right about now. Why did she stand there and pick and scratch at a man who so clearly had a lot on his mind? ‘We have a stonemason in town. Arthur Dell. I’m sure he’d do up a memorial stone if you asked. Or a sundial. A sculpture. There’s these wire sculptures and you balance them on a pin and they move with the wind. They’re very pretty—’
‘Tilly.’ There was a world of no built into that one word. ‘Enough.’
‘Right. I’m just going to go now …’ Do what she’d usually do. Bake up a storm. ‘I’ll see you round.’
*
I’ll see you round. What kind of farewell was that? So breezy and hurtful, and yes she’d been hurt by the way he shut her down, but that was no reason to turn tail and run. Tilly spooned cookie mix onto her baking trays. She’d needed something quick and easy to make; she didn’t trust herself to make pastry today, because it sure as anything wouldn’t have turned out airy and light.
Stay for a week’s worth of nights, he’d said, but that was back when he’d wanted her there to help care for his new baby. But Henry had Rowan’s nights completely in hand now and Tilly was no longer needed for that. Not anymore.
And, yes, she was sharing his bed, but they hadn’t exactly talked about how that might pan out in the long run. He’d never said I must have you with me every night or I shall waste away for love of you. Okay, the chance of him ever saying that was slim to non-existent. Not that she wanted him to, it was just …
Just a fragile new relationship developing. Perfectly normal anxieties surrounding it.
Just because they’d taken to playing happy families, complete with bouncing baby, didn’t mean they were one.
‘Trouble in paradise?’
She hadn’t even heard her mother come into the kitchen. ‘How did you know?’
‘I know you.’
Mothers. Always with the answers. ‘I’ll have you know I’m a cipher. A mystery locked in a puzzle.’
‘Also, you have no baby this morning.’
Observant mothers. They were