Fairytale on the Children's Ward. Meredith Webber
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