Chapter Two
Lying in the hammock strung up under the party tree in the large beer garden of the Clarence Pub was an excellent way to spend a quiet morning.
Dappled sunlight fell across Will as he swung back and forth, the waft of ground coffee beans hanging in the air.
Snoozing below the hammock was the stray ginger cat who’d turned up one rainy day last winter and never left.
A little like Will had turned up here at the pub and never left.
When he closed his eyes he could hear lorikeets in the mango trees that adorned the wide bank of the river, the chatter of women at one of the picnic tables and the rumble of the cat’s contented purr.
He liked that. He liked contentment . He especially liked it because, a while back, he’d wondered if he would ever feel content again.
Turns out, he would. All it had taken was everything he had.
‘Some mail for you, Will,’ said an Irish accent.
He opened his eyes as a wad of envelopes plopped onto his chest. Fergus was a backpacker working at the pub to earn a few bucks before taking off out west. He was a good worker and Will would be sorry to see him go, but there was no shortage of backpackers turning up wanting work.
He finally had the pub running as sure and steady as the Clarence River, and a change in staff would barely push a ripple through his contentment.
Turns out, running pubs was a heck of a lot kinder on his coping skills than his last job had been.
‘Thanks, mate,’ he said. ‘You finished pressure washing the paths?’
‘Yep. Couldn’t lift all the green though.’
‘It’s the rainfall we get around here. Mould, moss, mildew … the Northern Rivers area is like a greenhouse for that stuff.’
‘At least the rain’s warm, though. You should try Dublin rain—it’s cold and bleak enough to slice you into ribbons.’
‘I bet. You right to open up the bar at noon? Livvy’s on kitchen, Matt’s on serving and wash up, and I’m—’
‘On hammock,’ Fergus said with a grin.
Cheeky bugger. ‘I’m on close tonight. Warren called in sick. Again.’
‘Sure, look, and there’s no surprise there.’
‘Plus, I’m revving myself up to start hanging Christmas decorations.’
‘If you’re wanting a hand tonight, I could do with the extra hours.’
‘Thanks. I’ll let you know.’
When Fergus had taken himself off again, Will lifted the pile of envelopes to sort through them.
Pub bills, mostly, some junk mail, a postcard of the Kokoda Track from Joey and Kirsty, and a largish yellow envelope with a black ink smudge on an upper corner where the sender’s details had been before something—that warm Northern Rivers rain most like—had made them illegible.
He tore the yellow paper and pulled out a copy of The Australian Journal of Psychology .
Crap. He’d cancelled everything to do with his past life, hadn’t he? How had this found him here at the Clarence Pub?
No way was he reading anything. No way.
A note slipped out from the inside pages and he was reading past the hello and into the body of the thing before he could stop himself.
Just wanted to let you know that the research paper we worked on together has finally been peer-reviewed and published.
In the AJP , no less. Hope you’re doing okay and I hope you don’t mind me tracking you down like this.
Please get in touch when you’re ready. Or even if you’re not.
(Maybe especially if you’re not.) I’ve left the hospital and taken on a role at the university that’s part clinical, part teaching, and I’m enjoying it.
You will heal in time, you know. Of course you know.
Regards, Voula
Will’s sunny mood dimmed. His enjoyment of the hammock and the ground coffee beans and the lorikeets went pfft . Even the pub cat seemed to have picked up on the low vibe, because he seesawed to his feet, flicked his tail and stalked off in the direction of the pub’s rubbish bins.
Will was healed. Sort of. Healed enough, anyway.
Leaving the post and the journal in the hammock to be dealt with—or not—later, he followed the cat.
Not to the rubbish exactly, but to the storage shed tucked into the same narrow stretch of yard where the bins lived.
He’d start with the ladder and the snowflake-shaped fairy lights that were going to look insanely good strung between the trees in the beer garden.
He was a publican now, and a good one. He had a month to give this place a tinsel glow-up before the Clarence Pub’s Christmas Twilight Markets were on, and he was damn well going to enjoy the process.
Life, every day of it, mattered.
He had the snowflake lights up and the giant metal Christmas beetle sculptures strapped to the trees in the pub’s garden, and was wandering about with a spool of green tinsel, wondering if it would look awesome or tacky looped along the fence, when he noticed the woman collecting a takeaway coffee from the cart.
A stranger. But then, that was not uncommon here in Clarence.
The pub was in reach of a day trip from the coast—just, if a three-hour return trip didn’t daunt you—and had amassed the sort of online reviews that attracted day-trippers: Local avos so freaking good and make sure you buy a bottle of the avo oil ; a one star for not offering a Japanese fermented vegan breakfast (thanks for that, Annabel_94); and his personal favourite: Shout out to Will, the bar guy with mad biceps .
Why thank you, yes, he had been working out.
But his thoughts were running away from him.
Where was he? Oh, yes. The woman. Coffee in one hand, phone in the other.
Not tall, not short. Not fair, not dark.
Not thin, not plump. He was going to have to settle on some actual description soon because he couldn’t stick with this what-she-was-not stuff much longer, but the thing was … she was a little hard to see.
Which made no sense, especially as he had twenty-twenty vision. To put it another way, she had this sort of air about her which said, to put it bluntly, piss off .
Was she socially awkward? An introvert? It was at times like this that an almost-doctorate in psychology was a real pain in the bum. The terminology in his brain just didn’t know how to turn itself off.
But you know what didn’t need a psychologist’s terms? His man brain … because when she finally stopped hunching over her mobile phone and looked up so he could really see her?
Oh . She was … sweet looking. And terribly, terribly sad.
She had darkish red, curly hair that hadn’t seen a hairdresser in some time, she wore a pair of leggings that were as tight as a dry wetsuit, and a T-shirt the colour of one of those purple passionfruit that threatened to take over the beer garden if he got a little lax on the secateurs.
Also—and this was even more interesting than the snug pants and the passionfruit T-shirt—she looked a little familiar.
Will hooked the wheel of tinsel over his arm and headed her way to say g’day.
Someone from school, maybe? He’d lived in Clarence the first twenty years of his life, so he’d attended the local primary school and then the local high school, played footy in the local team.
His oldies lived in a community up in the hills circling the town, where families came and went, keen to grow veggies and live off the grid, until they weren’t.
Had she been a kid up at Bangadoon, perhaps? Had they picked eggplant together in tie-dyed clothing and commiserated with each other about being the kids of nutters who denied their unlucky children access to television, the internet and polyester?
The woman had finished whatever phone call she’d been making and was wandering in a distracted fashion along the path to a small table by the fire pit. Will had almost caught up with her when she gave a little shriek and her feet skidded out from under her.
The path that Fergus hadn’t managed to de-green, Will presumed, as he leapt forward to get his arms under her before she hit the ground.
‘Oof,’ she said, looking up into his face.
He would have liked to say oof, too, because she did not weigh nothing, and not only was the path mossy, it was wet and slick with some fool detergent Fergus must have thought was required.
No wonder she’d slipped. Will slipped, too, and ended up with one knee smashed into the ground, a female body in his arms and some alarmingly necessary-feeling part of him going piiiinnngg in the back of his upper thigh. Crikey, it hurt.
But Will had two sisters, which meant he had a comprehensive knowledge of the sort of male utterances that piss women off. Saying ‘oof’, like their weight was unbearably heavy, just after you’d picked them up? Major piss-off moment.
‘Are you okay?’ he said, trying not to sound like he was gritting his teeth.
She was staring at him. Like, really staring. It was kinda hard not to notice on account of the fact her face was about six inches from his and they were currently breathing each other’s breath.
‘You,’ she said.
Um … Will wasn’t sure what that implied, but whatever. She was clearly okay. She couldn’t have hurt herself because he—and his wildly hurting leg—had broken her fall, so it was time to get up.
If he could. Which he was beginning to doubt.
The back-of-thigh ping had now worked its way up and down and around in a fairly seismic fashion, and if she didn’t get off his bent knee she was going to topple them both over.
She must have read his face, because a nanosecond later she was pushing herself up to her feet and staring down at him.
‘Did you trip me?’ she said, a frown of incredulity or something very like it on her face.
‘What?’ What? ‘No. I was coming over to say hello, and I saw your shoe skid, so I … caught you.’
She looked doubtful, so he pressed on. ‘I’m Will,’ he said. ‘Will Miles.’
‘Is that so.’ She said it like she didn’t care what his name was. Not school, then—he was one of the good guys at school—and not a fellow eggplant picker, he was guessing. Eggplant picking bonded kids in ways that didn’t founder; just ask any one of his siblings.
He flashed his best hottie-bartender-with-biceps smile. ‘I thought you looked familiar. I’m just not placing you …’
She pushed a wayward curl behind her ear and took a very long time to reply to what was surely an innocuous question. Well, an implied innocuous question.
‘I’m Carol Wallace’s great niece. I spent my summer holidays here with her when I was a kid.’
‘She didn’t tell me she had visitors coming.’
The woman’s face changed again, but Will had no trouble reading it: definitely a frown, which wasn’t friendly, but it was better than the sadness he’d seen earlier.
‘Why would Carol need to tell you about her social life?’
Because he worked in hospitality these days, he’d grown skilled at not letting his face show just how freaking rude some customer comments could be. Like now.
He went for a mild disclaimer. ‘Uh … because she’s a friend of mine? Because she has lunch with me in the pub about three times a week? Because we’re both on the Twilight Market committee and we chat over the bickies and tea?’
She blinked. ‘Carol’s on a committee?’
How was that the salient point here? Here he was, on bended knee, wondering if he’d ever walk again.
‘Several, I imagine. Look, we seem to have got off to a rocky start. I’ve already told you my name.
I’m the publican here and I promise I didn’t trip you up, nor am I lying to you when I tell you Carol is my friend. ’
She sucked in her bottom lip, and then said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need to be sorry. I do need something from you however.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Will you help me up? I think my hamstring just exploded.’