Twist of Fate

FIFTEEN

Fifteen

T WELVE MONTHS LATER

Bel’s little flat above the bookshop had become both her sanctuary and her workplace. A few times she’d thought to find a bigger place, but there really wasn’t any need. She could set up with her laptop comfortably at her kitchen table and the location was convenient to everything she needed.

The bookshop, although it paid well for retail, wasn’t the highest earning job in the world and it had made her more than a little uncomfortable that she didn’t have spare cash or an emergency fund.

The cost of living was a lot higher here than in Wessex, so she’d turned her attention to researching ways to make extra income. Then she’d remembered Fiona, the author whose event they’d held, and what she’d said about freelance work.

She’d taken the plunge and enrolled in a course for copyediting and proofreading, then put out a call to her wider romance writers contacts and registered herself for content writing and editing on an outsourcing site. Within weeks, the work started trickling in. She felt a huge sense of achievement when she received heartfelt praise from her clients, and as their reviews came in, so too did the bookings. Some of the work wasn’t exactly stimulating, since it was more business-related, writing articles and social media content, but she also picked up the odd fiction-editing project and that was where her heart truly lay. It gave her an incredible sense of fulfilment.

The night she’d left Tate, she’d made a tearful call to Emma. She’d felt bad for worrying her friend, waking her up in the very early hours due to the time difference and sobbing incoherently. But, in true best friend spirit, Emma had let her cry before stepping in to get to the bottom of it. Then she’d instantly switched to lioness mode. ‘What a creep. No, that was definitely not overreacting. The camera stuff was without a doubt red flag material. Thank God you got out of there.’

Bel had gone on to break the news to Emma that she still wasn’t planning on returning to Wessex.

‘Staying? But … why? There’s nothing to keep you there anymore.’

‘I know it sounds a bit strange, but I don’t want to come back like a dog with its tail between its legs. I feel like a complete idiot.’

‘You’re not an idiot. You certainly aren’t the first one to have fallen for a handsome face and run off into the sunset,’ Emma had said.

‘Yeah, well … it’s too soon. And as much as I hate to admit it, you were right to try and push me to leave town all those times. I should have done this sooner, without the possibly narcissistic control freak of a boyfriend,’ Bel had added wryly. ‘I like it over here. I really love my job. I get to talk about books all day to people whose eyes don’t glaze over.’

‘If you come home, I promise I’ll hang on every word you say,’ Emma had said, and Bel had imagined the playful pout on her friend’s face.

Emma had shown her support by finding an elderly tenant for her house, Bert, who had been searching for somewhere to live. Even little Wessex hadn’t escaped the rental crisis, and accommodation was scarce.

Bel still missed her best friend terribly and had the odd bout of homesickness, but she honestly believed she’d made the right decision.

Within four months, she’d cut back to only a few days a week in the bookshop, and by eight months she was working in her own business full-time. She rarely thought of Wessex as home anymore. She was a different person to the one who’d left town, lovestruck and stupid.

She tried not to think too much about that either. ‘Tate wasn’t the guy I thought he was.’ The minute she had said the words out loud on the phone to Emma that night, the truth had dawned on her. He wasn’t the guy he’d presented himself as, but he wasn’t the man she’d made herself believe he was either. He wasn’t Jax Lexington. She’d been so caught up in trying to escape reality that, at the first glimpse of something remotely out of the ordinary, she’d blindly convinced herself he was the one .

Terry had encouraged her to go out and meet new people, but after trying the dating scene a few times, she really couldn’t find anything exciting in the nervous first dates and men who were never quite right for her. There’d been the odd weirdo—including one guy who’d had a strange obsession with her feet—but the majority of the men appeared to be perfectly normal. Nevertheless, her heart wasn’t in it. Maybe it was still too soon. None of them gave her the same tingles as Tate had. Certainly none of them had possessed his fiction-hero good looks and confidence, although she could freely admit now that this was not necessarily a bad thing. Looks were certainly unimportant when they hid a controlling personality. No, she’d learned her lesson—romance was for books, not real life. Never would she allow herself to be swept away like that again.

Taking her cup of hot chocolate to bed after a late night editing, Bel switched on the soothing music she listened to in the evenings to wind down and finished her drink before snuggling into her comfy bed. She was content, living a new life in an exciting place with unlimited possibilities. She wasn’t limited to town gossip or a job with nowhere to go. Her business had been steadily growing and she couldn’t be prouder of everything she’d achieved. Who would have thought? A small-town girl from Wessex was doing okay in the big city.

Bel blinked uncertainly in the dark room, disoriented. Then the ringing of her phone registered.

She scrambled across the bed to answer it, a tightness in the pit of her stomach. No good news ever comes at this hour.

‘Bel?’ Emma’s voice shook. ‘Craig’s had an accident. They don’t think he’s going to make it.’

It felt strange watching the scenery begin to transform as they got closer to Wessex. Nothing had really changed in the last fifteen or so months. It was the same paddocks, an endless patchwork of greens and browns and yellows stretching out forever, crops in some and flocks of cloud-like sheep grazing in others. Yet everything felt different. The place hadn’t changed, but she had.

Bel glanced as inconspicuously as she could at the man driving, pondering the changes she saw there too. Something about him seemed different, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what.

Dean Preston wouldn’t have been her first choice for a lift from the airport, but she wasn’t about to add to Emma’s problems by being picky. Her friend had more than her share of worries right now. She’d been a mess during that panicked call. Craig had somehow fallen from his tractor and hit his head, and that split-second, Bel knew, had changed life for everyone. He’d been flown to Sydney in a vegetative state, which often came with traumatic brain injuries, and they’d been unable to assess what degree of cognitive or physical damage he had sustained.

Bel had wanted to book a ticket home immediately, but once Emma had calmed down, she’d told her to hold off until they knew more.

Bel hadn’t been able to go back to sleep and had spent the night worried for her friends. Early the next morning, Emma had called; Craig had made it through surgery, but he was a long way from being out of the woods.

Emma would be shouldering the burden of not only the property, which was their business, but also four young children and a household that would still need her undivided attention. This wouldn’t be over in a week or two, either. They were potentially looking at a year—probably more— if he even recovered. They simply had no way of knowing the extent of the brain injury yet.

Bel had made her decision then and there—she was going home.

She’d spent a frantic few days packing and organising. The size of her flat had stopped her buying much, so apart from a few things that she’d get shipped to follow her, she only had two more suitcases than when she’d first arrived. She left the flat furnished—the furniture had all been second-hand anyway—and hoped that Terry could make some use of it.

By the time Terry had dropped her at the airport, she’d managed to completely clear away twelve months of her life, barely leaving a sign that she’d ever been there. It was a strange feeling.

‘It was good that you could come back. How long are you staying for?’ Dean asked as they drove, breaking into her thoughts.

‘As long as I’m needed.’

‘I heard you were working in a bookstore. They must be okay if they’re giving you so much time off work.’

She glanced across at him. ‘I’ve been working for myself for a while now. Luckily I can do it from pretty much anywhere.’

He looked different. He’d trimmed back his beard to a dark stubble and she found herself intrigued by his newly visible jawline. It had always amazed her how facial hair—either the removal or the growth—could make such a huge difference to a man’s appearance.

‘What kind of business are you in?’ he asked.

‘I do a bit of copyediting and content writing. I have a lot of corporate and business clients as well as creatives.’

‘Yeah? Wow. That sounds impressive.’

‘I kind of fell into it, but I really love it.’

‘That’s great.’

‘Yeah. What about you? Still farming?’

‘Yep. Can’t see that changing any time soon.’

‘I heard you’ve been helping out on Craig and Emma’s property. That’s really nice of you.’

‘It’s what we do,’ he said simply. ‘There’ll be more neighbours and mates lending a hand whenever they can. Everyone’s a bit snowed under with the harvest, but we’ll get it done. Em’s been amazing. Can’t imagine how hard it’s been to keep it together for the kids the way she has. She’ll be glad you’re here, that’s for sure.’

‘Em told me you were the one who found him,’ Bel said.

He glanced across at her briefly. ‘Yeah. Not that I could do much. I noticed the harvester hadn’t moved in a while and thought he might need a hand. But when I got there, I found him on the ground. He must have climbed up top to clear a blockage or something and slipped. He was in a bad way. Em and the kids arrived a few minutes later.’

‘I can’t imagine how terrifying it would have been for her, and with them there …’ she said. God, poor Em. She quickly turned to look out the window, blinking hard.

‘Everyone’s been doing what they can. I heard there’s a fundraising page being set up to help with some of the expenses,’ he said, lifting a finger from the steering wheel in acknowledgement of a passing ute driver. ‘People chip in however they can when someone’s going through a rough patch.’

That was the thing Bel loved the most about her community. They’d always band together to take care of one of their own. Something she’d noticed wasn’t always the case in a big city—she’d been lucky to have met Terry, who had been her saving grace.

‘It’s still strange seeing you like this,’ Dean said after a short silence.

‘Like what?’

‘Like that,’ he said, giving her a brief look up and down. ‘You look like a whole different person.’

Bel let out a small huff. ‘I swapped glasses for contacts and cut my hair. I don’t look that different.’

‘It’s not so much the look,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s everything. You seem more … I don’t know … confident or something. Like one of those models.’

‘A model?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, sounding flustered. ‘It’s your attitude. Everything seems to have changed. The way you walk and even how you talk. It’s like the old Bel disappeared and you’re someone else now.’

She wasn’t sure how to respond. She tried to work out if he thought this was a good or a bad thing, but she really couldn’t tell.

As they came into Wessex, Bel caught sight of the latest addition to town and her eyes widened. ‘Whoa.’ The huge object grew even bigger the closer they got.

‘You like the Big Cock?’ Dean asked with a smirk.

‘I imagine every man in Wessex has been enjoying saying that each time they go past.’

‘Well, it is impressive.’

It was something, that’s for sure. With Elvis being the clear winner of the community vote for Wessex’s mascot, even after a recount, the committee had wasted no time in getting things under way. Emma had been keeping Bel updated on the statue’s progress, but seeing it in person was a whole different experience. It was enormous , well over seventeen metres tall. Visitors could climb a staircase right up to the top to look out, getting a panoramic view of the main street, which had been given a facelift since Bel had left. Brightly coloured pots of petunias and geraniums sat outside most of the stores, and the street’s facades and verandah posts had been given a fresh coat of paint. It lifted her spirits to see the place looking so much more vibrant.

As they passed by Dwyers’, Bel felt a little tug of affection. It felt like a lifetime since she’d seen the old place.

It had been a little over a year since the wedding and the big flood. Larkin had invited Bel to the one-year anniversary celebration, a reunion of the wedding party for a week-long trip to Vanuatu, where Larkin and Tristan had gone on their honeymoon. She’d politely refused, and the current status of the cousins’ relationship was non-speaking.

Bel was okay with that. She’d rather repeatedly kick her little toe on the corner of the table than attend a week-long reunion with Tate. Larkin had told her he was planning to bring a date, as if that would somehow make it better.

The drive out to Emma’s passed by in a blur of landmarks—the O’Donnal’s rusty old milk can letterbox, and further along, the Simpsons’ home-made, brightly painted metal mailbox, which was shaped somewhat like a horse, or donkey—its true identity was an ongoing debate around town, and was made even more confusing by the fact that neither animal was kept on the property. They passed by the faded FLOWERS FOR SALE sign on the old readside stall that hadn’t been used for years, and the little white wooden cross beneath a huge old gumtree, a memorial to Bobby Robinson, who’d died decades earlier in a car accident. All the things that she’d driven by a thousand times and never taken that much notice of. Suddenly they meant something; they were all little markers of home.

The cattle grid at the entrance to Emma and Craig’s driveway rattled beneath Dean’s ute and the house appeared ahead. The brightly coloured play equipment and the massive trampoline, surrounded by neatly kept shrubs and flowerbeds, was still there in the front yard. Everything looked the same, only Bel felt a sadness lingering. No laughing children played on the equipment, no one rode the bikes that lay on their sides, abandoned, and it was unusually quiet.

Bel went to help unload her suitcases, but Dean waved her away. ‘You go up and say hello. I can bring these in.’

The front door opened with its familiar squeak and Bel looked up to see Ayla, Emma and Craig’s eldest, standing in the doorway. Her heart lurched at the child’s hesitant expression. Once Ayla would have run down the stairs to greet her with a huge hug. She was now eight, and taller than when Bel had last seen her. Jack the cattle dog stood protectively by the child’s side until he recognised Bel. His thick tail thumped on the floor and she smiled slightly at the dopey grin on his blue-grey face.

‘Hello,’ Bel said, stepping closer to Ayla. ‘Look how tall you’ve got.’

‘Hello,’ Ayla said, almost shyly. ‘Are you here to look after us?’

‘I am. I came back to give Mum a hand. Where are the others?’

‘In their rooms. Mrs Sheppard said we all needed to give her a break.’

Bel remembered Mrs Sheppard from her gran’s CWA days. She could understand the woman maybe needing a little rest. She’d seemed old when Bel was a kid, so she had no idea what age she was now, but she probably wasn’t up to running after four active children.

She made her way inside and found Mrs Sheppard in the kitchen. She greeted the older woman, who somehow managed to look exactly as Bel remembered her as a kid, and Bel barely had time to ask how she was before Mrs Sheppard was grabbing her handbag and bustling out the door. ‘Thank you,’ Bel called, and Mrs Sheppard gave her a wave without turning around.

Bel turned back to Ayla with narrowed eyes. ‘Did you guys give Mrs Sheppard a hard time?’

‘No,’ Ayla said with a beguiling innocence that may have fooled some people but not Bel, who’d know the child since she’d been in the womb.

‘Ayla Louise Prichard,’ Bel said, planting her hands on her hips.

‘We didn’t do nothing. She said we were being too noisy and sent us to our rooms.’

Bel decided to give Ayla the benefit of the doubt, seeing as Mrs Sheppard’s days of being able to handle loud children were probably long gone. Emma had been stressed enough trying to sort out the kids’ situation from Sydney, being unable to take care of them herself and with her parents travelling overseas. The ladies of Wessex had been doing shifts in the Prichard house so as not to disrupt the children’s routine even more.

‘Okay. Well, let’s go and tell the others they can come out. We’ve got a lot of stuff to do.’

‘Like what?’ Ayla asked curiously.

‘Like having fun,’ Bel said.

‘So we don’t have to go to school?’ the little girl asked hopefully.

‘Fun after school,’ Bel amended as she walked down the hallway to the bedrooms.

She opened the door to Ben’s room. ‘Hey, kiddo.’

The little boy looked up from a picture book and Bel felt her heart break a little. Where was the lively little ratbag she used to know? ‘Hello, Aunty Bel. Are you here to take care of us?’

‘I sure am,’ she said, crossing to the bed and sitting down. ‘Is that okay?’

He shrugged and turned back to his book.

It was understandable that the kids would be feeling confused. They’d had a revolving door of people taking them to school and bringing them home, coming and going. It was no wonder they weren’t sure what to expect. But she was here now, and determined to restore some kind of normality for them.

‘Aunty Bel!’ Lucy and Ivy came running through the door and jumped on her lap. Bel hugged them tightly. At least not everything’s changed around here .

‘When’s Mummy and Daddy coming home?’ Ben asked.

‘I’m not sure. It might be a little while yet.’

‘My daddy got taken away in an ambulance,’ Ivy said with wide eyes.

‘That must have been a bit scary,’ Bel said.

‘There was blood,’ Ayla said solemnly.

Bel wasn’t sure what the protocol for dealing with childhood trauma was—did you let them talk about it? Did you try and explain it or did you ignore it? She had no idea. ‘Daddy’s got a lot of doctors and nurses taking really good care of him. I know you miss him a lot and you’re probably really worried about him,’ she said gently. ‘But at the moment, he needs to be away in hospital so he can get better. Mummy needs to stay there with him for a little while too, until the doctors can give her some more news. But I’m here to take care of you guys until Mummy can come home. And I was thinking, maybe we can do something to surprise them when they come home?’

‘Like what?’ Ivy asked.

‘I don’t know. Can you guys think of anything?’

‘What about the chook pen?’ Ayla suggested. ‘Mummy’s always asking Daddy to fix it, but he never has time.’

‘That sounds like a good idea. What do you think, Ben?’ Bel asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said. He was still staring at the book, but Bel noticed he hadn’t turned a page in a while and suspected he was listening more closely than he appeared to be. ‘But you don’t know how to fix things.’

Okay, well, the kid has a point . She couldn’t be too offended though, at least he’d given her a glimpse of the ratbag she remembered.

‘But I do,’ Dean said from the doorway he was leaning against, having silently appeared God only knew how long ago. Bel found herself slightly distracted by the way his folded arms pulled his T-shirt a little tighter across his chest. Her eyes lifted to his face and she quickly looked away when they met his.

Crap. Bel cleared her throat quickly. ‘There you go. Uncle Dean knows how to fix a chook pen. Yay, Uncle Dean,’ she added weakly, without looking at him.

‘How about we go out and take a look at what needs to be done? You wanna show me what you’re thinking?’ Dean asked Ben. Bel saw the young boy’s chest puff out a little.

‘Can we come too?’ Ivy and Lucy asked, bouncing on the bed.

‘Sure. Why don’t we all go out? Coming, Aunty Bel?’ Dean asked as the kids all flew past him and headed out the back door.

Bel gave him a quick smile. ‘Thanks for that.’

‘No worries. I think it’s a good idea, give them something to take their minds off stuff.’

‘Will you have time though? You’re in the middle of harvest.’

‘I’ll make time,’ he said simply as Bel drew level with him in the doorway. Was it her imagination or did his eyes suddenly get a whole lot more sultry? And why was she suddenly feeling like she’d just experienced a hot flush?

What is happening here?

‘Come onnnnnnn,’ Lucy bellowed from the back door.

‘The natives are getting restless,’ Dean murmured as Bel moved past him, almost brushing against his torso in the process.

Bel squashed down all the weird, wayward feelings that had suddenly sprung to life and hurried outside. Did you get jet lag from flying across the country? That had to be it. A hot shower and a good night’s sleep and everything would be back to normal—whatever the hell that was nowadays.

Later that evening, after Dean had left and Bel had gotten through the whole dinner and bath routine, she read down the list on the fridge. ‘Bedtime book,’ she said out loud. Now this was more like it. Finally, something she could handle. ‘What book are we reading?’ she asked.

‘I’ll get it!’ Ivy said, running down the hallway.

‘No! I will!’ Ben shouted after his twin.

‘Ben, let Ivy get the book,’ Bel started to call out, but already a fight had erupted in the enclosed verandah that was a playroom for the children. With a long-suffering sigh, Bel followed the yelling and took control of the book the siblings had been wrestling over. ‘Any more fighting and I’m not reading tonight. Now, let’s go out to the lounge room and find a place to sit.’

‘Mummy always reads us our bedtime stories in her bed,’ Ivy said, leading the way towards Emma and Craig’s bedroom. ‘So we all fit.’

‘Fine, but no more fighting,’ Bel warned in her best don’t-mess-with-me tone, although she was fairly sure none of the kids were feeling the least bit intimidated. They all settled onto the bed. Bel had to admit, this was a pretty lovely way to wind down at the end of a long day. With two little bodies curled up on either side of her, Bel looked down at the book and a surge of childhood memories came flooding back. ‘The Magic Faraway Tree,’ she read. She’d been obsessed with this story and had read all the Enid Blyton classics when she was little. Which was most likely where her love of reading had come from.

She recalled her grandparents always teasing her that she was like a cat—they’d never know where she was until they called her for food. Then she’d uncurl herself from a sunny spot in the corner of the room or come in from where she’d been sitting under a tree in the back yard, reading. These stories of faraway lands and magical creatures had been her escape from grief and loneliness when she’d first moved to Wessex. Much like her later escape from everyday life with the Jax Lexington books.

‘Joe, Silky and Moon-Face were very pleased that Joe was the right way up again,’ Bel began reading, and soon she was as engrossed as the four children snuggled beside her, all of them lost in the magical world of make-believe.