Free-Falling Read online

  ‘Best man?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Who else would it be?’

  ‘All right, I’ll give her a chance if you swear you’ll never talk to me about your feelings again.’

  ‘How did we end up having so much fun that night?’ James asked, frowning.

  ‘Shots,’ Belinda responded matter-of-factly.

  ‘Ah, yes. And finding out that you could give as good as you got. I remember I tried to have a go at you for losing our table, but you weren’t going to take any shit from me. I was impressed.’

  ‘Plus don’t forget Andy was the designated driver that night and so the drunker we got, the more annoyed he became and the more we made fun of him.’

  ‘Man, I was a shocking brother.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up, that’s what brothers do. If I remember correctly, Andy was just happy the next day that we were getting along. All he wanted was for us to be friends.’

  They both started to relax now that everything had been aired. Conversation turned to lighter topics and they found they had plenty to catch up on. Belinda told James all about her embarrassing fall at the gym, to which he responded with the appropriate mix of amusement and concern, and he told her about his school break-in and near night in gaol. She was shocked to hear that his mother had stood up for him. She had always thought Evelyn to be more in the ‘throw ’em to the lions’ school of parenting. After James’s heartfelt story, Belinda felt herself opening up even more and she let him in on the recently revealed family secret.

  ‘I can’t say I would have picked your family as having a Jerry Springer style scandal,’ was his initial response.

  ‘Hey! It isn’t that bad,’ she laughed, whacking him with a cushion.

  ‘Okay, okay, truce!’ he yelled as he shielded off her blows.

  They fell silent for a moment and he glanced at his watch. ‘Didn’t realise it was getting so late. Should probably get out of your hair and let you have your dinner and what-not,’ he said, starting to gather up his phone, keys and wallet.

  ‘“Dinner and what-not”,’ she murmured quietly to herself. ‘Andy used to say that too. He was always finishing his sentences with “and what-not”.’

  James let his shoulders slump a little. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘No, no!’ she interrupted. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it – it was just nice, actually, to hear it again.’ She paused, then added, ‘Why don’t you stay for dinner? It’s been nice catching up with you.’

  He dropped all the bits and pieces he’d been gathering onto the table and fell back into the couch immediately. ‘Great, thanks! It’s horrible and wet and windy out there anyway.’

  She glanced towards the windows. ‘Huh. I hadn’t even noticed that storm building up.’ She looked at James, all comfortable on the lounge, and added firmly, ‘If you’re staying for dinner, don’t expect to just sit on your butt and wait for it to appear. Get your arse in the kitchen, boy.’

  She found they cooked well together – James doing all the prep work with the veggies while she marinated and cooked up the chicken in balsamic and red wine. And he did just the right thing when she asked him to pour them both a glass of the wine to have with dinner. He didn’t question whether she should really be having alcohol in her condition, just poured her a nice, small glass and slid it across the counter to her. Her friends had been driving her mad lately: on the one hand, she had Stacey snatching everything from liqueur chocolates to weak cappuccinos from her in case she put her babies in harm’s way, and then on the other, there was Jules, offering her tequila cocktails and looking confused when she turned them down.

  James and Belinda’s conversation continued smoothly through dinner and eventually they found themselves back on the couch again, listening to her favourite Jack Johnson CD, sharing a block of dark orange chocolate and enjoying being curled up inside while the summer storm that had been brewing earlier raged outside.

  ‘This has been nice,’ Belinda said, snuggling herself further into the deep, soft couch. ‘Oh, hello there!’ She shifted and patted her stomach. ‘Guess who’s awake? You want to feel them kicking?’

  ‘You can do that?’ James asked doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, of course you can, you dork.’ She grabbed his hand and pressed it against her stomach gently. ‘Just hold it there for a sec,’ she instructed.

  He waited a moment or two, then jumped as one of the babies obliged, giving his hand a forceful kick. ‘Holy shit, that kid’s got a mean right hook.’

  ‘I think that was its foot actually. I’d say “Twin A’s” foot, to be precise.’

  ‘Really? How do you know which one is which?’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know for sure. At the last ultrasound, Twin A was on the left and Twin B the right, but they could have swapped sides.’

  ‘Already getting them mixed up, eh? Good luck when they’re born then. You know Mum got us mixed up once? We were about three weeks old. Dad was back at work and Mum was trying to figure out how she was supposed to change two screaming kids’ nappies at the same time. Anyway, she’d been telling us apart with different coloured socks, right? So she lays us both on the floor, pulls off our suits, including the socks, chucks them to the side, changes both nappies and then, as she’s redressing us, she realises she’s forgotten which baby was wearing which coloured socks. To this day, we’ll never know if she put the right socks back onto the right babies. After that, she reckons it started to get easier to tell us apart – subtle differences, apparently.’

  Belinda cracked up laughing and James joined in. He leant forward and touched his finger to her cheek. ‘Tiny bit of chocolate,’ he explained – but his hand lingered and she found herself staring into his eyes much longer than was appropriate for someone who had almost been her brother-in-law.

  ‘So I guess, technically, I could actually be Andy,’ he said, intending to break the tension.

  It backfired, though: Belinda found herself feeling all the more strained and her skin prickled as she began to think, I could have him back, I could have Andy back, right here, right now. She must have been mere moments away from leaning in and kissing him . . . What the hell was I thinking?

  So what if this guy, sitting here on the couch in front of her, might have been the ‘original’ Andy? So what if he looked so much like his brother that gazing at his face gave her a severe case of vertigo? That didn’t make him the same guy who had proposed to her. It didn’t make him the guy she had shared holidays and movie dates and countless amazing nights in bed with. So maybe the guy she’d been engaged to had actually been born first and originally named James – that didn’t matter – the day his mother had mixed them up, he became Andy and he was the one she loved.

  She pulled back from James abruptly and he realised his mistake. ‘I’m so sorry, that was such a stupid, stupid thing to say.’

  ‘It’s fine, it’s okay,’ she said, staring determinedly down at her hands. ‘Probably time we called it a night, hey?’ The strain in her voice was apparent.

  ‘Good idea,’ he agreed, relieved to have an easy escape.

  He gathered his things and she walked him to the front door, pulling it open, ready to usher him out as quickly as possible. James made to head straight into the hall but, changing his mind, he paused and leant back in.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about what just happened there – but I’m not sorry about coming round. I think we could be really good friends and I do want to keep in touch. I’m bloody glad that I finally got up the courage to come and see you instead of just dropping off those stupid flowers. Like that was going to fix everything.’

  She had been listening with her eyes glued to the floor, wishing him out the door so she could get back inside and start to clear her thoughts. But when he mentioned the flowers, she snapped her head up in shock. ‘Those were from you?’ she g
asped.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t put my name on the card. I meant to give them to you face to face but I sort of chickened out at the last minute. Anyway, I guess I just wanted to make things up to you, after everything Mum said. To be honest, I felt as though I should be somehow looking after you. A bunch of flowers was the first thing that came to mind . . .’ He kissed her gently on the forehead, then whispered, ‘Friends, yes? Promise me we can keep being friends. I want you in my life and I know that Andy would have wanted that too.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said quietly, anything to get him out – now there was even more to think about.

  Thankfully, he finally left, obviously satisfied that she was going to keep in contact with him. She closed the door behind him, then turned and leant her back against it, slowly sliding herself down to the floor. Not only had it not been Andy helping her bring in the groceries from the car tonight; it hadn’t been him who had sent the flowers. Although, were both bunches from James? She supposed they must have been. Maybe he dropped off the roses first and then later remembered that her favourites were lilies? After all, all their friends knew that it was a standing joke between her and Andy that he could never get it right. James had said he’d wanted to look after her, that flowers were the first thing that came to mind. So it must have been him also doing all those friendly little favours she’d thought were Andy.

  ‘No more tears,’ she said determinedly to herself. She needed to accept it. Andy had never been haunting her: it had been James all along and there was no point crying over spilt milk.

  She pressed her hands down on the floor and carefully stood back up again.

  It was time to move on.

  Chapter 12

  Evelyn

  Evelyn pressed her back against the sticky, padded bench seat and breathed in the strong aroma of scrambled eggs, bacon, roasted tomatoes and steaming black coffee. Bazza grinned at her from across the table. ‘How good is this place?’ he asked, stabbing his fork straight into the middle of a hash brown and lifting it up whole off the plate.

  ‘Frankly, the stench is a little nauseating. A tad too overpowering for my taste. But yes, I’ll give you one thing, the food is impressive for such a gaudy looking restaurant.’

  Bazza had extended a breakfast invitation to her the other day when she’d met up with him at SkyChallenge for her third solo jump. She had taken a second jump as soon as possible after the company had opened back up after the holidays, but this one had been with Chad and the experience hadn’t been nearly as lovely as each jump with Bazza had been.

  Now, as Bazza swallowed a gigantic mouthful of hash brown, he continued proudly, ‘You tell me you need to take your mind off some family issues and I bring you to a themed café where the smell of food and the dazzle of the garish décor is so strong you’ve got no hope of concentrating on anything deep and meaningful. Did I deliver, McGavin, or did I deliver?’

  ‘Yes, yes, an apt distraction technique,’ she assured him as a waitress offered to top up her coffee in a very ‘American diner’ sort of way. She felt like she was in one of those clichéd sitcoms.

  ‘So what are these family problems you’re trying to escape? Doctor Baz’s clinic is officially open for business.’ He took a massive bite of his hash brown, then leant forward, placed his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his fists, peering expectantly across at her.

  She raised her eyebrows at him in amusement. ‘Ahh Bazza, I think you’ve just missed the point here. We were supposed to be distracting me from my issues, not dredging them up so we can rub them in my face some more.’

  ‘Yeah, but you know that’s not how I roll, Ev baby.’

  Evelyn choked on her coffee. ‘“Ev baby”? So now we’re on a “first name slash terms of endearment” basis, are we? God, I hate to think what you’ll be calling me next!’

  ‘You love it,’ he replied with an air of relaxed authority. ‘Now stop trying to change the subject. We all know the real reason you let me bring you to this trashy diner today.’

  ‘Is that right? We all know why I’m here, do we?’

  ‘That’s right, sista. I know it, you know it and that Betty Boop waitress over there knows it.’

  ‘And why is it?’

  ‘It’s because you really do want to chat about what’s going on in your life. You had a fricken fiesta giving us all the real dirt on the McGavin family back at Murphy’s pub before Christmas. I’m like your resident therapist, and while I should be charging you at least one-fifty an hour, I’m willing to let you slide on a freebie. So spill it.’

  Evelyn prepared herself to retaliate, but then she caved. What was the point in arguing? ‘Fine, you win.’ She launched into a rundown of what had happened when she’d left Bazza and the others at the pub. Bazza was suitably impressed to learn that she had been able to get James off the hook and even more so when he heard about how she had put the old school principal in his place. She cut the story short then, saying (in a voice that was just a tad too upbeat), ‘So that night James and I went out to dinner to celebrate.’ She gazed vaguely around the diner as though that was all there was to it.

  ‘And yet I’m getting the feeling that there’s more to the story, otherwise I wouldn’t be sensing a world of hurt radiating across the table from you?’

  Evelyn sighed crossly. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Okay, okay, so James and I had a little bit of an argument over dinner – that’s it.’

  ‘Give me some details to work with here.’

  ‘He brought up the one person I least want to hear about, talk about or even think about. He brought up Belinda, Andrew’s fiancée. He seemed to think we ought to be keeping in touch with her.’ She spat the last few words out as though disgusted by the mere thought.

  ‘Allow me to play devil’s advocate here and ask: is that really such a bad idea?’

  Evelyn fired up in an instant. ‘Are you joking? That woman, that girl, is responsible for my son’s death. Why would I want to have anything at all to do with her?’

  ‘Just chill, McGavin, I’m on your side. But humour me and explain exactly how she’s responsible?’

  ‘How? My God, I can’t even begin to put it into words – it’s everything about her. He met her and it changed the course of his life. Had he never met her, then he never would have died. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Walk me through it. How did meeting her wind up with him being killed?’

  Evelyn huffed a little irritably. ‘If I have to spell it out . . . before he met Belinda, he was still living with me and studying at university full-time. He was doing well, getting good results, and working a part-time job at a bookstore that was right around the corner from home. Because he was living with me, he was earning all the money he needed, and I let him off paying any board because I wanted him to concentrate on his studies and not have to worry about any financial issues.

  ‘Then he met Belinda and, before I knew it, he became serious about her, was spending far too much time with her, and all of a sudden it was vital that he had to move out, which led to him cutting back his last year of uni to part-time study so he could get a full-time job to pay rent. Before Belinda came into the picture, I can assure you he had absolutely no interest in moving out and he certainly wasn’t interested in interrupting his studies for work of any kind.

  ‘But here’s the important part. He was killed a block away from his work, while on his way home from work, just five minutes after leaving work. Do you get the connection now? He meets Belinda, Belinda makes him move out, therefore he needs a new job to support himself, therefore he ends up at that stupid Ezymart shop on Pitt Street, on that particular day, at that particular time, around the corner from his work.’

  Bazza hesitated momentarily, then spoke carefully. ‘Take a step back and imag
ine you’re hearing those words from someone else’s mouth. Think about it: “he met her, therefore it’s her fault”.’

  His calm, sensible words were infuriating her. ‘You’re not listening to me. Don’t you understand? She orchestrated his whole life so that he would end up in that stupid job. So of course it’s her fault. The whole thing was completely and utterly her fault.’ She paused for a brief moment and then pushed on determinedly, ‘She might as well have pulled the bloody trigger.’

  Bazza seemed to flinch at her final words. She had never told him exactly how her son had died; he was only just finding out now that he had been killed in a convenience store. She had shocked herself a little, saying those words out loud. He recovered quickly, though, and then gave his unwanted opinion, ‘I got one word for ya, McGavin: harsh.’

  ‘Harsh? My son is dead and you think I’m being harsh?’

  ‘Look, woman, I’m still on your side here. I see that girl on the street – what did you say her name was? Belinda? Right, I see this Belinda on the street and sure, I’ll give her a filthy look instead of my usual surreptitious once-over. But would I go so far as to accuse her of causing her own fiancé’s death? Nope. And I’ll tell you why – because it’s too damn harsh. You even realise what you’re putting on that girl’s shoulders? You’re making her solely responsible for another human being’s death when there would have been too many other factors at play. Can you guarantee one hundred per cent that he wouldn’t have ended up in that same job had she not come along? Maybe his mates would have convinced him to move out regardless. How about why he was in that shop? Do you even know why he went there after work? Do you get where I’m going with this?’