‘And that was part of the problem. We both needed to be on our own to figure out what we really wanted, we needed to be ourselves for a while.’
‘What a mess.’
‘It was back then.’
‘And it isn’t now?’
‘I’m with Jay, I’ve moved on. I suspect Harvey has too, although he hasn’t mentioned a woman in his life.’
‘There have been women along the way, I’ve seen him hanging out with several –’
‘I don’t need the details,’ Melissa protested.
‘He’s never got serious about anyone else as far as I know.’
Perhaps Harvey not being with anyone was the hardest thing of all, it made her question the ‘us’ that they’d been once upon a time and it was difficult not to look for signs that something may still be there between them. Or was it no more than nostalgia playing tricks with her?
‘So, how long are you staying?’ Tracy asked after a good swig of her cider.
‘Initially it was to be three weeks but I’m extending my stay.’
‘Barney’s recovery is going well, isn’t it?’
‘Physically, yes. But he’s not himself.’
‘You must be concerned if you’re thinking of hanging around a while longer.’
‘Barney’s saying he doesn’t want to do the Wedding Dress Ball this year.’
Tracy looked even more shocked than she had the day she saw Melissa in the street for the first time in years. ‘You can’t be serious. He does it every year and raises a lot of money for charity.’
‘He’s being really stubborn.’
Tracy laughed. ‘You know, sometimes it’s odd to think you two aren’t related.’
‘Very funny. But joking aside, I’ve never known him to be like this. Remember the time he dropped the planter pot that lives outside his front door onto the fingers of his left hand while he was attempting to move it?’
‘Do I ever? He swore, and not quietly either.’ They’d been helping hang the curtains Tracy’s mum had made for his lounge windows, the sort with the insulated backing that would keep the heat in during the winter.
‘Do you remember after he’d been to the hospital and they’d found one finger was broken, the other badly bruised, he was adamant he didn’t need two women running around after him?’
‘I do remember. I remember him going crazy at me when I saw him at the bus stop and offered to carry his groceries home. He was so mean, I cried my eyes out – pregnancy hormones at the time. He came to the house later with flowers and a box of chocolates and apologised.’
‘My point is,’ Melissa continued, ‘he hates sitting back and letting anyone take the lead. Or at least he did. Remember the Wedding Dress Ball the year I finished high school?’
‘The one where gale-force winds saw warnings on the radio telling people not to venture out?’
‘That’s the one. He wouldn’t accept it. He still had the ball, in the barn. It was as though it would be the end of the world if the event didn’t go ahead.’
‘I remember my mum talking about him being pig-headed,’ Tracy recalled. ‘She said he reminded her of my younger brother the year they cancelled the Wizard of Oz performance at the school because of snow. He wanted everyone to go there no matter the danger, he howled for days, I remember it myself.’
‘I’m worried about Barney and this fall taking away his independence.’
‘But he was up a ladder, could’ve happened to anyone.’
‘Everyone else seems to know that apart from Barney, who sees it as a sign of worse to come, that it’s the mark of the beginning of the end.’
‘Sounds a bit dramatic.’
