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He loved his wife but the joke was on him because she didn’t love him any more.
Breathing deeply, he looked again at the gift-wrapped box.
Feeling as if he were opening something that could bite him, he ripped the wrapping off and snapped the lid of the black square box open.
Nestled inside it were two gold wedding bands.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANNA ACCEPTED THE bottle of water from Melissa with a grateful smile of thanks.
The sand on Bondi beach was fine and deliciously warm between her toes, the sun blazing down and baking her skin. As it was a work day and the schools were open, the beach was busy but not packed. While there wasn’t the privacy she’d found at hers and Stefano’s Santa Cruz beach house, there was an easy vibe that almost, almost gave her the peace she so longed for.
The rate she was going she would never find peace. Not in herself.
Melissa stretched out on the sun-lounger beside her and they sat there amiably, sunglasses on, soaking up the rays.
‘What do you want to do later?’ Melissa said after a while.
‘I haven’t got anything in mind. You?’
‘Shall we borrow Mick’s Jeep and go for a drive and explore the suburbs?’
‘You’ll have to drive. I haven’t been behind a wheel in years.’
‘All the more reason you should drive. Use it or lose it.’
Anna laughed but it was a muted sound compared to the way she used to laugh.
‘Shall we invite Mum with us?’ Melissa asked carefully.
‘If you want.’
When Anna had flown out to Australia it hadn’t been to make her peace with her mother but to make her peace with Melissa. She had been determined to do what Stefano had suggested though, and sit down and talk to her mother, if only just so she could move on.
Her mum hadn’t quite seen it like that. Anna had arrived at the house to find the whole ground floor covered in balloons and banners to welcome her. All the neighbours and Mick’s family had been invited round to meet her. Melissa had stood there, eyes pleading for Anna to go along with it—Anna could almost read her mind, realising her sister was begging her not to make a scene.
Making a scene was the last thing she’d wanted to do.
She’d looked at her mum, flanked by her husband and stepkids, and seen the desperate excitement in her eyes, and the fear.
Too much water had passed under the bridge for Anna to throw herself into her mother’s arms as if nothing had happened but she’d returned her embrace coolly.
It had been almost a decade since she’d last seen her and she’d taken in the marked changes time had wrought. Her mother had done the same in return. They’d stared at each other for so long that Anna’s eyes had blurred, her heart so full that it pushed up into her throat and then she really had fallen into her mother’s arms.
As the evening had progressed and she couldn’t make a move without tripping over her mother, Anna had come to understand exactly what it meant for her mum to have her youngest child under her roof and had cancelled her hotel reservation and agreed to stay there, sharing the guest room with Melissa.
That had been two weeks ago.
They had spent a long time talking. They’d been honest with each other. Many tears had been shed. A bucketful of them.
Her mother had apologised over and over for leaving her behind and for the cruel words she’d spoken the last time they’d been together. She hadn’t made any excuses. She knew she’d been selfish and had effectively abandoned her daughters for the sake of a man. Her bone-deep guilt had been her punishment.
If Anna were being cynical she could say that if the guilt had been that bad, she could always have come home to them.
She didn’t want to be cynical any more.
Things were still awkward at times but slowly they were forging a rapport. Perhaps they would never regain their old mother-daughter relationship but Anna was confident that when she returned to London they would retain some semblance of one. It was entirely in her hands. Whatever wrongs her mother had done, Stefano had been correct in his assessment that she had missed her. She needed her mother in her life.
