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‘I wasn’t suggesting—’
‘Good. Don’t.’ He yanked open the front door.
‘Would you still like me to stay with Petra?’ she scraped up the courage to ask, taking heart from the fact he was still talking to her.
‘You’re a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?’ he rounded on her roughly. ‘What do you want me to say? What I would like is for you to get the hell out of my face! Right now I don’t want you anywhere near me, my home or my daughter. Is that explicit enough for you?’
The slam of the door reverberated through the big house.
‘Jeez, did you and Dad have a fight?’ Anya turned to see Petra frowning at her from the door of the music room.
Anya simply nodded, massaging at her temple
Petra padded up the hall. ‘A bad one?’
‘Pretty bad.’ Anya was afraid she was going to burst into tears. ‘Your father said to tell you he’d be back around two. I’m afraid I have to leave—would you mind telling Mrs Lee for me?’
She rushed to find her handbag, juggling the papers against her chest as she hunted out her car keys.
Petra followed her out to her car. ‘But you will be coming back some time, right?’
Anya’s fingers tightened around the keys. ‘I’m not sure…’
‘You’re still going to be doing my tutoring, though?’
‘I’m not sure about that, either. I don’t know if your father will want me to do that any more.’
‘You mean the fight was that bad?’ Petra was shocked. ‘You guys aren’t going to break up, are you? But Anya—you can’t. I’m going home next week. What about Dad? You know he’s going to be all bent out of shape about it. And if you’re not here he’ll be left all alone…’
Anya was having difficulty seeing through the growing blur. Why wouldn’t the key go in the lock? She took a wild stab and to her relief it finally fitted. ‘Your father’s a grown man. He lived here quite happily by himself before you came along, and he has plenty of friends.’
‘Yeah, but he’s sorta got used to having people hanging around—you know, like a family.’ She caught the car door as Anya got into the driver’s seat. ‘And what about the puppy we chose?’
Anya looked at her foggily. ‘Scott is giving you a puppy?’ What a ridiculous gift to buy a child who was about to fly back to Australia. Or was it supposed to be a lure to bring her back for future visits?
‘Not me…you! Dad said you told him that you were thinking of getting a dog so he and I went out and bought one for you. But we couldn’t give him to you yet because he has to stay with his mother until he gets big enough to be on his own and Dad wants it to be a surprise for you. He’s real cute and cuddly, but he has a pedigree and everything, and Dad’s even got you a collar and doghouse and a bowl and stuff. He’ll still give it to you, won’t he?’ Petra worried.
A puppy? Scott had gone out and chosen a warm, cuddly squirming puppy for her?
That was the warm, squirming thought that kept popping into Anya’s mind throughout a sleepless night and the long, dreary, lonely, grey Sunday which followed.
Giving someone a puppy wasn’t like handing them a box of chocolates, she told herself. An animal required a serious commitment from the gift’s recipient and that implied serious intent on the part of the gift-giver. That Scott had cared enough to want to buy her a pet to love and laugh and romp with in the grass surely meant that he had more complex feelings for her than he had been willing to admit. Otherwise, why bother? She had made it quite clear she had been happy with chocolates and candles. And doggy people were warm and loving. You didn’t give a dog to someone unless you felt they were trustworthy enough to look after it properly.
At that point in her tortuous thinking she always came to a painful cropper. You could have trust without love, but it was impossible to love someone that you couldn’t trust. And she was afraid that she had now indelibly associated herself in Scott’s mind with the other two women in his life who had badly abused his trust. Sure, once he had thought it over he would probably understand why she had acted the way she had, and hopefully even forgive her, but it was bound to have a negative impact on their relationship. If she had told him that she loved him before he had found out what she was doing, things might have been different, but why should he believe someone who had already perjured herself by her actions and omissions?
No, whatever slim hope she had had of persuading Scott that she was worthy of his love was probably gone. But, as he had cruelly demonstrated, a lack of trust didn’t stop him having sex with her. If she indicated she would accept such a one-dimensional relationship he might be willing to oblige. The idea left a bitter taste in her mouth. For her, sex and love had always been two sides of the same coin. She hadn’t required Scott to return her love before she shared her body with him, but she had needed his respect to balance the emotional scales. Now she was afraid she didn’t even have that.
Several times her hand hovered over the telephone, but if she rang him, what could she say? I was thinking about you? He must already know that. I want to talk to you? He would know that, too. As difficult as it might be, she had to wait for him to make the next move. And there would be one, because he wouldn’t be able to leave the loose ends dangling. If nothing else he would have questions he wanted to ask, for in the heat of anger he was the one who had done most of the talking. He might have told her to leave, but he had stopped short of telling her never to darken his door again. He also knew all that he had to do was crook his finger and she would come eagerly running.
There was Petra, too; she was bound to be strongly partisan on Anya’s behalf…
Her violently see-sawing emotions left her feeling tense and miserable, and by early Monday morning she was so firmly in the grip of a depression that she did something that she had never done in her life—she threw a ‘sickie’. So it seemed like fate when, not long after leaving a me
ssage on Liz Crawford’s answer-machine to explain that she was unable to come into school, she had a phone call from Russell Fuller and found herself talked into being interviewed later in the morning. She would have liked to fob him off with her supposed illness, but she decided gloomily that she might as well get it over with.
Talking to him reminded her she hadn’t responded to any of Kate’s nagging e-mails, so before he arrived she sent off a terse message to say ‘mission accomplished’ and ask if Kate wanted her to courier the package or send it by registered mail. Anya would have been quite content to throw the whole lot in the fire.
Russell Fuller turned out not to be the sleazy, ferret-faced scandal-monger she had feared, but a stocky, russet-haired man who not only recorded their conversation on micro-cassette but also took meticulous notes in his own form of shorthand in a lined notepad. He showed her the faded photo albums he said had been found for him at The Pines by Scott Tyler, after Russell had convinced him that Kate had said they were probably still in the attic of her childhood home.
