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She kept thinking of Kathleen, so bruised by her early experience of love that she’d kept herself at a safe distance from emotions until she’d met Brian. She was urging Martha not to make the same mistake.
Martha didn’t want to have regrets.
She didn’t want to make another bad decision, but which option would be the bad decision? Having a fling with Josh, or not having a fling?
She’d never felt a fraction of this chemistry with anyone else.
She glanced in the mirror to check on Kathleen and the older woman gave her a cheeky wink.
Kathleen didn’t say a word, but she didn’t need to. Martha already knew what she was thinking.
18
LIZA
Liza stood in the kitchen, humming to herself as she grated ginger and chopped lemongrass for the salmon fillets.
She’d spent the day painting, experimenting with a large canvas, applying bold swipes of aqua and green to reflect the colors of this part of the coastline.
Halfway through the day she’d broken off and jogged to the beach, taken a skin-numbing swim in the freezing ocean, and then jogged back. It was something she’d been doing every day. She felt horribly unfit, her face red and her heart pounding. Sean had a gym membership, and he tried to go at least twice a week. During Liza’s three-month membership she’d managed to go on precisely two occasions, and one of those had been cut short by the school calling asking her to pick up Alice who had fallen during a game of hockey. Deciding that there was no point in paying to sponsor other people’s fitness, she’d canceled her membership. She’d planned to try a yoga class, or maybe jog in the mornings, but there was always something more pressing demanding her time. And when she did find herself with thirty minutes to herself, she couldn’t bring herself to spend it pounding along a path.
As she’d showered off the salt water, taking time to condition her hair, she’d thought more about her dream to live somewhere like this eventually. There had been a time when she and Sean had talked about it, but like many other things that dream had been squashed out by reality. Why?
Spending time with Angie had made her ask herself that question. Her friend’s life had changed radically over the past few years, and that change had been forced upon her. But why did you have to wait for a crisis life event to rethink the way you lived?
And now here she was in the kitchen, preparing dinner for a man who wasn’t her husband.
Should she feel guilty? Did she feel guilty?
No. Finn had been generous to her mother. Also, she enjoyed his company.
And it wasn’t as if Sean was going to know anything about it. If it came up in conversation then she’d talk about it, but otherwise why raise it? It was all perfectly innocent.
She put the salmon back in the fridge, whisked egg whites with sugar to make meringues and slid them into the oven.
Feeling thoroughly unlike herself, she selected a track from Finn’s most recent album and danced round the kitchen.
When the track ended she stopped, breathless, thinking how embarrassed the girls would have been if they could have seen her. They thought she was too old to dance.
And she’d thought her mother was too old to do a road trip.
Behavior shouldn’t be dictated by age, she thought. If she wanted to dance, she’d dance. If her mother wanted to travel, she should travel.
And if she wanted to stay in her home, she should stay in her home.
The doors and windows were open to the garden and Liza could smell the climbing rose that clustered on the wall next to the window. An idea formed in her head, but she pushed it away. Ridiculous. She was stepping into fantasyland.
When she was satisfied that she had dinner preparation well in hand, she headed upstairs to change.
She surveyed her new wardrobe. The problem with so much choice, she thought, was actually choosing.
In the end she settled on the red dress, because she couldn’t imagine another occasion that she might be able to wear it and a dress like this wasn’t designed to live its life hanging on a rail.
Her phone rang as she was heading downstairs.
It was her mother.
“How’s the adventurer?” Liza fastened her watch. She’d started to look forward to these nightly phone calls with her mother. “How are Martha and Josh? Are your matchmaking attempts working?”
