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Her eyes smarted. Time to pull up her big girl pants and cop it, right between the eyes. Their moment in the sun was over.
She shifted over to him and asked, “What do we do now, Oliver?”
When he smiled at her, she thought she saw just a hint of sadness in the depths of his eyes, of regret, of longing even… before he flicked his sunnies back over the bridge of his nose and pulled out his phone.
Felicity swallowed the lump in her throat. A lump, she decided, that was as big as Gondwanaland. Like three great continents rolled into one.
“I have an old friend in Adelaide,” he said, flipping through the contacts in his phone. “I was thinking of looking him up even before this happened.”
Her mood brightened a little. Company would at least dilute the heavy energy between them.
“Luke Saunders. Here he is. We were in merchant banking together.” He put the phone to his ear.
Within seconds he had on his professional Oliver voice, deep, confident, like he was master of the world. “Luke, mate, it’s Oliver. Yes, Oliver Blake.” A laugh. “Yeah I know, it’s been a while… How are you?… Well, the thing is I’m in Adelaide…” Hesitation. “With a friend…” Why did she think he’d possibly say anything else? “I was planning to call you anyway, but would you believe we’ve had a breakdown.” A lot more words and head nodding and then, “Are you sure? That would be so kind.” He rattled off the name of the street then looked at her, smiled. “Her name’s Felicity, she’s English.” A hearty laugh. “No, no, we’re just travelling companions.” Felicity’s heart bombed. “No, that’s ridiculous, we’ll get an Uber… well, if you’re sure, okay, we’ll wait. Thanks mate.”
As he pocketed his phone, Felicity adjusted her sunglasses to hide the smarting of her eyes and stared at the traffic, which was running smoothly now that the poor old Shaggin’ Wagon was gone.
Travelling companions. It was true, an utterly sensible thing to say. So why did it feel like he’d plunged a knife through her ribs?
They waited in a nearby coffee shop until Luke turned up in a beaten-up old Land Rover. He pumped her hand madly with a friendly grin. He was not how she’d imagined a friend of Oliver’s. He was big and slightly unkempt, wearing muddy jeans and a checked shirt and smelled of hay and a day’s work in fresh air. Next to him an avid border collie did circles of excitement on the seat.
“This is Bonnie.” Luke grinned. “She always greets visitors like this.”
In the back seat, Bonnie proceeded to jump all over Felicity and lick her face. It was a welcome distraction, but she could still tune into Oliver and Luke chatting in the front. It didn’t sound like they’d seen each other in years. They drove out of Adelaide, up a steep winding hill, and not long after they’d left the city traffic behind, they arrived in a quaint little town, with an olde-worlde pub and sturdy stone houses with deep verandas and even a fountain in the picturesque town square. It reminded Felicity of Wiltshire. It had been a long time since she’d really missed her parents’ farm, but now a stab of nostalgia dug its way into her chest as she exclaimed, “This reminds me so much of home!”
“A lot of UK visitors tell us that,” Luke replied.
Soon they arrived at a sandstone brick house, set in undulating gardens with flower beds full of rose bushes and hydrangeas. Luke’s wife, Freya came to meet them with a baby clasped in her arms. Felicity immediately warmed to her, maybe because of her multi-coloured sundress and the tie-dyed band looped around her strawberry blonde curls, but also her wide ingenuous hazel eyes and open smile.
Freya gave Oliver a hug and shifted the baby onto her hip as Oliver said, “Good lord, how old is Theo now?”
“Six months—remember we couldn’t make your weddi—” Freya stopped and blushed vividly, and a moment of awkward silence followed before Oliver said, “Well regardless, it’s great to see you now.”
Thankfully little Theo reached for Felicity, grabbing her hair with a gurgle of delight. “He likes you,” said Freya as, hair now extracted, he still reached his arms out to her. “Good to meet you too, Felicity.”
Oliver’s eyes were on her as she planted a kiss on Theo’s downy head, but she carefully avoided his gaze.
Half an hour later, sitting under the wide veranda drinking iced tea in the late afternoon heat, Oliver and Luke were reminiscing about Langhan’s Merchant Bank and how good it was they got out, when Freya leaned over and asked Felicity, “Do you want to see more of the garden?”
“I’d love to.”
The grounds of the old colonial house reminded her of the gardens of Henry’s manor, a little less formal but still bursting with flowers like hollyhocks and honeysuckle, as well as Australian native plants with beautiful red and pink spikey flowers that Freya told her the names of but she had no hope of remembering.
“I grew up in the country,” she told Freya.
“Oh really, whereabouts?”
“On the border of Wiltshire and Dorset.”
Freya gave a wistful sigh. “Thomas Hardy country. I’ve wanted to go there ever since I readTess of The D’Urbervilles.”
“It is beautiful. But it rains a lot.”
“We could do with more rain here. We’ve had a drought this year, it makes it hard on the grapes.”
As they walked, Freya asked Felicity questions about her family.
“My mum’s very, what we callcounty, you know, wellies and tweed skirts, so she was a perfect fit for my dad, who’s been intent on breeding the best pig in the west country his whole life. Which, to his credit, he’s done. His pigs have won the West Country Fair first prize three years in a row now.”
