Outback Boss, City Bride

at Hal’s expression she felt suddenly cold. What had she done?

Puzzled, she looked down at the photo. What was there in it to provoke such a reaction? It was just a happy family shot.

‘In that box,’ she said, pointing. ‘There was a load of rubbish in there, but I couldn’t throw it away. I thought Emma and Mickey might like to see their mum as a little girl. I presume that’s her in the middle?’ She tried a smile to lighten the atmosphere. ‘And who’s the little boy with the cheeky grin? I didn’t realise-what are you doing?’

Her voice rose and she snatched the picture back from Hal, who had reached over to take it and was about to tear it in half.

‘You can’t do that!’ she said, holding the photo protectively and staring at him in disbelief.

‘I don’t want it.’ She had never seen his expression that cold. ‘It’s just junk.’

‘But it’s your family!’

‘Look, it’s none of your business!’ Hal lost control of his temper. ‘It doesn’t matter who it is or what it is. It’s nothing to do with you.’ He glared at her. ‘Why can’t you just leave things alone?’

‘But-’

‘You could have cleared a space for your computer and got on with your own work,’ he went on furiously. ‘But no! You couldn’t do anything as simple as that, could you? You always have to interfere. You have to poke around in things that don’t concern you,’ he said, practically spitting.

Shaken by his anger, Meredith moistened her lips. ‘I’ve obviously touched a nerve,’ she said carefully, still not really understanding what she had done.

‘Too right you have!’ Suddenly needing only to get out, Hal swung for the door. ‘Keep the bloody photo if it matters so much to you,’ he snarled, kicking the stool out of his way. ‘But don’t show it to me again. I don’t want it.’

Meredith sat very still after he had gone. She heard the screen door slam and the angry clatter of his boots down the kitchen steps. Seconds later he appeared striding across the yard, his body rigid. Watching him through the window, Meredith bit her lip as he disappeared in the direction of the paddock where the horses were kept. This was her fault.

Carefully, she smoothed out the crumpled photo. It showed a family squinting at the camera, like thousands of other families before them. The man looked so like Hal that he had to be his father, so that, thought Meredith, turning her attention to the woman, had to be his mother. She had been a beautiful woman and obviously very stylish. Meredith could imagine her in that sitting room, if not in the kitchen or on the scruffy veranda.

Hal looked about twelve, so his mother must have died not long after the picture had been taken. Was that what had upset him so much?

Meredith sighed as she stared down at the faces, their smiles frozen in time. Hal was right. It was none of her business and she shouldn’t have poked around in his private papers, but it had seemed such a happy picture. She had never dreamt that he wouldn’t be glad to see it.

He had listened so sympathetically when she had been talking about her childhood, too. Meredith had found herself talking easily, and it had almost been like finding a friend. Now she had spoilt everything.

Depressed, she looked at her watch and got to her feet when she saw the time. She would apologise to Hal later, and would just have to hope that it wasn’t too late. In the meantime, there were potatoes to be peeled.

She left the photo by the computer. It wasn’t hers to keep. If Hal wanted to destroy it, that was his choice, but she wouldn’t tear it up for him.

Meredith hoped all evening for a chance to tell Hal how sorry she was, but they were never alone and she knew better than to raise the subject with anyone else there. Emma and Mickey had taken to hanging around in the kitchen, and by the time Meredith had changed into her evening clothes, the stockmen were having a beer with Hal.

Hal himself had recovered his temper, but Meredith could see that he was withdrawn and the grey eyes were shuttered. When he turned down her offer to help with the clearing up after the meal, she decided that it might be better to leave it. If Hal didn’t want to talk, she shouldn’t make him. For once, she wouldn’t interfere or do what she thought was best, she thought, remembering how his comments about the way she treated Lucy had stung.

Instead, she would do some work.

The office was less inviting at night. Meredith tried to ignore the blank black windows and set up her laptop, averting her eyes from the photograph that had caused so much trouble that afternoon. Downloading her emails meant unplugging the phone, plugging in her laptop and dialing the Internet, a long process that had her remembering broadband at her house in London with affection.

She was just plugging the phone in once more when the door opened and Hal came in with a mug of coffee for her. ‘I thought you’d like this if you’re going to work,’ he said.

‘Oh…thank you.’ Having waited all evening for a chance to talk to him, Meredith found herself suddenly tongue- tied.

She could see the photo still propped against the base of the desktop computer and wished that she had put it away. It felt as if there were a flashing neon arrow pointing at it, reminding Hal of her interference. She went to sit back on the chair, where her body would partly obscure the picture, but it was too late. Hal had already seen it.

‘Hal, I’m sorry-’ she began, but he interrupted her.

‘No, I’m the one that’s sorry,’ he said. ‘I overreacted earlier. I haven’t seen a picture of my mother for over twenty years. I thought my father had destroyed them all and it was a shock to suddenly see her again.’

He took a breath, knowing that it would be impossible to explain to Meredith just how much of a shock it had been to come face to face with the past without warning like that. ‘I took it out on you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I shouldn’t have been looking through your papers,’ Meredith apologised in her turn. ‘You were right; it was none of my business.’

‘I’ve never looked in that box,’ he told her. ‘It must have been my father’s.’

Reaching past Meredith, Hal picked up the photograph and stood looking down at it, his mouth twisted. ‘I wonder why he kept this.’

It seemed obvious to Meredith. ‘It’s a lovely picture.’ She hesitated. ‘Your mother was very pretty.’

‘Yes, she was that,’ Hal agreed bitterly.

‘Why would your father destroy all pictures of her?’ asked Meredith. The pictures she and Lucy had of their own mother were their most treasured possessions. ‘It seems a terrible thing to do.’

‘As terrible as destroying a family?’ Hal dropped the picture back on the desk. ‘That’s what she did.’

‘Your mother?’ she said, startled. ‘But…I thought she died.’

‘No, she didn’t die,’ said Hal, a muscle beating in his clenched jaw. ‘She’s alive and well and living in Sydney, apparently. I haven’t seen her since she walked away from Wirrindago when I was twelve. She didn’t even say goodbye. She just left Dad a note, got into the ute and drove herself to Whyman’s Creek one day. Dad had to go and collect it from the airport after she’d gone.’

Meredith stared at him, shocked. ‘She abandoned you?’

‘She abandoned us all. Lydia was only nine.’

The same age she had been when she had been left at boarding school, Meredith thought. She had felt abandoned then, but what if it had been her own mother who had walked out on her? Meredith couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t imagine leaving her own children.

‘Jack was ten,’ he went on, and she remembered the little boy with the cheeky grin.

‘Your brother?’

‘Yes,’ said Hal, but he didn’t elaborate.

‘Do…do you know why she went?’ she asked after a moment.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘She was bored.’

‘Bored?’

Hal raised an eyebrow at her incredulous expression. ‘I would have thought that you of all people would understand. You’re a city girl too. You don’t like the heat and the flies and the loneliness.’

‘No,’ Meredith agreed, stung by the implication that she would understand walking out on a family. ‘But I’m not married to you and I don’t have three children!’