Janet knew, the moment she saw Scarlet’s pasty face and dull eyes, that her period had arrived. The poor darling, she thought sadly as she watched her daughter put on a smiling face for a client.
‘You know, don’t you, Mum?’ Scarlet said the moment they were alone in the car on the way home. She’d seen the sympathy in her mother’s eyes when she’d come out of the powder room a couple of hours earlier. The sympathy and the sadness.
‘Yes,’ was all Janet could bring herself to say. She was close to tears. Not for herself but for her daughter.
‘Mum, I’ve been thinking, was there any physical reason why you didn’t have more children?’
Janet swallowed. She’d been expecting this question for ages.
‘Not that I know of,’ she answered truthfully. ‘I was thoroughly checked out, the same way you’ve been. One doctor said I wanted to fall pregnant too much. He said stress and tension can sometimes be the problem.’
‘Yes, I’ve read about that,’ Scarlet said. ‘That’s why couples sometimes fall pregnant after they’ve adopted a child.’
‘Your father and I were going to adopt a child,’ Janet confessed. ‘But then he was…’ She broke off, unable to continue.
‘Oh, Mum. I’m so sorry. I know how much you loved Dad.’ After the funeral, she’d listened to her mother cry at night for months and months. It never surprised Scarlet that her mother hadn’t ever dated again, or remarried. She’d been a one-man woman.
Scarlet knew she’d never find that one true love like her mother had. But she was going to become a mother, come hell or high water. All afternoon, she’d been thinking about the letter John had left for her a month ago. When she’d first read it, she’d been incredibly touched, especially with his intuitive observations about her fragile nervous state. She’d almost changed her mind about going back to the clinic and rung him straight away. But, in the end, she simply hadn’t had the courage to take what would have been a really big step for her. It seemed so much simpler not to involve other people, and to not face the problem of actually having sex with John. Scarlet understood that sex for men was not the big deal it could be for women. For her, anyway. She’d become more edgy about it as she’d got older. Less confident. More… nervous.
But the time for being Nervous Nelly was long gone. If she didn’t take John up on his offer she would always regret it.
Of course,
Well, if he had, she’d just have to persuade him otherwise, Scarlet vowed with renewed resolve. If he waffled, she’d remind him how much he’d always wanted to have sex with her!
Scarlet might have been shocked at herself if she hadn’t been so fired up.
‘Mum, I think that I might go away for a while. On a holiday.’
‘Oh? Where to?’
‘Somewhere warm. In Australia, of course. I don’t want to go overseas.’
‘Cairns is nice at this time of year,’ her mother suggested.
‘I was thinking of Darwin. I’ve never been there. And I’ve always wanted to see Kakadu.’ A total untruth. Scarlet had seen one or two documentaries about the Northern Territory and was not at all interested in vast wetlands filled with biting insects, wild buffalo and crocodiles.
‘Really?’ her mother said, sounding surprised.
‘I could go on some organised tours. That way I’d have company. You could manage without me, couldn’t you, Mum? Lisa would be happy to do more hours. Joanne, too.’
‘Of course I could manage. I managed when you left to be an estate agent, didn’t I? When were you thinking of going?’
‘Not sure yet. Possibly the end of next week.’ Scarlet knew exactly when she would ovulate. She’d been charting her cycle for months. Two weeks after her period started was the beginning of her peak days for conceiving. No point in going to Darwin much before then. At the same time, she had to make it seem like she was going on a real holiday. She could hardly just go for a few days.
‘For how long?’
‘Um. A week or so. Maybe ten days,’ she added for good measure.
‘So you won’t be going to the clinic for another procedure next month?’
‘No, Mum. I’ve decided to have a break from that for a while.’
Her mother actually looked relieved. ‘I think that’s a good idea, love. And so’s this holiday. Who knows? You might meet a nice man.’
‘You never know, Mum,’ Scarlet said, then deftly changed the subject onto the traffic and the never-ending roadworks. She’d always been good at making conversation, but underneath her breezy chit-chat Scarlet was beginning to feel anxious about what John would say when she rang him. Which she fully intended to, at the first available moment. For if she procrastinated, her courage might falter.
As soon as they arrived home, Scarlet made the excuse that she needed to lie down for a while. When her mother offered to make her a cup of tea, she declined, saying she was going to take some pain killers and have a short nap before dinner. Fortunately, it was her mother’s turn to cook. Also fortunately, Scarlet’s bedroom was at the back of the house, some way from the kitchen. Once her mother turned on the television, she would not hear Scarlet talking on the phone.
Scarlet’s hands were literally shaking as she drew John’s letter out of the bedside drawer where she’d put it over a month ago. He’d given her two numbers, one for a regular mobile, one for a satellite phone. She sat on the side of her bed and tried the mobile number first. It rang, thank heavens. She would have hated for it to be engaged. As it was, she’d already worked herself up into a right state.
‘For pity’s sake, John, answer the damned thing,’ she muttered under her breath after it had rung several times.
But he didn’t, and the phone eventually switched to his message bank. A despairing Scarlet didn’t leave any message, choosing instead to try the satellite phone first. She actually prayed as she punched in the numbers.
CHAPTER NINE
JOHN was putting a few more pieces of wood on the camp fire when he heard the distinctive ring of his satellite phone. Frowning, he crawled into his one-man tent, picked up the phone and carried it back out into the moonlight, where he stared at it briefly before sweeping the phone up to his ear.
‘Hello, Scarlet,’ he answered, trying to sound cool when inside he was anything but.
John had been relieved at first when she hadn’t contacted him. Once he’d cleared his head, he’d told himself that it had been a crazy idea anyway. But as the days had crawled by, John’s every waking moment had been haunted by the thought of going home at Christmas and seeing Scarlet with a stranger’s child growing in her belly. Once again, he’d been repulsed by the idea.
After several particularly restless nights, he’d been tempted to ring her. But what could he say that he hadn’t already said? It was obvious she didn’t want him to father her child. To have pursued the matter would have made him look foolish.
So in the end, he’d done nothing. Literally. He hadn’t tried to find work with any of the mining companies. He hadn’t gone fishing, either, the way he usually did when he was holidaying in Darwin. Hadn’t done a damned thing. He had just moped around the place, watching endless movies on TV and doing way too much thinking. And way too much drinking. Bianca would have said he was running away from real life. Again.
In the end, he’d had his heli-fishing mate drop him into this isolated spot for a few days and had been camping out alone. Nothing cleared the head better than communing with nature, he’d found.
And it had worked, to a degree. He’d finally begun to see the sense of Scarlet’s decision not to accept his offer. Finally found some peace of mind over the situation. Or so he’d believed.
It had only taken one little phone call to shatter that illusion.
‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked, clearly taken aback.
‘The caller ID said you were from New South Wales,’ he explained. ‘You’re the only person in that state who has my satellite number.’
‘Oh. I see.’
