Watching Abby smile back.
He could help-Sarah kept offering him a turn-but he excused himself on the grounds that all Abby’s aprons were frilly and there was no way Banksia Bay’s cop could be caught in a rose-covered pinny.
But in reality he simply wanted to watch.
He’d forgotten how good it was to watch Abby Callahan.
Had she forgotten how to be Abby Callahan?
For years now, he’d never seen her with a hair out of place. Now, though, she was wearing faded jeans, an old sweatshirt smudged with flour, bare feet.
He remembered her in bare feet.
Abby. Seventeen years old. She’d laugh and everyone laughed with her. She could tease a smile out of anyone. She was a laughing, loving girl.
She’d been his girlfriend and he’d loved it. They just seemed to…fit.
But then they’d grown up. Sort of.
One heated weekend. Angry words. The car. The debutante ball. Incredibly important to teenagers.
Abby had started dating Philip. She and Philip had broken up, and then Sarah had started going out with him.
He hadn’t liked that, either. Maybe he’d acted like a jerk, making Abby pay. He’d assumed they’d make it up.
But then… The tragedy that turned Abby from a girl who’d dreamed of being a dress designer, who lived for colour and life, into a lawyer who represented the likes of Wallace Baxter.
A lawyer who was about to marry Philip Dexter.
No.
He came close to shouting it, to thumping his fist down on the flour-covered table.
He did no such thing. There was no reason why she shouldn’t marry Philip. There was nothing Raff could put his finger on against the guy. Philip was a model citizen.
He didn’t like him.
Jealous?
Yeah. But something else. A feeling?
A feeling he’d had at nineteen that had never gone away.
‘Why did you and Dexter stop going out?’ he asked as the pasta went through a third and final time.
She didn’t lift her head but he saw the tiny furrow of concentration, the setting of her lips.
‘Abby?’
‘Just ease it in a little more, Sarah.’
‘Ten years ago. After your debut. Why did you break up?’
‘That’s none of your business. Now we put this attachment on to cut it into ribbons.’
‘I know,’ Sarah said, crowing in triumph as she found the right attachment. ‘This one.’
‘It’s just I’ve always wondered,’ Raff said as Sarah tried to get the attachment in. They both let her be. It’d be easier to step in and do it for her-her fingers were fumbling badly-but she was a picture of intense concentration and to step in now…
They both knew not to.
‘You know I only went out with Debbie Macallroy to get back at you,’ he said.
‘So you did. Childhood romances, Raff. We were dumb.’
Really dumb. Where had they all ended up?
‘We did have fun before the crash,’ he said gently. ‘We were such good friends. But then Philip… First you and then Sarah. But you didn’t fall in love with him then. You ditched him.’
‘I’ve changed. We both have.’
‘People don’t change.’
‘Of course they do.’
Of course people changed. She had, and so had Philip.
She didn’t look up at Raff; she focused on the sheets of pasta, making sure they were dusted so they wouldn’t stick in the final cutting process.
She thought back to Philip at nineteen.
He’d been rich, or rich compared to every other kid in Banksia Bay. He had his own car and it was a far cry from the bomb Ben and Raff were doing up. A purple Monaro V8. Cool.
Every girl in Abby’s year group had wanted to go out with him. Abby didn’t so much-she was trying hard not to think she was still in love with Raff-but she’d needed a partner for her debut, all Raff thought about was his stupid car, and Sarah had bet her she wouldn’t be game to ask him.
For a few weeks she’d preened. Her friends were jealous. Philip danced really well and her debut was lovely.
But what followed…the drive-in movies… Sitting in the dark with Philip… Not so cool. Nothing she could put her finger on, though. It was just he wasn’t Raff and that was no reason to break up with him.
But finally…
They’d gone for a drive one afternoon, heading up Black Mountain to the lookout. She hadn’t wanted to go, she remembered, and when they’d had a tyre blowout she’d been relieved.
She hadn’t been so relieved when they realised Philip’s spare tyre was flat. Or when he thought she should walk back into town to fetch his father-because he had to look after the car.
‘No way am I trudging back to town while you sit here in comfort,’ she retorted. ‘You’re the dummy who didn’t check his spare.’
Not so tactful, even for a seventeen-year-old, but she was reaching the point where she wanted to end it.
Philip left her. Bored, she tried out the sound system. His tapes were boring, top ten stuff, nothing she enjoyed.
She flicked through his tape box-a box just like the one that graced her bedside table, beautiful cedar with slots for every cassette. His grandpa really was great.
Boring cassettes. Boring, boring. But, at the back, some unmarked ones. She slid one in and heard the voice of Christabelle Thomas, a girl in the same class as her at school.
‘Philip, we shouldn’t. My mum’d kill me. Philip…’
Enough. She met Philip and his father as she stomped down the mountain, fuming.
‘You were supposed to stay with the car,’ Philip told her.
‘I didn’t like the music,’ she snapped, and held up the tape and threw it at him through his father’s car window. ‘Put the ripped up tape in my letterbox tomorrow or I’m telling Christabelle.’
Why think of that now?
Because of Raff?
She glanced up and he was watching her. Sarah was watching her.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sarah asked, and she came back to the present and realised Sarah had successfully put the cutting tool in place.
‘Hey, fantastic, let’s cut,’ she said, and the moment had passed. The time had passed. The tapes had been an aberration.
Philip had brought the tape round the next morning, cut to shreds.
‘Hey, Abby, I need to tell you I’m sorry. Christabelle and I only went out a couple of times, well before you and me. It’s not what you think. I only asked to kiss her. And I hadn’t realised the tape was on record. I record stuff in the car all the time on the trip between here and Sydney-I try and recall study notes and then see how accurate I’ve been. I must have forgotten this was still on. I’m so sorry you found it.’
It was okay, she conceded. It was a mistake. Kids did stupid things.
Like driving on the wrong side of the road?
‘What’s wrong?’ Sarah asked again and Raff’s eyes were asking the same question.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just started thinking about all the things I had to do before the wedding.’
‘You want us to go home?’ Sarah asked, and Abby winced and got a grip.
‘No way. I’m hungry. Pasta, here we come. What setting shall we have it on? Do we want angels’ hair or
