Other Side of the Season Read online

  Only when the operator answered had Natalie let go of the scream.

  ‘Oh, sweet Albie,’ Natalie whispered where she sat on the villa’s veranda, toying with the mobile phone while re-reading the letter’s last line. ‘Of course your mother loved you. Mothers love their children. Even my mother. They sometimes make mistakes. We all do.’

  It had been a huge mistake to lie to the first police officer to arrive at the scene by denying any personal knowledge of the dead man. Once said, she could hardly change her story without implicating herself. And if anyone ever saw the contents of the letter he’d left her, Natalie didn’t know what she’d do.

  Despite the deep sadness, Natalie had managed to rein in her grief every time the police officer dropped by the B & B for another chat to assist with their investigation regarding the deceased’s identity. For those few seconds, whenever the officer said ‘thank you for your time’, Natalie had been tempted to confess. But then she’d told herself the contents of the letter had no bearing on the investigation. There was no disputing the cause of death–suicide–and the why made no difference to anyone else but Natalie.

  Until now, she told herself, having listened to David talk about his father earlier today.

  Accompanying the scanned letter on her phone was a comment from Marcus and Tasha, confirming that Albie’s handwritten words would most likely be enough to exonerate David’s father of manslaughter. That meant while Ted might not have lived to see his name cleared, the man would be restored to his rightful place in Watercolour Cove’s history.

  51

  Watercolour Cove, 2015

  Tempted to quiz her mother about the one-on-one gallery tour with David, Sid had remained a silent observer from inside the villa, deciding some space and time alone might be more prudent. But that was until a few moments ago. The woman who never cried had looked visibly shaken when disturbed by a laughing kookaburra, impatient for an afternoon treat. He’d been sitting on the veranda railing waiting, but Natalie seemed too intent on her mobile phone to notice.

  ‘Mum, is everything okay?’ Sid popped her head out the door to ask. ‘I’ve been watching you from inside and–’

  ‘For goodness sake, Sidney!’ Natalie snapped the cover on her smart phone shut. ‘Why are you spying on me?’

  ‘I’m not spying on you, Mum.’ Sid’s sigh, long and loud, sounded more like a growl. ‘I’m worried, okay? You’re staring at the phone as though that text, or whatever you have there, is telling you the world is about to end.’

  ‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ Natalie said. ‘You startled me.’

  Sid felt a twinge in her belly, painful enough that she pressed her hand over Little Bump, who was not so little any more and definitely showing. ‘I’m not being melodramatic. It’s just that you seem cross all the time these days. Ever since I told you about the baby.’ Sid deliberately lowered her voice as she stepped out onto the veranda so the neighbours in the Banksia Cabin didn’t hear. ‘I wish you were happier for me. I wish you’d agree with me about bringing this baby up on my own. It’s my choice to make.’

  ‘You’re lucky you have the opportunity to make choices.’

  ‘Oh, here we go again with the usual you-don’t-know-how-lucky-you-are speech.’

  ‘When did you become so bitter, Sidney?’

  ‘Ooh, I’d say it started somewhere around the time I lost my father. Losing my partner recently and most probably any career hopes I might have had in the design business didn’t help. I walked away from my home of seven years with virtually nothing, I’m thirty-five years old and living back with my mother, a man hangs himself in the room next to mine. I find out I have a grandfather only to lose him in a matter of days, my daredevil brother almost kills himself and somehow I’m to blame for it, and, oh, I know . . . Then there’s the bit where my mother tells me, repeatedly, that I’m not capable of raising a child without a partner.’

  Natalie seemed to brace herself, her hushed tone reminding Sid about the neighbours. ‘Sidney, I never said you weren’t capable. It’s this single-mindedness about doing it all on your own that has me worried.’

  ‘Do you want to know the truth?’ Sid perched on the edge of a chair next to her mother. ‘I got myself into this situation, so it’s my responsibility, but I’m actually terrified–and you not having faith in me isn’t helping.’

  Natalie made a little scoffing sound. ‘My dear, you hardly got yourself into this predicament alone.’

  ‘I made a choice–turns out it was a bad one. But haven’t you ever made the wrong choice? I never thought for a moment Damien would react the way he did or I would’ve been more careful. Seven years we’d been living together. Seven years!’

  ‘You purposely got pregnant? Oh, Sidney.’

  Sid slumped back against the chair and clamped both hands between her knees. ‘No, I didn’t. I forgot the pill. It’s not as if it was the first time, and nothing happened then. I guess I figured if I fell pregnant it would be fate and Damien would feel the same. Now I’m scared, Mum. What if I don’t know how to be a mother?’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous, Sidney.’

  ‘Ridiculous? Is that all you have to say?’ Sid’s frustration wouldn’t allow her to sit any longer. Besides, she desperately needed to see her mother’s face right now and she couldn’t while seated in that chair. ‘God, Mum, look at you sitting there like cold, hard steel. Why aren’t you crying with me? Why aren’t you comforting me? Where are those hugs? Instead you’re all composed and perfect, while I’m your imperfect daughter who’s never been quite good enough. So I made a mistake. Everyone does. Everyone except you, it seems.’ Sid couldn’t stop the rush of tears. ‘Well, Mum, I’m done trying to fit into other people’s expectations of me. I’ve made a decision. As soon as Jake is okay, I’m going to Casino to see Bill and Kath.’

  ‘Damien’s parents?’

  ‘Yes. Kath has asked me a dozen times to visit. I’m still like a daughter to them, and they feel like family.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t. Sometimes I’m not sure what you see when you look at me, but you don’t see me. You don’t see my tears. If you really saw me, you’d know how scared I am and how much I need my mother.’

  Sid hadn’t expected a grin to grace her mother’s lips, but there it was–fleeting, slightly infuriating, but sincere and loving. As if to prove it, Natalie reached out and took Sid’s hand.

  ‘I do see you, Sid,’ her mother said, her voice soft. ‘I do. I see in you so much more than you’ll ever understand.’

  ‘Then make me understand, Mum.’

  Natalie fell silent, looking contemplative, and Sid was hopeful, but she’d been hopeful on numerous occasions in the past and usually been disappointed.

  ‘Very well,’ her mother sighed and released Sid’s hand before falling back against the chair, defeated. ‘Despite what I might have said in the past, the one thing I am most proud of is you, and I’m scared for you because . . .’

  ‘Because . . . ?’

  Natalie sighed again. ‘Because, Sidney, I wasn’t married to your father when I fell pregnant.’

  ‘You what?’ So shocked by the confession, and the sudden plummeting sensation in her stomach, Sid leaned against the railing and hugged her belly with both arms. ‘So, the story you used to tell everyone about me being premature was a lie? A convenient cover-up? And you’re only telling me this now?’

  Natalie didn’t speak and for a moment mother and daughter looked everywhere but at each other.

  ‘Wow!’ Sid dropped onto the seat beside her mother, barely containing her smile. ‘A single mother. I’m shocked!’

  ‘Sarcasm is uncalled for, Sid.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum, but I don’t understand. Not that being illegitimate matters to me, but how can that make you so against me getting pregnant and being a single parent?’

  ‘I said you were conceived out of wedlock–not illegitimate. I did get married, you know. And I’m not sure why you’re findi
ng this news amusing. That cocky little smile of yours will end up on the other side of your face when things get tough and you realise you’re not superwoman and invincible. You do know my mother wasn’t married. I saw first-hand what happens when things go wrong. History wasn’t going to repeat itself when I fell pregnant. I didn’t want a hard life for you.’

  ‘About Grandma . . . You never told me anything about her other than she never married. Anyway, times have changed. They don’t take babies from unmarried mothers anymore, or put them in institutions.’ Sid hesitated a moment, then decided this opportunity wasn’t likely to come up too often. She took a deep breath. ‘Mum, I want to ask you something. You’ve said you were in foster care from age five, after Grandma died.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘I can’t help but notice your preoccupation with the royal commission on child sexual abuse.’

  ‘Is this going somewhere, Sidney?’

  ‘Did you . . . ? Were you mistreated in the girls’ home you grew up in?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I just thought maybe you’d had a bad experience and that’s why you were worried about me not being married–that you thought my child might end up in some kind of dodgy foster care if anything ever happened to me.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you, Sid.’

  ‘How do we know anything for sure, Mum?’ Sidney took another deep breath. ‘I have been thinking about Little Bump’s future, and I was wondering . . . You will raise my baby if something happens to me?’

  ‘Stop this talk now. Nothing is going to happen to you, Sid.’

  ‘Nothing was supposed to happen to Dad on a business trip to New York, either. The fittest man I knew died because he chose to have breakfast at the wrong café on the wrong day. Things happen to people all the time when they’re not expecting it. Look at Jake–he could easily have killed himself on that quad bike. Hospitals make mistakes and women still die in childbirth, you know.’

  ‘Nonsense. If you’re anything like me, and with that little bump, you’ll have an easy birth and that child will grow up inquisitive and pestering you for answers. I believe it’s called karma, my dear.’ Natalie smiled, the ice cracking a little more.

  ‘Mum, we’re all born with an expiration date.’

  ‘Well, yours is a long way in the future,’ Natalie said. ‘Where’s that indomitable daughter of mine who’s going to make me a grandmother? In fact, that is something I would like to discuss right now.’ She took Sid’s hand in hers.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please do not encourage the child to call me Granny. And before you suggest anything, Grandma or Nanna Natalie is just as bad.’

  ‘Agreed. You’re too young to be a granny, anyway. How about Glam-ma?’ Sid bit back a grin. ‘You’re still very attractive. In fact, maybe when you get back to Brushstrokes you should try your luck with Mr Coffee Invitation up the street. You might find the perfect mate.’

  ‘I’m fine without one, thank you very much.’

  ‘Me too,’ Sid said with a little too much enthusiasm. ‘We can be there for each other, though, can’t we?’

  ‘Of course. Always.’ Natalie patted Sid’s knee with some finality and Sid was convinced the conversation was over. ‘Thirty-five years ago I remember promising myself I’d be the perfect mother. Maybe I can start now and do things better.’

  Wow! Who was this woman in front of her, claiming to be less than perfect? Maybe Little Bump was going to make a big difference in all their lives.

  ‘How about I get us both a cuppa?’ Sid said, hoping a hot drink might thaw her mother out even more. Besides, Sid was starting to feel the cold sitting out here.

  ‘And there’s that leftover cake.’

  ‘If Jake didn’t find it first,’ Sid muttered as she walked inside and across to the villa’s compact kitchen. She took the plastic kettle and shoved the spout under running water.

  Sid still had questions–lots of them–but did she dare ask tonight and risk the nice mother–daughter moment ending? She switched the kettle on, then took two mugs from the cup stand near the sink and glanced at Natalie in the reflection of the kitchen window. The woman was looking at her phone again, the soft glow of the screen lighting up a worried expression. Sid could start by asking: what’s so damn interesting on that phone? Was it worth pushing this evening, while her mother was in this strangely open mood? What were the odds of a straight answer anyway? Might Sid upset their already fragile relationship–and for what?

  Sid had come to Watercolour Cove hoping to find out something–well, anything, really–about her father’s family. She had always been curious about her grandparents on both sides, but neither Matthew nor Natalie was ever willing to talk about them in detail. Now that she was having a child of her own, the questions seemed more pressing than ever. She’d never heard of Aspergers in association with her father until after he died, and even then it had been Tasha, and not Natalie, who told her. Sid had always doubted that to be the case. It had, after all, only been Tasha’s opinion and she hadn’t know him that well. But, if her father really had been on the autism spectrum, what might that mean for Sid’s children? Wasn’t that important information to consider?

  While slicing the remaining morsel of cake into two pieces and pondering what else there might be to know about her father’s medical history–or his family’s for that matter–she was struck by a sudden, unsettling thought. Was Natalie’s interest in the royal commission because their father was the one who’d been abused? Was it domestic violence that had forced him to leave his home, cutting off all contact? Had his father been violent, or perhaps an alcoholic? Did that have something to do with the prison sentence he was given? Was there more to know about her grandfather, Edward Hill, that might account for the harshness of the sentence, given the man’s age? David had said something about his father being in jail for manslaughter. Was it possible that David’s dad and her grandfather were maybe–

  ‘Gah!’ Sid gushed, as did the blood from the knife cut to her finger.

  ‘Are you okay in here?’ Natalie rushed inside.

  ‘I’m, ah, fine. Just need to mop up a bit of blood.’ She grabbed the tea towel. ‘Ouch! And maybe–’

  ‘Goodness, no, not that dirty thing.’ Natalie whipped the tea towel away and turned on the cold-water tap, guiding Sid’s hand directly under the flow. The water felt good, and so did her mother’s gentle hands applying pressure to the wound. ‘Give me your other hand,’ she said, ‘and press down on the cut. That’s going to need gauze and a bandaid.’

  ‘Mum, I don’t know where you’ll find anything like that here.’

  ‘I have what we need.’ Natalie fossicked in her handbag, pulling out a small black purse with a zipper, spreading the contents over the bench and picking though the miscellaneous bits and pieces for sticky plasters, alcohol wipes, and a tiny tube of antiseptic.

  ‘I can’t believe you still have that little kit.’

  ‘Old habits,’ her mother replied. ‘Do you forget how many times I’ve had to patch up your brother over the years? You kept me busy as well.’

  How easily Sid had forgotten those times–Natalie sitting up all night when bronchitis had made Sid wheezy, and mashing her favourite food the time her tonsils came out. Years later, she was holding back Sid’s hair over the toilet bowl after a night out. Soon, she’d be holding her hand while Sid gave birth.

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  Natalie shot a curious smile her way. ‘I haven’t fixed you yet. Hold on.’

  Her mother had stemmed the bleeding enough to apply the strip of sticky plaster. If only Sid could curtail the questions niggling away and a gut feeling that suggested David’s father and Sid’s grandfather somehow fitted into the same picture. Was there some connection that explained why David and Natalie had been looking so comfortable with each other the other day? Was he the final piece of the puzzle? He’d spoken of his brother leaving home and stealing the love of his life.


  As her mother packed away the paraphernalia in the little black purse, Sid had to wonder: Who was the love of his life?

  ‘All done,’ Natalie announced.

  ‘Mum . . . ?’ Sid ventured, inspecting the sticky strip. ‘I know there are things about your past you’d rather not talk about, and Dad’s, but I wish you would. Sometimes I feel like I didn’t even know my own father.’

  Natalie made a dramatic tsking sound and took over pouring the tea. ‘What on earth would make you say such a thing?’ Natalie shoved the mug of tea towards her.

  ‘Maybe that’s why I came here to meet my grandfather.’ The horrified look on her mother’s face made Sid clarify. ‘I wanted to feel closer to Dad.’

  ‘Sid, I shouldn’t have been so surprised you’d want to connect with him. I’m sorry I made such a fuss about you trying.’

  ‘David told me curiosity killed the cat, and I told him it was something you always said to me. He said you were a wise woman and that I should listen to you.’

  ‘I find it hard to understand why you talked about our family so casually to a man you hardly know.’

  ‘It’s called conversation, Mum, and it was nothing specific. We talked about lots of stuff. We talked most of the night. He’s nice once you get to know him, when he drops his guard.’ Sid decided to give Natalie a bit of a nudge. ‘It took me a while to break through and yet, I thought I sensed something between you two the other day. You have a lot in common. Maybe you and he–’

  ‘Maybe we need to change the subject.’

  ‘Me trying to fix my mother up makes a change from my mother fixing me up.’

  ‘Touché.’ Natalie moved and Sid thought she might leave. Instead, she guided her daughter to a chair, walked behind and began braiding the mousey-brown hair. Then, with her hands occupied, she offered this. ‘If you want to talk I’ll tell you the whole truth about your grandmother–my mother. What sort of person she was and how I ended up in a home for girls. It’s time you knew everything about those days. Maybe then you and I can talk about why I might’ve come across a little intolerant at times, and why I try so hard to stay strong and keep the past in the past.’