There was no way she wanted to bring that sort of negative energy to James and Kane. Imagine if she stayed, and in turn Kane turned out like her. Climbing out his bedroom window to meet his friends after curfew. Backchatting. One day leaving James and threatening never to return—
‘It wasn’t only Kane who mentioned you to me today.’
Siena turned to find Mandy leaning against the doorjamb. ‘Oh?’ Siena said.
‘Matt did too.’
‘You know Matt?’ How well integrated in James and Kane’s life was this woman?
Mandy sidled over and sat next to Siena, crossing her legs neatly at the ankle. She smelled of chalk dust and juice. Compared with her delicate prettiness, Siena felt dark and dangerous to know. She felt the way she had felt at school around the happy-go-lucky kids with two parents and not a care in the world. She felt different. An outsider. Bad.
‘I was the one who put James on to Matt,’ Mandy said, ‘and vice versa. I’m pretty proud of my matchmaking skills. They were made for each other.’
Siena noticed Mandy had blushed as she said Matt’s name, her skin going pale and pink all at once.
‘Are you and Matt … an item?’ she asked, hoping her relief was not as obvious as it sounded to her ears.
‘We have our moments,’ Mandy said, her eyes going faraway and puppy dog soft for a few moments before she shook herself back to reality. ‘Though I’m rather afraid I have more moments than he does.’
Well, there you go, Siena thought, shifting higher on her seat.
‘So I take it you’ve become rather friendly with James over the past couple of days,’ Mandy said, her ingenuous gaze shifting back to Siena.
‘Considering how we met, he’s been terribly kind to me,’ Siena said, hedging her bets.
‘I don’t doubt it. He’s a gentleman, which is why we in the community have all invested a lot of time in him and Kane. We are all as hopeful that they pull through with flying colours as they are. There is just so much potential in them both. Kane is such a good kid. Loyal. Polite. Smart as a tack. And then there’s James …’
Mandy gave a small sigh and Siena again found herself wanting to claw the woman’s pretty blue eyes out of her head.
‘James really is the catch of the PTA,’ Mandy continued. ‘Half the single mums are madly in love with him and the other half want to take him home and feed him. Only he has no idea.’
Siena nodded along politely. But she had no intention of taking James home to feed him. Her idea of a home-cooked meal was a cab fare and a menu. How did a woman turn out that way? With not a nurturing bone in her body, and with no lifelong dream to marry, no desire to have kids, no wish to fall in love?
But, if she was all that, what was she doing mooning after James Dillon like it seemed the entire generation of single women who had come into his sphere did?
Either way, she had no intention of declaring James taken. And she had no intention of declaring herself immune. So she did her ‘welcome aboard’ smile, the one she had perfected to cope with exhausting overtime runs, and left Mandy to fill the silence if she so desired.
‘Siena?’
Siena tur
ned to find James, stormy-faced, with Kane skulking red-eyed behind him, and she was darned glad she had kept her mouth shut.
‘It’s time to go,’ James said.
‘Rightio.’ Siena stood. ‘Hey Kane-o. How’re you going?’
Kane merely blinked at her as though he had never seen her before and slid further behind James’s leg.
Good one, Siena. Kane-o feels awful. He didn’t need to say a word for her to see he wasn’t happy. And he sure had no reason to tell her about it. Who was she to him?
To Kane-o she was probably just some other fun grownup who would swim in and out of his life with as much momentary niceness as a cute young girl who gave him a wink at the checkout at the supermarket. And she had gone and bought him a new bike like some kindly friend. Idiot!
She wiped her overly hot hands down the sides of her skirt.
‘So we’re off?’ she asked, backing away towards the front door. Suddenly she so wanted to be off. Off and away. Far away.
It was suddenly so obvious. Her flight through life was meant to be a solo one with shifting rosters and impermanent friends. She had proved that by being poison to her own family. She had proved that by flourishing in a job that left no room for anyone stable in her life. And, right at that moment, she felt it in every itching nerve-ending, in every suffocating thought, and in every instinctive urge to run and keep on running.