Unsuitable

Merrill was saying something

and Mia was at the fridge. All Audrey could think about was Reece, about the having to face him to give him this news, about how he’d want to do the honourable thing. And how if she did this, had a new baby, she’d want to do it alone because alone was her control point, her strength. She could trust alone.

Merrill had Mia’s bag in her hand. Mia had her giraffe and a penguin. Audrey hugged Mia too hard and too long and Mia fought to get out of her arms.

Five minutes later the house was empty and she was free to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come, maybe it was too much tea, maybe it was fear, loneliness. She should’ve changed her mind about the sleepover and kept Mia home. She could drive over to Merrill and Joe’s and pick Mia up again. She could call Reece, just to hear his voice, just to feel it trill across her body and settle the angina in her heart. But she couldn’t do that to him, it wasn’t fair, because that man loved her and she’d thrown his love back at him as if it was unworthy, like a too small fish, an unsuitable catch.

Audrey lay on her bed and sobbed. She was pregnant with Reece’s baby. Her body knew that truth, had been telling her all along. She didn’t need the blood test to confirm it. She knew it as surely as she knew she’d lost the love of her life when she sent Reece away.

She knew it as truly as she knew he’d do the right thing even if he no longer loved her, and that she loved him too much to let him make that call.

She hadn’t been protecting Mia from his aggression. She didn’t think he was violent or too young, or the stages of their lives couldn’t mesh together. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be his family and have him as hers.

She was simply afraid.

Afraid Reece was too good to be true; a man whose interests and skills were the exact complement to hers and who wasn’t threatened by their differences. Afraid to choose to move from lover to husband when family had always let her down. Because what would happen to her if Reece stopped loving her? Like her father had, like her mother struggled to. Like Reece’s father never had. She might want to die from that, a plant denied enough sunlight. She’d wither slowly, lose her colour and gloss and fail to thrive, and she’d stunt Mia and the new baby with her own inability to flourish.

She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t afford to fail, and if she called Reece now, like she’d wanted to call him every day for the last two months, she would fail. She would collapse into his easy generosity, into his readiness to take charge, and his boundless forgiveness. And she didn’t deserve that from him.

And he deserved more from her.

Now, more than ever, she needed to be strong and focused. She needed to have plans in place for every contingency. She wiped her face with her sleeve like Mia did. These were the last tears she’d cry this year. This was the last moment she’d feel sorry for herself.

She went to the kitchen and made herself a snack. She gave her body what it needed. Her heart would have to wait. She opened her laptop and checked her calendar. She made a list of all the things she needed to do and starting now she did them.

25: Loveless

Reece had taken to coming to the old garden centre site. Polly’s crew had reduced the rubble to a clean slate. There was nothing left but soil, the odd weed and litter that blew in from the street. He liked to imagine what it would look like when they built on it. They’d need shade for the outdoor area that doubled as shelter from the rain. They’d need the inside made with easy care, non-toxic materials, plenty of light but a way to make it dark for nap times. For the second floor, a big wide balcony would give them views to the beach if they got the design right.

He must look off his rocker, standing here in the middle of nothing, daydreaming. Especially as he often appeared worse for wear.

It had only taken a month to realise his drinking had gotten out of hand. Not that he was drunk all the time, that was the problem. He could drink and drink and barely feel the effects, and that was special kind of peril and failed to deliver the numbness he’d been looking for.

The third time he’d walked from the pub to stand outside Audrey’s place in the pitch of night, like a trained guard dog told to stay and too stupid loyal to know he was in danger and bolt, was the night he gave up drinking again. But he’d needed something else to take the craving away, to deaden the loss that pounded inside his body and made it hard to sleep.

He went back to bricklaying. It was the fastest way to get working again and they needed to show they were employed for the loan, even with Pollidore’s going guarantor and construction costs lower than mate’s rates, they were borrowing a bomb. On top of that, his heart wasn’t in it to commit to another nanny job. Whoever the kid was, they wouldn’t be Mia, and he missed her too much to replace her. The replacement he was working on was the new thing that stopped him sleeping.

He’d never run a business before. He was cramming books on small business as well as struggling through the paperwork to apply for a licence to run a pre-school. Charlie helped, and he could’ve asked Les, but by unspoken agreement they weren’t talking about this in front of Les. Reece guessed Polly didn’t want to ask her not to tell Audrey. He didn’t much care if Audrey knew or not. It’s not like it would change anything between them. Audrey would likely be happy he’d found a new focus.

But even with all that going on, he still needed something to help him forget. For a while Sky tried to convince him she was the something, but she was half-hearted and that was never Sky, so it was more about the idea of them than the real thing. They were buddies though, and he liked that she was still in his life. He’d run into Carrie again, but she’d treated him as if he was fifteen and in need of mothering and that was better than being propositioned and having to turn her down. The look in her eyes when they met told him she knew that already.

He found the something in an unexpected place. He was back in the ring. And that’s why anyone who saw him pacing around the vacant lot might think he was trouble. He looked like it. He usually went there from the gym a block away. He was wet through and so ragged tired he could barely pick his feet up after a day on a building site and an evening learning to box within the rules and in his weight class.

It was the combination of sobriety and the structure of a legal fight that were doing him in, along with the realisation he didn’t like getting smacked by blokes who been boxing longer and knew the score. His body hurt, his brain was spinning. He’d packed his life with new ambition and direction and he should’ve been too busy to miss what he’d lost, but it would sneak up on him, a stealth attack, a rabbit punch that rattled his senses and left him disoriented.

He loved Audrey and he’d lost her and he didn’t know how to get her back; now, two months on, he knew he never would. Once he’d shown her the violence in him, he’d wrecked his chances. She’d looked at him with fear in her eyes and that was the death of everything he’d meant to her. And he had meant something to her, and to Mia.

Audrey wasn’t playing office politics when she crossed her own professional line and let him make love to her. She wasn’t negotiating with him when she said she loved him.

She’d struggled to come to terms with how she felt, the surprise of it, the intrusion on her carefully constructed life. It was as much a power play for her to give up that knowledge to him as it was for her to fight for her status at work.

He thought they’d won. Thought they’d found a compromise between Audrey’s need for independence and his need for her. It was shitty to be so wrong.

Audrey and Mia, separately and together, had put him in a clinch and immobilised him in gratitude and happiness, made him punch drunk with the possibilities of a life with them. But in matters of the heart, as well as the boxing ring, he was an untutored brawler and he was down on the mat. In the darkest part of night he wondered if he’d ever get up.

He stood on the site as the sun set and thought about filling it with the noise of a dozen Mia’s. Sticking their surrealist painting up, hearing their squeals of laughter, watching their crazy dancing. The cra

zy dancing should be mandatory. He wanted every kid to dance and sing and feel safe to learn and grow. He wanted every parent comfortable their kid was happy and well cared for, and if it meant a website and cameras then he’d get over the way the idea of being recorded made him itch. He’d go take it out on the canvas, wearing gloves, playing by the rules, against an opponent who wasn’t hyped up on drugs, trying to mark him, crush him anyway he could; because although he was a carer by nature and a child care worker by choice, he was also a fighter, and he’d spent too long denying that part of himself for fear he’d lose control.