A Night, A Secret...A Child

She’d called it self-destructive, what they’d shared.

Maybe it had been. Because he’d never been totally happy with any other woman. Now that he thought about it, Nicolas suspected Serina hadn’t been happy with her husband, either. The day of his mother’s funeral, Serina’s tension had been more than fear that she might expose what she’d done to her husband because that old chemistry had been there simmering between them.

That was what he wanted to believe, anyway. And until he had proof otherwise, Nicolas was going to believe it.

Damn it all, he had an erection now. He really had to stop thinking about sex with Serina, or things might become embarrassing.

The temperature outside was hovering around thirty degrees already. He’d boarded the plane in chilly London wearing a suit, cashmere topcoat and scarf. In Sydney, however, he’d had to start taking things off, after having to board the connecting domestic flight by exiting the air-conditioned terminal and walking across a short space of much warmer tarmac. It had been even hotter by the time he’d landed at Port Macquarie, with the clear blue sky promising an even higher temperature later in the day. Which was why he’d changed into light trousers and an open-necked shirt rolled up to the elbows.

When he’d first climbed into the rented four-wheel drive for the trip to Rocky Creek, Nicolas had felt both refreshed and relatively relaxed.

Not so anymore.

Grimacing at his discomfort, he bent forward to turn up the air-conditioning to the max. Some very cold air blasted forth and it helped clear his mind from thoughts of Serina so he could concentrate on where he was going.

Wauchope loomed up ahead, the town closest to Rocky Creek, where Nicolas had attended high school and where most of the people in Rocky Creek came to shop. He glanced around left and right, not noticing the kind of major changes he’d seen in Port. The railway crossing was still the same, as was the main street. It wasn’t till he was heading out of town along the highway that he could see that the houses went farther out than they had before. There was also a big new shopping centre opposite the Timber Town tourist park.

Wauchope’s prosperity had once relied solely on the timber from the surrounding forests. The trees would be cut down and the logs brought out of the hills by bullock trains, then floated down the Hastings River to Port Macquarie. Not so anymore. But you could still see demonstrations of the old ways at Timber Town, as well as buy all kinds of wood products.

Nicolas was thinking about the wooden bowl he’d once bought his mother for her birthday when he drove right past the turn off to Rocky Creek. Swearing, he pulled over to the side of the road, having to wait for several cars to go by before he could execute a U-turn. Finally, he was back at the T-intersection and heading for home.

No, not home, he amended in his mind. Rocky Creek had never been his home.

Nicolas had been born and bred in Sydney, the offspring of a brief affair between his forty-year-old mother—who’d been working as wardrobe mistress for the Sydney Opera Company at that time—and a visiting Swedish conductor who’d had a wife and family back home and a roving eye whenever he was on tour.

The conductor’s eyes had landed on Madeline Dupre, who’d still been an attractive-looking woman at forty. Her lack of success so far in relationships, however, had left her somewhat embittered about the male sex, giving her a brusque manner that men had found off-putting. She’d been rather taken aback, but secretly elated, by the conductor’s interest in her and had happily comforted him in bed during his stay in Sydney, deliberately deceiving him about being on the pill. She’d waved him off a few weeks later at the airport, well satisfied with her rather impulsive but successful plan to have a child by a man who would be conveniently absent from her life, but who was both handsome and intelligent. She hadn’t realised at the time that raising a child by herself—especially one like Nicolas—would be so difficult.

After quitting her job during her pregnancy, she’d set about earning her living as a dressmaker. That way she could be home to look after her son. She’d already had the foresight five years earlier to get into the property market, purchasing a small though rather run-down terraced house in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills. The deposit had taken her life savings and there was a twenty-five-year mortgage, but it had given her a sense of security. She’d patted herself on the back now that she was having a baby.

Sydney, however, was a harsh city for a woman alone. Madeline’s parents had passed away—longevity did not run in her family—and her only brother had moved to western Australia to find work and had not exactly been a good communicator. All her friends had drifted away when she stopped being part of their working and social life, leaving her increasingly lonely. All she’d had in the world was her son, who’d proved to be more than she’d bargained for.