Kitabı oku: «Six Australian Heroes», sayfa 3

CHAPTER FIVE

BY THE time the ferry docked at the Manly wharf and Laura started off up the hill for the walk home, she’d become reconciled to her decision, except for one small regret. It would have been seriously satisfying to go home with a man like Ryan on her arm, she thought with a rather wistful sigh, just to see the looks on the faces of her aunt and uncle, both of whom never let an opportunity go by to point out what a loser she was in the dating department.

Of course the truth was that they didn’t like her. Uncle Bill had resented her from the moment she’d been brought home to her grandparents’ place to live and it had became obvious that his mother preferred her estranged daughter’s daughter to the son he and Cynthia had produced.

Laura didn’t think this should have been a surprise, since all the men in the Stone family were odious. Her grandfather especially. Jim Stone had been a male chauvinistic pig of the first order. His son and his grandson had taken after him, believing they were superior beings and that women were only put on this earth to pander to their needs. After actually living in her grandfather’s house, Laura understood fully why her mother had run away from home as soon as she was old enough and why she’d married a man like her father who, though a strong man, had been compassionate and gentle in his dealings with people, especially women. He’d been a lawyer also; Laura had adored him.

She’d disliked her grandfather intensely and hadn’t been at all sad when he had died. But even in death Jim Stone had been able to make her angry, leaving the family property to his son rather than his long-suffering wife. She’d tried to get her gran to contest the will but she wouldn’t, saying that it didn’t matter, that Bill promised to look after her until she died.

But that wasn’t good enough, in Laura’s opinion. The home which Gran had lovingly tended for over fifty years should have been hers until she died. Instead, she’d been relegated to the role of a poor relative, reliant on her son for charity. All her gran had been left was a miserable twenty-thousand dollars a year, not much more than the old-age pension. That was until Laura had had a little chat with her uncle and insisted that he bump the amount up to forty thousand at least, warning him that if he didn’t then she would use every bit of her power and influence to get his mother to contest the will.

Naturally, her firm stance hadn’t gone down too well, but he’d done what she had asked. Of course, he’d made it sound like it was all his idea. When Laura had seen how touched her grandmother had been—she probably wasn’t used to the men in her life treating her nicely—she hadn’t said a word. Several times, during the five years since her grandfather had died, Laura had tried to persuade her grandmother to come to Sydney to live with her, but to no avail. Her gran said she was a country girl and wouldn’t be happy living in the city.

Yet I have a very nice home, Laura thought as she pushed open the gate which led up the path to the three-bedroomed cottage which had belonged to her parents and which had come to her when they were so tragically killed. Her grandfather had tried to sell it after she’d gone to live with him, but her darling grandmother—who had been sole executor of her daughter’s will—had refused to give permission for the sale. So the contents had been stored and the house had been rented out until Laura had left school and moved back to Sydney to attend university, at which point she’d taken possession of it again.

She’d lived there ever since, mostly happily. Only once had the house been instrumental in bringing her unhappiness. But that hadn’t really been the house’s fault.

Laura inserted the key in the front door, knowing that as soon as she turned the lock and opened the door Rambo would come bolting down the hallway, meowing for food.

And there he was, right on cue. Putting her bag down on the hall table, she scooped him up into her arms and stroked his sleek brown fur. It was better to pick him up, she’d found, than to leave him down on the floor to trip her up.

‘How was your day, sweetie?’ she said as she made her way down to the kitchen.

His answer was some very contented purring.

Once in the kitchen she plopped Rambo down on the tiled floor and set about getting him his favourite ‘fussy cat’ food, steak mixed with chicken. She’d just filled his dish with the meat and shoved the plastic container in the garbage bin when her phone rang—not her mobile, her land line. Which meant it wasn’t Alison or any of her work colleagues. The only people who used her land line were telemarketers and family.

Laura steeled herself as she swept up the receiver from where it was attached to the kitchen wall.

‘Hello,’ she said somewhat abruptly.

‘I finally got you,’ Aunt Cynthia replied with an air of frustration. ‘I tried ringing earlier but you weren’t home.’

Laura glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was only five-thirty. She was rarely home on a Friday night before six.

‘You can always get me on my mobile,’ Laura told her. ‘I did give you the number.’

‘Bill said I wasn’t to ring people on their mobiles. He said it cost a fortune.’

Laura sighed. ‘Not these days it doesn’t, Aunt Cynthia. Anyway, what did you want me for? There’s nothing wrong with Gran, is there?’ she added with a sudden jab of worry.

‘No, no, your grandmother’s doing quite well, considering. I’m ringing because Shane asked me to.’

Shane was her vile only-son and heir who was a chip off the old Stone block. He’d tormented Laura from the day she’d gone to live with her grandparents. His family had lived nearby in a smaller house on the same property. Thankfully, when she had finished primary school, Gran had sent Laura to boarding school in Sydney, a move which she’d appreciated. Her grandfather had objected at first on the grounds of the cost but her gran had stood firm again, saying the fees could easily be covered by Laura’s inheritance. Both Laura’s parents had had excellent insurance policies which had paid out double because they’d died in an accident.

Laura had quite enjoyed her school days—not her holidays so much, which her wretched cousin had made a right misery. Admittedly, he’d improved slightly with age, mainly because he’d married a modern girl who refused to put up with his boorish behaviour. In truth, the last time they’d met, Shane had surprised Laura by being reasonably civil to her. But Laura couldn’t imagine why he would ask their mother to ring her.

‘What does he want?’ she asked warily.

‘To find out if your new boyfriend is the same Ryan Armstrong who was a famous goalkeeper a few years back. His father told him that it was highly unlikely, given he was dating you, but I promised to ask you just the same. Because Shane said, if he was, he wants to meet him.’

‘And if he wasn’t?’ Laura asked archly.

‘What?’

Laura gritted her teeth. They really were a most annoying family!

‘Yes,’ she bit out. ‘Ryan is, or was, a famous goalkeeper.’ She only knew that because she’d been told of Ryan’s international success by a sport-loving colleague of hers who’d been quite jealous about her securing Ryan as a client.

‘Heavens to Betsy!’ her aunt exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe it. Shane’s going to be so excited. You know how much he loves watching the soccer.’

Actually no, Laura didn’t know any such thing. She’d had as little to do with Shane as possible over the years.

‘I must say I’m somewhat surprised,’ her aunt rattled on, ‘That you’ve got yourself a boyfriend at all, let alone a famous one.

‘I was saying to Bill just the other week that it looked like you were going to end up an old maid. You’re not a bad-looking girl, but you do have an unfortunate way about you. You state your opinions much too strongly. Men don’t like that, you know. And the way you dress is … well, not very feminine. Still, I guess there’s someone for everyone in this world. So how old is your Mr Armstrong? I dare say he’s not all that young.’

Laura couldn’t say a word for a moment, having been rendered speechless by her aunt’s tactless commentary.

But, as she struggled to find her tongue, Laura knew that there was no way now that she was going up to that house tomorrow alone. No darned way!

‘To tell you the truth, Aunt,’ she said at last, ‘I’m not sure exactly how old Ryan is. Middle to late thirties is my best guess.’

‘You’d think you’d know your boyfriend’s age,’ her aunt said snippily. ‘How long did you say you’d been going out with him?’

‘We’ve been business acquaintances for two years. But we’ve only started dating recently.’

‘Oh, I see. So he’s not that serious about you yet.’

‘He’s very serious about me,’ she heard herself saying. ‘You don’t think he’d agree to come home with me and meet Gran if he wasn’t serious, do you?’

‘What? Oh no, no, I suppose not. So what time do you think you might arrive?’

Laura closed her eyes and prayed that Ryan would not change his mind and retract his offer when she rang him.

‘Around noon?’ she suggested.

‘Could you make it later than that?’ her aunt said. ‘Say, around three? That way I won’t have to do lunch tomorrow as well as dinner that night and lunch again the next day. That’s a lot of work, you know.’

‘But we weren’t going to stay the night,’ Laura protested.

‘Don’t be silly, of course you are. I’ve already bought the food and the wine. On top of that your grandmother is expecting you to stay for the weekend, not just for a few short hours. You wouldn’t want to disappoint her, would you?’

‘No, of course not,’ Laura said, but her head was spinning. How on earth was she going to keep up such a ridiculous charade for that long? And what if Ryan refused to go with her? Giving her his phone number was no guarantee he would say yes a second time.

‘We’ll see you tomorrow around three, then?’

‘All right,’ Laura agreed somewhat weakly.

‘And Laura …?’

‘Yes?’

‘Bring a dress to wear for dinner tomorrow night, will you? I don’t want to see you at the table wearing those ghastly jeans you seem to live in.’

Laura sucked in a deep breath through wildly flaring nostrils. She was about to launch into a counter-attack when she realised the line had already gone dead. She glared down at the receiver for several furious seconds before slamming it back on the hook.

If there was anyone who could get under her skin even more than her uncle, it was her aunt—stupid, self-important, insensitive woman! Laura felt sorry for her grandmother, having to live with two such impossible people. She deserved better after putting up with that wretched husband of hers for fifty-five years.

Thinking about her grandmother’s feelings put some perspective back into Laura’s growing frustrations over the weekend ahead. Okay, so she’d backed herself into a right royal corner now. Too bad. Gran was worth putting up with pretending to be Ryan Armstrong’s girlfriend for longer than a few hours. And worth having to put her pride aside to ring him back and tell him that she’d changed her mind and wanted to accept his offer. If he prevaricated, she would beg him to come with her, if she had to. Hell, she’d even bribe him if she had to. Though what with, she had no idea.

The thought of offering him sex popped into her head out of the blue. It was such a crazy idea that she threw back her head and laughed out loud. As if the prospect of sex with her would persuade a man like Ryan to do anything! It would more likely make him run in the other direction.

Shaking her head, she marched back down the hallway to where she’d left her handbag, rifling through it to retrieve the business card she’d written his number down on.

Her stomach tightened into a knot as she picked up her mobile phone and punched in the numbers. For what would she do if he refused? What could she do? Laura felt sick just thinking about it. She hit the call button and started praying.