‘The poor woman,’ Sarah said now.
‘Yeah,’ Ed responded softly...remembering...and wondering...
Almost immediately, he gave an irritated shrug, annoyed by the unwanted pull of his emotions. ‘Don’t forget, it was Milla who cut and ran,’ he said tersely.
Not only that. She kept her pregnancy a secret from the family. Which was the prime reason he had to find her now.
‘I know Milla’s persona non grata around here,’ Sarah said. ‘But I always thought she seemed very nice.’
Sure you did, Ed thought with a sigh. That was the problem. The woman had always been a total enigma.
* * *
It was weird to be back. It had been twelve long years...
Milla drove her little hire car over a bumpy wooden bridge and took the next turn left onto a dirt track. As she opened the farm gates she saw a large rustic letterbox with the owners’ names—BJ and HA Murray—painted in white.
She hadn’t seen her old school friends, Brad and Heidi, since she’d left town when she was twenty, dead eager to shake the district’s dust from her heels and to travel the world. Back then, she’d been determined to broaden her horizons and to discover her hidden potential, to work out what she really wanted from life.
Meanwhile Heidi, her best friend, had stayed here in this quiet old backwater. Worse, Heidi had made the deadly serious mistake of marrying a local boy, an error of judgement the girls had decreed in high school would be a fate worse than death.
Shoot me now, they used to say at the very thought. They’d been sixteen then. Sixteen and super confident that the world was their oyster, and quite certain that it was vitally important to escape Bellaroo Creek.
Unfortunately, Heidi had changed her mind and she’d become engaged to Brad only a matter of months after Milla had left town.
But although poor old Heidi had stayed, it was clear that many others had found it necessary to get away. These days Bellaroo Creek was practically a ghost town.
This discovery had been a bit of a shock. Milla had hoped that a trip to her hometown would cheer her up. Instead, she’d been depressed all over again when she’d walked down the main street and discovered that almost all the businesses and shops had closed down.
Where were the cars and people? Where were the farmers standing on street corners, thumbs hooked in belt loops as they discussed the weather and the wool prices? Where were the youngsters who used to hang around the bakery or the hamburger joint? The young mums who brought their babies to the clinic, their children to the library?
Bellaroo Creek was nothing like the busy, friendly country town of her childhood. The general store was now a supermarket combined with a newsagent’s and a tiny post office—and that was just about it.
Even the bakery Milla’s parents used to own was now boarded-up and empty. Milla had stood for ages outside the shopfront she’d once known so well, staring glumly through the dusty, grimy windows into the darkened interior.
From as far back as she could remember the Bellaroo bakery had been a bustling, busy place, filled with cheery customers, and with the fragrant aroma of freshly baked bread. People had flocked from miles around to buy her dad’s mouth-watering loaves made from local wheat, or his delicious rolls and shiny-topped fruit buns, as well as her mum’s legendary pies.
Her parents had sold the business when they retired, and in the short time since it had come to this...an empty, grimy shop with a faded, printed sign inside the dusty window offering the place for lease. Again.
Who would want it?
Looking around at the other vacant shopfronts, Milla had been totally disheartened. She’d driven from Sydney to Bellaroo Creek on a nostalgic whim, but instead she’d found a place on the brink of extinction...
It seemed the universe was presenting her with yet another dismal picture of failure.
It was so depressing...
Poor Heidi must be going mental living here, Milla decided as she drove down the winding dirt track between paddocks of pale, biscuit-coloured grass dotted with fat, creamy sheep. At least Heidi was still married to Brad and had two kids, a boy and a girl—which sounded fine on the surface, but Milla couldn’t believe her old friend was really happy.
Admittedly, her contact with Heidi had been patchy—the occasional email or Facebook message, the odd Christmas card...
She’d felt quite tentative, almost fearful when she’d plucked up the courage to telephone Heidi, and she’d been rather surprised that her friend had sounded just as bright and bubbly as she had in her teens.
‘Come for lunch,’ Heidi had gushed after the initial excited squeal over the phone. ‘Better still, come for morning tea and stay for lunch. That way you’ll catch up with Brad when he comes in around twelve, and we can have plenty of time for a really good chat. I want to hear everything.’
Milla wasn’t particularly looking forward to sharing too many details of her personal history, but she was keen to see Heidi again. Curious now, too, as the track dipped to a concrete ford that crossed a small, shady creek.
As her tyres splashed through the shallow water she imagined Heidi and Brad’s children playing in the creek when they were older. She edged the car up the opposite bank and rounded a corner, and saw her first view of the farmhouse.
Which wasn’t grand by any means—just a simple white weatherboard house with verandahs and a red roof—but it was shaded by a big old spreading tree and there were well-tended flowerbeds set in neat lawns, a vegetable garden with trellises at one end and free-ranging, rusty-feathered chickens.
Her friend’s home was a far cry from the acres of expensive glass and white marble of Milla and Harry’s Beverly Hills mansion...
And yet, something about the house’s old-fashioned, rustic simplicity touched an unexpected chord in Milla.
No need to get sentimental, she warned herself as she drove forward.
Before she’d parked the car, the front door opened, spilling puppies and a rosy-cheeked little girl. Heidi followed close behind, waving and grinning as she hurried down the steps and across the lawn. As Milla clambered out she found herself enveloped in the warmest of welcoming hugs.
After weeks of loneliness, she was fighting tears.
* * *
Ed had tried to ring his father several times, but the arrogant old man had a habit of ignoring phone calls if he wasn’t in a sociable mood. Which happened quite often, and went part-way to explaining Gerry Cavanaugh’s multiple marriages and divorces and why his three sons had been born to three different wives, who now lived as far apart from each other as possible.
Today, when Gerry finally deigned to return his son’s call, Ed was in the Business Lounge at JFK, sending last-minute business emails.
‘Glad to hear you’ve tracked Milla down.’ His father always jumped in without any preliminaries. ‘And you know what you have to do when you catch up with her, don’t you, Ed?’
‘Well...sure. I’ll tell her about Harry.’
‘If she doesn’t already know.’
Ed was quite sure Milla couldn’t know that Harry had died. Even though she’d run away, she would have been upset. She would have contacted them if she’d heard, and come back for the funeral.
‘And I’ll set up the trust fund for the baby,’ he went on. ‘Make sure Milla signs the necessary papers.’
‘That’s not all, damn it.’
Ed