‘Same,’ Ethan said.
‘And I do it for one day, sometimes two.’
‘That’s why there’s a canteen, Penny.’ Ethan smiled. ‘For all the people who have rotting vegetables in the drawer at the bottom of their fridge and didn’t have time to make a sandwich, and if they did they don’t have any super-healthy grain bread.’
Penny smiled. It was actually really nice to be out. It was a very clear day, the bay as blue and still as the sky, and the beach pretty empty. It was just nice to feel the sand beneath her feet and she thought of the last time she had been here with Jasmine and Simon, having hot flashes and carrying petrified hope and talking about wild flings with Ethan.
Penny glanced over at him, glad and surprised that the one thing she hadn’t wanted that day had transpired.
‘How come you ended up at Peninsula?’ Penny asked.
‘I wanted a change.’ Ethan’s voice was wry. ‘I thought a nice bayside hospital would mean a nice laid-back lifestyle—I mean, given we don’t have PICU and things.’ He gave a shrug. ‘I didn’t count on catchments and that we’d get everything for miles around and then end up transferring them out.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘I love it,’ Ethan mused. ‘It just wasn’t what I was expecting it to be—and I know that I don’t do this sort of thing enough.’ Ethan thought about it all for a long moment as they walked—thought about the wall of silence he had been met with because he hadn’t been able to suddenly come back when Penny was sick. Thought about all that was silently expected of them. Ethan wasn’t a rebel, just knew that there had to be more than work, and he told her that.
‘You go out,’ Penny said, because she’d heard that Ethan liked to party hard.
‘I do,’ Ethan said, ‘but …’ Just not lately. Ethan had once thought of days off counted in parties and bars and women and how much he could cram in. But since Phil’s death it had all halted. Right now, just pausing on the beach on his one day off, Ethan actually felt like he’d escaped.
‘I’m going to join a gym.’ Penny broke into his thoughts.
‘So you can feel guilty about not going?’
He made her smile because, yes, over the years she’d joined the hospital gym and the one near home many times.
‘Why don’t you just walk here more often?’ Ethan suggested.
‘Why don’t you?’
They took the path off the beach that led into town and ordered brunch—smoked salmon and poached eggs on a very unhealthy white bread, washed down with coffee and fruit juice, and it was nice to sit outside and watch the world passing. Ethan was right, it was so good to be out, but being out meant exposure and after half an hour sitting at a pavement café she heard a woman call his name.
‘Ethan.’
Penny looked up and it was the woman who had dropped him off that time, except she was pushing a stroller with a three-year-old and a very young baby.
‘Kate.’ Ethan smiled and looked down at his niece and nephew and gave them a wave then remembered to make the introductions. ‘This is Penny from work and, Penny, this is my sister, Kate.’
‘Of course you should join us,’ Penny said when Kate insisted she didn’t want to interrupt. She sat but when there wasn’t a waiter to be found Ethan headed inside to order coffee and a milkshake for the three-year-old.
It was horribly awkward for Penny, because she and Kate were just so different; both lived close by yet both moved in completely different circles.
Both had a bit of what the other wanted.
‘Days off?’ Kate asked.
‘Yes,’ Penny answered. ‘Well, I’ve been off sick, but I’m back tomorrow.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Kate said, aching at the defensiveness in Penny’s voice, because she knew so much more.
‘Ethan said you had three children?’
‘Yes, the eldest is at school,’ Kate said, nodding towards the school over the street. ‘You work in Emergency with Ethan?’ she checked, as if she didn’t already know. ‘I think I saw you when I dropped Ethan off one morning.’
‘That’s right.’ Penny did her best not to blush, because it had been the morning she had actually realised just how gorgeous Ethan was.
Yes, it was awkward because Penny just said as she always did, as little as possible about herself. If she’d only open up, Ethan thought when he returned, then Kate would tell her all about the hell she had gone through to get her three, but instead they talked about work and weather and things that didn’t matter, till Kate had to go. ‘I’ll catch up with you soon, Ethan.’ She gave her brother a friendly kiss on the cheek. ‘It was lovely to meet you, Penny.’
‘And you.’
‘She seems nice,’ Penny said.
‘She is,’ Ethan said, but if she’d just spoken properly to her, then Penny would know that Kate didn’t just seem nice, she actually was.
Penny, Penny, Ethan sighed in his head. What to do?
‘Shall we go to the movies?’
‘The movies?’ Penny frowned. ‘I haven’t been to the movies since …’ She thought for a moment. ‘I can’t remember when.’
At her insistence, Penny bought the tickets and he went and got the popcorn and drinks and things, but as she walked over she saw him talking to a woman and a young boy and stopped walking.
The woman was being polite, but her face was a frozen mask. The young boy beside her was smiling up at Ethan and she just knew then that it was Justin. He looked like Ethan.
She was shaking a bit inside, her mind racing. She’d got it wrong with his sister; she couldn’t keep jumping to the conclusion that every woman he spoke to he’d slept with. Penny made a great deal about putting the tickets into her purse, pretending to jump in surprise as Ethan came over.
‘Okay?’ Penny checked.
‘Sure.’
She could tell he wasn’t.
Still, the movie was a good one and it was so nice to sit in the darkness—so nice not to have to think. They sat at the back in a practically empty cinema and ate popcorn and just checked out of the world for a little while, which for Penny was bliss. It was nice too for Ethan to not go over and over the terse conversation with Gina. To just accept that Gina didn’t want her ex-husband’s cousin involved in her son’s life.
He turned in the darkness to Penny about the same time she turned to him. There was the rustle of popcorn falling to the floor as they acted more like teenagers than a responsible couple in their thirties. After the movie Ethan wished he had brought the car as they walked quickly along the beach, almost running, not just to be together but away from problems each needed to face.
It felt so good to fall through the door, to lift her arms as he slid her out of her top, to undo the zipper of her shorts, as she did the same to him.
‘Why did we leave it so long?’ He was kissing her, not thinking of anything else but her mouth and her body and all the times they had missed, and how much better the boat would have been if he’d had Penny there with him.
‘You know why.’
Ethan’s head was in two places as he remembered what had kept them apart, but that problem had gone now and he just wasn’t thinking, or rather he was thinking out loud, but before he had time to stop himself suddenly the words were out.
‘Maybe