‘Of course. So you fell in love but he didn’t?’
Maggie got up and wandered over to the window. They were in her bedroom on the second floor and she looked down over her colourful garden. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘That’s why I can’t accept second-best from him.’
A week later her mother did meet Jack and, although it had to be inherently awkward and there was a certain reserve that Maggie detected in Belle, it went well. Jack was quiet but courteous.
He was the first to leave and Maggie found her mother staring at her—well, staring right through her, actually.
‘What?’ she queried.
‘Nothing,’ her mother replied absently.
‘What did you think of him?’ The question came out before Maggie could guard against it and she bit her lip.
‘They could be two of a kind.’
Maggie’s eyes widened. ‘Jack and Dad? That’s exactly what I thought in the beginning!’
‘Yes, well…’ Belle seemed to come to a decision, and she imparted some surprising news to Maggie. Her father had bid successfully on three cattle stations and for the next few months they would be spending most of their time on them in Central Queensland.
‘That’s quite a coup,’ Maggie said dazedly.
Belle agreed. ‘Will you come with us? We’d love to have you.’
‘No. No… I’m fine here.’ But would she be, she wondered, without her mother’s moral support?
‘Of course I’ll come and see you frequently, darling,’ Belle assured her, ‘and I’ll only ever be a phone call and a short flight away.’
It wasn’t until months later that Maggie realized what a clever strategy of her mother’s this was…
Three months went by and at last Maggie started to show some signs of her pregnancy.
They went surprisingly swiftly, those months. She made all the difficult explanations—much less difficult than the ones to her parents and Jack, but not easy either. It was one thing to announce you were pregnant and to produce a partner even if he wasn’t a husband, quite another to have to explain you were doing it on your own.
Her boss was clearly concerned for her, but he did agree it made no difference to her work and she could continue for as long as she wanted to.
‘You have a real flair for it, Maggie,’ he said to her. ‘A born natural, you are.’ Then he frowned and seemed about to say more, but he obviously changed his mind.
Tim Mitchell was the hardest of all to tell. He was horrified, he was mystified and he offered to marry her himself there and then.
She thanked him with real gratitude, but declined. And she gradually withdrew herself from the crowd they both moved in.
‘You don’t have to do that, Maggie,’ Tim said reproachfully. ‘You need friends at least!’
‘Yes, but I’m a different person now. I guess I have different priorities. Tim…’ she hesitated but knew she had to do it ‘… I’m a lost cause, but there’s got to be the right girl for you out there and you should forget about me—like that, anyway.’ She stopped rather painfully as her words raised echoes in her mind she’d rather forget. But after that, she always found an excuse not to see Tim.
The one person apart from her family she couldn’t seem to withdraw from was Jack.
He came to see her frequently in those months, although he never repeated his offer of marriage. It puzzled her that he should do this—at least as frequently as he did. It made it harder for her because of all the memories it brought back, but every time she thought of refusing to see him, she also thought of her promise never to separate him from his child.
She knew that she could never do that and, not only because he simply wouldn’t have it, but also because he’d let her glimpse the pain and trauma of being abandoned by your natural parents.
She told herself that it was going to be a fact of her life from now on, his platonic presence in it, and she might as well get used to it. And it was platonic. He didn’t try to touch her; he didn’t refer to Cape Gloucester.
It was as if the desire he’d once felt for her had been turned off at the main switch and that caused her a lot of soul-searching. Had it been such a lighthearted affair for him? Had he achieved his revenge with spectacular success? Was there another woman in his life now? Was he turned off by pregnancy?