Summer Beach Reads. Natalie Anderson

do you imagine you don’t have to worry about forever?’ she persisted. ‘Do you truly think that you’ll exit this world early in a blaze of glory? Like Leonidas? Or will you just avoid any kind of emotional connection until the end?’

      ‘That’s the plan.’

      She stared at him, utterly lost. Heartsick. ‘Why?’

      ‘Because it’s what I want.’

      No one wanted to be alone. Not really. Then a thought popped into her mind. ‘You said you knew why you went underground a few years ago. Is it connected?’

      ‘I said I knew. I didn’t say I was planning on sharing.’

      Her confidence shrivelled. She could have argued that, Lord knew she wanted to. But she was too tired. Tired of thinking about him. Tired of hurting. Her soul ached.

      She went back to stuffing her bag.

      ‘Shirley. We’re adults. I’m sure we can share a bed without mauling each other.’

      ‘That’s not what I’m worried about.’ She’d take his arm off if he made a move on her. ‘Given how I feel right now, I can’t promise not to suffocate you in my sleep.’

      He laughed. He actually laughed.

      Maybe he was a machine.

      Her badly packed belongings weren’t fitting in as they had on the journey out. She kept shoving them down into unseen air pockets. Jerky and strong.

      ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You stay here and I’ll go sleep in the truck.’

      She turned heavy eyes up to him. ‘You think your freezing point is lower than mine?’

      ‘Oh, there are people who would assure you that I’m already sub-arctic.’

      ‘Here. You’ll need this,’ she grunted, and tossed a sleeping bag at him. He stumbled backwards half out of the tent to catch it like a marked football and then lifted bemused eyes. Had he not expected her to agree? She lifted her chin. ‘Unless that was just lip service?’

      A curious expression crossed his face and he backed fully out into the cold. ‘Thanks.’

      ‘See you in the morning, then.’ She smiled brightly and then zipped the tent closed in his face.

      And then sagged down onto the air mattress.

      He was right. They were as damaged as each other.

       To please a woman who’s been dead for a decade.

      Harsh, ugly words. But were they true? Was that what she was doing? Pleasing her mother? She thought back on how desperate she’d been to cling to something stable in the awful, disruptive weeks right after the funeral. The list had been like an anchor then, giving her something tangible to focus on. As though as long as the list endured so did her mother.

      Then, as she’d crossed from child into young woman, as she’d trained for the gruelling marathon, she’d realised that it was more about honouring her—just as Hayden had pledged all those months before. The list wasn’t going to bring her, or Shirley’s old life, back. It was just something she could do. And had continued to do to completion on principle.

      At least she’d believed it was principle.

       To please a woman …

      She’d certainly spent the better part of her childhood pleasing her mother. Studying hard, doing all her chores without reminder, keeping out of the way when she had students around. Making sure her mother never had cause for complaint. Because she held enough things against her daughter as it was: her father’s departure, her failure to find someone else in her life—

      Shirley frowned.

      —her inability to apply for exciting jobs overseas, her inability to move to a more upmarket district outside Shirley’s school zone. Now that she thought about it. She’d cried-poor Shirley’s whole life, despite having a crowded wardrobe and the best magazine subscriptions. She’d rarely gone out to dinner or the theatre or even a movie with friends. I can’t afford it she would say on a sigh. Not with Shirley’s school fees. Yet they’d been able to afford cable TV and a gardener and cleaner once a week.

      She’d been fourteen when her mother had died. She’d only ever seen her through a child’s eyes. And of course she saw an accomplished, popular, beloved teacher and mother. Maybe she would have seen a bad money manager if she’d been old enough to understand what she was seeing? Maybe her mother had actually been lousy at friendships and that was why she’d surrounded herself with a revolving door of students who adored her, but she’d rarely gone out with any of her peers. Maybe she’d been loath to give up the stability of tenure and her home to chase new experiences but hadn’t been able to admit that to her colleagues. Maybe her husband had left because their marriage had failed, not because Shirley had been born.

      Shirley stared at the fabric wall of the tent.

      Maybe a whole lot of things weren’t as they seemed. How many times had her mother used the single-mother excuse to disguise her own failings? And how many times had she willingly let those excuses settle onto tiny, anxious shoulders?

      More important, how much of her mother’s denial had she inherited?

      Her stomach churned, just like it had when she was little.

      She was still trying to please her mother. Every time she worried about the list, about doing it right, about doing it fast enough or slowly enough, about doing it the way her mother would have wanted, it was as if she were still here, judging Shirley’s performance. Finding her wanting.

      And she was still six years old, trying to make up for all the trespasses she sensed but barely understood.

      Her mother hadn’t been a saint or a legend or an oracle. She had just been a flawed human being who’d had trouble with friendships and taking risks and who’d used the nearest justification to excuse it. At the expense of her daughter.

      Something shifted deep down inside her, clicked into place so perfectly and comfortably it could only be rightness. And, as though in shifting it had uncovered a tiny drain hole in her soul, years of hurt and bewilderment started to drip away, leaving a lightness behind.

       Damn Hayden Tennant.

      What else was he right about, then?

      Did she hide behind Shiloh so that no one could reject her or find her thoughts and opinions wanting? Did she avoid forming relationships? She had a raft of online acquaintances and faces to nod and smile at when she met them at public events. Media she knew. Contacts she cultivated. People she liked to sit with at tables who all knew her as Shiloh. But no real confidantes. No one she’d feel comfortable calling up for a chat. Or drinks. Or a movie.

      No one to call to wail that her time with Hayden was over.

      No one she’d let see her without make-up.

      Her father had left because she cried too much.

      Her mother had blamed her for everything wrong with their lives. And then she’d died.

      Trouble making friends.

      Abandonment and judgement of one sort or another everywhere she looked.

      Had she come up with as many clever life strategies as her mother to avoid having to engage with people? To avoid taking personal risks?

      Had it made her crawl inside herself and let nothing out?

      Shirley forced herself to her feet, turned off the lamp and crawled onto the airbed, still dressed.

      But she had let something out. She’d fallen for Hayden, unwound for him, incrementally. Given him a space for his toothbrush in her heart. She’d found, in him, her intellectual match and maybe her spiritual match too. Two damaged people grasping each other in the darkness.

      Only