Chapter 1On the night before she was due to travel back to Ireland, Romy Kilkenny went to dinner in a stylish restaurant overlooking Sydney Harbour. The restaurant was the current the in-place to eat in the city, but its astronomical price tag as well as its lengthy waiting list for tables meant that is was normally out of her reach. Romy's usual haunt when she ate out was the rather less glamorous and significantly less pricey pizzeria at the end of her road with its checked tablecloths and Chianti bottles as candle-holders, and where the staff welcomed her warmly as a regular customer. Right now - despite the spectacular views of the illuminated Harbour Bridge and Opera House from the curved picture window; and despite the carefully designed mood lighting, elegant place settings and amazing floral arrangements of the restaurant interior - she was rather wishing that they'd gone to the pizzeria after all. She wouldn't have felt so bad about not enjoying herself if they'd been having the two-for-the-price-of-one pepperoni and double-cheese special at Luigi's.
She'd wanted to have a good time tonight. Keith had gone to an enormous amount of trouble to ensure that the evening would be memorable and he'd had to pull in a huge favour to get a prized table by the window. But even as Romy gazed unseeingly at the leather bound menu she was thinking that they should simply have stayed at the Opera Bar where they'd previously downed a couple of beers, crushed between a raucous hen party and a group of muscular rugby players who were hell bent on having a good time. Caught up in the midst of the fun-loving crowd she wouldn't have had any time to feel sorry for herself. She probably would've drunk too much beer, had a laugh and then tottered around on her impossibly high-heeled shoes which Keith had seen for the first time ever that night. He'd been startled by the sight of her in them, not having previously thought of her as the kind of girl who wore glamorous footwear and more used to seeing her in either desert boots or flip-flops. (The Australians called them thongs. She'd been taken aback at Keith talking about her lovely thongs when he meant flip-flops. It had, she told him, almost moved their relationship onto a whole new level.) He really had been stunned by her one and only pair of high heels, which brought her up to the approximate level of his shoulder. She was averagely tall at 5'4" (and, as her father had once told her, sturdily built) but Keith was a towering hunk of a guy who made her appear small and fragile beside him. It was one of the reasons she liked being seen with him.
She'd been laughing and joking in the Opera Bar, trying really hard to be cheerful and carefree, but now - surrounded by whispering waiters and overwhelmed by the sheer elegance of her surroundings - she felt suddenly deflated, knowing that in twenty-four hours she'd be on her way home and knowing too that even though it was home she didn't want to be there when he was here. And she wondered why it suddenly mattered to her because she and Keith had said goodbye to each other before and she'd never felt like this about it.
She was dreading going home. Not just because of leaving Australia and leaving Keith. But because she was going home to be with her family. And in the last few years, as she'd worked her way around the world, she'd hardly spared them a thought. Which, she reckoned, was probably just how they wanted it. It was certainly how she wanted it. As far as Darragh and Kathryn and Veronica were concerned (especially, ironically enough, as far as Veronica was concerned) the more time they spent apart the better.
While they waited for their food to arrive, Keith (oblivious to her mood and always in sunny humour himself) chatted about his plans for the following week. He was going to the Gold Coast and meeting up with some of their friends there for a few days of scuba-diving, water-skiing and surfing. She'd expected to go with them and was disappointed at missing out on the trip. He was filling her in on the schedule and she knew that he wanted her to feel included, so she told him as sincerely as she could that it sounded great. But at the same time she couldn't help wondering whether Keith (or indeed any of them) caught up in the sparkling blue ocean waters and their beach-front lifestyle would even notice that she wasn't there.
She poked at her roasted barramundi, not hungry even though it had become her favourite fish in the world and was the expensive restaurant's signature dish. Then she rested her fork on her plate and stared out of the window.
'Don't you like it?' Keith looked at her in consternation and she picked up her fork again quickly.
'It's fabulous,' she said as she dug it into the fish once more. 'I was just...you know...thinking.'
He nodded in understanding. 'I know it's difficult for you,' he said. 'We'll all miss you when you go back. I'll miss you, you know that. But it might not be for long and...well, what choice do you have?'
'None,' she said, although part of her was thinking that of course she had a choice. Saying no was a perfectly acceptable choice, wasn't it? She could have told them that it was impossible to come home right now, that she'd been offered an extension to her contract (which was true) and that she needed to accept it for the sake of her job (which wasn't really true and which they would have known was just an excuse). Or she could have said that she'd met someone important to her and that it was impossible to leave him (not true either even if she was having unaccustomed feelings for Keith tonight, wanting to throw her arms around him and beg him to ask her to stay). She told herself that these thoughts were generated by her unhappiness at leaving Australia, not her unhappiness at leaving Keith. But she was having them all the same. She could have even told them the absolute truth and said that she didn't care what the emergency was, that there was nothing on earth that would drag her home.
But of course if she said that, they'd simply think that she was being selfish. And she was certain that they thought of her as selfish already - the girl who had swanned (she just knew that they would use the word swanned whenever they talked about her) around the world for the past four years, not even bothering to tell them until the very last minute on the few occasions when she'd come home at all and then not even bothering to meet up half the time but spending it with her father instead.
Veronica herself might not think she was selfish, of course. Her mother would understand only too well why she didn't want to come home because Romy had made her feelings very clear about it in the past. But now circumstances had changed and Romy had been surprised when she learned that Veronica had agreed that her return would be the best solution all round. All the same....being in the same house as her mother again would be - challenging. To say the least! She took a slug of sauvignon blanc (about three times as expensive as Luigi's so, she told herself, she should savour it, not chug it back) then played with her food again.
Ask me to stay, she thought, as she nibbled at the fish (truly gorgeous, how on earth could she not feel hungry?) and glanced at Keith through her long, dark eyelashes. Ask me! Tell me you love me and you don't want me to go and I'll ring them now and say that I've changed my mind and hang the consequences.
She swallowed the flakes of fish thankful that Keith couldn't read her mind. Wanting him to tell her he loved her was a ridiculous notion. He didn't love her and she didn't love him either but that hadn't stopped her mind going into overdrive with the notion. It had been her middle-of-the-night alternative for the last few days when she'd lain in her single bed separated from him by a plaster wall and tried to come up with reasons for not going home. She'd wondered why it was that he'd never once, in all the years she'd known him, shown the slightest bit of interest in her. And why it was that she'd never before thought of him as the kind of guy she'd like to spend the rest of her life with either. She'd only started thinking like this since she'd got the phone call and she knew that she was clutching at straws in her efforts to find reasons not to leave. In the clarity of daylight she didn't want Keith to fall in love with her and she didn't want to fall in love with him either because that would mean losing one of her best friends and she'd seen When Harry Met Sally so she knew that letting other feelings in ruined male-female friendships. And she really didn't want to ruin her friendship with Keith. (She conceded that Harry and Sally eventually got it together in the end of the movie. But she bet that they would've split up again later.)
Anyhow, there'd been no chance ruining her friendship with Keith because there was no chance of him or, indeed, of anyone else falling madly in love with her and begging her not to go home lest it break his heart. There hadn't been anyone in her life for ages. So, no broken hearts at her departure. Anyway, a broken heart still wouldn't have been enough to get her off the hook.
Keith looked up and saw her staring at him and she blushed. He grinned at her and she smiled back before swallowing a forkful of fish. He was, as usual, being sensible about it all whereas she was being buffeted around by her unreliable emotions. It wasn't all that unusual; in their circle she was known as the emotional one - hot-headed and fiery-tempered but (she hoped) usually good-natured and cheery too. It was bugging her, though, that she couldn't find the good nature and cheer tonight no matter how hard she tried.
She wondered whether she'd fallen in love with him unknown to herself but she was pretty sure that was impossible. Her relationship with Keith was comfortable and easy and one of the constants in her life. Love, if she'd read all the novels and magazines correctly, was the complete opposite of how she felt with him. It was about being on edge all the time, waiting for a phone call, unable to eat or sleep for thinking about the object of your desire, wanting to kiss them and hold them and touch them....love was those sort of things, not the sort of relationship she had with Keith where they both sat in the back garden with a couple of tinnies and shared news about the day.
Their kind of companionship would only turn into love if mind-blowing sex was an option. And there had never been the option of mind-blowing sex (it probably wouldn't have been mind-blowing. It probably would have been damp-squib sex which she didn't want to have with Keith - or anyone.). So she was cool about it, no worries, but it was just that tonight it would have been nice to have something more. To be with someone who did love her, who truly would be heartbroken and who would definitely have begged her not to leave.