LITMIR.BIZ

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let her down. They would be there for her through life’s ups and downs, solid and real, keeping her very, very safe. After all, what man would even think of getting close to a woman with five kids, no money and this much padding on her frame?

      I am not on the market, the extra kilos said on her behalf, which meant she could focus on what really counted.

      Making ends meet.

      Being a good mother.

      Getting enough sleep.

      ‘I’ll just make their lunches, then head upstairs.’ She yawned, wondering what was still in stock on a Friday, the day before shopping day. Any biscuits left? Any fruit? Her stomach rebelled. She was way too tired to think about food.

      ‘I’ve already done their lunches.’

      That brought her close to tears. ‘Oh, lord, Mum, what would I do without you?’ They hugged each other, and Tammy could almost feel through Mum’s body heat all the things she wasn’t letting herself say about Tom.

      Ten minutes later, with the alarm set for two-twenty that afternoon when a couple of weeks ago she’d had to set it for two o’clock, she sank into sleep.

      CHAPTER TWO

      LAIRD WAS late getting to Tarsha’s elegant townhouse in Kew to pick her up for their Friday night date.

      Little Adam Parry had given them a scare this evening. Alarms going off. The wrong numbers rising or dropping on his monitors. Laird had had to spend an extra twenty minutes at the hospital on his way to his evening out, adjusting medication doses and ventilator settings, and answering several anguished questions from the parents.

      Chris and Fran Parry had wanted the kind of certainty that he couldn’t truthfully give them, and yet it would be disastrous if they sank into hopelessness. There were some parents who detached themselves from their baby emotionally if they thought it wasn’t going to live, in a desperate kind of defence mechanism that they didn’t consciously choose. But premature babies needed their parents. The sound of a mother’s soothing voice could raise their oxygen saturation when it dropped in the presence of medical staff. Even when they were so tiny, they seemed to know when they were loved, and to respond.

      He’d found himself looking for the Tammy nurse several times during his visit to the unit, as if she might have been able to bail him out with the Parrys, phrase things better than he could himself, help the couple find the right balance between love and hope and realism. Someone had mentioned her name, but apparently she was on her break and he’d left again before she returned.

      Tarsha greeted him at her townhouse door in a cloud of expensive perfume, her model’s figure immaculately clad and her flawless face beautifully made up as always, to make the most of her dark hair and brown eyes, but when he leaned forward to kiss her—cheek or mouth, he hadn’t made up his mind—she pulled back and he saw that she was tense.

      ‘What’s up?’ he asked her.

      ‘Nothing…’

      ‘Come on, Tarsh.’

      ‘We’ll talk about it at the restaurant.’

      ‘We’ll talk about it now.’

      ‘Must we?’

      ‘Yes. Have some pity for a weary man with fraying patience and don’t play games.’

      ‘All right…all right.’ She sighed, and tucked in the corners of her mouth. ‘You win.’

      They’d known each other for a long time as their parents moved in the same well-heeled social circles and were friends. They had first gone out together more than twelve years ago while Laird had been a medical student, but then Tarsha had chosen the lure of modelling in Europe and they’d called it quits, with no hard feelings on either side. There’d always been something missing at heart.

      ‘What is it, Laird?’ Tarsha had said once, back then. ‘It’s like a hundred-dollar bill that you know is a forgery. It looks right, but something still tells you it’s not.’

      Maybe they just hadn’t been ready at that point. Too young. Too ambitious. Not enough time for each other.

      A few months ago, after a successful modelling career, followed by several years spent working in the field of public relations in Paris, Tarsha had come home without the intended notch of a fabulous marriage on her belt. She was now in the process of starting her own modelling agency in Melbourne, which involved a lot of networking and schmoozing, as well as getting the right faces and bodies in her stable.

      Laird had the vague idea that something had turned sour for Tarsha in Europe—that she was running away from a professional or personal disaster—but so far she hadn’t shared the details with him.

      Some conniving between their two mothers several weeks ago had led to a choreographed cocktail party encounter— ‘You remember Laird, don’t you, darling?’—and Laird had understood at once that he was supposed to pick up again with Tarsha…no, not quite where they’d left off. People changed in twelve years.

      Close, though.

      The prospect had appealed on some levels. There was something out there that he hadn’t found yet—a core of happiness and stability that he saw in the best couples and that he wanted in his own life. Maybe this time with Tarsha, the timing would be right. It was hard to question a relationship that was so perfect on paper, especially when it had been so neatly deposited in his lap, gift-wrapped.

      Before Tarsha’s timely return to southern shores, and after a long and carefully selected series of suitable girl-friends, his mother had asked him in exasperation a couple of times, ‘What are you looking for in a woman, Laird, that you haven’t managed to find yet?’

      ‘Is that a rhetorical question?’

      ‘You’re thirty-four!’

      He hadn’t attempted to give her a list of attributes, but had half-heartedly tried to come up with a private one for himself.

      He couldn’t.

      Somebody different. A breath of fresh air.

      Not exactly a precise description.

      ‘I’ll know it when I see it,’ he had predicted to his mother, confident and a bit grumpy.

      Suddenly, looking at Tarsha’s set face, he realised that this relationship…this woman…wasn’t it.

      It turned out she knew it as well as he did.

      ‘I’ve realised this isn’t working, Laird,’ she said. ‘Us, I mean.’ And when he was silent for a fraction of a second too long, she went on quickly, ‘To use the old cliché, it’s not you, it’s me. Something happened in Europe. A man. I’m not ready, and you’re not the right person. And you know it, don’t you?’ She gave him a narrow-eyed look, and then she laughed. ‘Hell, you really do know it! I can see the relief in your eyes.’

      He couldn’t deny it. ‘I like you very much, Tarsha.’

      ‘And I like you.’ But she hadn’t yet relaxed. He wanted to put an arm around her purely for reassurance, didn’t quite know why she was turning this into a problem, as it was clear neither of them had any regrets.

      ‘So we’re fine, aren’t we?’ he said gently. ‘We’ve both realised. We both feel the same. We can forget dinner tonight, if you want.’

      ‘No, you see, that’s what I don’t want.’ She took a deep breath, gave a big, fake smile.

      ‘I’m sorry?’

      ‘The it’s-not-you-it’s-me thing was the easy part.’

      ‘Pretend I’m not getting this, and explain.’

      ‘Laird…look at me!’ Were those tears she was blinking back? ‘I’m not the kind of woman who goes out with her single women friends in a big group and doesn’t care what anybody

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