LITMIR.BIZ

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‘You’re not coming.’

      Did the tent suddenly echo or was it just her ears?

      ‘I think it would be better if I stayed a few more days.’

      She’d been working herself up to the long silent drive back to the city, planning out her coping mechanisms, trying hard not to imagine how that final moment between them would go.

      And here it was … happening live, in 3D. And she was totally unprepared.

      Pain tore at her. ‘So that’s it? Goodbye?’

      He stood. Stepped closer. ‘I’ll miss you, Shirley.’

      She wanted to be brave. She wanted to be as strong and resilient as Boudicca. But she also wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

      ‘No, you won’t.’ She knew that down to her marrow. ‘You’ll close the door on our time together before the dust plume has even settled on the horizon. That’s what you do with things you don’t want to deal with. You bury them.’

      He said nothing. As though he would stand and take any emotional flaying she cared to dish out. As though that was what he was used to doing. That should have made it less satisfying, but it didn’t. After everything they’d been through, all the excitement and clashes and intimacy, this was how they were going to part? So very civilised and … beige? In a tent?

      No way.

      ‘Say it, Hayden,’ she gritted.

      He stared at her.

      ‘Say that I mean absolutely nothing to you. Say you don’t love me and you never ever could. I want to hear it.’

      His throat lurched. His eyes glittered. He didn’t make a sound.

      ‘Speak, Hayden!’ she shouted and shoved at his hard chest, but a choked sob totally undermined her. ‘I need to hear the words.’

      His head tilted, his eyes creased. He gathered her hands into his and held them, hard, pressing his lips to them and speaking into her fingers.

      ‘I will never be able to love you, Shirley.’

      The air sucked out of the tent. She stared up at him, frozen. He held her eyes. He took her pain. He remained unmoved.

      Outside, the truck horn honked.

      Hayden gently released her hands and stepped back. She stumbled against his chair and glanced down to right herself. When she lifted her eyes he’d turned, robbing her of a final connection with those deep, expressive eyes. Gave her his back.

      ‘Goodbye, Hayden,’ she whispered.

      She got out of the tent with much more aplomb than she felt. She didn’t stumble once on the way to the truck, or as she hauled herself up into its backseat, or as she defied her shaking hands and shoved her seat belt into its fastener.

      And she didn’t look back.

      Because she didn’t want to know if he’d turned around. If he’d followed the truck with his eyes.

      She wanted to remember the exact girth and shape of his turned back.

      It would help her to hate him. And as long as she hated him, she couldn’t love him.

      The truck rumbled away and she sought refuge in the steady stream of conversation from the other passengers. But deep inside she was reliving her own conversation—the conversation from last night and early this morning. Their last.

      Mother Theresa had it all wrong.

      There was always more hurt to be had in love.

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       www.shiloh.com.au—An open letter to my mother,

       19th September.

       Dear Mum,

       I’ve done as much of your bucket list as I could. I’ve skidded down a hillside clinging to a sure-footed stock-horse, I’ve trembled with exhilaration atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge and I’ve thrown myself offa perfectly sound one in New Zealand. I’ve felt his music as Beethoven must have, and the extraordinary mercury-leather brush of dolphin skin against my body. I’ve dropped down the side of a building and floated high above the world. I’ve been marched across by penguins as I lay enraptured on an ice-sheet and moved to tears by a touch more reverent and gentle than I had ever imagined could exist.

      I couldn’t do everything on your list, but perhaps that was always the point. That life fully realised is something you strive for but should never attain. Because once you tick off that final box, what is left to do, then, but wait for your allotted heartbeats to run out?

       Somewhere in my childhood I learned that love is earned, not bestowed, and believing myself unworthy of it—yours, my father’s, even my own—has shaped my life. But it has made me more determined than ever to believe that there is a love out there—somewhere—that strikes like lightning. Because surely if love demanded perfection then none of us would ever find it. And if it is no more than a thing to be won via strategic campaign, then who amongst us would ever have the heart to try?

       It has taken me weeks to accept that I am the apple fallen from your tree. I have avoided risk in my life every bit as much as you did and I’ve let the excuses become truth, every bit as much as you did. In protecting myself I’ve damaged myself.

       Therefore, today, I step out of the shadows into full sunlight, naked and exposed. I hope and trust that the respect and commitment my reading community has shown to Shiloh they’ll extend to the real me.

       I am the silent child watching, breathless, under the stairs. I am the girl with no parents. I am the blogger behind the mask. I am the woman who loved.

       I am … and always will be … your daughter, Shirley Marr.

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      A YEAR ago she could never have conceived of standing here, swathed in thermal clothing and yak furs, gasping for breath, minutes from the base camp of Everest.

      Yet here she was.

      She’d outed herself publicly a month after getting back from the dinosaur trip and published her mother’s list, along with the letter to her. The outpouring of support—from readers and media and sponsors alike—had blown her away and, not long afterwards, a ticket had arrived courtesy of a local travel agent who wanted to help her finish the list.

      I can’t help with both of the final things on your list, the agent had written, referring to her mother’s desire to hold her grandchild, but I can get you to Nepal.

      Ten days of flights, buses, yaks and hiking later and here she was … Staring at the bright wind-tattered prayer flags so typical of Nepal and the scattered synthetic tents of the climbers. Being practically carried by her patient, serious-faced guide.

      Five thousand metres above sea level, all uphill. And they called this ‘base’ camp?

      She lifted her eyes to the peak of the mountain. ‘Holy Mother’ to the Tibetans. Despite being more than halfway up it already, Everest only got bigger. Less imaginable. Getting to base camp had nearly killed her, even with the compulsory acclimatisation days midway. No roads, no tracks, just vague, invisible trails lined with rocks. She couldn’t begin to understand what scaling to Everest’s summit would be like.

      The tents in front of them looked like acne—bulbous and out of place on the spectacular natural landscape. She laughed out loud at the image and her guide threw her the latest in many concerned

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