Nobody but Him Read Free Page B

And don’t forget it.
    She flipped up the collar of her vintage woollen coat to protect herself from the harsh wind and watched her breath cloud into the night air. After so many years in Melbourne, with its famed four seasons in one day, this weather didn’t really feel that cold at all. It was nothing like Melbourne cold, which seeped into your bones and settled there all winter. But that was a minor thing to cope with, considering everything else she loved about her adopted city. And soon she’d be back there. That day couldn’t come soon enough.
    Julia’s footsteps crunched noisily on the gravel driveway as she turned into her mother’s place, and unlocked the front door. Inside she flicked on the light in the living area and took a look around.
    She was about to make one of the hardest decisions of her life. What to do with this house now her mother was gone.
    She shrugged off her coat, tossed it onto the orange vinyl sofa, toed of the horrible black flatties she’d borrowed from Lizzie and stopped to consider if she needed coffee or wanted wine instead. So maybe caffeine wasn’t the best idea, particularly when she was trying not to think so much, but reaching for a bottle of wine to calm down probably wasn’t wise either.
    When she glanced at the little kitchen, a memory came back unbidden and she squeezed her eyes shut to try to suppress it. Her mother, standing in the small 1970s-inspired space, holding a cup of coffee, warming her hands against the bitter winter southerlies. Just remembering her mother’s smile, the way her blue eyes laughed, brought an ache to Julia’s chest and her eyes threatened tears. Again. It had been a year and she still saw her mother in every corner of every room. Since she’d been back in Middle Point, back in the house she’d grown up in, she’d been swamped withmemories, those perfect moments in time with her mother, the scents of her childhood and so many déjà vu moments that she was constantly overwhelmed and emotional.
    Which was not going to help her do what she needed to do.
    And once again, the words were in her head.
    Make a decision, Julia.
    She twisted the knob on the stove and pushed the lid firmly onto the top of the kettle. The electric plate on the stove glowed and reddened, and she spread her palms out, hoping it would warm her hands as well as the water.
    Why was this so hard? She was a crisis management consultant, for God’s sake. Her high-powered Melbourne job involved advising high flyers and top end companies when they found themselves in delicate predicaments, when they were juggling calamity, corruption or scandal. She was used to making literally hundreds of snap decisions for people when they were too freaked out to think straight, when their reputations or share prices were on the line. She’d earned kudos for her calm, clear head and her dead-on instinct. She was worth every dollar she was paid — and she was paid a lot of them.
    So what had happened? Since she’d been back, she’d been all at sea. All those personal virtues she was so proud of seemed to have vanished the minute she crossed the state border three days before.
    It was a chilly, gusty dawn. Ry’s running shoes pounded the white wet sand as he took step after jarring step on his twelve-kilometre morning run from Middle Point to Goolwa and back. He’d started running a year ago. His GP had told him he needed to do something for his stress. Yoga, running, anything. He’d chosen running and it had worked, helped him cope with the pressure of work, and he’d been sleeping better too. That alone was enough to convince him to keep it up. Running on the beach was no hardship, despite the cold, because he was almost always alone at this time of the morning. The silence, the crash of the waves, the fresh air. He liked it a lot.
    When Ry reached the steps to the lookout on top of Middle Point, he took them two by two in great, strong strides, twenty-five of them, until he hit the top