The Banksia Bay Beach Shack Read online

  Heath was patient and encouraging. She was doing well, he said.

  No, she wasn’t. She was all for charm, but outright lying to her was taking things a bit too far.

  One more attempt.

  She took a few deep breaths as instructed, raised herself up on her forearms, another couple of breaths, lift, pop, spread the feet, arms out wide . . . she did it! She landed both feet on the board.

  And then she toppled over, ploughing face first into the sand.

  ‘Oh God, are you all right?’ Heath rushed to her side and put a comforting hand on her back. Her trembling back. ‘Oh, Laura, you’re crying. I’m sorry.’

  She rolled over, giggling, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘Or laughing.’ Heath sat back. ‘Is that laughing?’

  ‘Yes.’ Laura could barely get the word out. ‘Please tell me I’m not the worst student you’ve ever had,’ she said between snorts.

  ‘I don’t want to ruin the trust thing we have going with a lie . . .’

  She hit him in the arm. ‘In this one instance, I’ll allow a small fib.’

  ‘You’re not the worst.’

  Laura stood up and swept the sand from her face and arms. Heath brushed it off her back. She froze at his gentle touch.

  ‘Do you want to try again?’ he whispered in her ear, his body behind her, almost touching her.

  She stepped forward and turned around. ‘Run the technique by me one more time.’

  Again he showed her, making it look so easy. He broke the steps down and she repeated each one four or five times, before stringing them together.

  Then she did it. And stayed upright. And she did it again.

  She jumped up and down on the sand in a little victory dance.

  Heath’s expression was kind, warm. ‘I knew you could do it. Now, we just have to do it out there.’ He turned and pointed to the waves.

  She fell to the ground, throwing her arms out beside her. ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Can’t we just take this as a victory and call it quits?’

  Heath laughed. ‘Well, not if you want to be able to say you learned to surf. Right now, you’ve only learned to stand up. On land.’

  She shot him a look.

  ‘On a board, yes,’ he said. ‘But that isn’t surfing.’

  ‘We could pretend it is.’

  Heath pulled a wetsuit out of his backpack. ‘You might want to put this on.’

  She eyed the black rubber suit.

  ‘It’s Charlotte’s. It should fit you. The water’s pretty cold this time of year, and you don’t want to chafe.’

  Chafe? Is that a thing?

  ‘Trust me.’

  She did. Trust him. Turned out her instinct was right, and that’s what worried her. There weren’t too many people in her life she did trust – Maher, Mrs Duncan, and once upon a time Lillian, though that trust was now in question. Because her mother had walked out on her so young, trust was something that didn’t come easily to Laura. That she trusted Heath, after such a short time knowing him, was new territory for her. New and frightening.

  She slipped into the wetsuit. Well, wriggled and writhed and pushed her way in was more accurate. She’d seen surf movies. They made it look sexy. This was most definitely not sexy.

  Heath moved behind her and pulled her zip up and then slipped his upper body easily into the top half of his suit.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  With her surfboard under his arm, he took her hand and steered her to the edge of the water.

  As she walked into the sea Laura stopped. The water was calm. At least she thought it was. In the time she’d been in the Bay, she had definitely seen waves bigger than this.

  ‘You’re not surfing?’ She looked at him.

  ‘These are a bit small. Great for you to practise on, though. The waves will be bigger tomorrow and I’ll go out then.’

  Laura bit her bottom lip. Part of her had hoped he’d be so busy catching his own waves, he’d forget all about her.

  ‘No. This is a good thing. I can stay near you and you can practise getting up. And we don’t have to worry about the hardest part.’

  ‘This isn’t the hardest part?’ Fear rose inside her.

  ‘When there are proper waves, we have to paddle out past the break to catch them.’ He pointed out to sea. ‘That’s where the real work is.’

  The real work? What had she been doing all morning? Knitting?

  In the shallows he got her to practise getting up and standing on the board. The first five times she fell, crashing into the water. On the sixth go, she managed to stand for three whole seconds before falling. On the tenth she stayed up, and with a little push from Heath, she rode the dying wave in to shore.

  ‘Great work. This time you’re going to catch the wave yourself.’

  She looked at him in shock.

  ‘You can do it. Paddle then pop.’

  Paddle then pop. Just like that.

  Three times the little waves crashed over her head as she tried to paddle in front of them, not going fast enough. Maybe she should just drift back to shore. Call it quits. No. She’d come this far, surely she could take this step. She turned her board around and set herself up for the next one. This time she paddled as hard as she could. She set her arms right, pushed, slid her left leg forward and stood. She was standing. And the board was moving forward. On its own.

  She let out a little scream.

  ‘Bend your knees,’ came a call from behind, and she did.

  She rode the small wave all the way to the end of its life and then fell sideways into the water.

  Heath came swimming alongside her. ‘Did that hurt? Next time I’ll teach you how to fall.’

  ‘That was . . . it . . . I . . .’

  ‘You surfed.’ He found her words for her.

  She stood up and threw her arms around his neck. ‘I surfed! Again?’

  She caught five more waves, two ending with her falling off halfway through the run, three that she managed to ride in to shore.

  And she was exhausted.

  After the fifth wave she sat on the sand, surfboard next to her, just within reach of the lapping tide.

  ‘Well?’ Heath lowered himself beside her.

  ‘It was more fun than I thought it would be.’

  He bumped her shoulder with his.

  ‘Don’t you dare say I told you so.’ She glared at him.

  He zipped his mouth shut, his eyes glinting with joy.

  She pushed him over and lost her balance, falling onto his chest. With one hand he reached up and brushed her wet, matted hair behind her ears. She stared into his eyes. His other hand pressed into the small of her back.

  Oh God, what are you doing?

  She pushed herself up. ‘I’m starving. Maybe we should go get some lunch.’ Starving – truth. Wanting to get lunch – lie. What she really wanted was to stay right there, in his arms.

  ‘Good idea.’ Heath stood up and helped her unzip her wetsuit and she stepped away from him as soon as he was done.

  They walked into town to the bakery. Mrs Andrews’ Finest Fresh Bakes.

  ‘Hey.’ Laura turned to Heath as he handed her a hot meat pie. ‘Is Mrs Andrews any relation to the woman whose name is on those early editions of The Bugle?’

  ‘Yep. Well, sort of. The original Mrs Andrews is long gone. But her family run the bakery now. They keep the name to honour their grandmother. It’s hard to find anyone around here who hasn’t been here for generations, or isn’t related to someone who has. Kids move away all the time, for study, or work, or travel. But they often come back. It’s always the same names you see popping up everywhere.’

  Where had the Tinellis’ name disappeared to, then? And why?

  ‘It’s not often, outside of tourist time, we get new faces around here.’

  ‘And when you do?’

  Heath looked her in the eye. ‘Well, they are always noticed, often judged.’ He raised a finger in the air. �
��But they are usually interesting.’

  Laura’s cheeks burned when he looked at her that way.

  They ate their pies as they sat on the small metal chairs outside the bakery. Heath said hello to everyone who passed, most people stopping for a brief chat.

  ‘Do you know everyone in town?’ Laura asked.

  ‘It’s hard not to.’ He smiled. ‘It’s one of the things I love about living here. Even when I was living in Ocean Heights, I came home every weekend. Mind you, when I was a wayward teenager it wasn’t such a good thing.’

  ‘A wayward teenager?’ Somehow Laura had no trouble imagining Heath as a cheeky youth.

  ‘Some stories are better left in the past.’ His eyes crinkled at the edges.

  And some need to come into the light, thought Laura.

  ‘So, tomorrow morning – lesson two?’ Heath finished off his pie.

  ‘Sounds like a da— a plan.’ Yes, just a plan. Not a date. She wasn’t here to date.

  Virginia rifled through the files on the coffee table in the holiday house.

  Yvonne paced back and forth. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’

  ‘Probably not. But we have to. We need to protect ourselves.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Anything? Everything.’

  That wasn’t much help, Virginia knew. They just had to go through whatever Laura had on them and figure out what to do next.

  Yvonne pulled out some pictures of the Bay, of surfers. ‘Maybe she is just here to do a travel story.’ She held them up to Virginia.

  ‘Keep looking.’

  ‘Virginia?’ Yvonne’s voice was soft and she held up some copies of The Bugle.

  Virginia took in a deep breath and searched more frantically through her pile. Then she came across a sheet of paper with names on it. Hers, Yvonne’s, Richard’s. There were questions on the paper too. But what caught her eye, what made the bile rise in her stomach, was seeing Costas’ name in the middle of the page. Underlined. Surrounded by question marks.

  ‘Yvonne.’ Her hands quivered as she showed her.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  The room began to spin and Virginia held on tightly to her friend. Laura may not know who Costas was, but she had his name and it was now only a matter of time.

  The hinges on the picket fence groaned.

  ‘Here.’ Virginia pushed a cloth into Yvonne’s hands and tidied up the files. She slipped out the back door and listened to make sure Yvonne was all right.

  ‘Oh, hi.’ Laura’s voice filled the house. ‘What are you doing here, Yvonne?’

  ‘Just a bit of cleaning.’

  Virginia was impressed how Yvonne held her nerve. But then, she had always been the braver of the two of them.

  ‘You clean holiday houses?’

  ‘Yes. Remember I said I manage this place?’

  ‘On weekends?’

  Virginia’s heart raced.

  ‘Whenever I can fit it in. I knew you’d be out and I didn’t want to disturb you. How was the surfing lesson?’

  Virginia let out the breath she’d been holding in. She hated asking Yvonne to lie for her. Again. She owed that woman so much. Her life, in fact.

  Satisfied that Yvonne was safe, Virginia tiptoed away from the holiday house and once she was clear, she picked up the pace and made a beeline for home.

  As evening rolled round, Laura stepped away from her notes. She’d been poring over them, organising what she’d already discovered, writing out her next questions. Come Monday she would go back to the Ocean Heights library and resume going through The Bugle. She knew she’d find answers there. She just wasn’t sure to which questions.

  She was about to change into her pyjamas when there was a knock on the door.

  Her pulse quickened at the thought it might be Heath. As she opened the door, though, her heart sank.

  ‘Charlotte? What are you doing here?’

  The woman stood before her, a baking dish in her hand. ‘Sorry to bother you. I just thought you might like some leftover roast lamb.’ She held out the dish.

  Laura took it and invited her in.

  ‘Is there something else?’ Charlotte’s demeanour wasn’t sitting quite right.

  ‘Actually, yes. I wanted to talk to you about Heath.’

  ‘Heath?’

  ‘Yes. Do you mind if I sit down?’ She moved to the sofa.

  Laura got her a drink of water and sat down next to her. ‘What is it, Charlotte?’

  ‘Heath. Well, he’s not . . . like other guys. He comes across as charming and confident and strong, and he is. He’s all those things. Stronger than anyone else I know.’

  Laura had already ascertained all this herself. ‘But?’

  ‘Well, deep down he’s actually more fragile than most.’

  Laura was certain Heath would be mortified to know his big sister was going around saying that to women.

  ‘He came home from your lesson, and he was . . . well . . . I don’t want him to get hurt. He’s had to deal with so much . . . pain in the past, so much uncertainty.’ A look of sadness came over her face.

  ‘We’ve all had our heart broken, Charlotte. Get to our age and it’s inevitable.’ She reached out and took Charlotte’s hand. ‘I’m not here to break your brother’s heart.’

  ‘Have you, Laura? Had your heart broken?’ Charlotte looked her in the eye. The blue-green of Charlotte’s gaze was the same as Virginia’s.

  Laura let go of her hand and looked down. ‘Of course. We weren’t married. But he left me. For someone else. After five years of lies.’ Hurtful, horrible, painful lies.

  ‘Why do men do that?’ Charlotte hit her leg. ‘If you don’t love me anymore, then fine. But why have an affair?’

  ‘If we knew the answer to that, we could start our own talk show.’

  Charlotte laughed, a light, joyful sound, like Aiden’s.

  ‘I tried to figure it out when Bumfluff left me,’ Laura said.

  ‘Bumfluff?’

  ‘Yes. Any time he tried to grow a beard, he could only manage this light, fluffy stubble.’

  Charlotte raised her hand. ‘Bumfluff.’ Laura gave her a high five. ‘Did you figure it out?’

  ‘With him, I think it was because he didn’t want to be the bad guy. If he broke up with me, he’d be at fault. If he never got caught, he’d stay a hero.’

  ‘Men are stupid.’ Charlotte sighed.

  ‘A lot of them, yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry I took up so much of your time. I just worry about Heath sometimes. He’s got . . . I just worry.’

  ‘You’re a good sister.’

  Charlotte got up and took her glass into the kitchen.

  Laura scrambled to cover the notes that were strewn across the dining table before Charlotte saw anything. She wasn’t sure if she’d made it in time or not. But her visitor didn’t say anything, so maybe she was in the clear.

  As she walked out the door, Charlotte turned around, gave Laura a look she couldn’t decipher, and then headed down the path.

  She turned back. ‘You promised me you wouldn’t hurt my family, remember?’

  ‘I remember.’

  Guilt tore through her.

  The next morning Laura was down at the beach, wetsuit on, before Heath arrived. She was going to keep today’s lesson strictly professional – teacher, student.

  ‘Morning,’ Heath called as he walked towards her, surfboard under his arm. He moved in to greet her with a kiss on the cheek, but she stepped back.

  ‘Good morning.’

  Heath seemed unfazed by her slight retreat. Perhaps Laura had imagined the heat between them yesterday.

  ‘Are you ready for the hard work today?’ He laid his surfboard on the sand.

  Duck-diving was on the agenda today, the technique on sand to start, then some practice in the water. But before diving under the waves, Heath taught her how to fall.

  ‘There’s a right way to fall?’

  ‘Always.’

  B
ackwards, knees tucked in, arms around head.

  She stood up on her board and prepared herself to topple into the water. A few deep breaths.

  Heath tipped the board and in she went.

  Splashing as she resurfaced, she wiped the salt water from her face. ‘That wasn’t very nice.’

  ‘No time to prepare out there,’ he declared.

  ‘Oh, this is funny, is it?’

  ‘A little.’ His eyes sparkled. ‘Yes.’

  She hit the water with her arm, sending white spray into his face.

  ‘Okay. I think you’re ready.’ He pointed out to the depths of the sea.

  As he’d predicted, the waves were bigger today. A lot bigger. Here in the shallows Laura was feeling confident. Out there . . . the waves looked like mountains to her.

  ‘There’s a small rip just up there.’ He pointed to the north. ‘That will help us.’

  She may not have known much, or anything, about surfing or beaches, but she did know you were supposed to stay out of rips. And she told him so.

  ‘True. As a swimmer, absolutely. And if you were on your own, absolutely, again. But I’ve been surfing these waters all my life. You’re in good hands. Surfers often use rips to help them get behind the waves.’

  This required a huge leap of faith for Laura. Yes, she trusted this man, inexplicable as that was, but this was next level. The last time she’d trusted a man to this degree, it hadn’t ended well. At all.

  Her breathing became shallow.

  ‘Hey.’ He touched her cheek. ‘It’s okay. We don’t have to, if you don’t want to. We can do it the other way. Paddle out. Or not at all, if you want to stop.’

  Laura looked into the aqua water, the waves foaming at their hips. Now that she was here, she didn’t want to quit. But every fibre of her being, every instinct, rule number three, was telling her to stay away from the rip.

  ‘Paddle?’ Her voice was soft, unsure.

  ‘Okay.’

  Heath repeated his instructions on where to position her body on the board, and how to duck-dive. Pushing the nose of the board under a wave and following it down till you were completely submerged, to come back up on the other side didn’t sound like too much fun to her.