Lizzie sighed in frustration. 'Would it be bad? Yes. Very bad. Seriously bad. We're talking about the Dan who slammed the door in my face. He's just being polite.' Whatever interest he might have had four months ago, and Lizzie was even suspicious of that now, was dead and gone. Despite the way he'd looked at her.
'Lizzie, it's just food. The man clearly needs to eat. Just chill.'
'I don't need to chill!' Lizzie shouted and her voice echoed around the car park. 'Oh hell, I need to chill.'
Lizzie heard the pub door open and there was a heavy thud of boots on the wooden floorboards. The sound triggered a jolt of memory.
That night, last winter. The pub had been busy but not jam-packed. A few tradies had stopped in for a cold beer on their way home and a party of day-trippers from Adelaide were tucking into a very late lunch. In the far corner, the Middle Point bowling club ladies were finishing up dessert, their celebrations for a member's eightieth birthday almost coming to a close. It had only taken them a dozen bottles of wine to get there.
Dan had swaggered in, his hair and leather jacket misted with rain, and his tall frame had almost filled the doorway. He'd worn a shit-eating grin and there was sex in his eyes. They'd roamed over her eyes, her lips and her breasts and unashamedly stayed there.
He'd asked her why she was known as Lizzie and not Elizabeth.
'Always hated it,' she'd told him. 'When people call me Elizabeth I feel like the Queen.'
'Bye, Elizabeth,' he'd said and winked at her, pushing his wayward fringe off his forehead.
Everything had changed just a few hours later on a lonely road.
At 7.30 p.m., Lizzie checked her make-up in the bathroom mirror. Entirely by accident, of course, as she'd just popped in to go to the loo. For the fifth time that afternoon.
At 7.45 p.m., she counted the bottles of chilled water in the fridge behind the bar.
At 7.50 p.m., she checked the time. Again. Was the old clock getting slower?
At 7.55 p.m., she reviewed the covers for the night, looked over the next day's specials and wondered again if the sushi counted as a gluten-free option if it didn't come with soy sauce.
At eight, she waited and watched the door.
She did the same at 8.10 p.m. and 8.15 p.m.
Dan stood frozen to the spot, sweat drenching his T-shirt. A wrench of pain arced to life near the scar on his thigh and radiated up and down, sending waves of shock coursing through his body. He took a few halting steps to the kitchen bench and gripped the counter top, knowing what would come next. A ferocious pounding in his chest and a terror so intense that it took over any rational thought and made him want to run and run and run.
Was this what a heart attack felt like?
The panic attacks only lasted a couple of minutes but the sudden onset of dread was bone shaking. It had a violent, uncontrollable and unpredictable power over him and Dan wanted to curse and shout at it, whatever it was, to fuck off and leave him alone but it gripped around his chest and his head like a vice and pounded there too. His heartbeat hammered so hard he thought his heart might burst.
When it was over, when his chest finally stopped quaking, he stumbled to the sofa and collapsed onto it. The wave was over but the ripples shuddered through him, inside and out. What came next was almost as bad.
The trying to make sense of it.
Why had it hit now, seemingly out of nowhere?
For once in four goddamned months he hadn't been thinking about that night, about the accident. He'd been feeling okay, and maybe even let himself feel a little … hell, feel something that wasn't a dulled sense of dread.
So why now? A few minutes before, he'd stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel to dry himself, and had pulled on a shirt and jeans to go down to the pub for that meal with Lizzie. He was in the kitchen, had just poured himself a glass of water and was drinking it over the sink, when it struck. Ordinary, stupid, mundane shit that he did every day.
Dinner with Lizzie.
He buried his face in his hands. He knew he wouldn't go. Couldn't. Not tonight. Not this way. Because he knew that after the fear and the confusion, came the exhaustion. And then deeper still, came the guilt, the disappointment, the shame.
Those things that were easier to hide when he was alone, in the dark.
At 8.30 p.m., Lizzie picked up her handbag, locked her office and wandered home in the fading twilight. She needed the ten-minute walk to think. Dan couldn't have made it more obvious. She got the hint. Maybe he'd had a rush of blood to the head yesterday, or even somewhere else, when he'd suggested they have dinner together. Whatever he was planning was now irrelevant. He'd clearly changed his mind.
Lizzie tried to tell herself she was okay with it. She'd had a full life before Dan McSwaine ambled into town, and she would just have to get back to it. During the past four months, Ry and Julia had been distracted by Dan's situation, as any friends would be. Lizzie's problem was that she'd let herself get sucked into their lives as well. Of course, she'd been more than happy to step up at the pub while Ry and Julia were up in the city in the weeks after the accident. It was her first few weeks as manager anyway, and she'd kept the place ticking over like a well-oiled machine. Ry had placed his trust in her and Julia had relied on her friendship. She hadn't let either of them down.
But now it was time for Lizzie to get back to her own life. She'd done it before, knew the drill. Knew that getting up in the morning, brushing her teeth and slicking on the mascara, creating a brave face for the rest of the world to see, created a routine, a reason to keep getting out of bed. There had been many times in the past when she'd needed to find reasons.
As she got closer to home, Lizzie looked over the dunes to the darkening, wild sea. There was so much to be thankful for, she knew. She'd always loved her job at the pub and was loving it even more now she'd been promoted. She had a life here. She was a de facto daughter to Harri next door, and Julia was back in the Point. Ry was now part of that circle too. It was a good life.
What she didn't have, what she hadn't had for a long time – two years, six months and he'd been a dud, but who was counting – was a man. While she loved Middle Point with everything she had, there were certain limitations in its man department. Half the boys she'd gone to school with had married their high school girlfriends. Others had married girls from other towns on the peninsula. The only guy she'd had a crush on, who she'd always considered really cute with perfect hair, had moved to Sydney and burst out of the closet the minute he'd stepped out of a taxi on Oxford Street. Men had been pretty thin on the ground in the years since. There were some single guys around Middle Point, either newly divorced or never married, but Lizzie hadn't been tempted the first time around.
For all these reasons, the news of Dan's arrival had been a glimmer of hope in a depressed man market. The first time they'd met, caught in the crossfire between Ry and Julia's battle about the merits of Ry's company's Windswept Development, they'd predictably taken the sides of their best friends and gone at it, tongues and tempers blazing. The next time they met, it was kind of different. They'd managed to overlook their differences when it seemed as if their best friends weren't going to make it. They'd engineered a rendezvous at the pub and Ry and Julia had been together ever since.
Whatever potential there was for anything between her and Dan had been snuffed out months ago in a car wreck on a dark road just outside of Middle Point.
Lizzie turned the corner into her street and saw Harri in the distance. Her neighbour's bright orange shirt was hard to miss and she threw Lizzie a spirited wave, beckoning her to come over. Harri watered her front garden at sunset every night, totally in line with water restrictions and in solidarity with the life-giving River Murray.
'G'day Lizzie! How are you, doll? Fancy a cuppa?' Harri leaned down to yank off her garden tap, her loose grey bun drooping to one side as she bent over. 'You're a bit late tonight. What's up at the watering hole?'
Lizzie sighed. 'Nothing, I just got a little held up.' She tried to avoid her friend's eyes.
'Something tells me you're bullshitting, Lizzie. But I'm sure you'll spill the beans in your own good time.' Harriet Byrne had been a trailblazer in her younger years and for two decades had represented the local area in State Parliament. Now in her seventies, she'd left politics behind but still had a blindingly good nose for intrigue.
That's why Lizzie changed the subject so fast. 'How's your hip holding up today?'
'Oh, it's a bugger. You think the warmer weather would help but no, it hurts like a bastard.' Harri plonked a hand on the hip in question for added emphasis. 'The doctor keeps telling me I should get a new one.'
Lizzie laughed out loud. 'Don't tell me, you're not taking any advice from that quack, right?'