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  ‘I wonder if my wish will come true,’ said Jem, scurrying over when she realised Maddie was leaving.

  ‘What wish?’ Evan successfully won the tug of war battle when Ava dropped his arm in lieu of following this more interesting development.

  ‘What wish, Grandma Jem?’ asked Ava.

  ‘The wish I made when I blew out the candles on my sensible cake.’ She winked at Maddie.

  ‘Tell me what you wished for.’ Ava grabbed Jem’s arm this time but didn’t attack it with anywhere near the severity that she had with Evan’s. Lucky, as Maddie suspected Jem would be the one to come off worse.

  Jem smoothed down the child’s bunches and stooped to whisper something in her ear.

  ‘Uncle Evan? Are you going to make Maddie your girlfriend?’

  Evan and Maddie stood aghast, but Jem sniggered. ‘Come on, you two. You’re both single, you’re both around the same age. Make an old girl happy. I don’t have time to beat around the bush at my ripe old age and I want to see my grandson happy. I hope to see you again, Maddie.’ And with that, she took Ava’s hand to the dance floor and left Evan and Maddie to deal with the words that still hung in the air.

  Maddie felt her cheeks burn. It was impossible to look up at Evan.

  ‘Well, that was embarrassing,’ he said.

  They stood side by side watching Ava and Jem dance; it was far easier than looking at each other.

  ‘Embarrassing? I don’t think anything can trump unveiling a huge penis cake at a one-hundredth birthday party.’

  His laugh warmed her right through. ‘True. So, what do you think?’

  ‘What do I think of what?’

  ‘Jem’s wish. Do we make it come true? Can I ask you out?’

  She pretended to be engrossed in watching some of the more senior guests getting their knees up the best they could to ‘Party Rock’. She opened her mouth to answer his question but nothing came out, so instead she tried to flick off the party streamers caught up on one of her ballet flats.

  Evan bent down and pulled the yellow and pink strands away from her foot, and when his hand grazed the skin on her ankle, she felt excitement ripple through her body. She so desperately wanted to say yes.

  ‘Evan, I …’

  He stood and held up his hands as though pre-empting her words. ‘No offence taken.’ His eyes held hers for a moment longer. ‘Enjoy the bachelorette party.’

  When other men asked her out, it was easy to turn them down, or she’d go out with them once and then never called them again. This was new to Maddie. This man she wanted to see again, and she scolded herself for not being able to think of anything to say.

  She left the function room for the second time that day. Baking cakes let her lose herself in a world she was in control of, a world in which the boundaries were only determined by her. But today she felt more out of control than she had felt in a long time. Evan had rattled her. Past casual flings had never made her nervous like this; they had never left her tongue-tied. And she hadn’t experienced such powerful chemistry with anyone since Riley.

  A little voice inside her head told Maddie it was time she let another man into her life, but it had spoken up too late and she had missed her chance.

  Some said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but Maddie wasn’t so sure. Perhaps not letting anyone else in was the right thing to do. That way she would never expose herself to the type of pain she had experienced before and hoped she never had to go through again.

  Chapter Two

  When Evan woke the next morning with only the slightest headache from the party the day before, he was relieved to be in the familiar surroundings of his own apartment. Following Jem’s celebrations he had ended up in a bar with his brother-in-law, Ben, and he could remember a blonde – Sadie? – leaving him in no doubt that she wanted to spend the night with him. She was gorgeous, had a smoking hot body with legs that went on for miles, but it still hadn’t been enough for him. He couldn’t push Maddie out of his mind, and he began to wonder whether the desire to be with one special person was something that came with age. Maybe that was it; at the ripe old age of thirty-eight, perhaps he was finally heading towards maturity.

  The faultless autumn morning in Melbourne couldn’t be overlooked. He had time to head out for a run before he went over to Jem’s place to put up the painting he had bought her for her birthday.

  A light breeze caressed the back of his neck as he pounded the pavements from his apartment block just behind the Exhibition Centre down to Albert Park Lake.

  The sun, suspended between broken clouds, splintered the surface of the lake as he ran past the sailing club. He ran wide around a swan with her waddling cygnets, and then he fell back in step beside the shimmering section of the water’s edge again.

  Running always gave Evan the space to think, and the only thing on his mind this morning was Maddie. Last night, she hadn’t blatantly turned him down; he hadn’t given her the chance to actually say the word no, but he suspected that was going to be her response. Perhaps that was the attraction. Perhaps if she’d said yes, he wouldn’t be so obsessed by her, by the thought of her bum in those figure-hugging jeans, the allure of her caramel-coloured hair tidied into a neat ponytail he wanted to release and run his fingers through.

  *

  When he arrived at Jem’s place, Evan pulled his toolbox from the boot of his swish black Audi TT and then pressed the remote on his key ring to lock it and set the alarm. Holly thought his car was unnecessarily flashy and that he would always love it more than any woman; sometimes he was inclined to agree with her.

  ‘Evan!’ Jem pulled open the door to her unit that sat a couple of streets back from the beach in the trendy suburb of Albert Park. She enveloped her grandson in as big a hug as she could manage, considering she only came up to his chest.

  ‘Before I set you to work, have a slice of cake.’ Jem disappeared along a narrow corridor until she reached the open-plan kitchen and lounge. ‘It’s a lemon drizzle, freshly baked this morning,’ she added when he set down his toolbox.

  ‘You’re a star. Now tell me, is it better than the birthday cake?’

  She scrunched up her nose. ‘I didn’t complain too much about that as your mother arranged it from a caterer, but next time I want Maddie’s number.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’ He had known it wouldn’t be long before Jem mentioned Maddie.

  ‘You know, I could’ve sworn she’d jump at the chance to go out with you.’ She cut a slice of cake for Evan and a smaller one for herself. ‘You need a woman in your life.’ She made her point with the knife still in hand.

  He was glad he had a mouthful of cake so she couldn’t see him smirk. The lecture sounded all too familiar because the women in his family had formed a united front to get him married off. Last week it had been Holly telling him he was going to be forty and alone if he wasn’t careful; a few weeks ago his mum had taken him aside and asked him whether he had anyone serious in his life. He hadn’t prolonged the conversation with either of them because there was nothing to tell.

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’ He devoured the cake, including the final crumbs, then slipped the plate into the hot soapy water in the sink. ‘Now where do you want me to put this new painting of yours?’

  Once Jem showed him the section of wall where she wanted it hung, he said, ‘I’m glad you like it. It took me forever to think of something for you.’ He rummaged through the toolbox to find a spirit level. ‘What do you buy the girl who has everything?’

  When Jem laughed it was like music to his ears, always had been.

  ‘Where did you find the painting?’ she asked.

  He tapped his nose. ‘Let’s just say that your friend Stan tipped me off.’ He’d found it in an unassuming tiny gallery not far from Melbourne’s Central Business District, but he would never have known it was there had it not been for the covert detective phase prior to her birthday.

  ‘Well it’s bright and colourful.
Exactly what I wanted.’

  Evan pencilled marks on the wall and used the spirit level to get the position of the hooks just right before he assembled the electric drill and pushed in the correct attachment.

  After he lifted the painting into position, he stood back alongside Jem to admire the scene of Melbourne’s Brighton Beach bathing boxes sitting proudly on golden sands. Although they remained as they did over one hundred years ago, licensees often differentiated the boxes by painting them different colours, or by adding their own design. In this painting, one bathing box had the Australian flag painted on its door; another had a mermaid; others were an array of banana yellows, turquoise, baby blues and pillar box reds.

  ‘It reminds me of some good family times,’ said Jem. ‘Grandad Bernie and I used to watch you play in the ocean for hours, and then we’d all bundle into our little bathing box when the sun got too much, or when the summer rain started, and we’d play cards. Do you remember?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ He hugged her. ‘I must say thank you to Stan when I next see him.’

  ‘He’s home from hospital now.’

  ‘Stan?’ Evan shooed away Jem’s offer to sweep up the debris and crouched down with dustpan and brush in hand.

  ‘He had a growth removed from his leg. He was lucky, mind.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Evan ran the brush along the ridge of the skirting board and knocked the dust he had created with his handiwork into the pan.

  ‘The lump turned out to be nothing, but it could have easily been worse. Getting older you have to be careful of these things. I’ve always been good at getting myself checked. You know, women’s checks.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t need the details.’

  ‘All I’m saying, Evan, is that it’s better to be careful, and you need to act quickly if anything is amiss.’

  He wondered whether Jem really did have a sixth sense when it came to knowing things about her family. She had known when Holly fell pregnant with Ava, even before Holly had taken the test herself; she had been the one to leap on his instant attraction to Maddie by instigating him asking her out. And now, the poignancy of her words were a reminder that nobody, young nor old, could afford to be complacent about their health, least of all him.

  When he left that day, he knew Jem’s words had given him the kick up the arse he needed. It was time to stop burying his head in the sand; it was time he had that lump checked out.

  Chapter Three

  Maddie squeezed past the group of teenagers huddled beside the doorway of the tram and tracked down the last spare seat towards the back, next to an open window. She watched the suburbs pass by as the breeze delicately toyed with her hair. Her hand rested on her Kindle, but instead of tapping in her password and diving into her latest book, she found her thoughts drifting back to last weekend.

  When she had finally made it to the bachelorette party, a whiff of alcohol had snaked through the air, and she’d laughed with the gaggle of girls crowding round and pointing at several peculiar-looking attempts to fashion a penis out of clay.

  But that wasn’t the party that had stuck in her mind.

  Jem’s party had taken up a considerable amount of her thinking time over the last few days. She could still picture Evan’s smile, his height, the stubble that hypnotised her when he spoke.

  Typical. The girl opposite was talking into her phone at a volume more suitable for a nightclub than a tram full of commuters.

  ‘Did you see the news feature on Ground Zero this morning?’ The girl spoke with an American accent.

  Maddie’s heart quickened. She pulled her iPod from her bag – perfect for this sort of emergency – as the girl’s voice rose above the volume of the other commuters.

  ‘I still think of all those people, their families …’ the girl continued.

  The American accent, combined with the topic of conversation, felt like tiny hammers beating away inside Maddie’s head as it brought everything flooding back to her. Her hands shook as she fumbled with her headphones, and she only relaxed when the sounds of Pink belted out so loud that the girl shot her a turn-it-down-I’m-trying-to-talk-here dirty look.

  As the tune pounded her eardrums, Maddie was right back there on the morning when she had woken to the terrible telephone call, that split second when her life moved from what was so familiar to what she never imagined it could be.

  On September 11th 2001, the world’s worst terror attacks in New York had changed her life, and so many others’, unequivocally. Maddie’s boyfriend, Riley, was working in New York, and that morning he had an important meeting in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He had spoken at length with Maddie the night before about his excitement. His firm had given him the reins, and he was leading the meeting and presenting to an important client who was looking to employ Riley’s team of management consultants.

  Maddie had assumed it would be Riley calling, nervous about the interview, and she’d answered the phone with a smile. But it was Caitlin, his mum, and as Maddie had listened to her urgent voice, she flicked on the television to see the news filling most channels; the news that shocked the entire world. Even now she could remember those images vividly: the smoke and dust billowing out of the North tower; debris raining from the skies; sirens blaring in the background; the screams that filled the streets.

  ‘I love you.’ Those were her last words to Riley, and as the tram spat her out on Collins Street in Melbourne’s Central Business District, Maddie remembered Riley repeating those exact words back to her. They’d been each other’s pasts, they were supposed to be each other’s future, but in the blink of an eye all that had disappeared.

  Feeling empty inside, Maddie crossed the road and pushed through the glass entrance doors of the building where she worked on the fourth floor at Palmer’s Physiotherapy. She pulled out her headphones and muttered hello to Tilly, the receptionist, who called out her compliments for the chocolate mud cake Maddie had supplied for her birthday over the weekend. Usually she was prepared for exactly what had just happened on the tram. On the anniversary of Riley’s death, she always started the day armed with her iPod and a playlist full of loud rock songs that obliterated the world around her; she would leave the television switched off for a few days either side of the actual date; she never so much as glanced at a newspaper or the billboards that graced the little kiosks on so many street corners in Melbourne’s CBD; she avoided Facebook, Twitter and all other social media.

  But today she had been caught out. Today was nowhere near the anniversary of 9/11, and it was on occasions like this that she wasn’t quite the prepared Girl Scout whom she wanted to be.

  Throwing herself into her work was always a great antidote. A busy morning focusing on sore knees, back problems and neck issues helped Maddie block out thoughts of Riley and the day that would haunt her forever. But in the staffroom at lunchtime, as she released the elastic band from around a plastic tray of sushi, her colleague Stuart dumped a newspaper right beside her and familiar words and pictures hit her in the face like a giant slap. The headline of the article about the opening of the new National September 11 Memorial & Museum taunted her, and she pushed her food away.

  Maddie wondered if the coverage of that day, or anything to do with 9/11 whatsoever, would ever be relegated so far to the back of the newspapers and the backs of the minds of the media that it fell out of the news altogether.

  Maddie’s phone pinged with an incoming text message. It was Adam, a mistake she had made almost a month ago. She hit delete. Unfortunately, he hadn’t yet realised she wasn’t interested in a repeat performance. Short, sharp flings had become a habit since Riley, and men like Adam lasted barely as long as a litre of milk before she pulled away. Getting attached and relying on someone was where it all went wrong; that was where you risked leaving yourself open to hurt, open to pain.

  *

  After work Maddie stopped at the supermarket. It was Ally’s mum’s birthday this Friday and she had promised to bake a cake for her. Flou
r was the last item on her list, and she wasn’t thrilled to see half of the packets had white dust leaking from the bottom. She stood on tiptoes to try to reach one from a higher shelf, and her fingertips gradually worked the packet towards the edge.

  ‘Here, let me do that.’ A familiar voice came from behind her as a hand stretched up and deftly plucked the package from the shelf.

  ‘Evan.’

  He gripped the large package in the palm of his hand and laid it carefully into the basket looped over her arm. She watched him eye the rest of the items she had collected. Thank goodness she didn’t have tampons or condoms in there or she knew she would be going a lot redder than she was right now.

  He looked thoughtful. ‘You’re not making another penis are you?’

  ‘It’s a birthday cake for a friend, and a lot more tasteful. It’ll be a gift box with plain chocolate and white chocolate bows around the edge,’ she babbled.

  Evan watched her intently, and it gave her the same giddy feelings she’d had at the party last weekend. He leaned against a shelf full of packets of sugar, his hands pushed into a faded pair of Levis. ‘You turned me down when I asked you out.’

  ‘I didn’t turn you down, I just didn’t answer.’ Her heart quickened as she noticed his manly arms that hadn’t been on show last time they met. His skin was lightly tanned, and subtle-yet-definitely-there biceps sat beneath dark-grey T-shirt sleeves.

  ‘It’s the same thing.’

  His eyes looked as though they could get their way whenever he wanted, the way a magician could move an object across the table by staring at it for long enough.

  ‘I’m going to go out on a limb here,’ he rushed on, saving her from providing an explanation. ‘Can I take you out to dinner? I promise I’ll behave and I won’t even mention that cake. If you really don’t have a good time, just don’t go out with me again.’

  He made it sound so simple.