Reunited By A Baby Bombshell

Well, yeah.

Griff couldn’t deny the great times he and these mates had enjoyed as teenagers, lapping up the free and easy outdoor lifestyle of a bayside country town.

Griff’s family had moved back to the city as soon as he’d finished school, and he could barely remember the last time he’d donned goggles and flippers to dive into the secret underwater world of coral and fish.

But there’d been a time when he’d lived and breathed diving...and surfing. Throughout his teenage years, he’d spent a part of every single day at the beach, in the sea. And every night, in bed, he’d listened to the sound of the surf pounding on the sand. The rhythm of the sea had been as familiar and essential to him as the beating of his heart.

By contrast, these days, the only water he saw was when he was rowing on the Brisbane River, which was usually flat and brown and still.

But the sea was different. And the Bay was special.

More to the point, these two mates were important to Griff. Amanda wasn’t especially fond of them, but she did have a tendency to be slightly snooty. She preferred mixing with Griff’s barrister colleagues and their partners, whereas Griff knew that these guys kept him grounded. Tim worked in a bank and Barney was an electrician and, between them, they provided a good balance to the eminent judges and silks who filled Griff’s working life.

He’d be crazy to let the haunting memory of one slim, dark-haired girl with astonishing aqua eyes spoil the chance to go back and recapture a little of the camaraderie and magic he’d enjoyed in his youth.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said cautiously.

He was rewarded with a hearty and enthusiastic back-slap.

* * *

Eva stared at the doctor in dismay as two words echoed in her head like a tolling funeral bell... Hip replacement...hip replacement...

It was the worst possible news. She couldn’t take it in. She didn’t want to believe it.

A few days earlier, during a rehearsal of The Nutcracker, she’d landed awkwardly after performing a grand jeté, a demanding movement that involved propelling herself gracefully into the air and doing the splits while above the ground. Eva had performed the move thousands of times, of course, but this time, when she’d landed, the pain in her hip had been agonising.

Since then, the hip hadn’t improved. She’d stayed away from rehearsals, claiming a heavy cold, which was something she’d never done before. Normally, Eva danced through every painful mishap. She’d danced on broken toes, through colds and flu, had even performed for weeks with a torn ligament in her shoulder.

Such stoicism wasn’t unusual in ballet circles. A culture of secrecy about injury was a given. Every dancer was terrified of being branded as fragile. They all understood it was a euphemism for on the way out—the end of a career.

This time, however, Eva found it too difficult to keep hiding her pain. Even if she faked her way through class and rehearsals, by the time she got home she could barely walk. So she’d seen an osteopath. But now, to her horror, the doctor had shown her disturbing results from her MRI scan.

She’d never dreamed the damage could be so bad.

‘You’ve torn the labrum,’ the doctor told her solemnly as he pointed to the scan. ‘That’s the ring of cartilage around your left hip joint. Normally, the labrum helps with shock absorption and lubrication of the joint, but now—’ He shook his head. ‘The tear on its own wouldn’t be such a great problem, but there are other degenerative changes as well.’ He waved his hand over the scan. ‘Extensive arthritic inflammation of the whole joint.’

Arthritis? A chill washed over Eva. Wasn’t that something that happened to elderly people?

‘I strongly recommend a complete hip replacement. Otherwise—’ the doctor sighed expressively ‘—I don’t really see how you can avoid it.’

No, please no.

On a page from his writing pad, he wrote the names of two consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeons. He handed the paper to Eva.

Sweat broke out on her skin and she swayed a little dizzily in her chair. A hip replacement was a death knell, the end of her career. The prospect filled her with such desolation that it didn’t bear imagining.

It would be the end of my life.

‘Aren’t there other things I can try?’ she asked in desperation. ‘Besides surgery?’

The doctor gave a shrug. ‘We can talk about physiotherapy and painkillers and diet. And rest,’ he added, giving her a dark look. ‘But I think you’ll find that the pain will still be too severe, certainly if you want to continue dancing. Ballet requires movements that are very unnatural.’

Eva knew this all too well, of course. She’d spent a lifetime perfecting the demanding movements most people never even tried. Pirouettes and adagios and grand allegros en pointe all made exacting demands on her limbs and joints, and she knew she was only human. She was at the wrong end of her thirties and there was a limit to what she could expect from her body. But she couldn’t give up dancing.

Not yet! She’d worked too hard, had sacrificed too much. Sure, she’d known that her career couldn’t last for ever, but she’d hoped for at least five more years.

Dancing was her life. Without it, she would drown, would completely lose her identity.

She was in no way ready for this.

The osteopath was staring at her a little impatiently now. He had no more advice to offer.

In a daze, Eva rose from her chair, thanked him and bade him goodbye. As the door to his office closed behind her, she walked through reception without seeing anyone, trying not to limp, to prove to herself that the doctor must have been wrong, but even walking was painful.

Glass doors led to a long empty corridor. What could she do now?

She tried to think clearly, but her mind kept spinning. If she gave in and had the surgery, she was sure the company wouldn’t want her back—certainly not as their prima ballerina—and she couldn’t conscience the idea of going back into the corps de ballet.

The worst of it was, this wasn’t a problem she dared discuss with her colleagues. She didn’t want anyone in the dancing world to know. The news would spread like wildfire. It would be in the press by lunchtime. By supper time, her career would be over.

As she made her way carefully down a short flight of stairs and onto the Parisian pavement outside, Eva, who had always been strong and independent, valuing her privacy, had never felt more vulnerable and alone. On the wrong side of the world.

* * *

‘Hello, this is Jane. How can I help you?’

Griff grimaced. He couldn’t believe he was tense about speaking to Jane Simpson. In their school days, Jane had been the Emerald Bay baker’s daughter. Since then she’d married a cane farmer and was now convening the class reunion.

‘Hi, there, Jane.’ He cleared his throat nervously and was immediately annoyed with himself. ‘Griff Fletcher, here. I’m ringing about the school reunion weekend.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Jane sounded excited. ‘It’s great to hear from you after all this time, Griff. I hope you’ll be able to come.’

‘Well, I’m still trying to see if I can...er...fit it into my schedule. But I was curious—how are the...er...numbers shaping up?’

‘They’re great, actually. We have about thirty-five coming so far—and that’s not counting partners. It’s really exciting,’ Jane enthused. ‘I do hope you can make it.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

Since the barbecue with Tim and Barney, Griff had been warming to the idea of going back to the Bay. But he wanted to ask about Eva. The thought of running into her in front of everyone from their school days completely ruined the picture. There was too much unfinished business between them. There was bound to be tension. And friction. It would be unavoidable.

If Eva was going to be there—which Griff very much doubted—he would stay well clear of the place.

The simple question should have been easy to put to Jane. Griff couldn’t believe he was uptight.

It wasn’t as if he’d spent the past twenty years pining for his high school sweetheart. Many of the relationships he’d enjoyed since then had been fabulously passionate and borderline serious.

Admittedly, Griff’s relationships did have a habit of petering out. While almost all of his friends and colleagues had tied the knot and were starting families, Griff didn’t seem to have the staying power. He either tired of his girlfriends, or they got tired of waiting for him to commit to something more permanent.