The Cove 1

Nick stared in astonishment.

I don't believe I found her this easily. It can't be her.

The best part of fifteen thousand miles, a change of aircraft in Perth for the final leg to the North-West coast, eight hours sleep in a blessed, air-conditioned roadhouse room, and there she was ... in the supermarket.

It was her hair that Nick recognised. The woman with her back to him was wearing a two-piece business suit, most definitely not Joelle's style as Nick remembered, in the old days, that wild month fifteen years earlier, Joelle had been a cut-off denim and tee-shirt girl, but those red-gold, gypsy locks were unmistakable.

"Joelle..." Nick mumbled. He cleared his throat and tried again. The woman turned at the mention of her name.

Moments passed -- an age for Nick -- as Joelle eyed the stranger ...

Was he a stranger? He looked familiar.

Distant memory niggled. The long scar from temple to jaw; the cane he used for support - despite his relative youth. She didn't know the man, although he appeared to know her.

Suddenly, Joelle's green eyes widened and her hand moved to her mouth.

"Nick?" she blurted. "It's you, isn't it?" Again, her eyes moved over him. "What happened to you?" Joelle reached out to her former lover but stopped short of touching him; his injuries appeared recent.

"Long story, Got five minutes for a coffee ...?"

Nick watched through the thick, polarised window as the road-train rumbled through the heat of midday. He saw Joelle's reflection in the glass. Nick recalled that day in the cove.

She moves just the same.

He remembered the sketch, scribbling the lines on the paper; trying to capture the essence of her as she walked slowly along the beach.

She's hardly changed. The suit's new, but—

"Oh my God, Nick ... I can't believe it's really you. Why ... Why did you come back?"

Nick shrugged. It was simple. "To find you."

Joelle avoided his eyes. She stirred her coffee.

"I'm sorry, Nick," she muttered. "I—"

The desolate feeling of loss and loneliness swamped Nick. Waking up in that hotel room and finding her gone ... Perversely, those feelings hurt more than the physical scars caused by the roadside bomb.

Nick sighed heavily. "Don't apologise," he said gently. "It was a long time ago."

"Oh God, Nick. This is all so sudden. "So many questions... What happened to you?"

Nick sketched a history: Waking to find her gone; wandering aimlessly around Perth; his decision to return to England; the army, and finally, the explosion that had caught him along his left side.

"The hearing in one ear, a kidney, my spleen, and a knackered leg," Nick listed. He grinned at Joelle's aghast face. With typical black humour: "I'll be OK. The leg's on the mend. I don't need those other bits." He waved his fingers absently, as though

those bits

were of no consequence. Nick paused and laid his fingers across Joelle's hand. "And I'm drawing again."

Joelle turned her hand so it was palm to palm with his. She squeezed gently. It was the first touch for fifteen years. The couple sat in silence, each momentarily lost in their own bubble of thoughts and emotions.

"You've lost your accent," Joelle eventually remarked. "I've been wondering what it was ... You're talking like a pom!"

"I

am

a pom," Nick smiled. "And you've changed too," he added. "Your clothes ... I mean, what happened to the cut-offs?"

Now it was Joelle's turn to give an account of the last fifteen years. She described the turmoil of coming to a decision: Should she let herself love Nick? He'd been nineteen, she thirty ... She was wild and tempestuous, whereas Nick was quieter; more serious-minded ... They were incompatible, she'd decided, in the long run the difference in age and their attitudes ...

She told of her marriage to George, a hard working Greek-Australian with a contract to build houses in the town - homes for employees of the iron ore mining company.

"I didn't want to ruin your life, Nick," she said softly. "I was a bad influence. Some of the things we did..."

"So you left me down there—" Nick blurted. He glared across the table at the chastened woman. "You broke my heart to avoid ruining my life?" he snorted, adding, "Well, that worked, eh?" Nick's temper cooled rapidly when he saw the hurt glistening in those green eyes.

I still love her!

"I ... I'm sorry, Joelle. I shouldn't have said that ..."

"I guess I deserved that," Joelle responded quietly. "But I only did what I—" She shook her head and reached into her purse.

"I can't believe I found you so easily," Nick said in an effort to break the suddenly despondent mood as Joelle dabbed at her eyes. "I'd expected to have to follow a trail, maybe track you down; I thought you'd have left this place years ago, but ..." He shrugged. "You were almost the first person I saw in town." Then, in another change of tack, he asked, "What do you do these days? Why the suit?"

"I'm an estate agent," Joelle replied. "Independent. I deal with commercial premises." She paused and added, "It's funny you should mention me being here. I'm only up here to close a deal. Two more days and I'll be gone. I'm opening an office in Sydney, so I'm going to base myself there for a while." Joelle sipped her coffee. "What are your plans, Nick?"

Nick ran a hand over the blond stubble he called hair. His cheeks puffed. "I dunno. I might see some of the country, draw some stuff. See if I can sell any of it ..."

"I've still got it," Joelle said softly. "That drawing. Of me. Down at the cove. I kept it."

The cove,

Nick thought, reminded again of those days and nights with Joelle. In his imagination he could hear the rumble of the V8 in Joelle's Ford Falcon ute as she shifted through the gears and negotiated the dirt roads to the coast. Nick could almost taste the cold beers from the esky as the heat of the day turned to sultry night, while he and the gypsy talked foolishness under the Southern Cross, and the Indian Ocean sighed against the shingle down beyond the mangroves. His stomach fluttered at the memory of making love to her the first time on top of the old sleeping bag, and he smiled when he thought of how he'd lain awake with sand in his hair and watched the crabs scuttling about their sideways business at the dawn of a new day.

And she'd kept that drawing.

Not that it mattered, Nick reasoned. Joelle had made her decision; she'd moved on. She was successful; she ran her own company.

And there was George.

It figures, she's too beautiful to be alone - Of course she'd be married by now.

What an idiot he'd been to come back ... Too much time to think, to dwell on what might-have-been as he lay shattered in the hospital.

Nick glanced at his watch. "It's getting on," he said. 'I must be keeping you from business."

Joelle blinked at his abrupt tone. "Uh ..." she responded. "Well ..."

"It was great seeing you again. Good luck with the business." Nick reached for his stick.

"You're going? Just like that? We ... I ..."

"I shouldn't have come back, Joelle. It was a mistake. I'm a sentimental idiot."

"Nick!" she called. "My number, take my number ... Please."

Nick paused and turned, his distraught expression wrenched at Joelle's chest.

"I can't." He shook his head. "It's impossible. Sorry"

She watched him leave.

The following morning, to Nick's surprise, the phone in his room rang.

"There's a lady down in reception," a man's voice drawled.

Joelle!

Nick's stomach slid. She's come to say goodbye. His eyes stung with tears of regret. Again, he asked himself why he'd come back. I should've left it in the past.

Joelle waited with a nervous, earnest expression on her face. A tentative smile flickered when she saw Nick, the constant cane in his hand, coming towards her.

She smiled tentatively. "It came to me last night," she said. 'Why you up and legged it like that. It's because of George, isn't it?"

Nick nodded in reply as he stared at her. She was dressed in her old style of cut-off jeans and tee-shirt. "We divorced four years ago, dopey." Joelle nodded in the direction of the hotel door, "I decided to take a few days off. Sydney can wait." Her devilish grin flashed. "Wanna take a drive to the cove?"

A smile spread slowly across Nick's damaged face as her meaning sunk in. "Sure," he said. "Did you bring a sleeping bag and the esky ...?