A Proposal Worth Waiting For

‘Well, do you want to?’ Wooden tone.

‘Yes!’

‘With me?’

‘Y-yes.’ A lot less emphatic.

‘Good,’ Nick said, and suddenly hugged him fiercely. ‘Because I think we’re going to have a great time.’ His voice was thick with sudden emotion that almost brought tears to Miranda’s eyes.

He cared. Whatever else she might doubt about him now, she couldn’t doubt that.

They almost ran through the terminal.

A sympathetic desk clerk, who’d been told about the situation, waved them through to the first-class check-in desk and despatched their luggage along the conveyor with practised speed. Waiting in a queue to go through Security, they heard the announcement for final boarding for the flight, but Nick said stoically, ‘They’ve let our baggage through, and the desk clerk knows we’re on our way. They should hold the flight a few minutes for us, now. I hope,’ he added.

Their departure gate seemed miles away, at the far end of the concourse. Nick loped ahead, seeming untroubled by Josh’s light weight. Miranda struggled to keep up. Last night’s sleepless mental list-checking of today’s travel details was taking its toll. Finally she saw the gate lounge and the open door leading to the access tunnel. The area was bare of passengers and a member of the ground crew was speaking into a telephone.

‘Boarding pass?’ Nick barked at Miranda.

‘Right here. You’ve got yours and Josh’s?’

‘Yes.’ To the ground crew he said, ‘Nick Devlin, Josh Devlin, Miranda Carlisle.’

‘Good. You’re the three we’ve been waiting for.’

Breathless, Miranda followed Nick down the tunnel, the blood beating in her ears and her limbs weak with relief. They’d made it. Just. Josh was smiling. Everything was going to be OK.

Just inside the plane, they caught up with the final members of the Crocodile Creek group. Benita mimed fanning herself with relief and said, ‘I’d almost given up on you.’

‘So had I. But I couldn’t let them miss the flight.’ Miranda lowered her voice. ‘Not these two. Not little Josh.’

‘Be careful of that,’ Benita warned. She meant the favouritism.

‘I know.’

Miranda saw the Allandales blocking the aisle further down as they sorted through their cabin luggage. Stella Vavunis stood just ahead, handing over her crutches to an attendant, to be stowed in one of their special hidey-holes for the duration of the flight because they were too long for the overhead carrier bins.

The teenager’s head hung with embarrassment, and her body was stiff and hunched, as if she just wanted to disappear. She felt humiliated and angry at the whole world about being singled out this way, and having to hop and hobble to her seat. Miranda thought she heard some very rude words muttered under Stella’s breath.

‘She isn’t handling that prosthesis very well yet, is she?’ Miranda murmured to Benita. ‘It says in her notes it was fitted a week ago.’

‘She won’t even try, according to her physio,’ the nurse answered. ‘She hates it, still insists on using the crutches because then she can get away with looking as if she has a broken leg.’

‘There’s a physiotherapist visiting the camp every day. I’ve had a couple of phone conversations with her. Susie Jackson. She sounds nice.’

‘We’re all nice, Miranda!’ Benita said.

‘True. You’re saying nice isn’t enough, in a case like this.’

Nice. The word dovetailed with some of Miranda’s questions about Nick, too, and about why she hadn’t yet been able to give her heart to a man who truly wanted it. Was being nice the problem? Too nice. Nothing but nice. Nice wasn’t enough, and sometimes it was boring…

‘Stella has to be motivated,’ Benita was saying. ‘She has to believe what we tell her, she has to find someone she’ll really listen to and trust. The prosthesis is too much reality for her right now. The crutches are what she knows, and she’s sticking to them.’

‘Tough for a thirteen-year-old, when body-image issues are so huge at that age already.’

‘I know, but she’s so darned prickly and negative and ungrateful I want to shake her, sometimes.’ Benita gave a rueful shrug. ‘We rub each other up the wrong way, I’m afraid, she and I. I’m not as patient as I should be.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘I shouldn’t admit to it, should I, but you know how it is,’ Benita said. ‘Some you love, some you don’t, often without even knowing why.’

‘True,’ Miranda replied, watching Nick and Josh.

Benita was right. Again. When it came to love, you often didn’t know why.

‘I have to fight to hide it, to be honest,’ she was saying. ‘Her dad’s supposed to be coming later in the week.’

‘Yes, that’s in our notes. He’s a major donor to the rebuilt camp and medical centre.’

‘And very driven. As well as very rich! I won’t be surprised if something gets in the way of him making it. I don’t think Stella will be surprised either, and I really, really wish I could step in and fill the breach, but we just don’t get on, she and I. I get more glares from her than words. Hope she finds a friend or two this week. Someone she can talk to.’

‘Someone better than just the usual nice, you mean?’

Benita smiled ruefully. ‘That’s right.’

The passengers blocking the aisles took their seats one by one, and Miranda found her own group of patients towards the back of the plane. There were three empty seats left, all in a row. Just ahead of her, Josh was walking on his own, as his dad had promised, with Nick directly behind him.

‘There’s your seat, mate,’ he said to his son, the ‘mate’ part sounding a little forced and unnatural. ‘Right by the window.’ Josh climbed eagerly towards it, sneakers treading squarely in the middle of the two seats adjacent. ‘Oh, hell, Josh, don’t tread on the seat with those shoes!’

Too late. The deed was done.

Josh looked scared when he understood the reason for his dad’s disapproval, even though Nick was telegraphing only a second or two of mild anger. The little boy’s sneaker soles looked clean…sort of…but they had that deeply grooved tread that harboured every piece of grit and every grass clipping until just the wrong moment.

‘Hope your neighbour isn’t wearing a white silk dress,’ Miranda said to him, smiling. She wanted to diffuse the difficult moment between father and son. Nick could see the expression on his son’s face and didn’t like it, she could tell.

But Nick didn’t smile at her teasing comment. Once again, was she being too nice? ‘Actually, it looks to me as if my neighbour is going to be you.’

‘Lucky for you, then,’ she persisted. ‘I don’t even own a white silk dress.’

Why had she bothered? Once again, he didn’t smile back. She sat down beside him and felt his tightly coiled body like a piece of humming machinery just inches away.

Miranda was in demand for most of the flight.

The aisle seat was either a deliberate choice on her part or a lucky bonus, because she had to hop up and down every five minutes to answer the summons of a hand waved over someone’s head and the call of her name.

Somebody needed their in-flight snack to be delivered early. Someone else had forgotten to pack painkillers and had a headache. Did Miranda happen to have some on her?

She dealt with it all cheerfully, and Nick was torn between regret that they didn’t get the smallest opportunity for a proper conversation and relief because he didn’t know what on earth they would find to say, with so much past and so much distance in between.