‘I hope you’re coming back,’ said Kevin. ‘We haven’t had a cook since you’ve been gone.’

‘Who’s been doing the cooking?’ she asked.

‘Hal, usually, but we’re taking it in turns while he’s away.’

‘He’s away?’ Meredith stared at the phone in her hand. How could he not be there? Hal was always there. ‘Where is he?’

‘In Sydney.’

Sydney? It was the last thing Meredith had expected. In all the possible scenarios she had played out in her head, Hal being in Sydney simply hadn’t occurred to her.

‘He’s gone to see his sister and the kids-hold on.’ There was a murmured consultation in the background, then he obviously turned back to the phone. ‘Ted says he’s due back tomorrow. Do you want one of the guys here to come and fetch you this afternoon?’ he asked hopefully.

‘No, thanks, Kevin,’ said Meredith slowly. ‘I think I’ll wait until tomorrow and see Hal here.’

Less embarrassing then if Hal said no to her proposition, she reasoned. Less awkward to catch the next plane back to Darwin and let her brain tell her heart I told you so.

But another twenty four hours to wonder if she was mad. What if he had just been saying that he loved her? What if he had met someone else? What if he was horrified to see her? What if…what if…?

Meredith paced restlessly around Whyman’s Creek. It felt different this time, she thought, remembering how dismissive she had been of the little town. OK, it was no buzzing metropolis, but she liked the camaraderie in the shop, and she was happy to sit on the pub’s veranda and watch the light and listen to the crows and think about Hal.

Bill was disappointed when she asked him if he would drive her out to the airport in time to meet the plane from Sydney the next day. His face fell. ‘You’re not going already?’

‘One way or another,’ she told him. She would be going somewhere, she just didn’t know where yet.

Hal’s little plane was parked where she had last seen it and Meredith waited for the Sydney flight to arrive in the shade of its wing. Sitting on her case, she was sick and shaky with nerves, torn between the longing to see Hal again and terror in case the greatest risk she had ever taken turned out to be the greatest mistake she had ever made.

With each minute that crawled past, the knot of anxiety inside her tightened and by the time the plane appeared Meredith had lost her nerve completely.

But she couldn’t go back now. She had already jumped. It was too late to change her mind now.

She saw Hal as soon as he ducked out of the cabin and came down the steps and her heart, which had been thumping and thudding deafeningly ever since the plane had touched down, seemed to stop altogether. He only had hand luggage, so merely lifted a hand in greeting to the official waiting by the terminal and headed straight for his plane.

For her.

Slowly, Meredith stood up, ducking underneath the wing so that he would see her. When he did, he stopped dead, just like her heart had done.

‘Hi,’ she said in a high, cracked voice.

Hal took a breath and looked deliberately away from her, across the tarmac to the heat haze on the horizon, and then back. She was still there.

‘Meredith…’ he said, coming closer. He put down his case when they were face to face, his eyes never leaving her face, devouring her with his eyes. ‘Meredith,’ he said again, unable to find the words for the turmoil of emotion that he felt at the sight of her. ‘It’s you.’

‘Yes.’ She couldn’t tear her gaze from his. It was as if they were having two conversations, and the one with their eyes was the only one that made sense.

Hal half shook his head, as if still not entirely convinced that he wasn’t imagining things. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I…um…I was hoping you’d give me a job,’ she said. ‘I understand you need a cook. Kevin sounds quite fed up.’

‘You want to come back to Wirrindago?’ Hal couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

At last a question that she could answer with complete certainty. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s what I want.’

‘Meredith…are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ she said again, and drew a deep breath. ‘You told me once that I was afraid, Hal. You said I was afraid to reach out for what I wanted, but I’m reaching out now.’

Her eyes never left his. ‘I know what I want,’ she said. ‘I want to be with you. I know you don’t do forever, and I’m not asking for any commitment. I just need to be near you, for as long as I can.’

‘But Meredith…’ Hal felt uncharacteristically helpless. ‘You can’t give up your life in London.’

‘I can,’ she said. ‘I have given it up.’

He was startled out of his numb sense of disbelief. ‘You’ve done what?’

‘I’ve given up that life. I’ve put my house on the market and I’ve applied to emigrate. I know you don’t want to get married, Hal, and I can’t be leaving every time my visa runs out.’

‘But your friends…your career…’ he said incredulously. Had she really done that? His sensible, practical Meredith?

‘I’ve brought my career with me,’ she said. It was the only safety net she had. ‘I can work as well at Wirrindago as anywhere else. My friends can come and see me. And yes,’ she said, ‘maybe there will be times when I’ll get bored. Maybe there will be times when I think I’d like to go and see a film or a concert or eat in a restaurant with white tablecloths and food I haven’t cooked myself, but there’s no reason why I can’t take a trip to the city now and then, is there?’

‘No,’ Hal agreed.

‘Well, then.’

A smile was dawning in Hal’s eyes, warming them, spreading slowly over his face. He knew this Meredith, hiding her nervousness beneath that brisk veneer. She didn’t fool him, though.

They still hadn’t touched. ‘And you’ve done all this without knowing what I would say?’ he asked, and she nodded defiantly.

‘I jumped. You were the one who taught me that I could,’ she reminded him.

Hal took a step closer. ‘This is a bigger risk than jumping off a rock.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know it isn’t sensible, but I don’t want to be sensible any more, Hal. I’ve changed,’ she told him with a tremulous smile. ‘I’m a risk taker now!’

‘And you’ll take a risk on me?’

The dark blue eyes steadied. ‘On loving you, yes.’

‘Even knowing that I’ve changed too?’

A chill ran through Meredith and she bit her lip. Was this the moment she had dreaded? Was Hal trying to tell her that he didn’t love her the way he’d said he did before? Perhaps she had taken too much for granted. Perhaps she had jumped too far.

Swallowing, she put up her chin and made herself smile. ‘If you’ve changed, you can say no and I’ll go,’ she said, knowing that he must be able to hear the tremor in her voice.

‘Oh, no,’ said Hal, and the smile reached his mouth as he pulled her into his arms at last. He didn’t kiss her at first; he just held her tightly against him and felt her arms go round him, and they stood, hardly daring to believe that the waiting was over and they were holding each other again.

‘I’m not going to say no,’ he said against her hair. ‘I’m not letting you leave me again. You’re not the only one who’s changed, Meredith. I’m going to be the sensible one from now on, and the sensible thing to do when you find the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with is to hold on to her, isn’t it?’

Tipping her face up to his, he smiled down into her blue, beautiful eyes. ‘In fact, the really sensible thing to do is to marry her.’

Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘You don’t want to get married!’

‘I do now,’ said Hal. ‘I used to think that marriage had to be the marriage my parents had. But then I started to think it didn’t have to be like that. It could be being with you every day, holding you every night and waking up with you every morning. And I realised that was the marriage I wanted,’ he told her. ‘I wanted a marriage where you would always be there.’

His hands came up to cup her face and with one thumb he tenderly traced the line of her mouth. ‘I missed you, Meredith,’ he said, his voice deep and low. ‘After you’d gone, I realised what a fool I’d been. The homestead was echoing without you. I couldn’t go anywhere without expecting to see you, and then I’d remember you weren’t there and I’d feel…bereft. I had a lot to say about how afraid you were, didn’t I, but I was the one that was afraid. I was too afraid of losing you to let myself love you properly.’

They had both been afraid, thought Meredith. Her heart was so full she could hardly speak. ‘Hal…’ she said lovingly. She pulled him closer, her hands tightening possessively around him, giddy with relief that he was warm and solid and there. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

‘I’m not now,’ said Hal. ‘Not now you’re here.’

He kissed her then, and they clung together, craving the reassurance of touch and taste. They couldn’t hold each other close enough, kiss each other long enough, deeply enough, sweetly enough, and as the last shreds of uncertainty dissolved in the intoxicating rush, Meredith was filled with a deep gladness, fiercer than happiness, that burned up from the very core of her and told her that this time she had made the right decision and she was exactly where she was meant to be-in Hal’s arms.

They smiled at each other when they broke apart at last, and Meredith rested her face into his throat with a sigh of sheer bliss. ‘What made you change your mind?’ she asked as his arms closed around her.

Hal kissed her hair. ‘Missing you,’ he replied. ‘I kept going round in circles. I’d let myself imagine living at Wirrindago with you, having a family, you always being there…and then I thought about how it would feel if you left me the way my mother left and I knew I couldn’t endure it, but I couldn’t endure life without you either. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to do something. That’s why I went to Sydney.’

‘To see Lydia?’

‘No, to see my mother.’

Startled, Meredith pulled back to look into his face. ‘Your mother…?’ Her eyes darkened with concern. ‘That must have been difficult for you.’ For both of them, she thought.

‘It wasn’t the easiest afternoon of my life,’ Hal admitted. ‘I kept wishing that you were there with me, but maybe it was something I had to do on my own. I should have done it before. When Lydia heard that I’d let you go back to London, she told me that I’d used our mother to justify my own fears for too long, and she was right.’

‘What was it like, seeing your mother again after so long?’ asked Meredith curiously.

‘It was like meeting a stranger,’ he told her. ‘I thought I would be bitter and angry, but when I looked at her I just saw a woman who had made a mistake. She married someone she shouldn’t have done and when she realised that she couldn’t deal with it any longer, she left in the only way she could. Jack wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t gone, but it wasn’t her fault. Or it was just as much my father’s fault for not realising how unhappy he was,’ he amended.

‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault,’ said Meredith, resting her head back against his shoulder. ‘Not your mother’s, not your father’s, not yours. It was something terrible that happened.’

Hal nodded, marvelling at how much better he felt just holding her in his arms. ‘Anyway, I’ve realised that my mother is just one woman who has lived her life her own way, and that not all women are going to be like her. Lydia’s not like her, you’re not like her. You’re Meredith, and I believe in you because of the person you are, and because I love you, and because I know that, whatever else might happen, you won’t suddenly turn into my mother.’

Meredith tilted her face so that she could kiss the corner of his mouth with a smile. ‘I’m glad.’

‘Not as glad as I am to see you,’ said Hal, his voice lightening. ‘You’ve just saved me a lot of money.’

‘I have?’

Not wanting to let her go, Hal kept one arm firmly around her and pulled a ticket out of his shirt pocket awkwardly with his free hand. ‘I bought this in Sydney,’ he said, ‘but I should be able to get a refund now.’

Meredith opened it. ‘It’s to London!’ She lifted her eyes to his and her smile was dazzling. ‘You were going to come and get me?’

‘I was going to try and persuade you to come back. I didn’t know if you’d be with Richard or not, but I knew that I had to try, I had to tell you how much I needed you, and that I was prepared to take a chance on the future if you were. Of course, that was before I knew how reckless you were,’ he teased. ‘I think I need a rather more sensible wife!’

Meredith smiled as she tucked the ticket back into his pocket. ‘I expect I can still manage to be quite sensible about the little things,’ she said. ‘We just need to be brave about the things that matter, like trusting each other and loving each other,’ she added with a soft kiss. ‘Especially loving each other.’