‘I was just as involved at the other weddings,’ she argued heatedly. ‘We still had time to be together.’
‘It was the only time I could get with you,’ he swiftly countered. ‘That’s not so anymore, is it? You’ll be coming home to me. And John.’
‘Don’t take me for granted, Fletcher,’ she warned, rising from the bar stool and moving swiftly to pick up the carry-cot. ‘Cook for yourself,’ she threw at him. ‘I’ll look after my son.’
‘You only want me there as window-dressing for your friends,’ he hurled after her. ‘Be damned if I’ll serve that superficial function! I have more productive things to do.’
She ignored him, striding on to the room they had fitted out as a nursery and shutting him out of it as fast as she could. A refrigerator and microwave oven had been installed to store and warm up bottles of formula for John. She’d had trouble with breast-feeding, generating too much milk and getting cracked nipples from pumping some of it out so the fast flow wouldn’t choke John. The decision to bottle-feed had removed a lot of stress, and her baby son’s contentment with the substitute lessened Tammy’s sense of failure in not being able to cope with what nature had intended. She could see to John’s needs tonight right here, without having to face Fletcher again.
She lifted him out of the carry-cot and sat in the rocker, needing the soothing rhythm and the comfort of cuddling her baby. Every nerve in her body was jangling. Her mind kept fretting over Fletcher’s window-dressing accusation. Was it a pride thing, wanting him at the wedding? Her heart kept insisting it was more than that. People who loved each other wanted to share happy occasions, have mutual memories of them.
He didn’t love her.
She’d known it all along, but tonight it hurt more than it usually did, and glossing it over with the positive aspects of their marriage didn’t ease the hurt. Tears welled up and trickled down her cheeks. The silent weeping went on for a long time.
When she finally emerged from the nursery, having settled John for the night, Fletcher had obviously gone to his computer room and shut the door on her. She went to bed and woke the next morning to find him beside her but still deeply asleep. It was hours later before he made contact with her, strolling out to the balcony where she was soaking up the early-morning sunshine with John.
‘Hi! Late night for me,’ he said in excuse for sleeping in so long.
She nodded. Her eyes were shielded by large wrap-around sunglasses, not so much to protect them from the bright light but to hide her feelings from him. He sat on the lounger beside her, nursing a mug of coffee in his hands, looking totally relaxed and cheerful.
‘I’ve persuaded Hans to come out to Australia,’ he announced.
The German super-brain.
‘Guy is coming, too.’
The American colleague.
‘Max will come up to Sydney from Canberra once they’re here.’
The four of them who had created the global transport network system.
‘I’ve been playing with a new concept and we’re going to put our heads together and thrash it through.’
The more productive things he had to do.
‘Then I think we should start looking for a nanny,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘We don’t need a nanny. You’ll be here while I’m in conference with them.’
‘I told you last night, Fletcher. Don’t take me for granted. My maternity leave is almost up. I intend to ask for three days a week at the hospital.’
His mouth thinned into a vexed line. Frustration flared in his eyes.
‘I have as much right to do the work I love as you have to do the work you love,’ she calmly pointed out.
He couldn’t manoeuvre around that argument. He’d lose if he tried and he knew it. For the sake of holding their marriage together it was truce time. But it was an uneasy truce, more like a cold war between them that Tammy was glad to escape from on the day of Jennifer’s wedding.
‘Enjoy yourself,’ Fletcher tossed at her as she left.
‘I will,’ she replied, determined to do so without him.
At least she had been able to reasonably excuse his absence to Jennifer by explaining about the think-tank Fletcher had arranged with his colleagues, though she knew none of the gang really swallowed the excuse. She’d squirmed inside at the way they’d rallied around her, though she was grateful that the issue was quickly brushed aside.
Jennifer had hugged her in sympathetic support, brightly insisting, ‘You’ll have a better time without him if his mind is so occupied with other stuff, Tam.’
‘Paul says Max is the same,’ Kirsty put in, rolling her eyes. ‘Off on another planet.’
Lucy struck a positive note. ‘It’s good that he’ll be minding John, leaving you free for the whole wedding.’
‘How about the two of us stay overnight at your old studio apartment, Tam,’ Hannah suggested. ‘We can hash over the wedding together, have us some girl fun.’
Tammy happily agreed to this arrangement. Her apartment had remained empty since she’d moved in with Fletcher, waiting for her like a security blanket so there was always somewhere for her to go if the partnership contract turned bad. Although she wasn’t at the point of ending it, she didn’t want to go home to Fletcher straight after the wedding as he had arrogantly assumed she would. The next day would be soon enough.
Celine was the only one who refused to gloss over the situation. ‘He’s a pig. He needs a smack in the face to snap him out of himself, and if I can think of a way to do it, I’ll do it.’
But any anger towards Fletcher was forgotten in the excitement of the big day. In keeping with Jennifer’s dream to have a fairytale wedding, she’d chosen to hold it in a castle that had been built by an eccentric millionaire over a century ago and was now an outrageously expensive function centre, not that the cost mattered because Adam was insisting on paying for it. He’d finished his second book on schedule and it was already being touted as more thrilling than his first. The castle, he’d declared, would be an interesting setting for his next book, which made everything tax deductible.
It stood majestically in a commanding position, overlooking Sydney Harbour from the old-established suburb of Hunters Hill, and the dressing for the wedding was very formal—the men in dark grey pin-striped tails, the women in splendid pastel ballgowns with big skirts, tight bodices, low scooped necklines, and off the shoulder little sleeves.