Broken by Ilsa Evans Read Free Book Online

Mattie.’
    â€˜Sorry.’
    â€˜So when you say you want me to stay – ’ Jake picked up his glass and took a sip – ‘do you mean just for another drink, or do you mean . . . longer?’
    â€˜I mean longer,’ replied Mattie without hesitation. And it was nice toknow something for certain when everything else was confusion. She didn’t know where she was going or even what she wanted if she got there, but she did know that she wanted Jake to stay tonight. To finish off the champagne and then go to bed and hold her tight. Make love. Fill her with security, and leave no room for doubts. Injecting something familiar into a life that was suddenly anything but.
    Â 
    T hey had already put a deposit on their own home before the wedding, and two months afterwards were able to move into a brand new clinker brick in Mont Gully, a relatively new suburb in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs nestled between Wantirna and Boronia. Mattie’s preference had been for nearby Box Hill, where she had grown up, which boasted numerous beautiful old-world Californian bungalows with deep verandahs and stained-glass windows. But, as Jake pointed out, for the same price as one of those they were able, with the help of their bank, to buy a twenty-five square, four bedroom, two bathroom house on a new estate. A house that nobody had lived in before them, a house that they could decorate to their own taste, with a garden they could start from scratch
.
    They did the long workday commute to the city for the first year. Driving in together, parking in the basement car-park beneath Jake’s accountancy firm, and Mattie catching a tram up to her secretarial job in the Defence Department near Spencer Street. Then Jake joined a firm in Ringwood and for a while Mattie caught the train into town by herself. That was when they started planning for a baby
.
    And by then the brand-new, character-less house had been transformed into a fine residence. A beautifully manicured garden nestled all the way around the brickwork, edging the cobble-stoned driveway and forming a mounded figure of eight around the wrought iron letterbox. Inside, tasteful furnishings were enhanced, here and there, with a nice antique piece, and gold-framed prints complemented the colours of the walls and curtains and carefully chosen knick-knacks. While wall-to-wall thick cream carpet muffled sound and aided the illusion that, when that front door closed, they were all alone
.

FOUR
    M onday morning they all slept in, a circumstance made worse by unfamiliar surroundings. School clothes had to be found, bags packed, lunches made. Nevertheless Mattie felt warmed by the prior evening, and fuelled by a sense of certainty that everything was going to fall into place. The twelve months of separation would be spent without losing Jake, and the distance it created would heal rather than destroy And he seemed to feel the same way, enveloping her in a snug embrace the moment she opened her eyes so that she woke into the warmth of security and optimism.
    Jake departed first, leaving behind two children made even more confused by his presence. Mattie tried to explain as they sat down for a quick breakfast of orange juice and cereal, but the incomprehension remained. And they avoided her gaze, instead concentrating fiercely on drowning cornflakes by holding them under with their spoons. Then all explanations had to be put on hold as they piled into the car for a dash to school before the 9 am bell.
    Of course, children being children, what on any other morning was a fairly straightforward exercise became, that morning, a major undertaking. First it was Max, who clutched at his belly and mumbled about stomach cramps and possible appendicitis. Then, while Mattie was dealing with this, Courtney, who had exited the car quite happily, paused by the school gates to watch the car suspiciously. When her brother still hadn’t emerged after a few minutes, she came running