Page 2 of The Beach Cottage
Maybe she shouldn’t have left. Instead, she could’ve stayed and listened to the girl’s explanation. It might have been a joke, but she didn’t wait around to find out. Perhaps it was nothing, or maybe she’d misheard. No, she’d definitely heard her say the words, “I’m your daughter.” And the similarities between her and Aidan were difficult to ignore.
This was Aidan Whitlock she was talking about. Aidan, who’d never had children. At least, that’s what he’d told her and everyone else. His wife had died of cancer five years earlier. They’d been happy, he’d said. She vaguely recalled him mentioning that there had been ups and downs in their relationship, but any married couple could say the same thing.
She’d left Evie’s place at first light and headed home. Aidan had left the key beneath her door mat and she found the party supplies neatly stowed in her kitchen, the dishes and glasses washed, and everything in its place. At least Aidan was a neat freak even if he did cheat on his wife. That was something, she supposed with a half-hearted smile.
If she didn’t get out of the cottage, she’d go crazy thinking about it. Perhaps Aidan needed time to process what’d happened. She could give him that. It wasn’t as though they’d been dating for very long. They were both adults—both had a past. No doubt he had some kind of explanation for what had occurred the previous evening. And there was no point in her wasting valuable energy pacing a path into her newly polished floorboards over it.
She showered quickly and dressed in a floral cotton frock with a matching belt. Breakfast was a bowl of homemade muesli and oat milk. She’d decided to go off dairy for a while to see if it would help with the constant congestion she’d had since she’d returned to the tropics. She’d forgotten how many allergies she could experience when living back in humidity and with thousands of blooming plants and trees around her every day of the week.
The news stories she flicked through on her iPad while eating did little to distract her. There was so much going on in the world, it was likely to give her indigestion if she took it all in. So instead, she turned off the iPad and made herself a coffee with her new coffee maker. Aidan had bought it for her as a housewarming gift for the cottage, and as the dark liquid poured into her enormous blue mug with World’s Greatest Mum written on the side, she couldn’t help thinking about how kind he’d been to do it.
Her ex-husband, Preston, had never bothered to buy her an espresso machine. In fact, he’d called the idea of ordering one wasteful because he didn’t enjoy drinking coffee. But Aidan had purchased one without even asking her about it first and set it up in the cottage for her to enjoy. There were so many differences between him and Preston that she hardly knew where to start — but thoughtfulness was certainly one of the key distinctions.
After breakfast, she stepped outside and surveyed the cottage, her hands pressed to her hips. It was perfect. An idyllic beach cottage. She’d hired a contractor to renovate it when she moved to the island a year earlier after her husband left her for another woman. Coral Island was her childhood home. She’d spent so many years in the city that it took her a while to adjust to the idea of moving back here. But now that she’d established a life for herself on the island, she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, and wondered why it’d taken so long for her to return.
The cottage was painted white with blue accents. It was nestled among spindly bushes, sea grasses and pandanus trees behind the dunes that lined a private cove with white sand, azure waters shushing gently to shore and black rocky outcroppings marking either end. It’d been her home after she was born, up until her parents built a much larger house for their growing family on the headland above. Then it had fallen into disrepair after her mother died.
Dad didn’t have the heart to rent it out to strangers since it’d been one of her mother’s favourite haunts. But now it was Bea’s home and she couldn’t be happier with how the renovation had worked out — there was a modern kitchen and two bathrooms, as well as fresh paint and a large, sturdy verandah that looked out over the beach.
She spun around and strode forwards through the sand. She often took a walk along the beach in the mornings, as it gave her a chance to think about the day ahead and clear her thoughts. The morning had already heated up, and she was bathed in a light film of sweat when she came puffing back up the beach to the cottage half an hour later. Aidan’s truck was there, parked beside the cottage. She hadn’t locked up before she left, so she washed her feet at the tap on the side of the cottage then went right inside to find Aidan sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of coffee.
He smiled up at her, half happy to see her, half hesitant. She understood the sentiment — she wasn’t exactly sure how to broach this subject with him herself.
“Hi,” she said.
He stood to greet her, kissing her forehead awkwardly.
She pushed away from him and filled a glass with water from the tap, downing it in two long gulps.
“I thought you might be walking.”
“You know me well.”
He nodded. “I thought we should talk about last night.”
“Good idea.” She sat opposite him at the table.
“It seems I have a daughter.”
Beatrice arched an eyebrow but didn’t speak.
He offered her a wan smile. “I’m sure you gathered that much.”
“I thought maybe she was a fan at first…”
“Not a fan. It turns out that an old relationship resulted in a pregnancy I knew nothing about.”
“But weren’t you married?” She asked the question as gently as she could. She didn’t want to make any kind of judgement about his relationship. They’d barely spoken about his marriage until this point. After all, his wife had died, and he’d grieved her a long time. It wasn’t exactly a topic Bea felt comfortable raising in casual conversation.
He rubbed his chin. “Yes, I was married. But we were separated. It was long before she got sick, and we tried to work things out. But she told me it was over, that she couldn’t keep going the way it was, with me so focused on my career. She felt lost, she was lonely, she wanted to go home to live with her parents. We fought a lot. It was a difficult time for me, but she moved out and I thought my marriage was over. I really believed that.”
Bea inhaled a slow breath. “I knew you’d never have cheated on your wife that way.”
“Thank you,” he replied, relief written across his face. “I don’t want there to be any confusion because of how your husband treated you. But the fact is, I did cheat. We weren’t divorced, but I thought we were on our way towards divorce. The affair showed me how much I loved my wife — I missed her, I wanted to work things out. So, I broke off the affair with Kelly and went to see my wife, begging her to try again. And we did. The rest is history.”
“And Kelly?”
“I never heard from her after that. She told me she was moving back to Adelaide to be with her family, and that was the last time we spoke.”
