Fairway To Heaven

By Lily Malone

It's going to take more than summer loving to heal old wounds, but a remote beach, old friendships and a bit of sunshine might just spark a second chance at love.

When Jennifer Gates drives to Sea Breeze Golf Club to kick off date-night with her boyfriend, the last thing she expects is to find Golf Pro Jack giving one of his lady students a private—and very personal—lesson in bunker-play.

Lucky for Jenn, her best friend gives her the keys to the Culhane family's beach shack on the white-pepper shores of Western Australia's Geographe Bay. Jenn hopes a weekend on the coast with her young son will give her the space she needs to rebuild her confidence after Jack's betrayal.

But she's not the only person seeking sanctuary by the sea. Brayden Culhane is there too, and Jenn can't look at Brayden without remembering the tequila-flavoured kiss they shared on the shack steps years ago.

As long-buried feelings are rekindled, and a friendship is renewed, Jenn knows it is more than lazy summer days bringing her mojo back. Romantic sunsets, ice-cold beers and the odd round of golf can only go so far, because this time trusting Brayden with her heart won't be enough. Jenn has to learn to trust her body, too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Apr 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9780857992376

Lily Malone

Lily Malone might have been a painter, except her year-old son put a golf club through her canvas. So she wrote her first book, His Brand of Beautiful, instead. Lily has now written six full length rural romance stories and a novella all published by Harlequin Escape. Her debut trade paperback, The Vineyard In The Hills, was published by Harlequin MIRA in September 2016. Last Bridge Before Home is the third of three books set in the fictional Western Australian town of Chalk Hill, a town which, in Lily's imagination, is about halfway between Manjimup and Mount Barker on the Muirs Highway. Book One was Water Under the Bridge, published in February 2018, which is Jake and Ella's story; and Book Two, The Café by the Bridge, followed Taylor and Abe. When she isn't writing, Lily likes gardening, walking, wine, and walking in gardens (sometimes with wine). She also doesn't mind the odd game of cards and loves her regular Thursday Night hand with the Card Girls. She lives in the Margaret River region of Western Australia with her husband, and two handsome sons who take after their father. Lily is a member of Australian Rural Fiction and Australian Fiction Authors. She loves to hear from readers and you can find her on Facebook, and on Twitter: @lily_lilymalone. To contact Lily, email [e-mail] or visit www.lilymalone.blog

Book preview

Chapter 1

Jack Bannerman likes the way my butt fills a pair of skinny jeans. I wish he didn’t. There’s a denim seam stuck in vaginal purgatory and no matter which way I squirm, it doesn’t want to budge. I’m getting squeezed in places no woman should ever be squeezed.

If Jack says I don’t make an effort after today, I’ll…I’ll… I don’t know what I’ll do, but it won’t be pretty.

Spying a gap in the traffic, I gun my Corolla across the dual lanes. The car splutters, hops a bit, and shoots between the polished black gates of Sea Breeze Golf Club into the shade of a solemn line of sheoaks.

They’ve changed the layout since I was here last, but that was months ago. No. Longer. I haven’t hit a golf ball here since I was pregnant with Seb. Swinging a club around my stomach then was like swinging round a basketball.

There are speed bumps on the driveway now, humps big as whales. The members must have thought the bumps would stop hoons. They’re a conservative lot.

The Pro’s parking space — now Jack’s designated space since he started managing the shop and teaching — used to be under the spreading branches of a gnarled old oak. Now his Subaru WRX is in a different spot, parked nearer the Pro Shop, divided from the bitumen and the billiard-table lawn by a low white-painted post and rail fence. Afternoon sun glints off the WRX’s metallic blue paint.

All the office-bearers and the Pro have reserved places. Secretary. Treasurer. Captain. The only slot currently filled, other than Jack’s, is President. That’s why Jack chooses Thursdays to teach golf lessons, because the course is quiet. It’s late night shopping in Perth and most of the members are under instruction to hurry home so their wives or girlfriends can hit the malls.

The dashboard clock says five-thirty and a thrill rushes through me. Tonight is all planned. Champagne on ice, Jack’s favourite dinner in the oven, and Sebastian is at Emmy’s for a sleepover.

If Jack wants to, we might hit a few balls down the twelfth for old time’s sake. We used to do that a lot, before we had Seb. Although when I look at my borrowed shoes, I’m hardly dressed for golf.

I cruise past a SAAB, then a Mercedes, turn the corner and double back, pass a couple of four-wheel-drives, one with the personalised license plate screaming HOLE IN 1.

Aiming the Corolla at a spot under the oak, I come in a little too fast. The tyres bump the kerb and recoil. Does that count as hoon behaviour?

I clamber out into the scent of cut grass, hot bitumen, bore water from sprinklers splashing the greens, and as I shove the key in my pocket, take a subtle second to ease denim from the centre of my groin.

The Pro Shop nestles under the right-hand wing of the club house. Unlike the more expansive glass and brick building, it’s got a skillion roof and it’s only single storey. The main path continues straight, but I detour right, wobbling a little in Emmy’s killer heels as I circle a bed of bright red geraniums, orange pokers, and yellow daisies.

From the Pro Shop, I know Jack can see the carpark. Has he seen me? He could hear me — these heels would wake the dead.

I’m an imposter in these shoes, but it’s exciting. I haven’t had a buzz like this in… too long to think about. My step quickens and I glance toward the Pro Shop door, half expecting Jack to be there, all lean and gorgeous, ready with a smart comment and a sexy smile.

The sign on the front door is flipped to Closed.

Huh?

Shoving my sunglasses to the top of my head, I walk up to the Pro Shop door until my nose touches the glass. Nothing moves inside. I grab the door handle and push, then pull, and it doesn’t budge. Only then do I agree with what the sign already told me.

‘Pro Shop’s closed, Jennifer,’ I mutter, checking my reflection in the window. The jeans are half a size too tight — baby weight I haven’t yet worked off. Jack says he doesn’t mind a bit of meat on my bones, which is lucky. By my count, there’s a large steak each side of my hips.

Two or three strands of blonde hair get yanked out as I lift the sunglasses from my head and put them back on my face.

Sometimes when he isn’t busy, Jack will take a bucket of balls up on the driving range. He takes a radio, and if a customer comes there’s a button on the door that says press for the Pro.

I don’t want to press the button. Today, surprise is the key.

The course opens before me, green, fresh, undulating like sheets in a breeze. It makes a wet sponge beneath my feet and in five steps, cut grass glues to Emmy’s shoes.

Kicking them off, I hook a finger under the heels.

The crack of someone teeing-off the fifteenth makes me look that way, but it’s not Jack. Two older men, silver-haired and bent, tuck their drivers in their golf bags and trudge away, pushing buggies up the hill.

Jack isn’t on the practice range. He isn’t anywhere and he’s hard to miss. Jack is six-foot-four. He hits a golf ball further than I can sprint (without having a heart attack).

Maybe he’s helping a student hunt for balls in the bush. That happens. But I can’t hear any crunching of sticks or leaves, and there are no shouts of found it! from the trees.

Then, in the shadows draped across the twelfth green I see the golf bag — Jack’s bag — complete with blazing Nike tick. He’s dropped a glove or a cleaning rag on the grass at the bunker’s edge. It shines lemony against the grass.

I open my mouth to call out, but years of ingrained golf club etiquette stops me. So, veering from the practice range, I head diagonally for the bunker on the twelfth. There’s a visible line not far ahead marking the end of the sprinklers’ reach, and as I step from wet grass to dry, I glance up to get my bearings.

That’s when my tummy does this flip-splat. Like an omelette tossed wrong.

There are two bags on the green, not one. The second is a Durbridge. I can see a woollen cover on the three-wood, coloured the bright blue and gold of the West Coast Eagles football team. My team.

It’s my golf bag.

Those are my golf clubs.

Jack persuaded me to sell them to Marnie James, one of his students. She’s the club president’s daughter and he said it might buy him a few favours with Archibald James.

My feet slow.

If Jack is teaching Marnie how to play a bunker shot, why can’t I see their heads? Why can’t I see the glint of a swinging club? Where are the balls that should be popping up on to the green?

Another few steps I’ll be close enough to peer over the rim, but there’s an alarm bell in my head that’s telling me I won’t like what I see.

A woman’s giggle flutters out of the hole and I drop to my haunches on the grass.

That scrap of fabric I thought was a glove? It’s a pair of lacy knickers.

My hand snaps over my mouth so tight, I taste lipstick.

A second giggle is interrupted by an ecstatic whimper, and a woman’s voice says: says, ‘I bet Jennifer never — aaah that feels great — did this.’

‘Jenn didn’t like… getting sand… in her hair.’ Jack’s voice is thick with lust. The words spurt in rhythmic thrusts.

‘Maybe, she should have — oh fuck me harder, Jacky — done it like this.’

Jack moans, and my blood runs cold. That’s the sound he makes before he comes.

I can’t be here when that happens. Can’t hear it. Can’t.

So I run.

Fast as I can for the carpark in my bare feet, Emmy’s shoes banging my hip, sprinting over wet grass, then bitumen that’s been baked all day and stings my feet. The burn is nothing compared with the ragged hole that’s been punched through my chest.

The Corolla’s interior is warm. I’m already strapped in before I realise I’ve forgotten to get the keys from my pocket. I have to lift my backside, straighten my hips. Denim grates between my legs.

Finally I have the keys in my hand, but I’m shaking so hard now they won’t fit the ignition.

My heart hammers. In the stuffy silence of the car, my breathing is even louder.

Winding down the window, I take a huge gulp of air bright with sunshine and the sea.

I want my son. He’s the only thing pure enough to drive out the vision in my head.

I need to get to Emmy’s.

Concentrating hard on the picture of Seb’s blonde curls and sweet cheeks, I force myself to take deep breaths. A car accident now doesn’t help anyone.

When I twist the key in the ignition, the old car starts first time and I reverse out of my spot.

Rolling now, never coming back.

***

Jack and I live in his house on O’Brien Street in Nedlands, not far from Sea Breeze. It’s his grandmother’s old house. He inherited it in her will.

When I met Jack four years ago, this was the worst house on the best street. For a year after he asked me to live with him we were here most weekends, painting, gardening, working on the house. It’s not the best house on O’Brien Street, not yet, but it’s not the worst anymore.

The garden used to be a mess of ivy and agapanthus with a hedge of holly bushes across the front that blocked out the light. There were roses in here, lovely old fashioned bushes that his grandmother nurtured, but we never knew how special they were till Jack chainsawed the holly, and I hoed out the ivy. Light and air flooded in and the roses bloomed.

A neighbour stopped once when I was planting the new box hedge across the front fence. She said Old Mrs Bannerman had the best roses on the street, she said I wouldn’t believe my nose when they flowered.

It’s not roses I smell as my feet slap the cement steps. It’s the slow-cooked beef ragout in red wine I slaved over earlier — Jack’s favourite — wafting from the kitchen window.

Bastard.

Shoving the key in the lock, I step into the hall and stop like a mouse figuring its next move in a maze.

It doesn’t look like my house.

There are no grubby fingerprints or spills on the timber floors. No crumbs or crackers, cars or blocks. All the Thomas jigsaw pieces, and the trucks, are packed away.

I’ve vacuumed, mopped, tidied. Under the ragout, I smell eucalyptus oil from the polish I’ve rubbed over the staircase balustrading.

The place sparkles, all because I made an effort.

I pull the door shut behind me. It doesn’t quite slam.

In the kitchen, I turn off the oven and take out the ragout, leaving the pot to cool on the stove. Then I run up the stairs. We keep our luggage in the study and I get the largest suitcase, and my travel bag, then the portable cot we’ve never used. Leaving that at the top of the stairs, I take the other bags into Seb’s room.

Tigger watches me scoop pyjamas, T-shirts, shorts, tracksuits pants, socks and boots from the cupboards and shelves. I move fast.

The door to our bedroom is open. The bed is plump and crisp, all fresh sheets and fluffed pillows. The nightgown I bought specially in the post-Christmas sales last week — red with a lace row of black roses stitched across a slashing neckline — drapes my side of the quilt.

I trace the silk with my finger. It’s slippery. Sleek. I don’t even like red lingerie, but Jack does, and this scrap of expensive stupidity wasn’t about me.

A tear wants to spill, but I swipe it away. What is it Emmy says? ‘Don’t get sad, Jenn. Get even.’

Deliberately, I hold an image of Jack in my mind.

Jack in the bunker — with me.

He’s laughing, wind ruffling his brown hair as he tucks his T-shirt into his pants. I’m laughing too. My thighs are sticky with his sperm. I’ve got sand in my knickers that will take the next six holes to shake out.

Jack always said that bunker was ours.

When we’d tee off the top of the twelfth, he’d wink and say, ‘Ready for the fairway to heaven, babe?’

Now it feels more like the highway to hell.

Grabbing the nightgown, I stuff it in the drawer under the bed. Then I snap the button on the jeans and peel them from my legs, kicking the denim away. I jam the jeans into the space on top of the nightgown and shove the bedside drawer closed.

Two minutes later, I’ve pulled a favourite white T-shirt and a stretch-cotton dress over my head, and I’ve found my sandals. They are so worn, any purple that was once in them is now faded grey-mauve.

Three more minutes in the bedroom, one in the ensuite, and both bags are filled. I drag them downstairs. Go back up for the portacot and the box of nappies. In the kitchen I grab jars of Seb’s favourite baby food — Lamb Rogan Josh — and a packet of baby rice. Bottles. Bibs. Plastic spoons. Bowls. Plates. All of it goes in one of the green recycled shopping bags we keep under the sink.

Loaded up, the Corolla wallows in Jack’s driveway like a pregnant hippo on wheels.

I twist my key off my key-ring, ready to slide it under the door, but as I turn it in the lock, my resolve wavers.

Jack is the father of my son. He might not want me anymore, but he loves his little boy. If Jack ever took Seb without a word to me about where they were going — I’d go out of my mind.

We keep a notepad and pen on the side table in the hall and I take them through into the kitchen. Staring at the pristine white paper, I think about what I want to say. The words pile and tumble in my head, filthy as coal.

Part of me wants to lash out. Hurt him, like he’s hurt me.

Part of me says I owe him no explanation. We’re not married. He’s the one who cheated. I should just tell him we’re finished and I’ll see him in court.

I’m not much of a talker. I struggle to get words out right. But people take me seriously when I write. That’s what I do best.

Dear Jack

Congratulations on winning first prize in Cunt-of-the-Year.

Please tell Marnie from me, I hope she’s enjoying my clubs. They were your choice, not mine, and I always thought they felt a bit soft in the shaft.

I have to get away for a while. I need to think things through and I can’t do that here. Seb is with me. If there’s any emergency Emmy will know where to find me.

I will call you when I have things straight in my head.

J.

The paper slips from my fingers and slides across the kitchen table.

I anchor it under an African Violet and look around one last time at the sparkling kitchen, the sparkling house.

My gaze lingers on the casserole pot. It was a present from my parents when I finished my media degree. Jack doesn’t deserve his favourite dinner and he doesn’t deserve my favourite pot — which reminds me: there’s an ice-cold bottle of Yarra Burn bubbles in the fridge. Buggered if he’s getting that, either.

Chapter 2

There’s a breeze that cools the Perth coast in summer that locals call the Fremantle Doctor. It churns the fronds of the palm trees lining Emmy Culhane’s street as I park on the verge outside her two-bedroom Cottesloe cottage.

After the leafy streets of Nedlands, Cottesloe feels scorched. The lawn where I park is patchy in places, seared by salt winds, sun-baked a yellow-brown.

Sebby has his nose pressed to the screen door. Emmy’s behind him, her face ripe with curiosity and a hint of concern. She doesn’t open the door until she’s sure my car has stopped, so I have time to get out and adopt brace position before my son totters to me, shrouding me in the scent of shop-bought baby food and banana.

I hug him so tight he squirms. His cheeks wipe a sticky mix across my collarbone and it’s the sweetest stickiness in the world.

‘So what happened to date night?’ Emmy asks. Her gaze flicks to the bags, the portacot and the pram, all stuffed in the back of my car, and her eyes narrow. ‘That looks serious. What’s he done now?’

Emmy never liked Jack. She thinks he’s possessive and controlling. She says I’m a different person when Jack’s around. The feeling’s mutual. Jack calls Emmy Nancy Drew. Says she’s always sticking her nose where it isn’t wanted.

Later I’ll tell Em everything, but it’s all too raw right now.

‘Is it okay if I stay here tonight, Em?’

‘Of course, sweetie, you know that.’ Then she sees my feet. ‘Hold that thought, what happened to my shoes?’

I love how some things in this world never change, like Emmy’s love of shoes and shopping, and the softness of my son’s skin.

‘They’re in the car.’

Emmy catches my eye around Seb’s blonde curls. ‘I just need to know one thing. Are you okay?’

‘I’m working on being okay. I’ll get there. Can you take him?’

I hand Seb to Emmy so I can open the hatch and pull out the things I need for the night: the cot, Seb’s baby bag, my bag — then I follow Emmy’s swinging pony-tail into the house. This week that pony-tail is auburn.

Emmy’s house smells of banana muffins, possibly on the burned side of perfect. I need two trips to bump all my gear through her front door and wrestle it into the spare room.

The cottage looks different, and it takes me a few minutes to figure out why. Usually, she has knick-knacks and pretty things on her side tables and coffee table, hair and fashion magazines everywhere, incense sticks and fragrant oil burners, souvenirs from a million Saturday garage sales. All these have been packed away and her surfaces are surprisingly clear.

Then I get it. She’s Seb-proofed it.

‘We’ve been baking,’ she says, sitting Seb on the kitchen counter and playing This Little Piggie with his toes, making him giggle. ‘I know baking wasn’t on your list, but I improvised because his Lordship got bored with Peppa Pig, and I got bored losing Hungry Hippo.’

‘The list was just a suggestion, Em. It wasn’t set in stone.’

She quirks a dainty eyebrow at me, but says nothing. Emmy mocks my penchant for making lists, but she’s far more fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants than me. She’s a hairdresser by trade, something she wanted to do since we met in high school in Karratha, where both our fathers worked in the mines. She ran her own salon for a while in Subiaco. Now she has a mobile hairdressing service, dealing cuts, perms and colours to the Western Suburbs blue-rinse brigade.

‘According to the list we just had dinner. Next on our agenda is a bath,’ she announces. ‘Do you want to do the honours, or shall I?’

I look at my watch. It’s six-thirty. Jack should be getting home about now. I wonder what he’ll think of my note.

‘If you don’t mind doing the bath thing, Em, I’ll get this stuff unpacked.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Emmy nuzzles Seb’s cheek. ‘Come on gorgeous boy, come with Aunty Em.’

Emmy doesn’t have kids of her own, but her parents have foster-cared for families in need for years. She was the one who changed Seb’s very first nappy when I was still recovering from the emergency caesarean — he was breech — and Jack had left the hospital to celebrate Seb’s birth with his mates. Wet the baby’s head, he called it.

Seb’s head bobbles as they disappear towards the bathroom. Seconds later I hear water pounding the bathtub. I take another trip out to my car, lock it behind me this time, and return carrying the casserole pot and the bottle of bubbles. These go on the stove, and in the fridge.

In the bathroom, Emmy’s switched to Five Little Ducks. From all the splashing, I’d swear she was washing a baby elephant in there.

Next, I tackle the portable cot assembly.

The cot falls apart on the carpet of Emmy’s spare room as I pull it from the bindings, black plastic legs sticking everywhere, like a dead spider on its back. It takes forever before I get the thing standing up properly, and as I struggle to get the sides to slot in and click like they’re supposed to, I get even madder.

Finally as I clench two connecting pieces, squeezing at a button the instructions declare is there but I can’t feel, the bars jolt into place and it’s up.

I shove it a bit with my knee. When I’m convinced it’s not going to implode, I dig out Seb’s pyjamas, a nappy, his bottle and sleeping bag and bring them all out to the kitchen. In the bathroom, Emmy has switched to The Grand Old Duke Of York, mixed with pleas for Seb to ‘stand up honey, it’s time to pull the plug.’

In real estate terms Emmy’s house is what I’d call snug, but it’s so much more cheerful than the dark timber and cool halls of Jack’s place. The kitchen splashback is bright sky-blue tiles with a painted sunflower tile trim, and the walls are sunshine yellow. Even in the middle of winter, sitting in Emmy’s kitchen is like being at the beach.

Eventually Em emerges with my freshly-scrubbed son wrapped in a towel. He holds out his hands for me. I put on a fresh nappy, get him dressed, and he sits on Emmy’s carpet, playing with my keys.

Emmy gets two wine glasses from her shelf — they’re more like buckets — and a bottle of red.

‘I bought bubbles, Em. The bottle’s in the fridge.’

‘I don’t get the feeling we’re celebrating.’

She gets the cap off with a practiced twist. Red wine spills into the glass. Then she opens the lid of my casserole pot, sniffs the contents.

‘It’s beef ragout. I made it for Jack. You weren’t expecting to have my company for dinner, so I brought it over.’

‘You could have had Lamb Rogan Josh in a jar. You left me enough of the stuff.’ She slides the lid on and lights the burner under the stove.

I bury my nose in the glass and inhale the rich, ruby scent. Emmy does the same, sips, then puts her glass on the countertop with a clink, and fixes me with hazel eyes that want answers. ‘So what’s going on?’

Seb hurls the keys under Emmy’s couch and crawls after them, until he gets distracted by the plastic bag that is holding Emmy’s shoes.

‘Jenn?’ Emmy prompts.

A quick slug of wine gives me courage. ‘I found Jack screwing one of his golf students in a sand bunker at Sea Breeze today.’

‘In a sand bunker?’ Emmy screws up her nose. ‘Which one?’

Does it matter? ‘The one on the twelfth.’

She giggles. ‘I meant which student.’

‘Oh.’ Smiling, just for a second, it is funny. ‘Marnie James. She’s the club president’s daughter.’

Emmy takes a slow sip of her wine and her brow furrows. ‘When you say you found them screwing…are you sure? I mean. You know it was him?’

I nod, twirl the stem in my fingers.

‘You actually saw them?’ Emmy’s eyes grow wide and soft and she stretches her hand across the stone countertop to cover mine.

‘My set of clubs was next to Jack’s golf bag on the green. He asked me if Marnie could buy them a few months back.’ I hadn’t wanted to sell my clubs, but Jack had been so persistent. ‘He said I never played anymore and that we could use the cash. I didn’t need to see them, Em. I heard them. I know who was in there.’

Emmy hisses a breath through her teeth and sits hard on her barstool, making the cushion whoosh air. Through tight, hard lips, she says, ‘Brayden will rip Jack’s head off.’

My glass slips the