CHAPTER THREE
THE ocean stretched forever beyond the arms of the bay. It was slate-blue and wrinkled. A layer of cloud rimmed the horizon, but the sun had risen above it and was pouring a path of tinsel light over the water. Long, lazy lines of swell were rolling in to crash onto the beach in a froth of sand patched white that looked like crazy paving until it slipped away.
To the south, the green, rock-fringed dome of Point Cartwright with its white observation tower stood guard over the mouth of the Mooloolah River.
To the north and much further away, the monolithic bulk of Mount Coolum stood out as well as Noosa Head, insubstantial in the distance. Closer to home Mudjimba Island lay in the bay like a beached whale complete with a tree or rock on its head to resemble a water spout. The whole area was known as the Sunshine Coast. It was an hour’s drive north of Brisbane and it competed with the Gold Coast as a holiday destination.
Maggie withdrew her gaze from the distance and studied the beach. She was on the ninth floor of an apartment block in Mooloolaba, just across the road from it, a lovely beach, long and curved and protected from the dominant south-easterly trade winds. The road itself was lined with Norfolk pines, some as tall as the floor she was on.
There weren’t many people on the beach although it was crisscrossed with footprints—the lull between the serious early-morning walkers and the beach frolickers.
It was an interesting spot, Mooloolaba. Its river was home to a trawling fleet and wonderful fresh seafood abounded. There were often huge container ships and tankers anchored off Point Cartwright awaiting clearance and pilots for their journey into Moreton Bay and Brisbane, services that originated in Mooloolaba together with an active Coastguard.
It was also a haven for many recreational mariners on their voyages north or south. Mooloolaba was the last stop before the Wide Bay bar, a treacherous waterway between the mainland and Fraser Island, or the first stop after it. Many a mariner had heaved a sigh of relief to be safely inside the Mooloolah River after a scary bar crossing and a sea-tossed trip south after it. If you were sailing north, it was like a last frontier.
Is that what I’m facing? Maggie wondered suddenly. A last frontier…
She sat down at the small table and contemplated her breakfast of fresh fruit and muesli, coffee and croissants. She’d been in the luxury apartment for ten days. It belonged to a friend of her mother’s and had no connection with the Trent name. Her mother had spent the last week with her before having to go to Sydney for a charity engagement she was unable to break.
Her father, thankfully, was overseas on business and she and her mother had agreed that he needn’t ever know about the episode in the shed.
She’d enjoyed the days with her mother—they’d window-shopped, sunbathed, swum, walked, been to the movies and read—but she was now bored and ready to go back to work although she had two and half weeks of leave left, well…
She ate some muesli, then pushed the bowl away unfinished and poured her coffee. To be honest, she didn’t know what she was ready for, but more of the same wasn’t it and at the heart of the matter lay one man—Jack McKinnon.
She’d heard nothing more from him although she’d arranged to have her mail checked and all her phone calls rerouted to her mobile.
I wonder what he would think, she mused several times, if he knew how much I’ve changed my stance on him? If he knew I can’t stop thinking about him, if he knew… come on, Maggie, be honest!… I seem to have fallen a little in love with him?
It was the strangest feeling, she reflected. While she’d been doing her ‘trapeze act’ she’d been a little nervous, but mostly fired with enthusiasm. She hadn’t been aware of him as a man, only as a partner she could more than rely on. Now, the close contact with him invaded her dreams and made her go hot and cold in her waking hours when she thought about it.
Not only that, she might have felt annoyed by him at times—here she always paused and looked a bit guilty—but his company had energized her. It must have or why else would she be feeling as flat as a tack? Why else would she have this feeling she was at a last frontier in her life with nowhere she wanted to go?