Emotional Rollercoaster

Chapter 7 - Questions

Saturday morning. Stacey was sitting outside on the balcony holding a cup of coffee in between both hands. It was cool, but like the whole winter had been so far, there wasn't a cloud in the clear blue sky.
'Hello gorgeous,' said Lee, going outside to join her. He'd just got out of bed, was bare-chested and wearing only a pair of union-jack boxer shorts. He bent down and kissed her on the top of her head before stretching, and sitting down on the seat beside her. He put his feet up on the table as he yawned, running his fingers through his hair.
'Aren't you cold?' Stacey asked with a grin, admiring his semi nakedness.
Lee considered this question before answering, 'not really. It's fresh, but not cold.'
'That'll waken you up. Do you want a coffee?'
'No, not just now, thanks.'

'How was your night?' Stacey then asked, knowing it would've been a big one with the old gang rallied together.

Lee nodded, feeling the stubble on his chin. 'Yeah, it was good. We had a good laugh. I haven't seen some of those lads in over a year.'

'And Tyler, he got along with them?'

'Yup, he's as funny as.'

Stacey smiled. She just loved looking at him sitting there like that. 'So where did you end up?' she asked, thinking it must have been late since she hadn't heard him coming in.

'Nowhere, we stayed at the Britannia Bar to the death. How was your night?'

Stacey threw him a look, 'probably not the best.'

'That's a shame. What happened?' Stacey didn't know where to begin or how to explain what they'd seen last night, let alone what they suspected was going on between Roxy and Martyn without any concrete proof. After all, no one knew exactly what they'd been doing in that apartment across from the Tipsy Trout, and letting out an uncomfortable sigh, she said, 'well, the first thing was, when Katie and I were on our way up to Randwick, we ran into Liam and Claire.'
Lee closed his eyes with a shake of his head. 'Oh no. What she said, or done now?'

'No, nothing,' she said, finding herself actually defending Claire. 'She was alright, funnily enough. She was going in to babysit Tyler's son as his wife had had a last-minute call to meet an old friend for a couple of hours at Bondi Junction ... and while I think of it, Claire looked really different with her new look.' Lee had already mentioned to Stacey the last time he'd dropped Liam home, she'd had a makeover, but had chosen not to compliment her, knowing a compliment from him could be processed in Claire's mind as meaning so much more, and he wasn't prepared to go down that path, she'd been hard enough to shake off in those early days, and however much she professed to hate him now, he could still see the hurt and bitterness in her eyes. He had to be cruel to be kind, and had since learnt to keep her at a very long arm's length.

'I actually told her how good she looks with her new hair-do and that,' Stacey continued to say, 'and she seemed quite accepting of the compliment. I'd half expected her to spit something vile at me, not caring in the least what I thought – but no, she seemed to have a completely different attitude. I don't know if it was because she had Liam with her, but I doubt it, cos that's never stopped her in the past. Anyway, long story short, Katie had no idea as to who Tyler or Roxy were, only what she'd heard you and Bob talking about, and realised whilst talking to Claire, that Roxy was the girl Claire had been having coffee with that morning at the café by the surf club, and that she was Tyler's wife. Anyway,' she then went on to say, not feeling overly comfortable gossiping. 'Once we got to the Tipsy Trout, she told me that she'd seen Roxy last Saturday going into the apartments above the shops in Belmore Road. She and Bob were in the gym opposite. At that stage, she still had no idea as to who she was, apart from the girl having coffee with Claire that morning, and she said when she saw Roxy leaving about twenty minutes later, Martyn came out of the building only moments after.' She stopped to see if Lee was following her line of thought, before realising he'd have no clue as to where this conversation was leading, and carried on. 'Apparently, when Katie mentioned it to Bob, he reckoned that Martyn would have been probably showing her a flat up there, and it wasn't until later when they realised that she was Tyler's wife, and that they lived in a luxury apartment here in Coogee, they wondered why she'd be viewing a flat there? Anyway, it was while she was telling me this that we saw Roxy getting off a bus out the front of the Tipsy Trout, and went over to that building again and got buzzed in, and we thought how come she was here when she was supposed to be meeting a friend in Bondi Junction, so we sat and watched and waited, since we were going to be there for a few hours, and she came out, two hours later – the same time Claire was babysitting her son for, and like the Saturday before, just after she left, Martyn left.'