The Waitress

Dodgers and Tim Tams

SHE may have done it before, but travelling halfway around the world from summer in Australia to winter in the UK was still a shock to the system, if not a total and utter culture shock.

Shorts, T-shirts and sunscreen one day and so many clothes that she looked like the abominable snowman the next. It was always a headspin, no matter how often she travelled and what time of year it was. She didn't know how Tom did it so often. It just seemed insane that yesterday she was having a small farewell dinner with the boys and the latest Blue Wave crew and today (or is that still yesterday) she was on the tube heading out of London to visit her aunt.

It was weird being in London, knowing Tom was there and yet having absolutely no contact with him other than their usual contact – text. Same day, different country same way of communicating. It was kind of disappointing though she knew why and she agreed, suggested it in the first place.

Tom was a man under siege and as much as she wanted to make that better for him, hug him, watch movies late into the night, it would cause him more stress than good. He was already a human headline without the added bonus of a leggy blonde with Taylor in her name. No, the press wouldn't have a field day with that – not much they bloody wouldn't.

So she'd backed off. Told him her aunt was coming in to get her when she had arrived at 10 am. But she'd come in earlier, hopped the train and headed straight across London and out the other side before Tom knew she was even in the country. Two and half hours later, Morag had turned up in her battered old Landrover at the station and now here she was standing in her aunt's front room ringing said, man. Why did she lie? It wasn't really a lie it was more a squeezing of the truth. She didn't trust herself to be in the same city and not suddenly turn up on his doorstep. But she'd made a promise. And so she'd done her best to keep it. If it meant she had to tell a little white lie – then so be it.

Morag's house was old – ancient by Australian standards, though in truth it was probably built about 300-400 years ago but since, when it came to white settlement at least, her country was yet to hit the 250 mark this was older than anything either of them could have at home.

The door frames were so much smaller than she was used to and it was not hard to imagine Tom having to duck to navigate his way into any room in the rambling four-bedroom cottage that her aunt had long called home.

It was hard to be in the UK and not think about Tom, not want to see him. But she'd try for a few more days. He was coming to her at the weekend. To Morag's on the way to his mother's for Christmas. Actually, Diana Hiddleston was meeting him here first. They'd been talking for so long, she felt like she knew the older woman and so she was getting a lift with a friend from the Coast to Morag's and then heading back with her son, just to meet her. Sure, they'd spend some time over Christmas together but that would be the whole family, overwhelming and noisy according to Diana and she'd wanted to meet the Taylor girls before she got so busy they couldn't actually get time to get to know each other. Though it was really only Mells she was meeting, she and Morag had met already – she talked to both – they weren't far from each other – so it had seemed natural to swap their phone numbers. And they'd hit it off. And had, in the past year, met for lunch a couple of times.

Mells didn't know how she felt about that.

Weird.

Yeah weird.

Tom's mother and her aunt were forging a friendship – on the other side of the world, while she and Tom were? Were what?

Yeah weird.

Tom's family and her own were becoming awfully entwined. But he lived here and she lived south, so far south the water ran the other way, so far south you lost a day getting there. And he was messed up from all the shit that went down last year and she was messed up from a lifetime of crap.