And she’d waited. She’d waited for Joanna to call her, or show up at her door, or something. She hadn’t been able to think about anything else. She’d missed most of the conversation at dinner, been too distracted to even think about fighting with Eden and lain awake until the early hours every night playing out every scenario in her head, working out what she’d say, what she’d do if she opened her door and found Joanna standing there, or bumped into her in the Beach Bookstore. In the end it had all been wasted because Joanna didn’t make contact. She didn’t appear in town. She was invisible. There was nothing. Not even a handwritten note pushed into her mailbox.

Joanna didn’t want to talk to Mel and that hurt more than she could have imagined.

It felt as if Joanna had rejected her twice.

She’d been staying here for a whole week and hadn’t reached out (as if they were strangers! As if they hadn’t shared every single minute of their lives up until the age of eighteen), so Mel decided that she would go to Joanna. Confronting her face-to-face couldn’t possibly make her feel worse. She needed answers. She wanted to know what had happened. She wanted to know what she’d done.

Because she must have done something, surely? She could no longer pretend that Joanna had simply been too busy or wrapped up in her new exciting life, or distracted by her love for Cliff (although that part had never made sense), or preoccupied by a wide circle of new friends. The painful truth was that she’d cut Mel out of her life without an explanation, as if she was a wasp in an apple. She hadn’t given Mel a chance to have her say.

But she was going to have her say now, and if this turned out to be a mistake, then it was a mistake. Better to do something and be wrong than do nothing.

And whatever happened, at least she’d have closure of sorts.

Mel put the basket in the car and drove to the farmers market that popped up on the far section of Main Street once a week.

She was feeling nervous and wanted to avoid conversation, so she was brisk and businesslike as she swept up plump tomatoes, a fresh sourdough loaf, cheese, a jar of local honey and some ripe peaches. On impulse, she nipped into the Surf Café and bagged up some of Nate’s macadamia and white chocolate cookies while he was busy serving a customer.

It was a short drive along the coast road to Otter’s Nest, but long enough for her to almost change her mind.