Inconsolable

by Ainslie Paton

  Inconsolable

  Ainslie Paton

  www.escapepublishing.com.au

  Inconsolable

  Ainslie Paton

  Sometimes the only way to forgiveness is through love.

  Foley has a new boss she doesn’t like, a flatmate who’s been known to wear odd shoes, and a car that’s ready to pack it in. She hasn’t met a guy worth lipstick in forever, and though she planned a life less ordinary, the only thing unique about her is a badly thought through tattoo.

  Until Drum.

  Drum wasn’t always the cliff guy, a homeless man sheltering in a cave tucked above a popular tourist beach. He wanted to get as far away from his previous life as possible. Now he wakes with the sun, runs on the beach, does odd jobs for cash to buy food, and is at peace.

  Until Foley.

  It’s Foley’s job to find Drum a safer place to live, but the only home Drum wants is the one place he can never stay: Foley’s heart.

  About the Author

  Ainslie Paton is a corporate storyteller working in marketing, public relations and advertising. She’s written about everything from the African refugee crisis and Toxic Shock Syndrome, to high-speed data networks and hamburgers. She writes cracking, hyper-real romances about strong women and the exciting men who love them. Her other books include: Grease Monkey Jive, Getting Real, Detained, Floored, Hooked on a Feeling and Insecure.

  Ainslie blogs at: www.ainsliepaton.com.au

  You can chat to her on Facebook or on Twitter @AinsliePaton

  For Garry, who was always sure I’d write a book.

  Contents

  About the Author

  1: House Hunting

  2: Sting

  3: Unlikely

  4: Intimidated

  5: Smirk

  6: Deal

  7: Vulnerable

  8: Falling

  9: New Deal

  10: Shaken

  11: Dishonest

  12: Overwhelmed

  13: Meditation

  14: Friends

  15: Conspiracy Without a Theory

  16: Yard Work

  17: Juggling Chainsaw

  18: Meteor

  19: Edge

  20: Knockout

  21: Attacked

  22: Accused

  23: Suspended Animation

  24: Word Against Word

  25: Doubt

  26: Payment

  27: Bare Essentials

  28: Small Talk

  29: Stung to Numb

  30: Nothing to Lose

  31: Haystack

  32: New Rules

  33: High Road

  34: A New Edge

  35: Probation

  36: Consolation

  Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…

  1: House Hunting

  Nowhere in Foley’s job description did it say lean over a railing on top of a scary cliff to talk a homeless hermit squatter into living somewhere else.

  Community relations managers didn’t do spelunking as a rule, nor did they force evictions in the face of pending public outrage.

  Foley’s job description said sensible, definitive, measurable things that you could put a key performance indicator against and bank a salary on. It said present the public face of council with integrity and professionalism. It was about recreation, community engagement and the environment. It was parks and beaches, family, historical and cultural events.

  It wasn’t sweating and squinting in the February heat haze with her stomach whirling and her palms so slippery the railing might as well have been made of butter while she yodelled off into space.

  “Hello, are you there?”

  The midday sun burned her forehead as she tried again. “Hello, I’m Foley Barnes. I’m from council. I’d like to talk to you if you’ve got the time.”

  Got the time. Idiot. He was an unemployed squatter, what could he possibly be doing but deliberately avoiding her. This would be funny if it wasn’t something Gabriella wanted her to fail at.

  Foley wiped her hands on her pants, put them back on the railing and leaned a little further over. She couldn’t see the man’s camp site. That’s how he’d managed to live on the cliff face undetected for so long. He was tucked away in a cave that must extend back under the rock ledge, perhaps even beneath the walkway and Marks Park, where she stood.

  Of course, now she’d said she was from council he’d probably think he was in trouble and he’d stay hidden away down there, so that was another dumb move.

  “Hello, you’re not in trouble or anything. I want to introduce myself.”

  Oh yeah, sure. That was going to work. He’d be sitting down there laughing his homeless head off.

  She sighed. Even in this she was Frustrated Foley. Nat was going to love it.

  “Okay, I’ll come down to you.”

  There were two ways she could go and they both involved the railing: under or over. That’s why the pants suit and the sensible shoes, instead of a lightweight dress and heels. If she had to be a billy goat on work time, she’d be a practically dressed one.

  She clamped her back teeth together and ducked under the metal rail, stepping out on the rock ledge. One of the world’s most famous beaches was spread out in front of her, along with a good deal of the coastline. It was blue on blue where the sky met the sea and it sparkled; blindingly awe-inspiring, spectacular, and though she saw it often, the beauty of it never got old. Now it was especially breathtaking, but for all the worst reasons. From the wrong side of the safety railing it was simply bigger, more ferociously beautiful and potentially deadly.

  She took a steadying lungful. She’d wanted a life less ordinary. She could’ve been in her comfortable air-conditioned office, at her ergonomically sound desk, working on the Beach Film Festival or the Winter Wonderland, or she could walk along the coast, a very safe distance from the edge, and check Sereno, the heritage-listed house she was trying to save from greedy agents and developers, but no, here she was, back to the wall, thrill-seeking on a rock ledge.

  Nat was going to piss herself laughing.

  From here Foley could see the ledge had two tiers. The one she was standing on and another that jutted out beneath. The cave must be between them. The edge and the drop off into the ocean was a good car length away, but it was still the edge to a sheer cliff and no next birthday. Sensible shoes or not, her knees locked.

  “Hello, are you there?”

  She bent forward and tried to peer along the ledge and was rewarded with the sight of a blue tarp. But no hermit squatter man. He couldn’t keep avoiding her, and surely he’d be able to hear her, unless he was sleeping. If he was sleeping she should let him be. It wasn’t smart to sneak up on a sleeping hermit on a cliff face. Who knows what he might do? They knew so little about him anyway. But you had to surmise what they knew didn’t suggest model citizen. He was an unemployed, bearded street person, who’d made a permanent camp site on a cliff face.

  “Hello, Mr Drum. Are you there? My name is Foley and I’d like to visit you.”

  Was that his surname, Drum? The lifesavers and the park rangers called him that. It was probably a nickname. They all spoke favourably about the man. A good bloke. Maybe some mental health problems, but he didn’t appear to be dangerous and was always ready to help out. There was probably truth in that, given he’d been living in the cave for about a year now and there’d been no reports of trouble.

  “Mr Drum. If you’re there, I need to talk to you.”

  And he needed to talk to her like he needed … Hell, he must need a lot of things. A hot shower and a home-cooked meal. A shave, haircut and a job. A proper bed to sleep on and some form of counselling. And walls. The man must need walls, at night, when there was only the moon and the stars to see by and it
was windy or cold, or just plain frightening to be living on the edge of the world with nothing to stop you falling off.

  A shudder started in her thighs and rippled through her body, leaving a trail of goosebumps. Imagine being here during a storm. It could rip you out of this life and hurl you into the forgotten. No one would even know it had happened, unless a body washed up. Oh God. What if he sleepwalked? What if he was hurt or sick or already dead in his camp site?

  Or he really was dangerous and they didn’t know it yet.

  Gabriella had suggested she take a ranger or a lifesaver from the beach with her, but no, Foley argued that might scare the man, and they didn’t want that. They wanted this to be a peaceful eviction. Not something the local press would write up. Which was true, but it was also Foley being stubborn about doing it her own way, because two months on she wasn’t over losing the department director job to Gabriella, and was thoroughly infected with an overwhelming desire to stick one up her by being the singularly most competent person on the entire planet.

  And for all that bravado, the man, the whole idea of him—which in air-conditioned comfort, within solid walls, was entirely benign, in a we’re more scary than he is, and it’ll be no trouble for me to manage way—was freaking her the fuck out.

  The singularly most competent person on the entire planet probably didn’t have rubber knees.

  That, and the knowledge she’d have to go down to the lower ledge to find Drum, or go back to the office and admit defeat. Not an option. But neither was moving her legs. Her feet stuck like sea snails to the rock, slimy suckers growing from the soles of her sensible, before you considered rock climbing in them, shoes and sticking like wet on water.

  She looked around for anything resembling steps naturally carved in the rock face. It wasn’t that she was scared of heights. She wasn’t besties with them, but she wasn’t normally frightened rigid of them, or spiders, or snakes, or the Doberman in the house next door to her unit block that tried to leap the fence to eat her every time she walked past. Those were decent, solid, ordinary fears, but not her fears.

  “Mr Drum, are you there?”

  She should’ve thought to bring a bribe. A sandwich, a coffee, a cash donation. With her bag strapped over her body, she could still do the latter, but was it smart to yell out come and get it, when the getting it meant opening her wallet in front of a quantity unknown, unemployed, homeless man?

  On a cliff face.

  Oh shit. This was a really dumb idea.

  “Please, Mr Drum, if you’re there. I’m a little scared about coming down to see you. I know I said I would, and I’ve come under the railing, but, um, I’m not sure how to get down to where you are from here.”

  Oh bloody excellent. Tell the homeless vagrant you’re on his turf, but spinning out. This is how smart people end up murder victims. They miss out on a promotion, take an unreasonable dislike to the person who gets their dream job and make idiot ego-based decisions about their own safety—because they’re a flaming numbskull.

  “Okay, I can see a way. I’m coming down to you.”

  Bad karma to even think the word down, proof of insanity to shout it. Her sensible leather-soled shoes really weren’t at all, in hindsight. No grip. Marvellous. If she sat, she could wiggle her way forward, drop her feet over the edge and push off to jump the rest of the way to the lower ledge. She bent forward, put one hand onto the rough rock and went to her knees. From here it was a matter of flipping over to her bum and butt-walking the rest of the way.

  That was a workable plan, except now she was in a crawling position, crawling felt safer than flipping anywhere so she crawled forward and yes, that ripping sound was the left knee of her suit pants. Fantastic. The toes of her shoes would be scuffed as well and she’d be pink with sunburn. All this and she’d achieved zip.

  She looked up towards the walkway and safety. The rational, professional thing to do would be to call this little adventure off, and come again another day with better shoes and backup. So what if Gabriella was patronisingly pleasant about it. The woman would probably offer up aloe vera for the sunburn, a sewing kit for Foley’s pants, and a smiley face in her follow-up email, asking passively aggressively if Foley wanted to pass this responsibility on to someone better qualified after her horrible ordeal.

  She was not passing this responsibility on. Disliking Gabriella wasn’t irrational, it was healthy. The woman swooped in from nowhere and took Foley’s promotion out from under her because she was a friend of the mayor’s, and now Gabriella very clearly wanted Foley gone.

  And Foley wasn’t going anywhere. Which was the metaphysical, and the actual physical, truth. She was in a battle to the death at work, and on her hands and knees on a rock ledge, suicide distance from plummeting to the sea.

  Freaking superb.

  But pitting herself against Gabriella and not being able to follow through was definitely a career-limiting move. She crawled forward, took hold of the rough stone edge of the ledge and brought her legs around to drop them over and sit. She made a hmmm noise, as though she’d actually achieved something and looked at her watch. It’d taken fifteen minutes to travel sideways maybe two car lengths and sweat was running down her face.

  Now she could see the rest of the tarp, a rusty, wrought-iron table, and two chairs, and an old barbeque cooktop. She peered over the ledge and a drop of sweat rolled down her jaw and off her chin to splash on the rock below. The distance between her dangling feet and the second ledge was about the same as stepping up onto a kitchen stool. The ledge she was sitting on would be about chest height.

  “Mr Drum. I’m almost there. Sorry it’s taken so long. I was checking out the view. I can see why you’d want to live here. Magnificent, isn’t it?”

  She smacked herself in the head. Lame, so lame. That’d sounded all right in the car on the way here. She pushed off the ledge and there was another tearing sound. She was safely on the lower rock platform but now frozen with a different fear. Her unsexy underwear would be on display. She felt her backside, screwing her head around to look and yes, she’d torn a hole in the bum of her pants. Could be worse. She could be wearing a g-string and there’d be bare white, fleshy, backside flashing. As it was, black undies under black wasn’t so bad and her jacket covered the damage. If she remembered to stand straight and not lean forward she’d be fine. Except she’d have to walk back across the ledge or he’d get an eyeful of Bonds Cottontails.

  She patted her face with a tissue. She wasn’t going to think about the trip back to the path. She was going to go flap Mr Drum’s tarp and hopefully take a seat at his table and they’d talk about how it was dangerous for him to continue to live here. She’d tell him council was concerned for his welfare and ready to help him move to more appropriate accommodation, especially before Sculptures on the Coast kicked off, when there’d be thousands of people, including the visiting Danish Royal Family, trouping all over the park and the coastal walkway.

  “Hello, I’m here.”

  She walked forward and put her hand to the tarp. The ledge was much wider and deeper than she’d expected. He had to be asleep, or there was one big cave behind the tarp and he still couldn’t hear her.

  “Hello.”

  She stepped around the tarp, which was more of a windbreak than anything else, and the cave came into view. Shallower than she’d thought, less sheltered. There was a camp bed and a sleeping bag, a zipped suitcase, an esky, a torch, some kind of lamp, and a pile of books. No rubbish, no discarded crap, no hoarded junk. Not a single empty alcohol bottle or can. It was surprisingly neat, functional and heartbreakingly sad that someone would want this hunk of exposed rock for their home. It was also annoying free of life forms.

  Why couldn’t an unemployed hermit squatter be home when you needed him?

  2: Sting

  The beach was officially closed. The lifeguards had packed it in for the day. Now it belonged to joggers, sweethearts strolling, surfers and locals who’d swum here for years and knew how to
read the sea. This was his favourite time of day in summer. The worst of the heat fading, the humidity easing with the setting sun, the sky gone shades of pink or orange, the beach returning to itself after hours of strutting the charm and acting the showplace for visitors from all around the world.

  He was one of the many joggers who now pounded the impressive curve of shoreline when he saw them. He knew they’d all been stung. The way they shook their limbs, contorted, folding in on themselves. The child, the worst, screaming in panic. He kicked his jog into a flat run as the father grabbed for a handful of sand.

  “Hey,” he called. “Don’t use sand. You need to wash it off.”

  He got blank looks from the adults and the kid continued to scream. Tourists. Beside them now, he tried again in his halting Japanese. Telling them it was a bluebottle and they needed to wash the tentacles off, not scrub at them, not touch them or they’d be stung again. He squatted down so he was face to face with the kid. She’d been stung across her head and neck, one of her eyes was swelling and the blister of the bluebottle was trapped under the strap of her swimmers.

  “It hurts, yes. Let me help you.”

  He looked up, met the mother’s eyes and got a nod that was more a surprised tearful whole body shake than assent, but it would do. He picked the kid up and turned to carry her into the sea.

  “Everything okay? Oh, bluebottle. Can I help?”

  Another jogger, a woman. He moved passed her, beckoning the parents. “I’ve got it.”

  “After this hot water, not vinegar.”

  He knew that. Vinegar was for deadly box and Irukandji jellyfish, stopping their tentacles releasing venom. He gave the woman a nod and copped a sting across his arm as the kid squirmed. He carried her back into the sea, the two adults holding on to each other, following.

  He showed them how to wash the tentacles off, but got stung himself a couple of times. The little girl never stopped screaming and he didn’t blame her. Bastard bluebottles bit like a whip and stayed with you like an electric current made of shimmering knifepoints.