by Morey, Trish
She had to get out. Not just for her life.
Not just for that of the child in her arms.
But for Domenic’s child.
Domenic, she thought as her mind swirled and her lungs burned. I’m so sorry!
Chapter 13
He saw the smoke as he turned into the suburb, his dark mood worsening as he steered the car towards the house he knew she ran as a refuge. Not being able to contact her by telephone from London had been frustrating enough, but coming back to find she’d gone had driven him completely mad.
Why had she left? Sure, they’d exchanged words before he’d left. But she didn’t ever strike him as a quitter. He picked her for having more backbone than that.
He rounded another bend. It was fortunate he’d never let on that he knew of her secret. It made sense that this house would be the first place she’d run to. He noticed the dark clouds drawing closer. It must be close to her.
It was her house.
Flames escaped from the front window, lapping at the old bricks, working their way upwards in the building.
Where were the emergency vehicles? He pulled over a little way down the road and snapped open his cellphone, dialling triple zero.
‘Three minutes,’ the operator calmly assured him. He jumped from the car, scanning the collection of people gathered outside on the street, but she wasn’t among them. He forced his way through the crowd. One woman was crying hysterically, screaming and calling for someone as another supported her, holding her back.
‘Do you live here?’ he asked.
She looked at him, eyes wild and red, fear turning her face to a terrifying mask. She lifted her arm towards the burning building. ‘Brittany,’ she whimpered.
‘And Opal?’ he asked. ‘Where’s Opal?’
Her eyebrows rose, a gesture of hopelessness and she turned back to the burning building.
NO!
She couldn’t be inside. There was no way in from the front; everything beyond the front door was alight. He’d have to try the back. The front door on the neighbour’s house was open as they worked with hoses to dampen down their home and he took advantage, sprinting the narrow straight hallway and exiting out the back door. He looked across. Someone had put a ladder up. There were two legs disappearing into the burning building.
Her legs!
‘OPAL!’ He didn’t wait for a response, just hurled himself over the wooden fence and across to the ladder. It shuddered and creaked, protesting at his weight, but his mind was only on getting to the top. Finding Opal.
Smoke was billowing from the window, dense and rank. No flames.. yet—but he knew smoke could be just as deadly. The sirens were coming closer but would they be quick enough? It was a moot question. He knew what he had to do. With a heave he hoisted himself through the window.
He was in a blast furnace, the oxygen consumed by the ravenous flames of the fire beyond. If the door went there would be no hope.
‘Opal!’ he shouted uselessly into the inferno, the sound lost in the omnipotence of the fire. Quickly he covered his nose with a handkerchief, knowing lungs could cook from the inside in this super-charged heat.
There was no sign of her. But she had to be in this room. There was no way she would have made it through that door. He had to find her.
There was a sound—a hacking cough?—and something bumped against his leg.
Not something.
Someone.
His hand reached down and found a shoulder. Felt her convulse with coughing again and moved his hand to underneath to steer her towards the window. He pulled her up and located the child in her arms just as the door swung off its melted hinges and a wall of flame burst in.
He propped the child over his shoulder, practically pushing Opal out of the window. She was battling to regain control, he could tell, and it took a couple of attempts to get her footing, but eventually she found the rungs and somehow stumbled down. He would have sighed if he’d had more time, a possible broken leg not much to risk when your life was at stake. But behind him the beds were on fire, the flames whipping closer, and sighing was out of the question.
It was like being in hell.
No, he thought, climbing through the window and finding the ladder rungs below, not like hell.
Hell had been watching her legs disappear through that window.
Hell had been wondering whether he’d ever see her again.
Hell had been thinking he might not.
Just as he clambered out and ducked his head below the sill, the whole bedroom exploded in a fireball that blew out what was left of the window in a spray of flying glass, shooting out straight over his head and raining down onto the emergency services, at last arriving in numbers.
He descended the last few rungs, and felt the reassuring touch of earth under his feet. In a second the child had been taken from his shoulder, rushed to emergency care. Someone yelled, ‘I’ve got a pulse!’ and he heard, ‘You’re a hero, mate,’ but he shook his head. Opal was the hero. She was the one who’d found the child. Without her action the child would now most certainly be dead.
Uniforms surrounded her, all frantic action and shouting. Firemen. That explained it. For some reason she’d had the idea that the man who pulled her to the window in the burning room was Domenic. Had sensed it was him. But that couldn’t be right. Domenic was in London with Emma. And even if he’d been home in Sydney, he wouldn’t have known where to find her.
Her mind was playing tricks on her.
The paramedics hustled her to an ambulance, plastering an oxygen mask to her face. She tasted rubber, but didn’t protest, because beyond that was oxygen, pure and sweet, and that made up for everything. She sucked deeply, drawing the life-giving gas into her traumatised lungs. After a few breaths she pulled the mask away, desperate to know.
‘Brittany?’ she said to the paramedic, busy assessing a jagged piece of glass stuck in her leg.
‘The little girl? She’s alive and on her way to hospital.’ He patted her hand. ‘She’s in good hands. Don’t worry.’
A huge wave of relief washed over her and, eyes shut, she tipped her head back onto the pillow, feeling the mask being put back in place.
Brittany was alive! The loss of Pearl’s Place she could get over. She’d find another house and start anew, somewhere with more space, as she’d planned. It was only a building after all.
But the thought that it might have cost a resident, particularly a young child, her life, would have been too horrible to bear. Her refuge would have been less of a shelter, more of a coffin.
She took another deep draught of the healing gas, and remembered one other thing she needed to know. She pulled the mask aside once more.
‘Who was the fireman who pulled me out? I need to thank him.’
‘No fireman, love,’ the man said, looking around behind the ambulance and then nodding. ‘That guy there in what used to be a white shirt. He one of your neighbours or something?’
She raised herself up and scanned the scene. No one in anything like a once white shirt. Then the sea of uniforms parted momentarily and her heart skipped a beat.
Domenic!
His face grimy with smoke and soot and his shirt stained and tattered, he stood brooding and impatient next to a paramedic who was stalwartly trying his best to do his job. In that instant Domenic looked over into her ambulance and magically their eyes caught and held across the distance.
And his gaze rocked her soul.
That wasn’t what she’d been expecting.
She’d thought when she moved out of Clemengers that her next meeting with Domenic would be full of recriminations and accusations. She’d expected a bitter debate, an even more bitter outcome.
The last thing she’d expected was a pair of eyes that speared straight into her.
And his eyes seemed to peel everything away, the resentment over his sudden trip to London, the knife-stab to the heart at discovering he was there with Emma and the pain of realising her life had b
ecome just a younger generation’s version of her mother’s.
But then, he’d just saved her life.
He’d saved all three lives, as she, her unborn child and Brittany had huddled together in that fiery room.
And then he’d had the sense to save his own.
‘Not a neighbour,’ she said, without taking her eyes from his.
‘He’s my husband.’
It was good to be going home. The smell of smoke still clung thickly to them and Opal was looking forward to a long, hot bath. After a night’s observation in hospital they’d been released, travelling back together to Clemengers in near silence.
Hospital had been no place to talk, both of them sensing that something more than simply expressing relief that they were alive could not be achieved with all the constant coming and going of the nursing staff.
So they’d talked about Brittany and how she was progressing. He’d even helped her arrange other temporary accommodation for the now homeless residents, not batting an eyelid when Deirdre Hancock came in to take charge of the arrangements and told them both they should be resting.
But they’d both skirted around the big questions they knew would have to be answered at some stage. Those would have to wait until they were alone.
It was just before reaching Clemengers that Domenic took her hand. She looked at him, surprised, as they’d sat chastely on opposite sides of the wide seat all the way home.
‘Opal,’ he said, ‘I brought someone back from London with me. She wanted to come to the hospital but I made her wait at the hotel.’
She stiffened and closed her eyes. Oh, God. Please not Emma. They’d been in London together. Surely he wouldn’t bring her back here. Surely he wouldn’t be that cruel.
‘Who is it?’ she asked at last.
The car pulled into the hotel’s driveway. ‘In a few moments you will see for yourself. I know you need to get cleaned up, but she’s very anxious to meet you.’
Sebastian pulled the car door open wide, nodding a greeting that was lost on her, and Domenic ushered her inside, his arm tight around her shoulders, leading her through to a private lounge.
After the bright sun outside it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darker interior. There was a woman sitting inside. She rose from her chair, took a tentative step towards Opal.
Opal halted and blinked.
And then time slipped, a glacier of years and memories melting down to a torrent of incomprehensibility.
The woman came closer and lifted her hands. ‘Opal,’ she said shakily, tears welling in her eyes. ‘It’s a dream come true to see you again.’
Opal looked at the older woman, searching her face, recognising, knowing that she was staring but unable to stop herself.
‘Mother…?’ she said.
Chapter 14
And then they were in each other’s arms, simultaneously laughing and crying and washing away with their tears the pain of their long separation.
They sat down together on the chaise longue, Domenic leaning against the mantle and giving the two women the space to get reacquainted.
‘But how?’ Opal was able to ask at last. ‘All this time we believed you were dead. Where were you?’
‘I know,’ she said, taking her daughter’s hands into her own. ‘There is so much to explain and you have much to blame me for. But let me say that leaving my children was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.’
‘How could you do it?’ Opal demanded, the pain of those first few months flooding back. ‘The twins were only four. They cried themselves to sleep for months. They needed you. We all needed you.’
Pearl rocked her body, biting down hard on her lips as fresh tears squeezed from her eyes. ‘And I thought of you all, every day, but I had no choice. He gave me no choice.’
‘My father?’
Pearl nodded.
‘I knew you weren’t happy together, but how could he make you leave, and leave us behind? I don’t understand.’
‘It was my fault,’ the older woman began. ‘I wasn’t happy. Your father didn’t love me, was happy to flaunt his many other lovers in my face, and I couldn’t deal with it any more.’
‘So you left?’ Opal said.
‘Hush. Hear me out. There’s more.’ She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and took a breath, as if collecting her thoughts.
‘I was wildly jealous. I loved your father so much, while he took me for granted. Wanting him to love me consumed my whole life. I think it must have become a form of madness.
‘I hatched a plan to make him notice me. I would take a lover. I planned to drive him mad with jealousy and show him that if he didn’t want me then I could easily find someone who did, someone who would give him a taste of his own medicine. I found the most handsome young man in the hotel and seduced him. Just as I’d planned, your father found us in bed together.’
She paused.
‘What happened?’ prompted Opal.
Pearl’s eyes were dim with tears and edged with the pain she must have felt then. ‘He laughed. He stood there and laughed and laughed, as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. And he said to my lover that anyone who chose to go to bed with me was either drunk or stupid or unlucky enough to be my husband and that position was taken, so which of the others was he?
‘The young man fled, your father’s laughter ringing in his ears. So I hit him. As hard as I could, trying to inflict hurt on him like he’d been hurting me for years. I hit him and hit him, trying to get him to feel something. And he did. That’s when he finally got angry—we had a terrible row.’ She shook her head. ‘Just terrible.’
‘And the next day…’ Opal trailed off, remembering the terrible sounds of that night and what it had led to as if it were yesterday.
Pearl nodded. ‘I couldn’t take any more. He made me feel utterly worthless. I had to get out, and there seemed only one way left…’
She gave a harsh laugh. ‘But I couldn’t even do that right. A cleaner found me. She’s the one who called the ambulance. I’m not sure your father would have bothered.’
‘He told us you’d died at the hospital.’
‘I know. He told me never to try to contact you girls and I never did. It was so difficult but I knew I hadn’t been a good mother. I thought you might be better off without me, the state I was in.’
Opal thought to herself for a moment. ‘No wonder he’d never married again—he wasn’t ever free. But still, how did he get away with it, to pull off such a deception, to convince everyone you were dead?’
Pearl shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t have been too difficult. My parents were dead; I had no living family aside from you children. Most of my friends were in Melbourne, where we’d originally met, though I was out of touch with them by that time anyway. He would have used the excuse of a small, private cremation, no doubt, and people would have accepted that was the way he had to grieve.’
‘And he wouldn’t let us go—I thought he was protecting us—but there probably never was a service at all.’
‘Maybe not. Meanwhile he was organising my way out of the country. He sent me to England, where I spent a long time in a private clinic. Eventually I settled in a small village outside London, and started a jewellery business with the money he settled on me.’
She smiled as she remembered. ‘That way, if I couldn’t see you girls, I could at least be able to work with your namesakes, sapphires, rubies and opals, the precious gems that would remind me of my daughters every day. So you were never far from my thoughts, believe me.’
‘Did you know he’d died?’
She nodded and sighed, long and sad. ‘I heard. His solicitor called to let me know. I thought about you even more after that. I even picked up the phone at one stage, wanting to call you. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just walk back into your lives after so many years. That wouldn’t have been fair. And, after everything that had happened, I was so afraid that you’d hate me for it.’
‘How
could I ever hate you? I missed you. We all missed you.’ Opal sniffed, gave a thin smile. ‘But you’re back. You’re here now.’
She patted her daughter on the hand. ‘Only because your husband is one very skilled negotiator. Still, it took him all New Year’s Eve to convince me.’
Opal’s eyes flashed over to him. ‘New Year’s Eve?’
‘Yes, of course. That’s when I agreed to meet with him in London. And when I had told him for what seemed like the hundredth time that there was no way I would turn your life upside down by coming back to Australia, he told me about you. How you’d set up a shelter for women who were trapped in relationships with nowhere to go, nowhere to run. That you’d named it after me.’ She paused, her lashes damp, her eyes creased, but with a smile that made her whole face glow. ‘Do you have any idea what that meant to me? And then there was no way I couldn’t come back. Not after learning that.’
She slid an arm round Opal’s back, squeezing her, a short, sharp hug.
‘And to think I’d come all this way, only to be cheated out of seeing you by a fire in that very refuge.’ She shook her head. ‘I was so sorry to hear of the fire and the loss of the building, especially when it meant so much to you and to the families who needed it. But I’m so relieved you saved that child and got out safely yourselves.’
Opal smiled. ‘I’ll find another place. In fact, I think the neighbours will insist on it now.’
‘Then I’d like to help,’ Pearl said, ‘if you’ll let me.’
‘You would?’
‘I think I owe it to you. There’s so much I need to make up for and so much I didn’t do for you and your sisters when you were growing up. Maybe it will help you forgive me for abandoning you at such a young age.’
‘You don’t have to buy my forgiveness, but thank you,’ she said. ‘It would be wonderful to have your help.’
The telephone burred softly behind them. Domenic reached over and took the call, speaking softly but mostly listening.
