by Helen Brown
• She’d also been stupid to fire him.
Lisa promised herself that, if he survived and things went any further, she’d have to tell him about the mastectomy. Which would scare him off permanently.
An old woman shuffled into the waiting room. First patient of the day, she eyed Lisa’s outlandish getup.
‘Emergency,’ Lisa explained.
The woman slid an iPhone from her pocket and started playing Candy Crush.
Target would be open by now. She wondered if there was time to drive over and pick up a sweatshirt and track pants. It’d only take ten minutes. But just as Lisa stood to leave, the doctor emerged, holding a clipboard. She scanned his body language for signs of triumph or defeat.
‘Is he going to be okay?’
The doctor scribbled something on his clipboard.
‘It was a dry bite.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘He’s lucky. The snake didn’t inject any venom. Still, I’d like to keep him here for the rest of the day.’
Chapter 24
Lisa pulled up in the driveway and stepped out of Dino with caution. A cockatoo screeched. There was no sign of the snake. She wondered how Mojo had survived in the wild so long, and exactly how he’d lost that eye.
After a shower, she slipped into a summer dress festooned with roses, the Scarlet O’Hara one she thought she’d never wear. It suited her mood somehow.
Scott’s ute was still on the side of the road. She’d bring him back from the clinic later. And who knows? He might not be going home tonight.
She made a cup of instant coffee and settled at the kitchen table to work. Sunlight bore through the windows. The room was heating up. Normally, she’d open the back door but it was hotter outside than in. Besides which, she didn’t want impromptu visits from the snake. She set up a table fan and pointed it at her face.
Mojo padded across the bluestone, and put his head to one side.
‘Scott’s fine, if that’s what you’re asking.’
The cat sprang onto the table and tried to sit on her keyboard. She lifted him onto the floor. He jumped back on the table, this time knocking the fan. She lowered him down. He jumped back . . .
‘If this doesn’t stop you’ll have to go outside.’
Mojo sprang up onto her lap, turned around three times and nestled in. Lisa rubbed his ears. He was learning to be a writer’s cat.
The Brontë parsonage had never been short of pets. Though the whole family adored animals, nobody loved them more than Emily. Her portrait of Grasper, one of the parsonage dogs, was full of loving detail, each hair and whisker defined. Grasper’s bright-eyed expectancy leapt off the page, even today.
Emily’s favourite was a bull mastiff called Keeper. She painted him lying on a tuft of grass, his globe of a head resting on his front paws, apparently transfixed by something just off the page. The power in his shoulders was palpable; Keeper was not a dog to mess with. The adoration was mutual. After poor Emily died, Keeper lay at the feet of the mourners in church and listened to the service. Keeper’s sorrow ran deep—with that sense of knowing some dogs have, he moaned outside her empty bedroom for nights on end.
Lisa tapped away, and for a couple of hours the words flowed. Emily dumped the earl, who was so heartbroken he sold up and moved to America. After their lovemaking sessions, Frederick cooked superb broths, dumplings and stews. Emily stopped using food as a psychological weapon against those who loved her, instead filling out a little and taking on a healthy glow.
Lisa carried her phone and a plate of stale egg sandwiches outside onto the veranda. Mojo followed and sat on the sofa beside her. The wind was like the inside of a clothes drier. New York could be unbearable in summer, when warmth radiated off the streets and buildings, but this Australian heat rushed in straight from the desert.
She called the medical centre. June informed her Scott was doing well and would be ready to go home around five o’clock. Putting the phone aside, she had another go at the sandwiches. They were inedible. She tossed a crust into the long grass. A flash of white shot after it.
‘Hello there!’
A yellow crest fanned above the blades. She tossed another crust. The cockatoo gobbled it up. Meanwhile, Mojo sat watching the parrot with the intensity of a judge of Australia’s Got Talent. To Lisa’s alarm, the bird waddled towards them and hopped up the step. She rested her hand on Mojo’s back in case he was getting ideas about Thanksgiving arriving early.
The parrot fixed them with a brilliant gaze. He wasn’t afraid. Lisa wondered whether the cat knew the bird from his previous life in the wild. The bird was no pushover, if his claws and beak were anything to go by.
‘Well, I’m pleased someone likes my egg sandwiches,’ she said, emptying the rest of her plate over the step.
The cockatoo relished the egg as much as the bread, putting its beak to one side to hoover up the last crumb. Then, satisfied there was no more food on offer, it hopped down the step and waddled back towards the grass.
‘See you again!’
The bird stopped, turned and spread its wings in what looked like a gesture of thanks.
‘You’re welcome.’
She waited for it to take flight. The wings flapped in a glorious display of pastel yellow feathers, but didn’t take to the air. This had to be the same cockatoo that had been hanging around the property ever since she’d moved in. It was always alone. The flock it belonged to had probably rejected it when it couldn’t keep up with them. The parrot must’ve been fighting for survival since it was first injured.
Lisa went inside and tried to settle to the next chapter, but the hot wind made her restless. Besides, she couldn’t wait to tell Scott about the cockatoo. Finally, she turned off her computer, circled her mouth with regulation neutral lipstick, fired up Dino and spun into town.
At the clinic, June greeted her with a sardonic smile. ‘He’s not here. Discharged himself an hour ago.’
When Lisa arrived back at the house, the only evidence of his ute were tyre marks in the dust. She reached for her phone. Her finger hesitated over his number. Portia’s voice lectured inside her head: It’s political, Mom. Her thumb scrolled down from Scott to Takeaway Pizza. She ordered mushroom and cheese and, with Mojo on her knee, resigned herself to a night of BBC costume dramas.
Chapter 25
Lisa was in bed with Mr Rochester when Beverley showed up wielding a flaming torch. ‘I was lying when I said I liked your book,’ Beverley said before setting fire to the sheets. ‘It’s bloody rubbish.’ Lisa woke yelling at Mr Rochester to find a chamber pot to douse the flames.
A miniature lion came into focus on the pillow next to hers. Mojo seemed curious rather than frightened by her shouting. Human behaviour was clearly crazier than anything he’d seen in the bush. She stroked his spine. His fur was beginning to grow back in the form of handsome ginger fuzz. ‘Honestly, Mojo. The sooner I finish this trilogy, the better. These women are driving me crazy.’
As the dream faded, the smell of smoke refused to dissipate. She rolled out of bed, stood at the top of the stairs and sniffed. Maybe she’d left the oven on. To her relief, the smoke didn’t seem to be coming from downstairs. Yet it hung heavy in the air. Her eyes prickled. She’d closed the balcony shutters the previous night because of the wind. Mojo jumped off the bed and trotted after her. She opened the latch and stepped onto another planet.
A red blister of sun glowered in a charcoal haze that engulfed the valley. Lisa could see no further than the silhouettes of gum trees at the end of the paddock. Flocks of birds squealed overhead. A mob of kangaroos bolted across the grass. The animals were all headed in one direction—away from the Wrights’ property and past hers. She worried for the cockatoo. How would he escape without wings?
She coughed. The smoke was laced with eucalyptus and getting thicker. She stood on tiptoe and peered over the trees along her driveway. Tongues of fire rose from the pine trees behind the Wrights’ house. They crackled brilliant re
ds and yellows into a shroud of dense black smoke. Cinders surfed the wind towards her house.
Running inside, she grabbed her phone from the bedside table. The recharger was hanging half out of the wall socket. It was out of juice. She fought the urge to scream and curl up in a ball. A cool logic settled over her and she tried to remember everything she’d heard or read about bush fires. She was in no position to defend her property alone, she realised. Her best bet was to flee.
She threw on a coat and the purple beanie. Somewhere she’d read that for all the high-tech fabrics around, wool was still one of the safest in a fire. She slid into her elastic-sided boots. Swooping Mojo into her arms, she ran downstairs. The pet container was still on the kitchen table. She slid him into it and whisked her keys off the window ledge.
As she opened the back door the hot wind blasted her face, roasting her cheeks and searing the back of her mouth. She squinted, scanning the garden for the cockatoo. There was no sign of him.
She closed the door and filled a water bottle. While the tap was on, she doused a tea towel in cold water and tied it under her eyes. The bank-robber look could be the next big thing in Milan, for all she knew.
Her hand rested on the tap. If she was about to lose her worldly possessions, the choices weren’t difficult. On the laptop, she summoned the manuscript for Three Sisters: Emily and saved it onto a memory stick. Then, with two-thirds of her next book dangling around her neck, she hurried to Alexander’s room and lifted his photo from the mantelpiece. Grabbing Mojo’s carry case, she rushed from the house and clambered into Dino.
The car grumbled to life. She spun out onto the main road. To her horror, the fire had already crossed the road. Several trees at the entrance to her driveway were flaring like candles. The Wrights’ drive was an avenue of flames. Though their house seemed intact, clouds of smoke were wafting from the guttering. Surely the old couple had left for a safe haven? She pressed the accelerator to roar into town. Then she saw the Holden in their driveway. She peered at the cottage. Something moved in one of the windows. It was almost certainly a hand.
Crouching over Dino’s steering wheel, she stamped the accelerator and roared towards the cottage.
The car skidded to a halt outside the Wrights’ back door. Lisa leapt out and ran up the steps. The door was locked. She ran into the garden and seized a gnome from under the birdbath. Immune to the drama of the situation, the statue grinned back at her. Wielding the concrete ornament, she ran up to the back door and hurled it through the glass. It shattered with a satisfying clash. Lisa slithered her forearm through the remaining glass daggers and turned the lock.
The air inside the house was heavy with smoke. ‘Mrs Wright?’ she called.
No response. A siren wailed in the distance.
Lisa strode down the hallway to the living room. A photo of a dark-haired child smiled from the wall. An unfinished crochet rug sprawled over a chair.
‘Help! Please! Help me!’ It was a woman’s voice.
Lisa sprinted across the hall to the bedroom.
Mr Wright lay unconscious on the floor. Lisa assumed he’d succumbed to smoke inhalation. A frail old woman was kneeling at his side, holding his hand. They were surrounded by piles of old newspapers, boxes and broken furniture—perfect fuel for an inferno. It appeared the Wrights were hoarders. A single spark would barbecue them all.
‘We were trying to get out, but he fell,’ the old woman wailed. ‘It’s his hip.’
‘Come with me!’
‘I’m not going without him!’ the old woman shouted, clinging to her husband.
Lisa’s forehead drowned in sweat. The house seemed on the brink of explosion. Lisa assessed the old man’s body weight. He wasn’t heavily built, and much of his muscle had shrivelled with age. She bent down and raised his torso off the floor. It felt do-able, as Ted would say. But as she heaved Mr Wright over her shoulder and tried to stand up, his dead weight was too much. She wobbled, then flopped him onto the bed.
‘Leave us here!’ the old woman sobbed. ‘Just go!’
Desperate, Lisa cast about the room. An old-fashioned stroller with fat rubber wheels groaned under a pile of newspapers in the corner. She jettisoned the newspapers and dragged Mr Wright off the bed before draping his limp frame over the stroller. Then she threw a blanket over him.
‘Come with us now!’ she urged, wrapping the old woman in another blanket and bundling her down the hallway.
Once she’d helped Mrs Wright down the steps and into Dino’s front seat, Lisa sprinted back inside for the stroller. As she negotiated it down the first step, Mr Wright’s limp form slid forwards. He was in danger of toppling off the pram and straight into the concrete path below. Summoning all her strength, she heaved the front wheels up and eased the stroller down step by step. When they reached the path, she turned and looked back at the cottage. Flames were shooting through the roof.
She opened Dino’s rear door, seized Mr Wright under his armpits and dragged him into the back of the car. Uncertain if he was alive, she curled him on his side like a foetus and placed the blanket over him.
She stamped on the accelerator and they roared back up the driveway to the main road.
When two fire engines whined to a halt in front of them, she almost collapsed with relief. The first engine swerved and zoomed down the Wrights’ drive. Yellow-clad firemen leapt out of the second fire engine and started dousing the trees on the manor’s side of the road.
A sturdy fireman swaggered towards Lisa and rested his elbow on Dino’s roof. She wound her window down and tore the tea towel off her face. It was no longer damp.
‘Bit early in the fire season for this sort of thing,’ he said, grinning.
Chapter 26
When Charlotte Brontë wrote about fire in Jane Eyre she had the luxury of symbolism. To Charlotte, fire represented sex and passion, cleansing and renewal. For Lisa, when she was finally able to return home, it was heartache. While she’d been over at the Wrights’ cottage, the inferno had raged down her driveway and engulfed the stables. The stables’ roof had collapsed, leaving a smouldering ruin. The blaze had then arced across to the servants’ quarters at the back of the manor. Another fire truck arrived just in time to stop the flames spreading to the kitchen in the main house.
In the meantime, embers had rained down on the front paddock, causing the dry grass to explode into flames. Fire fighters had done what they could to douse it with water, but the fire had run rampant until it reached the natural barrier of the river.
With the main house out of danger, the team had turned their attention to the spot fires on the other side of the river, but just as it seemed the conflagration might leap the water and roar through the valley towards town, the wind had changed direction and dropped.
By Australian standards, it was a small fire covering just a few acres and had been quickly extinguished. Yet the devastation was going to take months, possibly even years, to recover from.
News was back from the hospital that Mr Wright’s condition was serious due to heat stroke and smoke inhalation. Mrs Wright was in shock and dehydrated but would probably be okay. Their house had been checked out, too. Though it was badly damaged, it was repairable.
Now the fire fighters finished packing up their equipment. Humbled by their courage and cheerful pragmatism, Lisa hugged them one after the other. They waved as they drove off to check properties on the other side of the ridge.
After they’d gone, Lisa took Mojo’s carry case from the car and stood on the veranda. The air was hazy and heavy. Her front paddock was a blackened desert. Ravaged trees were etched against a tangerine sky. The cockatoo wouldn’t have stood a chance. The stables and servants’ quarters were destroyed. Her front garden was razed. She’d nearly lost the house she could hardly afford in the first place.
Sobs jagged from her lungs and echoed across the valley. Somewhere in her head she heard Aunt Caroline’s voice. Pull yourself together, girl. Where was Scott when she needed him?
&n
bsp; She crouched and flicked the latches on Mojo’s carry case. He stepped onto the veranda and lifted his nose. With tail looped close to the ground, the cat padded down the steps and sniffed the smoking grass. Head to one side, he extended a cautious paw and dabbed the blackened soil. Then the lion cat shook himself, as if this changed world was beyond comprehension, and crept back up the steps and inside the house.
Lisa sighed and walked around the side of the manor. Charred beams jutted like ribs from what was left of the stables. Amid the smouldering wreckage, a door to a horse stall swung from the outline of a frame. The servants’ quarters were a blackened skeleton. Empty windows stared back at her. The extension would’ve fared better if it’d been made of brick like the rest of the house.
To her amazement, the fire fighters had managed to save the orchard. The apple tree spread its fresh green branches in astonishment.
Numb to the core, she walked to the end of the driveway. All her favourite trees—the magnolia, the wattles and gums—had been reduced to charred sticks. The fire had ripped through at breathtaking speed. Leaves, scrub, everything that had been green was now grey. Lisa felt like a character in a children’s book who’d stepped through a portal into a black and silver world. Charcoal tree trunks rose from ashen earth. Maxine had been right all along. People who came to Castlemaine with big dreams were destined to fail.
Lisa hugged herself. Her skin was black and sticky—she needed a shower. As she turned to go back to the house she noticed a shape huddled near the base of a burnt-out tree trunk. It looked like some sort of animal. She tramped through the ash towards it.
To her astonishment, it was a human form, crouched on the ground with its back to her. It was a man wearing a dark-brown hoodie.
Scott turned and looked up at her. He put his lips to his mouth and beckoned her over. Branches crackled under her feet. As she drew closer, she saw the focus of his attention. Sitting on the bush floor in front of him was a bewildered koala.
