by Helen Brown
‘You okay?’ he said under his breath.
She nodded.
‘Sorry I didn’t get here sooner, but I had to check on Todd. They live out this way.’
She should’ve guessed.
‘Is he all right?’
‘He’s fine. They saved your house.’
She glanced back at the silhouette of the manor. Standing proud in the gritty air, it reminded her of photos of London’s blitz in World War II. ‘Only just.’
‘I parked on the road. I know you have a thing about me barging in . . .’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘Not anymore.’
‘I heard what you did for the old people. That’s incredible.’
She ached for him to stand up and encircle her in his arms. But that would just make her howl her eyes out. It was a good thing at least half his attention was on the koala.
The animal gazed up them through black button eyes. With his furry, rounded ears he was as cute as a grey teddy bear. The white fur on the underside of his chin extended down his chest, giving him a sort of baby’s bib. His leathery nose had a painful raw patch.
The koala turned and plodded away in a bandy-legged waddle.
‘He’s disoriented,’ Scott said as the koala stopped beside a blackened tree trunk and sat down. Scott slid a bottle of water from his pocket, and stepped slowly towards the animal. The koala didn’t move. Scott crouched beside him and ran his hand over the koala’s sloping forehead. ‘You’re thirsty, boy, aren’t you?’ he said, unscrewing the lid and tilting the bottle against the animal’s mouth.
Understanding what was being offered, the creature raised its head and gulped the liquid.
‘There you go,’ Scott crooned with tenderness Lisa hadn’t heard before. ‘He’s dehydrated.’
The water level sank in steady chugs. Lisa’s heart turned to butter when the koala raised his paw and rested it on Scott’s hand. This was a different Scott. His voice was soft, every movement gentle and considered. He seemed to have tuned into the koala on a level beyond words.
‘We need to take him into the shelter,’ Scott said. ‘The pads of his paws are burnt.’
‘Does that mean he’ll spend the rest of his life in a zoo?’
‘No way! He’s lost his habitat, but we’ll find him another home close by. Won’t we, boy?’
The bottle was nearly drained. ‘Can you grab me another one?’ he asked quietly. ‘And a towel.’
Lisa sprinted back to the house and refilled her own water bottle. She ran upstairs and snatched her towel from the bathroom. The house reeked of smoke, but she thanked God most of it was still intact.
‘How come you knew he needed water?’ Lisa asked as the koala started on the second bottle.
‘I’ve done a bit of wildlife rescue—not that you’d know from the business with the snake.’
‘Really? I worked in a shelter in New York. Nothing glamorous. Cats, dogs . . . the occasional crocodile.’
‘There’s an orphaned wallaby in the back of the ute,’ he said. ‘His hind legs need dressing.’
‘Can I see him?’
She watched in awe as Scott wrapped the towel around the koala with the gentleness of a midwife handling a newborn. He stood up with liquid ease and, cradling the koala, crunched across the smoking earth.
‘Come over here,’ he called.
The back of the ute was covered with a silvery tarpaulin. Scott lifted a corner of the cover. Two large ears and liquid eyes appeared from under a blanket. ‘I’ve brought you a mate,’ he said, lowering the koala into a cardboard box next to the kangaroo.
Lisa noticed a dome-shaped blanket on the passenger seat and asked what it was.
Scott replaced the cover. ‘You’ll like that one.’ He strode around to the ute door and lifted the blanket. Inside the cage sat a cockatoo, its yellow crest flattened against its head. ‘I found her waddling around the orchard,’ he said. ‘At least, I think it’s a she.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Females have dark-red eyes. The males’ eyes are blacker. Hard to tell with cockatoos, though. Only way to be sure is to take them to McDonald’s and see which toilet they go into.’
The parrot tilted her head and blinked at Lisa. She offered a tentative hand. The parrot bowed and rubbed her scalp against Lisa’s finger.
‘She’s okay,’ he added. ‘But I reckon one of her wings is damaged. She can’t fly.’
Lisa broke into smiles. Tears of gratitude streamed down her blackened cheeks. ‘I know this bird!’
Later that night Lisa took a long shower. The water turned charcoal grey as it poured off her body. Her throat felt burnt. She shampooed twice. It was going to take forever to get rid of the smell of smoke. After the shower, she filled the bath with luke-warm water. Sinking into the depths, she thought of Scott. Maybe she’d been too quick to jump to conclusions about him. Perhaps his ravings at the medical centre meant something. Dipping her head under the water, she hoped she’d done the right thing accepting his invitation to visit the animal shelter in the morning. Whatever happened, she was going to need his help with the garden.
She rose early the next day. Relieved to have an excuse to leave her decimated property, she climbed into Dino and rattled down what was left of her driveway. Scott’s concept of ‘a couple of kilometres’ along the road to Maldon turned out to be closer to ten. If Lisa hadn’t been so anxious about missing the turnoff, she might’ve enjoyed resting her eyes on the green-grey countryside, the hum of the road unravelling under the tyres.
She knew she’d reached the right place when she saw Scott’s ute roughly parked in the gravel. The house was what she’d expected of Juliet—a wooden Edwardian villa nestled behind a tall hedge.
The gate opened with a gracious creak. Lisa made her way up a brick path lined with lavender bushes. A dream catcher swayed in the breeze. Scott’s boots lay like a pair of drunken sailors under the step. She tapped on the door.
Juliet’s shape appeared in a shaft of light beaming from the end of a woody corridor. ‘Is that you, Lisa? Come on in.’
Lisa hesitated. Was it one of those quasi-spiritual shoeless houses? To be safe, she shook off her Mary Janes, the same ones she’d worn to the dance, and padded past sepia photos interspersed with splashes of modern art.
There was nothing fussy about the room at the end of the hall. Plates and babies’ bottles were scattered over the workbench, waiting to be washed. A pile of laundry lay slumped in a basket on one of the chairs. A calendar from the Castlemaine Arts Fair hung above the toaster. Almost every day had a name scribbled on it.
‘That’s the volunteer roster,’ Juliet said. ‘Would you like to sign up?’
Lisa said she’d loved to, as soon as she’d finished her book, which wasn’t far away. She asked after the koala. Juliet said she’d dressed the burns on his feet the night before. He was sedated and on a drip now. They were hoping for the best.
‘Impressive work you do here,’ Lisa said.
‘Oh there are hundreds of shelters like these all over Australia,’ Juliet said, spooning instant coffee into mugs. ‘They’re all run by trained volunteers like us.’ She smiled. ‘I hear you’re a bit of a hero yourself.’
Lisa’s earlobes tingled. ‘You mean the Wrights? Oh, that was nothing. I just acted on instinct.’
‘I don’t know what they would’ve done without you.’
Lisa shrugged the compliment off. She was more interested in hearing about Juliet’s shelter and the animals they rescued. Bush fires and road accidents were only part of the problem for native wildlife, Juliet explained. With every new subdivision, animal habitats were destroyed. As people built new homes for themselves, native animals lost theirs. ‘We do what we can to get them back on their feet and into the wild again,’ Juliet said, absentmindedly spiking up her hair. She was one of those women who could wear a sack and gumboots and still look like she was going to a fashion show.
From her time at Bideawee animal shelter, Lisa was n
o stranger to people doing great things for animals. But Juliet’s dedication was awe-inspiring. Thanks to the roster system, when Juliet was working at the garden centre, someone else would oversee the furry patients. Some baby animals needed feeding around the clock. Juliet’s helpers often stayed over and set their alarms to make sure their wards didn’t miss a feed.
‘You have to be psychologically tough to do this work,’ Juliet said. ‘Some of the injuries are terrible. We lose a lot of animals. It can be devastating.’
‘Make mine a skinny soy latte.’ Scott grinned from a doorway.
Juliet laughed and handed him a steaming mug. He swamped it with four sugars. The teaspoon looked like a toothpick in his fingers as he clattered it about.
Lisa’s gaze wandered to Juliet. Her pretty face glowed with affection as she watched Scott drown his coffee in milk. Then Scott caught Juliet’s eye and gave her a knowing smile.
Heat prickled on Lisa’s neck as she remembered the kiss in the doctor’s surgery. Was there something between Scott and Juliet? How could she have been so stupid!
Lisa wasn’t in love with Scott, anyway. She had no claim on him. He was hardly her type.
The words of Mr Rochester echoed in her head. You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love.
‘By the way,’ Scott said after a loud slurp. ‘Someone’s waiting to see you.’ He clattered his mug on the bench and lifted a blanket-covered cage from under the table. ‘The vet took a look at her this morning. Her wing’s damaged but it’s not too bad,’ he said, lifting the cover. ‘She might even learn to fly again.’
The cockatoo dipped her head at Lisa and raised a claw in salute.
‘If she can survive a fire and that cat of yours she’ll get through anything,’ he added. ‘Take her home and see how she goes.’
‘You can come through and see the other animals, if you like,’ Juliet said. ‘Try to keep quiet. Noise startles them. And don’t make any sudden movements.’
Lisa followed Juliet and Scott to what would’ve been the back porch in the old days. The space had been enlarged and enclosed, and the windows shaded. Mattresses and boxes were arranged around the perimeter of the floor.
As Lisa’s eyes adjusted to the dim, she saw the outline of a wheelchair. In it sat a young man with long dark curls and looks that belonged on a movie screen. The teenager was cradling a wallaby and feeding it with a baby’s bottle. The tender expression on his face was worthy of St Francis.
‘This is my son, Todd,’ Scott said, clearing his throat.
Todd looked up at Lisa through dark brown eyes and smiled.
Chapter 27
Later that night, Lisa stood on a chair and felt along the top shelf for the packet of Tim Tams she’d bought the other day. There was no point watching her figure any more. She ripped the packet open, shoved two biscuits in her mouth and eased herself back to ground level.
The cockatoo watched from her cage on the kitchen bench. Lisa broke a Tim Tam in half and poked a piece through the wire. The bird accepted the gift with a gracious claw. Lisa had grown fond of the parrot. It was a wild animal, though. She’d have to set it free to find a new home soon.
Mojo pounced on her lap as she sat in front of the computer. Running a hand through his mane, she reached for another biscuit. His tail flicked languidly. Tomorrow she would face the horrendous task of cleaning up after the fire. Tonight she needed to focus her attention elsewhere.
CHAPTER 35
Emily knew it was over the day she found Frederick in the arms of Amy, the village barmaid.
‘Farewell, Frederick,’ Emily said, concealing the ache in her heart.
‘How can I live without you?’ he cried.
‘I imagine you and Amy will manage perfectly well.’
His eyes turned dark as Guinness.
‘And you, my love?’ he asked, his eyes swimming with tears.
Emily straightened her shawl, turned away from him and strode back across the moors. She went home to drown her hurt and rage in her inkpot. Man free and in the prime of health, she produced the first of many great novels.
The End
Lisa thought she’d feel triumphant typing those last two words. She should’ve been overjoyed at finishing the book—a week before deadline, too. Instead, she felt like a dishrag wrung of its last drop of water. Now a week or two of redrafting weighed down on her. She couldn’t face the thought of wading back through the manuscript, eyeballing the inadequacy of her writing on every page. Simpler to delete the whole file and send it whirling into cyberspace.
The biscuit packet was empty. She sank into a pool of guilt and made a cup of peppermint tea. It was hard to imagine why Scott had kept Todd hidden away from her like some shameful secret. He had every reason to be proud of his son. Wise and funny, Todd was a fantastic kid. She’d never seen a young person with such empathy with animals.
She could see Scott was fiercely protective and devoted to Todd, though he’d clearly been stretching the truth about taking him white-water rafting and horse riding. But that was hardly surprising. Her relationship with Scott—not that there was one—had been based on a series of lies from the start. Since seeing Scott and Juliet at the animal shelter that morning, Lisa had been piecing things together. No wonder Scott had shown up to work at her place when it suited him. All the stories about his son needing him had been convenient excuses. He was in love with Juliet, who was an amazing woman. He had to be. He’d probably stayed countless nights at her place. No wonder Juliet had been on edge about Scott taking Lisa to the bush dance. Obviously there was something going on between them.
It was past midnight by the time Lisa put a towel over the cockatoo’s cage and climbed the stairs in Mojo’s wake. Her heart was as heavy as one of the flagstones on her kitchen floor. The Brontë sisters knew how it felt to run away from a place with their tails between their legs. Charlotte couldn’t hack more than a few months as a governess. Emily gave up her teaching job in Halifax after six months. They scuttled gratefully back to the moors.
Lisa had been nuts to move to this harsh country. She could barely afford to buy Trumperton Manor, let alone renovate it. The damage was going to cost a fortune to clean up. Her insurance didn’t extend to bush fires. Now the stables were gone, she’d never find out what happened there because no one would talk to her as she had no friends anyway.
There was no option but to cut her losses and put the house on the market. Once it was sold, she’d buy a discount economy fare back to New York, where she’d probably spend the rest of her life a bag lady. And to top it off, tomorrow was her birthday. Again.
She’d been so desperate to finish Three Sisters: Emily, she’d told Maxine and Ted to keep away. Just as well: she needed to conserve her energy more than ever, now. Besides, there was no reason to celebrate the anniversary of Jake walking out on her.
Collapsing into bed, Lisa fitted her mouthguard and earplugs, then lay on her side, waiting for the comforting plonk of Mojo landing on the covers. As the cat snuggled into the bend of her knees, she dropped into a chasm of sleep.
Lisa was woken by Mojo meowing and clawing at the curtains. She checked her phone and fought off disappointment: with California eighteen hours behind Australia, she couldn’t expect a message from Portia this early. She slipped into her kimono and opened the balcony doors. If only something magical had happened overnight. But the air smelt like the day after a cannibal feast and the view that had once sent her soul soaring was now a source of dread.
Lisa’s throat tightened at the sight of Maxine’s Golf shimmering in the driveway. She relaxed a little when she saw the Kombi van parked behind it. Ted’s alkali always neutralised Maxine’s acid. To her surprise, Doug’s old blue Honda now rattled down the drive. What was the Grey Army doing there on their day off? A silver car glided in behind it, then another. She rubbed her eyes. It was some kind of invasion.
‘Yoohoo!’ Maxine called,
waving up at her. ‘I’ve brought muffins.’
Lisa waved a finger in return. She could see Ted and his friends at work gathering burnt branches and dragging them down the driveway towards the road. A man she recognised from the bush dance lifted a chainsaw from the back of his truck. Doug directed him to the remains of a burnt pine that was on the brink of toppling.
Lisa climbed into her bush-whacking pants and green check shirt from Target’s menswear section. Her blue Cancer Council hat with a brim as wide as a coral reef completed the look. Hurrying downstairs to the kitchen, she stepped into her lace-up boots. She could hear the sound of more vehicles arriving.
The cockatoo squawked from under her towel. Lisa flicked the towel off. Agitated, the bird clawed the cage door. The poor creature craved freedom. As soon as Lisa prised the cage door open, the bird pushed her way out and flapped onto the floor.
Dexter from the Women’s Monthly sailed through the back door, brandishing a bottle of whiskey. The cockatoo took the opportunity to waddle through his legs and hop down the steps.
‘I think a peace offering’s called for,’ Dexter said. ‘Single malt.’
Whiskey made Lisa gag, but she appreciated the gesture. She took a glass from the cupboard.
‘Heavens no! Far too early in the day for me,’ Dexter said. ‘I mean, what is it, ten o’clock?’
‘10.37, to be precise.’ Maxine swooshed in and spread her arms like someone parking a plane. ‘Happy birthday!’
‘Let’s save it for another year,’ Lisa said, allowing herself to be crushed into Maxine’s bosom. She waited for the inevitable tirade of ‘I told you so’s’.
‘I’m so glad you’re safe,’ Maxine whispered. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Gordon’s organising the traffic, telling them where to park and whatnot. Go outside and meet your people.’
Her people? Mojo led Lisa out the back door. Dexter decided to stay inside and check that the whiskey hadn’t gone off. A semicircle of figures stood around the blackened ruins of the servants’ quarters.
