True Blue

by Sasha Wasley

  ‘Hey, Miss Patz!’

  ‘Cam!’

  It was him, standing beside Tia, their bikes on the ground at the bottom of her porch steps.

  ‘Oh my God! Cameron, are you okay?’

  Cameron wore his usual grin. ‘Of course I’m okay. We’re on our way to school.’

  ‘Come in, come in!’ She held the door open and ushered them inside. ‘Have you got time for a drink? Something to eat?’

  ‘I’m all good,’ Cameron said, and Tia shook her head with a quick smile.

  ‘What happened, Cam? Have you been in prison all this time?’

  ‘Nah, just one night. The cops checked the CCTV from the protest and it showed I never smashed nothing. I was lucky the cameras were there.’

  Relief hit Free, then an instant later she was filled with outrage. ‘I just can’t believe they kept you in the lockup overnight! It must have been awful. Why didn’t they release you like they released me? So unfair.’

  ‘No, that was because of Mum. She got them to keep me in overnight to teach me a lesson for sneaking out.’

  Free’s jaw dropped. ‘She —’

  ‘She’s bad-ass, my mum,’ he said with a tinge of pride.

  Free gathered her wits. ‘I hope you don’t hate the police after being falsely accused.’

  ‘Your boyfriend, you mean?’ Cameron shook his head. ‘He’s all right. He was the one who found the video showing I did nothin’ wrong.’

  Free was silenced.

  ‘Sorry we woke you up,’ he added. ‘Tia wanted to see you. She told me all about what Mr Hamilton did. What a dick.’

  Tia finally got a word in. ‘I just wanted to tell you. My mum, she works at the airport. She sold Mr Hamilton a one-way ticket to Perth last night.’

  Free gaped. ‘He’s already gone?’

  Tia nodded, a slight sparkle in her eye. Cameron stretched his arms above his head, his grin broadening.

  ‘I guess he didn’t feel up to coming back for more,’ he said. ‘Not after Ms Lincoln tore poor little Aidy a new one.’

  ‘Are you going to help the Year Tens redo their tiles now, Miss Paterson?’ Tia asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Those poor kids, she thought. Victims of Aidan Hamilton’s ego.

  ‘Callie will be happy. She wanted to be in your class all along.’ Tia checked her watch. ‘Cam, we’d better go or we’ll be late for first bell.’

  Free waved her students off and looked at Finn’s porch. She held her kimono closed so she wouldn’t flash her knickers and singlet to the street, and clambered over the divider. She knocked, heart skipping.

  No answer.

  Her shoulders slumped. Free climbed back over and went inside her unit. Where was he? She headed for her phone to see if he’d answered her message while she was asleep, but a knock behind her made her jump. She dashed back to open the front door.

  Finn was there, those Kimberley-creek eyes darkened with weariness. Hope rushed through her and her head emptied of all coherent conversation. Oh good Lord, how she’d missed him. Longed for him. This was a man whose soul spoke to hers. This was fate, goddammit. She had to try.

  She prayed to the god of hasty words that he would be willing to listen.

  ‘I heard your knock,’ Finn said. ‘I was sleeping and couldn’t get to the door in time. I only got home at three.’

  Free stepped back to let him inside. ‘So you’ve only had a couple of hours’ sleep?’

  ‘Yeah.’ His voice was low. ‘I’ve got the day off today to catch up. I couldn’t get my head straight yesterday so Briggsy told me to take a day.’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  Finn kept his eyes on hers while she struggled to find the right words. ‘Finn, I need to talk to you.’ She crossed to the table to take a seat and checked that he was coming too. He joined her. ‘It’s been a weird couple of days,’ she said. ‘The protest and the arrests. Then I had trouble at work. Aidan said something that made me think Beth had manipulated things behind my back to get me the residency. Turned out she hadn’t, though. Then we had a firing disaster with the tiles and it looked like my fault. But it wasn’t.’

  His eyebrows rose. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a minute. First, I want to talk about what happened on Sunday.’

  He nodded. And waited. An anguished yowl rose from somewhere below them, making Free start.

  Finn stood. ‘What the hell? Was that Donald?’

  Free dashed for the door. She scrambled down the steps, Finn right behind her, and peered into the gloom beneath the porch. Max was there, lying curled up in the dirt, eyes half-closed. He twitched his head and eyed them, giving another of those horrible long cries. Finn crouched down and tried to climb in and get him, but it was hopeless. He was far too big. Free dropped to her knees and commando-crawled into the dusty, cobwebbed space under the house, hampered by her kimono. She scooped Max up. He was weak and floppy, utterly unable to hang on to her or support his own weight like he normally did. She held him against herself as best she could, struggling out between the timber stumps.

  ‘What’s happened to him?’ said Finn.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Free stumbled up the steps. Did she have a cat carrier? Of course not. A box? A basket – she had a plastic basket in her wardrobe. Cradling Max, she ran for the bedroom and yanked open her wardrobe door. Everything was in the way. She used one arm to haul out a box of photos, then Finn caught on to what she was after and took over. He pulled out her roller suitcase and her sunhats, and finally got to the basket. He dumped its contents – old university papers – onto the carpet and shoved in an abandoned towel to make a soft bed. Gently, Free lay the limp cat on top.

  ‘Here,’ said Finn. He thrust a discarded dress at her and she flapped her arms out of her kimono so she could pull the dress over her head.

  They ran for the car and got in, Finn balancing the basket on his lap. Free started the ignition with a trembling hand.

  ‘Hold on, Max, we’ll get you some help,’ she said. ‘The vet will fix you, I promise.’

  Finn had his gaze on Max, keeping a hand on the cat, who was silent and still in his basket. Free kept glancing at them until she could stand it no more.

  ‘Is he —’

  ‘No, I think he’s still with us,’ said Finn.

  She pulled in at the vet clinic and peered at Max. His eyes flickered. Thank goodness! She raced around the car to help Finn with the door. Grasping the basket, he ran into the clinic, Free right behind him. The receptionist took a quick look, then led them straight through to the examination room.

  The grey-haired vet checked Max over. ‘It could be baiting, but I suspect a snakebite,’ she said, palpating Max’s abdomen. ‘We’ll do some blood tests. I’ll need to take him out the back. Do you want to wait, or —?’

  ‘We’ll wait,’ said Free.

  They returned to the little waiting room and sat on a bench.

  ‘Snakebite.’ Finn shook his head, staring at the floor in front of him.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the receptionist. ‘While you’re waiting, do you mind if I grab some details about your cat?’

  ‘Of course,’ Free said.

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘Male,’ Free said.

  ‘Sterilised,’ Finn added.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Donald.’ Finn said it at the same moment as Free said, ‘Max.’

  The woman waited. Finn glanced at Free.

  ‘Max,’ he said, to Free’s surprise.

  The woman tapped on the keyboard. ‘Last name?’

  ‘Paterson,’ he said, but Free interrupted.

  ‘No! Kelly. Max Kelly.’

  Finn caught her eye and his mouth tugged up on one side.

  The receptionist finished taking details and the two of them sat in the waiting area for half an hour, mostly silent. At length, Free scrounged in her handbag for change and bought a pack of Lions mints off the front counter. She offered them to Finn, who shook his head, then she
anxiously crunched her way through the whole lot. At last the vet reappeared, beckoning to them. They followed her out the back, where Max was lying in a cage, hooked up to a drip. He gave them a vacant stare, his inner eyelid membranes partially covering his eyes.

  ‘It’s almost certainly a snakebite but we’re not sure what type of snake at this stage.’ The vet opened the cage door so they could pat him. ‘I don’t want to seem insensitive, but antivenom is expensive. Do you have a limit on how much you can spend on him?’

  Free stroked Max’s soft little head. ‘Huh?’

  ‘What I mean is, if the treatment cost reaches a certain amount, we can call you to check what you want to do before we proceed.’

  Free started to say there was no limit, then she remembered she only had a bit of money sitting in the bank. Certainly not enough to say the funds were unlimited. She looked at Finn.

  ‘I could probably manage two thousand, if I use my credit card,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘I’ve been trying to put a bit of money away. I can manage about the same. Let us know if it’s going higher than that,’ he said to the vet.

  ‘Leave him with us and I’ll give you a call as soon as we know anything.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll survive?’ Finn asked the vet.

  The vet pressed her lips together. ‘It’s pretty bad. But cats are quite resistant to venom and poisoning, so we can only hope. You found him under the house, didn’t you say? You might want to call in a snake handler to take a look around your backyard, if that’s the case. I know a good snake guy. He’s a teacher at the local high school. Max Drummond.’

  Free couldn’t help a choked laugh, and Finn made a sound to match. Free bent over to kiss Max goodbye, her tears dripping onto his fur. Finn reached in his big hand to give the cat’s ears a rub.

  ‘It’s okay, Dona— Max. Hang in there, little dude, and then you can come home and have an extra serve of pilchard loaf, I promise.’

  They left the cat with the vet and returned to the car.

  ‘Poor Max,’ Finn said as they drove along the busy Wednesday morning streets of Mount Clair.

  Free was silent, tears welling again.

  ‘What a hell of a few days it’s been,’ Finn added.

  She felt him watching her but neither spoke. Free parked near the bridge over the Herne River and climbed out. They needed to talk, and being by the river would give her courage. Finn got out as well, but when she glanced back, Free found him hovering by the car.

  ‘Come for a walk with me,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  He joined her. They crunched over the yellowing grass of the foreshore down to the riverbank. The Herne was a lazy, peaceful flow beneath the bright blue sky, tracts of pungent red mud exposed on both sides. Free came to a halt and turned to face Finn, sick with nerves. He stopped short, his expression mirroring her feelings.

  He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. ‘Free, are we . . .?’

  She jumped in. ‘Yes. Yes. I’m so sorry I judged you.’ The light came back into Finn’s eyes in an instant and Free’s heart leapt. ‘Beth said something that made me realise how brave and true you are. I’m glad that you took a stand against me, Finn.’

  He burst into laughter. ‘You’re the weirdest, most gorgeous woman I’ve ever met.’

  But Free was completely serious. ‘I was wrong to assume you didn’t care about Cameron. I should have known better. Cam told me it was his mum who got you to keep him in the lockup overnight. And that you helped by finding a video that showed he was innocent.’

  He grimaced. ‘Yeah. I waded through eight hours of footage from four different cameras to find those ten seconds of video. Nothing of you. But the CCTV caught a couple of other interesting moments – including Cameron getting shoved through the gates against his will, and some dickhead putting a hammer in his hands. He was just standing there holding it when I grabbed him.’

  ‘He was never going to smash anything.’

  ‘I know,’ said Finn. ‘I just needed to find proof.’

  She blinked. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It would have been out of character for him.’ He caught her eye. ‘And I trust your judgement.’

  ‘My judgement?’

  He grinned. ‘Mostly.’

  Free caught her breath. Had . . . had they done it? Had they managed to work things out? Finn wore a smile and that was reassurance enough for her. She lunged at him, grabbing the sides of his face and dragging him down so she could kiss his lips. Oh God, that was good. His smell, his warmth – his strength. He slipped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him.

  ‘I love you,’ she said when her lips were her own again.

  Finn’s whole face changed, lighting up with utter joy in the bright daylight. He tugged her even closer.

  ‘I love you so damn much, Free. I’ve never loved anyone like this and I never will again. I’ve wanted to tell you for ages but I didn’t want to scare you off.’

  ‘Scare me off? No way. You’re the one guy I want to hear that from.’

  He buried his face in her hair and Free gave in to the giant sob that had been trying to escape.

  ‘Finn, what if Max dies?’ The words spilled out.

  He held her tight. ‘Let’s keep hoping. He’s a fighter.’

  Finn drove them home and made Free sit down while he put together an omelette for their breakfast. Although she swore she wasn’t hungry, she ate it and felt better afterwards. She checked the time. It had been over an hour since they’d left Max, so she braced herself and picked up her phone to dial the vet.

  ‘All Creatures, this is Lesley.’

  ‘Hi, it’s Freya Paterson here. I just wanted to check on Max.’

  ‘Hold on,’ the receptionist answered. ‘I’ll speak to the vet.’

  She waited, heart thumping, her eyes on Finn on the couch beside her.

  The vet’s voice sounded on the line. ‘Freya?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Max is alive, but he’s very unwell. We found the bite – it’s inside his mouth. We think it might have been a taipan.’

  ‘It bit him inside his mouth?’

  ‘He could have been hunting it, or even defending himself – hissing. Whatever the case, it got him just under his top lip. I’m very concerned about him, I’m afraid. I’m not convinced he’s going to make it. His vision seems to have gone – he’s not responding to light stimuli and his blood tests show a lot of internal bleeding. Taipan venom is haemotoxic, which means it stops the blood from coagulating. Max is passing blood in his urine. That indicates his system has been seriously damaged by the venom.’

  Finn’s eyes grew worried, watching Free’s reaction to the vet’s words. She hit the speaker button so he could listen too.

  ‘Is he in pain?’ Free asked this with dread. The idea of Max in pain was worse than the thought that he might die.

  ‘He’s not showing signs of pain, but he’s gone into a bit of a shutdown, I suppose, so his body can try to heal.’ The vet paused. ‘Look, I don’t know how this one’s going to go. He’s survived the first few hours, which is good, but sometimes when an animal gets bitten by a snake, the worst comes later. If he survives the initial injury, the toxins may still cause serious ongoing damage that will give him poor quality of life. It’s okay to stay hopeful, but I urge you to be realistic. If he survives but ends up with long-term damage, it might still be kinder to put him to sleep.’

  The woman’s gentle words made Free’s throat get tight. ‘I understand.’

  When the call ended, they tidied up the kitchen and sat together on the couch. Free curled up with her head against Finn’s chest, half watching the morning news, half focused on her inner thoughts. There was grief for Max, lingering worries over the river and the Year Tens’ tiles, but joy – delirious joy – that she and Finn were held together by this love. He bent down to kiss the top of her head and she wound her arm more tightly around his waist.

  Things weren’t perfect, but they s
ure felt better while she sat alongside the great big dose of wonderful that was Finn.

  Free could see that Finn badly needed sleep, so she ordered him into her bed and sat down to write a plan for remaking the tiles with the Year Tens. In the afternoon, she heard him waking up, so Free joined him. The two of them lay side by side, waiting for the vet to reopen for evening surgery so they could find out if Max had survived the day. Free took the opportunity to tell Finn all about the misunderstanding with Beth, and Aidan’s misadventures with the wrong glaze.

  ‘You had a lot to cope with over the last few days,’ he remarked. ‘Good thing you’re so resourceful.’

  They watched the ceiling in companionable silence for a few minutes. She would like to hear him sing. Would he be up to singing for her, under the circumstances? Maybe he was too sad about Max.

  She squeezed his hand. ‘Hey. I’ve been thinking about when my contract’s up.’

  Finn tensed, just a little. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I don’t think I want to go back to live at Patersons. I need another adventure to look forward to.’

  He laughed but it sounded wistful. ‘Watch out, world, here comes Free. Where will you go?’

  ‘I’ll have to move out of 17A. I won’t have a steady job, but maybe I could make a go of the art supplies thing with Bostons, and giving private lessons. What’s the policy on couples living in these government-subsidised houses?’

  Finn lay completely still beside her. ‘You want to live with me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Although her nerves fluttered, her tone was firm. ‘Yes, I want to live with you – quite a lot, actually. And maybe at the end of the year, if we save up our money, and if you have enough leave, we could go see your parents in Ireland for a few weeks. And your sister, and her kinda-average husband. And your little nephew, Henry.’ She paused. ‘Our nephew.’

  There was a long silence. ‘Do you mean that?’ he managed at last.

  She turned her head and the joy in Finn’s eyes threatened to make her own happiness spill over into tears. Again. She took a breath to steady her emotions.

  ‘Yes.’

  Finn flipped himself over the top of her and kissed her hard. Holy shamole. Free slipped her hands around the back of his big, strong neck and completely forgot that she’d wanted to hear him sing – until they were interrupted by a text message beeping through on her mobile. She grabbed her phone to toss it away from her but, as she did so, caught sight of the words ‘All Creatures Clinic’.