Hold On to Me

by Victoria Purman

  It would also have to become the headquarters of Operation Survive if she was going to get back to business as soon as she could.

  Mouse performed an acrobatic leap onto the table and looked at Stella expectantly, a purr rattling her ribcage.

  Stella stroked the silky white fur and Mouse arched her back in appreciation. ‘You want to be in on the action, too, huh?’ She tugged a crust from one of her pieces of toast and offered it to the cat, who sniffed then refused it. Her life might have been crashing and—literally—burning all around her—but some things would never change. She’d managed to adopt the fussiest cat in the country.

  Stella sipped her coffee and made one very important call.

  It went straight through to Ian’s message bank. She listened to his message and took a deep breath. ‘Ian and Lee. I don’t know what else to say but how awful everything is. I’m just glad you’re both okay. Courtney told me you’ve been talking to the police about what happened. Whatever you need, I’m here. Please call me when you get this.’

  In the five years since she’d moved back to South Australia, Stella had slowly made some good friends. She was cautious and kept to herself for a long while, still recovering from what had happened in Sydney and finding solace in her own company. Some people remembered her from growing up over at Middle Point, like Julia Jones, but she was careful with those friendships. She wasn’t the person she had been when she left at eighteen. Gradually, she’d found people she liked. Ian and Lee. Summer. Julia’s friend, Lizzie. Stella didn’t have many friends but they were good ones. And knowing that Ian and Lee were okay made their loss easier to bear.

  She rang in to listen to her messages.

  ‘Stella.’ It was Duncan McNamee. He had a business in Port Elliot too and lived next door. ‘You must know what’s happened by now. I looked for you down on The Strand and couldn’t find you. And then I knocked on your front door and you weren’t there, either. I hope you’re okay. Call me. Anything you need, let me know. Anything, babe, you know that.’

  Delete. With force.

  ‘Hi Stella, it’s Julia.’ A breathless voice. ‘I can’t believe it. I’ve just heard what’s happened. It’s—Mary, put down the saucepan—that’s it, sweetheart. It’s so awful. I’m good in a crisis. It’s what I do, remember? Ring me back.’

  Then the next call, just as breathless as the last one.

  ‘It’s Lizzie. Julia just called me. Shit a brick. I hope everything’s okay. If you need anything, call. Come and have lunch with us at the pub. How terrible. The fire, I mean, not the pub. Thinking of you. Bye.’

  The fourth. Not breathless at all. Quite matter of fact, actually. ‘It’s Ry Blackburn, Stella. If there’s anything I can do—if there’s anything the company can do—you know we’ll do it. Julia’ll kill me if I don’t do what I can to help fix her favourite shop. Seriously, I mean it, and you know Dan and I can do the work.’

  The fifth. To the point. ‘Stella. Dan McSwaine. Ry told me what’s happened. That’s bad news. Whatever you need. I can get a crew over there today to clean up if you need it. Cheers.’

  Stella sipped her coffee for a moment or two. Let the caffeine do its work. The concern she heard in all the calls so far buoyed her a little. A lot, actually. And it was one thing for her friends to ring, but for the men to call too, and with such concrete offers of help—she was definitely starting to feel better. Blackburn McSwaine Developments was a great company, and she knew Dan and Ry could get the best tradies on the coast to work for her. It was worth a thought.

  The sixth phone call was the paparazzi.

  ‘Hey, Stella, it’s Joe Blake. Yeah, I know I’m from the media and no, don’t delete this message without listening to it. Really sorry to hear about what happened. We’re covering it for the Southern Gazette and I’m wondering if you want to say anything about the fire. A certain regular customer of yours—and you know I mean Dr Anna Morelli, my significant other and the mother of my child—called from the road and she’s desperate to know when you’ll be open for business again. So will half my readers, I’m sure. Give me a call.’

  And then as the seventh message began, the hysterical factor was upped considerably.

  ‘Stella? It’s Anna Morelli here. Oh my god, I can’t believe what’s happened. Now listen to me. If you have smoke inhalation, you need to go straight to the hospital. Don’t mess around with that. And if you have asthma—do you?—make sure you have your puffer with you at all times, bella. I’m on my way back to Adelaide to work this week but we’ve got it all sorted. My brother is a builder. I’ve called him and given him your number and told him he has to call you. I can’t believe it! I love your shop. We all do. Especially the shoes. Oh, what you must be going through. And all those shoes that were lost. It breaks my heart. You know we’ll do whatever we can. Bye.’

  Stella felt like crying again, though her eyes stayed resolutely dry. It healed her heart to know these people wouldn’t let her go through this alone. Julia Jones and Lizzie Blake were right there with words of comfort. Ry Blackburn and Dan McSwaine had offered up their construction company to help her. Those guys were transforming some rehabilitated industrial land at Middle Point into a major new sustainable housing development, but were obviously willing to delay whatever they were doing to send assistance. And Anna, whose partner was Lizzie’s brother Joe, had even given her a builder if she wanted one. Anna was a passionate Italian with an enthusiasm for stilettos and was one of Style by Stella’s best customers. Stella hadn’t known before now that Anna had a brother and wasn’t sure exactly what to do with all these incredible offers of support.

  All those people were more than a tight bunch of friends and siblings. They were a family, and Stella had watched from a distance over the past few years as their lives had moved on in happy and loving directions. Julia and Ry had been reunited a couple of years earlier when Julia returned to Middle Point from Melbourne after her mother died, and they now had little Mary. Lizzie and Dan, who was Ry’s best mate, had found each other after Dan’s terrible accident and they were married now too. Lizzie’s brother Joe had felt the pull of his hometown, and had come home from Sydney to find the love of his life, Anna.

  If that part of the world had some mystical romantic power, Stella had never fallen prey to it. And she didn’t regret it one bit. She was safer that way. It wasn’t even as if her links to the area went back forever. She hadn’t grown up on the south coast; she had moved down when she was ten years old and had met Julia years later when they were teenagers. They’d worked together in the Middle Point general store, sharing part-time work for two years over the busy summer and holiday seasons. Stella had been shy back then but had recognised from the outset that they were kindred spirits: two young women with a plan to get out of their sleepy beachside town as fast as they could. They’d both worked hard for that dream and achieved it, slowly losing touch as they’d moved to the two big cities on the east coast. In the days before Facebook, it was a little easier for friendships to slip away.

  Stella had been gone for twelve years. She’d studied a Bachelor of Design in Fashion and Textiles in Sydney, working in boutiques to support herself, and to learn the trade on the shop floor. Her vintage style caught people’s eye and it wasn’t long before she had a stall at the Paddington Markets, before being poached by a boutique owner in Newtown. When the stunningly eccentric Miranda North decided to retire to the northern beaches, Stella went to the bank and borrowed more money than she had ever dreamed possible and bought the business. She didn’t tinker with anything about it. It was working and she had found her place. Ten years in Sydney and she was set. Had reinvented herself. She was a success. She’d told no one about her past and there was no way they would ever find out. Sydney was the kind of place to which people from all over the world came to reinvent themselves. When she first arrived, she was Stella from Adelaide, that was all. And after a few years, she was simply Stella. And for a decade, life in Sydney had been good, verging on great.r />
  Until it had all gone spectacularly wrong.

  Mouse meowed and Stella patted the cat again. ‘You really are a big sook, aren’t you?’

  Stella bit into her cold toast and, as she was chewing, savouring the delicious lemony spread, the phone rang again. She didn’t recognise the number, so she let it go through to her message bank, then dialled voicemail and listened to it a few minutes later.

  ‘Stella.’

  Then there was a pause down the line. Just enough time for goose bumps to rise on her arms.

  ‘This is Luca Morelli. My sister Anna called me. I’m sorry about what’s happened to your shop. I might be able to help you out.’

  Then the deep, velvety voice mentioned some numbers, perhaps there were ten of them, but Stella had stopped listening. She replayed his message. Listened to it again. That throaty voice, slow and considered, as rich and sweet as a Spanish sherry, was the most soothing thing she’d heard in her morning from hell.

  She listened to his message one more time. Closed her eyes and blocked out everything else but his voice.

  She didn’t delete it, vowing to think about it later.

  Stella opened her eyes, straightened her shoulders with a new resolve. She had work to do, and a shop to rebuild—once she got her insurance claims sorted out. And the most important thing she could do right that second, while her coffee cup was still warm in her hands, was to find a way to get the word out to her loyal customers that she wasn’t down for the count.

  That she wasn’t beaten.

  She scrolled through her contacts and pressed Joe Blake’s number. While she waited for him to pick up the call, she already had her story worked out and the headline went something like this: I’m back, baby.

  ‘Hey, Stella.’

  ‘Hi, Joe.’

  ‘Shit. You’ve had a day and a half and it’s only ten o’clock. What’s happening with your shop? Is it all gone? The cops won’t tell me anything at the moment. What did they tell you? Was it deliberately lit? Was anyone hurt? Are you all right?’

  ‘If you stop with the twenty questions and listen up, I’ve got a comment for your story about the fire. About Ian and Lee. And about my shop. You ready?’

  CHAPTER

  3

  By early afternoon, Courtney had called and informed Stella that the fire cause investigators had completed their inspection and she could head to her shop and assess the damage. After she changed into work clothes and walked with a heavy heart back around the corner to The Strand, it hadn’t taken much more than a glance through the broken glass of the front window for Stella to realise how much work she had to do.

  There were still no tears—she was determined there would be no tears—but she felt shattered. The weight that had lodged in her chest that morning was now lead.

  Stella pushed the front door. It was half open, smashed and splintered. The little Open/Closed sign she’d painted herself four years earlier, and which she’d hung so proudly on her first day of trading, was nowhere to be seen. The large front window, which had once housed stunning window displays to match the seasons, was covered by a sheet of plywood.

  When she looked further inside, her gasp echoed in the trashed space. Her first step was right into a puddle of water: soggy plaster squelched under her runners. Another step and there was the crackle of broken glass underfoot; shards from the front window littered the ground. Above her, large sections of the ceiling had collapsed and there was more plaster, soggy clumps of insulation and a fine layer of mud over everything.

  She’d had hours and hours to think about the likely damage and she could now see that it was worse than she’d imagined. The fire had been contained to the café next door, which was now unrecognisable—a blackened shell of melted plastic and disaster. She didn’t want to think about how devastated her friends Ian and Lee were. They’d lost everything too. They’d kept her in coffee over the years, hand delivering her double espressos, even in the middle of tourist season when they had customers four deep at the counter. She knew they’d been planning to retire and were going to use the proceeds from the sale of the café to buy a four-wheel drive and explore Australia. She hoped that without a business to sell they’d still be able to afford that dream.

  ‘Four years,’ she said quietly into the hand she’d clamped over her mouth.

  Four years of work, every day all day. How many days had it been? The answer came to Stella in a millisecond. Nearly fifteen hundred. She’d never been good at numbers before but steep learning curves meant she’d learnt damn fast. You didn’t need fancy brain-training apps when you’d faced bankruptcy.

  Every single thing in the shop—the beautiful clothes, colourful costume jewellery, stylish shoes, aromatic organic candles, Moroccan leather stools, silk scarves, summer hats—was an unrecognisable, soggy mess on the floor of her boutique. Garments had been blasted off hangers and lay on the ground like the jumble of a teenage boy’s bedroom. Jewellery and shoes had been swept from their displays and the shelves themselves lay like scattered cards on the ground. Leather purses and handbags lay misshapen. Everything had been crushed underfoot and drenched.

  A couple of sheets of galvanised iron were off the roof, letting the light invade the space through the ruined ceiling. She peered up at the clear blue late-November sky. The iron could be replaced, couldn’t it? Some new sheets, nails and a hammer would do the trick, right? She huffed. God, what the hell would she know? She was a businesswoman and a fashionista, not a building inspector. Give her a spreadsheet and she could make the numbers sing, or a look book from her favourite stockist and she could pick in an instant the items that would walk out the door. Give her a window and she could merchandise her stock so that products flew off the shelves as if they’d been caught in the summer breeze.

  But what did she know about repairing this kind of damage? She needed advice and she needed it quick. It was less than four weeks away from the busiest trading time of the year. She had to be open to cater to the tourist season, which kicked in just before Christmas and lasted until the very end of January, when school resumed. The turnover from that short period alone would see her through another year. She couldn’t afford to be sentimental about it. It was business and she had to get back to it as soon as possible. But how was she going to resurrect her livelihood from this ruined mess?

  At the sound of crunching glass, Stella looked back over her shoulder.

  Duncan stood just inside her shop, glancing around at the disaster. ‘Hello, Stella.’ His tall frame almost filled the doorway.

  ‘Hi, Duncan.’ Stella dug down really hard and found a friendly smile. She’d tried to like this man in the way he’d wanted, but she felt absolutely nothing for him besides a kind of frustrated friendship. Sure, he was tall and he wore a great suit. He had a nice coastal tan and, by any objective measure, he was handsome. But there simply hadn’t been any zing between them, something Duncan regretted way more than Stella did.

  ‘I thought you’d be in here. Surveying the mess.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ She shrugged. ‘Sitting around moping isn’t my style.’

  ‘I know.’ He regarded her with a furrowed brow and adjusted his tie as he walked towards her. ‘Have you called the insurance company to report this? Please tell me you’re insured.’

  ‘Of course I am.’ She tried not to snap. Duncan was simply trying to be helpful. ‘Building, contents and income protection.’

  ‘Mmm, glad you thought of that. You’ll need every bit of it to get out of this mess. Have you checked with the police? Are you sure it’s safe to be in here?’ Duncan looked up at the hole in the ceiling and took a cautious step back from it.

  Stella crossed her arms. ‘I think all the damage has already been done, don’t you?’

  She could tell by his serious expression that he was trying to help. Why couldn’t she accept his sympathy and advice?

  ‘Is the power off?’

  Stella sucked in a deep breath. ‘Yes, the power’s off. Eve
rything’s disconnected. It’s all safe. A total mess, but safe.’

  ‘Right.’ He propped his hands on his hips. ‘We should do something about getting this cleaned up.’

  Stella turned away from him, gritted her teeth and wondered why she had to remind him again. ‘We?’ There was no ‘we’. There was her. And there was Duncan. Despite what had happened once—almost twice—during the past year, there was no ‘we’. There would never be. ‘Duncan, that’s lovely of you. But I can handle this myself. I’ve been on the phone all morning to my insurance company. I’ve already organised a skip and I have a shovel. I’m the one who has some work to do.’ She hoped he got the message.

  ‘Right.’ Apparently he had, but he rested an arm around her shoulder nevertheless. ‘Stella. I’m here for you. If you need anything—manual labour, help with the clean-up, money to tide you over—I—’

  ‘Duncan.’ She cut him off and took a step back so he was out of her personal space. ‘It’s okay, really. I’m insured. I have money.’ She knew he was trying to be nice, but really, it was insulting as hell.

  Her fiercely independent streak, which was rising faster to the surface with every word from Duncan, was born of necessity, not genetics. Every time she’d been let down by people, she’d got tougher, and her heart had hardened a little bit more. She couldn’t help but bristle at his concern. She’d heard variations on his evident doubt in her abilities a million times before. Usually it came from other women, who thought someone working in a ‘little shop’ must be a doctor or a lawyer’s wife who’d been given some play money to fill in her days. That her business must be a hobby or a whim for a bored wife. And that she lacked the wit to hear them say so through the heavy canvas dressing-room curtains. Screw them. This was her business and it was her career, something she’d rebuilt once before and would again. All by herself.

  ‘C’mon, Stella. You don’t have to do this by yourself.’

  She stepped over a pile of soggy fabric and shuddered when she realised it had been a stunning long-sleeved black silk shirt. She fought the urge to pick it up but then realised there was no point. It was hand-wash only and she figured that being blasted by a fire-hose was probably not the rinse cycle the designer had in mind.