‘Let me finish,’ she whispered. ‘He heard on the radio that there were fires on the other side of the ridge-that’s where they started. So Toby took the van and went to see. He took magnificent photographs. You probably saw them-they were the ones beamed around the world the next day, after the wind changed and over a hundred people were killed, and Dad and Micki and Benedict and all the animals in our vet clinic were left without a vehicle to escape in. Dad put Rusty in the fireplace and protected him with his body. Our three big dogs-Mutsy and Pogo and Bandit, they died, too. One little dog was all they could save.’
Once more he made a move to go to her, but she flinched. She swiped her hand across her face again and she sniffed. Trying desperately to move on. ‘Enough,’ she said bleakly. ‘Toby made a fortune, and I lost everything. I promised Micki she’d be safe here, but it didn’t happen. I failed her as I failed…so many. Trusting Toby. Leaving the mountain. But it’s dopey to keep crying. We’ll bury Manya, and then Rusty and I will move on.
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘This is where I belong but I don’t know any more. Look, it’s deep enough. I can do the rest.’
‘You’ll do nothing,’ he growled. ‘I’m the undertaker, today. Stay.’
He helped Tori gather sheaths of fresh eucalyptus leaves. He carried the little body from the house. They laid her on a bed of the leaves she’d loved, they covered her with more leaves and then he filled in the grave. They spread more leaves on the freshly dug earth, and then Jake stood back, silent, not knowing where to go next.
Not knowing how to help.
He wanted to hold her again, but Tori was standing apart, rigid, as if ashamed at her previous show of emotion.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you so much. I… When do you want your house back?’
‘Let’s look at it now,’ he said and held out his hand. She looked at it but she didn’t take it. Her reserve was back again. The woman who’d sobbed her heart out was well hidden.
‘Of course,’ she said, stiffly, and led the way back down to the house, with Rusty limping along behind them. She ushered him into one room after another, letting him see it all.
Apart from yesterday he’d never been in this house. When his father died it had already been let to tenants who’d wanted to keep renting. A realtor had acted as intermediary, and there’d been no opportunity or need for him to see it.
The grand old homestead was battered now, from years of renting, from six months of being used as an animal hospital and from the fires themselves. The building hadn’t burned but it was still smoke stained and grim. The only furniture was what they’d needed for the animal hospital.
The last room Tori showed him was what was obviously the master bedroom. He stood at the door and saw how she’d been living for the past six months, and he drew in his breath in dismay.
There was a camp stretcher in the corner. There were half a dozen cardboard cartons acting as storage and as a bedside table. A basket lay in the corner for Rusty.
Nothing else.
At speed dating he’d thought she’d looked dowdy. It was a miracle she’d managed to look presentable at all.
‘No mirror?’ he asked, trying to make it sound as though he was joking.
‘No mirror.’ She’d recovered a little now; her voice was firmer. Moving on. ‘Just as well, as I suspect I’d scare myself silly.’
‘You look all right to me.’
‘Said the man who looked at me like I was a porrywiggle on our five-minute date.’
‘A what?’
‘A tadpole. Something that wiggles out of pond scum.’
‘I never said…’
‘You never had to. Have you seen enough?’
‘More than enough. Are these all your possessions?’
‘I live light,’ she said, in a tight voice. ‘I can be gone in half an hour.’
‘Where are you staying tonight?’
‘You’re not kicking me out tonight?’ she demanded, alarmed, and he shook his head.
‘I’m not kicking you out at all. I’m asking if you have an alternative-something a bit less appalling than here.’
‘Here’s fine.’
‘Here’s not fine. This place needs an army to make it habitable.’
‘It’s a lovely house.’
‘It could be a lovely house. It’s anything but now. Do you have anywhere you can go?’
‘Of course I do,’ she retorted, but he thought that she was lying.
There were all sorts of emotions twisting inside him right now. He didn’t want to get involved-when had he ever?-but walking away from her…
He’d be as bad as Toby if he left her anchored to this place, to her grief, to her loss.
‘Come down to Manwillinbah Lodge,’ he found himself saying. ‘You know the lodge?’
‘I know it, but…’
‘But what?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s your place.’
‘It’s a guesthouse and it’s almost empty. So I’m offering, and I believe you’d be sensible to accept.’ He spread his hands. ‘Tori, either you stay here tonight in this bleak and lonely place and, I suspect, cry your eyes out again for a little koala called Manya, or you come down the mountain and let Rob take care of you while you regroup.’ Then, as she hesitated, he added, ‘You know, you’d be doing Rob a favour. He loves the lodge being full and he loves company. Since the fire, all his guests have come and stared out into the night and not wanted to talk.’
‘I don’t think I want to talk.’
‘No, but our housekeeper can cook for you, and Rob can make you smile. Rob’s good with people.’
She looked at him curiously at that. ‘You talk as if you mean you’re not.’
‘I’m not a people person.’
‘Yet you let me soak your shirt.’
‘Sometimes I’m compelled to be a people person.’
‘That sounds like your five-minute date. Like you want to be out of here.’
‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that,’ he said, flinching. Hell, he had to figure out how to sound nice.
But to his relief she was smiling, a faint smile but a smile nonetheless. ‘Yeah, okay, you’re not a people person but you did very well just now,’ she said. ‘I was really grateful for your shirt and you held on manfully. So whether you wanted to bolt or not, the fact is you didn’t and I’m not asking questions.’ She turned and looked down at her camp bed, at the detritus of six months’ camping in this sooty, makeshift home. He could see her indecision.
‘You don’t really want to stay here.’
‘I have Rusty.’ Though Rusty was on the verandah again, staring fixedly at the road. Still endlessly waiting.
‘Rusty can come with you. Stay in the lodge while you figure where to go.’
She stared down at the camp stretcher again. ‘I’ve been offered a job,’ she said. ‘In a small-animal clinic down the mountain.’
‘Will you take it?’
‘I don’t…I don’t know.’
‘When did you last sleep through the night?’
‘I don’t know that either,’ she admitted, and people person or not, he took her hands in his and held.
‘Tori, you’re in no state to decide anything. Come to the lodge. Let Rob look after you for a month or so.’
‘A month? No.’
‘Okay, come for tonight and take it from there,’ he said hastily. ‘But you need to sleep and you need to start thinking of something other than destruction.’
