came back looking even grimmer than he had when he’d left.
‘Gone,’ he said. ‘And their car... God help them if they’d stayed in that car, or even if they’d made it out onto the road. Our cars are still safe in the garage, but a tree’s fallen over the track leading into the house. It’s big and it’s burning. We’re going nowhere.’
There was no more to be said. They worked on. Maybe someone should go back to Amina to tell her about her house, but the highest priority had to be making sure this house was safe. Not because of emotional ties, though. This was all about current need.
Mount Bundoon was a tiny hamlet and this house and Amina’s were two miles out of town. Thick bush lay between them and the township. There’d be more fallen logs—who knew what else—between them and civilisation.
‘We’ll be stuck here till Christmas,’ Julie said as they worked, and her voice came out strained. Her throat was so sore from the smoke.
‘Seeing as Christmas is tomorrow, yes, we will,’ Rob told her. ‘Did you have any plans?’
‘I...no.’
‘Do we have a turkey in the freezer?’
‘I should have left it out,’ she said unsteadily. ‘It would have been roasted by now. Oh, Rob...’ She heard her voice shake and Rob’s arms came round her shoulders.
‘No matter. We’ve done it. We’re almost on the other side, Jules, love.’
But they weren’t, she thought, and suddenly bleakness was all around her. What had changed? She could cling to Rob now but she knew that, long-term, they’d destroy each other. How could you help ease someone else’s pain when you were withered inside by your own?
‘Another half hour and we might be able to liberate Amina,’ Rob said and something about the way he spoke told her he was feeling pretty much the same sensations she was feeling. ‘The embers are getting less and Luka must be just about busting to find a tree by now.’
‘Well, good luck to him finding one,’ she said, pausing with her wet mop to stare bleakly round at the moonscape destruction.
‘We can help them,’ Rob said gently. ‘They’ve lost their house. We can help them get through it. I don’t know about you, Jules, but putting my head down and working’s been the only thing between me and madness for the last four years. So keeping Amina’s little family secure—that’s something we can focus on. And we can focus on it together.’
‘Just for the next twenty-four hours.’
‘That’s all I ever think about,’ Rob told her, and the bleakness was back in his voice full force. ‘One day at a time. One hour at a time. That’s survival, Jules. We both know all about it so let’s put it into action now.’
* * *
One day at a time? Rob worked on, the hard physical work almost a welcome relief from the emotions of the last twenty-four hours but, strangely, he’d stopped thinking of now. He was putting out embers on autopilot but the rest of his brain was moving forward.
Where did he go from here?
Before the fire, he’d thought he had almost reached the other side of a chasm of depression and self-blame. There’d been glimmers of light when he’d thought he could enjoy life again. ‘You need to move on,’ his shrink had advised him. ‘You can’t help Julie and together your grief will make you self-destruct.’ Or maybe that wasn’t what the shrink had advised him—maybe it was what the counselling sessions had made him accept for himself.
But now, working side by side, with Julie a constant presence as they beat out the spot fires still flaring up against the house, it was as if that thinking was revealed for what it was—a travesty. A lie. How could he move on? He still felt married. He still was married.
He’d fallen in love with his dot-point-maker, his Julie, eight years ago and that love was still there.
Maybe that was why he’d come back—drawn here because his heart had never left the place. And it wasn’t just the kids.
It was his wife.
So... Twenty-four hours on and the mists were starting to clear.
Together your grief will make you self-destruct. It might be true, he conceded, but Julie chose that moment to thump a spark with a wet mop. ‘Take that, you—’ she grunted and swiped it again for good measure and he found himself smiling.
She was still under there—his Julie.
Together they’d self-destruct? Maybe they would, he conceded as he worked, but was it possible—was there even a chance?—that together they could find a way to heal?
* * *
It was time to get Amina and Danny and Luka out of the bunker.
It was dark, not because it was night—it was still mid-afternoon—but because the smoke was still all-enveloping. They’d need to keep watch, take it in turns to check for spot fires, but, for now, they entered the house together.
Rob was holding Amina’s hand. He’d been worried she’d trip over the mass of litter blasted across the yard. Danny was clinging to his mother’s other side. Luka was pressing hard against his small master. The dog was limping a little but he wasn’t about to leave the little boy.
Which left Julie bringing up the rear. She stood aside as Rob led them indoors and for some crazy reason she thought of the day Rob had brought her here to show her his plans. He’d laid out a tentative floor plan with string and markers on the soil. He’d shown her where the front door would be and then he’d swung her into his arms and lifted her across.
‘Welcome to your home, my bride,’ he’d told her and he’d set her down into the future hall and he’d kissed her with a passion that had left her breathless. ‘Welcome to your Happy Ever After.’
Past history. Moving on. She followed them in and felt bleakness envelop her. The house was grey, dingy, appalling. There were no lights. She flicked the switch without hope and, of course, there was none.
‘The cabling from the solar system must have melted,’ Rob said, and then he gave a little-boy grin that was, in the circumstances, totally unexpected and totally endearing. ‘But I have that covered. I knew the conduit was a weak spot when we built so the electrician’s left me backup. I just need to unplug one lot and plug in another. The spare’s in the garage, right next to my tool belt.’
And in the face of that grin it was impossible not to smile back. The grey lifted, just a little. Man with tool belt, practically chest-thumping...
He’d designed this house to withstand fire. Skilled with a tool belt or not, he had saved them.
‘It might take a bit of fiddling,’ Rob conceded, trying—unsuccessfully—to sound modest. ‘And the smoke will be messing with it now. But even if it fails completely we have the generator for important things, like pumping water. We have the barbecue. We can manage.’
‘If you’re thinking of getting up on the roof, Superman...’
‘When
