ate away at self-esteem and corroded hope, making the seduction of alcohol and drugs so tantalising as a temporary escape.
Only it wasn’t an escape at all. It was an extension of the poverty trap, which then gripped people like his mother permanently until death claimed them. Her death had been her release and he ached that she’d wanted death more than she’d ever wanted him.
He shivered as he pushed the memories away and then realised the wind had changed. He reached out his hand for his cane. ‘Feel the cold in that wind? What does the sky look like?’
‘Gunmetal.’ She shivered. ‘Oh, it’s really spooky.’
He heard her tossing things into the picnic hamper as the sun vanished. The temperature plummeted and the south-buster wind picked up speed. Dust made his eyes water and he could imagine the leaves and any debris being tossed every which way by the ferocious wind that howled around them.
He stood up and wished he knew the area better. ‘We need to find shelter.’
‘My place is less than two blocks away.’
He shook his head. ‘I know storms like this and we don’t have that much time.’
As if on cue, huge drops of rain started falling, but the violence of the wind blew them horizontally, stinging his face.
‘Ouch.’ Hayley caught his hand. ‘Since when does rain hurt?’
‘When it’s sleet. I was here in 1999 for Sydney’s most expensive hailstorm ever and this feels like the start of that.’ He yelled to be heard over the wind. ‘Get us to the nearest shelter. Now.’
Thunder cracked around them and Hayley squealed. ‘Sorry.’ She jammed his hand on her shoulder. ‘There’s a bandstand a hundred metres away.’
As they started walking, the sleet became hail—stones of ice that dive-bombed them with sharp edges, and stung, bruised and grazed any uncovered skin. It was the most painful hundred metres he’d ever walked and he hated that his blindness meant Hayley had to endure it too instead of being able to run to safety.
‘Three steps,’ Hayley yelled over the noise of the hail on the bandstand’s tin roof.
He navigated the steps and he knew he must be inside the bandstand, but they were still being pummelled by hail. Bandstands generally had only hip-height walls, which gave scant protection when the wind was driving the hail in at a thirty-degree angle. ‘We need to get down and huddle.’
‘We can sit on the ground wedged in against the seat. That puts us lower than the height of the wall.’ She moved his hand and he felt wooden slats before he lowered himself down and sat cross-legged on the wet and icy concrete.
Another crack of thunder seemed almost overhead and Hayley’s arms wrapped around his head so tightly he risked neck damage. He reached out and wet strands of her hair plastered themselves against his palm. ‘I gather you don’t like thunder.’
She shivered against him. ‘I think I must have been a dog in a previous life.’
‘Get the picnic rug out and we’ll use it as extra protection.’
‘Okay.’ She sounded uncertain but she pulled away from him.
He heard her cold fingers fumbling to untie the toggles, followed by the emphatic use of a swear word he’d never heard her say. In fact, he’d never heard her swear, not even in the OR when she’d been operating on Gretel. She really was scared. The next minute she scrambled into his lap and her whole body trembled against his as she wrapped the rug around their shoulders. ‘I hate this.’
‘I’m getting that impression, but usually storms like this are over quickly.’ He stroked her wet back as an unfamiliar surge of protectiveness filled him and then he pulled the rug over their heads to protect their faces.
Her fingernails instantly dug into his scalp as sharp and as tenacious as a cat’s claws. ‘Hell, Hayley, what are you doing?’
But she didn’t speak. Instead, her chest heaved hard and fast against his and the next moment she’d torn back the rug and was panting hard.
He reached out his hand, trying to feel the rug. ‘We need the protection.’
‘You have it.’ She threw the rug over his head and he immediately blew it away from his mouth. The instinctive action made him think. ‘Are you claustrophobic as well as scared of the dark?’
There was a moment’s silence before she said, ‘It’s easing. The hail’s turned into rain.’ She grabbed his hand. ‘Let’s go to my place. Please.’
The pleading in her voice both surprised him and propelled him to his feet. ‘Lead the way.’
As they reached the bottom of the bandstand’s steps, Hayley said, ‘I can’t believe some hailstones are the size of cricket balls.’
‘I’ll trudge, then.’
After navigating flooded gutters and hail-covered footpaths for five minutes, Hayley said, ‘We turn left and then we’re home. It’s a tiny cottage and nothing like your penthouse.’
The rain was now trickling down Tom’s collar and the cold seeped into his bones. So much for mild Sydney winters. Still, perhaps the storm wasn’t all bad. He now had the perfect excuse to entice Hayley into bed—he needed to keep warm while his clothes dried in front of her heater. Then he’d go home and leave her to her study.
With a loud gasp Hayley suddenly stopped and he crashed into her as water flowed over his feet. ‘Is your house flooded?’
‘I don’t think so. The water hasn’t quite reached the front door.’
‘You might want to make a bit of a levee between the front door and the road, then.’ He kept his hand on her shoulder, following her, all the while trying to tamp down his rising frustration that he had no idea what she was seeing and that the only help he could give was advice. He heard her slide a key into a lock and then the grating squeak of a door swinging open.
‘Oh, God.’ She pulled away from him and the sound of her running feet against bare boards echoed around him, leaving him with the impression he was standing in a long corridor. Her wail of despair carried back to him.
‘Hayley?’ Using his cane, he tapped his way along the corridor. ‘What’s happened?’
‘My roof’s collapsed, my windows are almost all broken and I have a house full of hail.’ She sounded utterly defeated.
Tom instantly recalled the billion-dollar damage that the huge storm of 1999 had inflicted on the city. He pulled out his phone. ‘Show me where I can sit down and I’ll call the State Emergency Services to come and tarpaulin your roof, and then I’ll wait in the phone queue of your insurance company. They’re going to be inundated so it might take a while and you can sweep up the hail.’
‘I don’t even know where to start.’ Her voice rose with every word. ‘There’s more plaster on the floor than on the ceiling and I can see sky!’
Seeing sky wasn’t good. He ran his hand through his hair. ‘You can’t stay here, then, even with a tarpaulin.’
He
