by Nicole Hayes
Other times, it didn’t matter how hard she squeezed his hand or said his name, the black thunder behind his eyes would turn on her and he’d speak like he didn’t know who she was. It was the inconsistency that jolted her most. One minute her dad, the next a stranger.
Tessa paused after she finished shading the workbench. The walls were done now too. And the chair she could only remember ever seeing in the shed – that vintage ultra-cool chair that was probably her gran’s – was lying on its side just the way she’d sketched it. Though, now, it was rendered in brown, slick oil paints, the gleam of sunlight on its surface. Beside it, empty space, beckoning but impossible. She couldn’t bring herself to fill it, as if a hand stilled her brush every time she tried.
‘Tessa,’ her mum said, appearing in the doorway.
Tessa jumped. ‘Hey,’ she said, moving away from her painting.
‘I’m sorry I startled you.’
‘No. It’s fine. I was just lost in it.’
‘How’s it going?’
Her mum knew better than to ask to see what Tessa had done. ‘It’s not ready until it’s ready,’ her dad used to say, and Ellen would agree because she preferred a surprise.
‘Not really sure what it is yet.’
‘All the best things start that way,’ her mum said.
‘Maybe.’
‘When you’re done, can you give me a hand?’
‘Sure.’
‘I shouldn’t have barged in.’
‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’
‘Don’t be long.’
Tessa didn’t move for a full minute after her mum left, realising then she’d been holding her breath. Felt the dizzying flow of blood returning to her head when she let go. She draped a square of tarp over the painting, wondering if she needed to finish it at all. If she’d be able to.
The sun is still low in the east, and the birds are at their noisiest. Tiny shadows cast across the radiant sky, streaks of lava-red with honey-coloured edges, exploding into a deepening blue. She takes out the water bottle and they share tiny sips. It’s barely half full now.
They move on until they find a flattened stretch, the closest thing to a path they’ve seen since the accident. It’s just beaten-down grass, but it’s more accessible than the rugged bush and mountainous rock around them.
‘Kangaroos, probably,’ Tessa says. ‘No. Wallabies.’ She can see pellets of droppings scattered throughout. ‘Too small for roos.’
‘They’re never far from water,’ Nick says.
They follow the path down the mountainside, managing to cover good ground in the morning sun. She estimates they only have two or three hours before it’s too hot to continue. They need to travel as far as they can before that happens.
The activity helps her, gives her the boost she needs. She lifts her feet higher, quickens her pace, Nick close behind her. Hunger tears at her gut, and images of her mum’s lasagne fill her mind. She thinks of the dinner party – just days ago, but it feels like a lifetime – when she and her mum had spent the day together, buying the groceries and preparing the meal. The way everyone had looked so hopeful and nervous. How the house had felt full and warm, like a home for the first time in too long.
Tessa stops, draws in a shaky breath.
‘Tess?’
She nods. ‘Keep going.’
She searches her mind for a distraction, a memory that will aid her, not tear at her heart. She thinks of the chocolate cake her dad made for her eighth birthday. It was in the shape of a treasure chest lined with liquorice, bejewelled with wild raspberries, mint leaves and jubes, and had a small knob of caramel chocolate for the lock. The lid was half open, spilling forth with every imaginable sweet – chocolate coins, candy bracelets, freckles, strawberry creams, mates, bananas, Mentos, Lifesavers, M&M’s, milk bottles and Skittles. It was such a work of art Tessa hadn’t wanted to touch it at first, but the temptation of the bounty was impossible to resist. With her mum’s half nod, and her dad’s broad grin, she’d sliced her own piece, carefully ladling a handful of lollies to sit by the cake. She’d grinned proudly at Yuki, who shook her head in awe before diving into her own slice. And then, finally, the strength leeched from the cake walls and it began the slow crumbling decay of gravity, leaving a delicious, colourful mess on the platter, which Tessa’s and Yuki’s parents helped themselves to. Both families together in this shared bliss. All of them, together –
She presses her fingers against her temples, as though to purge the memory from her mind, but the images race on and it’s too much to control. She stops again and turns to Nick, who is looking more and more unsteady on his feet. ‘Let’s take a break. I’ll see where we are.’
‘I’ll come.’
‘No. It’s okay. Rest your leg.’ She knows his limp has worsened. ‘I’ll be quick.’
She leaves him leaning against a tree, in the cool of its shade, and finds a narrow path leading to higher ground. It’s dry and breaks apart underfoot, her feet sliding backwards several paces before she manages to reach the top.
The view is vast and sweeping. She can see where they’ve been and where they’re going, but her eyes are riveted on the next mountain over – orange and glowing with what has now become a roaring bushfire, the broad arc of its front so wide she can’t see where it begins and ends. Great tracts of mountainside are engulfed in flames, and the distant sky is grey with smoke.
Dread crawls in her gut. It’s still a long way away, but the sheer size and scale are frightening. She tests the breeze. It’s soft with little force behind it and is blowing away from them. But if it changes, the fire will turn in an instant and there’ll be nothing they can do except find cover – the kind of cover not available to them out here.
And then across the range, to the east, she sees the blackened landscape that was burnt crisp two years before, with little fuel left to sustain another fire. Rocky outcrops and caves are more readily visible with so much of the bush wiped out. And there’s a gorge at its base that could offer protection. But it’s far. Too far, she thinks.
She scans directly below them, the glare almost blinding. Fear gnaws at her. The bush is so thick in places she can’t even make out the slope of the land. She lets her hand drop and focuses on the ground for a bit, to ease her eyes, before searching the other side of the mountain …
There.
In the middle, the defined curve of a bitumen road. Her eyes follow to see where the nearest point is, skips over the patches where it disappears, finds a hint of it, just a glimpse of a flat, clean stretch, then it disappears again. But it’s a road – the only road up there – and their best shot.
She considers the blacked-out landscape across the gorge. If they head down, in as near to a straight line from where she’s standing, there are sections of cascading rock and house-sized boulders along the way that would offer cover and still keep them on track for the road. She checks the fire. It doesn’t even have to reach them, she knows – not all the way. It just has to get close enough. The smoke will do the rest.
Shouganai. Keiko’s word pops into her head. The shrug of surrender, the reality of all those things you can’t change, so why even try? Change what you can, endure what you can’t …
She hurries down the path, sliding and staggering back the way she came. Nick is still leaning against the tree, his whole body sinking against it, as though his bones are no longer able to hold him upright.
‘We need to get moving,’ she says, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. ‘The fire’s grown.’
He blinks and nods, but there’s a flicker of panic in his expression, and she feels it too.
The wind has turned.
‘Can you get the door, Tess?’
Her mum was juggling a large casserole dish, the square kind she used for lasagne. They’d made it that morning, Tessa grating cheese and garlic, her mum stirring the sauce and thickening the bechamel. When it had come time to assemble it, her mum had handed her the dish and said, ‘Do the honou
rs?’ And although it had been the thing she resented most of all – having to cook when her mum was too drunk or simply not around – it was different this time. They were cooking together. Tessa had smiled and said, ‘You start.’
And she’d watched her mum line the first layer, thick sauce with chunks of zucchini, eggplant, whole tomatoes and onion. Tessa had arranged the lasagne sheets, spread the bechamel sauce and grated parmesan mixed with tasty, and then added two more layers. They’d let it sit in the fridge all day and only baked it right before dinner.
Tessa opened the door to see Nick standing there, the smile she was so used to appearing a little forced. There was no denying it – he didn’t want to be there. He’d acted weird when she’d told him about her mum’s invitation; the quick dip of his head, the vague, half-hearted acceptance. But now she could see it, clear on his face.
Nick’s mum stepped forward, a bunch of flowers in her hand. She was a head shorter than Nick, with fairer skin, and her hair was pulled high and neat in a bun. When she smiled, her whole face lit up, a beauty spot near her top lip disappearing under the generous width of her smile. The shape of her mouth, and the shine of her eyes, was all Nick. Tessa couldn’t help but like her from the moment they’d met.
‘Tessa! So lovely to see you again,’ Mrs Kostas said, her voice reassuring.
Nick’s dad stepped forward, brandishing a bottle of wine, thrusting it at Tessa like she was the hired help. ‘Tessa,’ he said curtly. ‘Hope you’re well.’
She stared at the bottle, stifling a wave of dread before taking the wine. ‘Um, thanks.’ She stood there a beat longer than comfortable, genuinely forgetting how to do this, how to be social, how to have visitors who weren’t already drunk. And then she remembered herself, stepped back. ‘Come in.’
Nick’s mum touched Tessa’s elbow. ‘I didn’t think we should …’ But before Tessa could answer, her mum was behind her.
‘Of course,’ Ellen said, reaching for the bottle. ‘Thank you. I’ll keep it cold for you.’
Mr Kostas was tall like Nick, but darker and with a neat, trim beard. He spoke with a trace of an accent, probably Greek, where his family had migrated from, though Nick had told her his dad’s mother was originally Egyptian. Nick’s mum was Cypriot but born in Sydney. Somehow Nick reflected both sides of the family – his dad’s height, skin and the glossy black hair; his mum’s cherubic lips and her wide, dark eyes.
‘It’s so good to meet you properly,’ Mrs Kostas said into the awkward silence, and Tessa nodded a thanks.
‘You too.’ Her eyes not leaving Nick, who seemed to look everywhere but at Tessa.
He was embarrassed. She knew that expression all too well, having worn it more times than she could count. At parent-teacher interviews, the few her mum had shown up to drunk or hungover and, once, so distracted and teary that Mr Prentice had actually asked Ellen if she’d like to lie down, right there in front of the other parents, until Ms Bainbridge had appeared and guided Tessa and her mum into her office. And the school fete, of course – the pinnacle of her humiliations. Nick was ashamed of her.
Tessa bit her lip and led them into the kitchen. Suddenly, their small fibro, which had begun to feel warmer and richer under the loving hand of her mum’s recent energies, appeared shrunken again, as if there was too much baggage housed here to contain all of them.
Ellen stepped forward, her smile true and proud, tugging at Tessa’s heart. ‘It’s so lovely having you here, Marina, Ayman.’ She held out her hand, squeezed Mrs Kostas’s warmly, the glow in her cheeks working to ease the ice in the room.
Tessa decided then that she’d make this work. For her mum. ‘Why don’t you sit down, Mrs Kostas, Mr Kostas?’ She indicated the couch. They’d laid out a platter of pita bread and mixed dip on the coffee table.
‘Please, Tessa, call us by our first names.’ Marina laughed. ‘Whenever anyone calls me Mrs Kostas I look around for my mother-in-law.’
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Ellen hovered at the entrance to the kitchen with that smile firmly in place, but it was tighter now. Firmer. Tessa saw determination where before she’d seen light.
‘Something soft,’ Marina said quickly. ‘Or water?’
Ellen blinked. ‘We can open the wine, if you like,’ she offered.
Ayman stood. ‘Can I give you a hand?’
‘I’ll do it,’ Nick said, stepping between them.
Tessa watched helplessly as all the unspoken accusations mounted between them. She knew she should fill the silence, and make an effort to talk to Nick’s parents, but she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the wine bottle in her mum’s hands. She felt the first stirrings of nausea as she considered all the ways this would – and in the past, had – gone wrong.
‘Let me do it,’ Nick said, taking the bottle, and rather than appear offended, Ellen looked grateful. She handed him a glass.
Tessa dragged her gaze away from the kitchen and turned to Nick’s parents. ‘Nick tells me you’ve been away, Mr Kostas? To the Greek Islands?’ She saw Mrs Kostas’s smile. ‘Sorry. Ayman.’
Ayman’s eyes darted to Nick, then the same steady assurance settled on his bearded face. He tilted his head to listen the same way Nick did. ‘Yes. Briefly.’ He glanced at his wife, who was busily rearranging the cushions in a fan behind her back. A pink stain touched Ayman’s cheeks, and he crossed his legs, leant forward. ‘I’m back now.’
Marina clasped her hands. ‘Nick tells me you paint.’
Tessa startled, confused. The tension between the Kostases was almost tangible.
‘She’s really good,’ Nick said from the kitchen.
Tessa smiled thinly. ‘Uh, thanks. But not really. I’ve just started. I have a lot to learn.’
‘That’s kind of the point of studying at university,’ Nick said, returning to the room. ‘To learn? To get better.’
Heat rose to her cheeks. She frowned at Nick. Not now.
‘I studied art at school,’ Marina said.
Nick looked at his mum. ‘Really?’
She laughed. ‘I did have a life before …’
‘That was a long time ago,’ Ayman said.
His wife’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, but I loved it.’
The sentence rang out stark and raw against the clumsy small talk, and Tessa felt something shift.
‘You should do it,’ Marina continued. ‘If you’re as good as Nick says, you should make it your priority to study.’ She smiled then and leant towards Tessa as though they shared a secret. ‘I could give you some names, if you like. Do some research. I mean, I’d love to, for myself. I’m curious to see what’s out there too. Plus, it would be a fun distraction from work.’ She laughed again, forced and brittle.
‘I’m sure there are plenty of people who can guide Tessa at school,’ Ayman said brusquely.
‘Um, thanks,’ Tessa said, the silence following broken only by the chime of the doorbell.
They run. Their feet moving faster than they’d have thought possible only minutes earlier – staggering, really, but pressing forward, following the narrow path as far as they can before it disappears into a thick copse. Tessa hesitates. She doesn’t want to get caught up in the rugged bush – so many reasons why that’s a mistake: the fire being the most obvious, but also, if there are fire crews in the air, they’ll never be spotted from the sky. Tessa doesn’t dwell too long on the reality that neither she nor Nick are officially, or even unofficially, missing in anyone’s mind. Except maybe Yuki’s – but would she risk getting Tessa in trouble, knowing that Tessa is with Nick, that there’s every chance they’ve snuck off to be alone together? That this is far more likely the truth, given Yuki would know nothing about what had happened before the accident. How they’d ended up here.
Unless the Carrima grapevine had kicked in. The irony is not lost on her that the thing she hated so much might actually be her saviour.
She peers into the bush. ‘We can’t go around it,’ she says, gasping. ‘I don’t want to disappear in th
ere either. But we have to keep going …’
As if in answer, the wind kicks up, the smell of smoke on its edges, and they no longer have a choice. Forward. They have to go forward. So they push through without another word, finding gaps in the tangle.
It’s her mum’s fault, Tessa decides. If her mum wasn’t so weak and pathetic they’d be at the beach with the others. Nick and Tessa wouldn’t have argued. Everything would have stayed right where it was …
Except, of course, it was all a lie, anyway.
They reach a rise and stumble their way over the rock face, the grasses and bush thinning out again where the grey granite forms. Large boulders tower over them like stone sentries. The cliff rounds off, and they find themselves staring down at a cavernous mouth, where the entire path simply disappears beneath them, the ground seeming almost to crumble away. A cascade of rock and stones form their own platform, rippled and shiny, like a blue-tongue’s back.
Tessa looks around. She can’t see much – their view is blocked by these enormous boulders – but she can smell it now. They can’t outrun it. They need to find shelter.
She looks to the path ahead. It’s a big drop – tricky with their injuries. ‘It’s a long way down.’ Uncertainty in her voice.
‘We can do it,’ Nick says.
She hesitates.
‘We don’t have time …’ he urges.
She nods, crouches on the ledge and, with an awkward, one-handed push, launches herself over.
‘Gomen kudasai!’
Keiko and Doug stood beside Yuki with broad smiles on their faces. Tessa couldn’t remember the last time Doug had come for a social visit, one that didn’t involve official warnings or handcuffs, or the gentle kindness of his hand on Tessa’s back, guiding her to the police car that he’d driven there without the lights or siren on.