by Holly Ford
‘I got cold.’ Trying to nod, Mitch winced. ‘It started to rain. I was trying to get out of it.’
Ugh. Tess bit her lip. He’d dragged himself into the scrub? She didn’t even want to think about that.
Mitch looked at Nate. ‘Did you walk up here?’
‘We brought the Robbie.’
‘You flew it?’
‘Yeah.’ Nate shot a look at Tess.
‘Have you tied the blades?’
‘Yes, mate.’ Nate’s cheek dimpled. ‘I tied the blades.’ He looked at her again. ‘I think he’s going to be okay.’
‘Where is it?’ Mitch glanced around.
‘We’re parked up on the bluffs. I’m sorry, mate’ – Nate’s face was serious again – ‘I don’t think I can get the Robbie down here.’
‘I don’t think you can either.’ Mitch gave a snort.
‘Mountain Rescue,’ Tess smiled, ‘are on their way. They’ll have you out of here in no time.’
Mitch looked up at the sky. ‘Not in this.’ He took a deep breath. She felt him try to sit up, his breath shuddering out in a series of little grunts as he gave in to the pain. ‘You guys should get going,’ he said, when he could. ‘I might be here for the night.’
‘No rush,’ Nate said wryly. ‘We’ve got a few hours before it gets dark. We might as well stick around.’ He looked around at the rocks. ‘I’m starting to like this place.’
‘I wouldn’t if I were you.’ A smile flitted over Mitch’s face. ‘The bar service is slow. And I’m pretty sure there’s a hole in the roof.’
‘Well’ – standing up, rope in hand, Nate studied the scrub – ‘let’s see if we can fix that.’
Twelve
Leaning over Mitch, Tess put her hand to what little of his face could be seen below the hood of the sleeping bag. He still felt good and warm. Zipped up in the bag by himself, his body temperature seemed to be holding. Which was just as well. The thermos was empty and most of the chocolate was gone. If he started to slip, they didn’t have much to bring him back again.
Having double-checked the zip, she shuffled out from under the tarpaulin.
‘Okay?’ Nate glanced up from the heap of stones he was rearranging.
‘I think so.’ As okay as a man whose leg was pointing the wrong way could be. ‘He’s sleeping again.’ Taking Nate’s lead, she was going with calling it that – a few minutes’ escape, anyway, from the pain.
‘What do you think?’ Nate nodded at the tarp.
Tess circled it slowly. ‘It looks pretty solid.’
‘It’s not much,’ he said, ‘but it should hold.’ He looked down the slope. Visibility was down to a couple of metres, the scree below their shelter melting into a wall of white. ‘I tell you what, when this weather lifts, it’ll have a hell of a view.’
‘What are you building now,’ she joked, ‘the hot tub?’
‘Close.’ Nate set another piece in place, the clink of stone on stone bouncing back off the thick, slow-swirling cloud that was sticking to the gully like glue. ‘If I build a break up behind the fire, it might help bounce the heat back under the tarp.’
Tess looked at the small heap of dead gorse and scrub he’d collected, wondering if it was entirely wise to be messing with the only things holding the ground underneath them together. The air was damp, but it was far from cold – she’d had to take her jersey off. She listened, hoping against all reason to hear the thump of an engine above the cloud. The only sound was Nate’s stonework beside her. Tess cast a glance back at the tarp.
‘Who’s Ems?’
Nate stopped piling stones. He too looked back at Mitch, still asleep, in the shelter.
‘Emily,’ he said quietly, after a second’s pause. ‘She was a girl he met in Afghanistan. They served together on Mitch’s second tour.’
‘Was she his girlfriend?’ Keeping her voice down, Tess moved closer, settling herself on the ground beside Nate, her attention on Mitch’s sleeping face.
‘She wasn’t supposed to be. She was an officer in the camp. She and Mitch worked together a bit, and the RAF had some pretty strong thoughts about that sort of thing. If they got found out, they’d be in trouble. So they didn’t tell anyone. But yeah. They were a thing.’ Nate sighed. ‘A serious thing, I think. For Mitch, anyway.’
‘What happened?’
‘One day she was out with a patrol that got ambushed. Mitch was supposed to get them out, but he couldn’t get into the landing zone. Too much fire. He had to bail.’
Oh, Jesus. ‘She was killed?’
‘She,’ Nate said, ‘and a few others. Mitch ended up flying the bodies out the following day.’
Tess drew in her breath.
‘Nobody knew she meant anything special to him. He couldn’t even talk to anyone over there about it.’
Stirring, Mitch let out a groan. They watched him in silence, waiting. Gradually, his breathing settled again.
‘But he could talk to you,’ Tess said.
Nate shrugged. ‘He didn’t,’ he said. ‘Not at the time. Mitch and I hadn’t seen each other for years. Now he does, sometimes.’ He looked across at her. ‘Your arm’s bleeding.’
So it was. ‘I must have knocked it on a rock coming down.’ Peeling her torn shirt sleeve back, she turned her forearm, inspecting the scrape. That was going to sting in the shower. ‘Hey there,’ she said, realising Mitch was awake and watching them. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m okay.’ His gaze rose to the tarpaulin. ‘This place has improved.’
‘I’m glad you like it,’ Nate said. ‘We’re checked in for the night.’ Crawling under the tarp, he sat on the ground beside Mitch. ‘I’d hate to lose the deposit.’
‘Look, I’m all good now,’ Mitch said. It would have been more convincing if he wasn’t having to grind the words out through his teeth. ‘No point in us all being stuck here.’
Nate ignored that. ‘So what happened up there? Can you remember?’
‘We were heading home.’ Mitch thought for a second or two. ‘We went after a couple of woollies on the bluffs,’ he said. ‘Bo copped a loose rock, lost his footing. I tried to grab his collar as he fell past me, and … I must have overbalanced. The next thing I knew I was on my back going down the scree.’
Tess exchanged a look with Nate. This was all because of a dog?
‘Bo’s a good dog,’ Mitch said gruffly. He turned his head as the huntaway beside him whined in his sleep. ‘I guess he bounced better than I did.’
They all looked at the dog. Apart from the limp and a bit of a cut on the nose, Bo looked perfectly okay. Perhaps sensing scrutiny, he squeezed his eyes shut tighter. Beyond the edge of the tarp, the rain was starting up again, a drizzle light enough to fall without a sound.
‘I’d better go get some more wood,’ Nate said, ‘before it gets any wetter.’
‘I’ll go.’ Shrugging her jacket on, Tess smiled at the two men. ‘You sit with Mitch for a while.’
•
Sometime in the night, drifting in and out of sleep, Tess woke up enough to become aware of two sets of eyes glinting green on the other side of Mitch’s sleeping bag – the side neither she or Nate had dared lie on for fear of disturbing his leg. The dogs were curled into his body, keeping watch. Behind the fire, the emergency blanket she’d strung up to reflect the heat was glowing a gentle, flickering gold, reminding her of nights on the floor in front of her grandmother’s five-bar heater. At its edges, she could make out the line of the opposite ridge against the sky, a dusting of stars high above them. The cloud had lifted.
Tess closed her eyes again. She was in the middle of nowhere, nothing between her and the ground but her clothes and a glorified sheet of tinfoil, more than halfway up a mountain, on an island at the edge of a waterfall in a river of stone. Every now and then, she could hear it moving around her, rivulets of shingle trickling down as something, tahr or sheep or deer, crossed the scree above them. But somehow, in spite of it all, she felt surprisingly secure.
> The next time she was aware of forming a thought, it was light enough to distinguish the shape of the dogs and the tarp above them. Beneath the emergency blanket, Nate’s arm was lying under her breasts – force of habit, no doubt. The night had been too cold and uncomfortable to think of his heavily clad body beside her as anything other than a resource, a warmth coming and going against her back as he fed the fire. Now, looking across Mitch’s chest into Bo’s eyes, the dog’s nose a ruler’s length from her own, Tess could see the funny side of it. If she’d ever imagined waking up next to Nate – and she had to admit that she had – it hadn’t exactly looked like this. Keen to garner every gram of insulation she could, she’d taken out her ponytail, and she could feel his breath stirring her loose hair. She lay still, trying not to disturb either man, as she watched the world lighten around them.
Nate was right. It was a hell of a view from here. Below what was, essentially, a precipice, the gully opened out, their shingle side-creek joining the vast expanse of the main scree as it dropped to the valley below. In its deep shadows, the braids of Broken Creek River glinted, catching the mauve of the sky. Across the valley, the contours of the hills were starting to appear, spurs and gullies fading up out of the dark, the traces of snow that still clung to the high basins beginning to glow. Apart from the breathing of the men beside her, there was no sound, the cold air hanging utterly still.
In the darker sky to the west, a handful of stars still shone. As she watched, they went out, and a new one appeared. In a second more, Tess could make out the growing, echoing roar of a motor.
Carefully, she leaned back, away from Mitch, into Nate’s chest. ‘Hey.’
As she twisted in his arms, Nate’s eyes smiled sleepily into hers. ‘Good morning.’ He removed a strand of her hair from his face.
‘Come on,’ Tess said quickly. Struggling up to her feet, she took Mitch’s spare socks from her hands. ‘They’re here.’
•
Within half an hour, Mitch was morphined up and safely aboard the gleaming, R22-dwarfing bulk of the hovering Squirrel rescue helicopter. Shading her eyes, Tess watched the dogs ascend to join him.
‘Last chance.’ As the winch line returned to ground, the remaining paramedic turned to her. ‘Sure you guys don’t want a lift down the hill?’
‘No, it’s okay.’ Yelling over the noise, Tess met Nate’s eyes. ‘We’re good.’
Hooking himself to the line, the paramedic gave his crew the thumbs up. A few minutes later, the Squirrel beat away, slowly at first, dwindling into the shadowy hills as its speed increased, until it was just a distant blink of red and green.
‘You could have gone with them,’ Nate said.
‘I didn’t need to.’ She glanced around the remains of their tiny campsite. ‘I’ve already got a lift.’ Picking up the flask, she tipped what rainwater they’d managed to gather over the fire. ‘Besides,’ she joked, ‘somebody needs to keep an eye on you, make sure you get home okay.’
It took a lot longer to scramble back up the bluffs than it had done to come down them. At the top, the Robbie sat waiting patiently, the tiny cabin wet but seemingly none the worse for wear.
They flew home in silence. All joking aside, Tess hoped Nate wasn’t as close to sleep as she was. Despite the wind, the cold, the hurtling void just beside her knee, she was struggling to keep her eyes open. It wasn’t until they touched down that she realised how badly she’d failed.
‘Here we are,’ Nate’s voice said in her ear.
Tess undid her seatbelt. Her feet on solid earth at last, she looked around the paddock at the familiar, everyday sights. Suddenly Broken Creek’s untrimmed hedges and ageing sheds seemed like the height of civilisation. She felt exhausted, relieved and – crazily – a tiny bit let down to be out of the grip of the hills and back where things were safe and ordinary.
The day was warming up. Shedding a couple of layers, she pushed up her sleeves, wincing a little as the dried blood on her shirt pulled away from the graze below. Bollocks. Seemingly she’d managed to knock the other arm climbing up.
‘You okay?’
‘Fine.’ Surveying the myriad scratches decorating her skin, Tess found herself starting to laugh.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘Just’ – she poked at a darkening bruise – ‘this is going to be a great look with my ball dress.’
Thirteen
Trying out her strappy dress in the mirror on Saturday morning, Tess was less amused. Given the low light there would almost certainly be, the skirt should hide her bruised shins, but her arms – ugh. What a mess. She looked like she’d lost a fight with a sack of cats. Sure, a few scabs spoiling your look for the gala was a First World problem, but still, it was going to be pretty embarrassing walking in there tonight, turning heads for all the wrong reasons. That scrape on the back of her arm was enough to put people off their meal. The one time she needed to look elegant … Maybe if she left early, she could pick up another dress somewhere in Queenstown? What were the chances of finding the perfect long-sleeved ball gown in half an hour on a Saturday night?
With a sigh, she stepped out of the dress, folded it carefully, and added it to the bag on the bed. Putting on the outfit she’d laid out beside it, she checked her reflection again. It felt weird to be out of her work clothes. Like she was a different person. Another Tess, one she hadn’t seen in a while, who wore layers of makeup and expensive cropped jeans and styley heels and pristine, blindingly white t-shirts. She pulled on the grey trench coat she’d bought last year and so rarely worn, neglecting, for once, to roll up its sleeves. There. That hid most of the damage.
Finishing her packing, Tess looked down at the clean underwear in her bag. Around her, the old house creaked in the sun, the hall outside, the shadowed rooms beyond it full of silence. Tomorrow morning, Stan would be here pottering around the place like he always did, Harry and Nate would be out in the hills, going about their business, Mitch would be in his hospital bed – and she would be sitting in a five-star hotel in her best knickers having breakfast with Mark. She wasn’t sure why that seemed so surreal. She’d met him in hotels before. They’d had breakfasts, dinners, lunches, drunk more coffee than she could remember. What was different? She hadn’t been wearing high heels, and he’d had a wife. Tess reminded herself, sharply, that he still did. She zipped up the bag.
Through the open window, she recognised the sound of the Mazda’s engine chugging up the drive. Nate. Tess grabbed her bag. He was back from the hospital. She hurried down the hall to meet him, her sandals clomping alarmingly on the sagging boards, all her scratches and angst falling back into perspective. She got to the kitchen just as Nate opened the door.
‘How is he?’
Looking at her, Nate blinked. ‘High as a kite,’ he grinned. ‘They’re keeping him in while they wait for a couple more scans to come back, but he should be out on Monday.’
‘Did they say anything else?’
‘No permanent damage, they think. A few weeks on crutches and he ought to be good as gold.’
‘That’s great.’ Tess let out her breath. ‘That’s really great.’
‘Mitch said to tell you he’ll be flying in time for the muster.’
‘Good to know,’ she laughed.
Nate shook his head. ‘I don’t think he was joking.’
In the silence that followed, Tess dusted her palms on her coat.
‘You heading off?’ Nate said.
‘Yeah, I …’ She stopped. ‘I should probably get going.’ Her bag on the kitchen table between them seemed, suddenly, to be taking up the whole room.
‘I was hoping I’d catch you before you left.’ Nate reached into his back pocket. ‘I was going through some old stuff of Mum’s last week,’ he said, ‘and I found these.’ He handed her a wad of tissue paper.
Opening it up, Tess looked down at a pair of white satin evening gloves.
‘I thought they might go with your dress,’ Nate said. ‘You
know.’
She bit her lip. To cover her arms. Yes.
‘Maybe they’ll bring you luck.’ He paused. ‘On the dance floor, I mean.’
‘That’s so …’ So nice that she couldn’t look at him. ‘That’s so kind,’ she managed. ‘Thank you.’ Hoping they were going to stop blurring soon, Tess continued to stare at the gloves. ‘But – I mean, are you sure? They were your mum’s.’ And precious enough, clearly, to have kept all these years.
‘They’ve got buttons at the wrist,’ Nate said, ‘so you don’t have to take the whole thing off when you need to use your bare hands.’
She looked up with a smile. How the hell did he know how to use evening gloves?
‘Mum had quite a few pairs,’ he shrugged, smiling too. ‘Mitch and I used to use the red ones for playing Spiderman.’
Boy. Tess’s shoulders shook. Now there was a mental image to file.
‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘Really.’ Don’t touch him, she reminded herself. Just … don’t. ‘I’ll take good care of them, I promise.’
She started to unzip her bag, then, remembering the red lace underwear sitting on top, thought better of it. Replacing the tissue paper carefully, she slipped the gloves into her pocket. ‘Well.’ The kitchen seemed to have got very quiet again. ‘I’d better head off.’ Throwing the bag over her shoulder, she made for the door.
‘Tess?’
Turning back towards him, she waited expectantly. A beat passed before Nate smiled. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’
Tess rolled her eyes. ‘See you tomorrow.’ She pushed the door open.
‘Hey.’
Tess looked over her shoulder again.
He paused. ‘You look nice.’
‘Thanks.’ With a grin, she let the door swing to behind her.
•
As the kilometres between her and Broken Creek widened, Tess tried to lock her mind on the night ahead. She had a lot to look forward to. A lot to be nervous about. She should be concentrating on that, not continuing to get misty-eyed over Nate’s mother’s evening gloves on the seat beside her every five minutes.