by Trish Morey
He got a message via radio that their old home in the hills had escaped the flames, while others around it had been razed, and, for that, he gave silent thanks, but still his phone was useless to him, and it was only the map of the fire ground at the sports ground that gave him comfort. The bushfire had cut a great swathe through the hills, but there, on the western fringe, the fire had passed it by. The gorge was safe and Caleb could breathe again.
Now he just had to find Ava.
It wasn’t until the next morning that he finally got his chance. He drove up into the hills, still smoking in some places, seeing the devastation the bushfire had wreaked in this part of the hills first hand. Either side of the roads with nothing left but the blackened trunks of trees, gnarled fingers poking into the sky. And all around was the smell of ash and death. A roadblock stopped him in one place – only residents allowed in, and even his day job didn’t give him a free pass, there were serious fears of looters, so he didn’t push it– and he had to backtrack down to the city and find another way around. But this route was better, the burned footprint of the fire a narrower band and soon that was behind him. He drove higher up the escarpment, the vegetation eerily unscathed here, like some miracle had protected it from the monster the fire had become.
He began to breathe easier then, finally accepting that the maps hadn’t lied and that the gorge and the houses that dotted its upper reaches had survived. Most of all that Ava was okay.
He pulled into her driveway, giving thanks for whatever miracle had saved the gorge, his footsteps crunching on the gravel Overhead in a cloudless blue sky, the sun shone, the volume dialled back to autumn while the bush looked refreshed after its drenching. A perfect day to live in the Adelaide Hills, if you still had your home.
He found her tending the small herb garden filled with the coriander and Thai basil and mint she used in her cooking that she kept outside the kitchen. Dressed in a singlet over cute bobble fringed shorts that showed off the long satin length of her legs, she’d heard his footsteps and was poised waiting, watering can in one hand, to see who was coming, and after days and nights of not knowing, the urge to run to her and sweep her into his arms and hold her to satisfy himself she was real and he wasn’t just imagining her was almost overwhelming.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, turning back to her herbs, her cold greeting like a bucket of water to his face.
He crossed the paved patio to her, his heart leaden, but he wasn’t going away and he wasn’t giving up. He’d never for one moment imagined this was going to be easy.
“Ava,” he said, drawing alongside, talking to her downturned profile as she tended her plants.
He ached to reach out a hand to her back, where the thick knot of her hair rested against her back, ached to run his fingers down the sweet curve of her spine, but there was an aura around her, a force field that repelled him and told him not to touch.
“I tried to call.”
“I had my phone off.”
“I’ve been worried sick.”
This time she turned, the lights in her brandy coloured eyes all but snuffed out, her lips tightly drawn. Did he only imagine their quiver or the tiny tic in the corner of her mouth?
“Why?”
“Why do you think? There were bushfires raging all through the hills and I didn’t have a clue what was happening around here or where you were or how you were managing. I was scared witless when I couldn’t contact you. I’ve never been more scared in my life.”
She shrugged and turned back to her plants, shifting sideways away from him along the small raised bed, putting down her watering can and picking up some snips, trimming bits here and there. “As you can see, I’m fine. I had my bushfire plan ready, in case things got hairy.”
In case things got hairy? “Who are you trying to kid, Ava? This was a major bushfire. If it had got into the gorge, there would have been no stopping it.”
“It didn’t get into the gorge.”
“And that was all kinds of miracle. All it needed was one live ember to land and the whole lot would have gone up, and taken you with it.” He raked one hand through his short hair, thinking of the dead livestock in the burnt paddocks and the kangaroos blundering in panic through the burning bush. The horses they found when they could go back... “The things I saw – things you never want to see.”
Her eyes snapped up to his, a glimmer of light illuminating their cognac depths. “You were there?”
“Every available firefighter available was there.”
She dropped her gaze, turned her face away again.
“Don’t you understand? All the time I was seeing what the fire could do, the way it was eating up the bush, I couldn’t call you. I didn’t know where you were or how you were. I was beyond terrified– I was shit scared.”
She put down her snips and brushed her hands. “I can’t help that. I’m not responsible for how you feel.”
“Maybe not. But you’re the reason I feel. I told you I’d give you time to think. I told you I’d be back and here I am.”
She shook her head and started back toward the house. “Look, if you’re planning on replaying the conversation from that night, I’m afraid going to have to pass. I’m not interested.”
He caught one of her hands and spun her, catching her other hand so they faced each other, his thumbs drinking in the satin texture of her skin while making circles on the backs of her trembling hands. He gazed down at her beautiful face with the frightened eyes, feeling the weight of the future bearing down him, and knowing he had to do this right.
“No, not the same conversation. This one is a different one. A far more important one. Because while I was stuck out there fighting this bushfire, with no idea what was happening here or what you were facing, all I knew was that if the worst happened, I could lose you forever. And it tripped a switch in my brain, and made me realise what you really mean to me.”
Her eyes filled with panic, and she pulled her hands from his and spun away, crossing her arms across her chest, protecting herself that way she did.
“I don’t have to listen to this.”
“No, you need to hear this. I don’t just care for you, Ava. I love you.”
“No!” she cried, flinching as if he’d physically struck her. “No!”
“I love you, Ava,” he repeated, because the words sounded so right and she needed to hear it, needed to know what she meant to him. “And I want to spend the rest of my life loving you. I want yours to be the face I see when I go to sleep. I want yours to be the face I wake up to every morning. And I’ve been walking on eggshells around you, afraid to lose what we have for fear of speaking up, when I realised I could have lost you and never have told you what I now know.” He reached a hand to her shoulder, and turned her too him, his eyes imploring. “I love you.”
She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. “I don’t want your love. I don’t want anyone to love me.”
“That’s something I can’t help you with. I can’t turn off what I feel for you. I can’t stop loving you. And be honest, can you say you don’t care about me? You don’t feel something for me? You weren’t worried the tiniest bit when you realised I’d been up there, fighting that bushfire?”
She looked up at him then, her face a mask filled with shock and horror and fear. “No...’
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, her whole body shaking, her eyes wild. “I can’t do this. I can’t let you love me. I can’t let anyone love me. I can’t risk it.”
“Why?” he demanded. “What’s stopping you?”
“Because I know what love leads to!” she cried. “I know how it ends. Because it hurts too much to be broken and I don’t want to ever be broken again.”
And before his eyes, she seemed to crumple in on herself until she sagged, boneless, to the floor. He scooped her up before she hit the ground, collecting the puddle of flesh and bones she’d become and cradling her close against his chest, wa
nting to protect her from the pain of what was hurting her.
“Oh, Ava, what happened to you? Who did this to you?”
He pressed his lips to her hair and carried her to her room, laying her on her bed and holding her close as the sobs racked her body, her keening cries piercing his soul.
And, with every savage convulsion, his anger built. “I love you,” he whispered to her, even as she shook her head and told him he mustn’t. Yet still she clung to him while the storm moved through her, and still he held her tight, until her shudders subsided and her tears abated, the only sound her fractured gasping breaths.
“What kind of man could do this to you?” he asked her, stroking her hair, because he knew it must have been a man to hurt her so deeply, to make her so afraid of giving too much to another. Gently he lifted her chin to face him, her tear clumped lashes forming spikes around her wounded eyes. “I want to tear whoever did this to you apart.”
She sniffled and pushed herself away from him then, curling herself up to sitting on the bed, one arm wrapped around her knees and the other hand swiping at the moisture on her cheeks while she started blindly ahead. “That would be a pointless exercise,” she whispered, her voice now eerily calm. “My parents are already dead.”
Chapter Nine
She heard his gasp of shock, and knew his mind was joining the dots.
“Oh, Ava,” he said, reaching out a hand to her cheek and she saw the look of abhorrence in his eyes, but the confusion too, at what he was hearing. “Is that why...”
His fingertips brushed against her damp skin, and she closed her eyes against the sensation, leaning into it and savouring it, knowing it would be one of the last times they touched.
“I had an idyllic childhood,” she started, blinking her eyes open again.
She’d never told anyone about her past before, but she now knew this man would never give up, and it was the only way to make him understand why loving her was futile.
“I couldn’t have dreamed for a better one. My mother was an Australian model who worked all over the world for the best houses, Chanel, Valentino, Yves St. Laurent – you name it, she was there strutting the catwalk – when she met my father. He was handsome and magnetic, already a rich man with interests worth countless millions in property development, hotels, and retail.”
She flicked the bobbles on her shorts, focusing on something meaningless, inane, while she spilled the toxic details of her life. “They met one evening, at a fashion event in Singapore, and that night he proposed. She gave up her career to become his wife. They were the golden couple, the successful businessman and his supermodel wife. She had golden wavy hair and emerald green eyes, and so glamorous, that as a child, I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
“I grew up thinking it was a fairy tale marriage. And why wouldn’t I? I lived in a fairy tale palace for a home, with a fairy tale mother and a fairy tale father, and I was the little princess. That’s what my father called me, inviting me into his business meetings from the time I could twirl and be shown off, while all the time my mother dressed me in the prettiest of clothes and then, as a teenager, taught me all the tricks she’d learned as a model, so that one day, I might look as beautiful as her. I knew I never could, because she was so fair, but my mother insisted I try my best. Men liked women to look beautiful, she told me. Men liked women who knew how to look after them.”
She paused, temporarily abandoning the bobbles, thinking how naïve she’d been, how she’d loved them and how she’d believed they’d loved her. So she’d trusted them, when all those years they’d been grooming her.
“When I turned sixteen,” she said, her throat constricting at the memories, “I was so excited. My father had promised me a surprise for my birthday. He called me into his office late that evening. There was a man there who I knew, the father of a good school friend, and he wished me a happy birthday. He acted strangely when I asked about my friend, but I just thought he was embarrassed he hadn’t thought to bring her.
And then my father offered me champagne for the first time – I was sixteen, my father said, and it was time to take my place in the family business – and the men drank a toast to me and I felt so mature and grown up. And then he told me the men had business to do, and called for the brandy as he sent me away.
“I didn’t understand what was happening. Not then. Not until later, when my mother took me to a beautiful bedroom in the house I’d never seen before, and on the coverlet of the bed was lingerie all set out, beautiful white silk lingerie my mother told me was a birthday gift, and that I should put on, and get into bed, and wait for my surprise. And even then, I was confused and none of it made any sense, but this was my mother, my beautiful fairy tale mother, and she loved me, and so I trusted her...’
So naïve! She squeezed her eyes shut and rolled her lips between her teeth and bit down.
“You don’t have to do this,” Caleb growled, his big hand between her shoulders, his fingers trying to stroke comfort into her soul.
“But I do,” she bit out without turning. “You have to know. You have to understand why.” She took one breath and then another, steadying herself. “Eventually I fell asleep, only to be awakened when I realised there was somebody in the bed with me, a man who reeked of brandy and who was fumbling for me. I screamed, thinking he must have stumbled into the wrong room, the wrong bed, but then he hit me and told me to shut up, and I recognised it was my friend’s father and I screamed again. I was so frightened.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, cast back to that moment, to that innocent girl whose life was about to be shattered.
“And this time after he hit me, he had the pleasure of telling me, he had paid my father handsomely for the privilege of deflowering his daughter and I should cooperate and enjoy it.” She put a hand over her heart, her breathing ragged and rushed until she calmed it, several breaths later.
“That was the first time my father used me as part of his deal making. That was the first time I was expected to take my place in the family business.”
She turned her head up to the ceiling, remembering the helplessness she’d felt back then. The fear. The pain. The agony of knowing her fairy tale life had been a lie.
“Christ, Ava...’ Beside her Caleb searched for words, but she knew there were none.
This was no flesh wound he could stitch up or stick on a dressing and let it heal. This was betrayal that cut soul deep and there were no dressings, no sutures for that.
“How could they do that to you? How could your mother...”
Ava clutched her arms, trying to laugh then but the sound came out fractured and broken. “I appealed to her, of course. I couldn’t believe she knew. I thought she would help. And I remember she held me like when I’d been a child, rocking me, and as she wiped the moisture from my eyes she told me that tears make eyes puffy and that men like their women to look happy and beautiful. And when I told her I didn’t understand, she smiled down at me and told me that this was the price for my fairy tale existence. That for twenty years she had been my father’s whore, and that it was my turn now.”
“Ava.” He made to scoop her into his arms then, but she pushed them away and rose from the bed, feeling strangely stronger, as if saying the words out loud had released some of the pressure.
No longer was it her big dark secret. It was out there, in the open, the whole sordid horror of her former existence. She stood by the window, staring out but unseeing, her mind stuck in the past, replaying the video from those former days.
“After that, my home became my prison, palatial and luxurious, but still a prison. I had bodyguards to accompany me when I was allowed out, delivered to hotels or private houses for a rendezvous or a party, but they weren’t there to protect me. They were there to ensure I didn’t escape.”
“God, Ava, I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything.” All he had to do was listen and understand, and let
her go.
As he would once he knew, knowing any sympathy he had for her would evaporate faster than a spray of mist into the summer air.
“But do you know the worst thing, the very worst thing?”
He shook his head and she smiled. “I enjoyed it.” She chewed on the words like they were meat. “I enjoyed the sex. I got good at it. I enjoyed making men come for me and I took pleasure from them any way I could. I wasn’t just a good whore. I was the best. I made my father a lot of money.”
She shrugged, her jaw clenched, her eyes following the flight of a dozen sulphur crested cockatoos across the sky rather than meet his disappointed eyes rethinking his earlier declaration. Rethinking that she could ever be a mother for his children.
“What changed?” he asked, and she was surprised he hadn’t already fled in disgust. “How did you get away?”
“I ran into my old school friend at one of those parties, and she asked what I was doing now and why she never heard from me anymore. But how do you tell someone what their father has done when you know that her parents are still together? When you know her own fairy tale life would unravel or that she would brand you a liar and hate you forever? So what could I tell her other than what I did? That I worked for the family business.
She dropped her head. “And then she asked if I was still painting, because it had been my dream in school, to be a painter one day.” She turned her eyes up to his. “I’d forgotten my own dream. And it reawakened something in me, a yearning to be free, to live life the way I wanted.
“By then, my father had grown complacent. I think he believed he had me where he wanted and that I had accepted my fate like my mother had and that I was resigned to exchanging sex for a life of luxury, and being traded like a commodity. And then a chance came up. He sent me to Hong Kong to entertain a man he could potentially make millions from.” She looked at Caleb. “My father didn’t know I had seduced my bodyguard. He didn’t know that I had learned to use the tricks I had been taught against him. I pretended to be happy that we were away together, and he was happy to have me away from my fortress of a house. We had champagne and sex and when he fell asleep, I grabbed my passport and ran. That poor man. I often wonder at the punishment he must have received for letting me slip free.” She trailed off and turned to the window.