Bella wondered if Prowsy still had a bruise from the right hook she’d delivered at Nunkeri. She stared out through the ute passenger-side window, not really seeing the fog enclosing them in its grey grasp. She was back at the Muster looking down at Prowsy prostrate on the grass, clutching her bleeding mouth.
Bella shook away that disquieting memory, determined it wouldn’t wreck what had been a fabulous day shopping with her mum and best mate. She checked the side rear-vision mirror, and caught a glimpse of the bright pink dress bags poking out of the tool box in the back. Burrindal B&S Ball, here we come! She let out a whoop and threw a clenched fist into the air.
‘We are going to look like hot chicky babes in these numbers, Pat Me Tuffet. Those Marlboro mountain men of ours better watch out, because we’re comin’ to town.’ A chuckle came from Francine as she sat with eyes shut, listening to her girls.
The Dixie Chicks wound to a close and the CD spun to a stop.
‘What’ll we play now?’ Bella looked at the depleted bundle of CDs in her hand. ‘We’ve played them all twice. Why’d you leave your CD holder at home, Patty? What were you thinking?’
‘Of getting to your place before it got dark. I didn’t want to come up close and personal with a flaming kangaroo on that shitty road down the mountain.’
Francine lifted her head from where it had dropped to Bella’s shoulder. ‘Patty, honey, I think you should pop your lights on. That fog’s getting thicker out there.’ She went quiet for a minute. ‘What about the CD you bought for Beccy and Joel, Bella? Have you still got it in the ute, sweetheart? You didn’t give it to them in the end, did you?’
Bella leaned down to scrabble in the side pocket on the door. ‘Great idea, Mum. Nope. I didn’t give it to them. I should have got Hi-5 or the Hannah Montana soundtrack. They were a bit old for the CD I got. That’s just what we need after all this country music, a blast from the past with . . . nursery rhymes!’
Patty groaned. ‘Don’t do it to me.’
‘When you’re desperate, you’re really desperate,’ said Bella, coming up empty-handed. ‘You may be saved. I can’t find it. Have you got it over there, Patty?’
‘Yep, I’ve got it.’ Patty reluctantly dragged out the CD from the driver’s-side pocket. With her left hand she awkwardly tried to slide the disk into the player, jamming it on the way.
Francine opened her eyes and let out a gentle sigh. ‘Patty, my love, when will you learn to slow down?’
Patty was still scrabbling with the CD, pressing the eject button repeatedly with one hand, while the other guided the steering wheel. The CD popped out of the cavity with a clatter and bounced off the gearstick onto the floor.
Francine tried to reach it, leaning forward around the gearstick. ‘I can’t get it with my belt on.’
‘I’ll have a try,’ said Bella. ‘Damn, it’s gone under the seat.’ She clicked her seatbelt open so she could lean further down. ‘Nup, I can’t reach it either.’
‘I’ll have another go.’ Francine unclipped her belt and leaned over sideways to reach as far back as she could. ‘Got it!’ She came up triumphant, waving the silver disk. She slid the CD into the player.
‘She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes,’ blasted through the speakers.
‘Yee ha!’ Bella leaned forward and cranked the volume to full blast.
They all joined in as Francine jiggled her knees around the gearstick in time to the beat. ‘Do you remember our singsongs around the piano at Maggie’s?’ she yelled to the two girls. ‘You all loved this one so much.’
As the chorus came round again, they sang with all their hearts. ‘Singing Hi Yi Yippy Yippy Yi, Singing Hi Yi Yippy Yippy Yi . . .’
Bella grabbed her mother’s hand and swung it in the air. At home they would have danced, spinning a partner around with glee.
Mid-song, Patty remembered Francine’s comment about her lights. She turned them on, along with the wipers. It was now drizzling rain. Sliding her foot from the accelerator, she slowed the ute.
‘What are you doing?’ yelled Bella.
‘The fog’s getting thicker. There’s an intersection with a give-way sign somewhere around here.’
They didn’t hear him coming.
A 30-tonne B-Double, loaded to the max with grain destined for Atkins Fertiliser and Stock Feeds.
Bluey Atkins’s right foot was touching the brakes to slow up for the intersection ahead; his left hand holding a mobile phone. His wife was on the blower wondering how far from home he was; there was a cow down with milk fever and she couldn’t get it up by herself.
A pair of lights suddenly appeared to the left of his startled gaze.
He barely felt the vehicle go under the huge bullbar. The steel Mack Dog guarding his bonnet. His wife was still talking on the phone he’d hurled to the floor as he threw every ounce of his ample weight into any brake he could find with his hands and feet.
Knowing it was too late.
Knowing there was no hope.
Knowing at that moment he was killing someone.
‘Bluey? Bluey? Are you there, Bluey?’ The phone continued to twitter.
Trying to control the brakes, Bluey struggled to arrest the weight of his rig and its huge bins of grain from bearing down on what was underneath.
A red Holden ute.
A torrent of sound assaulted his ears; tearing metal, shattering glass, screeching tyres and, most shocking of all, terrified screams. For Bluey, everything seemed to occur in slow motion, as if he were hovering above, observing.
The massive rig out of control. Brakes locked. Leaving the road.
Punching through the wire fence like scissors through thin jute twine.
A paddock of lush green lucerne laden with water droplets, shining in the misty rain.
The 180-degree slide across the paddock of ‘Montmorency Downs’; a slide, a sweep, taking only seconds to change lives.
A fire engine red ute attached to the bullbar of his truck.
Floating into his line of sight, a pair of eyes. Frozen with pure terror. Perfectly round. Lapis blue. Staring straight up and into his.
A soul in flight to death?
An angel on the way to heaven?
Images to haunt him for the rest of his life.
Bella’s world exploded.
A stream of noise assailed her ears: the shrieking of crumpling metal, the shattering of imploding glass. The high-pitched screech of air brakes competed with human screams. Cassettes, CDs, boots, pliers and rolls of insulation tape became missiles inside the ute’s crumpling cab.
Strapped to her driver’s seat, Patty was the first to absorb the incredible force of being T boned.
Francine’s unrestrained body flew forwards and out the front windscreen. Through the shower of glass Bella instinctively flung her hands towards her mother, fluking a hold on her ankle as she ploughed through the shattering window casing and out onto the bonnet.
At the same time, Bella’s passenger-side door flew open.
Her mother’s body thumped its way across the shiny, rain-slicked bonnet as the truck did its circular waltz across the paddock. Bella clung to the ankle that was keeping her in the cab of the ute. Her terrified and panic-stricken gaze swept across the devastation around her. Her eyes met those of a man fighting a duel with his truck.
Bella felt her mother’s ankle slowly slip from her grasp. She let loose with a blood-curdling scream. Without the shackle of a human anchor, Francine flew through the air, clearing the fence and landing with a thud on the tar.
Simultaneously Bella’s unrestrained body was snatched from the seat and flung out of the open passenger doorway, across the wide spaces she loved so much, rolling through a scrubby bush and somersaulting to a stop beside the road, tangled in the barbed wire that lay broken by the truck’s wild ride.
It only took seconds, but it seemed like hours.
Finally both the rig and the remains of the ute ground to a halt.
The sobbing of a
man and a twittering mobile phone were all that disturbed the moist, early-evening air.
Then they too were silent.
PART TWO
Eight years later
Chapter 21
Melbourne was a bright glow in the rear-vision mirror of the Mercedes.
When Bella first arrived in the city, the place had screamed bedlam to her country ears; cars, trucks, sirens and people, all fighting for attention. She’d nearly gone nuts trying to dodge the pace and aggression; had slogged it out day after day, until she realised with shock that the chaos had become normal. It was as if landscapes filled with space, trees, mountains and silence had never been a part of her life. They were conveniently locked in the dark recesses of her mind.
Until now.
Bella wove the Mercedes around a speeding semi-trailer also heading east. Her dress, a scrap of magenta silk, was rucked up around her thighs where faint scars tracked patterns on her skin. Moonbeams danced in through the back window of the car, the light frequently glancing off the large diamond solitaire ring encircling the third finger on her left hand. Pavarotti played softly through the surround-sound system. Everything around her reeked of the sleek and expensive.
Bella slammed her hand down hard on the leather steering wheel. The moonbeams seemed to pause, expectant. ‘Damn him!’ she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘Fuck him!’ The moonbeams barely wavered. Everything around her stayed the same.
Who was she? What was she?
An urbane woman in control of her life? Hardly.
A country girl playing a game of charades? Possibly.
If this was a game, she didn’t want to play anymore, especially after tonight. Thank God she was out of there, away from Melbourne, away from Warren, her fiancé. Fiancé. The word rolled around her tongue. Funny how something that once tasted like honey, delightful and sweet, could turn into a mouthful of grit. How could things go so wrong?
Bella had met Warren at a cocktail party two years after she’d arrived in Melbourne. The public-relations firm she worked for specialised in large rural clients, and she was at the party to attract work and sponsorship from the corporate attendees.
She loved her job but she hated those nights; putting on a front, being nice to wan, spotty-faced city blokes who were more interested in looking down her shirt than listening to what she had to say. Meeting Warren had been the highlight of the evening; he’d made the other men in the room sink into the ludicrous pattern on the papered walls.
With his blond, patrician good looks and English accent, Warren had flattered and flirted and asked her out for a drink after the function. One hand held her coat, the other a large cheque. ‘An investment in the future,’ he’d said to her boss, while looking deep into her eyes. He was a man who knew what he wanted, where he was going and with whom. And she was sucked in.
He had about him an air of reassurance that made her feel safe and secure. After the turmoil her life had been in, she felt like she had finally reached calm waters in Warren’s arms. Here was someone who truly cared. When Warren focused on her, it made her feel like she was the only person in the world who was important. And she had desperately needed that, to feel loved, adored and cherished.
She wasn’t sure when it had all changed; couldn’t put her finger on the exact moment when the adoration and cherishing had turned into suffocation. For despite all Warren’s assurances that she helped him kick back and enjoy life, she slowly came to realise that wasn’t true. He wanted her to focus on him and help build his career. And it had only grown worse the higher he climbed the corporate ladder. Although he maintained that their relationship was the priority in his life, Warren’s career came above and before anything else. Including her.
Six years later, she could yell and curse all she wanted, but it wouldn’t vent the anger she felt over Warren’s betrayal. Cocking her head, she caught the faint warbling coming from the CD player. She hit the eject button and snatched Pavarotti from his cosy hole. Jabbing at the electronic buttons near her right hand, she slid the window down.
‘Take that, you morbid bastard,’ she yelled as she threw the disc out the window. The CD bounced once on the road and then into the thick grassy verge.
Grappling one-handed through the CDs at her side, she realised they were all Warren’s. Pavarotti, Carreras, Domingo: the operatic list went on. Bloody hell! She needed some yell-out-loud country music. And she needed it now.
It took a minute for it to come to mind. It had been so long. Swinging the car into the next truck stop, she parked and then bent to scrabble on the floor under the driver’s seat.
‘Got it,’ Bella muttered as she drew out her find. A cheap and dog-eared CD holder. She flicked on the interior light and opened the front of the battered old relic. Inside the cover, barely legible in a flamboyant hand, was inscribed, ‘Dearest Hells Bells, Yell out loud, girlfriend. You rock! Love always, Pat Me Tuffet.’
Oh dear God, could she bear it? Even after all this time? Waves of emotion fought to escape from tight confines of her heart. Bella took a deep breath; forced her feelings to stay under lock and key. She looked closely at the labels imprinted on the disks in her hands, and her walking fingers found what she needed.
She slid the CD into the slot and within seconds the Dixie Chicks bounced from the roof and plush interior. Using both hands, Bella pulled at the sleek chignon that held her hair in check. She released her tumbling ringlets, finger-combing through hairspray to send the honey-coloured locks into wild disarray.
Cranking up the stereo a few more notches, she started the car and took off, stones flying, wheels spinning, back onto Highway Number One, a road that could take you all the way around Australia if you wanted.
Singing hopelessly flat and at the top of her voice, Bella found a release for the anger that had been consuming her for most of the night. The diamond on her hand glinted again. She refused to be attracted, keeping her eyes glued to the road leading her to the Vermaelon family home, and respite.
As the car ate up the miles, the massive and brightly lit bypasses that overhung the highway became more sporadic, and finally disappeared. The luminous full moon shone white and settled itself slap-bang in the middle of the highway, lining up its radiance with the grassy verge between thoroughfares.
She hadn’t been home as much as she’d have liked these last eight years. Warren was never keen to ‘head bush’, as he called it. He always came up with excuses not to visit her family and he sulked if she went by herself. It had been easier to just go along with him. Christmases had come and gone, and another year passed with only the odd visit to the farm, when Warren was working away.
A plane heading east slung a white hazy jet stream out behind. The fluffy residue reflected brightly under the light from the moon. She had missed seeing the night sky undimmed by blazing city lights; missed the quiet of the bush; missed her family.
Thank God she didn’t feel sick anymore. The gastro bug she’d been battling seemed finally to have abated – or maybe her anger had burned it away? The fact she’d been able to attend this evening’s function at all was a feat in itself. A couple of days ago, she would’ve vomited all over Warren’s Italian leather shoes.
She knew she should have gone straight home after the rodeo rather than going onto that bloody cocktail party. But then again, she wouldn’t have finally ripped off the rose-coloured glasses she’d worn these past few years. At last she had acknowledged Warren’s selfishness, and the spinelessness that lurked beneath his self-assurance. Tears pricked her eyes as she sighed. There were so many choices and paths leading alternate ways.
The smaller country towns marched along the road at various intervals, and then they too grew further apart. The Dixie Chicks moved onto ‘Taking the Long Way’ and Bella’s mood gradually slipped into the slow beat and melancholy emotions of the ballad, her anger spent. Was it something everyone went through – this search to find themselves? Her Aunty Maggie had an old birthday card on the wall at Tindarra Cottag
e, which read, ‘Sometimes the best way to figure out who you are, is to get to that place where you don’t have to be anything else.’ She wondered about that.
Was it only yesterday that her boss had handed her two free tickets to the State of Origin International Rodeo? Her job delivered some side-benefits: free tickets to a huge variety of events was one. She hit the elevator button at the lavish Docklands penthouse she shared with Warren beside the Yarra River. She couldn’t wait to go, to see, feel and be a part of a country tradition from her early years, which until now she hadn’t realised she missed so much. It wasn’t until the elevator started its climb to the top floor that reality hit like a fisted hand.
Warren wouldn’t want to go.
Her bubbles of excitement popped in mid-air.
The elevator delivered her into a sleek, minimalist living room suffering mortuary-level temperatures thanks to efficient airconditioning. Bella shivered, goose bumps rising on her arms. The intelligent lighting blinked on and she could hear the pre-programmable convection oven spinning its stuff, a couple of chicken mignons ensconced inside. Bella looked around at her sterile surroundings. What the hell was she doing here? Really?
The only part of the penthouse that was cosy was the mocha-coloured shag-pile rug on the floor and a cherry-red minky blanket she kept on the back of the leather sofa, much to Warren’s disgust. At least she’d snipped off the Target label so he could pretend it came from some fancy designer.
Slipping off her high-heeled shoes, Bella wrapped herself in the blanket and shuffled into the kitchen for something to eat. What wouldn’t she have done for one of her mother’s date scones with lashings of yellow butter, or even a slice of Aunty Maggie’s ginger fluff sponge dripping with homemade cream freshly skimmed from the milk bucket that morning?
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