‘We can’t go.’ Warren was adamant as he tapped on his BlackBerry an hour or so later. ‘You did say tomorrow night, didn’t you?’
Bella opened her mouth to reply but Warren kept right on talking.
‘It’s a definite no. You know we have that black-tie function at Crown to meet my new CEO.’
Of course, Bella should have known. Oxford, Bride and Associates always took precedence over everything else. Momentarily she wondered whether turning herself into a share portfolio or a multi-million-dollar takeover bid would give her more say over her life.
Warren moved to stand directly in front of her, BlackBerry still in hand, the downlighting casting his shadow over her. She drew the warm minky blanket closer, instinctively seeking its reassurance.
‘We can give the tickets to Caroline and Trinity. It can be their last hurrah before their wedding this weekend, seeing as they’re so set on moving to that God-forsaken place in the mountains. I have no comprehension as to why you people love that place.’
‘Probably because you haven’t been there.’
‘And I have no desire to go there, but I will . . .’ Warren’s patrician face formed a grimace ‘. . . for you. Hopefully there’ll be someone there to talk to who isn’t totally preoccupied with the weather. But like I said, give the tickets to Caroline and Trinity.’
‘Warren, we’re not giving second-hand tickets to Caro and Trin as a wedding present.’
No, Bella had arranged a few nights at a luxurious retreat for Caro and Trin’s honeymoon, and that was going to be her gift, not freebie cast-offs. And the pair deserved it after being there for her all these years, supporting her through all the grief and loneliness. Caro and Trin had slogged for the last eight years to turn old Wes’s Ben Bullen Hills Station into a profitable working property while still holding down jobs in the city to help pay for all the improvements. Now they were going to move back to the mountains and farm full-time. They deserved a few nights’ honeymoon before heading bush.
In the early days of her relationship with Warren, Bella had relished the fact that he was so wonderfully different to the men she had known before. Gone were rough work clothes, elastic-sided boots, the colloquial slang of the bush. Warren was sophisticated, handsome, precise. Nobody would never call Warren a ‘bloke’.
Now she wondered if she’d fallen in love with a smooth veneer – a superficial man whose cold and competitive English boarding-school upbringing was colliding fiercely with her own deep loving family, where values and principles went beyond just thinking about yourself. Their relationship hadn’t started out like this, had it? In the early years, he was so loving and attentive. And surely, Warren hadn’t always only done what he wanted to do? She pondered that. Possibly. So had she just aided and abetted him?
Warren, oblivious to all that was going on in his fiancée’s head, stashed his BlackBerry back in its usual suit pocket and moved towards the bar. Relieved he wasn’t standing over her anymore, Bella watched as he walked away in shiny black-tasselled leather moccasins, bum cheeks hugging fine Italian wool pants, treading a slightly mincing step.
‘I’m not going.’ Bella’s voice was flat and even.
Warren didn’t even look up from where he was mixing his drink. ‘Of course you are, darling, you’re expected to be there. You’re my fiancée,’ he said as he squeezed a lemon. ‘You need to be there. What will the other wives think?’ He picked up a bright pink swizzle stick with a laughing plastic monkey perched on its end, and continued talking as he swished his drink. ‘What will the—’
Bella had heard enough.
Shrugging out of her minky, she jumped to her feet. ‘What about what I need, Warren? What about me?’
She strode across the room, coming to a halt in front of the bar. ‘When did what I want to do cease to count? When did what you need and what the company wants come before me? Before us?’ She stopped and drew in a ragged breath. ‘I want to go to the Ro-DE-o!’ Bella accentuated the ‘DE’ in an exaggerated Queensland drawl, something she knew would offend Warren’s delicate sensitivities. ‘I’ve earned these tickets, I want these tickets, I need these tickets and I am going, with or without you! I can still come to your party, I’ll just be late.’
Bella stood rigid, waiting. She had to win this battle with Warren, to try to retain a part of herself in more ways than one.
Warren set down his swizzle stick on the bar mat with precision, the pink plastic monkey staring straight up to laugh in his face. He looked up from his drink and saw in Bella’s huge blue eyes something he’d never seen before.
He’d seen tears. Plenty of tears.
He’d seen laughter, love, flashes of frustration and sometimes even hints of temper. But he’d always been able to sway her, to make her see his way.
But never this.
He’d never seen absolute and utter determination.
Chapter 22
Eight years earlier Bella lay in the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, with her father by her bedside.
Frank Vermaelon sat in a grey hospital chair, as close as he dared to the bed in which Bella lay unconscious, surrounded by machines that seemed to breathe of their own accord; the lights, hums and the beeps that helped keep his daughter alive.
After the crash, an unconscious Bella had been air-lifted by helicopter to Melbourne with head and suspected spinal injuries. A CT scan revealed cerebral oedema and spinal shock but the scan was inconclusive. The doctors told Frank they’d have to wait for his daughter to regain consciousness to ascertain her brain function and spinal-cord ability. That was the only way they’d know how much damage she had sustained.
Frank was unshaven and slack-jawed, in a light sleep that caused his limbs to jerk and twitch. His pallor was grey with suppressed fatigue, worry and grief. His eyes were heavily circled with black and he wore an obvious air of anguish and loss.
Bella’s eyes blinked. The machines around her went wild in their response. She fought for consciousness.
Frank leapt forward to grab his daughter’s hand, in hope. Bella, in her semi-conscious state, reached for the light, trying to open her eyes, to feel her father’s hand, but she retreated when the pain became too much. The room was filled with noise, and even though the pressure of her father’s warm, calloused palm was there to comfort and draw her back into the real world – it was too hard.
No, not just yet.
Soon – but not yet. It hurt too much.
She allowed the blackness to reclaim her once more. And Frank slumped back into his chair.
As the nurses rushed in to check on his daughter and quiet the whistling machines, Frank allowed himself a sliver of hope. He was sure he’d felt Bella’s hand respond slightly to his gentle squeeze. And that was all he needed. It gave him strength and fuelled his belief that his determined little girl would pull through.
She wafted in and out. Sometimes she saw a fuzzy Frank, and other times she heard Will. But mostly it was just blackness with a visit from Patty from time to time.
‘Bugger off sunshine,’ her best mate seemed to say. ‘You’re not coming with me this time, girlfriend.’ The voice was definitely Patty’s, at her determined best. ‘Much and all as it would be good to have you here.’ A waft of wistfulness flickered as the words disappeared, out of sight, out of her mind, gone as silently as they had come.
When Bella finally came to, her Aunty Maggie was dozing in the chair by her side with some sewing lying discarded on her lap.
She lay there a while just soaking in the familiar look of her aunt, her long grey hair all piled into a bun, the half-moon glasses falling from her snubbed nose, the polyester rayon ‘best’ dress with its bright orange psychedelic geometric print that sat awkwardly on a body more comfortable in slacks and shirt.
At the sight of Maggie, the scents and memories of Tindarra assaulted her; the call of the mountains seemed to reach out from the warm, diminutive figure sitting at her side.
‘Aunty Maggie,’ she whispered.
‘Bella. My love. You’re back.’ Maggie’s face was awash with joy and tears. As her aunt fumbled to press the button for a nurse, Bella tried to make sense of her surroundings. Things must be crook if Maggie’s in tears, she thought. The fuzz in her mind wasn’t helping. It was all so white and the sheets on the bed felt hard, scratchy and uncomfortable, like she was lying under sandpaper rather than her mum’s soft linen at home.
What was Aunty Maggie doing here? She should have been home at Tindarra. And why the hell was she crying?
‘Where?’ Bella croaked. It felt like she had rusty piano wire twisted around her vocal chords.
Maggie hurriedly reached for a glass of water with its angled straw.
‘Only a little bit,’ she warned, as she helped her niece to lift her head and sip a few drops.
Maggie waited until Bella lay back before answering. ‘You’re in hospital, sweetheart. In Melbourne.’
‘How long?’ she croaked again, a little louder this time.
Maggie put the glass back on the bedside table, picked up the discarded sewing and sat down in her chair once more. ‘A couple of days.’
Bella tried to cast her muddled brain back. She could remember the trip to town with her mum and Patty. Buying their B&S dresses and then riding home in the ute, music blaring, singing at the tops of their voices . . .
‘Patty?’ She had been first in line to be hit by the truck.
Maggie’s face drained of colour.
‘Gone?’ Bella whispered, as Maggie dropped her head into her hands.
A few moments passed, time that seemed like eternity. Maggie raised her head and looked into the eyes of her beloved niece. Eyes that were even bluer than usual, resting in a pallid face.
‘Oh, Bella, my love. My sweet, I’m so sorry.’
Bella tried to swallow. It felt like the piano wire had eased its garrotte only to let a hangman’s knot take its place. Summoning saliva to soothe the passage of speech, Bella asked again.
‘Mum?’
Maggie’s eyes shifted sideways as tears ran in ripples down her apple-skin cheeks. Groping for the box of tissues on the bedside table, Maggie gave a slight shake of her head.
It was enough.
Bella turned the other way and shut her eyes, closing herself off from her aunt, closing off from the world.
‘No, Bella, no!’ Maggie gasped as she realised what the girl thought.
Bella wasn’t listening. She was in a bitter, dark place. Her insides felt like cold granite, her heart a frigid lump of ice.
Why was she alive when those she loved were dead?
Francine. Her warm, beautiful and loving mother.
Gone. Dead.
Fingers of terror raced through her blood.
Patty. Her vivacious, fun-loving best mate.
Gone. Dead.
Just like that.
Never again.
Why, in God’s name why?
And why couldn’t she have gone too?
Frank Vermaelon, followed by his son Justin and a nurse, ran through the doorway. As Bella turned towards her father and brother, Maggie tried again. Shaking her head so hard the glasses went flying from her nose to skitter across the laminate floor. ‘No. Not your mother, Bella, not Francine. She’s fighting. She’s alive.’
Frank reached Bella as the nurse scurried to the other side of the bed, observing her now-conscious patient. Maggie gathered her glasses, sewing and tissues and headed for the hospital hallway to pull herself together.
Alone with the men, Bella looked up at what remained of her family, eyelids brimming with unshed tears. If she needed any confirmation of her nightmare, it was found in Frank and Justin’s sorrow-filled eyes. The two men were unashamedly crying. Relieved to see their girl awake battled with the grief of the loss they may still have to endure.
They sat down to tell her quietly of the terrible injuries sustained by her mother, who was now battling for life in a cubicle down the sterile hallway.
And then they too confirmed what Bella didn’t want to hear.
Patty was dead.
Harry Bailey came to the funeral, all the way from up north. So did a sun-soaked Knackers and Wendy Anderson, with four little boys standing like descending steps by their side. Max still had an arm in a sling.
Harry had rung the O’Haras to find out the outcome of the Muster’s whip-cracking championship, looking to celebrate with Patty what he was sure would have been a win. He was told instead that Patty was dead.
He found it so hard to comprehend how such a vivacious, bright-eyed ray of sunshine could be snuffed. Gone. Obliterated. Just like that. Harry had finally hung up, after mumbling condolences through the tears.
Bella was determined to go to the funeral. Doctors had followed up with a second CT scan and full neurological examination, which showed the brain and spinal-cord swelling had resolved leaving no permanent injury. And because the doctors’ tests said she was physically okay, Bella immediately discharged herself. Her family were horrified but she was adamant. She was going to be there to say goodbye to her best friend.
After the funeral service, Bella had turned and walked towards the only thing she felt was anchoring her to life. The one person she thought would truly understand the grief that was overwhelming her – the man she hadn’t seen since waking up in her hospital bed. But Will deliberately turned away and started talking to Prudence Vincent-Prowse.
Bella halted mid-step, startled. What the hell was that all about? Why didn’t he want to speak to her? To hold her? They were lovers, for heaven’s sake – boyfriend and girlfriend, weren’t they? He had been at the hospital while she was still unconscious, her father and Aunty Maggie told her, so that hadn’t been a dream. But since she had started to recover, no-one had sighted him and she was at a loss to understand why. And why the cold shoulder now? What had she done? Where had he gone? And why?
Did he blame her for the accident?
Did he blame her for being alive while his sister was dead?
She looked across at the seemingly cosy twosome and felt affronted and sickened by the sight of Prowsy.
She deflected her path to her father, her brother and her very pregnant sister-in-law, who looked ready to collapse in the heat. They were standing to the side of the big, black hearse with silver trim on the duco, a stark coffin laden with carnations inside.
‘You okay?’ asked Frank, worry etched firmly into the creases around his eyes.
She managed a nod as she took his dry and wrinkled farmer’s hand. She tried to quell her alarm over Will’s behaviour, her gaze drifting to her cousin, standing nearby with her Aunty Rhonda and Uncle Bryce.
Macca’s anguish was palpable; she could taste it in her mouth, feel it on her skin. She couldn’t stand to look at that grief-stricken face, the bloodshot whites of his eyes competing with the florid flush of his cheeks.
He stood in his black suit, beside his parents, hollow-eyed.
As he’d linked arms with Will to carry Patty from the church, Bella had seen his body shaking violently. Without his big black Bronco Akubra atop his head, he looked a shadow of the big man he’d been at the Muster only weeks before.
Bella’s gaze drifted back to the black hearse, and all thoughts of Will and Macca fled. Her whole body and mind were again consumed by absolute wretchedness. She saw Rory and Helen O’Hara barely hanging on. In her mind she could hear them thinking, A child’s not supposed to die before a parent. She finished the sentence in her own mind, especially this child.
Standing silent, Bella waited with her family for her best mate to leave the churchyard on that hot and sunny day.
To depart for her final journey.
Her closing chorus, ‘Singing Hi Yi Yippy Yippy Yi . . .’
Her last dance through those whirling tumbleweeds.
Chapter 23
Bella spotted the huge green-and-silver reflective sign indicating
the turn-off from the Princes Highway towards Narree. As she swung left off the main road the car climbed a slight hill before hitting a plateau that in daylight allowed travellers to see the Great Dividing Range in all its glory. Even in the dark Bella knew it was there, a hulking bulk on the horizon, the looming shadow of enormous mountains. Lights occasionally dotted the sweeping irrigated plains at the foot of the hills, early-rising dairy farmers already cloistered with their cows in the milking shed.
The car’s clock flashed four a.m. and Bella knew she couldn’t drive for much longer. Weariness was creeping in. She’d camp at her mum and dad’s for a night before heading into the mountains for Caro and Trin’s wedding at the weekend. It was unfortunate her parents weren’t home. They’d gone to some Young Farmers Reunion down in South Gippsland, and Bella was pleased they weren’t allowing her mother’s quadriplegia to get in their way of living a great life. She would see them on the drive back.
It had taken months to get Francine home after the accident, while Bella’s own injuries, even though they had been serious, had resulted in no long term physical effects. She had resigned from her job and, with Frank, moved to Melbourne, taking it in turns to watch over Francine’s fight to survive and be a wife and mother once again.
Caro, who was just out of teachers’ college, invited Bella to share her flat in East Melbourne. ‘I’m teaching all day. You can grab a tram outside the door and it’ll take you straight past the hospital.’ Frank meanwhile installed himself in a house catering for patients’ next of kin who were from the bush.
Justin had taken over the farm, running himself ragged while Melanie started motherhood for the third time. There wasn’t much else they could all do. Just sit it out and wait to see if Francine was coming back to them.
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