Gemma gave her a wide-eyed look. “I thought you didn’t want to know why he’s here. That’s certainly the impression I got as you ran off into the night.”
“Gemma!” Maura pleaded. “Please!”
Gemma relented. “Well, they stayed until just after eleven. It was a little difficult to talk to your Dominic in front of the others, but you’ll be glad – or terrified – to hear that he’s staying on in Clare for a couple of days. His publishing house is sponsoring the Awards, by the way, if you’re wondering how he managed to wangle an invitation tonight. The others are going back in the morning, there’s more judging to do in Adelaide apparently.”
“He’s staying on? In Clare? Why?” Maura leapt up.
“I guess the answers are all in here,” Gemma said, pulling an envelope from her pocket and handing it to Maura.
With shaking hands, Maura pulled out the sheet of paper. Dominic had written just a short note, in firm black handwriting:
Maura, Will you talk to me? Please ring me and I’ll come to you. Dominic. He had added a mobile phone number.
“Well?” Gemma looked over.
She looked up. “He wants me to ring him.” She read the note again, then looked over at Gemma again, her face quite pale. “But it’s too late now. I’ll do it in the morning.”
Gemma looked at her watch. “It’s only just past midnight. The phones do work this time of night.”
Maura shook her head. She was too nervous to speak to him now. “The morning will be fine,” she said, trying for a firm voice. She changed the subject. “More wine?”
Gemma grinned knowingly, then obediently held out her glass.
* * *
By nine o’clock the next morning, Maura had read the note many times over, trying to read between the lines. But it was straightforward, the message clear. He wanted to tell her something. The problem was, what? She thought briefly about bolting again, but squared her shoulders. He was an honourable man, she knew that in her heart. Even if he had come all this way to explain that what had happened between them in London was a mistake, and that he and Carla were happy together, then at least she would know.
Before she could have second thoughts, she rang his mobile number. There was a brief pause, then she heard his voice.
“Dominic, it’s Maura.” She knew her voice was shaking. “I got your note.”
“Will you see me?” he asked quietly.
Her heart was pounding. “Yes, can you come here at twelve today? To Lorikeet Hill?” She wanted to be on safe ground, on her territory.
“Yes, of course.” He paused. “Thank you, Maura.”
They hung up then, at the same time. She was annoyed to feel her heart beating quickly, and took a deep breath to calm herself. There was certainly nothing to go on from that brief exchange. It was probably the shortest phone conversation she’d had in her life.
She made a cup of coffee and came out onto the front steps where Gemma was sitting, legs bare in the already hot sunshine. Looking around, Maura realised it was dangerous weather, well suited to the drama of the past twenty-four hours. The whole sky to the east of the house was a strange dusky colour and a gusty hot wind was whipping around the trees.
“Well?” Gemma looked up.
“He’s coming to Lorikeet Hill at twelve today.”
“Good girl,” Gemma said proudly. “I liked him. There’s something decent about him.”
“Yes,” said Maura. “Very decent of him to come all this way to tell me it’s all over before it even started.”
Gemma shot her a look. “So you’ve become psychic all of a sudden and know exactly what he’s come to tell you? You may as well cancel the meeting then.”
Maura poked out her tongue and was about to answer back, when Keith’s car pulled up in front of the house. He was taking Gemma to the Barossa Valley, an hour’s drive away, for a day’s wine-tasting.
Gemma hugged her goodbye. “Good luck,” she said. “I hope you sort it all out. And listen to what he has to say, won’t you?”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Maura waved as they drove off down the gravel road. She looked at her watch. Not even nine thirty. She had more than two hours to fill before he arrived, and she was too nervous to spend it in front of a mirror putting on make-up or trying to decide what to wear.
She looked around the house. There was nothing to do here. Gemma was meticulously tidy and had the whole place in perfect order. There were no preparations to be done at the café either.
Maura suddenly thought of Nick and Fran’s house. They would be back with Quinn in just a few days and the last thing they would want to do was a big clean-up. She’d go out there and scrub their place for a couple of hours. That would keep her busy, and keep her mind off Dominic, for a little while anyway.
She took the back roads through the yellow scrubby paddocks to Nick and Fran’s house, noticing again the strange light in the sky. The wind had become even fiercer too, whipping up clouds of red dust in front of the car, once so quickly that she had to suddenly brake because she couldn’t see anything in front of her.
She turned on the radio, and wasn’t surprised to hear a news report that a spot bushfire had broken out in scrubland about forty kilometres north of Clare. The volunteer fire-fighters had it well under control, she was relieved to hear, but it gave her an uneasy feeling. The hills around Clare had even more undergrowth than the flat plains to the north.
She let herself into Nick and Fran’s house, and took pleasure in vacuuming the carpets, mopping the floors and cleaning the windows. She had given it a basic tidy-up the last time she had come out here to collect some clothes for them, but this was the sort of good physical work she needed to keep her mind from the imminent meeting with Dominic.
By the time she finished, it was nearly eleven thirty. Just time to get home, wash and change, and be ready to meet him at Lorikeet Hill. She carefully locked the front door, noticing again the strange haze in the sky, which only slightly blocked out the searing heat of the sun. The forecast was for 35 degrees and it felt like it was nearly that already. As she climbed into her car, she thought she caught a faint smell of smoke. She wasn’t surprised. The winds were so fierce there was every chance the smoke from the fires would be swept down as far as Clare.
She had just driven up onto the rise of the hill when she braked suddenly, the tyres spinning on the gravel road. “Oh my God,” she said aloud.
The row of hills on the horizon were blanketed in smoke, the sky above them coloured a glowing pink, shimmering and changing hues even as she watched.
“Fire,” she breathed. Climbing out of the car, she could just hear the sound of the fire sirens in Clare, sending out a signal to all the volunteer fire-fighters to hurry to the station. There were no such things as full-time fire-fighters here.
The smoke made it difficult to get her bearings for a moment, and she had taken a back road to Nick and Fran’s that she didn’t often use. But she realised in one horrible moment that the fire front was heading west. If they couldn’t stop it, Lorikeet Hill would be right in its path.
“No, no way!” she screamed aloud. Not after all they had done, all the effort they had put into it. And especially after all Nick and Fran had been through with Quinn. There was no way she was going to let them come back to find Lorikeet Hill burnt to the ground.
She drove like a demon through the paddock roads, heading toward the main road. She looked at her watch, eleven forty-five. She couldn’t let herself think of Dominic, just hoped that he too had heard about the fire. If she had a chance, she would ring him.
Minutes later, she knew there’d be no chance for a phone call, let alone a meeting. The fire was obviously devouring the kindling dry undergrowth on the hills to the west of Clare. The smoke was billowing down in great choking gusts onto the main road. It was nearly impossible to drive through the clouds of smoke and whirling dust that were sweeping down from the hill.
She was only a couple of hundred metre
s from Lorikeet Hill and saw to her relief that two of the fire trucks had already reached there. She pulled the car to a stop and ran toward one of the fire-fighters, recognising him immediately as an old school friend.
“Kym, thank God you’re here, what can I do?”
“Maura, you shouldn’t be here, you know that, it’s dangerous. How did you get past the roadblock? The cops are stopping all the cars from both directions.”
“I took the back road,” she said quickly, not explaining that she would have broken the road block in any case. “What can I do?” she repeated.
Kym looked around quickly. The other fire-fighters were already dragging hoses toward the shed that housed Nick’s wine laboratory and barrels. “We’ve got the wine covered. Can you do the café?” he shouted, the roar of the wind making it difficult to hear. She nodded.
“Wet everything down, block off the downpipes and fill up the gutters with water. We’ll fight off the best of it. And wrap some material around your nose and mouth, to help you breathe through the smoke.”
As Maura ran to do what she was told, she felt the adrenalin rush through her, blocking out the panic she had felt previously. Thank God she and Nick had listened to all the fire warnings about protecting their property. They had ensured that the grass and undergrowth was kept well down around Lorikeet Hill and her cottage. That barrier would give them some protection, she knew that. She had seen photographs taken the morning after bushfires. Whole paddocks of blackened earth, broken up by a tiny island of green in which a house stood, saved only because the owner had taken the right precautions.
The smoke was thick all around them now. She could barely see in front of her as she dragged a ladder and hose from the garden shed. The fire-fighters were shouting frantically around her. They wanted the road to act as a fire-break to the main front. The only problem was the unpredictable wind. The gusts could drive the flames across the highway. Lorikeet Hill would be right in its path.
Maura could hear the roar of the wind and an undercurrent of a loud crackling noise. Branches snapped and gum trees exploded, the oil inside them igniting in the heat of the flames. The fire front was getting closer.
Kym snatched three towels from the clothesline and threw them to her as he ran past. “Use these to block the downpipes, Maura,” he shouted.
She dragged the ladder against the front verandah of the café and clambered up it. She crammed the towels into the downpipes and turned on the hose. A powerful stream of water flowed into the gutters. That would help stop any sparks falling on to the roof and setting it alight.
“We’ve got about five minutes,” she heard one of the fire-fighters shout into a two-way radio. “The front’s changing direction – it’s headed this way.”
Another surge of adrenalin ran through her. She looked at her watch. It was twelve noon. The thought of Dominic flashed through her mind. He’d be safe. He would have been stopped by the police roadblock.
“Well done, Maura,” Kym shouted as he ran past, his voice only just audible over the roar of the wind. Maura gave him a thumbs-up sign. She started coughing, glad of the cloth around her face which was keeping some of the smoke and ash from her lungs.
The ladder gave her a high vantage point and her blood pumped as she saw, in glimpses between the billowing smoke clouds, the red glow of the fire burning its way down the hillside towards them. The main road was their last defence.
Maura knew that it wasn’t just the first rush of fire that caused the damage. It was the second wave, the slow creeping carpet of flames that stayed and caused the most harm. That was started by burning leaves being flicked through the air or gusts of wind carrying whole fiery branches.
Climbing quickly down the ladder, Maura ran up to the fire truck and shouted to the fire-fighter in charge, an older man called Len. She knew him from his full-time job in the local post office but she hadn’t realised he was a volunteer fire-fighter too.
“What else can I do?” she shouted over the sound of the two-way radio and the roar of the wind.
Len leaned down to her. “We’re as ready as we can be. The front’ll be here any minute.”
They all braced themselves, hoses directed at the undergrowth on the edge of the road. The fire would have to catch there if it was going to make the jump over the road. If it didn’t, or couldn’t, it would burn sideways and then back on itself. It would have already devoured a lot of the bush fuel, and Maura knew the hope was that it would burn itself out.
The noise was incredible. She thought she heard the sound of glass exploding and remembered the abandoned old shed across the road. It must have been right in the path of the fire.
She looked up, her eyes smarting from the smoke and the tiny specks of ash that were hurling through the air. She gasped as she saw a whole burning branch whip past, throwing out sparks as it did so. It landed on the roof of the café and to her horror, caught under one of the eaves.
“Kym, Len!” she screamed. But they were too busy to hear her, their attention focused on the flames roaring by the main road only a hundred metres away.
As she watched, the branch on the roof flamed up again. She grabbed the ladder and dragged it around under the eaves. She clambered up and snatched hold of the hose. It was caught in the gutter. The branch was burning fiercely. If any sparks managed to fall down through the iron roof, there was plenty of fuel to inflame it. She tugged at the hose again, feeling the ladder shake as she did so.
“Come on!” she roared, trying to pull the hose free. She gave a furious tug and it suddenly came free. She directed the force of water at the branch, shouting as she did so. “Go out!” Her eyes were filling with smoke and tears. Finally it looked like the branch had stopped burning. The air was now so thick with smoke she could hardly see. She put her hand on the gutter to ease herself down the ladder. As she did so, she felt a great gust of wind.
The ladder suddenly gave way under her. She felt a sharp blow as she knocked her head against the edge of the roof and fell to the ground.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Her first sensation was one of agonising pain. She felt as if a layer of skin was being slowly scraped off her right arm and a blowtorch directed at her raw flesh. Something was wrenching at her skull. She screamed aloud and felt the blessed relief of unconsciousness slide over her again.
Later she heard voices and shouts around her and she felt her body being carried and carefully placed into a vehicle. She was dimly aware that it must be an ambulance, but she was unable to form any words or ask any questions.
Her head was spinning. Pounding. The blowtorch against her arm wouldn’t stop. She could smell a bitter mix of smoke and ash and an underlying acrid odour. In a dazed horror she recognised it as the smell of her own burnt hair and flesh.
She willed herself to faint again, to leave this behind until she was ready for it. She tried to ask what had happened with the fire, whether they had been able to drive it back but the chorus of soothing voices started up again, tumbling over each other to implore her to lie still.
In the midst of it, she thought of Dominic. She had to find him, she had to talk to him, hear what he had to say.
The chorus wouldn’t let her. The voices solidified into gentle hands that slowly stroked her forehead, briefly easing the pounding pain, soothing her for a moment. She managed to say his name. There was no answer from the voices. She said it again and imagined she heard his voice in reply.
The heavy sleep suddenly claimed her again.
Chapter Forty
Maura sensed the light on her. She could feel warmth on her face and frowned for a moment, not opening her eyes. Her cottage bedroom didn’t face the morning sunshine, so what was the light that was waking her up so early? And it must be early. She didn’t feel like she’d had nearly enough sleep.
Eyes still tightly shut, she moved her left hand up to her face. As she did, she felt her hair. All three inches of it. Her eyes snapped open. What had happened to her hair? She looked around
in a panic. This wasn’t her bedroom. It looked like a hospital room. She tried to sit up and gasped as a sharp pain shot down her arm.
The noise caused a male figure at the window to suddenly turn toward her.
“Dominic?” Maura said haltingly. She had barely spoken his name before he had covered the short distance from the window to her bedside. He didn’t speak, just looked at her searchingly.
“Dominic,” she said again, a little stronger this time. “What’s happened? Where am I?”
Still he didn’t reply. Instead he moved as if to touch her right arm, then suddenly pulled his hand away. She looked down and saw her arm was completely covered in bandages. She tentatively tried to move it and was rewarded with another agonising dart of pain.
She suddenly remembered it all. “I was in the fire, wasn’t I?”
He nodded. When he finally spoke, his voice was very quiet. “You’re in the Clare Hospital. We think a gust of wind blew you off the roof. You were knocked out, and a burning branch landed on you.”
So the nightmare of the blowtorch had been reality. “And Lorikeet Hill? My cottage?” she whispered, steeling herself for the awful news.
Dominic smiled gently at her. “All saved. You lost a couple of trees from the far end of the garden, but they managed to fight the fire back at the main road. A shed was lost in the field across the highway, but apart from you, there was no serious damage.”
She remembered it now. She was supposed to have met Dominic there at noon. “What time is it now?”
“It’s Wednesday afternoon,” he answered softly.
She sat up again. “Wednesday? But the fire was on Sunday.”
He lifted his hand and gently touched her forehead. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness since then. The doctors have had you on some very powerful painkillers.”
It was all becoming too much. She struggled to understand why Dominic was still in Clare. “That means you’ve been here for days. You shouldn’t be here. You’re supposed to be in New York. Bernadette told me,” she said, confused.
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