The roar from outside built to a crescendo, a sound where nothing could be said, nothing heard. Maybe they should have been terrified, but for Julie and for Amina too, they’d gone past terror. Terror was when the people they loved were outside, missing. Now they were all present and accounted for, and if hell itself broke loose, if their shelter disintegrated, somehow it didn’t matter because they were there.
Rob was there.
He roused himself after a while and pushed himself back against the wall. Julie wasn’t sure where the black soot ended and burns began. None of his clothes were burned. His eyes seemed swollen and bloodshot, but maybe hers did too. There were no mirrors here.
Amina was cuddling Danny, but she was also cuddling the dog.
The dog had almost cost her son his life, Julie thought wonderingly, but as Amina poured water over Luca’s paws and his tail gave a feeble wag of thanks, she thought: this dog is part of their family.
No wonder Danny ran after him. He was loved.
Love...
It was a weird concept. Four years ago, love had died. It had shrivelled inside her, leaving her a dried out husk. She’d thought she could never feel pain again.
But when she’d thought she’d lost Rob... The pain was still with her. It was like she’d been under anaesthetic for years, and now the drug had worn off. Leaving her exposed...
The noise...
She was sitting beside the dirt wall, next to Rob.
His hand came out and took hers, and held. Taking comfort?
Her heart twisted, and the remembered pain came flooding back. Family...
She didn’t have family. Her family was dead.
But Rob was holding her hand and she couldn’t pull away.
She stirred at some stage, found cartons of juice, packets of crackers and tinned tuna. The others didn’t speak while she prepared a sort of lunch.
Danny was the first to eat, accepting her offering with pleasure.
‘We didn’t have breakfast,’ he told her. ‘Mama was too scared. She was trying to pack the car; trying to ring Papa. I wanted toast but Mama said when we got away from the fire.’
‘We’re away from the fire now,’ she told him, glancing sideways at Rob. She wasn’t sure if his throat was burned. She wasn’t sure...of anything. But he cautiously sipped the juice and then tucked into the crackers like there was no tomorrow.
The food did them all good. It settled them. Nothing like a good cup of tea—Julie’s Gran used to say that, and she grinned. There was no way she could attempt to boil water. Juice would have to do as a substitute, but it seemed to be working just as well.
The roaring had muted. She was scarcely daring to hope, but maybe the front had passed.
‘It’s still too loud and too hot,’ Rob croaked. ‘We can’t open the door yet.’
‘My Henry will be looking for us,’ Amina said. ‘He’ll be frantic.’
‘He won’t have been allowed through,’ Rob told her. ‘I came up last night and they were closing the road blocks then.’
‘You were an idiot for coming,’ Julie said.
‘Yep.’ But he didn’t sound like he thought he was an idiot. ‘How long have you lived here?’ he asked Amina, and Julie thought he was trying hard to sound like things were normal. Like this was just a brief couple of hours of enforced stay and then they’d get on with their lives.
Maybe she would, she thought. After all, what had changed for her? Maybe their house had burned, but she didn’t live here anyway.
Maybe more traces of their past were gone, but they’d been doomed to vanish one day. Things were just...things.
‘Nearly four years,’ Amina said. ‘We came just after Danny was born. But this place...it’s always been empty. The guy who mows the lawns said there was a tragedy. Kids...’ And then her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Your kids,’ she whispered in horror. ‘You’re the parents of the twins who died.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ Rob said quietly. ‘It’s been a very long time since we were parents.’
‘But you’re together?’ She seemed almost frantic, overwhelmed by past tragedy when recent tragedy had just been avoided.
‘For now we are,’ Rob told her.
‘But you don’t live here.’
‘Too many ghosts,’ Julie said.
‘Why don’t you sell?’ She seemed dazed beyond belief. Horror piled upon horror...
‘Because of the ghosts,’ Julie whispered.
Amina glanced from Julie to Rob and back again, her expression showing her sheer incomprehension of what they must have gone through. Or maybe it wasn’t incomprehension. She’d been so close herself...
‘If you hadn’t saved Danny...’ she whispered.
‘We did,’ Rob told her.
‘But it can’t bring your boys back.’
‘No.’ Rob’s voice was harsh.
‘There’s nothing...’ Amina was crying now, hugging Danny to her, looking from Julie to Rob and back again. ‘You’ve saved us and there’s nothing I can do to thank you. No way... I wish...’
‘We all wish,’ Rob said grimly, glancing at Julie. ‘But at least today we have less to wish for. A bit of ointment and the odd bandage for Luka’s sore paws and we’ll be ready to carry on where we left off.’
Where we left off yesterday, though, Julie thought bleakly. Not where we left off four years ago.
What had she been about, clinging to this man last night? The ghosts were still all around them.
The ghosts would never let them go.
‘We’re okay,’ Rob said and suddenly he’d tugged her to him and he was holding. Just holding. Taking comfort or giving it, it didn’t matter. His body was black and filthy and big and hard and infinitely comforting and she had a huge urge to turn and kiss him, smoke and all. She didn’t. She couldn’t and it wasn’t just that they were with Amina and Danny.
The ghosts still held the power to hold them apart.
* * *
An hour later, Rob finally decreed they might open the bunker doors. The sounds had died to little more than high wind, with the occasional crack of falling timber. The battery-operated radio Rob had dug up from beneath a pile of blankets told them the front had moved south. Messages were confused. There was chaos and destruction throughout the mountains. All roads were closed. The advice was not to move from where they were.
They had no intention of moving from where they were, but they might look outside.
The normal advice during a bush fire was to take shelter while the front passed, and then emerge as soon as possible and fight to keep the house from burning. That’d be okay in a fast-moving grass fire but down in the valley the bush had caught and burned with an intensity that was never going to blow through. There’d been an hour of heat so intense they could feel it through the double doors. Now...she thought they’d emerge to nothing.
‘What about staying here while we do a reconnaissance?’ Rob asked Amina and the woman gave a grim nod.
‘Our house’ll be gone anyway; I know that. What’s there to see? Danny, can you pass me another drink? We’ll stay here until Rob and Julie tell us it’s safe.’
‘I want to see the burned,’ Danny said, and Julie thought this was becoming an adventure