scouts. You’re the captain minding the fort. Take care of everyone here, Danny. You’re in charge.’
And he held out his hand to Julie. ‘Come on, love,’ he said. ‘Let’s go face the music.’
She hesitated. There was so much behind those words. Sadness, tenderness, and...caring? How many years had they been apart and yet he could still call her love.
It twisted her heart. It made her feel vulnerable in a way she couldn’t define.
‘I’m coming,’ she said, but she didn’t take his hand. ‘Let’s go.’
* * *
First impression was black and smoke and heat. The wash of heat was so intense it took her breath away.
Second impression was desolation. The once glorious bushland that had surrounded their home was now a blackened, ash-filled landscape, still smouldering, flickers of flame still orange through the haze of smoke.
Third impression was that their house was still standing.
‘My God,’ Rob breathed. ‘It’s withstood... Julie, Plan D now.’
And she got it. Their fire plan had been formed years before but it was typed up and laminated, pasted to their bathroom door so they couldn’t help but learn it.
Plan A: leave the area before the house was threatened. When they’d had the boys, this was the most sensible course of action. Maybe it was the most sensible course of action anyway. Their independent decision to come into a fire zone had been dumb. But okay, moving on.
Plan B: stay in the house and defend. They’d abandon that plan if the threat was dire, the fire intense.
Plan C: head to the bunker and stay there until the front passed. And then implement Plan D.
Plan D: get out of the bunker as soon as possible and try to stop remnants of fire destroying the house.
The fire had been so intense that Julie had never dreamed she’d be faced with Plan D but now it had happened, and the list with its dot-points was so ingrained in her head that she moved into automatic action.
The generator was under the house. The pump was under there too. If they were safe they could pump water from the underground tanks.
‘You do the water, spray the roof,’ Rob snapped. ‘I’ll check inside, then head round the foundations and put out spot fires.’ It was still impossibly hard to speak. Even breathing hurt, but somehow Rob managed it. ‘We can do this, Julie. With this level of fire, we might be stuck here for hours, if not days. We need to keep the house safe.’
Why? There was a tiny part of her that demanded it. Why bother?
For the same reason she’d come back, she thought. This house had been home. It no longer was, or she’d thought it no longer was. But Rob was already heading for the bricked-in cavity under the house where they’d find tools to defend.
Rob thought this place was worth fighting for—the remnants of her home?
Who knew the truth of it? Who knew the logic? All she knew was that Rob thought this house was worth defending and, for now, all she could do was follow.
* * *
They worked solidly for two hours. After the initial checks they worked together, side by side. Rob’s design genius had paid off. The house was intact but the smouldering fires after the front were insidious. A tiny spark in leaf litter hard by the house could be enough to turn the house into flames hours after the main fire. So Julie sprayed while Rob ran along the base of the house with a mop and bucket.
The underground water tank was a lifesaver. The water flowing out seemed unbelievably precious. Heaven knew how people managed without such tanks.
They didn’t, she thought grimly as finally Rob left her to sentry duty and determinedly made his way through the ash and smoke to check Amina’s house.
He came back looking even grimmer than he had when he’d left.
‘Gone,’ he said. ‘And their car... God help them if they’d stayed in that car, or even if they’d made it out onto the road. Our cars are still safe in the garage, but a tree’s fallen over the track leading into the house. It’s big and it’s burning. We’re going nowhere.’
There was no more to be said. They worked on. Maybe someone should go back to Amina to tell her about her house, but the highest priority had to be making sure this house was safe. Not because of emotional ties, though. This was all about current need.
Mount Bundoon was a tiny hamlet and this house and Amina’s were two miles out of town. Thick bush lay between them and the township. There’d be more fallen logs—who knew what else—between them and civilisation.
‘We’ll be stuck here till Christmas,’ Julie said as they worked, and her voice came out strained. Her throat was so sore from the smoke.
‘Seeing as Christmas is tomorrow, yes, we will,’ Rob told her. ‘Did you have any plans?’
‘I...no.’
‘Do we have a turkey in the freezer?’
‘I should have left it out,’ she said unsteadily. ‘It would have been roasted by now. Oh, Rob...’ She heard her voice shake and Rob’s arms came round her shoulders.
‘No matter. We’ve done it. We’re almost on the other side, Jules, love.’
But they weren’t, she thought, and suddenly bleakness was all around her. What had changed? She could cling to Rob now but she knew that, long-term, they’d destroy each other. How could you help ease someone else’s pain when you were withered inside by your own?
‘Another half hour and we might be able to liberate Amina,’ Rob said and something about the way he spoke told her he was feeling pretty much the same sensations she was feeling. ‘The embers are getting less and Luka must be just about busting to find a tree by now.’
‘Well, good luck to him finding one,’ she said, pausing with her wet mop to stare bleakly round at the moonscape destruction.
‘We can help them,’ Rob said gently. ‘They’ve lost their house. We can help them get through it. I don’t know about you, Jules, but putting my head down and working’s been the only thing between me and madness for the last four years. So keeping Amina’s little family secure—that’s something we can focus on. And we can focus on it together.’
‘Just for the next twenty-four hours.’
‘That’s all I ever think about,’ Rob told her, and the bleakness was back in his voice full force. ‘One day at a time. One hour at a time. That’s survival, Jules. We both know all about it so let’s put it into action now.’
* * *
One day at a time? Rob worked on, the hard physical work almost a welcome relief from the emotions of the last twenty-four hours but, strangely, he’d stopped thinking of now. He was putting out embers on autopilot but the rest of his brain was moving forward.
Where did he go from here?
Before the fire, he’d thought he had almost reached the other side of a chasm of depression and self-blame. There’d been glimmers of light when he’d thought he could enjoy life again. ‘You need to move on,’ his shrink had advised him. ‘You can’t help Julie and together your grief will make you self-destruct.’ Or maybe that wasn’t what the shrink had advised him—maybe it was what the counselling sessions had made him accept for himself.
But now, working side by side, with Julie a constant presence as they beat out the spot fires still flaring up against the house, it was as if that thinking was revealed for what it was—a travesty. A lie. How could he move on? He still felt married. He still was married.
He’d fallen in love with his dot-point-maker, his Julie, eight years ago and that love was still there.