Christmas Where They Belong. Marion Lennox

CHAPTER THREE

      NOTE: IF A bush fire’s heading your way, maybe you should set the alarm.

      He woke and filtered sunlight was streaming through the east windows. Filtered? That’d be smoke. It registered but only just, for Julie was in his arms, spooned against his body, naked, beautiful and sated with loving. It was hard to get his mind past that.

      Past her.

      But the world was edging in. The wind had risen. He could hear the sound of the gums outside creaking under the weight of it.

      Wind. Smoke. Morning.

      ‘Jules?’

      ‘Mmm.’ She stirred, stretched like a kitten and the sensation of her naked skin against his had him wanting her all over again. He could...

      He couldn’t. Wind. Smoke. Morning.

      Somehow he hauled his watch from under his woman.

      Eight-thirty.

      Eight-thirty!

      Get out by nine at the latest, the authorities had warned. Keep listening to emergency radio in case of updates.

       Eight-thirty.

      Somehow he managed to roll away and flick on the bedside radio. But even now, even realising what was at stake, he didn’t want to leave her.

      The radio sounded into life. Nothing had changed in this house. He’d paid to have a housekeeper come in weekly. The clock was still set to the right time.

      There was a book beside the radio. He’d been halfway through it when...when...

      Maybe this house should burn, he thought, memories surging back. Maybe he wanted it to.

      ‘We should sell this house.’ She still sounded sleepy. The implication of sleeping in hadn’t sunk in yet, he thought, flicking through the channels to find the one devoted to emergency transmissions.

      ‘So why did you come back?’ he asked, abandoning the radio and turning back to her. The fire was important, but somehow...somehow he knew that words might be said now that could be said at no other time. Certainly not four years ago. Maybe not in the future either, when this house was sold or burned.

      Maybe now...

      ‘The teddies,’ she told him, still sleepy. ‘The wall-hanging my mum made. I...wanted them.’

      ‘I was thinking of the fire engines.’

      ‘That’s appropriate.’ Amazingly, she was smiling.

      He’d never thought he’d see this woman smile again.

      And then he thought of those last words. The words that had hung between them for years.

      ‘Julie, it wasn’t our fault,’ he said and he watched her smile die.

      ‘I...’

      ‘I know. You said you killed them, but I believed it was me. That day I brought you home from hospital. You stood here and you said it was because you were sleeping and I said no, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, but there was such a big part of me that was blaming myself that I couldn’t go any further. It was like...I was dead. I couldn’t even speak. I’ve thought about it for four years. I’ve tried to write it down.’

      ‘I got your letters.’

      ‘You didn’t reply.’

      ‘I thought...the sooner you stopped writing the sooner you’d forget me. Get on with your life.’

      ‘You know the road collapsed,’ he said. ‘You know the lawyers told us we could sue. You know it was the storm the week before that eroded the bitumen.’

      ‘But that I was asleep...’

      ‘We should have stayed in the city that night. We shouldn’t have tried to bring the boys home. That’s the source of our greatest regret, but it shouldn’t be guilt. It put us in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve been back to the site. It was a blind curve. I rounded it and the road just wasn’t there.’

      ‘If we’d come up in broad daylight, when we were both alert...’

      How often had he thought about this? How often had he screamed it to himself in the middle of troubled sleep?

      He had to say it. He had to believe it.

      ‘Jules, I manoeuvred a blind bend first. A tight curve. I wasn’t speeding. I hit the brakes the moment I rounded the bend but the road was gone. If you’d been awake it wouldn’t have made one whit of difference. Julie, it’s not only me who’s saying this. It was the police, the paramedics, the guys from the accident assessment scene.’

      ‘But I can’t remember.’ It was a wail, and he tugged her back into his arms and thought it nearly killed him.

      He was reassuring her but regardless of reason, the guilt was still there. What if...? What if, what if, what if?

      Guilt had killed them both. Was killing them still.

      He held her but her body had stiffened. The events of four years ago were right there. One night of passion couldn’t wash them away.

      He couldn’t fix it. How could it be fixed, when two small beds lay empty in the room next door?

      He kissed her on the lips, searching for an echo of the night before. She kissed him back but he could feel that she’d withdrawn.

      Same dead Julie...

      He turned again and went back to searching the radio channels. Finally he found the station he was looking for—the emergency channel.

       ‘...evacuation orders are in place now for Rowbethon, Carnarvon, Dewey’s Creek... Leave now. Forecast is for forty-six degrees, with winds up to seventy kilometres an hour, gusting to over a hundred. The fire fronts are merging...’

      And all his attention was suddenly on the fire. It had to be. Rowbethon, Carnarvon, Dewey’s Creek... They were all south of Mount Bundoon.

      The wind was coming from the north.

      ‘Fire is expected to impact on the Mount Bundoon area within the hour,’ the voice went on. ‘Bundoon Creek Bridge is closed. Anyone not evacuated, do not attempt it now. Repeat, do not attempt to evacuate. Roads are cut to the south. Fire is already impacting to the east. Implement your fire plans but, repeat, evacuation is no longer an option.’

      ‘We need to get to a refuge centre.’ Julie was sitting bolt upright, wide-eyed with horror.

      ‘There isn’t one this side of the creek.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘We’re not driving in this smoke. Besides, we have the bunker.’ Thank God, they had the bunker.

      ‘But...’

      ‘We can do this, Jules.’

      And she settled, just like that. Same old Jules. In a crisis, there was no one he’d rather have by his side.

      ‘The fire plan,’ she said. ‘I have it.’

      Of course she did. Julie was one of the most controlled people he knew. Efficient. Organised. A list-maker extraordinaire.

      The moment they’d moved into this place she’d downloaded a Fire Authority Emergency Plan and made him go through it, step by step, making dot-points for every eventuality.

      They were better off than most. Bush fire was always a risk in Australian summers and he’d thought about it carefully when he’d designed this place. The house had been built to withstand a furnace—though not an inferno. There’d been fires in Australia where even the most fireproof buildings had burned. But he’d designed the house with every precaution. The house was made of stone, with no garden close to the house. They had solar power, backup generators, underground water tanks, pumps and