Summer Bay High

[I love music]

Distant Thunder

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat

“I got a call about Kane. I’m his...uh...his girlfriend.” It was only now that Martha realised how fast her heart was racing and how nervous she was about the whole thing.

“You don’t seem too sure about that, Missy. Maybe you’re way too young to make up your mind about anything.” Officer Jeff Harwood, manning the station’s reception desk, stopped muttering curses to himself as he tried to shake dry the official form he’d slopped drops of tea on, and grinned as he looked her up and down. And unwittingly came to Mac’s rescue.

Years of arguing with her over-protective brothers made her bristle immediately at the condescending put-down and rise admirably to the challenge of acting the part. “Yeh, well, I’m not too sure I still want to be his girlfriend after tonight.” She had already noticed Kane Phillips sitting in the waiting area with two police officers standing beside him and now she swung around, hands on hips and glared. “You promised me you’d stay out of trouble!”

Kane Phillips raised his eyebrows and smirked in amusement but only Martha noticed. Everyone else in the station was too preoccupied with watching the beautiful Martha McKenzie apparently in a blazing fury.

“Whoa,” Luke Johnson smiled, believing every word of the girlfriend story and glad they could let the suspect go free, blissfully unaware that his superior Joe Briscoe was about to haul him over the coals for this. “Don’t give him too hard a time. It was nothing too serious. We brought him in because he’d had a few drinks too many.”

“And just happened to be wandering outside the female block of the Rowan House Centre,” Joe Briscoe put in drily. “Your phone, I believe, Miss McKenzie!”

“Thanks.”

Martha accepted Hayley’s phone without batting an eyelid, beginning to stun herself with her own acting abilities. She was aware that Kane Phillips was watching her curiously though he’d quickly looked away when Rowan House Centre was mentioned. Guilt, thought Martha, wondering what the hell she was doing, about to leave herself alone with this sicko who, after attacking her two best friends, had gone prowling the grounds of the psychiatric hospital. But then an image of Cassie flashed into her mind. Poor lonely, lost Cass, who never hurt anyone, turned into a nervous wreck by this...this monster - and even defending him!

“Okay, Phillips, pick up your things. You’re free to go. This time.” Officer Briscoe gritted his teeth, only narrowly stopping himself from adding “you b*****d”, smoothing back what little was left of his greying hair, and feeling ready to kill Luke Johnson.

“Sweet. Nice chatting with you, boys.” Kane Phillips whistled with arrogant nonchalance as he retrieved his belongings. Jeez, Mac was bloody good! He had no idea she was apparently destined for a career in the movies.

So far, so good. Now all she had to do was...Martha jumped sky high as a hand was suddenly clamped on her shoulder.

“Thought I knew the face,” Joe Briscoe said thoughtfully. “I’ve seen you helping out in the Diner. You’re Alf Stewart’s granddaughter, aren’t you? From Brookdown?”

“And what if I am?” Martha blustered.

Joe remained impassive. His own daughter, now married with kids of her own, had been just as feisty at Martha’s age.

“You know, I suggest you have a serious talk with your Grandad about the kind of bloke you’re dating these days.”

“It’s my business,” Martha defended herself. Beside her Kane Phillips grinned triumphantly.

“That may be so, but you’re playing a very dangerous game,” Joe answered levelly.

Martha defiantly tossed her head without reply.

“Come on, babe, let’s get outta here. I don’t like the smell, it don’t agree with my delicate constitution,” her companion remarked.

He wondered whether he should put his arm round her waist to make it all the more convincing but she wasn’t even looking at him. And anyway they were supposed to be in the middle of a blue, weren’t they? So he simply grinned again, mouthed “love ya” to Joe Briscoe and blew him a kiss.

Officer Joe Briscoe could only watch them walk into the rain*filled night, seething with rage that Phillips was able to walk free, yet powerless to stop him.

****

Bypassing various partygoers spilled out from the party house, Megan Ashcroft finally stopped by Whitelady Copse and emptied the rain from the brim of her hat. She was drenched. Not that she minded. Rain was both lifeblood and music to her soul and she was sorry it had stopped again although the moon shone anew and lit up the grounds with a hazy silver light.

The ornamental pond that had once attracted visitors to the now defunct restaurant with its laser beam dancing water show was dried out except for the rainwater still dripping down from rusty pipes. The peaceful rhythmic dripping suddenly called an old tune to her mind. Something about moon and stars and guardians of sleepers. Most of the words had long since been lost in translation over eons of time, her grandmother had said, and few that made any sense remained in living memory. Still feeling slightly drunk from the vodka, Megan replaced her hat, spread out her long red hair and half danced around the edge of the dried out pond, humming the lullaby that her grandmother would lull her to sleep with when she was tiny.

A magic lullaby, Gran had said, that went as far back in time at least to when Molly Scattergood, an ancestor of the Ashcrofts, sang it to her own children as she mixed herbal cures and told fortunes, long before Edwin Henry Scattergood was sentenced to transportation after “the defendant pleaded guilty to stealing the sum of five guineas from one Arthur Pryor shopkeeper of 110 Bridgewater Street, Cheapside, London. PC Thomas Entwistle said the defendant became much agitated upon being apprehended and claimed there was no food to be had in the house nor fire in the grate and his wife and children had ate nothing but a weak broth for two days... ” long before his wife Margaret and two children, Lydia and Henry, were allowed to join him in Australia.

Funny how the song had always stayed in her mind. Her sisters Lauren and Emma, even her own mother, said they recalled the melody but none of the words. But Megan and her Gran had always been exceptionally close.

“Sweet child, thy tears dry...” Melanie’s voice rose clear as the cool waters of the moonlit river below, as she idly wondered whether or not he water sprites that reputedly haunted the area really existed. “Lulla-lulla-lullaby...Lulla-lulla-lullaby...”

And that was when she saw it. At first she thought it was simply moonlight dancing playfully through the trees. But the bright glowing shape took the form of a woman in a long flowing white dress and glided swiftly into the distance before disappearing before her very eyes.

She couldn’t ignore her intuition any longer, try as she might to push it all away and imagine she was just an ordinary student of Summer Bay High. She could never be ordinary. Gran always said it was a gift, but being psychic was more a curse than a blessing. To know enough to push open the curtains of the future and yet not enough to see clearly through its misty windows. To see things not of this earth that others never saw.

Wishing Tony could be there to comfort her, lonely without his love, Megan leaned her forehead against the wet bark of a tree and wept softly. What must be must be. Legend had it that the ghost of Lady Eleanor -The White Lady after whom Whitelady Copse took its name - was the harbinger of death.

*****

They had walked along in silence through the trickling rain, neither certain of where they were going, neither looking at the other. At last he spoke. Uneasily, hastily. He’d always loved that fiercely independent spark that, besides her stunning good looks and figure, marked Martha McKenzie out from other chicks. For a little while, when she’d begun dying her hair every other week, plastering on the make-up with a trowel and having no topics of conversation other than fashion, celebrities and boys, it seemed she was about to be merged into Hayley and her clones but suddenly tonight the real Martha was back with a vengeance. What was more, the field was wide open.

Martha and Jack had been the ideal couple and while normally he didn’t give a stuff about muscling in on other blokes’ girlfriends, Holden had been about the only student at Summer Bay High to give him the time of day so, uncharacteristically, he’d backed off from making a move on his chick. But he’d heard it on the grapevine they’d split officially and now she was no longer off limits he was keen to impress.

“Bloody rain can’t make up its mind tonight.” He made a tentative stab at conversation after racking his brains for a suitable opener.

Martha McKenzie didn’t reply. Cars swished through the night, splashing through puddles, casting yellow streaks of light from headlamps. People passed by. Someone hailed a cab. An Irish ballad and laughter blared out from an Irish theme pub. But she was hardly aware of anyone or anything. Her mind was swallowed up in an images of Cassie and Hayley and just one thought.

There’s a knife in my pocket and I’m going to...I’m going to...

They reached to where roadworks had blocked off a lane with traffic cones and crossed to the opposite side for no other reason than they were by a pedestrian crossing and the traffic stopped, assuming they had come this far and so they would.

Across the road, a sharp incline marked the point where the ocean swelled into the river. A long stroll along by the sea wall when the tide was in, as it was now, or a long stroll along the soft, powdery sand when the tide was out, eventually led down to the harbour. It was normally a tranquil, picturesque place with starlight shimmering on an inky river and the gentle sigh of the rolling waves to soothe troubled minds and a hugely popular area with walkers and cruise ships, but tonight the temperamental weather had dictated otherwise and it was almost deserted, most folk preferring the warmth and shelter of home or the nearby bars and restaurants, especially as the latest forecast was that a heavy storm was expected to hit and all shipping had been cancelled.

Already a cooling breeze was breathing through the night and dark clouds were rolling further and further inland, pushing away their quieter cousins that could only manage sudden brief downpours before slinking timidly away. He stole a glance at his companion but she was walking steadily onwards, seemingly engrossed in what lay ahead, though he had a sneaking suspicion she was still watching him.

Peripheral vision, her brother Chris, who was studying to be a doctor, had called it, looking up from the thick medical book that he’d opened after swinging down from the tractor to sit beside her and take his lunch break too, and which Mac, while pretending to read her own magazine, had just begun reading aloud from in gibberish to put him off.

“My eyesight’s perfect!” She protested, wiping crumbs off her jeans . “That’s WHY I can see the book, drongo!”

“No, you dork!” Chris grinned. “Peripheral vision means the ability to see things outside of the direct line of vision. Everyone has it - not half as well as you do though.”

“I knew that!” Martha lied, giggling.

“No, you didn’t!” Chris snatched her music magazine, swiftly rolled it up and hit her lightly on the head, receiving a punch on the shoulder for his efforts. “Wow, Mac! Check out that rainbow over Lacey’s Farm!”

Why couldn’t life always be the summers of yesterday? When a glorious sun browned her and brought out natural highlights in her hair, when the strawberries yielded a bumper crop, when there was always the familiar homely smell from the hen coop and Ethel the fattest hen would cluck in triumph as she laid yet another egg? Or when she and her brothers had fiercely argued or gently teased each other in the love/hate way of family, when Mum was nagging her to tidy her room and Dad was singing out of tune again? Or when she first came to Summer Bay and she and Jack first fell head over heels in love and the world was suddenly perfect? Why couldn’t it always be the golden summer of yesterday?

Instead of now, when she had a knife in her pocket and she was going to...

Smoke?” He pulled a packet from the inside of his jacket and held it out to her.

Another silence.

I’m doing this for you, Cass. You and Hales. Because if I don’t sick lowlife like Kane Phillips will think they can always get away with it.

“Yeh. You’re right. Filthy habit.” He replaced the packet. Where the hell where they walking to then? Whatever, she had quickened her pace. Jeez, it was like Crazy Cassie all over again!

“Well, anyway. How much?”

“What?”

Reee-suult! Response! He grinned to himself. Money always talked!

“How much?” He repeated, pulling a wallet from his pocket and flicking through some low-value banknotes. “Sorry, I don’t have too much of the readies on me right now, but if you’re okay with it I can pay you tomo...”

He gasped in shock and reeled backwards as Martha suddenly struck him hard across the face.

“What the...?” Kane somehow managed to steady himself against a lamppost. “What the **** was that for?” He asked in astonishment, stroking his stinging cheek. It wasn’t the first time a chick had lashed out at him over some remark or other but it was the first time one had actually packed a punch.

“How dare you! How dare you imply that I can be...I can be bought!”

“What?” He tried to make sense of the statement. Okay, he’d had a few drinks but being in the cop shop had definitely sobered him up. Then realisation slowly filtered through. “Hang on! You thought...?” He began to laugh, then seeing the anger in Martha McKenzie’s eyes thought better of it. He watched her warily while keeping a safe distance, holding on to the lamppost as though it were a tried and trusted friend.

“Sorry.” He couldn’t help his lips twitching at the corners. “I only meant how much did I owe you for bailing me out?”

“Oh.” Martha swallowed, suddenly feeling like a fool. The colder air was beginning to wake her out of the dream-like quality of the night. What did she think she was doing? What the hell did she think she was doing? You didn’t just pick up knives and make plans to kill someone, no matter what they’d done, no matter how drunk you were.

I’m sorry, Cass. You’re like my kid sister and all, and I’m sorry, I promised you and Hales, but I can’t go through with it...

“Nothing,” she added, finding her voice at last.

“Nothing?”

Under the surreal light of the street-lamp and through the drizzling rain, he blinked at her in bewilderment. She looked like she was crying but that didn’t make any sense. Had she had yet another row with Holden or something? He opened his mouth to ask a question, but she suddenly turned her head and stalked off as though practising the heel-to-toe speedwalking that Adele Stevens, Summer Bay High’s sexy new PE teacher was keen to promote. Naively, Miss Stevens still hadn’t figured out why certain male students, including himself, were just as keen to put their names down to join her after-school fitness club.

He hurried after her. “Hey! Wait up! What d’ya mean, nothing? You mean I owe Jack or something? Was this his idea? Where is he? Mac!”

Omigod! I’m all alone and he’s...

She walked on faster. They said don’t run in these situations. They said keep your wits about you, walk quickly and keep looking out for someone to alert. They didn’t say what to do if you’d walked further and further to where the sea wall led down to the hidden area favoured by lovers and further and further away from the road. Her hand clasped tightly round the knife in her pocket, her only chance, and she began to run.

“Mac! Wait up!” Jeez, were ALL chicks seriously loopy? Or had she just spent too long with Crazy Cassie?

She could hear his panting breath and his pounding footsteps gaining on her as her own feet stomped on the sand-dusted ground, her own panting breaths echoing his, and nothing but the sky and the sea and the storm all around.

She screamed, her screams drowned out by the roar of thunder and waves, as the inevitable happened and he caught up with her, gave a small sob of terror as she felt his arm snaking around her waist, tried desperately to push him away, tried desperately to pull out the knife, but he was the stronger..

.

...and in the tussle through the eternity of darkness and rain, her right heel slipping in something...

...seaweed? sand? does it matter, what does it matter? I’m falling, I’m falling, please somebody help me, I’m falling...

as she tumbled backwards, cold, icy cold water, freezing every part of her body, stealing her breath, waves thundering in her ears... She opened her eyes for a second and in the flash of lightning briefly saw him standing by the sea wall before the blackness and the ocean claimed her...cold, so cold, so very, very cold...

[I love music]

^^^ I love this fan fic it just seems so real and your writing of the characters is fantastic- it really brings them all to life. Great last part, but I'd love to see more of Gypsy - you write her so well!

Good to know that you'd carry on regardless I began a fan fic a few months back and I continued to update it regularly for a while but even though the viewings suggest people have been reading it I haven't had any comments whatsoever and I'm not sure that I'm even going to carry on with it. Hope you continue writing this though, it might be addictive writing it but it's also pretty addictive reading it .

Thanks for your lovely comments. Sorry to hear about your fanfic not receiving any reviews, maybe you could try posting again? Kat (Skykat) was the original creator of Gypsy as she is in this fic. Sorry, Gypsy isn't in this chapter but she will be in the following chapter as I've long had a certain scene in my head for her that I might end the following chapter with (not really begun writing much of the next chapter yet tho! )

Changing Times

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat

“Are we crazy? We’re meant to be in the middle of a party, we’re sober as judges and we’ve come to look at school!”

“We’re crazy,” Noah confirmed.

“Well, I must admit, I kind of like being crazy if I can be crazy here with you.”

Kit leaned back against Noah’s chest and he enveloped his arms around her and rested his chin on her shoulder as, oblivious of the rain, they gazed down from the hill at the moonlit silhouette of Summer Bay High with its picturesque background of moody night sky stretching down to the beach where eerie silver-tipped waves crashed and rolled on to the greying shore.

“We’ve come a long, long way since we got to know each other at the AA meetings in the church hall, haven’t we?” She murmured dreamily, still hardly able to believe that her life could have turned around so much.

Back when she couldn’t get through a day without alcohol she never would have imagined she would fall in love with the most wonderful guy on earth. The most wonderful guy, who tonight had asked her to be his fiancee. Tiring of the shallow noise and bustle of Hayley’s party, a million miles away from their enchanted world of two, they had slipped out to stroll hand in hand along the moonlit beach where they’d jumped over rockpools and kicked off their shoes to make footprints in the sand and let the icy water tickle their toes, comfortable in each other’s silence, comfortable in each other’s words, till the swiftly incoming tide had led them to take the winding path to the grassy slope that looked down at their school.

“Remember Esther Simmons?” Noah reminisced. “Remember when Stewy tried to pash her?”

“Don’t! The Night of the Cupcakes!” Kit spluttered with laughter at the memory and she glanced up, expecting to find Noah smiling too. But he was deadly serious and she guiltily drew a breath to gulp back her laughter. “Sorry, Noah,” she said gently, reaching up and stroking his face. “I know your religion still means heaps to you. I guess it wasn’t funny.”

“The trouble is, Kit,” Noah began sternly, and then found he was suddenly unable to hold his mock grave expression any longer. “It was.”

And this time they fell against each other, laughing helplessly, thinking back.

“Cupcakes? Cupcakes? What planet does that woman live on?”

Noah sighed. “I think she’s misguidedly trying to give us all a focus. Healthy competition, a team building exercise. Something like that.”

“Yeh, but, Noah...A cupcake competition! And all this bloody God stuff freaks me out too.” As though afraid that somebody might hear Kit looked up and around at the ceiling heaters that just about kept the draughty church from freezing its mainly elderly congregation to their deaths and sending them to their Maker much earlier than some among them had anticipated when they’d taken out their late-in-life insurance policy of churchgoing piety . “I know you grew up with it but I didn’t and it makes me feel...well, weird.”

Noah replaced the lid on the polish spray and sneezed slightly as he shook the duster. Kit was right. It had been nothing to him when he answered the call for a volunteer to polish the pews while Mrs Walsh, the usual church cleaner, was abroad on holiday and Verity O’Reilly, who was studying theology and who often helped out, had been called away to nurse a sick relative. Kit had decided to keep him company but given her nervousness around “God stuff” it was no easy task for her whereas his early indoctrination into religion meant he took their surroundings in his stride. He wasn’t in the least fazed, for instance, by the chanting of prayers they would often hear through the arched wooden doors if a Mass was being celebrated at the same time as their AA meetings were being held in the church hall, but he noticed Kit often looked furtively round whenever she heard the “mumbo*jumbo” as she called it.

“It’s because of the lobsters,” she explained.

“The what?” Noah stared at her in bafflement.

“You know. In the Bible. I overhead Verity O’Reilly talking to the rector or bishop or whatever he’s called, that bloke who wears the long frock...”

“Cassock.”

“Mr Cassock, he...”

“No, Kit,” Noah grinned. “That’s just what he wears. He’s a priest. He gets called Father.”

“Okay, Father Cassock then.”

Noah blinked in amusement but decided not to pursue it further. It was already complicated enough as it was.

“Anyway,” Kit continued, “I overheard them talking about the Bible for Verity’s religious studies and they mentioned a plague of lobsters that fell down from the sky. I mean, I don’t know that I really believe it but what if it IS true? What if a plague of lobsters came down AGAIN?”

Noah’s grin grew broader. He took her hands and gazed into her eyes. “Kit. Every single day you remind me of exactly why I love you.”

“Why? What’d I do?” Kit was smiling back, though genuinely puzzled.

“Well, even if it WAS true - and don’t forget the Bible was written by several different people over thousands of years - it was a plague of locusts and it was manna that fell from heaven, NOT lobster. You make it sound like Gordon Ramsey flew by in a chopper and dropped down dinner and dressings!”

“Sssh! Are you allowed to say things like that about God stuff?” Kit’s eyes twinkled and she smiled a smile that lit up her face and made Noah marvel how she could ever have thought herself dowdy and plain.

“You’re beautiful,” he echoed his thoughts.

“Noah.” A lump came to Kit’s throat and she could barely whisper his name. “Should we be doing this in here? In case they send down a plague of lobsters?” She mumbled as their faces drew inevitably closer, with typical Kit humour making fun of herself.

“Probably not.” Noah made no attempt to stop it however.

But their lips had barely brushed when they were interrupted by a crashing and screaming and to their astonishment plump Esther Simmons, who usually never walked any faster than a slow waddle, half ran, half fell through the door.

“Help me, help me!” She yelled in passing on mid-run, espying the young couple.

“One kiss! One kiss, that’s all I ask!”

Another figure had raced in after her. Kit and Noah somehow weren’t too surprised to see Stuart “Stewy” Caldwell. Stewy was Summer Bay High’s practical joker, an extremely clever, acne-prone, gawky kid a few years younger than themselves, who’d managed to avoid being labelled geek and even elevated his status to popular among his fellow students by his frequent clowning around and witty jokes. Noah, who’d lately been elected student counsellor, had been shocked when Stewy confided in him that he’d been a secret drinker for years. Even with his battle to overcome his own addiction and alert to the signs of alcoholism in others he’d never once suspected.

“It started off with the whiskey in my Dad’s drink cabinet,” Stewy had told him, cracking his knuckles, which made Noah cringe though he understood it was a nervous habit and said nothing. “But now I can’t seem to stop. Only I heard you...uh... know somewhere that might help.”

Stewy may have been the first student to approach Noah about alcohol problems but he was by no means the last. Several students had asked Noah how they could get out of the culture of binge drinking without losing face with friends and he’d thought by encouraging them to join the church hall group and letting them hear first hand how alcohol destroyed lives it would be the best wake-up call of all. The status quo at the AA meetings had been shaken like a sheet in the wind with the influx of younger members and, even though some had already dropped out disillusioned by Esther’s old-fashioned attitudes and the religious element, things still hadn’t settled down.

The cupcakes idea had been the latest bone of contention. Esther had suggested a bring-and-buy sale in aid of the church fund which doled out to various charities, with a prize for the baker of the best cupcakes. The older people thought it a great idea. The teenagers thought it silly and a better way to raise money would be something that grabbed the public’s attention such as a sponsored parachute jump but Esther flatly refused to even discuss it. Nor did it help matters that Paul Gibbons, recently suspended from Summer Bay High for fighting, had recently had a blazing argument with one of the older members, been told he was banned from the group, claimed he resigned anyway and had sworn aggressively at everyone as walked out.

Esther hitched up her ample bosom and ran the length of the pew. “Stop him! Stop him!” She appealed again to Noah and Kit, on her way to the altar steps .

Stewy followed determinedly on behind. “But, Esther, I’m in lurrrve!” He stopped, and for the entertainment of Kit and Noah, twirled around, both hands clasped to his heart like an old time silent movie actor, and then blithely continued the chase, which saw them reach the altar almost together. Esther shrieked and grabbed a silver crucifix, which she held in front of her as though warding off a vampire.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil...” She panted breathlessly.

It was all too much for Kit who clutched her stomach with tears of laughter raining down her face while Noah, hardly able to conceal his own amusement, had presence of mind enough to see Esther’s genuine distress and to catch hold of Stewy.

“Put a sock in it, mate,” he hissed. “Can’t you see she’s terrified?”

“Sorry, Esther.” Stewy had the grace to hang his head in shame. “It just seemed funny at the time. Didn’t mean to scare you or anything. I wasn’t really going to pash you.” He stretched his arm out to Esther, who sniffed and fanned her round red face with her hand, refusing to return the proffered olive branch.

“Young man,” she said stiffly to Noah. “Your sort are not the sort we want in a good Christian environment. From this moment our group will NEVER AGAIN accept anyone under the age of 21.”

“At least Stewy’s fooling around led to us setting up Summer Bay High’s own AA club,” said Noah, referring to the informal meetings that were often held now in the office that Donald “Flathead” Fisher, the principal, had agreed to allocate him as school counsellor, and where students were free to drop in any time and discuss in confidence their more relevant problems, which, as Noah soon found out, could include anything: drink, drugs, bullying, being too fat, being too thin, schoolwork, relationships, parent problems, even on one occasion how to remove a felt tip caricature of one of the teachers from the toilet cubicle before it was discovered.

A sudden crash of thunder roared overhead, breaking into their nostalgia, and making Kit jump and clutch Noah’s arm. An angry fork of lightning struck in the distance as almost immediately the rain began lashing down faster than ever.

“Omigod, it’s a Baystormer!” She exclaimed, using the local expression for Summer Bay’s infamous sudden storms. “We’ve nowhere to shelter.”

“Oh, yes, we have, Kit.”

Noah triumphantly jangled a Homer Simpson key-chain that held five or six keys, two of which by virtue of their being larger and marked by bright yellow tags were instantly recognisable. As school counsellor, and already earmarked for a paid post to help finance his way through uni provided Donald “Flathead” Fisher could obtain the necessary backing from the education authorities - which was likely to take even longer now Flathead was on a six-month visit to the US with Barry Hyde in temporary charge - he’d been entrusted with the keys in case of emergencies. Grinning, he grabbed Kit’s hand and they ran to take refuge in Summer Bay High.

*****

“You okay, Hayles?”

Cassie hesitantly laid her hand on her friend’s shoulder. She was still feeling pretty shaken but Hayley seemed to be in a worse state. And, as always, big-hearted Cassie put others before herself. She had dressed now. Somehow it seemed the right thing to do if she were to take charge. And instinctively, though it was a whole new ball game to her, she had known she should take charge. But she couldn’t do that if she was still a nervous wreck, rushing into the shower every five minutes, could she? Hayley needed her to be strong.

Hayley didn’t answer. She couldn’t believe Adam had made a lewd suggestion like that. Adam had always worshipped the ground she walked on. Or so she’d thought. Cheap tart, he’d called her before he’d stormed off. And other names. Worse names. All because she wouldn’t. He’d said things about Cassie too but that didn’t matter. Cassie would be used to it.

She pressed her forehead against the now safely bolted door, her heart beating nineteen to the dozen. She was furious. It was her party and Crazy Cassie, the biggest dork in the whole school, was the only person she had with her. Her many friends were at the other side of the door, partying on unawares, and even if she didn’t feel sick at the thought of picking up Kane Phillips’ mobile and even if she could remember any of their mobile numbers, they probably wouldn’t hear it above the noise. She had no way of letting them know what had happened.

Cassie consolingly rubbed her back. Hayley swung angrily round. She was damned if she was going to have a dag pitying her!

“Get off me, lesso!” She spat.

Cassie shot back as though she’d been stung. “Hayles! You can’t mean...you don’t think...”

“Maybe Adam had a point,” Hayley sneered. “You and Martha are always hanging out together, always hugging and stuff. Maybe that’s the real reason Jack dumped her.”

“How can you say that? How can you think that?” Cassie stared at her so-called friend as if she’d never seen her before.

“Easy. Because it’s true.” Hayley curled her lip in distaste.

“I’m not, you know,” Cassie said quietly when at last she could find breath again. “I’m not gay. Neither is Mac. But if I were...even if either of us were...would that be so bad? Simon Howell’s gay, he’s never pretended otherwise, but people like him.” She gulped back a small sob and her voice wavered. “Why do you have to be so judgemental of everyone? Can’t you see it doesn’t matter?”

Hayley’s eyes flashed scornfully. How dare Crazy Cassie question her like that!

“Ah, but it does matter,” she sneered. “Haven’t you noticed he didn’t get any invite to the party of the year? Dags don’t, see. You only got your invite because of Mac. I mean, look at you with your daggy party outfit. You think nobody knows you got it from Perry’s bargain basement? People’ll have been laughing at you behind your back all night!” Hayley, realising by the devastated look on Cassie’s face that she and her crew had guessed correctly when they’d discussed Cassie’s clothes earlier, gave a smug smile. “Get this into your thick head. I may be stuck with you but I don’t like you. You’re a jerk. Always have been, always will be. And I don’t need jerks in my life, Crazy Cassie. Unlike you, I have real friends. Who the hell wants to hang out with you? Even your precious Martha’s deserted you now. Can’t say I blame her.”

Satisfied when she saw the tears spring to Cassie’s eyes, Hayley flicked back her silky blonde hair, strolled over to the small portable TV housed on the wall brackets, clicked it into life and made herself comfortable on the bed as though she didn’t have a care in the world.

But somehow she didn’t want to move from this room. Not yet. Maybe later. After all, she needed her friends but they were all out there drinking and dancing and pashing. Having fun thanks to Hayley. She definitely didn’t need Crazy Cassie.

Had she known at that moment one of her only two true friends was fighting for her life in an icy sea and the other stood with her now, had she known how Adam’s revenge would set in motion a chain of events that would change everything that night, then perhaps she wouldn’t have been so sure.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: For any non-UK readers who might not know the name Gordon Ramsey is a UK TV celebrity chef

[I love music]

Night Talk

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat

“Lord save us!” The darkness of the Diner was lit by a ray of torchlight that freeze framed Irene Roberts in the act of grasping the collar of her coat with her free hand while the other firmly gripped the base of the silver candlestick holder raised high above her head.

“Good God, woman!” Barry Hyde spoke at exactly the same time, both their voices tapering on a high note as though they were singing in barbershop harmony.

The torch beamed its harsh light into Irene’s face, causing her to blink. “Do you mind?” She demanded.

“Sorry.” Barry Hyde dimmed the torch and shuffled. He never felt comfortable around women. His wife had been his only ever girlfriend before they’d married. His childhood sweetheart. Long, long ago. Oh, so long ago.

“Who did THAT?”

“Did what?”

Jimmy Farrell’s expression was one of over-exaggerated innocence as he chewed on three pieces of gum for all he was worth and blew a large pink bubble that burst with a loud pop, smearing bits of chewed gum all over his mouth and nose.

Barry angrily snatched up the duster but it was too late. On cue with the morning bell, Kerry had entered the classroom almost behind him, obviously having just been dropped off at the gate. Her mouth opened slightly as she saw the large heart with the crookedly drawn arrow pierced through it and the words “Berry loves Kerry” but she only scuttled to her seat like a frightened rabbit and looked down at her desk, blushing furiously and never said a word. Small, pale and skinny, with large scared eyes and dark, curly hair, she was the quietest, shyest kid in the whole school.

“Oh, my God, Kerry Berry NEARLY spoke!” Gloria Sweeney, who could never be accused of being short of things to say herself, declared to the amusement of her giggling friends.

Kerry’s surname wasn’t Berry. Her quiet mouse of a mother, an older version of Kerry with exactly the same facial features and who dropped her off at the school gate at the last minute every morning (Barry guessed, probably correctly, that this was so that Kerry could avoid the playground teasing from the other kids) and then rushed back to her car with exactly the same head-down, hurried walk as her daughter, was called Mrs Mitchell. But somewhere along the line someone had thought if funny to rhyme Kerry with strawberry because Kerry went bright red if anyone so much as glanced in her direction and Strawberry had quickly been shortened to Berry. Maybe because he had two younger sisters himself, Lorraine and Emma, he’d felt a need to protect her ever since she’d arrived that term. Of course the other kids in the class quickly picked up on that and had baited him for a rise ever since.

Any kid who showed interest in the opposite sex was considered fair game but Barry Hyde and Kerry Mitchell were most fun because Kerry always blushed, Barry always hit the roof and the nicknames were...so PERFECT. For extra entertainment, free of charge, persuade some poor unknowing soul, maybe a newbie, that Barry preferred to be called Berry and then sit back and watch the fireworks!

“For Gawd’s sake, Barry, you look like you’ve seen a ghost! Here, dahl, pull up a chair, I’ll make you a strong cuppa.”

Irene bustled about as she spoke, setting the candlestick holder down on the nearest Diner table, removing her coat, flooding the eating area back into brightness with the flick of a light switch, boiling the water in the tea urn, as if she’d been looking after people all her life. As indeed she had. Few people would guess at the problems that had blighted her own life yet her personal tragedies, far from making her bitter, had given her a unique insight and empathy towards others.

Barry Hyde sat down and gave a small smile.

“Irene, I came to see if you were alright. I was worried about you locking up the Diner and then attempting to walk home in this Baystormer. And it seems I got here in the nick of time, you had every intention of going out in it.” Barry meaningfully eyed the discarded coat.

Irene laughed dismissively. “Me? Tough as old boots, that’s me! Whereas you, matey, either you really did come to help yourself to the takings or you’ve got something you want to get off your chest - and I’ve a hunch it’s the second. So...the moment this tea’s brewed, I want to hear it.”

Her companion sighed and wiped his hands across his face. What was it about Irene Roberts? All his life he had seen women as the weaker sex. All his life he had held his emotions in check and been strong and silent. But Irene turned his logical world upside down. He watched her as she clattered cups, milk and sugar bowl, as the tea urn finally gurgled with a cloud of accompanying steam, as she poured boiling water into a large teapot. Knowing he couldn’t keep this heavy secret any longer. Knowing Irene must be the one he told.

“Look, talk only if you want to talk. I don’t want to be stomping my bloody big feet all over something that’s none of my business and poking my bloody big nose in where it’s not wanted.” Irene said bluntly as she poured the tea.

“No, Irene. You were right. I do want to talk.” Barry spoke more composedly now, feeling the reassuring calm that, despite the somersaulting of his heart, inevitably descended after just a few minutes in Irene’s company.

He had come here to unburden himself of the terrible secret and he would. He cupped the mug she placed before him and took a deep breath. But his plans were to be thwarted.

“Darn it!” Irene exclaimed as a loud roar of thunder overhead was accompanied by a crackling flash of lightning and the Diner was plunged once more into thick darkness.

*****

It was bitterly cold. The wind screamed in her ears and every inch of her body shivered uncontrollably. She clung to something soaking wet that covered her shoulders and upper body, desperate for its meagre warmth, longing to wake. But the strange dream held her in its grip. She was rocking in the middle of a pitch black ocean and vaguely aware of another presence. They were in...some kind of vessel...a box? a boat? a raft? Rising and falling. Rising and falling, rising and falling, making her want to heave in time with its relentless rhythm.

The figure she sensed close by let out a string of expletives as a higher wave crashed against the side of their vessel and they spun crazily round towards lightning flashed rocks. She knew now who it was. Kane Phillips. She should have been terrified but exhaustion overwhelmed her. And anyway this was just a dream, wasn’t it? Wasn't it? She groaned in weak agony as the little wooden rowing boat smashed like a matchstick against the rocks and cruelly thudded a juddering pain against her ear.

“Hold on to me,” the voice said, and the voice seemed to echo from far away. “We’ll make our way up when it’s light enough to see, when the storm’s done. It shouldn’t be too slippy, the waves’ll be calmer then.” The voice doubted itself, the presence dragging her ever upwards, tugging the meagre warmth that wrapped her further up her shoulders, locking tight arms around her waist, giving a welcome body heat as they lay down together on the cold, hard stone.

“Don’t die,” the echoing, faraway voice said to the back of her head.

And was it midnight? Or was it much, much later? Somehow it seemed fitting if she were to flee this harsh world at midnight. Sleep now. Close tired eyes. Tender, oblivious sleep.

“Don’t die,” the voice begged again.

In the middle of the darkness a faint ringtone emitted from the pocket of her trousers before fading away altogether. If they hadn’t been in so much danger it would have been laughable.

I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world, life in plastic, it’s fantastic...

*****

Damn! Just when she’d finally made up her mind to have a chat with her adopted daughter Hayley the cellphone rang out only briefly and then went dead. Cellphone! Julie Smith smiled at her reflection in the mirror, running her tongue over perfect pearly teeth and thinking all the expensive dentistry had been well worth the money. Americanisms often peppered her conversations now. She had become truly acclimatized.

An American twang had crept into her accent and while she was still occasionally asked if she was from “outta town” yesterday two Chinese tourists had mistaken her for Roxy Clark, who’d become a minor celebrity after appearing on a quirky over-40s Big Brother style US TV show, and pleaded with her to have a photo taken with them using their timer camera. She should have put them right but the temptation had been too great. Who’d have thought it back in high school? Plain Julie Fleetwood, now married to wealthy property developer George Smith, plain old Julie who’d sat at home sobbing her heart out listening to the lyrics of that same song over and over

I learned the truth at seventeen

that love was meant for beauty queens

and high school girls with clear skinned smiles...

had successfully posed as someone regarded by many viewers as the most stunningly attractive over-40 Housemate and who, back in 1982, had won her small American town’s beauty pageant (Roxy had successfully gained the sympathy vote when, with tears streaming down her cheeks in the Diary Room, she’d told how her moment of triumph had been ruined by hecklers waving “Ban this Cattle Market” signs). Caught up in her own charade, Julie had obligingly even signed the name Roxy Clark on the Hollywood street map the awestruck Chinese girl had been carrying. She should have felt guilty but where was the harm? They had thanked her profusely and gone away with stars in their eyes.

And strangely she had thought suddenly of Hayley.

Will had been seven and Nick eighteen months when the adoption was made official yet it was as if they’d always been her sons. But somehow she had never connected with her adopted daughter. At five years old Julie herself had never been interested in traditional girly pursuits, preferring footie, climbing trees, digging up insects, and a hundred and one other boyish games with her twin brother. She could well remember a peculiar conversation when Hayley had been around five years old, when the little girl had climbed up on the park bench to sit beside her and enquire if she was as pretty as Princess Precious, a character in the bedtime stories Julie read to her.

She'd watched her squint up at the sky in smug satisfaction after Julie reassured her that her eyes really were as blue as the sky just like Princess Precious’s had been, feeling sadly at a loss as to how she would relate to this child when they had so little in common. Even today she found it much easier to talk to Hayley’s friends Martha and Cassie. Cassie’s shy awkwardness reminded her of the angst of her own teenage years, Martha’s sexless, boyish clothes brought back vivid memories of her own lack of interest in fashion.

Julie stared critically at her reflection, piling up her hair and wondering whether to go for yet another completely different style. What else was there to do? She’d already had a facelift, boob job, had her own personal trainer, did a strenuous workout every morning and every afternoon lunched, shopped and topped up her golden tan. There had been...um...offers, of course, but Julie was a one-man woman and genuinely loved George even if he was married to his work nowadays. She sighed. Hollywood had lost its glitter. Not that it ever held much for her to begin with. Unlike Hayley, Julie had never been particularly impressed by fame and glamour but Nick had been far too young to go to the States without a guardian when a Hollywood talent scout, who’d seen him playing the lead in his drama school’s production of Oliver! reckoned Nick could pass for two or three years younger, which made him perfect for the part of tragic tug-of-love kid Harry in a new romantic tearjerker.

Nick’s contract binding him to the movie meant his career otherwise was non-existent, but the Smith family were already wealthy enough to live the lifestyle and Nick, unperturbed, had another interest anyway. Brooke was the same age but years older in her head. Her Mom and Dad were both something in advertising, Julie could never figure out exactly what, while her older brother, a drummer in a rock group, was in rehab after talking crazy on stage during a gig and later being found slumped in his dressing room after taking a cocktail of drink and drugs; Brooke had proudly showed her the newspaper stories.

Julie threw the cellphone down on the sofa and decided she would pamper herself in the jacuzzi and then ring her husband, maybe persuade him to take a vacation. Or better still persuade Nick it was time they took a vacation back to Oz. If she even missing Hayley’s shallow conversation, she really must be homesick.

*****

“There! I knew they had to have another use other than bashing burglars.” Irene grinned as she blew out the match. The flickering candlelight of four burning candles cast wavering shadows on the walls of the Diner while rain rattled against the window panes. “Look, dahl, it’s alright if you’d prefer to sit here in silence.” She added gently.

Barry shook his head. “Give me a few moments,” he said hoarsely.

It had been stormy that night too. He remembered so much of that night. Sights, sounds, smells. Images indelibly printed on his mind, conversations etched in his heart and soul forever.

His wife stood motionless at the top of the stairs, looking like a ghost in the thin grey light, and he raced up them two at a time, called from a late night in the office preparing papers for tomorrow’s annual parent/teacher day by her increasingly frantic phone calls.

“Kerry! Kerry, what’s wrong?”

She was carrying something laid across her outstretched arms. Jonathan’s christening gown. Her eyes were glassy and a thin smile played on her lips though small tears rained down off her chin.

“It’s too late, Barry. Jonathan’s gone to Heaven. I left him for just a moment and the angels came. I knew they would come tonight. We have to prepare him now.”

He pushed past her into the bathroom, in a room still permeated by soft baby smells of oils and talc and creams, and to his horror saw the small lifeless body floating face down on top of the bathwater. He scooped up his infant son and lay him tenderly in his lap, pressed his mouth over the tiny mouth and nose. He gave two slow, desperate breaths and searched in vain for a pulse. Nothing. Breathing and checking over and over. But nothing!

He placed two fingers on the baby’s chest and pressed five times, so terrified of accidentally crushing those tiny ribs. And still nothing. Again he sealed his lips over the tiny mouth and nose. All to no avail. He heard an unearthly, wolf-like howl and realised it came from himself.

“I was thinking of my wife. Kerry. Irene, I...I..I...”

And Barry Hyde, temporary principal of Summer Bay High while its regular principal Don Fisher was on a six month visit to New York to see relatives, and who could strike fear into the toughest student’s heart at five paces, broke down and wept like a child.

*****

They were laughing as they ran down towards the school. It had been a stupid idea, they knew, to go for a slow, romantic walk in the pouring rain. But they had never done it before, either of them, when they were younger. They had never done silly, spur-of-the-moment things. Gypsy had made the leap into adulthood without the angst and romance of teenage years, scornful and cynical of the those her own age. Jack had discovered at a very early age that his good looks and charm could get him anything he wanted.

He’d had girls queueing to kiss him at the tender age of six when his best mate Matthew Randall realised they could cash in on Jack’s popularity and for a charge of one bar of white chocolate, a strawberry-flavoured lollipop or a sherbet dab (all of which were Jack’s favourites and could be obtained from nearby Ye Olde Summer Bay Lolly Shoppe where Mrs Parker, the proprietor, wondered at the sudden run on sherbet dabs, white chocolate and strawberry lollipops) Jack Holden would pucker up his lips and plant a smacker. That first week they made six lollipops, eight sherbet dabs, five bars of white chocolate, two tim tams, a yo-yo and a key-ring size Pokemon game that nobody, including its previous owner, could figure out to work (negotiated) and Ellie Woods had run off in tears because he wouldn’t promise to marry her. Within two weeks he’d kissed most of the girls in the class and some had even come back for more.

Chicks, he discovered as he grew up, would do anything for even a glance of those melting brown eyes or a careless smile. Except when he was grown up it was far, far more fun. By then he’d discovered the wonderful world of sex. He never committed himself. He was determined not to. In his own way still taking revenge on his mother for walking out on them all those years ago and leaving his father broken-hearted. Love ‘em, leave ‘em had been his philosophy. Until Martha McKenzie. And now it was too late with Martha but it wasn’t too late with Gypsy.

Maybe they really could fall in love. If they took it slower than they’d ever taken any relationship before.

They saw Megan Ashcroft strolling alone towards Whitelady Copse and went to see she was okay. But Megan was just being Megan. She said they made a great couple and she looked at them sadly. Almost wistfully, Gypsy thought.

“Tony’ll be back on Monday, won’t he?” She said consolingly. “It’ll pass in no time.”

“I guess so.” Megan smiled. “Thanks, guys, I’m cool.”

She laughed and turned as if she didn’t have a care in the world, but when Gypsy looked back for a moment, she was standing watching them. But Megan only waved goodbye with the hat and twirled around though Gypsy had the strangest feeling she was crying. But who knew with Megan? Who knew anything anymore?

Under the starlight they had made a pact that would have been alien to them not so very long ago. They would not make love. Not for quite a while and then only if they were truly in love. Under the magic of that night anything was possible.

“Omigod, it’s Kit and Noah!” Gypsy yelled, espying their friends down by Summer Bay High. “Hey, guys!”

“Sanctuary, sanctuary!” Jack roared, mimicking the Hunchback of Notre Dame - they had been studying Victor Hugo’si]works in English Lit - and he and Gypsy laughed as they grabbed each other’s hands and in the teeming rain they half ran, half slid down the muddy hill. They were greeted with whistles and whoops and she and Kit hugged while Jack and Noah slapped each other’s shoulders. They were all talking at once.

“The common room’s probably the warmest place. Heats up faster than anywhere else,” Noah said, pushing open the door that was closest to his own student counsellor office and to which he’d been entrusted with the numbers of the combination lock that he’d long since memorized. And then he stopped suddenly. Kit gasped loudly in shock.

“Hold me. Please, please just hold me,” Gypsy pleaded as she fell against Jack and silently he held her close and stroked her back.

No noise other than Gypsy’s sobs and the raging storm pervaded the quiet of the common room, its wall adorned with a blown-up photograph of Gypsy naked and scrawled above in large bold letters the single word SLUT.

Barbie Girl ©Aquamarine

At Seventeen ©Janis Ian

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I was thinking about this in work today and it just occurred to me some readers might be a bit puzzled if they've forgotten what happened previously in this story or haven't read from the beginning. So, for your benefit , an explanation:

Martha has Hayley's mobile phone (with the Barbie Girl ringtone) in her pocket (it's a zipped pocket by the way, hence no falling out into the water! ) because she posed as Kane's girlfriend in an earlier chapter and accepted the pink phone belonging to Hayley (that Kane had inadvertenly picked up in the darkness mistaking it for his own) as hers. This is why the next scene leads on to Hayley's Mum phoning "Hayley". Hope that helps!

[I love music]

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Many thanks for your fantastic reviews. I guess Irene/Barry fans will like this next chapter then... ?

The bad news is that I need to start concentrating on other characters in this fic too now but the good new is that Irene and Barry will reappear during later chapters. Hope anybody who reads enjoys reading!

Guardian Angels

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat

“Irene, I...”

Barry Hyde gulped back his tears, ashamed that he had been unmanly enough to let them fall. Through the wavering yellow candlelight he looked at the only woman other than Kerry he had ever given his heart to. But he could not meet her eyes. Those eyes had once looked at him with love and he didn’t deserve her love when he was what he was.

“Only my sister Lorraine knew. Ever knew. Lorraine’s dead now. She took our secret to the grave with her.” He pressed his palms down hard on the table as if for support, seeking the strength to go on. “Irene, Kerry didn’t leave me like I always led you to believe. Kim was a baby...” He swallowed several times knowing his words were about to change everything. “She was trying to drown him, he was just a baby... I’d always suspected she’d killed Jonathan but I didn’t know, I didn’t want to believe it...And the coroner recorded Jonathan’s drowning as accidental death...”

Tears, refusing to be quashed, refusing to listen to his inner voice that tears were weak, rained down his face again at the memory. “It was post natal depression. I should have realised, I should have got her the help she so badly needed. But I didn’t. I didn’t give her a chance. He was only a baby and she...Irene, I...I flew into a rage and...and...I...I...killed her...”

Breathing quick, shallow breaths as though he’d been running, he dropped his gaze and waited. Waited for the shock, horror and condemnation, for the barrage of questions, for her to recoil in disgust. These hands had murdered. These very hands had taken away the life of a human being. His hands. His hands, being taken into the fold of another’s tenderly as a mother takes her child's.

“Irene, how can you...?” He whispered emotionally, trembling. “I thought...”

She squeezed his hands reassuringly. “I know how I should feel but I also know you’re a good man, Barry Hyde. And I’ve lived,” she added, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“Okay, who’s next? Anyone wanna DARE to take ME on?”

Eleven-year-old Irene McFarlane swung the makeshift weapon - a tennis ball inside a sock - around her head and glared threateningly at the gathered crowd of kids. Of course nobody dared. One look at that furious red face and angry eyes was enough. Not even Eric Sharp, the school bully, the one who’d got his little brother and his mates to carry out Benji’s latest bashing was going to chance it. But everybody hoped somebody else would. Wild Irene was like a madwoman when she did her block and it made for great entertainment. However, their hopes were to be dashed. A shrill whistle cut through the crisp breezy air carried from the nearby sea, announcing that recreation had finished and pupils were expected to be back at their desks in ten minutes exactly. The crowd of interested onlookers, careful to hide their giggles from Wild Irene, began to reluctantly disperse.

Seven-year-old Benji, cowering behind the safety of his older sister, tugged on the back of her hand-knitted cardi and announced in a stage whisper, “Irene, our Irene, I think I need...uh-oh!”

The abrupt comment confirmed it. Irene knew even before she turned and saw the trickle of yellow urine running down his leg.

“Aw, Jeez, Benji!” She sighed. “Pin back your bloomin’ lug’oles and listen and listen good. You gotta learn to start standing up for yourself, mate. I won’t always be around to fight your battles.”

Benji looked up at her in alarm and wiped a tear from his eyes with a small brown fist. Did this mean she was abandoning them? It was unthinkable. Irene always looked out for him. She looked out for all the McFarlanes because...because...well, somebody had to. Young as he was, Benji realised they were different . They were dirt poor without a regular Dad and their clothes were charity shop rejects or home-knitted or hand-me-downs and nobody seemed to like that. They shouted names after them in the street, they called them b*****ds and devil’s spawn and if they were shopping in the mall with Mum and neighbours saw them they’d look down their noses and move away like she carried some terrible disease, whispering stuff behind her back, nasty stuff, he figured, because sometimes on the way home Mum’s eyes would be red and she’d be sniffling a little bit though she tried to hide it. For some reason though Irene got it worse than the rest of them. Irene didn’t cry though when folk said she’d probably end up a bludger and cheap like her Mum. She yelled back and occasionally used her fists, but then they called her Wild Irene so she couldn’t win even if she won the fight (which she usually did) and next thing their olds would be banging on the door to complain she’d bashed their kid.

His bottom lip wobbled in trepidation. “Where ya goin’, our Irene?” He asked worriedly.

Irene felt a stab of guilt. “Nowhere, Benji,” she answered gently and spat on the crumpled tissue that she fished from her school dress pocket to tenderly dab yet more blood from his bloodied nose. “There! All done. Now let’s get you the dunny and I’ll tell the twins to nick you a pair of shorts from the Lost Locker. You’ve got games this arvo so you’ll be right.”

She ruffled his black hair and sighed again. Benji was of mixed race and absolutely beautiful. Everyone commented on it. Once a couple of toffs in a limo had stopped and the woman, who’d been DRIPPING in jewellery, as Irene later told her mother, rolled down the tinted window to ask directions - a flimsy excuse, Irene knew, if they’d been truly lost the snooty-looking chauffeur would have been the one making the enquiries.

“What a little sweetie!” The woman exclaimed in admiration, a term of endearment which made Benji squirm and grab Irene’s hand in case they wanted to buy him (Benji had lately watched a kids’ movie in which a wicked witch had turned all the children of the village into gold coins and it had given him nightmares). “What’s your name, sweetie?”

Irene shrewdly weighed up the situation. Normally she wouldn’t have given “plastic people”, her disdainful nickname for folks with more money than sense who didn’t live in the “real world”, the time of day, for Irene McFarlane did not suffer fools gladly. But these guys obviously had money and this conversation seemed to be leading somewhere.

“Benji. He’s my brother,” she said sweetly, when Benji was too tongue-tied to reply, and looking as coy and innocent as it was possible to look with two stolen bottles of pop poking their heads out of her mother’s shopping bag as though both bottles were determined to be unashamed and hide their criminal past from legally bought groceries.

The woman wrinkled her nose in distaste. Clearly Irene did not impress her.

“Well, you buy your brother some lollies. I daresay the poor little mite doesn’t get many.”

The tone was accusing as though she suspected his sister of snatching away any he DID get and she grimaced again as Irene sniffed and absently wiped her nose on her sleeve before happily accepting the ten dollar note that was peeled from a wad of several more while her husband sat beside her smiling indulgently.

“Ta, missus!” Irene winked at Benji, which, he knew, was always their signal to run and to the astonishment of the strangers, the two dirty-faced urchins raced away as though their very lives depended on it, leaving nothing in their wake but a cloud of sandy dust from their stampeding heels.

They had stopped under the cooling shade of a large tree to drink some of the lemonade, giggling as it fizzed up into their hot, perspiring faces the moment the top was twisted off.

“Now it’s only cos I’m here that we took the dough. If I’m not here, you mustn’t EVER take money or lollies from strangers in case they turn out to be sickos. Remember that or else!”

Irene hammered home the message literally with a series of short, gentle raps on Benji’s head every four or five words after they’d each taken a couple of long swigs of warm cherryade straight from the bottle. Out of the whole family, Benji was her favourite. Shy, sensitive, dreamy Benji, with the heart and soul of a poet. It was hardly surprising that when he was seventeen he and a group of like-minded teenagers decided to travel round Oz in a converted bus, living off the land or charity or occasional seasonal work. And sometimes, he told her proudly during one of his intermittent phone calls, he and a couple of the guys busked and sang songs HE’D written and, in his very last phone call, he’d been buzzing because they’d made “heaps of money” and people had been asking who’d written the lyrics of HIS songs.

But this was ten years away yet. Today her current concern was Benji’s wet pants. She gave another deep sigh. It was all very well for the bubs in Reception class to wet themselves but Benji was seven now and life wasn’t easy for any of the McFarlane kids as it was. He was just lucky her birthday fell when it did else she would already have swapped primary for high school and wouldn’t have been around to protect him anymore. And she worried about Benji more than any of their other siblings.

The twins, Katie and Jill, had each other and a father who sometimes called with presents for them and took them to stay with him and his girlfriend every other weekend. The younger kids were too young yet to know how tough things were growing up in a large, single parent family. But Benji had it tougher than most. While he was often admired for his looks the downside was that racists like Eric and Kevin Sharp bullied him. Not that they knew any better, Irene realised. Their bulldog of a father, a squat, thick-necked man with a permanent red face from heavy drinking, was notorious for his racist views and had even been locked up twice for victimizing a black family who’d had the misfortune to move into his neighbourhood.

To Irene’s relief, a sudden clatter of footsteps heralded the arrival of their nine-year-old twin sisters who, judging by their worried looks, had obviously just heard the news, and Irene thankfully handed Benji over to the twins’ care and squinted up at the town hall clock over the way.

Damn! Small wonder the schoolyard had become so quiet. She was already five minutes late for Cookery and Mrs Buckley would be none too pleased that yet again Irene McFarlane had “forgotten” the ingredients - this time for the choux buns they were meant to be baking. She quickly rolled the tennis ball out of the sock and crammed it into a corner of her school bag to make all appear innocuous, she’d had enough detentions this term for fighting, cursing and a hundred and one other things. Even when it hadn’t been her fault - like not having the items required for cookery lessons and the proprietor of the local store who sold required items watching her like a hawk when she’d tried to obtain them since she’d caught Irene stealing often enough before.

“Dark chocolate and double cream. We just can’t afford it, dear. I’ve barely enough left to buy bread and milk till my welfare cheque arrives next week.”

Evelyn McFarlane had shown her eldest daughter the few coins left in her purse and shrugged helplessly. She was a thin, pale, pretty woman with baby blue eyes, always up to her eyes in nappies and washing and always tired. Besides Irene, Benji and the twins there was Terry, four, Ruthie, nearly two, and little Christabel, eight weeks old. And she had just had her heart broken yet again. Evelyn fell in love far too easily.

“You can’t believe every single thing a bloke tells you, Mum,” Irene frequently advised, not quite twelve years old and yet already wise to the ways of the world.

But unfortunately Evelyn did. As soon as a new boyfriend whispered sweet nothings Evelyn inevitably convinced herself he was The One THIS Time and, swept off her feet by the romance of it all, took the relationship further. The Pill was not yet widely available and by the time she was she was thirty-three Evelyn had seven children to five different fathers. Apart from the twins’ Dad none of them had stayed around long enough to even acknowledge their offspring - although Terry’s father Jeff Maddox, a likeable enough layabout and petty thief, who sometimes worked, often didn’t, and who liked to up sticks and move on without telling anyone because he “hated to be tied down”, had belatedly reappeared and Christabel had been the result before he was off again.

Irene was never able to discover anything more about her own father other than he’d been in the Army and his nickname was Hal (what his real name was, she never found out) because Evelyn had been so horrified to learn he was already married that, unaware she was pregnant with her first child, she’d cut all ties. Irene vowed she herself would never be so stupid. When she married (she was certain she would marry) it would be for keeps and her kids would be brought up in a secure, stable two-parent family.

But of course when she grew up she discovered it wasn’t quite as simple as that. Her own three kids had been taken into care because of her alcoholism and their father was nowhere on the scene. Her mother and siblings were long gone too - the twins, when they were ten, being taken by their father and his new bride to live in San Francisco and, despite his faithful promises to Evelyn, he never did send a forwarding address. And the rest of her family...

Over time things had changed. Jeff Maddox, the father of Christabel and Terry, finally decided to grow up and accept his responsibilities and Evelyn had lately gone through the menopause so there was no possibility of yet another unplanned pregnancy. After all the years of struggling, at last there was light on the horizon and money in the pot at the McFarlane household thanks to Jeff finally settling down to a regular job and even earning promotion and Irene, who’d left home to train as a nurse, sending home occasional cheques from her meagre salary for the youngsters to have treats. Evelyn excitedly booked their first ever family holiday, a week on a farm, and, suitcases full to the brim, they left their little grey town for the glorious Australian countryside.

Irene heard later how they’d all been laughing and singing.

There was a popular summer novelty song climbing the charts and they’d been singing the summer song at the tops of the voices as they took the bend. Mum and Jeff, fourteen-year-old Terry, twelve-year-old Ruthie, and little Christabel, only ten years old, and the sun blazing in a cloudless sky and the fields greener than they’d ever been after last week’s rain. The couple in the other car survived. Little Christabel, Ruthie and Terry, Evelyn and Jeff, none of them ever sang again.

Neither did Benji. Benji took his own life the same day.

Tragically he learnt of the car crash through a television news bulletin except they got it wrong and said the victims, named by their neighbours as Jeff Maddox, 44, Evelyn McFarlane, 43, and her children, Terry, Ruthie, Christabel and Irene, had all died. There was believed to be another son, the report said, who had left home some months previously and twin girls, who had apparently emigrated with their father over a decade ago. Benji, who’d been watching TV and drowning his sorrows after a row with his girlfriend, was last seen alive with tears streaming down his face heading for a local beauty spot where his still warm body was found by a man out walking his dog.

The police informed Irene only a few short hours after they’d brought her the devastating news of the car crash. Two of her friends from the Nurses Home caught her as her legs gave way and everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. People were speaking to her but it was as if she couldn’t hear, as if her brain refused to function anymore. All she was aware of was that through a window flung wide open to let in the sun-kissed air of that beautiful summer’s day a bird was singing as if all was well with the world. Yet it couldn’t have been because somebody was screaming.

In the shadowy half light two silhouettes rose without words but as if of one mind and held one another. At last he spoke, his voice hoarse with emotion.

“We chose...we chose together the inscription for his tiny white headstone “The brightest star in Heaven tonight is our little boy saying goodnight”. I would stand at the window. Gazing up the stars and wondering if Jonathan was watching. I still do. I wonder if he knows what his father did, if he hates me...”

“Ssh, ssh.” Irene spoke softly, stroking his face, touching the tears. “It’s alright now. It’s alright.”

One night, three years or more after their deaths, she stood alone on the beach of the little grey town where she had been born. It was a wind-chilled night and lights flickered in long-ago familiar buildings while the sea gathered all its strength and prepared to rush towards the shore. She pressed her feet into the powdery sand and, wrapping her coat tighter around her shoulders, head down against the wind, she had begun her solitary walk back to the town when a ray of moonlight suddenly cut across her path. She stopped, caught by surprise, to look up at the sky and through a curtain of misty tears she saw dozens of stars twinkling as if she and they were alone in the world. And in the lonely eternity she found herself wondering if some of those twinkling stars were the people she had loved and lost watching over her. So she named them, one by one, from the smallest and shyest for Christabel, to the brightest and most beautiful for Benji. And when she hurried from the beach, wiping tears from her eyes, the tide was already trickling over her toes but her heart was lighter.

Another lightning flash. Two people needing each other captured in the soul of the night.

[I love music]

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thanks for your reviews, everyone. Frankie (Frankster???!!! ) and eduardo bearo thanks for your reviews on fanfic.net - eduardo bearo, I’m flattered as I’m a great admirer of your own writing.

After reading about the Nashes, I didn't feel Gypsy fitted in somehow and I needed to create a background for her so I’ve taken COMPLETE poetic licence with this chapter. Be warned tho, Gypsy’s story is harrowing.

Tramps and Thieves

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat

We’d hear it from the people of the town

They’d call us gypsies, tramps and thieves...

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves © Cher

“You think I’m gonna let Miss Piranha get away with that? No way! No waaay!” Gypsy thumped Jack’s chest to emphasis her point, her tears now tears of anger.

“Gypsy, just listen...”

But Gypsy was beyond reasoning. The photo had been torn to shreds. And it felt good. It felt like, if she tried hard enough, she might be able to rip the memories to shreds too. But, no, they were still there, tormenting her. Why wouldn’t they go? It wasn’t fair! She didn’t want them. She saw Jack wince as she pounded his chest even harder, she saw the tenderness in his eyes as he tried to gather all her pain in his strong arms, but she had to hurt someone because the memories, they wouldn’t go. She had been eleven years old...

*****

“I want to know.”

“No, Gypsy, you don’t. Darling, it’s for your own good.”

“I have a right to know.”

“Please, Gypsy, darling...”

“Tell me! Tell me! You have to tell me!”

Eleven-year-old Gypsy Nash picked up the nearest thing to hand. A clock would have done, anything would have done, but the nearest object just happened to be an extremely expensive antique ornament of a white horse carrying a warrior into battle, sculpted by a famous Greek artist whose name Gypsy could barely pronounce and which Natalie Nash had only recently purchased, after almost being outbidden, from an antiques auction to add to her collection. She saw the alarm in the her mother’s eyes and a mixture of satisfaction, anger and guilt overwhelmed her, her heart and mind still racing.

“Serve you right, Natalie!” She yelled. “I’ll never call you Mum again, see? You’re Natalie to me now and him, he’s...he’s Joel, he’s never been my Dad like you’ve never been my Mum and...and...”

“Gypsy, please sit down.”

Unlike his wife’s tearful pleas, Joel Nash’s voice carried an air of quiet authority that penetrated like a sharp needle through his young daughter’s fog of fear, anger and confusion. Before returning home to his native Australia and coming to live in Summer Bay he had been a police officer in Hong Kong, where the sweltering heat could sometimes act like a powder keg to bustling, overcrowded streets. He had twice been commended, once for successfully persuading an armed gang holed up in a bank to give themselves up without a single drop of blood being shed, another time for talking a suicidal man down from a motorway bridge. But those situations were nothing compared with what he had to deal with now: telling their adopted daughter the truth about her background.

They had made no secret of the fact Gypsy was adopted. When she was very young they had told her being adopted meant she was very special and that had been enough for little Gypsy to smile her bright smile as she snuggled down with her favourite teddy, content and secure after the regular routine of bath and bedtime story. When she was five or six she began asking questions. They told her no lies but nor did they offer any information that wasn’t asked for. Gypsy knew the nurses had named her.

“Because nobody knew your name,” her adopted parents had explained. “And gypsies are people who like to be free.”

She wanted to know more about her early life and so they took little Gypsy and her eight-year-old brother Tom to visit the hospital where she met Margaret, the plump middle-aged nurse who had cradled her in her arms and given her the name Gypsy.

Margaret enveloped the little girl in such a tight hug that Gypsy had protested anxiously, “Help me, somebody, quick! I CAN’T BREATHE!” which had made everybody laugh. But she liked her new friend, despite the too-tight hug, and willingly clutched her hand to be shown round the hospital and quite seriously told Margaret, who was dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose, that it was okay, she wasn’t choking now and so there was no need to cry, which, strangely, only seemed to make Margaret sniff all the more. It was odd. Gypsy didn’t think about it until she was back home and then she drifted off to sleep wondering. By morning however she had forgotten all about it. Until she was eleven and stood in the parlour threatening to break the antique like her own life had just been broken and her mind suddenly plucked it from memory where it had lain hidden all these years...

Like Margaret, many of the people they met that day had secretly wiped away tears as though they knew a great secret.

“Who found me?” Six-year-old Gypsy asked curiously, shaking her glorious red curls and looking up at Margaret with her beautiful green eyes and gap-toothed smile, and unknowingly breaking the kindly nurse’s heart. Margaret was a mother of three and just couldn’t understand it.

“Some bigger kids,” she said huskily after exchanging a wary look with Natalie and Joel, but fortunately Gypsy was happy enough with the answer. And Margaret sniffed back the tears again, remembering.

Startled by the loud commotion, Margaret Fogerty, the most senior nurse on duty, apologised to the elderly man whose X-ray results she was checking and, after giving the student nurse hasty instructions, hurried out into the inevitably busy but normally fairly sedate waiting area.

Charlotte Mayfield, two weeks into her training, looking flustered and holding a bundle to her chest, her long thick black hair spilled out of its slides and pins, was doing her best to restore order but her voice was drowned in the sea of noise.

Chairs, had been knocked over, toddlers were screaming, Dawn Vernon was in the act of vaulting over the Reception desk, a furious pensioner hobbling on one crutch and whirling the other crutch in the air as though she fully expected to strike someone on the ceiling was shouting “Catch the bloody b*****s!” and outpatients in assorted stages of age, health and mobility were chasing after several frightened ten-year-old boys who, finding the two outside exits blocked by burly men and stern-faced women, were running everywhere - though in actual fact the “several boys” turned out to be just three. Who’d decided to wag school. Thankfully. Because God only knew what would have happened if they hadn’t. God only knew.

Tom and Gypsy were feted and enjoyed every single second of it. They were given huge slices of chocolate gateau with generous chunks of ice cream and long, tall glasses of fizzy lemonade (all great treats as their parents didn’t like them to have too much sweet stuff) and when they went home both children, carrying armfuls of lollies, toys and books given to them by various hospital staff, were over-excitedly playing up and under threat of early bedtimes. Oh, but Gypsy wasn’t stupid and she knew!

Lost children were ALWAYS but ALWAYS princes and princesses taken away by a kindly woodsman ordered by a wicked stepmother to kill the infant but the kindly woodsman could never bring himself to do so and instead left the child somewhere safe. So Gypsy knew, without anyone having to tell her, that she was a princess and one day the king and queen, led by a handsome knight on a white horse, would come for her.

The king and queen would weep tears of joy at finding their long lost daughter and Gypsy would marry the handsome knight with the white horse and they would all live happily ever after in the royal palace although she would still visit Natalie, Joel and Tom sometimes or have them stay over and Tom would be sooo jealous of the huge swimming pool she had all to herself and the soft downy feather bed with twenty mattresses that she slept on like the Princess and the Pea, she prattled non-stop much to her brother’s annoyance (Gypsy loved to talk) while the afternoon sun hit Tom’s bedroom window and captured dust motes spinning in its dazzling rays as if to tease them with its beautiful day.

Brother and sister didn’t play together now as often as they used to, preferring their own friends, but today they’d both been grounded - a half-used tin of green paint they’d been stoked to discover in the garden shed, two paintbrushes acquired from same garden shed and a jumble of green pictures suddenly decorating the pristine white fence of the Nash family home being the reason - and had been building a miniature city with Lego bricks. And Gypsy was bemoaning the fact she didn’t think there would be enough bricks in the bucket to build a palace “like the one she used to live in when she was a princess.”

“Bull!” Tom declared scornfully. “You’ve never been a princess, dork!”

“Yes, I was!” Gypsy argued back. “And just for that I’m NEVER letting YOU visit my palace!”

“Palace? What palace! You’re loopy, that’s what you are!” It wasn’t that funny, but Tom was bored and missing his mates and so he tapped his forehead, clutched his stomach and rolled around on the floor laughing.

Gypsy pursed her lips for a moment and then, being youngest, decided there was no way her brother was going to get away with this infringement. She leapt to her feet and ran to the door.

“Muuum!” She yelled at the top of her voice although the door, like the window left wide open to let in some air, was already enough to amplify any sound. “Muuummm! Tom’s picking on me!”

To Gypsy’ satisfaction, their mother’s voice immediately resounded back upstairs from the kitchen where she was busy preparing dinner.

“Tom! Stop teasing your little sister or you’ll be grounded even longer!”

Gloating with her victory, spoilt little Gypsy smirked and raced out of the room, dodging the slipper that Tom angrily flung after her by quickly pulling shut the door, following up her star performance by opening and closing it again to poke her tongue out at him before hurrying to the safety of her own room, secure in the knowledge he couldn’t risk coming after her because he was already on a warning. She wasn’t too perturbed by her brother’s mocking. Of course she was a princess! It was a well know fact that boys especially brothers didn’t know anything!

By the time she was eleven and the Nash family had returned to the Australia they had left for Hong Kong some five or six years previously, Gypsy had long stopped believing in the princess story herself. She’d heard stuff on TV, she’d talked about stuff with other kids. She knew all about single mums and poor mums and young mums and mums at school who didn’t know they were having babies and lost all their friends because their friends were always out having fun while they were stuck at home with no money and a kid to look after 24-7. Gypsy’s Mum and Dad, Gypsy had decided by then, both came from very poor families and had still been at school when they had their unexpected baby. She pictured them, aged about fourteen, still in their school uniforms, leaving their baby daughter at the hospital entrance, hiding to watch until she was found by some other kids and taken inside so they knew she’d be safe and then emotionally embracing each other and saying it was for the best for their little girl. When she was old enough she’d trace her real parents and they’d be so proud of her because by then she’d be beautiful and rich and successful, a movie star or model or singer or...

Jodie Beamish jumped at the stunned silence that had suddenly fallen around them, all eyes on herself and Gypsy now. But she was sick of Gypsy Nash and her showing off! Jodie didn’t have much going for her but she did have a good singing voice and she had hoped for a speaking part in the school musical Bugsy Malone but she’d only made one of the chorus girls (she mumbled her lines and was too self-conscious, Deirdre Kent, the drama teacher told her bluntly) while Gypsy, who’d only been in Summer Bay High and the drama club five minutes, had been offered the part of Tallulah! Gypsy was forever dancing and singing and when she wasn’t doing that she was showing off about her well-off parents and about how she had another Mum and Dad who loved her too but they’d been very poor and when she was rich and famous she’d find them again and give them heaps of money. Well, Jodie’s Mum didn’t like the wealthy, tickets-on-themselves Nashes either, especially Natalie Nash, always shopping in the most expensive shops, wearing designer clothes and going off to antique auctions and charity balls, and last night Jodie’s Mum had told Jodie some shocking gossip.

“You’re a liar!” Gypsy stared at her classmate. She might have expected something like this from snobby Hayley Smith, but Jodie Beamish? Jodie was one of the average kids in the school, neither a geek nor cool enough for Hayley’s crew, simply blending into the background and fitting in.

“No, I’m not.” Jodie’s words were all the more convincing because she spoke them quietly though she was trembling. “It’s true, I swear. Ask your olds if you don’t believe me.”

“Yeh, well, I WILL!” Gypsy promised with false bravado. “And then you’ll have to get up in front of the whole school and apologise.”

“It’s true,” Jodie insisted, scooping out her book as Miss Hope entered hellbent on cramming as much history into her students’ heads in as short a space of time as possible.

Gypsy flicked through to page 36, uncharacteristically trying to ignore the Hayley-and-Adam-Kerr-led whispering that had broken out behind her. She’d prove Jodie Beamish wrong. The whole idea was ridiculous. Nobody believed it for a second especially not Gypsy. But the lines of the book were swimming, her head was banging and her heart was pounding. She didn’t want to believe it but...Miss Hope noticing how pale she looked and, after establishing someone would be there to look after Gypsy, had sent her home immediately.

It was a Wednesday afternoon. Natalie was always home Wednesday afternoons, the day she “caught up with herself” as she termed it. Mrs Graham, the school secretary, drove her to their large white house close to the sea and kept asking, with worried looks at her gleaming car interior and the white-faced girl sitting beside her if she was going to be sick. Gypsy shook her head each time. She didn’t know if she was going to chuck up or not. She didn’t care. She was answering, she was aware of what was going on, but it was all happening to someone else.

*****

Michael, Josh and Sam thought they’d be able to run in, dump the kid and run out again before anyone had time to blink. The hospital was the closer than any house so it made sense. In fact, it boasted such panoramic views of the sea that 40 or 50 years ago a property developer who had wanted to build a hotel in the same spot tried to sue the town council when he lost out. But panoramic views and suing town councils were the last things on the boys’ minds. After the initial shock, after they’d cried and called each other wusses, after they’d worried if they’d done the right thing or if they’d accidentally poisoned her by giving her a few drops of orangeade that Sam poured from his can of Tango on to his finger, they knew they couldn’t just leave the bub there. But they couldn’t afford to let anyone see them either. They were in heaps as it was.

Michael’s olds said if he cut school one more time he could forget the bike he’d been promised for his birthday. Josh had been hauled over the coals because his marks were plummeting. Sam, who’d been the perfect student at his old school, had told them last week that his Mum had threatened to send him back to live with her ex, his Dad, so he could go back to his old school - though he didn’t really think she would, he’d added hopefully, seeing as she hated even speaking to her ex for a few minutes when he came to collect Sam every other weekend. So they hadn’t been planning to cut school that arvo. It just happened.

By noon the sun had climbed higher and higher and there was the gentlest of breezes whispering through the trees and the sea was rolling and swishing and calling. And it was double math after lunch. One of them, nobody could remember who, vaguely mentioned it’d be good to get their mark and then bunk off to take a walk in the sea breezes and almost before they knew it...

Gypsy remembered running down the path. She remembered turning to give Mrs Kent a wave as Natalie Nash opened the door and Mrs Kent returning the wave and the sun glinting on the dark blue car as it turned back the way it came. She remembered pushing past her mother and running into the parlour because she didn’t know where else to run or what she was doing anymore.

...they were on the cliffs, where it was cooler and the tough, rugged climb meant there was little chance of them being seen and rumbled. The three friends were fooling around, eating lollies gone sticky from the heat and crisps crumbled from their climb, lazily taking in the hot sun, idly discussing footie, computer games, the girls in their class, their favourite food and anything else that came into their heads, when they heard the mewing of a gull. They ignored it at first. But it sounded close by and in the end Josh’s curiosity got the better of him and he stretched and strolled off to explore, leaving the other two elbow wrestling. Then things happened fast. There was something down there, he yelled frantically, and it looked like...

“Such wicked, wicked boys,” Student Nurse Charlotte Mayfield remarked, shaking her dark head, off duty now but unable to tear herself away from the children’s ward.

The police had been called and the waiting room long since calmed down. The three ten-year-olds and their parents had been taken down to the station hours ago and the gloom of evening begun to settle.

“The poor little gypsy,” Margaret Fogerty said tenderly, using the same words she had when she’d first cradled the baby in her arms, looking down on the sleeping infant, fed, washed and clad in sleeping suit, oblivious to all.

The name stuck. The child was never referred to as Jane Doe. The hospital, the media, the shocked general public who sent gifts and money, one and all knew her as Gypsy. Natalie and Joel, the foster carers called in, who had a two-year-old boy of their own and were baffled by the cruelty, decided to keep the name when they applied for adoption. It was all the poor little mite had to call her own.

*****

The Wednesday afternoon she learnt the truth Gypsy sat down like an automaton. The sea breeze stole in to gently flutter the light blue curtains and cool her hot face and the sunlight danced cobwebby shadows on the wall. She heard herself speaking a plaintive question and she heard the silence that echoed back for a moment because there were no answers and never would be.

“Why did they do that to me?”

“We don’t know,” Joel answered, called from his work by the family crisis. “We can only guess the person was mentally sick. But Gypsy, sweetheart, WE are your family and we love you.”

Gypsy nodded, listening to her own rapid breathing thundering in her ears. It was true. It was all true. Jodie’s Mum had been working at the hospital the day the Nash family visited. She had heard the Gypsy story from one of her colleagues and she had recognised Natalie Nash when they came to live in Summer Bay. And Gypsy’s world had crashed around her.

Michael was bright red and shaking and convinced he was going to be sent to jail forever, despite the reassurances of his Mum and Dad sitting either side of him. They’d taken Sam and Josh to different interview rooms. A man came in and whispered something to the lady who was taking the notes and she nodded and looked at Michael, then she smiled. The three little boys weren't the villains, they were the heroes.

*****

“I’ll kill her!” Gypsy screamed, trampling her heels again on the shreds of blown-up photograph of herself naked with the words "slut" scrawled across now scattered under her feet like snow.

“We don’t know for certain it was Hayley...” Noah began.

“Yes, we bloody well do ! Who else would it be? Who else hates me enough? Who else could sweet-talk Barry Hyde into giving them the keys of the school? He don’t even like his own son!” Gypsy rounded furiously on her friends. “What do you expect me to do, Godfreak, pretend it never happened?”

“Gypsy, cool it...” Kit said, stung that Noah should be the recipient of her fury.

“Yeh, well, she’ll wish she hadn’t done that. I’m good at destroying stuff. My family tells me so all the time. Everybody does.”

Gypsy fell sobbing against Jack’s chest. Since she was eleven years old and had learnt the truth she had destroyed everything and everyone. When Tom went to University and the Nashes moved to Yabbie Creek, Gypsy elected to stay with Irene Roberts. She had stayed there the first time after a blue with her Mum and Dad when Irene found her hiding out in the Diner and Gypsy flatly refused to go home. After that, she stayed there often. She didn’t know why but there was something about Irene that she could relate to.

In a world where there was no one else.

*****

So night had fallen again as night will, the world moved on and time passed by, swallowing yesterday into memories long forgotten. Whoever made the long climb, trussed the baby’s tiny naked body like a chicken and left her to her fate high on jagged rocks in the blazing heat of a merciless sun was never found.

And as they left the police station Michael wiped his tearful eyes with a grubby fist and said again they couldn’t untie the knots, they’d tried and tried and tried but they were just too tight.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I watched a TV documentary a few years back in which a woman told how she was found as a baby tied up and abandoned just as Gypsy was. Her parents were never traced. There really are “people” in the world capable of incredible cruelty to kids.

[I love music]

Companions

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat

“Noah? She’ll...she’ll be okay, won’t she?” Kit looked worriedly across to where Jack and a now much calmer Gypsy sat huddled together and talking quietly. She and Noah had retreated to the far end of the room to give the couple some space. “I mean, your God person, He wouldn’t let anything else bad happen to her, would He?” She added. “She’s been through enough in her life already. Can’t you do some of your God stuff? You know, where you trade prayers for favours? ”

Kit was quite serious and despite the situation Noah smiled. “He’s not just my God, Kit, and it doesn’t exactly work like that.”

They had switched off the lights so that their presence in the school building didn’t attract any unwanted attention and now and again lightning would steal in through the window to stay and watch for a little while, curious about its companions on this lonely stormy night. Noah had turned the radiators up to the highest control and the common room had become pleasantly warm, drying out their soaking clothes and hair. There was something strangely comforting and even church-like about the warmth and the darkness that made Kit feel as if she had to speak in whispers.

“Yeh, well, you know what I mean. You know all about God stuff and...and...I hate Hayley!” Another lightning flash lit up the fury in Kit’s face. “How can even that she-devil be so cruel? Having fights is one thing, stealing each other’s boyfriends is one thing, but she knows Gypsy’s history.”

Everybody in Summer Bay High did, ever since Jodie Beamish had first revealed the secret when Gypsy was eleven years old. And if they didn’t, if they were new to the area or the school, they were soon brought up to speed. But after they learnt of it nobody spoke of it again. Not even Hayley would have been stupid enough to broach a subject that was considered taboo. She knew she would quickly lose all her friends and hangers-on if she did. It was okay for Hayley and Gypsy to be sworn enemies, it was okay for Hayley and Gypsy to have cat fights or scream at each other in the schoolyard or pour cold melted toffee into shoes (as Hayley had once done) but bringing up a past as harrowing as Gypsy’s had been would be fighting dirty. And even though Hayley hadn’t directly referred to it, what she had done, putting up that blown-up photograph of a naked Gypsy on the wall for all to see, with the word “Slut” scrawled across in large red lipstick letters...somehow it stripped Gypsy not just her clothes but of everything, reminding everyone of how she’d once been dumped as though she were no more than a piece of rubbish. And that had been the obvious intention.

Kind-hearted Kit sniffed and pressed her fingers to her eyelids and Noah drew her to him.

“Hayley’s a...a...bitch! How can anyone be so cruel?” She said muffledly into his chest and broke down with silent tears.

It had always baffled her that not everybody understood why Gypsy had to behave the way Gypsy did.

*****

“You can’t stay under the ruddy table forever!”

The response to the challenge however was equally adamant.

“Oh. Yes. I. Can. Mr. Stewart.”

Gypsy Nash, aged eleven years six months and feeling that eleven years six months was way too old to be hiding under tables, nevertheless stayed exactly where she was, clasping her arms around her legs and drawing her knees up to her chin. An end of her long red hair had caught in the corner of her mouth and instead of blowing it away she chewed on it. That was babyish too, she supposed, for someone aged eleven years and six months. A single tear splashed down on her knee and Gypsy immediately told herself to stop the pity and with a heavy but silent-as-possible sigh succeeded in pulling back the urge to weep uncontrollably. Good, good, good. She didn’t deserve pity from anyone especially not herself. She listened to the conversation above as if none of it concerned her.

“Strike me roun’! What is it with that kid?”

“You know perfectly well what it is, Alf Stewart.”

“Pampering to her though, Irene! Okay, so she had a rough trot and don’t get me wrong, if I ever got my hands on the mongrel who could leave a helpless bub there like that...” Under his breath, the proprietor of the Summer Bay Diner Alf Stewart muttered a few choice and extremely colourful swear words that his customers would never have the privilege of hearing. “But I reckon the best thing to do is to get Nat and Joel round here quick smart to take her home.”

“Alf, Gypsy doesn’t feel she HAS a home.” Irene kept her voice steady even though she saw the baffled look on her employer’s face. He opened his mouth to protest but Irene pressed a finger to her lips. “I haven’t finished.”

Alf raised his eyes heavenwards and gave vent to an emphatic sigh but was obediently silent. Irene Roberts was one of only two people (his sister Morag being the other) who could actually win an argument with the no-nonsense, tough-talking, often intimidating direct descendant of the original founder of the little seaside town and who owned the Summer Bay Diner and much more of Summer Bay besides.

“Gypsy will make the decision for herself,” Irene continued firmly. “Nobody else.”

As if reading from a script and taking her cue, a dusty Gypsy embarrassedly shuffled her way out from under the table, self-consciously flicked back her mane of long striking red hair and placed her overnight bag on the table together with a random plastic teaspoon that she’d discovered during her half-hour sojourn.

“I’ll stay here tonight, Irene,” she announced quietly.

“Fine, dahl.” Irene spoke as calmly as if Gypsy had arrived the way visitors normally did, directly through the door and not through the door and via under tables. “I’ll give your folks a bell.”

Gypsy nodded. It was the third time she’d stayed at the Diner. She couldn’t explain even to herself why sometimes she just had to get away from her adopted family and why she was so drawn to Irene Roberts. All she knew was that Irene hadn’t turned her away when she’d found her there the first time, just after Gypsy had learnt the truth about her past, when she’d planned to sleep all night under a table in the closed Diner with the half-formed idea of running away forever.

“Look, dahl, how about next time we cut out the shenanigans?” Irene said as Alf, knowing when he was beaten, shook his head and withdrew to the back room to sort out his gear for a night-time fishing trip. “Whenever you want to stay, you simply ask me and then I simply okay it with your Mum and Dad. It’s a helluva lot easier.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Gypsy sheepishly hung her head.

Despite his brusque manner, Alf Stewart was a generous man. As the Diner owner, he could have laid down the law and flatly refused to even allow Gypsy in its vicinity. But he had known Irene many years now and trusted her judgement implicitly. It was good to know the Diner was in safe hands when he had to leave on business trips and fishing trips and Irene slept there to keep an eye on things - and now with Gypsy staying too whenever the fancy took her!

Admittedly it had got a bit awkward when his granddaughter Martha came to live with him - for some reason Alf couldn’t fathom Gypsy and Martha had decided to hate each other and walked past each other in stony silence with their noses in the air - but that problem had quickly resolved itself. When Alf was home Gypsy went home to the Nashes, when Alf was away Gypsy stayed with Irene, and Martha, quite happily, stayed with Hayley or more usually with her best friend Cassie and Cassie’s Gran. The arrangements suited everyone. Alf’s fishing tournaments were becoming more frequent and when a old mate and his wife, both already retired, got him involved in golfing tournaments too Alf reckoned it was high time he too began to enjoy a semi-retirement. These days he was away more often than he was home. The gossip-mongers of Summer Bay, led by Colleen Smart, said there had to be a lady involved somewhere but if there was Alf wasn’t telling.

When the Nashes decided to move to Yabbie Creek just as Alf had made up his mind to take a six month golfing and fishing holiday and Irene learnt her own house needed some major renovations that would take several months to complete everything fell perfectly into place. Irene moved in and, with the blessing of the Nashes, so did Gypsy. He popped back now and then, the last time a couple of days before the party of the year, as his granddaughter and her friends were already referring to Hayley’s planned party, and, thanks to Irene, everything was ticking along nicely. She’d make someone a great wife, Alf reflected, though he certainly didn’t consider himself in the running. Not that Irene would look at him twice. No, the twinkle in her eyes was solely reserved for Barry Hyde and Barry Hyde was very welcome to her, thank you. Alf was quite content to plod along as he was and delighted to discover that among the retirement circles he now mixed in females outnumbered males by three to one, but he had no plans to settle down with any merry widow.

He far preferred his freedom and his fishing. In fact, he felt exactly how he’d felt that night Irene had convinced him Gypsy should call the shots over where she stayed. Unlike the female of the species, fish were uncomplicated. Fish didn’t hide under tables and bring overnight bags. Rivers didn’t interrupt to say they knew better. Rivers flowed along in the same way they had for years, peaceful places where a man could go to forget his troubles. Looking forward to his night-time fishing trip, Alf had burst into a song.

“Ol’ man river, that ol’ man river, he mus’ know something but don’t say nothin’, he jus’ keeps rollin’, he jus’ keeps on rollin’ along...”

Gypsy giggled and met Irene’s eyes.

Irene winked, her lips twitching in amusement. “We’re battlers, you and me. We’ll be right.”

*****

“Hey. I was wondering when you were gonna wake up.”

Martha McKenzie blinked groggily. Kane Phillips sat beside her, shivering slightly, the sea breeze riffling through his hair, his chin cupped thoughtfully in his hands, looking as though he’d been sitting there watching her for some time. Early morning light filtered across a strange grey landscape and in the distance lightning flashed in eerie silence while in their alien stormless world a lonely sea lashed the rocks and sent icy splashes raining down through the gloom.

She sat up swiftly only to cry out as a red hot pain tore through one side of her head and neck.

“Take it easy, Mac!” He quickly placed his hand on her arm, startled by the sudden movement. “Don’t try and move!”

“Why?” She demanded suspiciously, rubbing her sore neck, gritting her teeth and ignoring the pain. She was used to that. Working on the farm had been a tough, physical job and Martha was constantly having to prove herself to three older brothers.

Not that she could move much anyway. Her whole body still ached from the pummelling it had taken from the sea and the crash of the little wooden boat - if indeed there had been a little wooden boat, if this wasn’t all some terrible nightmare...Yet it was all so vivid if it was. And she was all alone with a sicko who had already attacked her two best friends. It was vital she figured out a psychological plan that would hopefully get her through this unharmed. Unfortunately she didn’t have a clue what that plan was going to be.

Martha McKenzie had decided to study Psychology at Summer Bay High purely because Psychology was an easy class to cut. Hayley had persuaded her it was cool to turn up for class, claim you needed to go to the library and then go off to sunbathe down on a hidden part of the beach and if you wanted to fit in at Summer Bay High you did whatever it took to be considered cool. But it did mean she hadn’t learnt much about psychology. She racked her brains trying to remember something, anything, that might help now but all she could recall was Mr Tennyson droning on about statistics and her mind wandering to anything and everything .

It didn’t take much for Mac’s mind to wander when she’d just had yet another blue with Jack Holden. Anything to take her mind off that...

...that lowlife. Rat. Jerk. Two-timing toe-rag. The classroom was warm, making her drowsy, and her daydreaming wasn’t helping matters. Tennyson. How the hell did he get a name like Tennyson? Was he related to the poet? Had he researched his family tree to try and find out? What was that Tennyson poem they’d studied back at Brookdown School? Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of death rode the six hundred...

Stifling another yawn, she began idly thumbing through the thick text book on her desk in a desperate attempt to keep herself awake and gave a long, low whistle of delight (a tomboyish habit that Hayley had told her was geeky and gross) as she came across something that immediately captured her interest. Serial Killers - Is there a typical psychological profile? And to the right of the intriguing words a footnote provided the appropriate index the reader should refer to for more information. Oh, wow! Serial killers! Now that HAD to be heaps more interesting than the complicated red-blue-green-yellow mysterious drainpipe shapes on the chart that Mr Tennyson had just clicked on to the video screen to replace the previous mysterious circular red-blue-green-yellow chart with a triangular slice taken out of it that reminded Martha nostalgically of the apple pies her mother used to bake.

“Miss McKenzie! I must say, it’s delightful to see a student enjoying their chosen subject. These statistics really do tell us a lot, don’t they?”

John William Robert Tennyson, lately tempted out of early retirement to teach psychology at Summer Bay High, smiled indulgently. Absolutely no sarcasm intended. He really did believe that the exceptionally pretty, dark-haired, green-eyed student sitting at the back of his class was as fascinated as he was by the varying results of the research methods.

John Tennyson, a small, plump, silver-haired man with a round, cheery face and rosy cheeks (on his very first day at Summer Bay High and despite being clean-shaven earning the nickname Santa from its irreverential students) wasn’t their usual type of teacher. He had spent the best part of his career tutoring the older, creme-de-la-creme, destined-for-top-universities-and-a-glittering-career students in Ancient History and Psychology at a small independent school for “gifted children” aged 13-18, cosseted and sheltered by their keen desire for knowledge and their extremely wealthy parents who were prepared to pay astronomically high fees in pursuit of it.

“Uh-huh,” Martha agreed vaguely, smiling her most disarming smile back in the hope he wouldn’t ask any questions, unaware of the effect that effortless sexy smile had just had on the pulse rates of every red-blooded male in the class.

Till Hayley kicked her under the desk and she remembered her teeth were too big and too many, like Hayley had often told her, and immediately closed her mouth again. And the index had been hugely disappointing and not much help to the situation she now found herself in. Serial Killers - Is There a Typical Psychological Profile? Professor David White $14.99 Blackwell Publishers had been the only information it imparted.

“Why d’ya think? You could do yourself more damage!” Phillips’ rough voice brought her abruptly back to the present. “I had a walk round while you were still out and discovered at least there’s fresh water here...don’t mention it!” He added sarcastically as she eagerly snatched the small plastic bottle out of his hand and drank greedily, draining every last drop.

“Thanks.” Martha flushed, spluttering and coughing with the speed in which she’d drunk, ashamed of her action now. She’d just been so unbelievably thirsty. Still was.

“No worries,” he shrugged. “Heaps more where that came from. And even if there wasn’t...” He looked up at the sky; “There’s always rain. I reckon we’d easily find a container to catch it. There’s all kinds of garbo been washed up here besides that bottle. Some guys obviously don’t believe in recycling.”

“What?” Martha spluttered again, this time wondering what the hell she might have accidentally swallowed, disgustedly dropping the plastic bottle with the barely recognisable wet and torn Volvic mineral water label. “Are you trying to kill me? Imagine the bacteria!”

Kane Phillips sneered. “Jeez, you’re almost as bad as Snobby Hayley! Beggars don’t get to be choosers, love. You can either die of thirst or take a chance on a few germs.”

“Leave my friends out of this,” Martha said haughtily.

“Yeh, right. I always knew Hayley was a germ.” Kane Phillips guffawed at his own wit and Martha decided it was high time they changed the subject. Focussing on killing just might give him ideas.

“Where’s the boat? Can we fix it?”

“What boat?” He was staring at her blankly.

“The one that crashed,” Martha spoke testily, convinced he was winding her up. “The one we came to the island in. The one I hit my head on.”

Kane Phillips guffawed. “Are you for real? There is no boat. We didn’t come sailing here on a bloody Sunday picnic, for Crissakes! You fell in the river, I jumped in after you, you hit your head on the rocks when we made shore. You’ve been in and out of consciousness awhile though. Maybe that’s what you were dreaming about. You did enough muttering.”

He'd pulled her out of the river! Shivers ran down Martha’s spine and she picked up something that had fallen from her shoulders earlier and wrapped it tightly around herself. The unmistakable smell of leather assailed her nostrils. A leather jacket. His leather jacket. While he’d sat beside her, shivering. She was supposed to hate him. She wanted to hate him after what he’d done to Cassie and Hayley. But how could she hate someone who’d saved her life and risked his own to save hers? Who gave her water and warmth, and, strangely, someone, despite her fear, despite their constant jibes at each other...someone with whom she was beginning to feel an odd kind of comfort just by knowing he was there? She stared unseeingly at the distant storm, confused by her emotions.

He followed her gaze. Or thought he did.

“Faraway lightning. That’s what my bro used to call it when we were kids. He was okay back then.”

Kane Phillips sounded uncharacteristically wistful for a moment as he picked up a reefer thin piece of driftwood and began sketching imaginary lines on a rock.

“You have a brother?” She spoke more gently now, feeling guilty about her earlier harshness. “I didn’t know.”

“Trust me. You don’t wanna know.” He pulled a face and threw the piece of driftwood back into the calmer sea. “You have three, don’t’cha?”

What else did he know about her? Martha bit her lip, wondering. But what he said next was totally unexpected and sent shivers running down her spine even icier than those before.

“Mac, do you believe in ghosts?”

Old Man River ©Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

[I love music]

I hardly deserve you crediting me anymore ILM it's been so long since I came in here. My bad I'm sorry, I've missed this story though, you're one of the few writers on here who completely hook me in and you're doing such a good job of this. Sorry it's been so long since I reviewed and I've missed to many chapters to comment on everyuthing but I have to point out Gypsy's backstory. You know she's my favourite and you did it so well. The rest is pretty darm spectacular too. I hope you update soon and this time I'll read and review, its a promise.

Kat, you are the original writer of this fic and I am still using many of your ideas. Without your creation of Freddie Teddy I would never have found the catalyst I needed to make Hayley’s childhood come alive; your description of Hayley sitting on the bed with the teddy bear thinking back to how simple it was when she was a kid was very powerful and the image still haunts me. I am also still using the terms you coined (Miss Piranha! ) and this story will still end exactly how you planned it. Any time you want to return to co-writing you’re more than welcome - I couldn’t have done it without you in the first place.

Thanks for your brilliant reviews, everyone. I did hope to have this chapter written and posted by this afternoon but I ended up going out instead. Still, I’m off work tomorrow so I’ve been working on it tonight. It was getting pretty long so I’ve moved Kane/Martha scenes and the Dani cameo forward to the next chapter.

WISHES

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat ( despite what she says )

Will Smith almost didn’t turn back. He knew her Dad had an insane dislike of his daughter’s boyfriends and running into him again tonight just might tip Rhys Sutherland over the edge. He knew only a fool would stay out in a Baystormer. He knew when a Baystormer hit, it hit with a vengeance especially if it snapped on the heels of a sizzling heatwave, and the night was wild as the weeks preceding it had been gentle, the once glassy sea churning as though some gigantic butter-making machine was at work beneath the waves. Definitely a night for heading straight home and straight back to the party. Even if the chick was red hot. So he stopped, holding on to a litter-bin, to think about it. Baystormer & Angry Dad v Hot Chick. Uh...no contest. He immediately staggered back the way he’d came.

Still thinking deep, alcohol fuelled thoughts. Like how come they always put inside pockets on a guy’s jacket next to his heart? What was the deal with inside pockets anyway? Not big enough for a wallet, not secure enough for cash, not convenient enough for a mobile phone, right? A love poem, on the other hand...

He still had a copy of the poem he’d written for Gypsy right next to his heart.

He’d written it so many times trying to get it right. It wasn’t perfect and it was never going to win any prizes for Literature and he’d later heard her mocking every word as she flirted with two guys she’d only just met. But it was still touching the rhythm of his heartbeat. Well, maybe it really was time to move on like Hayley kept telling him to.

“Stuff you, Gypsy!” he shouted drunkenly, shaking his fist at the thunderous sky. “ Betcha Dani appreciates poetry!”

When he brought the fist down, the fist swept over his eyes and he had to force himself to think of other things. He thought of his kid sister.

Hayley said it was bad luck to turn back. Other people never suspected Hayley had heaps of superstitions but Will had known Hayley a lot longer than other people. It seemed she’d always been around and he’d always been looking after her.

He didn’t actually remember the first day he saw her, being only two and a bit years older himself, but the ‘rents said he’d been very disappointed. Even though they’d explained that Mummy was expecting a bub and would be coming out of hospital with a little brother or sister for him, he’d explained that he’d rather have a puppy. On the day the key turned in the lock and his Mum and Dad arrived home, faces wreathed in smiles, Mrs Smith carrying a small bundle wrapped in a white woollen shawl, Mr Smith inviting him to meet “someone new”, Will jumped up and down in excitement, stamping on the crayon he dropped (he and his babysitter, 19-year-old Laura Wilkins from next door who’d been called in very, very hurriedly since Hayley had taken into her head to initiate labour pains at 3.00 am yesterday and a whole month too early, had been busy scribbling patterns on the large sheet of paper that Laura had set up on a play-board on the floor). But when he saw there wasn’t a puppy inside the shawl he’d pushed her away demanding, “Take back, Mummy! Get puppy!”

After a while however they kind of got used to having each other around. And when Will was six, not long before the terrible accident happened, and after there’d been yet another addition to the family, a little brother Nick, the Smith family finally acquired a puppy! A small black mongrel with a shiny wet nose, permanently wagging tail, and pink tongue that was forever hanging out as though everything puzzled him about the world. Nick and Will loved him but Hayley, who’d once been frightened by a large dog, ran away screaming every time Jet came near (which made Jet think it was a game and chase her all the more) till in the end her mother was driven to distraction. It was another amusing family anecdote often told.

“Hayley, sweetie, Jet will have to go,” Sara Smith said gently, sitting on the bed beside her after Hayley had fled screaming to her bedroom because Jet tried to lick her hand.

Alarm filled Hayley’s big blue eyes. She had mixed feelings about the puppy although she was terrified of him. “I don’t want Jet to go, Mummy!”

“We can’t carry on like this,” her mother sighed, and suddenly she wondered if she could perhaps persuade her small daughter to make friends with Jet by using a shock tactic. So she over-dramatically wiped her hand across her forehead in a way that would have done Bette Davis proud. “I can’t cope. If Jet didn’t go I’d have to go!”

“But I don’t want you to go, Mummy!”

“Hayley, ONE of us will have to go!”

Hayley brightened suddenly as the perfect answer struck her. “Can’t Will go?”

Funnily enough at that moment, making a great show of turning her back on daggy Cassie Turner, Hayley was thinking back too. Forehead pressed against the window as she’d once pressed her face on the glass of the large toy store wishing her parents were well off enough to afford everything in there, she gazed out towards Whitelady Copse and shivered as another clap of thunder rolled ominously overhead and lightning framed the lonely, trembling trees, half expecting to see the ghost of Lady Eleanor staring back at her. The couple who had adopted the three orphaned Smith kids were wealthy enough to have bought everything in that toy store but...

If only she could close her eyes and slip back in time to when she was very small and she couldn’t have every toy she wanted but she did have a Mum and Dad who loved her.

Will had been the only beacon of light in the darkness. Not that Hayley, being five years old, would have been able to explain it like that. All that she knew was one day they had a Mum and Dad and the next day the car crashed and they didn’t. Nick was too young to remember much. It was different for Will and Hayley. And Hayley still couldn’t understand why they didn’t come back, no matter how many times Will told her. Not even when she got to six.

She thought when she reached the grand old age of to six she’d know. But then she reached the magic number and their new Mum and Dad (who had the same surname and said it must have been because it was meant to be for them to adopt them) bought her a Cinderella cake with six pink candles and Hayley blew them all out first go!

But her wish still didn’t come true.

Will was the only one who knew all about how much she still missed them, who never let her down by going away, and she shadowed him as faithfully as Jet had done. Because Jet had gone away too. He’d had to go. There was no room for dogs in the Children’s Home they were taken to after the terrible car crash killed their parents, a sad little trio of unnaturally silent children, each clutching the three favourite toys they’d been told they could choose to carry with them.

Five-year-old Hayley stood in her bedroom with Freddie Teddy in her arms, where the clean laundry her mother hadn’t had time to put away that morning was neatly folded on her bed, aware the lady was getting impatient and trying to pretend she wasn’t, unable to decide which two of her seven Barbies deserved to go on vacation and with a vague idea that she was going to come back later with Mummy and Daddy and put everything back.

“Come along now, Hayley! Your brothers are all ready,” the lady, Fiona, chivvied, tapping her foot without realising and glancing over her shoulder to roll her eyes at the lady who was helping Will and Nick and who seemed heaps nicer.

And Hayley, worried she might be left behind, snatched up the nearest two Barbies and never did find out what happened to Molly. Molly had been a present her parents’ friends brought back on a visit from the distant hot country they had returned to live in. She was a beautiful ebony colour with long black hair way, way past her waist, and ear-rings and necklace that sparkled like real diamonds. With scarlet ballgown that reached down to her sparkly shoes and lacy black shawl wrapped around her shoulders, Molly was obviously ready for some serious dancing but when last seen she was sitting on the wall shelf on top of three My Best Fairytales books, one arm flung in the air, head askew, one side of her hair loosely tied in Hayley’s own pink flower hair-slide (her little owner had been playing hairdressers the day before).

Hayley often regretted her hasty decision but Molly had travelled with Hayley and Freddie Teddy on their last two holidays and none of the Barbies had been anywhere. But she wished she had chosen Molly instead. She wasn’t like the Barbies, all toothy, eager-to-please grins and alabaster skin. Molly smiled too but it was a happy smile and Hayley wished...well, she wished she knew how to smile like Molly again. Since she’d come to live in the Home she had to make smiles happen like the Barbies did because somehow she couldn’t quite remember how it worked. Sometimes, when she and Freddie Teddy lay wide awake, while Will and Nick slept in the boys’ wing, while silver moonlight tried to creep over the top of the thick green curtains, while the sleep-heavy breath of the two little girls she shared the room with were occasionally broken by tiny snorts and murmurs, she would wonder about Molly, left all alone on the shelf with her only hair half done.

When they went to live with their new Mum and Dad she told Will that Molly would still be watching out for when their real Mum and Dad came home so they’d know exactly where to find them. Will said if they did it would have to be as ghosts and she knew he wasn’t trying to scare her because he was being very serious and not teasing her and he treated her to her favourite shell necklace candy on the way to school, not caring that his mates laughed at him for being soppy with a kid sister. After that she pictured Molly sitting exactly where she’d left her except it would be night-time and Molly’s shadow would be all alone on the wall when the ghosts of her real Mum and Dad looked in.

When they came back - because they WOULD come back one day - she was going to tell them all about how Will looked after her even if he did yell at her sometimes. Like now.

“Fair go, Hayles! You haven’t got time to play Don’t Step on a Crack or You’ll Break Your Back. We gotta to get to schooool!”

Six-year-old Hayley flashed her big brother a look of contempt.

“You don’t know EVERYTHING, Will!” She declared and continued to take giant strides over the broken paving stones to ensure she avoided stepping on any jagged lines.

Stupid Will! She wasn’t playing Don’t Step on a Crack or You’ll Break Your Back! Bubs in Reception played that and she wasn’t a bub anymore! She was playing Don’t Step on a Crack, And They Might Come Back...‘cos...’cos they might, see? If they knew how much she wanted them to. She sniffed back tears, hoping Will’s mates hadn’t noticed. Boys always teased girls about crying.

“I’d just drag her there if she was my kid sister, mate!” Harry said impatiently.

“Nah, she’s okay...” Will Smith grinned in his usual easy, laid-back style. “Just give us a few minutes, hey?”

They had reached the sweetshop they always called into on their way to school and the bell pinged in anticipation as Will’s mates - unlike Hayley, he had heaps of mates - pushed the door and piled inside. But Will stayed with her, gently pulling her blonde curls round his fingers the way their real Dad used to do.

“What’s up then, buddy?” He asked, just like their real Dad would have done and using the nickname their real Dad always used when Hayley was upset.

Her voice was a whisper. Tiny tears rolled down off her pink cheeks. “They haven’t come back, Will. And I wished it on my birthday. And Molly's waiting for them to tell tell them where we are but they still haven't come back and I wished it. Don’t they love us anymore?”

Will was only two-and-a-bit years older but he was heaps taller. He bent down and put his hands on Hayley’s shoulders. “Hayles, they still love us. 'Course they do! But they CAN'T come back when they’re dead. Only ghosts can come back and they know if they come back as ghosts it 'll scare us so they don’t come back at all. We have to wait till we’re very, very old to see them again. And, hey,” he dug his hands into his pocket and jingled several coins, aware she’d already spent all her pocket money. “Reckon I’ve easy got enough for a candy shell necklace. Want one?”

And she nodded and smiled a smile that was nearly how she remembered, following her big brother into the shop, knowing Will was looking out for her and always would.

*****

In the darkness two figures holding each other lightly as friends were but a short step away from holding each other closer. And so they took that step. She smelled of a light flowery fragrance, of soap, of warmth and tenderness, of croissants freshly baked that long ago morning yet that had lived and breathed only a few short hours ago, when the sun was still golden and the sky never knew any darker clouds.

He had a sadness in his eyes that broke her heart. He woke scattered memories of those she had loved and brought every memory rushing and tumbling back to her mind.

“Barry, why didn’t you tell me? Why did you suffer all this alone?”

“How could I tell you, Irene? How could I bear to lose you?”

“Barry, you haven’t lost me...If anything...” She cupped his face and gazed into his tear-filled eyes and the silence between them spoke a thousand words.

“But you don’t know me,” he said hoarsely.

He wanted her to know everything. To cleanse his soul. He wanted to tell her about the cold wind that rose from the sea the night he dug his wife’s grave and of the mewing cries of his newborn son as his sister hushed him. To tell her how each clank of metal on that hard ground sealed the evil inside him, how the silhouette of Lorraine cradling her nephew and standing a little away from him, on the tiny mound of ground created by the newly discarded soil, suddenly seemed as though they were on a distant hill, so far removed were they from he in their innocence.

The night would haunt him forever. The night and the moon.

Panting heavily, he pauses to wipe the beads of sweat from his brow and look up at the accusing moon.

“Hurry!” Lorraine urges above the faraway sound of the roaring sea. Her voice grows more urgent. “For God’s sake, Barry, hurry!”

Yet for him there is no God. There is no hope.

The wind whips strands of hair across her face. The baby whimpers and she strokes his back and soothes and whispers. She herself is still in mourning for her husband. Her brother and a heavily pregnant Kerry attended the funeral just a few weeks ago, consoling her by the side of the grave, supporting her when she was so overcome by grief that she could barely stand. Their own marriage had been childless. Yet what would David have done, he wonders, if they had been blessed or cursed with a child and David had found Lorraine trying to drown their tiny, helpless baby the same way Kerry had tried to drown Kim and drowned their first born Jonathan before him? Would he too have been evil enough to wrap his hands around his wife’s neck and push her down into the tepid bath water? Would he too have watched so unforgiving as her eyes bulged and her face reddened and bloated? Would only the child’s screams of hunger have woken him from what he was doing when it was all too late and her body was limp?

Murderers mingle with shadows where none will find them. He holds his tiny son against his chest and, bypassing the switch that would flood the room with light, in the thick darkness dials Lorraine’s number. When all around crumbles, blood is thicker than water. They have shared grief before, their parents, their sister Emma’s death from leukemia when she was barely fourteen, David, now Kerry. She understands the need to hide his terrible crime. But more than this she understands he has a son to protect.

So he digs on into the silent earth and the moon watching. Something burns in the corner of his eye, some grit or soil or grain of sand. And still he has no tears to shed. He grips the spade so hard that tomorrow blisters will cover his bloodied hands, he presses his heel so heavily on the silver metal that tomorrow he will find the blood seeped through his boots to leave its indelible print.

His sleeping son now safely ensconced in his tiny crib, the baby alarm alert to the slightest noise, she pours them both a tumbler of whiskey from the half bottle she has found. Trembling, he accepts a cigarette from the packet she offers and he a non-smoker, he so steadfast in his advice to the students he teaches to never take up nicotine. David smoked till the last and finally succumbed to cancer but Lorraine says what does it matter, Death will come soon enough with his sharp scythe to pick each of us off one by one.

His wedding ring sparks in the flame of the lighter and chinks against the glass. And still he cannot cry. But for the sake of his son he must go on. Knowing he will never get close to anyone again. Put an invisible barrier between those you love and thus never hurt or be hurt.

This is important. This is what those of you who have loved and lost will know. Never give your heart.

Oh, but sometimes...

Irene locked her fingers in his and led him like a child into the living quarters. She let his hand fall from her grasp for only a moment while she lit the gas fire and into the cold room brought warmth and light too in her tender smile. The room was rarely used as Alf had given over to her his own more spacious and comfortable living room but here she had put her own stamp. He looked to the flower print home-made curtains brought with her from some previous life, to the dancing blue flames and to battered little old carriage clock still ticking away the years, to the framed photographs adorning shelves and walls. Family. Her family. And all that the light touched was tinged with flecks of gold and each flicker was a breath and each breath was carried on the wings of hope.

This is important. This is what those of you who have loved and lost will know. Never give your heart.

Oh, but sometimes your heart will be stolen.

[I love music]

Um...I got a bit carried away again...at this rate you’ll have Irene’s ancestry from the year dot! Thanks to Kat for telling me about Irene’s past as a country and western singer.

FEELS LIKE HOME

It feels like home to me

It feels like home to me

It feels like I’m all the way back where I come from

It feels like home to me

It feels like home to me

It feels like I’m all the way back where I belong

© Chantal Kreviazuk

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat

“Summer Bay’s a small town, Irene,” Barry Hyde said, his voice choked with tears. You’ll be ostracised if you associate with a murderer.”

She only drew him closer. “I never gave a fig for what other people think, Barry. You should know that by now.”

Eleven-year-old Irene McFarlane tapped her foot as she strummed guitar and winked at Benji who sat in the front row between Katie and Jill, their twin sisters. Mrs Macklin’s lips were set in a thin line and that glare could have frozen the local park lake but there was absolutely nothing the principal could do about Wild Irene being on stage and both she and Irene knew it. Irene had as much right as everybody else to take a turn.

Bonhomie was the theme Harper Junior School had chosen (no doubt to Mrs Macklin’s eternal regret now) to celebrate the final day of the top class who would be moving on to high school after the summer break. Everywhere was decorated in French style with French flag colour posters, banners and balloons, all lovingly created by the youngest class who had for several months been exchanging letters, cards and small gifts with a class of similarly aged children in a small village in northern France. The idea was for photographs of the event to be sent to their pen-friends (the French kids would be hosting a “UK Day” the following week when their own school reached its end of term and its top class moved on to high school too) but Irene had a strong feeling that the four proud little seven-year-olds who had been chosen as “official photographers” and who were now innocently clicking their cameras would have certain pictures carefully removed at the development stage.

It had been Benji’s idea that she go out with a bang that told everybody exactly what she thought of them and the way they had looked down their noses at the rough, tough, foul-mouthed McFarlanes and their mother who slept around and lived on welfare hand-outs - that is, they looked down their noses until extremely recently when snobs like Mrs Macklin realised little Benji just might make Harper Junior School famous. Irene no longer had any qualms about leaving him behind. Even the twins wouldn’t need to look out for him anymore because Benji could and did look out for himself these days. In the last month or two he had grown taller, begun to lose his chubby baby face and had not only come out of his shell but was proving to be extremely popular. Nobody bullied Benji now, not even the racist Sharp brothers. And while he had plenty of mates to sit with nowadays, the McFarlane family led by Irene were united whenever they needed to be.

Benji’s new found confidence was mostly down to the music teacher, Mr Halford, who, unlike the previous music teacher who passed timid little Benji by unnoticed, had discovered and encouraged Benji’s obvious talent for music, lifting him from the obscurity of being too shy to sing above a whisper to the forefront of the school choir and a place in the school band, where Benji was busy learning to play a variety of musical instruments with kids three and four years older.

All of the McFarlanes had a good ear for a tune but as the seven siblings (three of whom were too young as yet to start school) had five different fathers between them, it’s fair to say that their musical ability must have come from their mother’s side of the family although Evelyn herself, who, surprisingly, didn’t have a particularly good singing voice, couldn’t think who. Her own father, she was told, had been a soldier and was killed in the war when she was very young and her mother was “distant” - although, Evelyn recalled, she did occasionally play piano and then quite well in the brief glimpses she had of her when she came home from boarding school. Her maternal grandparents she never once saw although they paid for her education until they faded from this earth within weeks of each other shortly after her seventeenth birthday, having delivered the final blow by leaving every penny of their estate to a cats’ home and nothing whatsoever to their only child and grandchild.

Once her own mother died, Evelyn had no choice but to make her way as best she could and with remarkable tolerance in a world that, with a clutch of qualifications in subjects such as Ancient Greece and Embroidery together with a total inexperience of life in general, she was ill prepared to meet. It wasn’t until Irene pointed out to her that she was almost certainly born illegitimate and her grandparents wanted to hush up the “scandal” that it even occurred to Evelyn her grandparents might not have had her best interests at heart when they sent her away for an exclusive private education.

Irene grew up fast not only because she was the eldest but because she had to. Despite her expensive education, Evelyn wasn’t the brightest button in the box and her refined accent and ways marked her out from the folk she now mixed with. One of Irene’s earliest memories was of throwing orange peel at a couple of women who had upset her mother and her mother being absolutely horrified (even though, to Irene’s annoyance, it missed and passed its intended targets by unobserved) and telling her it “just wasn’t done.” Okay, it wasn’t, Irene decided. At least not when Mum was around to see it...

She saw by Mrs Macklin’s expression that she recognised the tune. Good. The very first moment Irene heard it (when she’d been browsing through her mother’s record collection) she’d thought it summed up their narrow-mindedness perfectly. Its name had been a delightful coincidence. She smiled sweetly and launched into the song.

I want to tell you all a story ‘bout a Harper Valley widow wife

who had a teenage daughter who attended Harper Valley Junior High...

But it was the last the few lines that gave Irene most satisfaction and she deliberately sang them over and over pretending she'd forgotten the rest of the words. It was a moment of triumph that often came to her, that strong family bond she shared then with Benji, Katie and Jill who were clapping their hands and singing along.

When you have the nerve to tell me as a mother I’m not fit

Well this is just a little Peyton Place and you’re all Harper Valley hypocrites

No, I wouldn’t put you on because it really did, it happened just this way

The day my momma socked it to the Harper Valley PTA...

“Irene, how can you always be so strong?” He asked wistfully, wishing he could give something back to this woman who gave him so much, wishing he could be with her in that faraway memory of something only she saw.

“I wasn’t always.” Her voice quavered with emotion as it brushed against his chest and he tangled his fingers gently in her hair glad he could at least give her that small comfort. “After my family’s death in a tragic accident and my brother’s death by his own hand when he was only seventeen I didn’t sing again for a long time.”

And Irene crumpled into tears while Barry held her.

*****

Clutching a mug of steaming hot chocolate, Dani Sutherland tweaked open the bedroom curtain a fraction and peered out the window to admire the storm. Her first Summer Bay party had been awesome. Will was cute and she’d enjoyed putting that slag Gypsy Nash and that snob Hayley in their places. She’d seen the guy of her dreams at that party tonight and she was still on a high. Talk about gorgeous! They must have invented the word just for him. Sex on Legs, as her friend back in the city Alison Parr used to say. She couldn’t wait to ring Ally tomorrow and tell her all about how hot he was. Lovely eyes, great smile, and oh, wow! that manly physique! She gasped suddenly, her thoughts tailing off as a flash of lightning lit up the unmistakable figure of Will Smith creeping up the path in the pouring rain.

Dani’s bedroom was to the side of the house and so she had an ideal view of the front door. She watched intrigued as he slid something under it and then, looking round all ways as though he half expected lions to be unleashed, raced back into the night. Did she dare sneak down again to find out what it was? The olds - well, okay, just Dad - had had a hissy fit when she’d gone down for the hot choccie, no doubt imagining Will had been hiding round the corner and she was going to sneak him in for pashing session. Yeh, well, as if!

Although if Will had only been Davey Molyneaux it would have been a totally different story...

*****

Martha McKenzie rolled her eyes in exasperation. “No. In answer to your question, I don’t believe in ghosts,” she replied.

After her initial terror (obviously what Phillips had intended when he fired the shock question, the two of them being all alone as they were on this eerily silent island) and the unexpected roller coaster of emotions telling her she couldn’t hate someone who’d just saved her from drowning she felt suddenly back on terra firma. Why couldn’t she hate him? There was no law said she had to be eternally grateful, was there? Fate may have thrown them together but that didn’t mean she had to like it or like him. She might have well have washed up on shore anyway. Years ago just before she set off on a school boat trip her brother Macca, busy smearing butter and strawberry jam on a thick slice of toast for his brekkie and still sore with his kid sister because she beat him in a swimming race across Shrewton’s pond the day before, had remarked that bodies floated anyway so there was little point in her trying to battle the waves if she happened to fall in.

“Chill, babe. I just wondered.” He stretched to retrieve the discarded plastic Volvo mineral water bottle, shook out the last drops of water and newly acquired dirt and glanced up to regard her with the same patronising smirk he reserved for most people especially girls. She knew the smirk was there simply to annoy her and what was more he was succeeding.

“Why?” Mac could feel her hot temper slow burning like a neglected pan on a cooking ring.

Her ex-boyfriend Jack Holden and her three older brothers had liked to deliberately wind her up at times too but she’d never taken any nonsense from Jack and her three older brothers and she was damned if she was going to start taking it now from this jumped-up little jerk. Who did Phillips think he was? He may have rescued her, she owed him that, but nothing changed history. Nothing changed what he’d done to Cassie and Hayley.

Kane Phillips shrugged lazily and slicked back his hair, still smirking. “You really wanna know? Okay, sweetheart, I’ll tell you. When we were out there on the water I saw something weird. A kind of misty shape following us. Whatever the hell it was, wasn’t interested in me, love. I swear I heard it whispering your name though...”

Martha glared. “If you’re trying to scare me, you’re wasting your time. And get this, loser. I’m not your babe, sweetheart or anything else, never have been, so that stops right here, right now.”

He laughed. It was never a good idea to laugh at Mac when her anger was slow burning but he wasn’t to know that. Not yet.

“Sheesh! You ever think of becoming a cop like Jacky-boy wants to be? If they ever remake Prisoner and need some extras, babe, you’d shape up well as a sadistic screw like Vineg... Jeee-zus!” He stopped laughing suddenly and reeled backwards in both shock and not a little pain as Martha’s fist caught him square on the chin and made him bite down hard on his tongue.

“S**t!” He spat out salty blood two or three times and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Mac sucked in a breath, not caring how far she’d gone now. “Well, STOP calling me babe and DON’T call Jack Jacky-boy and DON’T compare me to...to...”

No way would she give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Martha gulped back the onset of tears. When she’d first come to live in Summer Bay, her grandfather Alf Stewart had blown the dust off the Stewart family album to introduce her to family that until then she never knew she had. Great Aunt Celia, still out doing missionary work somewhere, had looked so much like Vera Bennett from Prisoner that Mac had done a double take. And she’d swallowed a lump in her throat then just as she did now because the same memory returned.

The memory of an autumn evening, leaning back against Mum’s arm-chair - despite the abundance of comfortable furniture, Mac preferred to sit on a large cushion on the floor, half doing homework, half watching TV - stroking Prince’s floppy ears as the dog rested his head and two front paws across her lap, one ear cocked to listen out for trouble. (Although exactly what Prince intended to do if there ever was trouble was anybody’s guess - during his last outing with Mac, a big dog had snarled back at him and, despite his size, he’d tried to jump into her arms like he used to when he was a puppy.)

But Prince was safe enough from snarling dogs now and his tail swished contentedly at their laughter. Prisoner was on TV. Lizzie and Bea were brewing grog in the prison laundry and Doreen had been sent to cover for them because warden Vera Bennett had become suspicious, but the outlandish stories she was concocting to stall Vera were baffling the prison officer more and more. Martha remembered turning to grin at her mother and her mother putting down her knitting because she needed to wipe away tears of laughter. She could remember the colour of the wool, her father and the boys - as everyone, including Mac, referred to her bros - chopping something and calling to each other out back, Prince’s breath tickling her lap, the smell of the delicious stew they’d eaten for supper. It was one of those moments when nothing happens and yet stays forever in our mind, some magic touches and years later reels us back like an invisible thread. Perhaps it’s pure happiness captured and bottled for all time.

She’d psyched herself up for a furious row with Kane but to her amazement he was grinning. “Okay. Guess I earned that, Mac. Go, girl power! Re-spect!”

“I can’t.” Martha ignored the high-five to ruefully rub her painful shoulder, a smile that hadn’t been invited and had no business to be there hovering at the corner of her lips. “Prisoner was a pretty good TV show. I used to watch it with Mum sometimes. She was hooked. I guess your Mum was too?”

“Nah. Ma didn’t really do television.” He shifted uncomfortably and seemed keen to change the subject. “What were you thinking about just then? You were miles away. I take it I’m...uh...allowed to ask?” He grinned again and raised his arms in mock surrender.

“Nothing much. Just the Farm where I used to live. My family. Prince, my dog. Prince!” She smiled fondly. “I got him for my birthday. He didn’t have to work like dogs on a farm do, like our border collies did, he was there to be a pampered pooch and, Jeez, didn’t he know it! Used to go round with his nose in the air like he was Royalty. My bros reckoned he was doing it on purpose, rubbing the other dogs’ noses in it kind of thing. You should’ve seen the collies’ faces whenever he walked past. You just knew if they hadn’t been so well trained, they’d have soon put him in his place! Did you ever have a dog when you were a kid?”

“Yeh. Well, my Dad did. Two.”

“What kind of dogs? What were their names?” Martha loved animals and immediately wanted to know more.

“Rottweilers. Brutus and Caesar. Dad bought them as guard dogs.”

“Wow!” Mac was hugely impressed. “I bet nobody gave you a hard time with pets like that.”

He snorted. “What kind of ******* fluffy bunny planet d’you live on? I just told ya, they were ******* guard dogs!”

Martha bristled. “Does it hurt you, Kane? I mean, does it actually physically HURT you to talk to anyone female civilly? How’d you like it if someone spoke to your Mum like that?”

He looked shaken. “Sorry,” he muttered after a long pause, for the first time ever since she’d known him seeming genuinely ashamed of himself. Even when he’d backed down earlier it had been simply because he found the whole thing funny.

“It’s okay,” she said, dropping the anger from her voice, slightly appeased.

“Did you ever listen to the rain when you were a kid, Mac?” He spoke in the same uncharacteristic pensive tone she’d never heard him use before. “I mean, really, really listen? I don’t mean when you were snug in bed and it was hitting the windows, I mean...ahh, it don’t matter!” He broke off suddenly to rise and brush imaginary dust from his trousers and walked away to stare out at the sea and the storm playing out beyond.

It sounds as though the whole world is weeping. It sounds as though the wind is screaming in despair. The black clouds of late evening are floating over the horizon, coming home to cloak the night. A steady flow of water runs along the guttering, dripping monotonously down the chipped, rusty pipe where it spills into the muddy, overgrown sprawling front garden of the detached and dilapidated old house. The rain isn’t heavy yet, but soon it will be and it’s cold enough already on thin, sodden clothes covering small, thin, sodden bodies. For the world, the warm world, is far away and it’s lonely out here in the ever-falling darkness. Traffic swishes past, a TV blares out a football game, drunken voices shout through the distance of night.

And the dogs bark.

They bark a warning to two frightened, hungry, pathetic little boys stealing pitifully towards the light of the window.

“It’s no go! Even if that door’s locked they’re ready to break it down,” Scott Phillips tells his younger brother, jumping back as the barks turn to growls and the two enormous animals snarl ferociously, eyes red and wild, large, sharp canine teeth bared, leaping up and pounding the glass with massive paws, determined to keep out intruders. Inside they are warm. Cosseted, well fed, given the best steak, the freedom to sleep on soft, comfortable chairs. Nothing asked in return save that they protect Richie “Gus” Phillips’ latest drugs haul and let nobody inside while he’s out drinking. Not even his own kids and no matter how bad the night.

“Maybe Ma...?” Kane suggests hopefully, keeping a wary eye on the frantic Rottweilers, and trembling at the knowledge only glass separates them from being torn to pieces.

“**** that, ya jerk, she’ll still be out cold after the bloody bashing she took tonight,” Scott says dismissively.

His little brother looks up at the bedroom window. It had started the way it usually started with Dad shouting, swearing and insulting her. This time Ma had been putting out supper. Dad always had his supper first and if they were lucky Mum, Kane and Scotty might get to have something later. But tonight Dad wasn’t happy with the food. Something was burned or undercooked or too tough or too chewy. It didn’t matter what it was though because he never seemed to need an excuse for laying into her.

Kane and Scotty looked warily up from the muted TV because his voice was rising and crept as one to peer round the kitchen door in time to see their father in the act of pressing their mother’s face into the dish of food. Things happened really fast then. Drunk and cursing, he dragged her past them while Mum was yelling frantically “Get out! Get out!” to him and Scott because often they would be the next victims of his violence. And so they ran out although she was screaming and the night was cold and wild and they knew Dad must have a new stash because when the screaming finally stopped and just before he left the dogs were unchained from out back and put in the front room.

“Nah, it’s shoppin’ at ******* ‘Arrods again for dinner, innit?” Scotty adds with ironic humour.

And so, sick with hunger, bellies aching, the two young brothers trudge through the cold rain to the garbage bin to forage for left-over food scraps. Perhaps in that miserable, lonely night if there had been puppies left whining and shivering someone might have alerted an animal rescue centre. But incredibly people could and would and did pass children by. A group, a rowdy group, eight or more, men and women talking, laughing, swaying, they passed by so close they MUST have seen the two kids, they MUST have wondered at them tumbling garbage out of the trash cans...and if the kids had been cute puppies or fluffy kittens would...or if they hadn’t been so drunk would...or if Kane or Scott had run to them for help would...Or had the whole world simply spun on its head and forgotten to tell two small boys it just didn’t care?

Gritting her teeth against the agonizing pain of each movement, Martha finally managed to struggle to her feet and limped across to where he stood.

“It does matter,” she said gently, strangely moved. “If it hurts you this much, it does matter.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. Not until she placed her hand on his shoulder and then he jumped as if suddenly aware of where he was. A flicker of a smile crossed his face and she smiled tentatively back as her brown eyes met his blue ones. Perhaps it was only the sound of the sea or her mind playing games, perhaps it was only the cry of gulls or a playful breeze, but for a moment it sounded as though she could hear Chantal Kreviazuk’s song being carried on the water...

There’s something in your eyes

Makes me wanna lose myself

Makes me wanna lose myself in your heart...

AUTHOR’S NOTES: Oh, I just couldn’t resist that reference to Prisoner, not once I found out the same actress (Fiona Spence) played both Celia (H&A) and Vera Bennett (Prisoner)

Harper Valley PTA - not sure which singer to credit it with.

Harrod’s (Scotty’s ‘Arrod’s) is a very expensive London store that specializes in luxury goods.

[I love music]

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I don’t know enough about Irene’s marriage and kids to include much about it and it would be way too many characters anyway (as if there aren’t already enough! ) if I introduced them so I’ve kind of skimmed over that bit.

WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN?

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat

Long as I remember the rain been comin’ down

clouds of mystery pourin’ confusion on the ground

good men through the ages tryin’ to find the sun

and I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain?

©John Fogerty/Credence Clearwater Revival

Irene impatiently wiped away the tears with the heel of her hand. For a moment she looked sadly down into the gas fire that reflected its flickering light on her face and drew a deep breath before she spoke.

“My family were wiped out in a car crash. My mother Evelyn. Jeff, my stepdad. My little brother, my two little sisters...and Benji...my brother, Benji...he hanged...he hanged himself when he heard.” She passed her hand across her face before she continued in the same dull voice only the broken-hearted know. “I have twins sisters. Katie and Jill. Their Dad took them to San Francisco when they were kids, for a holiday, he said, but he never brought them back. I had a family and then they were all gone. Mum, Jeff, Benji, Christabel, Ruthie, Terry... all of them gone. There was only me and the twins left out of us all and I didn’t even know where they were. After the crash, my two best friends, Didi and Sadie, tried every which way they knew how to help me trace them but every single trail ran cold. Every single one. There was no one left. No one at all. I began drinking to blot out the pain.”

Teardrops coursed down her cheeks again. Silently. Over the years Irene had perfected the art of crying noiselessly. Silent tears when no one knew soaking her pillow night after night for all that could have been and never was.

No one but Irene to remember how Christabel insisted on her frizzy red hair being tied in two long bunches with her favourite green ribbons and how much she loved those black patent leather sandals with the flower pattern. No one but Irene to recall how Terry loved to build and had tried to make his own bicycle with scraps of bikes that he found or that when Benji got a new song in his head he would often sleepwalk half singing, half muttering the words and wake the whole house. No one but Irene to tell how Ruthie, who hated sums, had wept the night before a class math test and next day raced all the way home and couldn’t catch her breath, making her frantic mother think something terrible had happened, until Ruthie finally managed to pant she’d come first out of the whole class, and of how Evelyn McFarlane had immediately fetched the “emergency house money” envelope and sent out for cakes, crisps and lemonade to celebrate. And did the twins, somewhere in San Francisco, somewhere in the world, ever talk of the funny things they did when they were very small, the time they tried to clean the carpet with toothpaste or the time they had found a dead bug in the garden and put it in a matchbox coffin, burying it in the shallow grave they dug with teaspoons and marked with popsicle sticks? Or had they been far too young to remember or were they far too grown-up now to care?

Irene sighed again. She had told few people of her tragic past. Counsellors, psychologists, doctors, they were told...because they said they needed to know to help her through.

But telling them never brought her family back.

The day she walked away from herself and her life as a student nurse she made a promise she would burden no one. She drifted from place to place, lived in rundown apartments, found employment where no one asked questions, what little was left of her wages inevitably being spent on drink. Frequently she changed her name and her appearance, frequently she was fired for being drunk. From time to time and unrecognisable, she caught a train to the little grey town she had grown up in and walked along the pebbly beach by night, by velvet night, when darkness covered tears, by lonely night when waves muffled sobs, by cold night when all was lost.

Yet somewhere along the road of life she fell in love, or thought she did, she married, took her husband’s surname, settled down, or thought she had. The love of drink was stronger. The marriage crumbled and for several years she drifted as before.

When she stepped off the bus in Summer Bay the sun was just rising, stretching golden fingers towards an azure sky. She saw it as a sign of hope. She had battled against the booze, been clean now for almost twenty months, saved hard for this vacation. Her fellow travellers, dusty and exhausted after the long journey, were making their way up the hotel steps, the remaining passengers, bound for the caravan site, sleeping or soothing tired children. But she set down her luggage and watched the sun welcome the morning, fascinated that the world could ever be so beautiful when it had taken so much away.

“Planning to stay here forever then, love?” The coach driver laughed and she smiled back, picked up the bags and ran up the hotel steps after her companions.

But his words proved prophetic. She never left Summer Bay. Something touched her heart, some whisper, some magic, some angel’s prayer, call it what you will, and kept her in its embrace. Here at last she found a home, a job, friends, a sense she belonged. And she had stayed true to her promise. Save for one person. The day before Hayley’s birthday party she told Gypsy.

Gypsy, who reminded her so much of herself, who sat with her and clasped her hands in her own with tears falling from her beautiful green eyes as she listened, while Evelyn McFarlane’s battered little carriage clock, once so shiny and new, together with an oil painting of wild horses running free, two pretty pink lamps and a pink vase spilling over with fresh flowers, the first things Evelyn ever bought when she moved proudly into the bigger house she’d finally been allocated, realising too late she had no money left for groceries.

And so the McFarlanes had had to eat jam on toast for three days while the flowers bloomed, the lamps shone brightly on the painting and the clock ticked on. Years passed by. Flowers died, the vase got broken, the lamps were sold to a second-hand shop to buy shoes for the youngest, the oil painting was demanded by a neighbour, under threat of calling the police, to recompense for the McFarlane kids breaking a window and trampling all over her garden. But still the little clock ticked away every moment, days and nights and games and squabbles, voices and tears and laughter and the hum of the second-hand sewing-machine Evelyn painstakingly tried to teach herself to use, and the clack of knitting needles that produced clumsily-made woollen garments for her brood.

Gypsy, sworn to secrecy. They understood each other. Both eschewed self-pity and battled against the world as best they knew how. Gypsy, as hell bent on self-destruction as Irene had once been. Hoping reaching out and telling Gypsy would pull her back before it was too late from the edge of the abyss Gypsy seemed determined to hurl herself down.

She gulped back the tears and looked up into her companion’s weatherbeaten face. “I’m sorry, Barry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to fall apart like this.”

He said nothing. There was no need for words. So much was said in the tender stroking of her tears, in the warmth of his strong arms. And in the comfort of his body, close to his heartbeat, her tears fell afresh like a cleansing spring rain.

“I’d been so happy that day. I didn’t know...” Her voice buried itself in a sob.

“It’s alright now, Irene. It’s alright,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head, letting her tears soak through to his chest, his heart breaking for her. “Don’t bottle it all up inside anymore. Tell me. I’ll listen.”

*****

People were often surprised when they heard Didi Watts was training to be a nurse. Although she had an IQ of 125, with her silky long blonde hair, slim, perfect figure, full lips, blue eyes and flawless skin, many for some reason imagined beauty and intelligence couldn’t mix and she was often perceived to be stupid. Once, on one of her days off as she passed by a cheap club, a straggly-haired, pot-bellied gorilla of a man had pressed a flyer advertising for lap dancers into her hand and told her “Don’t think ya gotta be bright to make yer fortune in the smoke, darlin’. We get some top notch customers here who tip well.”

Sadie Hepplethwaite, a blunt, down-to-earth, talkative girl addicted to diet coke and chocolate, as round and curvy as Didi was petite, was always in trouble for spending far too long stopping by to chat to patients and not enough time making beds and emptying bed pans. Together with pretty, just-turned-twenty-one-year old Irene McFarlane, the eldest of the trio, that early Saturday morning they were weaving their way through the bus station rattling “Kidney Machine Appeal” collecting buckets at the sea of human traffic passing by.

All three had begun their student nurse training on the same day at a tough inner city hospital and all three had bonded the moment a retired doctor, the plump and pompous Dr Stanley Bancroft, an expert in the field of heart surgery and infamous for his controversial and oft-quoted view “men made the best doctors, women the best carers” was in the middle of giving a patronizing talk to his mainly female audience when his trousers fell down round his ankles, revealing peculiarly old-fashioned undergarments. The initial river of giggles turned into an almost deathly hush as the great Dr Bancroft pulled up his pants and made an indirect threat of how he feared certain people would not last the course. He glared in particular at the three students who dared break the silence. Didi, with her hyena giggles, Sadie, with her raucous laugh, and Irene, with her own hearty, infectious laughter, had marked themselves out from then on and made an enemy of Sister Moira “The Dragon of Darkness” Brown, who was a great-great-niece of Dr Bancroft’s and overawed by her distinguished relative.

After a while, finding student nurse accommodation too restrictive, the three had opted to share a large, dilapidated terraced house with two other nurses and although they struggled on five student grants (when Evelyn baked and posted a 21st cake for her daughter the rich fruit cake was served up for supper with a disgustingly weak powdered custard mixed with milk and water, there being little else left in the larder) they thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of nobody checking what time they got in and (more importantly) who they brought back.

It was a happy, busy, crazy time: boyfriends, dancing, drinking, cramming for exams, arguing over who’s turn it was to clean the bathroom, catching a movie, downing one too many bottles of wine with heart-to-heart chats late into the night. Occasionally they managed to boost their income and have a cheap night out too down at the grimy, smoky pub on the corner of their long, winding street where the greasy, sleazy landlord, having accidentally discovered Irene had a talent for country and western when he overheard her singing, paid her in cash or in free drinks for herself and her friends all night if she sang a few songs. But even this and their combined efforts of trying, mostly in vain, to fit part-time jobs around anti-social hours, study and sleep, wasn’t enough and when the rent went up yet again lack of money drove them reluctantly back to the Nurses’ Home. With exams becoming more intense and their increasing experience meaning more responsibility at the hospital, volunteering to collect for charity was a chance for a break. But they had barely begun when the first trickle of rain fell, dripping down off the edges of the bus station roof and perversely through any other little gaps it could find.

Irene looked worriedly up at the overcast sky, praying it wouldn’t last and annoyed the TV weather forecast could have got it so spectacularly wrong. The TV had said it would be a bright, beautiful summer’s day, she’d watched specially because she knew Mum and her stepdad Jeff were taking her younger brother and sisters on their first ever holiday today. Last time she’d managed to get home on a long weekend the kids had talked of nothing else.

The change in the weather seemed to have made people gloomy. They were too busy hurrying to and fro to take much notice of the three young nurses and only a few coins lay in the bucket. At his rate, they would be going back with hardly anything, Irene thought despondently. A sudden dig in the ribs woke her from her reverie.

Sadie was standing beside her grinning. The three of them had half planned this. Any excuse to liven things up. “Reckon they need a song or two, kiddo?”

“Because we reckon they do!” With a mischievous glint in her blue eyes, Didi was already tumbling her long blonde hair down out of its nurse’s cap and shaking it loose over her shoulders.

“You got it, guys!” Irene grinned back.

She immediately knew what they were hinting at. A nostalgic trip down to their former local a couple of weeks back had resulted in a drunken, rowdy, dancing-on-the-tables session that had had The Travellers Rest bursting at the seams. With nothing but her strong voice to carry the tune, Irene set the bucket down before her and, with Sadie and Didi hitching up their uniforms and twirling their nursing capes round in a random dance, sang the same song that had been the start of the night that saw police visits, a gang fight and hastily appointed bouncers being posted on the doors:

“Come and look out through the window

that big ol’ moon is shining down

tell me now, don’t it remind you

of the blanket on the ground”

It worked even better than they hoped. By the time they reached their fourth or fifth song with no sign of flagging, an enthusiastic crowd had forgotten all about timetables and appointments to clap, dance and sing along while an enterprising derro with a small, scruffy dog sat in a corner where he happily strummed on a home-made cardboard guitar that played no tune, the dog wagging its tail whenever the occasional coin landed (or almost landed) in the proffered cap beside them.

The promised golden sun had chased away the small black clouds and the collection buckets were filling rapidly with dollar bills and high value coins when a dark blue van, gleaming in its afternoon light, pulled up and, flanked by two grim-faced police officers, a man and a woman, The Dragon of Darkness herself appeared “as though in a puff of smoke”, Didi, who was responsible for the nickname and who maintained Sister Brown had made a pact with the Devil who gave her the ability to materialize out of thin air, muttered under her breath.

“Nurse McFarlane...Irene...” Sister Brown seemed uncharacteristically subdued as she took Irene’s elbow. “Could you come with us please?”

Sadie swore and Did grabbed Irene’s arm as though to prevent her being led away. The audience jeered. The small, scruffy dog rose and shook himself, panting heavily as though preparing for a showdown.

“Leave them alone, you b*****ds!” A man yelled, similar cries of protest immediately being taken up by the angry crowd.

Irene herself however was stunned into silence. Sister Moira Brown was a large woman with a thick Scottish accent and nothing fazed her. Last week a gunshot victim with an almost perfectly formed round bullet hole in his head had been brought into the hospital and the Dragon of Darkness hardly batted an eyelid when the patient’s brother, brandishing a steak knife, burst into the treatment area and threatened to slash her throat if the patient didn’t pull through, simply telling the terrified young male orderly to snap out of it and fetch security.

Drunken patients, drug addicts, old ladies with paper thin skin, mothers-to-be, millionaires and paupers, Sister Brown dealt with everyone in the same brisk and efficient but startlingly abrupt manner. Yet she seemed a shadow of her former self. And strangely, the suited bus station official, who’d earlier only asked the girls to make sure they stayed where they were and thus avoided interfering with the flow of traffic, now looked extremely concerned.

“Nurse Hepplethwaite, Nurse Watts...we’ll need you with us.” Sister Brown’s tone was almost pleading and Didi and Sadie exchanged baffled glances.

Irene’s mind raced in confusion. She knew Sister Brown was married with a grown-up son. She had met Gavin once. He was a tall, good-looking man who had “fortunately inherited all his Dad’s genes and none of his Mum’s” as she later told Sadie and Didi. Her heart fluttered and her face flushed when he spoke in that half Australian, half Scottish lilt, gazing at her with those grey eyes and smiling that crinkly smile. Nothing came of it, Gavin was engaged to be married and at least ten years older, but she clearly remembered the filthy look The Dragon of Darkness shot her way, and at that moment all she could think was perhaps something had happened to Gavin and for some reason Sister Brown particularly wanted to confide in Irene.

The surrealism continued. The suited official led them behind the ticket office area, down a white corridor, stopping only once, and briefly, to consult in whispers with a girl who was perhaps a PA, and who looked far older than the years her young face belied with her hair tied back too severely and her business-like jacket and skirt, and who whispered in return, nodded gravely and gave Irene a look she couldn’t fathom before hurrying away. The official opened the door to a comfortable room furnished with cushioned easy chairs and coffee tables, one bearing a teapot, jug of milk and bowl of crystal sugar lumps all set out on a tray next to delicate china cups resting on delicate china saucers, as if they were all expected to sit down to tea.

The window, flung wide open to let in the sun-kissed air, showed a small mosaic-tiled courtyard , where colourful flowering plants, loved and nurtured, trailed merrily over the edges of fat, round tubs and the hot sun sparkled on the tiles as though a tiny piece of Italy had flown away from its homeland and landed in the congested city to bring harmony to the background noise of thundering traffic. Amid the oasis of calm, a bird was singing. She remembered this much.

But she didn’t remember how they broke the news of her family’s deaths.

She couldn’t take in the words because somebody was screaming. Oh, God, those screams! Those terrible, terrible screams that flowed icily through her body and gripped her heart. Somebody was yelling it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true. They said it over and over and over. They said it when she was falling, falling, falling into a blackness. They said it when, refusing to be seated, her knees buckled and her friends at either side caught her. And still someone was screaming those blood-curdling screams.

*****

She was shaking uncontrollably now. Every pent-up emotion unleashed

At last she fell against his chest, exhausted. “Why, Barry, why? Why did it have to happen? Why, when they had so much to live for?”

Outside the storm seemed to rage more wildly than before, rain lashing against the window faster, faster, ever faster. Oh, but inside this room, inside this room the battered old carriage clock ticked steadily on, inside this quiet room her tears were all cried out as he held her tightly to his chest and inside the shelter of his arms.

Blanket on the Ground © Billie Jo Spears

[I love music]

THE STORY SO FAR: Fabulously wealthy and spoilt Hayley Smith is hosting a party for fellow Summer Bay High students at the Smith family mansion. Two of the partygoers are Kim Hyde, the principal’s son, and the enigmatic Megan Ashcroft. They meet in the vast grounds at the long-abandoned restaurant near haunted Whitelady Copse.

BAD MOON RISING

written by I love music

ideas and suggestions by Skykat

I see a bad moon arising

I see trouble on the way...

©John Fogerty/Credence Clearwater Revival

(Yes, another quote from another CCR song! I’ve loved them ever since someone at work did me a compilation of their music. )

“Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, brief as the lightning in the collied night!”

Kim Hyde, only son of widower and principal of Summer Bay High, Barry Hyde, had been lost in thoughts of how he could win back Hayley Smith and he jumped sky high as a disembodied voice seemingly auditioning for a part on some ghostly stage floated from the direction of haunted Whitelady Copse. He breathed again however as Megan Ashcroft emerged shortly after it, hair bedraggled, clothes soaking.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you - again,” she said apologetically.

It was the second time that night she had made him jump. He’d been beating himself up then over Hayley catching him in bed with Gypsy Nash and Megan had warned him he was wasting his time worrying about her. Her advice had obviously fallen on deaf ears. For reasons best known to himself, Kim was clearly still carrying a torch for Hayley Smith even though neither Gypsy nor Hayley were in the slightest bit interested in him and were simply using him to get back at each other.

Megan had begun working her way gingerly through the mud around the side of the long abandoned restaurant towards him and she wasn’t too surprised when Kim, ever the gentleman, immediately left the almost cosy shelter of the restaurant’s doorway to plough his way through the deep mud and heavy rain to help her.

“Thanks.” She smiled warmly as they reached the top.

Apart from her Tony, the guy she had been in love with from the moment they’d met, Kim was the most sensitive soul she knew. He was at one with nature, incapable of hurting anyone or anything. But Kim didn’t see his own inner beauty. He was convinced that to be loved he had to be clever and he constantly laboured - inevitably with disappointing results - over his schoolwork desperate to please his father.

Kim never once saw the beautiful person he was inside or ever thought that he mattered. Despite his muscular frame, floppy blonde hair and gentle blue eyes, he never considered himself remotely good looking either and when he overheard that the girls at Summer Bay High had nicknamed him The Greek God he was convinced they were laughing at him and his head went down further and he thrust his hands deeper into his pockets as he blushed and shuffled away in embarrassment.

“The words just seemed to fit,” Megan explained matter-of-factly. “Beautiful, aren’t they? And it’s such a beautiful night.” She stomped the mud off her shoes on the wide stone step and removed her wide-brimmed hat to shake off the raindrops as though she’d been caught in nothing more than a light shower.

“Are you serious?”

Kim had to shout to make himself heard above the roar of thunder that chose to hit at that precise moment and he looked up in disbelief at the torrential rain and the lightning flash that furiously followed to tear the sky apart.

“Look beyond what you see, Kim. Nothing is as it seems.”

Baffled, he brought his gaze back down to Megan’s. She smiled fleetingly, gazing steadily into his eyes as she replaced the hat. She had an elfin-shaped, homely face and a shock of long, frizzy red hair that now seemed almost witch-like drenched as it was by the rain and yet she was very pretty in a startling kind of way. It was her eyes that held all the beauty. Framed by long, silky lashes, they were different colours, one brown, one green, but sometimes they seemed a colour all of their own and deep and mysterious as any ocean.

“Nothing is as it seems,” Megan repeated, shaking her head sadly as if she and the night, and only the night, shared some terrible secret neither must ever tell.

Megan was strange...no, not strange...he searched his mind for a word to suit and a horror movie he’d once watched rushed helpfully back to memory to supply an answer - otherworldly. Otherworldly! That was it! Megan often spoke in riddles like the reincarnated girl in the movie and her terrified teacher had said she was otherworldly. Or...hang on...had the terrified teacher said she was other wordly...?

“Isn’t it?” He asked uncertainly.

Kim Hyde never knew how to respond to topics that seemed to require great intellectual debate and he faltered clumsily over even the two small words like a young child stumbling over his two times table. He knew he wasn’t bright. His father had told him so often enough. His father had told him many things.

Like never show your feelings.

Well, okay, he could maybe understand that. He was heaps more emotional than most guys his age and had been even more emotional when he was a kid. When he was nine or ten, his favourite TV show, the one about the injured animals that were rescued and taken to the animal hospital always made him cry, with sympathy when creatures were hurt, with happiness if the vets saved them. Girly stuff, his mates would have said - if they’d known, that is. Kim was careful to keep his “weakness” secret because even in an enlightened age it wasn’t considered cool for guys to cry. Fact was though, kids cried. His mates cried although, like Kim, they pretended they didn’t. Jacko cried in anger and frustration when he broke his ankle and lost his place in the footie team and Mikey cried for days afterwards when his dog was knocked down by a car then furiously denied that he had cried at all when reminded of it some months later. Kim was pretty damn sure though that none of his mates had to sneak the TV on while listening guiltily out for their father’s footsteps, tightly clutching the remote in case they had to quickly switch to another channel, feeling like they’d let everybody down if even a single tear coursed down their face.

Ever since he could remember he and his Dad had moved from state to state and from town to town, never settling anywhere. But they’d stayed in Summer Bay longer than anywhere else. Maybe Barry Hyde had finally found the elusive happiness he was searching for in Summer Bay with Irene Roberts. Kim hoped so. Because he’d already made up his mind if his father moved on again it would be without him. He was almost eighteen now. Old enough to make his way in the world on his own. There was no point in them pretending any more.

All his life Kim had felt as though there were some invisible barrier between himself and his father. He was obviously still heartbroken over his wife Kerry’s sudden death, for she had died a few weeks after Kim was born and he rarely spoke of her. It couldn’t have helped matters either that his son was stupid. His parents had probably dreamed of him becoming a lawyer or an architect or perhaps even prime minister but Kim would be lucky to scrape through his exams at even the lowest grades.

His older brother Jonathan might have done them proud if only he’d lived, Kim often speculated, gazing into those blue eyes so like his own. Jonathan was one of the two little kids in the two circular photo frames (Kim being the other) that sat at either side of the mantelshelf under the star-shaped wall clock (an “exceptional award for excellence” given to Barry Hyde by his very impressed TAFE college). The photograph was taken when he was only five days old and Kim thought even then Jonathan looked far more alert than the picture of himself taken at the same age. Kim, dim-witted Kim, who was good at swimming and nothing else at all. Small wonder he was such a huge disappointment to his clever and successful father.

Yet Barry Hyde was never cruel to his son and growing up Kim wanted for nothing. There were presents and treats, new toys and new clothes, holidays and day trips, a generous pocket money allowance and a savings account that was regularly topped up. But Kim yearned for the bond he saw other kids shared with their Dads. No matter how well he played at footie, for instance, never once did Barry Hyde roar his encouragement or thump him proudly on the back after the game like Jacko’s Dad did with Jacko.

But he felt the difference most down on the beach. Other kids’ olds always seemed to be digging in the sand with their kids or took their costumes and swam in the sea with them. Kim’s father took a stopwatch and berated him if he didn’t swim fast enough to beat his last record. Swimming was the only thing he did well. He could move through the water with the speed of a fish. What Barry Hyde didn’t know was, he swam well because with every stroke he pounded the water with all the anger and hurt of not being good enough to be loved.

Kim bit his lip to halt the easy tears and swallowed a lump in his throat. It was all in the past now and none of this was Megan’s fault. He faked a smile.

“You look cute when you smile and frown at the same time,” she said.

Any other chick and he might have thought she was coming on to him. Not Megan though. Megan spoke her mind to anyone and everyone and anyway Megan and Tony Lombardi, the half-Italian student with the incredible talent for music, currently away at a summer school music academy, were madly in love and always had been. And although she spoke gently and he knew she wasn’t mocking his natural shyness made him flush.

“Yeh, well, just trying to figure out what the hell you’re waffling on about,” he blustered, trying hard to sound macho but feeling like sounding macho was all wrong and only about insulting other people. “What’s with all the swift as shadows stuff? You writing a poem?”

She laughed. “I wish! Shakespeare. You remember, we studied it last term? A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she added when still he looked blank.

“Right.” Kim nodded, trying to look wise while his anxious eyes said it all made as much sense to him as rocket science explained in Mandarin Chinese.

Megan grinned self-deprecatingly, determined not to make him feel any worse than he obviously already did. “I still dunno what it all means though. I think...don’t quote me...it’s something to do with how fast life and love flies by. I guess what I’m trying to say - in a show-offy kind of way - is you know how I get feelings about stuff?”

He nodded. Megan was known in Summer Bay High for her predictions. Last term she’d told a classmate, Dionne, that she’d have a new baby brother before the year ended and Dionne laughed till she cried and said nooo waaay (she was sixteen, the youngest of four and her Mum and Dad definitely didn’t plan on having any more kids) but nine months later on New Year’s Eve, exactly three minutes before midnight, little George had been born. Another time she predicted NOBODY in Summer Bay High would turn up for school for the first two days of the winter term and, sure enough, a week before its reopening, a major leak was discovered in the roof and the first two days of term were cancelled while emergency maintenance was carried out. Students were always trying to get her to tell their fortunes, but Megan said it didn’t work that way, she only wished it did. She had to wait for messages to come through to her not the other way round.

Megan gave a small sigh, uncharacteristically perplexed at where to begin. She had always liked Kim though not in a romantic way. Nobody could not like Kim, he was a nice guy, quiet and unassuming. But ever since his father had been come to Summer Bay High she had wondered at the tightly closed secret Barry Hyde kept. The first time she saw the newly appointed principal she had had an overwhelming sensation that she was all alone staring into a black-clouded sky but tonight it was as if the gathered thunderclouds had been broken open. A round full moon momentarily tinged the scene before slipping back into the shadows of the night but for the brief while the moon shone a hazy image had come into her mind like some ethereal dream she couldn’t quite capture by morning. It was why she’d gone to Whitelady Copse. Somehow she could think more clearly when alone among the old trees that for eighty years or more had watched from their lonely hill as tides ebbed and flowed, as people lived and loved and a timeless sun slept and woke anew.

“Kim, your Dad never meant to hurt you,” she said quietly. “He only ever wanted to protect you. He needs you so much.”

He looked at her eagerly, his voice hoarse with emotion. “My Dad! Meg, what else can you see? Why does he...why is he how he is?”

But Megan could only shrug helplessly.

“I’m sorry, Kim. It’s all I can tell you.”

“Please, Meg, there must be more. Please try! Why does he hate me?”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t hate you, Kim,” she whispered. “You mustn’t ever think that. He loves you deeply. And right now he needs you more than he ever needed you before.”

“There’s nothing more?”

“There’s nothing more I can tell you.”

It was a white lie because she couldn’t tell him the truth. That must come from Barry Hyde himself. And now that she knew the truth, what must she do with it? And did it mean something more? Kim was somehow inextricably tied with the death she knew would come tonight but she didn’t know how or when and she couldn’t alter fate. Her Gran had told her in her quaint old-fashioned way when she told Megan she had inherited the gift of second sight that soothsayers were the messengers of time and nothing more.

He ran his fingers through his hair, raindrops and tears glistening on his face. “Well, I was headed home anyway,” he said at last. “This lousy party’s over for me. I’ve had it with being a loser.”

She touched his arm reassuringly. Somehow she knew he would not make it home. For some reason he would stop by the Diner where he would meet his father and be told something that would change his life forever. “You’re not a loser, Kim. You never have been. And your Dad loves you. Whatever happens, always, always remember that. He loves you.”

In the distance music boomed out from the party house. In their world, all time had stopped. They were both crying now and neither could have told the other why. Something must happen this stormy night. They both sensed it. On an impulse, Megan suddenly hugged him and with a shy smile and after a slight hesitation he returned the hug. He spoke no more but turned and walked away.

She watched until he was swallowed by the night and then she sank sadly down into the corner of the abandoned restaurant doorway, closed her eyes and listened to the rain pouring relentlessly down through the branches of the gnarled old trees that creaked in weary protest at the ravages of time. And gradually, as it had done before, the music of the rain faded away to be replaced by the lonely mourning of the wind and the cold scraping of metal against the quiet earth and she saw again the silhouette of a man. And came as always the brief flash of moonlight silver on the spade and pale on the troubled face of Barry Hyde. Then fell once more the deathly silence and shroud of blackness.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry, that was meant to be a Cassie/Hayley chapter as well but the Megan/Kim scene was too long so it's Cassie/Hayley next chapter.