Chapter 30
CHAPTER
The hands on his watch were moving far too slowly for Justin.
The day was never going to end. The minute hand staggered forward another space.
A quarter to five. He’d already changed out of his uniform and was ready to go as soon as the next shift arrived.
It would take him more than an hour and a half to get to Anna’s and he’d told her he would pick her up at seven.
‘Justin.’ A head appeared around the corner. ‘Have you seen the latest from the Castle Rock fire?’
His heart sank. The fire had started a couple of days ago, probably sparked by a lightning strike during the storm.
It was centred south-west of Wagtail Ridge, closer to Muswellbrook, and fire teams from that area had been working on it.
But it was close enough that his team was on standby, just in case it got away.
‘No. What’s happening?’
‘The wind has lifted and shifted. It’s on the move.’
‘Damn!’ Justin put down his coffee and followed his colleague into the incident tracking room.
A big map covered one wall, pins showing where fires were burning.
At this time of year, there were always some.
Most of the pins were yellow, which meant the fires were under control.
There was a small, closely grouped selection of yellow pins that was the Castle Rock fire.
That fire wasn’t one blaze, but smaller outbreaks that hopefully would never merge into one.
Ted Carter, the commander, was finishing a phone call. ‘It’s burning on three fronts. And it’s going to get worse overnight.’
‘Do they need us?’ Justin tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. But if he was needed, he had to go.
‘They haven’t asked yet. But we need to be on standby.’
Justin sighed.
‘Not you,’ the commander said. ‘You’re off shift in five minutes. Go home. Get some sleep. You may need it.’
Ben entered the room, shaking his head. ‘He won’t be going home. He’s off to Wagtail Ridge. He’s got a date.’
Justin frowned. Ben and his big mouth. ‘I can cancel.’
Ted thought for a few seconds. ‘That’s a good idea.’
‘What is?’
‘You going to Wagtail Ridge. Take a support vehicle and the keys to the station. Spend the night there. If this thing gets away, you’ll be closer than we are. We might have to call in those volunteers the two of you trained.’
Justin bit back a curse. That wasn’t how he’d imagined this evening.
‘Do you want me to go too?’ Ben asked.
‘No. You stay here. We’ll need to send a team from here as well, and I could use you.’
That was a small relief, thought Justin as he collected the Wagtail Ridge Station keys from the office drawer.
‘I want you to take the single cab four by four. Then we know we have that on standby down there,’ Carter said. ‘You got your go-bag? You may as well leave now.’
Justin nodded. A small rucksack with a toothbrush, clean underwear and a few other essentials was, as always, in his locker. He had everything he needed for an emergency call-out. ‘I’m on the way.’
Ten minutes later, Justin texted Anna to say he was running late, then got behind the wheel of the RFS truck with its water tanks and its bright yellow stripes.
He shook his head with resignation. This wasn’t how he’d planned to collect Anna.
Nor did he think it was how she’d pictured their night out together.
But he couldn’t say no. Being an emergency responder was part of who he was.
He wouldn’t, couldn’t, be anything different.
As he passed out of the town limits onto the highway, he increased speed, but not as much as he would have in his own car.
It wasn’t the done thing to break the limit in an emergency vehicle, unless it was a real emergency.
He didn’t think the RFS or the police would consider being late for a date an emergency.
He hoped Anna wouldn’t either.
***
Anna was loath to admit it, even to herself, but she wasn’t altogether disappointed that Justin was going to be late.
In preparing for the dance, she had made a horrible mistake.
She looked at her face in the mirror. She looked terrible.
Like some strange creature from a horror movie.
The bride of Frankenstein or that horrible doll, whatever it was called.
Laid out around her bathroom basin was an array of makeup, all newly arrived and removed from its packaging.
She’d decided it was time she made an effort to look good.
But looking in the mirror made her mistake all too clear.
In trying to hide her scar, she had only made it stand out more.
A few days ago, before her online spending spree, she had considered going into Scone, or even Tamworth, where she wouldn’t be recognised, and visiting a beauty salon.
She could get makeup advice. Maybe learn how to hide the scar.
She could also get her hair and nails done so she’d look nice for the dance.
She’d googled and found a couple of places, but at the last minute, her courage had failed her.
She couldn’t bear the thought of the looks she would get if she took her imperfect face into a place dedicated to beauty and perfection. She simply couldn’t do it.
Anyway, this was just the Wagtail Ridge dance.
The people of the town had never seen her with makeup.
Or a posh frock. These people knew her and didn’t flinch or look away when they saw her face.
But this was a dance. A date. A date with Justin, and that made it different, so she’d ordered a pile of makeup online.
It was promptly delivered two days later.
She’d been so busy, this was the first time she’d opened it.
It did not help the way she looked. Maybe if she practised some more she might get it right, but Justin would be here in—she glanced at her watch—a little over an hour.
That was not enough time to learn how to hide her scars, no matter how many YouTube videos she watched.
She reached for a facecloth and some soap and scrubbed her face.
Choosing what to wear had suddenly become a lot easier.
With her face clean and covered with nothing more than a light moisturiser, she walked through to the bedroom.
Yesterday, she’d pulled several dresses from the back of her wardrobe.
They were dresses she’d owned for years, since before that day, and she hadn’t worn any of them since.
They would all still fit. She was still as slim as she’d always been.
Maybe even a tad thinner due to hard work and taking better care of her patients than herself.
If she wasn’t wearing makeup, if she didn’t have a new hairstyle, then she wouldn’t need to wear one of the dresses. The town was used to seeing her in work overalls. Or jeans and boots. It wouldn’t take much to make it look like she had made an effort.
She slid into the jeans, pulled a pretty top over her head. She opened the wardrobe door to look at herself in the full-length mirror. She looked only at her body, not her face.
‘No. I hate this.’
The jeans were removed in less than a minute, and Anna sat on her bed and buried her face in her hands.
This was ridiculous. Last time she’d tried to look good to go out with Justin, it had turned into a disaster.
She could still see the looks on the faces of some of the people at that restaurant.
She would not let that happen again. She wasn’t about to cancel the date, so she had to make it work. Make herself look—and feel—good.
She slipped on a dress. Nothing fancy or over the top.
On a hot night like this, something light and airy felt so much better than jeans, but it did have short sleeves.
Just enough to cover the scar on her shoulder.
She went back to the bathroom and added a little mascara and a touch of soft lip gloss.
Her hair was newly washed and shiny. This time, when she opened the wardrobe door, she did look at her face in the mirror, as well as the rest of her.
The scar would always be there, but the rest of her looked good.
More importantly, she felt good about the way she looked.
Her mind darted to the papers from the plastic surgeon, lying in a drawer in her living room.
Maybe with a little bit of help, she would feel even better.
She heard a vehicle pull into her driveway. The engine noise was wrong for a car—this was something bigger. Hoping her evening wasn’t about to be interrupted by an emergency, she walked to the door and opened it.
‘Wow. You look really nice,’ Justin said as he approached.
So did he. She was so used to seeing him in a fire uniform that this version in well-cut jeans and a linen shirt was as surprising as it was good to look at. But that wasn’t what occupied her thoughts.
‘You brought a fire truck?’
‘Ah. About that …’ He hesitated and glanced at his watch. ‘It’s the reason I’m late. Can I explain it to you as we drive into town?’
‘Okay.’
Anna was glad she’d settled for low-heeled shoes and a dress with a soft, flowing skirt. A pencil skirt and high heels would have made getting into the truck a lot more difficult. Not that she was a pencil skirt and high heels kind of girl.
They had been on the road for a few minutes before Justin explained about being on call for the Castle Rock fire.
‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘But I can’t say no. It’s important to me to be there when I’m needed. I hope you can understand.’
‘Of course I understand.’
Justin cast her a surprised sideways look.
‘I’m exactly the same,’ Anna said. ‘If I’m needed, if there’s an animal hurting, I just do what I have to do. When I heard your truck, I thought it might be an injured animal being delivered. If it had been, we wouldn’t be on our way to the dance now. At least I wouldn’t.’
‘Nor would I. I’d be trying to help, if I could.’
‘You know, in some ways, you are a lot like your mother.’
Justin visibly started. ‘Really? In what ways?’
‘I know you and she have your issues, but she’s got the same sense of right and wrong. She would never walk away and leave an injured animal. She would always try to save it.’
‘But she risks her own life as she does it. And—’
‘And nothing. So do you. You risk your life when you’re fighting a fire. And look what happened to my face. We are all the same. We believe in something bigger than ourselves.’
Silence fell, except for the sound of the engine. When Justin spoke again, his voice was heavy with memories.
‘She used to take us. Ben and me. When we were kids too young to leave alone. She would bundle us into the car at all hours when she went to collect some rescued joey. She’d tell us to stay in the car while she did what she had to do.
Sometimes we’d fall asleep, but there were times when we watched her through the windows.
We saw the care and love she gave to those animals, which sometimes felt like more love than she gave us.
Sometimes, when the animal was beyond help, we’d see her humanely kill it. ’
‘That must have been tough for the two of you.’
Justin nodded. ‘It was even worse sometimes when she loaded an injured animal into the car and we drove to the nearest vet with the poor creature bleeding or crying in pain.’
Anna’s heart went out to the boy Justin had been. ‘That’s a lot for someone so young.’
‘It was. We never should have been there. When we were older, we wouldn’t go.
We demanded that she leave us behind, which she did.
Maybe we were a bit too young to be left alone without a babysitter, but I think we were better off.
We had each other. We were twins, so we were pretty self-sufficient in many ways.
After a while, we needed each other more than we needed her. ’
‘I’m sure she regrets that as much as you do.’
‘She does. She told us so the night we left. The two of us. We left home when we were seventeen and never went back.’
‘Surely now you can forgive her.’
‘I can. I think I have. But Ben hasn’t. It wasn’t just that for him. There was something else. And I can’t tell you, because that’s Ben’s life, not mine.’
‘I understand. Will Ben be here tonight?’
‘No. He’s on standby back in Tamworth.’
‘I think Carol may come.’ She didn’t say any more. It was Justin’s decision if there was to be a rapprochement with his mother.
In town, cars were lined up on both sides of the road near the hall.
Justin drove a little further to the fire station, where the driveway outside the big roller door was empty.
So too were the spaces in front of the building.
From force of habit, he backed the unit onto a space and turned the engine off.
Facing the road like that, it could be on its way to a call-out in seconds.
They sat in silence for a while.
‘You know, before we came here, I can’t remember when Ben and I last talked about our mother. Or when I last told anyone what it was like growing up with her.’
Anna turned to look at him. His face was close to hers, his eyes gazing at her with an intensity that almost sent a shiver down her spine. Slowly, he leaned forward and kissed her.
It was a simple kiss, almost tentative. And he pulled away to look at her. ‘I’ve been wanting to do that since the moment I saw you.’
Anna lowered her head, letting the hair fall over her face. ‘Because I look nice tonight?’
‘Not tonight. Since the moment I first saw you. The day after the fire. You are …’
She never found out what she was. He stopped speaking as he gently pushed the fallen hair back so he could see her face. She raised her lips to his and he kissed her again. She kissed him back, and this time it took much longer.