Christmas Where They Belong

She could do this. She felt herself relax, just a little, and she even managed to smile back.

‘Julie McDowell. Legal financier from Sydney. I, too, have an interest in this house.’

‘McDowell?’ He was caught. ‘You still use...’

‘It was too much trouble to change it back,’ she said and he knew she was having trouble keeping her voice light.

‘You’re staying despite the fire warnings?’

‘The wind’s not due to get up until tomorrow morning. I’ll be gone at dawn.’

‘You’ve just arrived?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t want to take what you want and go?’

‘I don’t know what I want.’ She hesitated. ‘I think...there’s a wall-hanging... But it seems wrong to just...leave.’

‘I had two fire engines in mind,’ he admitted. ‘But I feel the same.’

‘So you’ll stay until ordered out?’

‘If it doesn’t get any worse, maybe I can clear any debris, check the pumps and sprinkler system, fill the spouts, keep any stray spark from catching. At first light I’ll go right round the house and eliminate every fire risk I can. I can’t do it now. It’s too dark. For the sake of a few hours, I’ll stay. I don’t want this place to burn.’

Why? she wanted to say. What does this house mean to you?

What did it mean to her? A time capsule? Maybe it was. This house was what it was like when...

But when was unthinkable. And if Rob was here, then surely she could go.

But she couldn’t. The threat was still here, even if she wasn’t quite sure what was being threatened.

‘If you need to stay,’ she ventured, ‘there’s a guest room.’

‘Excellent.’ They were like two wary dogs, circling each other, she thought. But they’d started this sort of game. She could do this.

‘Would you like supper?’

‘I don’t want to keep you up.’

‘I wasn’t sleeping. The pantry’s stocked and the freezer’s full. Things may well be slightly out of date...’

‘Slightly!’

‘But I’m not dictated to by use-by dates,’ she continued. ‘I have fresh milk and bread. For anything else, I’m game if you are.’

His brown eyes creased a little, amused. ‘A risk-taker, Jules?’

‘No!’

‘Sorry.’ Jules was a nickname and that was against the rules. He realised it and backtracked. ‘I meant: have you tried any of the food?’

‘I haven’t tried,’ she conceded.

‘You came and went straight to bed?’

‘I...yes.’

‘Then maybe we both need supper.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s almost too late for a midnight feast but I could eat two horses. Maybe we could get to know each other over a meal? If you dare, that is?’

And she gazed at him for a long moment and came to a decision.

‘I dare,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

* * *

He put the cars in the garage and then they checked the fire situation. ‘We’d be fools not to,’ Rob said as they headed out to the back veranda to see what they could see.

They could see nothing. The whole valley seemed to be shrouded in smoke. It blocked the moon and the stars. It seemed ominous but there was no glow from any fire. ‘And the smoke would be thicker if it was closer,’ Rob decreed. ‘We’re safe enough for now.’

‘There are branches overhanging the house.’

‘I saw them as I came in but there’s no way I’m using a chainsaw in the dark.’

‘There’s no way you’re using a chainsaw,’ she snapped and he grinned.

‘Don’t you trust me?’

‘Do I trust any man with a chainsaw? No.’

He grinned, that same smile... Dear heaven, that smile...

Play the game. For tonight, she did not know this man.

‘We have neighbours,’ Rob said, motioning to a light in the house next door.

‘I saw a child in the window earlier, just as it was getting dark.’

‘A child... They should have evacuated.’

‘Maybe they still think there’s time. There should still be time.’

‘Let me check again.’ He flicked to the fire app on his phone. ‘Same warnings. Evacuate by nine if you haven’t already done so. Unless you’re planning on staying to defend.’

‘Would you?’ she asked diffidently. ‘Stay and defend?’

‘I’d have to be trustworthy with a chainsaw to do that.’

‘And are you?’ The Rob she knew couldn’t be trusted within twenty paces of a power tool.

‘No,’ he admitted and she was forced to smile back. Same Rob, then. Same, but different? The Rob of after.

This was weird. She should be dressed, she decided, as she padded barefoot back to the kitchen behind him. If he really was a stranger...

He really is a stranger, she told herself. Power tool knowledge or not, four years was a lifetime.

‘Right.’ In the kitchen, he was all efficiency. ‘Food.’ He pushed his sleeves high over his elbows and looked as if he meant business. ‘I’d kill for a steak. What do you suppose the freezer holds?’

‘Who knows what’s buried in there?’

‘Want to help me find out?’

‘Men do the hunting.’

‘And women do the cooking?’ He had the chest freezer open and was delving among the labelled packages. ‘Julie, Julie, Julie. How out of the ark is that?’

‘I can microwave a mean TV dinner.’

‘Ugh.’

But Rob did cook. She remembered him enjoying cooking. Not often because they’d been far too busy for almost everything domestic but when she’d first met him he’d cooked her some awesome meals.

She’d tried to return the favour, but had only cooked disasters.

‘What sort of people occupied this planet?’ Rob was demanding answers from the depths of the freezer. ‘Packets, packets and packets. Someone here likes Diet Cuisine. Liked,’ he amended. ‘Use-by dates of three years ago.’

She used to eat them when Rob was away. She’d cooked for the boys, or their nanny had, but Diet Cuisine was her go-to.

‘There must be something more...’ He was hauling out packet after packet, tossing them onto the floor behind him. She was starting to feel mortified. Her fault again?

‘You’ll need to put that stuff back or it’ll turn into stinking sog,’ she warned.

‘Of course.’ His voice was muffled. ‘So in a thousand years an archaeological dig can find Diet Cuisine and think we were all nuts. And stinking sog? For a stink it’d have to contain substance. Two servings of veggies and four freezer-burned cubes of diced meat do not substance make. But hey, here’s a whole beef fillet.’ He emerged, waving his find in triumph. ‘This is seriously thick. I’m hoping freezer burn might only go halfway in or less. I can thaw it in the microwave, chop off the burn and produce steak fit for a king. I hope. Hang on a minute.’

Fascinated, she watched as he grabbed a torch from the pantry and headed for the back door. That was a flaw in this mock play; he shouldn’t have known where a torch was. But in two minutes he was back, brandishing a handful of greens.

‘Chives,’ he said triumphantly and then glanced dubiously at the enormous green fronds. ‘Or they might have been chives some time ago. These guys are mutant onions.’

Clarissa had planted vegetables, she remembered. Their last nanny...

But Rob was taking all her attention. The Rob of now.

She’d expected...

Actually, she hadn’t expected. She’d thought she’d never see this man again. She’d vaguely thought she’d be served with divorce papers at some stage, but she hadn’t had the courage or the impetus to organise it herself. To have him here now, slicing steak, washing dirt from mutant chives, took a bit of getting used to.

‘You do want some?’ he asked and she thought no. And then she thought: when did I last eat?

If he had been a stranger she’d eat with him.

‘Yes, please,’ she said and was inordinately pleased with herself for getting the words out.

So they ate. The condiments in the pantry still seemed fine, though Rob dared to tackle the bottled horseradish and she wasn’t game. He’d fried hunks of bread in the pan juices. They ate steak and chives and fried bread, washed down by mugs of milky tea. All were accompanied by Rob’s small talk. He really did act as if they were strangers, thrust together by chance.

Wasn’t that the truth?

‘So, Julie,’ he said finally, as he washed and she wiped. There was a dishwasher but, as neither intended sticking round past breakfast, it wasn’t worth the effort. ‘If you’re planning on leaving at dawn, what would you like to do now? You were sleeping when I got here?’

‘Trying to sleep.’

‘It doesn’t come on demand,’ he said, and she caught an edge to his voice that said he lay awake, as she did. ‘But you can try. I’ll keep watch.’

‘What—stand sentry in case the fire comes?’

‘Something like that.’

‘It won’t come until morning.’

‘I don’t trust forecasts. I’ll stay on the veranda with the radio. Snooze a little.’

‘I won’t sleep.’

‘So...you want to join me on fire watch?’

‘I...okay.’

‘You might want to put something on besides your nightie.’

‘What’s wrong with the nightie? It’s sensible.’

‘It’s not sensible.’

‘It’s light.’

‘Jules,’ he said, and suddenly there was strain in his voice. ‘Julie. I know we don’t know each other very well. I know we’re practically strangers, but there is only a settee on the veranda, and if you sit there looking like that...’

She caught her breath and the play-acting stopped, just like that. She stared at him in disbelief.

‘You can’t...want me.’

‘I’ve never stopped wanting you,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve tried every way I know, but it’s not working. Just because we destroyed ourselves... Just because we gave away the idea of family for the rest of our lives, it doesn’t stop the wanting. Not everything ended the night our boys died, Julie, though sometimes...often...I wish it had.’

‘You still feel...’

‘I have no idea what I feel,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been trying my best to move on. My shrink says I need to put it all in the background, like a book I can open at leisure and close again when it gets too hard to read. But, for now, all I know is that your nightie is way too skimpy and your eyes are too big and your hair is too tousled and our bed is too close. So I suggest you either head to the bedroom and close the door or go get some clothes on. Because what I want has nothing to do with reality, and everything to do with ghosts. Shrink’s advice or not, I can’t close the book. Go and get dressed, Julie. Please.’

She stared at him for a long moment. Rob. Her husband.

Her ex-husband. Her ex-life.

She’d closed the door on him four years ago. If she was to survive, that door had to stay firmly closed. Behind that door were emotions she couldn’t handle.

She turned away and headed inside. Away from him. Away from the way he tugged her heart.

* * *

He sat out on the veranda, thinking he might have scared her right off. She didn’t emerge.

Well, what was new? He’d watched the way she’d closed down after the boys’ deaths. He was struggling to get free of those emotions but it seemed Julie was holding them close. Behind locked doors.

That was her right.

He sat for an hour and watched the night close in around him. The heat seemed to be getting more oppressive. The smoke hung low over everything, black and thick and stinking of burned forest, threatening enough all by itself, even without flames.

It’s because there’s no wind, he told himself. Without wind, smoke could hang around for weeks. There was no telling how close the fire was. There was no telling what the risks were if the wind got up.

He should leave. He should make Julie leave, but then... But then...

Her decision to come had been hers alone. She had the right to stay. He wasn’t sure what he was protecting, but sitting out on the veranda, with Julie in the house behind him, felt okay. He wasn’t sure why, but he did know that, at some level, the decision to come had been the right one.

Maybe it was stupid, he conceded, but maybe they both needed this night. Maybe they both needed to stand sentinel over a piece of their past that needed to be put aside.

And it really did need to be put aside. He’d watched Julie’s face when he’d confessed that he wanted her and he’d seen the absolute denial. Even if she was ever to want him again, he’d known then that she wouldn’t admit it.

Families were for the past.

He sat on. A light was still on next door. Once he saw a woman walk past the lighted window. Pregnant? Was she keeping the same vigil he was keeping?

If he had kids, he’d have them out of here by now. Hopefully, his neighbour had her car packed and would be gone at dawn, taking her family with her.

Just as he and Julie would be gone at dawn, too.

The moments ticked on. He checked the fire app again. No change.

There were sounds coming from indoors. Suddenly he was conscious of Christmas music. Carols, tinkling out on...a music box?

He remembered that box. It had belonged to one of his aunts. It was a box full of Santa and his elves. You wound the key, opened the box and they all danced.

That box...

Memories were all around him. Childhood Christmases. The day his aunt had given it to them—the Christmas Julie was pregnant. ‘It needs a family,’ his aunt had said. ‘I’d love you to have it.’

His aunt was still going strong. He should give the box back to her, he thought, but meanwhile... Meanwhile, he headed in and Julie was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, attaching baubles to a Christmas tree. She was still dressed in the nightgown. She was totally intent on what she was doing.

What...?

‘It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow,’ she said simply, as if this was a no-brainer. ‘This should be up. And don’t look at the nightgown, Rob McDowell. Get over it. It’s hot, my nightie’s cool and I’m working.’

She’d hauled the artificial tree from the storeroom. He stared at it, remembering the Christmas when they’d conceded getting a real tree was too much hassle. It’d take hours to buy it and set it up, and one thing neither of them had was hours.

That last Christmas, that last weekend, the tree was one of the reasons they’d come up here.

‘We can decorate the tree for Christmas,’ Julie had said. ‘When we go up next week we can walk straight in and it’ll be Santa-ready.’

Now Julie was sitting under the tree, sorting decorations as if she had all the time in the world. As if nothing had happened. As if time had simply skipped a few years.

‘Remember this one?’ She held up a very tubby angel with floppy, sparkly wings and a cute little halo. ‘I bought this the year I was trying to diet. Every time I looked at a mince pie I was supposed to march in here and discuss it with my angel. It didn’t work. She’d look straight back at me and say: “Look at me—I might be tubby but not only am I cute, I grew wings. Go ahead and eat.”’

He grinned, recognising the cute little angel with affection.

‘And these.’ Smiling fondly, he knelt among the ornaments and produced three reindeer, one slightly chewed. ‘We had six of these. Boris ate the other three.’

‘And threw them up when your partners came for Christmas drinks.’

‘Not a good moment. I miss Boris.’ He’d had Boris the Bloodhound well before they were married. He’d died of old age just before the twins were born. Before memories had to be put aside.

They’d never had time for another dog. Maybe now they never would?

Forget it. Bauble therapy. Julie had obviously immersed herself in it and maybe he could, too. He started looping tinsel around the tree and found it oddly soothing.

They worked in silence but the silence wasn’t strained. It was strangely okay. Come dawn they’d walk away from this house. Maybe it would burn, but somehow, however strange, the idea that it’d burn looking lived in was comforting.

‘How long do Christmas puddings last?’ Julie asked at last, as she hung odd little angels made of spray-painted macaroni. Carefully not mentioning who’d made them. The twins with their nanny. The twins...

Concentrate on pudding, he told himself. Concentrate on the practical. How long do Christmas puddings last? ‘I have no idea,’ he conceded. ‘I know fruitcakes are supposed to last for ever. My great-grandma cooked them for her brothers during the War. Great-Uncle Henry once told me he used to chop ’em up and lob ’em over to the enemy side. Grandma Ethel’s cakes were never great at the best of times but after a few months on the Western Front they could have been lethal.’

‘Death by fruitcake...’

‘Do you remember the Temperance song?’ he asked, grinning at another memory. His great-aunt’s singing. He raised his voice and tried it out. ‘We never eat fruitcake because it has rum. And one little bite turns a man to a...’

‘Yeah, right.’ She smiled back at him and he felt strangely triumphant.

Why did it feel so important to make this woman smile?

Because he’d lost her smile along with everything else? Because he’d loved her smile?

‘Clarissa made one that’s still in the fridge,’ she told him. Nanny Clarissa had been so domestic she’d made up for both of them. Or almost. ‘And it does contain rum. Half a bottle of over-proof, if I remember. She demanded I put it on the shopping list that last... Anyway, I’m thinking of frying slices for breakfast.’

‘Breakfast is what...’ he checked his watch ‘...three hours away? Four-year-old Christmas pudding. That’ll be living on the edge.’

‘A risk worth taking?’ she said tightly and went back to bauble-hanging. ‘What’s to lose?’

‘Pudding at dawn. Bring it on.’

They worked on. There were so many tensions zooming round the room. So many things unsaid. All they could do was concentrate on the tree.

Finished, it looked magnificent. They stood back, Rob flicked the light switch and the tree flooded into colour. He opened the curtains and the light streamed out into the darkness. Almost every house in the valley was in darkness. Apart from a solitary light in the house next door they were alone. Either everyone had evacuated or they were all sleeping. Preparing for the danger which lay ahead.

Sleep. Bed.

It seemed a good idea. In theory.

Julie was standing beside him. She had her arms folded in front of her, instinctive defence. She was still in that dratted nightgown. Hadn’t he asked her to take it off? Hadn’t he warned her?

But she never had been a woman who followed orders, he thought. She’d always been self-contained, sure, confident of her place in the world. He’d fallen in love with that containment, with her fierce intelligence, with the humour that matched his, a biting wit that made him break into laughter at the most inappropriate moments. He’d loved her drive to be the best at her job. He’d understood and admired it because he was like that, too. It was only when the twins arrived that they’d realised two parents with driving ambition was a recipe for disaster.

Still they’d managed it. They’d juggled it. They’d loved...

Loved. He looked at her now, shivering despite the oppressive heat. She looked younger, he thought suddenly.

Vulnerable.

She’d never been vulnerable and neither had he.

But they’d loved.

‘Julie?’

‘Yes?’ She looked at him and she looked scared. And he knew it was nothing to do with the fires.

‘Mmm.’

‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said, but she hugged her arms even tighter.

‘I don’t...know.’

‘There’s no one else?’

‘No.’

‘Nor for me,’ he said gently. He was treading on eggshells here. He should back off, go and sleep in the spare room, but there was something about this woman... This woman who was still his wife.

‘We can’t...at least...I can’t move forward,’ he told her, struggling to think things through as he spoke. ‘Relationships are for other people now, not for me. But tonight... For me, tonight is all about goodbye and I suspect it’s goodbye for you as well.’

‘The house won’t burn.’

‘No,’ he said, even more gently. ‘It probably won’t. At dawn I’ll go out and cut down the overhanging branches—and even with my limited skill with power tools, I should get them cleared before the wind changes. Then we’ll turn on every piece of fire-safe technology we built into this house. And after that, no matter what the outcome, we’ll walk away. We must. It’s time it was over, Jules, but for tonight...’ He hesitated but he had to say it. It was a gut-deep need and it couldn’t be put aside. ‘Tonight, we need each other.’

‘So much for being strangers,’ she whispered. She was still hugging herself, still contained. Sort of.

‘I guess we are,’ he conceded. ‘I guess the people we’ve turned into don’t know each other. But for now...for this night I’d like to take to bed the woman who’s still my wife.’

‘In name only.’ She was shivering.

‘So you don’t want me? Not tonight? Never again?’

And she looked up at him with those eyes he remembered so well, but with every bit of the confidence, humour, wit and courage blasted right out of them.

‘I do want you,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what terrifies me.’

‘Same here.’

‘Rob...’

‘Mmm.’

‘Do you have condoms? I mean, the last thing...’

‘I have condoms.’

‘So when you said relationships are for other people...’

‘Hey, I’m a guy.’ He was trying again to make her smile. ‘I live in hope. Hope that one morning I’ll wake up and find the old hormones rushing back. Hope that one evening I’ll look across a crowded room and see a woman laughing at the same dumb thing I’m laughing at.’

That had been what happened that night, the first time they’d met. It had been a boring evening: a company she worked for announcing a major interest in a new dockland precinct; a bright young architect on the fringes; Julie with her arms full of contracts ready to be signed by investors. A boring speech, a stupid pun missed by everyone, including the guy making the speech, and then eyes meeting...

Contracts handed to a junior. Excuses made fast. Dinner. Then...

‘So I’m prepared,’ Rob said gently and tilted her chin. Gently, though. Forcing her gaze to meet his. ‘One last time, my Jules?’

‘I’m not...your Jules.’

‘Can you pretend...for tonight?’

And, amazingly, she nodded. ‘I think...maybe,’ she managed, and at last her arms uncrossed. At last she abandoned the defensive. ‘Maybe because I need to drive the ghosts away. And maybe because I want to.’

‘I need more than maybe, Jules,’ he said gently. ‘I need you to want me as much as I want you.’

* * *

And there was the heart of what she was up against. She wanted him.

She always had.

Once upon a time she’d stood before an altar, the perfect bride. She remembered walking down the aisle on her father’s arm, seeing Rob waiting for her, knowing it was right. She’d felt like the luckiest woman in the world. He’d held her heart in his hand, and she’d known that he’d treat it with care and love and honour.

She’d said I do, and she’d meant it.

Until death do us part...

Death had parted them, she thought and it would go on keeping them apart. There was no way they could pick up the pieces that had been their lives before the boys.

But somehow they’d been given tonight.

One night. A weird window of space and time. Tomorrow the echoes of their past could well disappear, and maybe it was right that they should.

But tonight he was here.

Tonight he was gazing at her with a tenderness that told her he needed this night as well. He wanted that sliver of the past as much as she did.

For tonight he wanted her and she ached for him back. But he wasn’t pushing. It had to be her decision.

Maybe I can do this, she thought. Maybe, just for tonight, I can put my armour aside...

Her everyday life was now orchestrated, rigidly contained. It held no room for emotional attachment. Even coming here was an aberration. Once the fire was over, she’d return to her job, return to her life, return to her containment.