‘Your men came back.’
‘He drives his harder than most. And they do it, because he’s Justin. But he’d never push too hard or put them at risk. He’ll be here soon. Or if not here, we’ll get word that he’s at one of the other bases.’
She stood there, looking down at the ground, not meeting his eyes. Ben found that far more disturbing than thinking about his brother.
‘Sit down. You won’t do Justin or anyone else any good getting yourself wound up.’ He didn’t say that she looked as if she’d fall if she didn’t sit. She looked so fragile. In all his life, he’d never once thought of his mother as vulnerable, far less fragile.
She cared. He hadn’t really accepted that before. Part of him was still the angry teenager who’d walked out a week before his seventeenth birthday. Eight days before the birthday he’d never celebrated. As he looked at the lines in his mother’s face and thought about his brother, fighting the beast out there somewhere, some things suddenly didn’t seem as important.
Ben looked down at his phone and swiped for a refresh. He nodded when he saw the latest updates.
‘They’re bringing in the planes. That will help.’
‘Planes?’
‘Water-bombing planes.’ He read on and heaved a sigh. ‘They say the weather’s changing. The wind will swing around later today. It might even rain.’
‘Thank God.’
‘It would need to be some decent rain, though. A shower is not going to do it.’
They turned their eyes upwards. Smoke cast a pall over everything, but whenever a gust of wind caused the smoke to clear, even for a few seconds, the mid-afternoon sky was cold, hard blue, with not even a hint of cloud.
They sat in silence, each locked in their own thoughts. Ben cast a sideways glance at Carol. Her hands were clasped in her lap. They were the hands of a woman no longer young. A woman who had known and still did know hard work. Her nails were chipped and uneven, the dry skin crisscrossed with healing scratches, no doubt from when she was pulling young branches off trees to feed the injured animals she nursed. Or maybe from the animals themselves; even young koalas had long claws. He tried to remember what her hands had been like when she was younger. When he and Justin had been children. But he could not remember them any different. Nor could he remember her wearing pretty clothes or makeup. In his mind, her hair had always been unkempt and her brow always furrowed with concern. He had a few memories of her face wreathed in a smile and the sound of her laughter, but very few. She hadn’t been that kind of parent. She had always been distant, and Ben had always sought out his twin rather than his mother. Justin had always had time for him. His mother hadn’t.
But as he sat, he wondered for the first time if that distance had been related to the work-worn hands and the ragged hair. Maybe there was a reason she had so seldom laughed. A reason she had lied to him for all those years. If he asked her, what would she say?
The actual thought of asking her should have horrified him, but for some reason it didn’t. Maybe it was time. Justin had said it was time to move on. His brother was right about so many things, perhaps he was right about this as well. Justin should be there for this conversation. When he was back with them and this emergency had passed.
He heard a startled gasp and looked towards the hall. Anna was standing there, staring at her phone. Her face was white, making the scar stand out even more. She was shaking her head.
‘Anna? What’s wrong?’
***
Anna barely heard the voice. Her eyes were glued to the news alert on her phone.
A burnt-out fire truck had been found on a dirt road halfway up a blackened ridge. A news helicopter crew had seen it and flown a low pass over the vehicle. They’d seen no movement nearby and no sign of the fire crew.
The picture on the phone screen showed a barely recognisable hulk of burnt vehicle completely surrounded by charred earth. A tree had fallen on the truck, crushing part of the cab. A vice squeezed her heart and she could hardly breathe.
‘Anna?’
The voice that was so like Justin’s but totally unlike him caused her to look up.
‘Ben. Carol …’ She could barely speak. How could she tell them?
She didn’t have to. Ben stepped to her side and took the phone from her hand. He read the screen, scrolling through the words, then stopping to study the picture. His face told her everything she needed to know. His eyes were pools of fear as he handed the phone back and ran to the command centre. He took the stairs in two huge steps and vanished inside.
‘What’s wrong?’ Carol appeared at her side. ‘Is it Justin? What’s wrong?’
In a few words, Anna told her, then they followed Ben to the control centre.
He met them at the bottom of the truck stairs. ‘I know where it is. They’ve told me there’s no way to get there. There’s a band of fire between here and there.’
Anna heard the agony in his voice. ‘But we can’t just—’
‘Trying to get there would just put my crew in danger. I can’t do that.’ His face was set in a determined grimace. ‘So I’m going alone.’
