There didn’t appear to be anywhere to garage the car. Indeed, the whole cottage wasn’t as big as the six-car garage Colin had insisted upon to house his collection of classic cars and her Volvo. A safe car for a “truly dreadful driver”. She’d soon stopped driving Colin anywhere because he heckled her so much. It had been equally grim in the kitchen, where he’d told her constantly she’d never make a living as a chef.
She remembered the first and the last time she had told him to shut up, and felt instantly ashamed she hadn’t left him there and then.
So what had their marriage been? Sex? For someone who found her frigid he had spent a lot of time taking her to bed.
Laura got out of the car, keys to the cottage in hand. She didn’t look closely at the houses to either side, wondering if she was under surveillance. One was a high-set colonial, far grander than the cottages, its grounds immaculate and studded with palms.
The picket gate swung cleanly without a creak. She closed it after her carefully, looking around with quiet pleasure at the small garden as though it was already hers to put to order. It was beginning to encroach on the narrow paved path up to the two weather-worn steps that led to the verandah.
The key fitted neatly into the lock. She opened the yellow-painted timber door with its old brass knocker and stepped inside, feeling a little Alice in Wonderland full of wonder with her curiosity to explore.
A hallway with a polished floor, pale golden wood with a darker grained border, ran straight through the house to the rear door. She wandered from room to room peering in. Parlour to the left, dining room, to the right. Beyond the parlour a fair-sized bedroom which led to a very quaint bathroom; behind the small dining room an equally small kitchen, somewhat modernized with a curved banquette area. Five rooms in all. No laundry. Unless there was one outside.
There was. It was attached to the cottage by a covered walkway hung with a glorious bridal veil of white bougainvillaea. Laura walked out into the sun. It was so brilliantly golden she needed her sunglasses or she’d be dazzled.
Another cottage garden, even more overgrown. It curved away to either side of a pink brick path that drew her along. Masses and masses of lavender gone wild. She picked a sprig, waved it beneath her nose. The path disappeared into a tunnel of lantana, flowering monstrously, richly blazing orange. There was even a small, charming bird bath, though the bowl was cracked.
This place is mine. It’s wonderful! Laura, who had grown up with every possible comfort, breathed aloud. A doll’s house.
She wandered back along the path to sit down on the hot stone step, lifting her arms as if in praise of the sun. She was drawing out every moment of the peace and freedom she had been denied living with Colin. The aromatic scents of the garden and the great wilderness that lay just beyond the town were balm to her wounded heart.
“Please God, help me,” she prayed. “I can’t hide for ever.”
There were no furnishings. She told herself she didn’t need much. She even felt a tingle of anticipation at the idea of making the cottage comfortable. And her own. She knew intellectually she was going to ground. Emotionally she felt if she didn’t hide away she was risking her life, and there were frightening statistics to back her fears. A wife-abuser was unpredictable and dangerous.
I’m in the middle of nowhere, she thought with a tremendous sense of relief. Who could find me here in this vast landscape, so stunningly, wonderfully primitive, as though nothing has changed for countless thousands of years?
She had fallen in love with the Outback town, a small settlement on the desert fringe. Beyond the town’s ordered perimeters lay the wild bush. What she had seen of its unique beauty had cast a compulsive spell on her. The amazing colours! The deep fiery red of the earth and the extraordinary rock formations; the breathtaking cobalt blue of the cloudless sky that contrasted so vividly with the blood-red soil; the myriad greens and silver-greens of the wild bush and the iridescent greens of the countless creeks and billabongs that criss-crossed the huge area.
There was such a feeling of space and freedom she was beginning to feel a difference in herself. She was less upset, less disturbed, less fearful. She had taken the first big step to help herself. She could take another if she kept to the fore-front of her mind that a journey of a thousand miles began with the very first step. She could be what she was meant to be—a woman who had confidence in her own ability to look after herself. A woman who cared about others. A woman who took delight in friendships and her once deeply satisfying talent.
She could start again. That meant at some point divorcing Colin, but first she would have to bring about changes in herself. She had to grow and learn, see herself as someone who could handle life’s difficulties. She had to stop for ever looking over her shoulder, as though she expected to see Colin, his arm outstretched to grab her. She had to subdue and conquer her fear of Colin.
She knew one day, perhaps sooner than she thought, she would be free.
Drawing her long hair over her shoulder, Laura walked back inside the cottage. She had already decided she would take it, and her mind was busy with thoughts of exactly how much furniture she would need. What would go where? Her enthusiasm for this little cottage in the back of beyond was infectious. In fact she felt quite jubilant. It was a long long time since she’d felt that.
Laura took a little notebook out of her shoulder bag and began to scribble in it.
CHAPTER TWO
THE sound of a car door slamming broke his concentration. Not that the book was going so well at this point. Memories always made him suffer. Writing kept him sane.
In this little Outback town of Koomera Crossing he was known as Evan Thompson. Loner. Man of mystery. He’d had an ironic laugh at those names. Evan Thompson wasn’t his true identity. It was a cover of sorts for his secret life as a wood worker. He’d had no apprenticeship in the trade. He’d learned in his youth from his diplomat father, who’d channelled his abundant natural skills into an avenue for relaxation.
His father! Christian Kellerman. Killed in a terrorist attack in the Balkans.
In another life he’d been known as Evan Kellerman, respected foreign correspondent, who had earned a reputation for putting his own life on the line to get to a big story. Everything he had written from the war zones where he’d gone searching for truthful answers had had an insider’s knowledge. With a base in Vienna, close to his father, he had covered the war in the Balkans when three ethnic groups had been at each other’s throats. Even after the Dayton Peace Agreement he had stayed on to cover the demilitarisation.
He had had a story to tell. Not the usual coverage of the war and recent political developments, but one man’s day-today existence during that violent time, when he had been plunged into a world gone mad and a journalist’s life was greatly at risk.
The terror had taken his father and an alluring but traitorous woman. Monika Reiner. Evan’s lover. So-called patriot. But Monika, unknown to him and his associates, had had an agenda of her own. Spying for the enemy.
Monika Reiner had used her beauty and her useful contacts to infiltrate the ranks of freedom fighters, leaving behind her a trail of death. All in the name of greed, money and power. And to think such a woman, responsible for passing on his father’s itinerary on that terrible day, had held the key to his heart. The sense of guilt, though irrational, had almost destroyed him.
He stood up so precipitately he sent his swivel chair flying. After a minute he retrieved it, but he couldn’t return to his desk. Restlessly he prowled, like a wild animal in a cage. From a bedroom window he caught sight of the young woman who must have slammed her car door. She was going into the cottage next door.
He