Standing Strong (2 page)

Would anyone complain? No, who out here would care? It seemed Damien was a favourite; no one would want to cause him grief. But Jacqueline knew it was not a chance she could take. She could not live her life looking over her shoulder – she'd done that with Jacob already. And, actually, there was a chance her stalker might figure this out and use it to cause her more grief. He had seen Damien there at her house. Regardless, she couldn't live with knowing she was doing the wrong thing – even if she did think the rule was a bit over the top.

Jacqueline actually felt sick to her stomach. She swallowed it down, made herself a cup of tea, then took it outside to the small garden table, along with a notepad and pen. She sat tapping her pen against her lip. What options did she have? She could end things permanently with Damien and save her career – though she could still get into trouble if someone dobbed her in. She could resign her job and psychology registration and stay with Damien. But then what would she do for money? She'd had a number of patients in who were out of work; with a town so small, the opportunities were very limited. Perhaps she could write and 'fess up to the board and beg them to allow her to both continue to see Damien and keep her registration. It could be argued that, technically, they hadn't breached the letter of the ethics clause – if it came down to it and she had a decent lawyer on her side. She almost snorted. Pigs would be more likely to fly. If she came clean to Doctor Squire – as terrifying as that would be – perhaps he'd be kind and keep her on as a counsellor and not a registered psychologist. That wasn't much less ludicrous than writing to the board. She was seriously deranged. And, anyway, no matter what Doctor Squire's reaction,
his
career might be in jeopardy if he covered it up and didn't report her. No, she couldn't mention it to him until she'd decided what she was going to do.

But really there was only one main concern: was Damien more important than her career, which she'd studied for years to acquire? She had so much still to achieve – so many people to help. But how much good would she be doing if she didn't know the basics, such as ethical standards? Tears flooded her eyes. What a mess.

She considered phoning Damien just to hear his voice, in the hope it might make her believe there was a way through this and that things would be okay. But he'd be busy by now. And he'd detect her angst. It wouldn't be fair to put this on him, he hadn't done anything wrong – it was she who had well and truly stuffed up. She should have known better. She
had
known better. She'd just let herself down.

She was the only one who could get her out of this mess – by resigning her job and giving up her psychology registration before she could get into any real trouble. It was the only way. She sighed deeply. All she could hope was that Doctor Squire might appreciate her work enough to keep her on anyway. Really, helping people was what was important. And she had the training.

She could give up her piece of paper to keep Damien, couldn't she?

Chapter Two

‘Did you sleep well?' Damien asked the joey suckling on the teat attached to the bottle clutched between her tiny paws. None of them had got more than a few hours of sleep between feeds. He rubbed his slightly gritty eyes and looked around the van. It really was a surreal thing, this being homeless. Well, he wasn't homeless in the poverty-stricken sense – he just didn't have his own roof over his head. And it wasn't like he didn't have everything he needed thanks to the kindness and generosity of everyone. He'd been really too tired the night before to take much in beyond ascertaining the caravan's main facilities, but it was fully contained and even set up to run completely on solar power. He liked the idea of being self-sufficient – off-grid. Losing everything really did put life into perspective. His current most prized possessions – other than his ute and Squish and Bob and Cara, of course – were the packets of jocks and socks from the owner of the menswear shop in town. It had felt so good to put on his own underwear after his shower last night. And of course, Bruce from the store knew his size and what style he liked because he'd been shopping there for ever.

Damien kept being surprised about how the little things could become huge. Like Stan Richards going to the trouble of retrieving a copy of Damien's dad's house plans from the council. Damien wouldn't have thought of doing that and it meant so much to him. They could have just said they were building him a stock-standard weatherboard cottage and he would have been very grateful and happy. But to actually go and dig out the plans of his dad's handbuilt house … Well, that was something else entirely.

The question now was, did he want the house he'd had before or did he want something different? He'd need to discuss it in more depth with Jacqueline. If things went to plan, she'd be living in it at some point. He smiled, picturing them at the bench together, cooking. No way would he make the mistake of thinking she'd be doing all the cooking and cleaning. He might be a country guy not up with all the femmo mumbo jumbo, but he was smart enough to know you couldn't make assumptions about who did what any more. While he had to concede he didn't have much of a clue what she was like domestically, if Jacqueline turned out to be the sort of woman who wanted to take care of her man, he sure wouldn't argue. He bet she'd be tidy, like she was with her office and desk, he thought, picturing her professional surroundings. Everything in its place – that's what she'd be like.

His mum always went into a frantic cleaning frenzy when visitors were expected – despite the place always being immaculate. Damien wondered if this part of his mother had changed now she seemed to be a little less uptight. He hoped so, for his sister Lucy's sake, otherwise Tina's visit to her London flat, which was, apparently, minuscule, could end in tears. Tina and Lucy's relationship was best described as ‘tense' and he wondered how Lucy was taking the news of their mother's impending visit. Had Tina stopped to consider that Lucy might have moved to the other side of world to escape her control-freak mother?
It's not my problem,
he thought, dismissing them and returning to Jacqueline.

The way he felt about Jacqueline, she could tell him she was the great-great-granddaughter of Hitler and didn't have a problem with what he'd done, and he'd probably shrug and say, ‘Yeah, okay, whatever.' She was seriously under his skin and could do no wrong in his eyes.

‘It's love, isn't it, little one?' he said, stroking the top of the joey's head. ‘Right, all done? Back into bed then.' He held the baby roo against the homemade pouch hanging on the back of one of Ethel's wooden kitchen chairs. There wasn't a whole lot of room in the van for furniture that wasn't built-in, but there was also nowhere really to hang the pouch. Damien had briefly wondered if one of the cupboard doors might do the trick, but dismissed it. The last thing he wanted to do was damage the flash van he'd been loaned. The filthy black grime that already seemed to have seeped in despite him taking his boots off and wiping Squish's paws before coming in was bad enough. He really hoped the curtains were washable. The couch was leather and should be able to be wiped off. Auntie Ethel would know how to sort it out. Anyway, it was a problem for another day. He was doing his best.

Damien picked up the binoculars and peered outside. A light fog was hanging over the gullies. Pity it was all black from the fire, otherwise it would have been a lovely sight. He couldn't see the young buck anywhere. Hopefully that meant he was happily grazing over the rise or, better yet, had found his mob or joined up with a new one and was in company.

One thing that bothered Damien in all of this was reconciling his past views about kangaroos with how he felt now. Since he was a kid he'd loved spotlighting – hunting kangaroos. It was a uniquely country sport and entertainment. But now he was thinking more deeply, and had changed himself and his life so much, it was really troubling him. Looking at the joey and thinking of all the work he and his auntie Ethel had done bringing her and the young buck back from the brink and then how many kangaroos he'd shot over the years – and foxes, rabbits and wild cats too, for that matter – made his stomach turn and his skin crawl. But they were pests: in large numbers, kangaroos caused havoc trampling crops and eating pasture the sheep needed, and carnivorous predators preyed on lambs that were crucial to a farmer's livelihood. One good thing about a few years of drought was that pest numbers had been kept down naturally. If they got too high again, he didn't know what he'd do. There was no way he could live with saving their lives one day and going out shooting them the next night. Culling was always done humanely, but it still didn't sit right with him at all. Why was life so full of compromises and contradictions? Was it especially so out here on the land, or was it just because that was what he saw day in and day out? In many ways it was a wonderful life to live, but it could also be confronting. The things he'd seen and done and taken for granted … Christ! He'd have to put it out of his mind and deal with it when it came up, otherwise he might go completely mad.

‘Fancy a walk, Squish?' Damien asked quietly. The dog leapt off the bed and was at the door in a split second, wagging his little tail. ‘I'll take that as a very enthusiastic yes, then,' Damien said with a chuckle. ‘You'd be useless at poker.'

He grabbed the jumper of his long-gone uncle Gordon that he'd been wearing the day before. He considered leaving the joey in her pouch, but he couldn't bring himself to let her out of his sight. Her pouch had straps to wear it like a backpack, or as a front pack – thanks to Auntie Ethel.

She was a thinker all right. And a doer. Damien had quite often thought over the years that his auntie Ethel had been wasted out here being a stay-at-home housewife – she'd have been a great inventor or engineer. It made him a little morose to think that if she'd been young now – and not born into an era where women stopped working when they got married – she could have really done something meaningful with her life. Not that being a mother wasn't meaningful. But perhaps it was the way it was meant to be. And he'd certainly never heard her complain. About anything; she was one of the most positive people he knew.

And, anyway, there'd be plenty of people thinking I'm mad doing what I'm doing
. But he was happy saving lives – even if they weren't human. And as far as he could see, giving something a chance was as important to the world as inventing something cool like a smartphone app. Well, maybe it wasn't. But it did feel good to be helping, no matter how small his actions might be in the scheme of things. Damien felt himself choking up. This was the first time since losing his dad that he could remember being truly content and feeling that he was okay with his place in the world. God, he wished his dad was here to see it. He swallowed hard.

‘Righto,' he said boldly in an effort to rid himself of the downer threatening to engulf him. With the pouch secured to his front and the binoculars in hand so they couldn't hit the joey if she popped her head up, Damien let Squish out, then carefully negotiated the caravan's steps, and shut the door behind him.

Over at the new dog enclosure, he was greeted enthusiastically by his farm dogs, Bob and Cara. Their whole bodies shook and they whined and moaned as they waited at the gate to be let out.

‘Okay, everyone, we're off. Bob, Cara, you stay close. No chasing anything,' he called as they loped off ahead. Squish was by his side, his little legs going a mile a minute to keep up with Damien's long-legged stride.

He skirted around the bare black earth that had once been his stubble and sheep feed for the next year. He hadn't thought about that particular loss as yet, but now his mind was clearing, it would make sense to plant a crop and cut hay. But he wouldn't do it himself. He had no plans to replace all his expensive equipment and go back into cropping. No, he'd keep that part of the insurance money and let someone else have the grief by contracting it out.

He called the big dogs back to his side as he climbed the small rise. He didn't want them tearing off out of sight and startling the young buck or sheep. He didn't have to worry about Squish; the pup was struggling to keep up. And, anyway, being so short, Damien doubted he saw anything beyond feet and legs. He took pity on the little guy, put the binoculars around his neck so he had both hands free, and then bent down and scooped him up. He draped the little dog around the back of his neck, retrieved his binoculars from under the dog, and carried on.

Damien was a little out of breath when he paused at the top of the rise to take in the gully stretching below. The joey and Squish together were heavy. Half of the gully was black. On the other half, a mob of about a dozen kangaroos grazed. He took a few deep breaths.

‘Do you reckon our buck's down there?' he said, and received a lick on the neck from Squish. He put the binoculars to his eyes. He wished they'd put some sort of marking on the roo – from here they all looked the same. A gust of wind must have carried their scents down the gully, because suddenly all the roos lifted their heads and turned towards them.

‘Stay!' he commanded Bob and Cara. ‘At ease, you two,' he said, taking the binoculars away and looking directly at the dogs looking up at him expectantly, crouching and ready to give chase. The only way the dogs would believe him was if he got himself settled. He carefully lowered Squish and then himself onto the ground. It was nice to have the time to just sit and watch. There were a million things he should be doing, but it could all just wait for a bit. He really wanted to see if he could make out the young buck they'd released. He was actually quite anxious to know he was okay, and hadn't had a relapse and ended up going off into the scrub to die. He crossed his legs under himself. The joey's pouch was the perfect length to sit in his lap. Squish sat beside him, panting, and Bob and Cara gave a frustrated harrumph and lay down nearby. Settled, he brought the binoculars back up to his eyes. He was surprised to see one of the roos was out on its own, halfway between him and the mob, and making its way towards him. Damien could now see the bare patches of pink, healing skin on its legs.