Mango Kisses (29 page)

Funny how a couple of months alone with his large credit line and the knowledge that he could spend like a maniac for years without making a dent in his capital changed his world view. Tiffany would be proud of him with his new materialistic approach, if he could find her.

Really, he should sell that shop. He hardly needed to keep working there and he couldn’t leave Boris in charge. Miles switched on the light and padded across thick carpet to the ornate, marble bathroom. But Boris would be devastated if he sold the place from under him. Who else would employ him?

After breakfast he continued calling Hollands.

At H Holland, a mobile number, he struck gold.

‘She’s my sister,’ said the laconic voice.

‘Do you know where she is?’ The words tumbled out as Miles leapt to his feet and punched the air.

‘In Sydney?’

The delight fizzled and died. Miles slumped into a chair, deflated. ‘Neither of her numbers are in service. Do you have any idea where she might be?’

‘No, mate. Sorry. We’re in Cairns. Got a Christmas card from her, though.’

‘Did it have a return address?’

‘Hang on.’ A woman’s voice in the distance. ‘Lulu says there was no address on the envelope. Try our parents. It’s university holidays so they might be away. George Holland in Chatswood.’ He could almost hear the sound of a spit following the name.

‘Thanks very much.’

‘Are you a friend of Tiff’s?’

‘Yes. Actually...’ Miles stopped. But this was his beloved’s brother. He might even be a relative one day. ‘I love her.’

‘I hope you’re rich, mate. She likes her blokes to be cashed up.’

‘I am,’ said Miles but a chill shivered down his spine. When he found her would the money make a difference? Would she only want him now because he was rich? How could he tell? Was she really that shallow? Hugh obviously thought so. But she knew he was rich and still left. And she couldn’t hide the attraction to him early in their relationship. Before she knew...

‘Hope you find her, mate. Name’s Hugh, by the way. If you do catch up with her, tell her to come and see us.’

Miles hung up and ran his finger down the column in the phone book searching for G Holland of Chatswood. He’d pencilled ‘A’ beside it — answering machine. He tried the number again. Same result. He didn’t leave another message.

The temperature had risen steadily all day. Summer in the city was something he’d always avoided. He sat uncomfortably gritty, grimy and sweaty in a café filling in the day trying to stay awake. Jetlag was a killer.

The evening papers were on the stands. Miles picked one up as he returned to the hotel.

‘Any messages?’ he asked hopefully at reception. To his amazement the man nodded.

Miles took the folded slip of paper with a pounding heart and dry mouth. Tiffany. Concise and to the point.

‘Miles. Call me. Tiffany.’ She’d left a number. The parents. Was she there in Chatswood?

‘When did she call?’

‘At three. She specifically asked me to give you the message personally.’

He’d spent the whole afternoon wandering about, hot, miserable and lonely as sin, filling in time, wasting time, when he could have been with her.

The blasted machine again.

‘Tiffany? It’s Miles. I didn’t know how to contact you when the other numbers didn’t work. Can you call me again, please? I only got back to Australia yesterday. I’m a bit jetlagged. Please call.’ He was babbling. ‘Tiffany, you were right, you know,’ he said quickly, ‘about the money. The freedom. It’s fantastic. I’ve been all over the world. I’m thinking of selling the surf shop. I don’t need to work there and I’ll probably move to Sydney. Call me. Bye. Miles.’

He hung up slowly. Had he said the right things? Had he said too much? Not enough? He couldn’t say too much. Not on a machine when anyone could be listening at the other end. He wasn’t going to pour out his love to a message bank. He wanted to see her face when he told her.

Clad in shorts, bare chested, he sat on the balcony with the million dollar view of the Opera House, and opened the evening paper. Graphic photos leapt off the page. ‘Bushfire’ screamed the headline above shots of black silhouetted fire fighters dwarfed by a raging orange-red inferno.

Words and phrases jumped out at him. ‘The far north coast’, ‘blaze out of control’, ‘Kandala on stand-by’, ‘native bushland destroyed.’ No mention of Birrigai but it was close, very close. Too close.

He flung the paper aside and grabbed the phone.

‘I want a car, now,’ he yelled. ‘Anything.’ The astonished receptionist on the other end burbled about charges. ‘I don’t care,’ he interrupted. ‘I need a car.’

Miles packed his bags, checked out and was on the freeway heading north before he remembered Tiffany. He hadn’t copied her parents’ phone number into his diary. But he comforted himself as he accelerated around a slow moving petrol tanker, he knew where she was.

As soon as he’d helped fight the fires he’d be back on the road. He knew if he stayed too long the Birrigai magic would take hold and he’d find it harder and harder to leave for that filthy, smelly, ant-heap of a city. Tiffany was the only reason he’d even contemplate doing such a thing. Surely she’d recognise that as a gesture of true love?

Tiffany replaced the receiver thoughtfully. Miles had left, the hotel receptionist said, in a hurry and with no warning. He’d hired a car. Why hadn’t he waited for her call?

She replayed his message. His voice was raspy. He seemed anxious to see her. Why had he disappeared so fast and where to if he was thinking of settling in Sydney? Birrigai? Wouldn’t he fly north? Not if he wanted to get there quickly. Tiffany had checked the very limited country flights for her own trips. He must have wanted to go tonight. Perhaps he’d just discovered the bushfire situation.

Tiffany’s breathing quickened. Yes. Miles was driving to Birrigai. He was in the local volunteer fire-fighting unit. He’d be racing to help, driving alone, jet-lagged, a four hour trip. Insane!

She snatched up the phone to change her flight. She could be at the airport at six, Port Macquarie at eight, collect the VW from the long stay car park where she’d left it, Birrigai by nine-thirty or ten. The best she could do. Tiffany ran to pack.

The bushfires were visible from the air. A vast tract of the north appeared to be ablaze, judging by the choking red-grey smoke that shrouded the horizon. The haze had filtered up into the higher atmosphere and cast a reddish tinge through the cabin of the small plane.

Now, speeding along the highway in the VW, Tiffany tuned the radio to the local ABC station. The highway south had been closed for most of the day. The fire front was holding. Reinforcement crews were coming from far afield. Residents of all towns in the direct path of the fire had been put on standby for evacuation although none were directly under threat at the moment.

Sixty kilometres short of Birrigai, Tiffany smelled the smoke and for the first time a thrill of fear rippled down her spine. The sky had darkened under a pall of grey until the sun, almost completely obliterated, appeared as a blood red orb suspended overhead. A restless wind tugged viciously at the trees. Leaves and branches littered the road side and occasional charred embers danced off the windscreen. Like driving into hell.

Every so often a bright yellow fire truck whirled by with red and blue lights flashing. Tiffany drove with tense hands gripping the wheel and the metallic taste of dread in her mouth. Had she made a most terrible mistake, cutting all support lines and heading north?

‘You’ll never be a millionaire working for someone else,’ her father had declared after the shock of Tiffany’s announcement of her move to Birrigai had worn off. ‘But in a place like that I doubt whether you’ll be a millionaire at all.’

‘I don’t care, Dad,’ Tiffany had stated with a defiance she wondered about now. He knew nothing about the other more stifling, overwhelming reason. No-one did.

What if the fires swept through and burned her new home together with her new business? She hadn’t moved in properly yet. All her goods and chattels were about to be shipped from Sydney. At least she wouldn’t lose them. The removal truck would arrive tomorrow evening if it could get through, and if the fires didn’t cut the highway. All she had in her lovely new cottage was a single bed and mattress loaned to her by Jim and Sharon.

And on top of that Miles may have left Birrigai. What if he’d changed his mind about her, had fallen out of love as fast as he claimed to have fallen in? This whole venture was insane.

Tiffany slowed and edged around a fallen branch. Leaves skittered across the road. Her eyes stung despite the tightly rolled up windows. She blinked rapidly and wiped her hand across her face drying her cheeks of moisture, which could be from smoke induced tears or tears of another sort. She mustn’t start feeling sorry for herself. She’d taken the plunge and hadn’t hit bottom yet, had only just jumped. Anything could happen. Wasn’t that what she wanted? Hugh had done it. Kevin had done it. Marianne lived her whole life that way.

Tiffany wiped her eyes again and leaned forward. It appeared that as well as quitting a good job and committing herself to a town under imminent threat of immolation, she’d made a grand gesture in the name of love for a man who wasn’t even in the country at the time, and may or may not love her.

He loved the place, though. Tiffany nodded energetically to herself. That’s right. He wouldn’t leave Birrigai permanently. But after that message — was he seriously intending to settle in Sydney? Had the money got to him? Or someone else? Someone female, attractive, exotic, available and more willing and liberated than she’d been?

And love might mean something entirely different to him. He may be horrified to realise she’d actually believed he meant long term, whole life, forever and ever with children and the whole catastrophe.

The beach was eerily deserted as was the road along the sea front. The shops were closed. Had they been evacuated? Her lungs hurt. She was holding her breath but released it in a whoosh when she reached the pub and saw the parking area packed with vehicles. Two Volunteer Fire Brigade trucks had grim faced men sitting in them, while someone issued instructions to other fire-fighters in a huddle around a flapping paper map nailed to the pub wall.

Tiffany drove straight to Miles’s house. The blank-faced building stared back. No vehicle in the driveway. Closed, just as it had been all summer. She continued further up the headland to the white house with a blue roof and grey guttering; the house perched on the rocky edge of the cliff which had the very best view in her opinion. Overlooking the bay in front, Birrigai to the left, and the vast expanses of the ocean to the right was home. Regardless of the outcome with Miles, this little house was hers, her very first home. And that one thought, as she pushed the key into the door, renewed her faith that she had done the right thing in coming here.

She was strong and independent. She was well-qualified and experienced and had done her homework before setting up shop in Birrigai. Already several clients — local businesses fed up with struggling through the paperwork for quarterly tax instalments — were waiting for her to open the door of her office.

Tiffany dumped her bag in the spartan bedroom and walked through to the living area. Polished wood floors throughout had impressed her mightily on first viewing although the main selling point had been the view and the wide verandah and sundeck. Then there was the room at the side of the house, perfect as an office. Large, with its own entrance from outside, it had clinched the decision.

Only one thing needed changing. Tiffany smiled and shook her head every time she saw it, the name of the cottage displayed artistically on a piece of driftwood nailed to the front wall by the door —
Emoh Ruo.
That would not be a good look on her business cards and letterhead.

Tiffany Holland

Chartered Accountant and Financial Services Advisor

‘
Emoh Ruo’
, 2 The Esplanade, Birrigai

She stared through the picture windows at the row of shops facing the beach on the sea front. Difficult to make out through the smoke haze —Birrigai, her new community. Her new home, for better or for worse.