Detained (38 page)

“Sit,” he said, over his shoulder. Then, “How do you take your tea?”

It was a reminder they didn’t know each other well. Their time together had been all passion without thought of future, or drama without hope. Darcy sat watching Will make tea, shocked by this thought. Maybe she’d simply idealised him because he’d been so unexpected in every way. Maybe what she thought was love was just desire for the mystery of him, and what he could do to her body.

If that was true, this was easier. This was a transaction and he’d understand it.

He brought mugs, a carton of milk, the teapot. He pulled out the chair beside her and moved the teapot in a slow circle, helping the tea draw.

“How are you really, Will?”

“Better.”

“What happened at the hotel?”

“The infamous Will Parker had a crack-up.”

She reached out and touched his hand. “Don’t,” she meant don’t make fun, don’t dodge, talk to me.

He closed his eyes, breathed deep and scruffed his hair. “Okay, we’ll play it your way.”

“I’m not here to play.”

“You’re not?”

The room was cool, so what she felt was a blush, which deepened when he said, “Neither am I.”

She blinked at him. “Let’s start again.”

“From the top?” He licked his lips; he meant from the kiss.

“Will.”

“You didn’t like the kiss?” He leant forward, within stroking distance, his eyes bright. Will’s eyes, like in Pudong, like over that weekend, not the veiled, suspicious, hurt and panicked eyes he’d had the rest of the time.

If she’d only idealised him, then it was perfectly natural to want another kiss, to want to curl up in his arms, but that wasn’t allowed. “No.”

“Then I didn’t do it well enough. A little out of practice.”

He moved so quickly he’d slid his chair against hers and pulled her to him before she had time to protest. As if she’d meant to. This kiss started in a different place. It had no hesitancy. There was no misinterpreting this kiss as anything other than a prelude to something world-colliding and seriously delicious. But he stopped it too soon, sat back. “That better?”

He hardly deserved an answer. “Much.”

He pushed his chair back. “Where were we?” All business again.

“You were going to tell me what happened?”

“Right.” He took a breath. “My memory came back in pieces. Like a jigsaw. A bit of this, a bit of that. No particular order or sequence. Some of it was easy enough to make a whole memory from. Some of it was like knowing the next line of a song but singing the wrong words. And there were big blanks. I remembered Pete as a skinny kid with scabby knees but not that he was my brother. I had no idea why everyone around me but Pete was Chinese. That was a head spin all of its own. I couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying till they worked out I’d lost my Chinese language.

“I remembered feeling pain, I remembered blood and fire, smoke and screaming, and I thought I’d lost something so important to me that it wasn’t worth living.”

“Oh God, Will.”

“The more I tried to fit the pieces together, the angrier I became. I couldn’t spit out more than two words in the right order. I couldn’t sleep unmedicated without nightmares. I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t think clearly, and pretty much every part of me hurt.

“But it got easier. I started healing. More pieces arrived. I could put them together. I used to record myself speaking in secret and play it back, utter garble. I refused to speak until I could make myself understood clearly and any language would’ve done.

“The worst of it was how I felt inside. Still do some days. Like I’m a kettle about to boil. Like my blood is scalding me. I have trouble controlling it, it makes me,” he cleared his throat, and his eyes flicked away, “hit things. It took a while to work out what I was also feeling was sadness, for everything I’d lost.”

Darcy reached for his hand, lying on the tabletop, he flipped it and they clasped, like they’d done across the interview table in Quingpu before everything turned to red. “Your body healed, you can relearn the languages. You even got Parker back in control. You worked a miracle on yourself. What have you lost you can’t get back?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “You.”

She shook her head. “I’m not real.”

“Yet here you are.”

How to explain it to him? She barely understood it herself. It was ‘how do you have your tea’ and ‘what do you want to do with your life?’ It was knowing he was more than
The Departed
, Miss Fredrick’s sexual favours and the parts in her car made by Parker, but not knowing what that was, without the drama and the intensity of what they’d shared.

They’d had a holiday romance on steroids, turbocharged with fear and urgency, and it changed both their lives profoundly. But they were still strangers.

“I’m one wild weekend and the bit part heroine in the movie script of your life. I’m the face that makes you remember dreadful things. I’m get in my car and drive for thirteen hours on a hunch based on a doodle, your tattoo and the word ‘home’. That’s not real, Will.”

He leaned closer. “I’ll tell you what’s real to me. You are the memory that made me open my eyes, made me fight the pain. You were the screaming. You were the most important thing lost. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t realise the flesh and blood you sat by my bed till later, but once I knew it, I also knew I couldn’t bring you into my angry world. That meant I couldn’t afford to think about you or what happened.”

Darcy’s throat was tight. She reached for her teacup; empty, he’d never poured. She was the screaming. She was the important thing lost.

“When I saw you outside the hotel, when they started firing those questions at me, the wall between memories and the real world got a big hole whacked in it. I had trouble stepping through it. But what I said then I’ll say again. I’d go through hell and back to protect you, real or imaginary. And I love you enough to know I’m no good for you.”

“One joy dispels a hundred cares.” — Confucius

Way to blow it, fuckwit.
If he wasn’t intimidating her, he was frightening her by cracking up, or delivering confessionals, or both at once.

Darcy was on her feet, halfway across the room. She said, “I have to tell you why I came.”

Will stayed seated and waited for the axe to drop. He hadn’t forgotten how beautiful she was, but with her hair all wild, stalking about the room like a caged cat, he briefly considered getting nervous. But he was entirely too turned on to think rationally, and he couldn’t blame it on the head kicking.

“You have to know why I came before you say anything else.”

He picked up the teapot and poured. Maybe that might bring her back to the table. “You could drink your tea.”

She waved a hand, annoyed with his distraction.

“I came to ask you to do an interview with me.” She made a stop gesture as if she was sure he was going to interrupt. How could she not know he’d do anything for her?
Ah yeah, that’s right, because he’d gone psycho, one minute denying she existed for him, the next issuing public declarations of love.
There were galahs in the paddock smarter than he was on his good days about this woman.

“At some point, you need to make yourself available for a profile. After everything that’s happened.” Again with the hand. She was tied in knots about this.

“There is a strong appetite for information on you. You’ll get continual requests for interviews, and as soon as you decide to come out of hiding—”

“Assuming I do.”

She inclined her head in agreement. “Assuming you do, you’ll be door-stopped until you give something up.”

“Ah-huh. Aileen says that too.”

“Oh. Ah, I’m suggesting if you do an interview with me, it will go some way to closing the issue off.”

“Not just reigniting it?”

“Not if it’s done carefully. Not if we close the loops. I can help you do that.”

He sat forward, elbows on knees. He wanted to go to her, but she clearly needed her space. “Okay.”

She stopped pacing about. “Okay, what?”

“Okay, when do you want to do it? Can I have time to prepare? I’m not ready to leave here yet.”

“Will, you understand what I’m saying?”

“Dull. Even dumb at times, but no permanent brain damage, at least I hope not.”

“I don’t get it.” Her hands went to her hips. If she wasn’t a grown-up she’d have stamped her foot.

“What’s not to get?” He stood, but kept the table between them. “This is a sensible thing for me to do. I trust you to help me through it, and I owe you one, professionally speaking.”

All the colour fled from Darcy’s face, she plumped down on the sofa.

He stepped out from the table. “Darcy, what’s wrong?”

She looked stricken. “I have a problem.”

“Am I your problem?”

She looked miserable. “Yes.”

“I get it.”

“No you don’t.” She shook her head violently. “I need you to know I came here to convince you to do this profile because I’m desperate. The network thinks I fudged the interview about you.”

“They’re right, you did.”

She frowned up at him. “They’re saying I breached my contract and unless I bring you in like a big fish, they’re going to sack me and come after me. I could lose this job if I don’t hook you.” She looked away. “And it’s the wrong reason to even try.”

He sat beside her, but didn’t touch her. She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I’m not happy about this shit they’re heaping on you. But Lois, I expected you to disembowel me after what I did to you. I have no problem helping you out with this.”

“It’s not enough to want to help me out. You can fly out of here tomorrow and be free of all this. It’s not what you need.”

She was so skittish she might stand up and stalk around the room again. He wanted her close but he did nothing but gently lean his shoulder into hers. “Hell and back, Lois. This hardly scratches the surface of hell and back.”

“Real world, Will. This is using you as a ratings grab. This is using you to solve my personal problems.”

He shoulder bumped her. Tried to catch her eyes, but she kept them down. “I can say with authority I’ve been used for worse.”

She made a sound like a hiccup. It might’ve been a sob, might’ve been a laugh.

“Some of the other times included handcuffs, gags and terrible prison fashion.”

“How can you joke about this?”

“I survived it, how can I not?”

Now she turned to look at him. “All of this only happened to you because of what I did. Why don’t you hate me?”

He put his hands on her shoulders and saw his own shadow reflected in her big doll eyes. “Darcy, we’re not having this conversation ever again. I did this entirely to myself. You gave things a nudge, but didn’t I deserve it? I was an arrogant prick, and after that, well, you saved me by going to Tengtou. And you saved me when I was too out of my head to even know it was you. You don’t owe me anything. If you don’t want to interview me then I guess I’ll have to offer myself to Liarne Bennett.”

She blinked but otherwise didn’t move.

“So what’ll it be?”

“If you so much as think Liarne Bennett’s name, Will Parker, you’ll wish you were back in those ugly prison pjs.”

She looked so serious. Mouth drawn in a thin line, arms pressed rigidly at her sides. He laughed. She didn’t laugh with him, but God this was funny. He’d come to Tara to try to put the pieces of his life back together, make good decisions, make peace with all of his bad ones. He was reconciled to Darcy being a piece he could never afford to fit in his life, but here she was, unexpected and angry as a roused snake. What could he do but laugh?

“Will, I’m not joking.”

“I know,” he managed to get out. He let go her shoulders and wrapped his arms around his ribs, his laughter louder, harder. She was looking at him as though he’d popped another gasket. That made him laugh more.

“Are you all right?” She put her hand on his arm, apprehension on her face, and for no good reason that was funny too.

“Will?”

He couldn’t have gotten an answer out past his laughter. She kept saying his name, with concern, but her voice was higher, lighter, until she was laughing softly too.

“I don’t know what we’re laughing at,” she said, her smile so wide, so young.

“Ugly pjs!” he spluttered. “Liarne Bennett!”

“I told you,” she broke off laughing, “not to even think her...” She shoved him in the chest, her laughter bright and quickly as close to out of control as his was. “She’s a cow.”

Will got a moo sound out that was so demented it set him off again. Darcy was virtually in his lap now, her face so close, her breath on his neck. Her giggling the best sound in the world.

She took a fist full of his shirt, “They had frog toggles.”

He knew he shouldn’t, but it was too funny. “Ribbit!”

Her head went down on his chest, her whole body shook with laughter. They were laughing about his prison experience and it felt so good.

He and Pete had laughed like this, when Norman was in town, and they’d been left to fend for themselves, sometimes for days at a time. They’d laughed till they made themselves sick, till they had sore ribs. And it was always at nothing, at each other, at the stupidity of being blockies living in a shipping container in the middle of the bush.

A favourite trigger was the word, ‘ahoy’. It had the power to set them both off into hysterics and never got old. He said it now. “Ahoy,” remembering two skinny boys trying to make a life and avoid a daily beating.

Darcy’s head came up, a bewildered expression on her face. She choked out an, “Ay, ay Captain,” and they were the funniest words he’d ever heard. She was flushed a gorgeous pink and completely breathless. She shifted so she could twine her hands around his neck and sit astride his lap.

Too silly but he said it anyway, “Ready to come aboard?”

She lost it altogether, throwing her head back. He had to grab her to stop her toppling off his knees. When she righted herself there were tears in her eyes.

His laughter shut down as flash fast as her mood changed. She was snatching air, only a shuddered breath away from sobbing. “I thought they’d killed you.”