Holding Out for a Hero (22 page)

“I’ll just be pleased when it’s all over and we’ve hopefully won. I’m not really into sports, deep down I’m just a math geek who’s trying to keep her school open for the kids.”

“What do you say to that, Jake?” John Wells butted in. “Is she just a maths geek? You and Ella go back a long way, don’t you?”

Jake felt a finger of fate crawl up his spine but kept his face appropriately grim. “No comment.”

“I don’t suppose while I’m here you’d like to name the woman who you alleged Tony Winchester raped all those years ago?”

Jake watched all the other journalists lean in a touch closer. “No comment,” he repeated.

“What about you, Ella? You and Jake are obviously close, any pillow talk you care to share?”

If Jake hadn’t been holding on to Ella he may just have stormed down and shoved John’s photographer’s camera right down John’s smarmy mouth. He heard her gasp and gave her waist a squeeze for reassurance. “No comment,” he repeated, his voice rough with contained anger. “Press conference over.”

The reporters all surged forward again yelling questions, well and truly on the scent of something big as Jake retreated dragging Ella with him and ushering Daisy and Iris away too.

Genghis growled and they faltered.

“Mr. Pennyworth, you can come up,” Rosie said over the din and then moved back into the house, a bemused reporter and his photographer following in their wake.

*

Ella woke to the drift of Jake’s hand on her hip, stroking down her thigh and then wandering back to her waist. She smiled and murmured, snuggling her bottom into his groin against his already impressive erection. “Are you the Energizer Bunny?”

Jake chuckled, his hand drifting higher, capturing the swell of a breast, brushing across her nipple. “Pretty ever-ready yourself,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck. She smelled like clean linen and him and he wanted her.

She turned in his arms but a thundering belting on Ella’s door interrupted them.

“Ella!” Rosie called and pounded again.

Jake groaned into her neck. “Rosie, I swear to God,” Jake called. “I don’t care how good your mushrooms are, I’m not letting her out of bed.”

For the first Saturday in months there was no footy match and they intended to stay right where they were until Jake’s presence was required at the Demons’ training session later this afternoon.

“You have to get up,” Rosie called. “It’s the papers. It’s … pretty awful.”

Jake’s hand stilled on her breast. Ella’s eyes flew open, the post-coital fatigue vanishing. Iris’s fretting last night returned and settled like a lead weight in her stomach. She sprang out of bed, threw Jake’s clothes at him and hastily pulled on some of her own, shoving her hair into a shabby ponytail.

Jake reached for the door handle and she covered his hand with her own. “Before we go out there, I just want you to know that I am truly sorry about bringing this down on your head. If I could go back and undo it, I would. Do you think John Wells has uncovered Trish?”

Jake brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. He looked into her dark brown eyes. “I don’t know. It’s done now, anyway. Maybe, as Trish says, it’s time.”

Ella nodded, a knot of dread twisting in her stomach, knowing it was all her fault. Jake was going to be raked through the muck again and she’d been the instigator.

They hurried down the hallway and walked out onto the verandah, cigarette smoke and despair embracing them in equal measure. Four faces looked back at them in varying shades of grimness.

“Oh God,” Ella said, her heart thumping as she saw Rosie’s red-rimmed panda eyes. Simon couldn’t even maintain eye contact. Daisy and Iris already had a slug of sherry in their glasses. She sank into a chair and her hand shook as she took the
Sydney Mail
from Daisy.

The massive front page headline said
SUBURBAN SECRETS
and then underneath in slightly smaller print,
THE COACH, THE GEEK, THE GOTH AND HER LOVER
. A full-sized photo of them all standing on the stairs took up half the page. Ella felt sick as her gaze dropped to the first paragraph in smaller but still bold print. The byline read, “John Wells”.

Ella gasped. “Oh. My. God. I don’t believe this.”

Jake, who was reading over her shoulder, was slightly less wordy. “Fuck.”

The report went on, in the vilest details, about their lives under the rather loose guise of fallen celebrity and political deceit. It chronicled Ella’s connection to Jake through Huntley and her mother’s sordid history, making much out of the irony of Ella trading one brothel for another. It repeated the old rumor that Ella had run away with her high school principal and questioned her moral integrity. It challenged the appropriateness of her being a role model for school children and her ability to raise her fifteen-year-old brother.

Simon was slammed for keeping his relationship with Rosie, “a third-generation carnie with Goth tendencies”, to himself. “What kind of political wife would she make?” it questioned. “At least she could attend all the state funerals.” The article also speculated on Simon’s connections. Would he use his influence to save his fiancee’s home?

Daisy and Iris were painted as some feed-the-birds, grumpy old ladies turning down multi-million dollar deals to buy their property just to piss off their neighbours. But Wells hadn’t stopped there. He’d done a little more digging and found that the sisters had never lodged a tax return. Suddenly they were tax evaders in the order of Al Capone.

Ella looked up. “You two seriously haven’t ever lodged a tax return?”

Iris and Daisy traded a look. “Never could wrap my head around those damn forms,” Daisy said, pouring herself another slug of sherry.

Ella returned her gaze to the page to discover that even their beloved animals had copped it. Apparently the reporters had been menaced by “a pack of mangy, unruly, unregistered dogs”. Ella looked at the picture with Cerberus mid-wriggle, obviously ecstatic at the attention and wanted to cut John Wells’s heart out.

She threw the paper on the table. “I feel sick.”

 “Fucking. Bastard,” Rosie said stabbing her finger at Wells’s byline.

“He’s good,” Simon said. “It took me well into the night to dig through the archives to find out the stuff about Annie’s.”

Jake shook his head. “He’s probably just gotten it off Pennyworth.” The Huntley stuff, however, would have taken some digging.

They all sat and stared at the paper like it was a toxic stain. “Can he—can he say that stuff?” Ella asked into the growing silence. When Rosie had alerted them to the paper this morning Ella had been prepared to pick up the pieces for Jake. She’d had no idea that the media machine she’d embraced would turn around and kick her in the teeth.

Jake nodded. “Unfortunately. Most of the facts are essentially true. And he’s been really careful to wrap the more outrageous things in phrases like ‘it’s rumoured’ and ‘sources say’.”

“I don’t care,” Simon said. “I’m going to sue him anyway. And when I’ve finished with him, my mother will move in for the kill—if she hasn’t put out a contract on him already.”

As if on cue, his mobile rang for the fifteenth time that morning and Rosie didn’t have to look at it to know who it was. “How does she know  to ring right after you’ve uttered her name?” Rosie asked him.

Simon shrugged and hit the end button.

Jake plonked himself in the chair next to Ella and put his hand on her shoulder, his thumb stroking her collar bone. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Ella felt like her head was going to explode. Prior to today, the only people outside of Huntley who knew her story were the people sitting at the table; now the whole nation knew her shame.

“Not really.” She cradled her face in her hands for a moment and then looked at him. “I don’t think I’ve got anyone but myself to blame though.”

“No,” he murmured, shaking his head. “This stuff is inexcusable. I’m really sorry you got dragged in.” His hand moved to her nape and he drew her head onto his shoulder. “I’m really sorry everyone here got dragged through the muck,” he said, addressing the table.

Ella lifted her head. “What does he hope to gain from this?”

Rosie frowned. “Notoriety?”

“Circulation,” Simon said.

Jake shook his head. “He’s hoping to flush me out. Piss me off enough that I’ll give him what he wants in exchange for him backing off.”

Ella looked at him. “He doesn’t know you very well.” But she did. She knew Jake Prince was his own master and didn’t dance to anyone else’s tune.

“What are you going to do?” Daisy demanded.

“Nothing. For now. I’m not going to feed this monster any more morsels.” Jake stood. “I have a finals series to win and the Schools Cup to claim. And I will not let a slimy toe-rag like John Wells distract me.”

But after that was done, he wouldn’t rest until John Wells was writing the fluffiest cat in show stories for some two-bit rag in outer Woop-Woop.

Ella was not prepared for the impact of the newspaper article. It started when journalists began gathering at their front gate late Saturday afternoon and were still there Monday morning as Rosie, Simon and Ella left for work. It continued on talk-back radio in her car. She, along with Simon, were hot topics. People were talking about her morals—
her morals
—and her suitability to run a school.

Hanniford supporters rang in too, with their rather colorful ways of telling the wowsers to butt out. But by the time she got to school she had several messages from concerned parents and one from head office. By midday, five families had announced their intentions to pull their kids out of Hanniford and the phone calls from the media were relentless.

And then the phone call she’d been expecting—dreading—the most came from Donald Wiseman. “Ms. Lucas, this is unacceptable. I hate it when any of my schools are dragged into disrepute.”

“Mr. Wiseman, I can explain.”

“I’ve had media and angry parents on my phone all morning.”

“Join the club.”

“By my reckoning, if the number of people who say they will pull their kids out of your school actually do, then your numbers will no longer be viable.”

Ella’s grip tightened on the pencil she was flicking in her hand. Was that gloating she heard in his voice? She’d worked so hard to keep Hanniford open and the change in the school and the students over the last six months had been truly miraculous.

“I’m sure after this has blown over in a few days parents will realize it’s all been a media beat up and everyone will calm down.”

“So, it’s not true what they’re saying? About your mother, about the affair with your high school principal?”

Ella gritted her teeth. “What I’m saying is that it’s nobody’s business, and give it a day or two or some other juicy news items and it’ll all be forgotten.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Ella could hear his pompous splutter and pictured the phone receiver covered in his spittle. She shuddered. “It might be just as easy to affect an immediate closure. At least the publicity will be deflected from the school on to you.”

Ella, usually calm and professional, felt that all snap at his preposterous statement. The rage that had been building since Saturday coalesced with the rage she’d felt all her goddamn years in Huntley. She stabbed the pencil into the fake leather inset of her desk, snapping it in half. She rose to her feet and her hand shook as she gripped the phone wishing it was Donald Wisemans’ testicles instead.

“
Don’t you bloody dare
,” she hissed. “I’m telling you, pretty soon this will have blown over and no one is going to give a damn who my mother slept with or how many times I supposedly porked my high school principal.” Ella gave a disgusted half-laugh. “You think this is a media storm? This is nothing,
nothing
, compared to what you’ll have on your hands if you try to shut me down now. You might like to remember, Donald, that I have nothing left to lose. And you better believe that makes me a completely loose cannon.”

Ella slammed down the phone. And for a moment felt so alive, so invigorated, she could fleetingly understand why people took drugs.

And then her legs gave way and she flopped into an unceremonious heap in her chair.

*

On Wednesday, things were still manic and Ella felt like she’d been on the rack for months. Iris’s prediction had come eerily true—everything was a mess. Her entire urban family had been dragged through the muck.

The negative publicity had taken a toll on the students and teachers alike and the Demons, in particular, were finding it distracting. None of it was conducive to their training, to putting them in the zone to win their first finals match on Saturday.

Her phone rang not long after the bell for the first period had gone and Ella picked it up with some trepidation in case a journalist had somehow managed to get her private line number. It was Gwen, Cameron’s biology teacher.

“Cameron’s not here,” Gwen said.

Ella frowned. “Oh.” Cameron hadn’t missed a day’s school since Jake had picked him for the Demons. None of them had.

“I thought you might like to know.”

Ella thanked Gwen and hung up. Where the hell was he? He’d been quiet the last few days but then they’d all been a little preoccupied. She rang his mobile and it went to his voicemail. She left a terse get-your-ass-to-school message, then she texted the same for good measure.

Over the course of the day, she rang and texted Cam dozens of times, but she wasn’t overly worried. She was pissed off, sure, but she knew where he’d be come three o’clock.

But he wasn’t on the oval for training after school.

“Cam not joining us?” Pete asked.

Ella frowned. “Apparently not.”

“Everything okay?”

Ella gave a half-laugh, half-snort that sounded like an asthmatic horse. “What do you reckon?”

Pete nodded. “Some of the guys said Cameron’s been copping it a fair bit the last few days from the other kids, teasing him about Rachel.”

Ella bit her lip as tears sprang to her eyes. Goddamn it—the woman had lived a thousand miles away and was
dead
for crying out loud but still managed to cause Ella and Cam grief. “Thanks, Pete.”

She left the oval and rang Jake, who was attending to pub business. Jake hadn’t seen him. She rang Trish. Not there. She rang a couple of the boys he used to hang with before football had set him on the straight and narrow. Not there. She went to the arcade he’d frequented during his truant phase. Not there. She went home. Not there either.

By now it was late afternoon and Ella was imagining him dead on a road somewhere or kidnapped by a serial killer. He’d never done this before. He may have been, sullen, rude and hard to get along with but she’d always known where he was—even when he’d been playing hooky. And they’d been making such progress.

It was almost dark and Ella was pacing the front verandah, her thoughts shunting from worried sick to irrationally angry. When he got home Cam was going to wish Ted Bundy had picked him up. The gate squeaked and the sensor lights caught Cameron ambling up the path.

“Where the hell have you been?” Ella demanded, coming out of the shadows, making him jump.

“Jesus, Ella, you scared me half to death,” he grumbled.

“Well good. Maybe you’ll know how I’ve felt all afternoon.”

Cameron went to push past her. “I don’t want to talk.”

Ella stood her ground, placing a hand on his chest. Two years ago, the pissed look he was sporting now would have scared the hell out of her, had her backing down, but they’d grown closer in the last six months and she was surer of their relationship.

“I don’t give a good goddamn what you want. Where the hell have you been all day?”

“Places.”

“Who were you with?”

“No one.”

Ella curled her fingers around the nearby railing in case her temper got the better of her. “Have you forgotten your promise to Jake when he put you in the team? What about your practice session? What about your teammates?” Ella knew she was pushing him but the adrenaline that had been pumping through her system needed a release somewhere. “Jeez, Cam, can’t you think of somebody else once other than yourself? What about the Demons, about Hanniford?”

“What about them?” Cameron roared.

Ella startled at his sudden vehemence. She could feel his anger but she also heard the crack in his voice and could see tears shining in his eyes.

“They don’t give a shit about me. Jesus, Ella, why’d you have to go and open your mouth to that reporter? For the first time in my life, I was living someplace where no one knew all my dirty secrets,” he yelled, putting his face right up in hers. “And now the entire school does. Fuck! The whole bloody
country
knows that my mother was a whore.”

Ella gasped as he spat the word with such contempt it blew her fringe back. She didn’t even think about her next action, just raised her hand and slapped him hard across his face. She’d put up with boys from Huntley calling Rachel a whore for years and she sure as hell didn’t have to hear it come from her brother.

“That’s a despicable thing to say.”

Cameron blinked and cradled his cheek as tears spilled down his face. “Goddamn it, Ella, I’m not some kid you have to protect from the truth.” He was crying hard now, his breath choppy and gasping between sobs. “I knew who she was two years ago. I knew who she was from very early on. You can go on saying things like, oh Rachel liked to entertain or Rachel had a lot of men friends, to protect me for as long as you like, but I’m not an idiot.”

Ella reached for him, a sob choking her throat, horrified at her actions, but he took a step back. He was right, she had done that, made excuses for their mother, tried to pretend she wasn’t who she was. She had tried to protect him from the truth, just like she had tried to protect herself for so many years. Trying to justify and absolve Rachel of her actions.

“And now the whole bloody world knows. How could you?” he demanded. “How could you?”

Cameron whirled around and ran back down the stairs.

“Cam, wait,” Ella cried. How was she to know this would happen? That talking to one piss-ant paper would lead John Wells to Huntley and their sordid past?

Ella was shaking all over and crying so hard she could barely see her mobile screen as she located Jake’s number and pushed call.

“Hey.”

Ella could only just hear him over the background noise of the bar but she sobbed at the sound of his voice anyway.

“Jake? Jake … it’s so … we yelled and … Cam was so mad … and I—I slapped him and—” Ella stopped, the thought of what she’d done, of slapping him, choking her up further, rendering her incapable of coherent speech.

“Ella? Stop. What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Where are you?”

“At h—home,” she wailed.

“I’ll be there in ten.”

He made it in eight by running all the way from the pub. She was sitting on the front steps, her head in her hands, sobbing her heart out when he sat beside her and pulled her into his arms.

“Oh, Jake,” she cried.

“Hey,” he said, “hey. It’s okay. I’m here.”

“No … please. Go find Cam,” she said, shrugging his arms away. “He’s so angry … go after him … I’m worried about him … don’t know what he—”

“Cam can wait,” Jake murmured. “He’ll be fine for a few minutes. Tell me what happened.”

Ella opened her mouth to tell him but her face crumpled instead and she reached for him.

“Hey, sh,” he crooned, stroking her hair, his heart pounding from his run and from her scaring the life out of him with that phone call. He pulled her onto his lap like he had that night in his office and they sat for a few minutes while Ella’s tears subsided.

“What happened?” he murmured when she’d grown silent and all that could be heard were the hum of insects, the squawk of lorikeets and the drone of an occasional distant engine.

Ella raised her head from the comforting curve of his neck, hiccupped, took a deep breath and the whole messy argument tumbled out.

“Damn it, Jake. How can Rachel still be causing this much trouble so many years down the track? I thought we were both putting it behind us but it just won’t let us be. Why can’t Huntley just let us be? It’s always there, between us.
She’s
always bloody there.”

Jake rubbed his cheek against her hair. “Maybe she’s always there because you’ve never let go of the anger. Maybe Huntley keeps sucking you back because you keep trying to erase it from your memory banks instead of confronting it.”

He dropped a gentle kiss on her head. “You never even grieved her passing, Ella. Maybe it’s time to just let all that anger go?”

Ella’s heart beat filled her head. She knew he was right, even as the rejection came to her lips. “No.”

“Yes,” he whispered, looking directly into her eyes. “Instead of railing against your origins, maybe you need to embrace them? Whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not, Huntley’s part of us. Rachel’s part of you. And Cam. Just like my drunkard, gambling father’s part of me. Like them or loathe them, they made us who we are today.” He brushed his thumb across her mouth. “Stronger. And better.”

“What about you?” Ella searched his face, looking for an out. He was asking too much. “Have you let go of your anger?”

Jake nodded. “Over Huntley? Sure. I had to, years ago. It was interfering with my game too much.”

Somewhere amid the storm of emotions the irony that the meathead footballer was more emotionally evolved than her was a major comeuppance.

Jake placed his forehead against hers. “Have you ever thought that maybe Rachel was just doing the best she could with what she had?” He paused. “I think by and large, people just do the best they can. Even my father. They’re not all strong like you, Ella.”

Ella gave a little laugh, her voice wobbly. “I’m strong?” She’d cried three times in the last two years and Jake had been there for each one. Frankly at the moment, she felt like she was going to break into a thousand pieces.

Jake grinned, easing away from her again. “You’re one of the strongest women I know.” He stroked her cheek. “It’s okay to have loved her, Ella.”

Ella felt a lump in her throat. “I did. I did love her.”

“Of course you did,” he murmured. “She was your mother. It’s okay to miss her and to grieve for her. It’s also okay to admit you didn’t like her. You don’t have to make excuses or atone for her sins, no one’s asking you to do that. She was a grown woman and her actions were her own. But you do have to find a way to make peace with them, with her. Or you’re never going to be able to move forward. Neither will Cameron.”

Ella’s eyes filled with tears. She knew he was right. She’d spent the last nineteen years in a knot of conflicted feelings about Rachel. She’d always thought admitting she loved her mother was tantamount to approving of her. But maybe she could love Rachel and not like her all at the same time and that was okay.

“She used to dance with me. When I was little. She’d put on ‘Blue Moon’ and she’d pick me up and waltz me around the room.”

Jake smiled. “She used to feed me,” he said. “When I came to pick Dad up. I think she knew with my aunt gone there wasn’t a lot of routine. She’d say, ‘Jake, you must be starving. I’ve made some choc-chip muffins for Ella, help yourself.’ Then she’d whiz up this thick shake with honey and ice-cream and she’d sprinkle the top with Milo and she’d sit and chat with me while I ate.” He rubbed his forehead against her hair. “She asked me about school. About footy. She talked about you. A lot. She was proud of your achievements, Ella.”