30

ONE OF THE UNIFORMS dropped me back at City Station, and though I was tempted to go straight to the room, I did as McHenry had ordered and got into my car and drove home. The first thing I did when I walked in the door was make myself a big bowl of toasted muesli, which I ate while sitting in a hot bath. Then I got dressed and called Jean.

Even though she’d just got home after being on-air all evening, and sounded tired, she insisted that I come straight over. Her invitation, however, came with a warning. Most of her gallery colleagues were still pursuing us, she said, and now the paparazzi had joined the hunt. Their interest had been sparked by a headline on one of the blogs: ‘Love lives in House of Death’.

Jean gave me her address, which I already had, and the number of her apartment. She said that when I came over, I should park under her building. That way, I could mostly escape the shutter hounds who were camped on the nature strip across from her place.

Fifteen minutes later, when I drove into Jean’s street, twenty photographers rushed my car, their cameras on rapid fire as they pursued me into the carpark under her building. I parked and ran through the carpark; even so, some of them were just metres behind me as Jean buzzed me through to the lifts.

She looked very sleepy when she opened her door, but she gave me a lingering kiss before taking my hand and leading me into a dimly lit lounge room. We sat on a couch facing a big picture window, and she asked what I’d like to drink.

‘I’ve got beer and Guinness,’ she said. ‘And there’s a chardonnay. Or you can have a tea or a coffee, if you like.’

‘I’ll go the Guinness,’ I said, ‘if you’re having one.’

She smiled and brushed the back of my hand, and I turned and watched her leave the room. Then I looked the place over. There seemed to be framed photos and intriguing bits and pieces on every flat surface. The northern wall was all glass, with sliding doors that led out onto a balcony crowded with potted plants.

Jean came back with two tall glasses of Guinness, and settled down next to me on the couch. We sipped our drinks in silence, staring out at the lights that dotted the slope up to Red Hill. I desperately wanted to take her in my arms, but then doubt assailed me. What if she’d called me over for a ‘Dear John’ meeting? Was it possible that she was going to thank me and just say, ‘See you around’? No. That made no sense at all, and I knew it.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said in that room,’ she said, running a finger around the rim of her glass. ‘About life-threatening situations doing strange things to people. And it’s true, it made us very close, very quickly. But the thing is, I thought you were a knockout the first time I saw you. And the second. And the way I feel about you now has nothing to do with gratitude. Or, worse still, hero worship. I really like you, Darren, and even if we’d never been locked up together, I still think we would have ended up like this.’

She leaned in and we kissed. Then we put our drinks aside and wrapped our arms around each other, kissing and withdrawing, looking into each other’s eyes, saying nothing. It had been a long time for me, and I was glad to go slowly. But then Jean got up, and, still holding my hand, led me down a corridor and into her bedroom.

We slowly undressed each other, letting our clothes drop where we stood. Then she pulled me towards her, and we fell onto her bed and coiled together, skin on skin.

I woke up alone in her bed. The dull light breaking through the slit in the curtains told me it was morning. Crockery clinked somewhere down the corridor, and then Jean came in with a tray on which she had a teapot, two cups, and some slices of cake on a plate. She set the tray down next to me on the bed, and then she left again. Minutes later, she returned with the morning newspapers.

Most front pages featured big photos of us leaving the hospital. The accompanying stories cast me as the hero who’d rescued Jean, my new love, from the ‘House of Death’. I was also credited with saving the ‘hapless’ Rolfe. None of them had much information on Joe, other than the fact that he was dead. And they all gave front-page treatment to Brady’s reaction. He’d told them I’d been well trained for what I’d confronted at Rodway Street, and that I’d done the AFP proud. So it looked like he was holding fire.

Jean turned on the TV, and we watched a segment about ourselves on one of the morning shows. It included a long clip of her from the Live Cam, and a shot of me hustling her into the patrol car at the hospital. We flipped between networks. Each of them had a different shot of my arrival at her place. And every story was a variation on the theme ‘From House of Death to Love Nest’.

‘And they’re still out there,’ said Jean, peeking through the curtains. ‘Waiting patiently.’

‘And what’ll satisfy them?’ I said, though I knew the answer.

‘We’ve got two options, really,’ she said. ‘We could tell our story to one of the networks, preferably mine, but there’s no guarantee that would kill the story. It could do the opposite. Or we could give the people down there what they want — us kissing on the stairs outside. That would do it for most of them. The thing is, right at this moment, we’re the biggest story in Australia. Bigger than the election. Bigger than the murders, even. So they’re not going to give up. Not till they get us.’

‘So you’re saying we should go down there and pose for them?’

‘One kiss and we get our privacy back. Mostly. Otherwise, we’ll have to skulk around for weeks. And they’ll get us in the end, you know. And when they do, it might have an ugly edge to it. And you and me, we don’t need that. Not right now.’

‘A kiss at the top of the stairs. Mmm. Well, my instincts say, “Stuff ‘em.” But then again, I’d kiss you anywhere, under any circumstances. And if it means getting rid of that lot? Let’s do it.’