Summer Bay High

[I love music]

This chapter contains a warning for references of a sexual nature

You, Being One of the Beautiful People, are Cordially Invited to Hayley Smith’s Strictly No Dags, Dropkicks or Uglies

***Party of the Year***

This story is based on an original idea by Skykat

Chapter 52

VENGEANCE

No noise other than Gypsy’s sobs and the raging storm pervaded the quiet of the common room, its wall adorned with a blown-up photograph of Gypsy naked and scrawled above in large bold letters the single word SLUT. (Chapter 24: Night Talk)

Centuries passed and nothing but tears to mark their passing.

But at last all time was done. The storm abated. Shadows stilled. A gentle sunlight stole through the curtain of softly falling rain to lend golden hues to the quiet day. Through the silvery raindrops rippling on the sunlit stream, Eleanor spoke with Megan again, her voice devoid of all emotion, all that happened so long ago now.

Harry never truly loved me, just as my friends had warned. Arnold claimed I had gone with him willingly and given my consent and my fiancé accepted his brother’s story above my own. He said I was soiled and he could not marry me now. That no man would or should. My godmother, artless and unworldly, was easy prey for Harry’s charm and sadly believed the lies. A woman then had no rights and, as my betrothed even though he’d rejected me, Harry’s word was law. He persuaded Aunt Beatrice my mind must be weak to do what I had done and, on his suggestion, I was to be sent away to a convent for a year or more. I saw at once his intentions were to have me declared insane and thus seize the fortune for himself, but my godmother refused to listen, thinking me delusional. I had alienated all my friends and had no one to turn to. I couldn’t bear the thought of being locked away forever…

**********

It was only when Gypsy and Kit reached the annex that they realised how deceptive the thick black smoke had been. The flames were contained to a small area at the front of Hartwell Mansion and to judge by the shouts, cheers and gushing water it sounded like things were fast getting under control. Gypsy laughed in relief, about to say something to Kit - Megan had been striding too far ahead of them - when a blinding flash of light momentarily dazzled her vision and for a crazy second she thought she saw…

But it had to be her imagination, right? That weird experience in the abandoned River Restaurant, when she and Megan heard the low whistling and watched the eerie, green-tinged light streak through the sky, well, that had to be some freak weather condition and she’d just been swept up in Megan’s talk of omens. She didn’t truly believe in ghosts. She’d imagined the White Lady standing in an upper window of Hartwell Mansion in bridal gown and veil…hadn’t she…?

She conveniently swept aside the niggling little doubt that maybe it hadn't been Megan they followed. Anyway, the image was gone now, quickly as it came. It had probably been no more than a fleeting glimpse of her own reflection shimmering through the orange glow of firelight. Gypsy glanced briefly down at the costume she’d taken from the Summer Bay High props department, the wedding dress torn, grey and mud-splattered now although it had been pristine white and perfect when she’d taken it out of the trunk. She bit her lip.

Given her history, maybe the soiled look suited her.

She’d even scored with a boy, whose name she couldn’t even remember now, right here on the Love Seat last summer. Just some random holidaymaker she’d been chatting to on the beach when it began to pelt with rain and they’d needed to find shelter fast. Hartwell Mansion was the nearest place and she knew for a fact Hayley had invited a crowd of friends over that day so she’d pass unnoticed as she had before. Their kisses led to more, their desire for each other surpassing all else, the thrill heightened by the chance of getting caught and the gymnastics they had to perform in the limited narrow space. He told her, as he pulled on his pants, the last of the dying raindrops running down his bare chest, that she could make her fortune in the city and, busy trying to untwist the strap of her bikini top as she sat, she asked him what he meant.

“Selling it. I don’t mean just as any pro though. I could see you as a high class call girl. Can’t believe I got it for free!” He smiled as he retrieved his shirt and was baffled and angry when she flew at him, digging long fingernails into his face, drawing blood.

She didn’t remember his name, but she remembered all the names he’d called her. She didn’t remember his name, but she remembered afterwards sitting all alone on the beach and crying till her eyes stung and her throat was like sandpaper. And even then crying some more.

What Hayley had done, pinning up a poster-sized photo of Gypsy naked, with the lipstick-painted word “slut” scrawled in giant letters above, in Summer Bay High’s common room for the whole school to gawk at, had been cruel beyond belief. Everybody knew Gypsy’s background. Everybody knew that as a tiny baby she’d been bound hand and foot and left to die in the searing heat at the top of jagged cliffs. It was only by pure fluke that three small boys wagging school had found her there dumped like a piece of trash.**

And a small voice inside her told her trash was all she was and all she would ever be.

“Gyps, we gonna stand here admiring the view forever? Maybe we should go round the front, see how the guys are doing. I swear I heard Noah shouting orders out there!”

Kit’s question, the joy in her voice that her fiancé was okay evident, cut into her thoughts.

“Wait. You wanna know where that photo of me naked came from?” There was a feigned gaiety in Gypsy’s voice though, given the way Kit swung round so quickly at the light touch on her arm, she wondered if her friend could see right through her and know how broken she was inside. “That sleazeball Adam Kerr whipped the sheet off me and snapped it on his mobile after we made out.”

“You made out with Hayley’s lackey Adam Kerr?” Kit couldn’t conceal her astonishment.

“Uh-huh. Two days ago. In one of the little guest rooms up there.” Gypsy indicated, grinning. “Just to get up Miss Piranha’s nose. And I figured if he ever showed that pic to Hayley it’d get up her prissy nose even more so he got to keep the pic.”

Kit stared at her, still stunned. “I never even knew there were any guest rooms. How the hell did you get in? Somehow I can’t see Hayley opening the door and welcoming you with open arms. Didn’t the staff try and stop you? Didn’t you ever set off alarms or appear on security cameras?”

Gypsy laughed. “Why, you have such a suspicious mind, Kittykins!” She patted her hair and spoke affectedly, mocking Hayley. Her eyes danced as she looked back at Kit.

“You know Miss Piranha is always bringing her hangers-on back here, hoping they’ll swoon over her latest designer dress or diamond studded necklace or whatever? The staff assumed I was one of her friends from school when they saw me so why would they bother with cameras and alarms? As for getting in, simples. Kane Phillips showed me how. He told me he did the place over way back before the Smiths moved in. The little window never closes to properly because the lock is fake and there’s a secret staircase hidden in the wall for lovers’ trysts, see? They must have been a frisky lot back when Hartwell Mansion was first built! And I think we both know how Hayley got the keys to Summer Bay High to pull her dirty trick.”

“Kim Hyde?” Kit suggested.

Gypsy nodded agreement. “Kim Hyde. Nice enough guy, but when it comes to Hayley…”

“Brains in Pants!” Kit supplied.

“And a bit too dim to ask why she wanted them in the first place,” Gypsy added. “The perfect Patsy.”

Kim Hyde had been trying to impress Hayley ever since he started Summer Bay High and Kim’s Dad happened to be Principal Barry Hyde. Hayley would easily have sweet-talked him into stealing the keys from his father’s briefcase. No doubt that jerk Adam had showed Miss Piranha the photo and then, hoping to get inside the ice queen’s knickers, had happily gone along with her idea to have it printed and enlarged for public display.

An aching loneliness overwhelmed Gypsy again as she recollected stumbling across the poster-sized picture of her naked self when she, Jack, Noah and Kit, using the spare keys Noah was entrusted with as school counsellor, had taken shelter from the Baystormer.

It was only when Kit stroked her back that she realised she was crying. “I’m sorry, Gyps,” Kit said gently. “Sorry too I can’t be Will or Jack…”

“You’re a friend, Kit,” Gypsy said in a quiet, subdued voice. She smiled sadly. “The only one I have even if we did only bond through our mutual hatred of Miss Piranha. And sometimes you don’t need sex. Sometimes you just need a hug from a girlfriend.”

Kit immediately embraced her warmly. “You got it, girlfriend! And any time you want payback on our mutual enemy you got that too.”

“Thanks. It might be a bit sooner than you think.” Gypsy pulled herself together and impatiently brushed away her tears, angry with herself for letting Hayley get to her so much. “Kane Phillips took me on a short tour. Guess whose bedroom is just down the corridor from the guest rooms? While everybody’s busy putting out the fire, guess whose bedroom we could trash?”

Kit returned her broad grin. Hayley had made her life hell when she found out she’d had an alcohol problem. And she was furious with Miss Piranha for destroying what little self-esteem Gypsy had managed to build up behind that tough, confident façade. Revenge was going to be sweet.

“Deal!” she said emphatically.

**********

On the day she died, Lady Eleanor Hartwell smoothed down the satin wedding dress and placed her wedding veil carefully over her head. A glorious bridal bouquet of red and white roses had arrived, delivered in error by an over-zealous florist, unaware or unwilling to acknowledge the wedding had been cancelled. She picked up the flowers and sniffed their beautiful scents, and as she did so caught sight of her reflection in the three-winged mirror of the mahogany dressing table. Years ago when she’d been but a small child, she and her great friend Arabella would often amuse themselves with infant games, pretending that the dresser’s intricate carvings of plants and fruit were real or that they could appear and disappear at will by hiding from the mirror. The room had rung with laughter and friendship then. There was no laughter, no friendship, now. Today, on the day that should have been the happiest of her life, there was nothing but emptiness.

She lifted the train of her wedding dress and walked slowly, quietly down the hidden staircase of Hartwell Mansion, making her way to Hartwell Woods, to where the river waited patiently, sparkling and chattering in the sunlight. She lifted back the bridal veil and gazed deep into the water that would soon be her grave.

The golden rays of the sun, the pure whiteness of the clouds, the glittering blue of the river, that day all screamed at her eyes, the river’s hushed lapping seemed to crash like the thunder of her heartbeat, the wind, no more than a zephyr, whooshed in her ears. A few curled, dead leaves, fallen like tears down from the Weeping Willow across the bank, floated haphazardly downstream towards their sad destiny, and she threw the bouquet in after them, watching as though in a dream while the roses, quickly separated and destroyed, joined the melancholy journey. A movement close by, almost imperceptible, caught her attention. A large grey spider hurried by, busy with its life and living, busy with a world no longer hers. And then she jumped, shocked by the river’s iciness as it took her in its arms. The water began to fill her lungs, and she surrendered to her fate, closing her eyes forever, as blackness enfolded…

**********

She found herself in Hartwell Woods. How long had passed since she stood by the river, she could not tell. Her body was weightless, her footfall noiseless, her every breath out of step with time. Grey half-light streamed down through the hushed treetops and silver clouds sailed in a dark pool of sky. A sudden rush of air disturbed the night. A flock of bats darkened the moon briefly and then were gone. Silence fell once more. Eerie, heavy, empty silence. Lost, forsaken, alone in death. Waiting.

But no peace came. No quietude, no perfect sleep, no silent watchers to take loved ones to rest. Only an aching loneliness, a yearning for the love of another human being, consumed her.

She walked the places she had walked in life. In Hartwell Mansion some of the old furniture remained: the mahogany grandfather clock in the hall; the specially commissioned painting of Hartwell Woods; the triple-mirrored dresser at which she had once sat. Sometimes she thought the girl who looked in the mirror saw her and she would try to speak with her but the girl was too afraid and, though perhaps the same age as Eleanor had been, would snatch up the toy bear that rested on her bed, clinging to it like a terrified child while her eyes scanned the room in terror.

Yet somehow Eleanor knew she would find her freedom in the very room that many, many years ago had been her own. And never had she been more sure than she had been tonight, drawn as she was like a magnet to another so wronged, so friendless, so broken-hearted, to the one who could finally set her free.

In the vast grounds where the Summer House had once stood, she had at last been able to tell her story.

“Harry, as my intended, took my wealth, my home, everything I owned. My godmother was cast out like a pauper and had no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of relatives. And I…I roam for eternity...”

The voice faded away. Memories were all that was left, all that had always been, in every blade of grass, every ripple of the river, every whisper of the breeze, triggering Megan’s psychic powers to see and hear all that had gone before.

And, exhausted by the burden, she began to weaken now.

Images flooded her mind: Noah and Jack racing to put out the fire; Irene, helpless, trapped by the fallen beam of a collapsed roof; Barry, near death, his son Kim, his face tear-streaked, kneeling nearby pumping water from his chest and desperately begging him to live; Will, gritting his teeth in pain, injured, alone, on a narrow, stony ledge down one of the old pits that dotted the Ancient Path of Whitelady Woods; Kane and Martha, isolated on an island in the ocean and both badly hurt; Cassie, unconscious, rich, red blood pouring from her temple; Gypsy and Kit laughing as they ran up the secret staircase; Hayley…oh, God, Hayley!

Megan saw the White Lady enter the room and then, like the last flame of a dying candle, her power flared brightly, illuminating the scene, and died.

And all she knew for certain was that Lady Eleanor had lured Gypsy and Kit to Hartwell Mansion…to where Hayley’s only chance of being saved lay in the hands of the two people who detested her most…

**See Chapter 26: Tramps and Thieves

[I love music]

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I really want to begin drawing this story to a close now to concentrate on other writing projects so apologies if this latest chapter seems rushed. I realise it doesn’t ring true that Gypsy, Hayley, Kit and Cassie would just be left to chat together after what happened but taking them through police procedures (and also more long explanations about the White Lady) would drag the fic out too much - not as if it isn’t long enough already!

You, Being One of the Beautiful People, are Cordially Invited to Hayley Smith’s Strictly No Dags, Dropkicks or Uglies ] ***Party of the Year***

This story is based on an original idea by Skykat

Images flooded her mind: Noah and Jack racing to put out the fire; Irene, helpless, trapped by the fallen beam of a collapsed roof; Barry, near death, his son Kim, his face tear-streaked, kneeling nearby pumping water from his chest and desperately begging him to live; Will, gritting his teeth in pain, injured, alone, on a narrow, stony ledge down one of the old pits that dotted the Ancient Path of Whitelady Woods; Kane and Martha, isolated on an island in the ocean and both badly hurt; Cassie, unconscious, rich, red blood pouring from her temple; Gypsy and Kit laughing as they ran up the secret staircase; Hayley…oh, God, Hayley!

Megan saw the White Lady enter the room and then, like the last flame of a dying candle, her power flared brightly, illuminating the scene, and died.

And all she knew for certain was that Lady Eleanor had lured Gypsy and Kit to Hartwell Mansion…to where Hayley’s only chance of being saved lay in the hands of the two people who detested her most… (chapter 52: Vengeance)

***Chapter 53***

***Closure***

Gypsy never knew how or why or she moved so fast. All that she knew was that something in her far deeper than she ever knew existed flew into her heart and to her surprise she cared. She cared about what was happening to Hayley, about Cass, about so many people…

She was vaguely aware of Kit helping a groaning Cassie to her feet; she vaguely remembered that the slumped figure of Cassie in the doorway had alerted them to something being very wrong, as she tore across the room and fought with Hayley’s attacker. She heard herself yelling at him, screaming, kicking, scratching. To her relief, she suddenly wasn’t alone in the fight any more. Other people had come to help, other students from Summer Bay High. She kicked him once more as her helpers dragged him away and heard Hayley gasp as in the struggle the scarf that masked his face slipped away to reveal Adam Kerr.

“Ssh, ssh, it’s okay now, it’s okay,” she soothed as though to a tiny child as she enveloped her sobbing enemy in her arms .

*****

When Megan woke at last from the blackness and opened her eyes to the early morning light filtering through the trees, faded images tumbled crazily around her head like the lingering residue of a peculiar dream. Dizzy and crook, she staggered uneasily to her feet, for the first time in her life self doubt about her psychic powers creeping in. What was the point of knowing? What was the point of feeling the pain and distress of her friends when she could do nothing at all to help? She was alone out here by Whitelady Woods and even if there had been anyone to tell, how would she get the authorities to listen? How could she help so many people? The task seemed impossible.

“I don’t know what to do.” She spoke aloud to the sun-glowing sky, tears of helplessness and frustration wetting her cheeks. “Please someone tell me what the answer is!”

“Friendship.” A crisp voice sliced the air.

A mysterious beam of green light shone through the trees of Whitelady Woods. As Megan watched transfixed it gradually became a tremulous white shape. Where over the centuries it had often been glimpsed before, stood the shimmering, translucent figure of a beautiful young bride. The White Lady.

The leaves of hundreds of trees rustled and sighed with whispers.

“Megan, it is I, Eleanor. My time here is short and I must be swift. I used you in order to connect, which weakened you. For this, I apologize, but it was borne of necessity. Like I, the girls named Gypsy and Hayley each nursed a broken heart and shut out all those who would love. It drew me to them. When Gypsy wore the wedding dress my link with her grew stronger than ever. Through you, her selfless act of friendship became mine and released me from being bound forever to this earth. I am at last free. I wished however to repay your kindness. I have ensured all your friends are safe but one. No matter how I tried I could not reach the boy trapped in the Woods…” The figure began to fade away again, its light diminishing as the whispers fragmented and Megan strained her ears to understand. “Trees…mystical powers block my own…another death…I am losing…wish you well…”

The White Lady disintegrated and silence fell once more.

*****

The Summer Bay emergency calls had come in thick and fast. The strange thing was, nobody ever did find out who made them. The telephone number proved not to exist. The voice had been female, emotionless. It gave nothing more than the details of the injured person and where they were. The mystery remains to this day.

*****

Much, much later, when fire fighters had quenched the fire and partygoers begun to wind their way homewards, when the police had taken dozens of statements and contacted families, Gypsy remembered anew that they were enemies and always would be. She and Kit sat at the little dining table, huddled together whispering, while Hayley and Cassie sat side by side on the two-seater sofa. The police had brought them hot drinks then left the four alone together in one of the smaller lounges of Hartwell Mansion. They had assumed they were friends and as friends would like a little time out.

But now the air seemed to crackle with hostility and Hayley drew a deep breath before she spoke. “Thanks,” she said awkwardly, “for what you did.”

Dusk was falling, darkening the as yet unlit room. Flashing blue and white lights from emergency vehicles danced intermittently on the walls and emergency sirens wailed like banshees. A chill crept in through the open window but Gypsy’s glare was even icier. Hayley looked quickly back down into the mug of hot chocolate she held as if fascinated by its swirly brown depths.

She was trembling and glad Cassie was with her. You needed friends more than ever at times like this. She had been so close to being raped. It would have happened without Gypsy. Her heart still thudded with fear though she was calmer now. Nobody had managed to get in touch with her brother Will yet, but she had spoken on the phone to both her adoptive parents. Their concern had stunned her. She’d always thought they didn’t care about her. How could she have been so wrong? They might not be her biological Mum and Dad but they really did love her.

George Smith had cancelled his important business meetings in London and booked the earliest flight out. He’d be back on Australian soil tomorrow. Julie Smith, already on her way back from the States when she’d taken Hayley’s call, had a surprise announcement. Not only was Hayley’s brother Nick coming home now that the movie he’d starred in was finished, but Nick’s girlfriend was with them! Hayley hadn’t even thought of her kid brother as being old enough to have a serious girlfriend. It was kind of cute.

Brooke had begged to say a “quick hi” and then prattled happily about nail varnish and what was the best hairstyle when travelling and what did Hayley think of the shocking gossip about Katie Price, hot off the press in the latest edition of Hello? She spoke as if she’d known her forever and Hayley found herself smiling. Mum had only told Nick and Brooke a watered-down version of what had happened, that Hayley (she felt a wonderful shiver of happiness as she heard Julie describe her to Brooke as “my daughter”) had thrown a party while her parents were away and things gone badly wrong, but it was obvious Brooke was trying to console her. Hayley had a feeling she was going to like Brooke. A lot. Strange to think not so long ago she’d been way too wrapped up in herself to like anyone. Even poor Cassie, whom she’d mockingly nicknamed Crazy Cassie, and yet who’d been such a good friend to her. Well, she’d never again make the mistake of not valuing true friendship. Heaps of things had changed since the party.

It had been a terrible shock to realise her attacker had been her classmate Adam Kerr. Like Hayley, he’d looked down on anyone who didn’t have wealth or beauty. Cassie had always warned her not to trust him, but back then she’d thought Cassie too stupid to know anything. He’d been arrested. It turned out he’d persuaded some mates to start a small fire as a distraction while he “talked to” Hayley, but the fire gotten out of control. His friends, alerted by the noise, had been just as shocked as everyone else by what was happening and fortunately just in time to help Gypsy drag him away. They knew he was keen on Hayley, they told the police, but they never dreamed he’d do something like this.

“Yeh, well, I wasn’t just gonna let you get raped, was I?” Gyspy snapped, bringing Hayley back to the present. “See, despite your dirty trick of putting the picture up in the school and unlike you I’ve got standards.”

Hayley jerked her chin upwards, unaware of the cream moustache that laced her upper lip.

“What picture? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, cut the innocent act, Princess Piranha!” Gypsy spat. “Who do you think you’re fooling?”

“Gyps, cool it,” Kit said gently.

Gypsy came crashing down from the heights of her anger, reminding herself Hayley had been through a terrible ordeal. It was hard though. Real hard when Hayley had been so cruel.

“The photo of me naked.” She tried to keep her voice even. “The one you blew up, pinned up in the students’ common room at Summer Bay High and wrote slut across in giant letters with bright red lipstick. Remember now?”

Hayley shook her head, her long, silky blonde hair falling across her face. She sounded tearful. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Gypsy. I really, truly don’t.”

She felt Cassie squeeze her arm reassuringly and, blinking back tears, gave her a half smile.

Kit dug into the pocket of her trousers and produced a lipstick engraved “Hayley S”.

“I picked this up near the picture. You can’t deny it’s yours. Who else can afford expensive stuff like this? Who else would go to all the trouble of having their own name engraved on their very own designer lipstick case? Or be big-headed enough to even think of it?” She couldn’t help adding, bristling as she remembered Gypsy sobbing broken-heartedly and destroyed.

Hayley continued to stare at her.

“Yes, okay, it’s mine, but I swear I don’t know how it got….”

“Let me spell it out to you,” Gypsy scathingly interrupted. “Adam Kerr took my photo. He showed it to you. You got it blown up and used Kim Hyde’s puppy dog crush on you to persuade him to steal his Dad’s keys to the school. Then you and that sick freak Kerr broke into Summer Bay High to put the photo on the wall. Not content with that, you had to write “slut" across it. But you made a big mistake because you left behind evidence that you'd been there. I’m sorry for what happened to you tonight, Hayley, but no way am I sorry I scared you half to death when I dressed up as the White Lady. You’re bitter and twisted and you deserved that.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t do anything!” Hayley still protested vehemently though Gypsy and Kit looked unconvinced. “Why are you lying?”

To everyone’s astonishment, Cassie who had been sitting quietly listening, suddenly sprang to her feet, clasping both hands over her mouth.

“Omigod! She cried guiltily. “This is all my fault!”

[I love music]

Strictly no dags, dropkicks or uglies, Hayley Smith decreed. It was to be the party of the year. Nobody could ever guess it would be so much more than that…

PENULTIMATE CHAPTER

You, Being One of the Beautiful People, are Cordially Invited to Hayley Smth’s Strictly No Dags, Dropkicks or Uglies

***Party of the Year***

This story is based on an original idea by Skykat

***Chapter 54***

***New Beginnings***

Cassie sat down heavily, her knees buckling under her. Her heart sank miserably as she realized everything she’d have to admit to. But it wasn’t Hayley’s fault about the picture. She could do this no matter how much it hurt. She would do this for her friend.

She took a deep breath. “I asked Kane Phillips to get the keys to Summer Bay High. So he did.”

“Why?” Kit asked blankly.

Cassie shrugged. “Well, because I gave him a hundred dollars.”

“Don’t be thick!” Gypsy snapped impatiently. God, she never thought she’d agree with anything prissy-features Hayley Smith said or did, but no wonder Miss Piranha called her Crazy Cassie!

“Cassie’s NOT thick,” Hayley said, her uncharacteristic loyalty stunning both Kit and Gypsy into silence for a moment.

“Okay,” Gypsy said at last. “I guess we just got our wires crossed. Kit meant what did you want the keys for? And where did you get a hundred dollars from? No offence, but you’re Gran’s not exactly rolling in dosh, is she? Unless…” she looked suspiciously from Cassie to Hayley.

Cassie shook her head. “It wasn’t anything to do with Hayley. I…I overheard Adam Kerr and his mates talking about needing to get the keys to Summer Bay High. They said Kane’d easily be able to get them but he hated Adam so…so…”

*****

Summer Bay High

The Day Before the Party

“What the **** do you want?” Adam sneered.

Cassie tried to pretend she hadn’t heard his mates sniggering behind her back. She knew she was a standing joke. She knew everybody thought she was crazy. But she wasn’t. She didn’t know how else to deal with her terrible secret. Why did Adam have to look her up and down in that creepy way that reminded her so much of it?

Not so long ago, Cassie had actually been flattered when Adam Kerr asked her out. She’d never particularly liked him, but he was rich and good-looking and she was desperate to have a boyfriend so it all made sense in a mixed up kind of way. She was so sure having a boyfriend would make her “normal”. Even though his recent death had finally ended the nightmare, she still didn’t feel normal because of what happened with Uncle Ben.

He’d sexually abused her for years.

It had begun when she was barely eleven years old, when Uncle Ben left the Army and came to live with Cassie and her grandmother on their isolated farm. Nobody knew because there was no one to tell. How could she bring herself to tell Gran? Ben was her adored only son and it would surely have broken her heart. And back then there had been no friends to confide in because Cassie had had no friends. Not knowing how to deal with the abuse, she retreated into her own world, muttering to herself or sometimes rocking herself to and fro for hours. People said she was crazy and she moved to school after school after school because of the bullying. It was only when she met Martha “Mac” MacKenzie at Summer Bay High that she found a friend at last. But Mac still didn’t know about the abuse. Cassie hadn’t yet plucked up courage to tell anyone.

Mac, who had a fiery on/off relationship with Jack Holden, couldn’t see what was the big deal about having a boyfriend. She couldn't stand Adam Kerr and tried to talk her friend out of dating him. Cassie stubbornly refused to listen. But Mac had been right.

They’d gone to catch a movie at Yabbie Creek and in the darkness Adam suddenly slid his hand down from her shoulder and into her clothes to loosen her bra strap, his fingers crawling towards and touching her naked breast. It brought back memories of all the terrible things her uncle had done and she fled outside in terror. Adam seemed fine, even apologetic, about it at the time, but ever since he’d made derogatory remarks about Cassie and Martha being dykes.

But then Cassie had another brainwave. No matter what Mac said about him being bad news, Kane Phillips had lovely eyes and in all the romantic novels Cassie read the hero always had lovely eyes - which meant he was a nice guy. So that meant Kane had to be a nice guy underneath his roughness, right? Mac had raised her own eyes Heavenwards when Cassie put forward her theory.

But Cassie did genuinely like Kane. Maybe if she gave him a hundred dollars to get the keys he’d be impressed enough to ask her out? There was something about his deep blue eyes that made her feel he was a different person behind the cruel tough guy act. Unguarded moments that only she saw because, more than anyone, she understood. Nobody knew better than Cassie what it was like to be on the outside, alone and friendless, pretending on the surface everything was fine when all the while the loneliness gnawed away inside.

She’d recognised it too in Gypsy and Kit themselves though their “friendship of convenience” had now become a “real friendship”, she added earnestly, breaking away from her narrative for a moment.

“True,” Gypsy acknowledged sheepishly, taken aback by Cassie’s perception. “It was just a” friendship of convenience”. To begin with.”

“Our mutual hatred of Hayley,” Kit agreed. “Sorry, Hayles,” she added, with an apologetic shrug.

“S’okay.” Hayley’s voice was barely audible. They’d had good reason to hate her. She’d used the fact Kit was an ex-alcoholic and the fact Gypsy had been so cruelly abandoned as a baby every way she could to make their lives a misery.

“After everything that happened with your uncle, Cass, and all that happened with Hayley tonight, it all seems so stupid and childish now,” Gypsy said quietly. “But go on. If you’re okay with talking about it, that is.”

Somehow, somewhere, some time in the sharing of confidences, they had all come together. There was no more room on the two-seater couch and so she sat beside Cassie on its arm, listening intently, elbows on knees. Kit, who normally would never have dreamed of coming within a five-mile radius of arch enemy Hayley Smith, was voluntarily squeezed on the couch next to her.

“Yeh. I am.” Cassie returned Gypsy’s warm smile and continued.

“I could ask Kane to get the keys for you,” she offered.

“You gonna **** him then? Or is it only chicks you do?” Adam scoffed.

Cassie flushed, wishing she dared slap the stupid smirk off his face.

“I’m not gay. Neither is Mac. But why should it matter? Would it be so terrible if we were?” She replied bravely although her voice turned into a high-pitched squeak.

“Maybe not,” Adam drawled. “You and your hot babe up for a threesome?”

His mates openly guffawed at the crass remark and Cassie wanted to cry.

“Just give me the money and I’ll get the keys,” she said, on the verge of tears.

“Maybe she’s paying him to **** her,” she heard Adam comment as she hurried away.

“I never thought of asking why he wanted the keys though. I just thought…”

Cassie left the silence to speak for itself. How could anyone have known Adam’s sick plan? That, with the school alarm silenced, he would leave a poster-sized photograph of a naked Gypsy displayed on the wall of Summer Bay High for the whole school to gawp at? To violate her over and over by reminding everyone that she’d been found, no more than a day old, tied with rope and left on sharp, jagged cliffs to die in the searing heat of the unmerciful sun, dumped like a piece of trash. And just in case there should be any lingering doubt in anybody’s mind about what she was and always would be, in giant red letters the world “slut” had been painted across with lipstick.

It was only by pure chance that Gypsy had been able to destroy the picture before Summer Bay High re-opened, when Noah, using the keys allocated him as school counsellor, had, with Kit, Gypsy and Jack, taken shelter there from the Baystormer.

“I don’t know what I thought. That he wanted to cheat on exam papers…play a practical joke... I didn’t think really. And, well, I knew Kane wouldn’t ask questions if he got the chance to make a few bucks…”

Cassie burnt up at the memory. Although he’d been quite happy to take the hundred dollars to steal the keys, Kane Phillips had mocked her in his usual sarcastic way when she’d asked him. And yet his eyes didn’t say what he said, she consoled her broken heart. His eyes said what so many lonely people said: if only someone would take the time to get to know them, they would be so very, very different.

When she returned with the keys, Adam was standing alone by a window, gazing out at something, the sun glistening on what looked like a cigarette lighter as he idly turned it over in his hands. Probably trying to make up his mind whether or not to go out for a smoke, Cassie thought. Wanting to get this over with quickly, she strode up behind.

He jumped sky high.

“****ing hell, why d’you have to sneak about like Creeping Jesus, you bloody retard?” He snapped, swiftly pocketing the item he’d been toying with. But not fast enough. It hadn’t been a cigarette lighter, Cassie realised. It had been one of Hayley’s three designer-engraved lipstick cases.

“I…I pretended I hadn’t seen it. I just had to get away. The look on his face when he was staring out the window freaked me out. It reminded me of my Uncle when he…when he…” A tear trickled down Cassie’s cheek and Hayley put her arm round her friend’s shoulders “It wasn’t what he was staring at…it was who…” She hiccuped back a sob. “I’m so sorry, Hayles. I tried to tell you, I swear…”

“I know you did. It’s not your fault, Cass. I didn’t listen,” Hayley whispered, white-faced.

She’d been way too busy treating poor Cassie like dirt. Putting her down. Calling her stupid. Telling her she was butt ugly and jealous. But never once telling herself the truth: she was jealous of Cassie and Martha’s friendship. And she needn’t have been. Why had it taken her so long to realise it? She didn’t deserve them, but Cassie and Martha were the greatest friends she had ever had.

*****

“Kane, what did you mean about the ghosts?” Martha asked.

They had grown comfortable together. Bonded in friendship. Exhausted, leaning on each other’s shoulders, they slept in frequent short bursts of fitful sleep, and each time they woke their fingers were still locked together and the sea-cooled wind still danced on their faces.

Kane Phillips grinned lazily, watching small sailing clouds float through an azure sky as the ocean sang its timeless lullaby and gulls squawked and dived.

“What made you suddenly think of that?”

“I don’t know. A dream, I guess. Were you winding me up or did it really happen?”

He paused for a moment as if weighing up whether or not she could take the truth. “Yeh. It did,” he said hesitantly. “I wasn’t winding you up, Mac. I did see a grey, misty shape when we were out there on the water and it did sound like it was calling something.”

“My name, you said.”

“Aw, that was just my imagination! It sounded like anything I wanted it to sound like.”

She knew he was lying but it was a kind lie designed to protect her. Ice cold shivers ran down her spine and she snuggled closer. Her squeezed her hand to reassure and she breathed more easily, glad that in their enforced isolation, stranded on this tiny island, she had come to know him. A few short days ago she’d thought him a total jerk. But they were friends now. Friends trusted and looked out for one another.

“Wow! Seriously weird.”

“Heaps of weird stuff seems to have happened in the build up to Hayley’s party, don’t it?” He said pensively. “World’s Most Uptight Principal Barry Hyde and World’s Most Cool School Secretary Irene Roberts getting it together as per Megan Ashcroft’s latest prediction, Will finally breaking up with Gypsy, Kim Hyde getting beat in the swimming finals, Cassie paying me to nick the spare keys to Summer Bay High…”

“Cassie?” Martha repeated, startled. “What the hell did she want those for?”

“No idea. You know how weird she…sorry.” He added when Martha gave him a look. “You know how Cassie sometimes gets these ideas? And she had the money up front, a hundred dollars, so…

“Didn’t you think of asking her where she got it?” Martha bristled furiously. Cassie was like a kid sister to her. “She might have…”

But he suddenly interrupted with a whoop of joy although the damage done to his stomach quickly turned it into a spasm of coughing. “Jeeezus, I thought I heard something!” He managed to croak. “Mac, look!”

She raised her head as high as her own injuries would allow and if it hadn’t been for the pain she could have danced. A boat was approaching the island…

*****

“Look, it’s up to you whether or not you tell your Gran about Ben,” Kit said, as Cassie finished telling her story. “Being Noah’s girlfriend - well, fiancée now,“ she grinned happily at Gypsy, with whom she’d already shared the news; “and him being a counsellor I know how much confiding in someone can help. But it’s your choice how much you tell and how much you don’t. Counselling might help you reach that decision.”

Cassie nodded. It was good to have friends to talk things over with. Friends cared. Just in the act of talking, she felt a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Gypsy had been silent for some time. At last she looked up, biting her lip. This wasn’t going to be easy. Why should Hayley make things easy for her?

“Hayley, I owe you a massive, massive apology. I was so sure you put up that photo in Summer Bay High that I dressed up as the White Lady just to terrify you. I knew you were petrified of ghosts. I could’ve killed you.”

She had washed off the luminous greasepaint and no longer wore the matching bonnet and gloves also borrowed from the school props department, but she still cut an odd figure dressed in a mud-splattered wedding dress borrowed from same.

“I want you to know something,” Hayely said sincerely. “I think what that toerag Adam Kerr did to you was sick. And I hate him for what he did to you every bit as much as I hate him for what he did to me. No matter what you think of me, I’d NEVER have done something like that.”

Gypsy swallowed. “I know. At least, I know that now. I’m really, really sorry.”

“And anyway it should’ve been me who got payback,” Cassie sighed guiltily. “I don’t believe in ghosts so I would’ve been fine,” she added, quite seriously.

“Cass, you dufus!” Gypsy spluttered.

Cassie looked up sharply, so used to being bullied that, despite her new-found confidence, she half expected it to begin all over again. Gypsy’s lips were twitching. Kit seemed to be trying hard not to laugh. Even Hayley looked amused.

And then Hayley suddenly caught Gypsy’s eye, which seemed to act like some secret signal to both Gypsy and Kit, and all three fell about laughing. Till they cried.

Yet it wasn’t like the laughter of the bullies. It was a different kind of laughter. It made Cassie smile too. She had a feeling they had, each of them, moved on to another level.

That they would never go back again.

*****

Across the rudder of the police rescue boat, PC Jeff Hayes could just about make out the two Summer Bay High students. Exactly where and how it was claimed they would be.

Every single one of the emergency calls had been startlingly accurate.

Like the rest of his colleagues in the Summer Bay High police force, Jeff was whacked but on a high. Alerted by the same female caller in each case, they’d made several successful rescues. The rumour buzzing over the airwaves was that the calls had all been traced to a restaurant near Whitelady Woods that had been abandoned for many years…

...from a telephone line disconnected decades ago…

Jeff’s wife, a police officer too, had told him of the ethereal-looking girl with the strange, piercing eyes of different colours, dressed in bizarre costume of wide-brimmed hat, baggy 1930s style trousers and high necked, puff-sleeved blouse teamed with dozens of rings, beads and bracelets, who had run frantically down the restaurant steps in laceless hobnail boots to greet them, long red hair flying wild and witch-like over her shoulders.

Kathy had thought at first that she’d been responsible for the emergency calls flooding into Summer Bay station and that it was all some kind of crazy student prank. But you didn’t have to be a genius to figure out there was no way her mobile phone would be able to obtain a signal in that isolated area thick with woodland. And already the news filtering through was that none of the calls so far had been a hoax.

Someone was hurt in Whitelady Woods, the girl garbled, fallen down a pit near the Ancient Path; something about the White Lady hadn’t been able to reach him. She said her name was Megan, that she was a student at Summer Bay High. No, she was not on any prescribed medication and no, she hadn’t been taken illegal substances, she told them impatiently, she was psychic, that was how she knew, and could they please go look for her friend instead of wasting time asking their polite little questions?

It was going to be too late to save one person in Summer Bay though. Way too late…

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I love the idea of the White Lady ghost making all those phone calls! Wonder if she got billed?!!

[I love music]

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Decided to keep you in suspense a bit longer about who died. Have a lot of loose ends to tie up too so this epilogue will be split into at least one more chapter, maybe a third (neither of them written yet) as I explain what happened to all the characters. Apologies too for the long delay again. I’ve had a very close bereavement so some parts of this have been very difficult and poignant for me to write.

Strictly no dags, dropkicks or uglies, Hayley Smith decreed. It was to be the party of the year. Nobody could ever guess it would be so much more than that…

This story is based on an original idea by Skykat

EPILOGUE

JIGSAW

(Part One)

Well, I asked a lot of questions

when I was three or four

Are there goblins, ghosts and witches,

monsters, murderers and more?

The fairytales read to me

Seemed full of death and gore

And pictures fell to pieces

In life’s crazy jigsaw

And as I grew I wondered

At all the sadness I saw

So I asked the politicians

they looked me in the eyes

Smiling all the while they glibly spun their lies

They told me war was peace

and they told me peace was war

And pictures fell to pieces

In life’s crazy jigsaw…

It was a year to the day since their friend’s death.

The morning rain had stopped and a burst of sunlight began to stream through the stained glass windows of the Summer Bay church. As though specially invited and eager to be part of the memorial service, a myriad of colours danced merrily inside like ribbons caught on a breeze. Blinking a little in the dusty brightness, Kit frowned up at the window’s pictures. They looked like moons now. Or even dinner plates. But definitely not…

“Hard boiled eggs. I never heard anyone call them that before.” Noah’s mock-despairing whisper tickled her ear as he followed her gaze and read her mind. She stifled a giggle, no longer afraid to find humour in a House of God. She still wasn’t quite convinced about life after death, supreme beings and heaven and angels, but she was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, she said, and, well, it was a nice idea, even if it probably wasn’t true though it might be. And Noah laughed and kissed her. As he did now, sharing the memory.

*****

It had been in the early days of their relationship. Lots of things still puzzled her about his faith but she was keen to learn.

“Noah, why do they have hard boiled eggs?”

Startled, Noah, who had been admiring the religious carvings in the wooden pews, looked up, half expecting to find a group of people picnicking in the aisles.

They had driven out to have lunch and visit a medieval church and Kit, bless her, was trying hard to take an interest in her fiancé’s strong Christian beliefs. She had nodded gravely while he showed her the specially-created window where, he explained, lepers could gather outside to listen to the Mass, and she had asked intelligent questions about altars and chalices and ceremonies.

Now she indicated with an expansive wave of her hand, biting her lip in concentration. “Behind their heads. The saint people.”

“Halos.” Noah amusedly rolled his eyes to the Heaven where he believed his God and angels dwelled. “I love you, Kit Hunter. Even though you’re crazy.”

*****

Something made Cassie turn. She never knew why. There are many such moments in our lives. Perhaps some imperceptible sound or movement or scent alerts us or perhaps the knowledge comes from a power hidden too deep within our psyche to understand. She saw Kit and Noah kiss and she nudged Kim and nodded in their direction, her large brown eyes shining with happiness.

Kim squeezed her hand and grinned back. He was much more confident nowadays. He had to be. Being voted student representative at Summer Bay High meant liaising between pupils and staff, dealing with officialdom, queries, events, complaints and a thousand and one other things. He’d blushed to the very roots of his hair when stamping and applause greeted the result of the school election. Originally, he’d had no intention of even standing as a candidate but his friends and Cassie, his girlfriend, had talked him into it. Okay, anything for a quiet life, he’d agreed, and thought that would be an end to it.

Kim was the only one shocked when his landslide victory was announced.

He saw the proud look in his father’s eyes and his heart soared. No, somersaulted! How could he ever have ever doubted his love for him? Barry might never be able to forgive himself for his terrible crime, but his son understood it had been done out of the pure, beautiful, unconditional love of a parent for a child. Cassie had helped him see that. They’d been going steady for a year now. A lot of things had changed in the last twelve months.

There was no pressure on him anymore to go to college. Kim had been offered a full-time job at the Yabbie Creek Animal Rescue Centre where he already worked as a volunteer. The pay was so low as to be almost non-existent and the hours were long and irregular but on the scale of job satisfaction the reading was off the scale. Being outdoors, working with animals, was what he’d always dreamed of doing. He would be taking up the post when he left Summer Bay High after taking his HSC next year. Surprisingly enough, everyone expected Kim to pass. He never would be academic, but his schoolwork had improved drastically now he was more relaxed, at peace with his father, and happy with Cassie.

It was odd how they had never been particularly close before the tragedy and yet afterwards they instinctively sought each other out.

Kim remarked on it once to Megan Ashcroft and she smiled her slow, knowing smile and said it was meant to be, that as gentle souls they would always be drawn together. It had been so since the beginning of time, she added. Go down to the beach very early on a quiet morning, Megan said, just as the sun begins to rise. Listen to the ebb and flow of the sea, let its music sweep into your soul and know then the eternal love of true friendship.

Had anybody else spoken in the same peculiar way that Megan did, they would have been laughed at. With Megan, it was different. She was the voice of logic and yet reassurance for those who found it difficult to believe, as Noah and others did so easily, that their friend had merely shed the shackles of mortality and gone on ahead to another time, another place, where eventually all would meet again. She had no belief in any organised religion, whether Christian or Buddhist, Sikh or Muslim. Megan’s only faith was in the renewal of nature. That, just as spring begins anew year after year, those we loved would live on forever in our hearts. Nor did she have any answers as to who or what the White Lady was. Perhaps she really was the wraith of Lady Eleanor Hartwell tied to earth, perhaps she was no more than a memory. She didn’t know and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was love and friendship.

Everyone at Summer Bay High drew strength from Megan’s simple words. Next month she and her boyfriend Tony Lombardi would be spending a year in Italy with his Italian family. But she had no qualms about leaving, she confided in Kim. With he and Cassie to look out for them, no student in the school would be alone.

Noah and Kit would be taking a gap year before Uni and TAFE. While he was away, Cassie, who still hadn’t decided which career she wished to pursue, would take Noah’s place as school counsellor at Summer Bay High. She had studied hard over the last year, taken counselling courses, worked alongside Noah, and most of all, was seeing a counsellor herself over her own terrible secret of her uncle’s abuse. She knew how much it meant to have someone to confide in. And she would never forget the first day she had “flown solo” as Noah put it.

Cassie could hear the muffled sobs even before the little eleven-year-old knocked timidly on the door.

“Come in!” she called, hoping she’d injected just the right note of sympathy and brightness into her voice. First impressions were so very important. Students had to know they could trust her and that she wouldn’t fall to pieces.

Lynette Bell - she hadn’t introduced herself, but Cassie caught sight of the name on a school book peeking out of the bag that the younger student dropped to the floor as she sank defeatedly into the easy chair beside her - had obviously made the decision to see the school counsellor on the spur of the moment. There was thick, fresh mud on her trainers and her hair was scooped back into a pony tail as though she’d been headed for games and actually made it as far as the changing block before suddenly changing her mind and hurrying back. Cassie noted too the streak of mud across Lynette’s cheek, the graze on her elbow and her dirt-smeared knees. She felt pretty damn certain that Lynette hadn’t fallen over her own feet. She was right.

“I know you try and I know you’re nice n’all, but you can’t really know what it’s like,” Lynette hiccupped at last, having sobbed for a full ten minutes before she spoke, absently tossing another tear-soaked tissue on top of the pile that was already gathering on the coffee table as though determined to build a miniature paper mountain. She plucked yet another from the box and drew a shaky breath. “You’re so popular and everybody likes you. You can’t possibly know what it’s like to be…to be bullied.”

Cassie’s heart lurched in pity as she took Lynette’s small, thin hand in her own and listened quietly as she told of the misery she’d endured for so long. It had started with whispers behind her back. Name calling. Sniggering at her hair, at her freckles, at whatever she wore, at whatever she said or did. Then it escalated. They hid her lunch, broke her glasses, tore her schoolbooks, smeared her locker with jam. They tripped her up. Pushed her down stairs. Sometimes, after school, a group would spring out from nowhere and chase her to the bus-stop hurling sharp stones and clumps of grass after her. It had been only two or three students who bullied her to begin with. Then it was seven or eight. Then a dozen or more. And then…She gave a weary, heartfelt sigh and said maybe everyone, because those who didn’t join in watched from the sidelines and did nothing to stop it.

“I tried telling them to stop but it only ever made it worse.” Now that she’d found courage enough to confide in someone the floodgates opened and Lynette poured out her heart. “I didn’t know how to tell any of the teachers and I just couldn't tell Mum or Dad. Mum miscarried twins just before I started here and she’s still being treated for depression so the olds are always at the hospital and stuff. I don’t want to worry them any more. I lie to them that I have heaps of friends and I love Summer Bay High.”

Lynette had a dental appointment the sunny afternoon a shamefaced class of Summer Bay High Year Sevens sat listening to Cassandra Turner give a talk on bullying. She told of how badly she’d been bullied at high school until someone befriended her. Of how isolated and alone she’d felt. Of the hurt and humiliation. Sometimes she had to brush tears from her eyes and at times her voice was strangely croaky.

“It’s not funny,” Cassie finished. “It’s not a game. It’s not just something to do when you’re bored. Bullying is much, much more. It’s somebody’s life you’re destroying. I never, EVER want anyone else at Summer Bay High to go through what I went through. I hope WE’RE all better than that.”

She never once mentioned Lynette. She gave no indication whatsoever that she was even aware anyone had been bullied among the newbies. But next day Lynette almost bowled her over as she arrived at school.

Kim was parking the car and Cassie was waiting for him to catch up with her, looking up at the sky and wondering if the rain would hold off for the beach barbie they’d been invited to that evening. It had teemed all night and the ground was still slippery. As Lynette proved, her heel sliding as she reached her mentor. She somehow managed to narrowly stop herself from causing a major collision between her head and Cassie’s stomach.

“Sorry, sorry.” She said breathlessly. Already she looked different. Her eyes were brighter and ready laughter tumbled from her lips. “I just wanted to say thanks for everything. And to tell you they said at the hospital Mum’s getting better. And I didn’t know you were bullied. Mia and Caitlin were telling me all about the talk you did yesterday. They said it was terrible, what happened to you, and I felt awful because I thought you’d always had it easy.”

“Mia and Caitlin?” Cassie smiled back, finally able to get a word in.

“They’re in my class. They’re nice. Never bullied me or anything. We’re going for ice creams at the Diner at lunchtime. Gotta go, we’re meeting Hannah by the gates.”

“Any time!” Cassie laughed.

“What was that all about?” Kim grinned, joining her as Lynette ran off again as though she couldn’t afford to lose a single second.

“It was all about my future,” Cassie replied, slipping her arm into his. “I’ve made up my mind. I want to be a social worker.”

[I love music]

This story is based on an original idea by Skykat

EPILOGUE

JIGSAW

(Part Two)

I dreamed the jigsaw pieces

Crumbled and shattered

Turned cold as ice

And like snowflakes scattered

But just when all seemed lost

Wild as a sea tempest tossed

I remembered a truth

I remembered you

For I’ve known family, lovers too

But friends made the circle

that made me and you

So we’ll laugh together,

We’ll cry together,

We’ll talk and walk some more

Down the same road we’ve walked

A thousand times before

Funny, though the path is twisted

And the signposts read all wrong

When you fall in step beside me

it’s only half as long…

So much had changed in the last twelve months, Barry Hyde reflected. He stood close to Irene at the memorial service, his heart soothed by the Summer Bay church’s mixed scents of wood, incense and candlewax and his spirit calmed by its comforting air of love. His silent prayers sang their way to the Heavens and Angels. He had found his God again. Or, he amended, his God had never deserted him; he had ostracized himself from his God, believing himself beyond redemption. Once he confessed to his terrible secret, of how he had killed his wife Kerry in a moment of fury and terror to protect his infant son, a great weight fell from his shoulders.

With the help of Irene and his now grown son Kim, and the support of the Summer Bay community, he had coped with the court case that followed. Alone, it would have destroyed him. He’d been so fortunate to have friends and the forgiveness of his son and the woman who loved him. This quiet church, with its dancing, dust-ridden sunbeams and candles burning with timid, wavering yellow light beneath its statue of Madonna and Child, was the same church in which he and Irene had taken their wedding vows six months earlier. He closed his eyes and thanked his God that he had been so blessed with love.

The pianist began to play the intro of a song their friend had loved, the harmony perfect as the grace of a bird in flight.

Gentle memories carried on its wings.

*****

The wedding was meant to be a simple ceremony: his son Kim as best man and Gypsy Nash, young friend and confidant of Irene, as bridesmaid. There were to be just a handful of guests: Kim’s girlfriend Cassie; Alf Stewart and Irene’s grown-up children and their partners. Things didn’t quite pan out like that.

The little church was bursting at the seams with friends and relatives, with the students he taught and with Summer Bay people, with well wishers and curious holidaymakers. Irene’s children and their partners arrived for the ceremony and the day could not have been more perfect. Her face glowed with happiness as they hugged, kissed and wept together, teenage angst and teenage arguments long forgotten. They took their places in the pews, laughing in baffled amusement at the subdued noise as the crowds they’d had to fight their way through spilled over into grounds and even graveyard in a joyous blend of colour and voices.

Of course, the media was there too, shouting their intrusive questions, clamouring for their attention. Try at they might, however, they could not break down the bond of friendship that closed ranks in a wall of overwhelming support.

The couple’s friends ferried reporters’ questions and deliberately blocked would-be newspaper photographs until they themselves indicated they were ready to face the press. Barry offered to give a short interview if they would agree to leave immediately afterwards. Amazingly enough, the newsmen and women were satisfied with that. After all, they reasoned cynically, there was no one now to seek revenge: his story had lived and breathed and died many years ago. His son bore no grudges. There was no family to mourn the wife he had killed as she tried to drown their son in the same way she had already drowned their firstborn. Kerry, housebound by her agoraphobia, had been way too shy to make friends. There was no one to give him the grief he felt he so richly deserved.

No one to punish him save himself.

And only when he and Irene were alone again did he sob, breaking down in her arms as he had sobbed so many times before, drawing strength from her love, hushed in her whispers. For Barry Hyde had been forced to face an unpalatable truth about himself.

He was a coward.

To kill to protect his baby son had been an act of love. To bury his wife’s body in an unmarked grave and keep the secret for years had been an act of selfishness. No matter what nightmares the years taunted him with they could never be punishment enough. No matter how many times he ran the images of that terrible night through his tormented mind and tried to tell himself all had been done for the love of his child, nothing could alter the fact he’d been too afraid to face up to the consequences of his crime. Even Kane Phillips had had had conscience and courage enough to show remorse for his own actions.

And, ironically, it had been Kane Phillips, once the most troublesome student in the school, who inadvertently shamed him into confession.

*****

Phillips had changed, Irene remarked, the day before Barry, after months of intensive therapy since his near drowning, was due to return to Summer Bay High and resume his post of principal. The sneer and sarcasm had gone, she said, and he wasn’t a loner anymore. He had friends nowadays, was always in the thick of some group. Kane and Martha McKenzie were often together too although there didn’t seem to be any romantic liaison. Martha confided in Irene that she’d regularly accompanied him to see his mother in Rowan House Residential Centre and that Diane Phillips seemed to be slowly improving.

“None of us ever dreamed his mother was a patient in a psychiatric hospital. Or even that she was still alive,” Irene mused, as they lay together.

She rested her head on Barry’s chest as they curled together and she gently traced her finger across his lips as she told him of the many changes at Summer Bay High.

“It will be fine tomorrow,” she promised.

He believed her. He believed everything about the woman he loved with every fibre of his being. She knew he had killed his wife to protect his child. She knew that, in terror and confusion, he had buried the body on a remote hill, the only witnesses his sister, now dead herself, and his infant son. But nor did she pressure him into confessing to the authorities. It will be in your own time, at your own pace, Irene said. And her brown eyes were full of love for him.

The day Barry Hyde cleansed his soul was bathed in sunlight and kissed with gentle breezes.

He leaned on Kim’s arm as he and Irene helped Barry negotiate the steps of Summer Bay High. Irene, Kim and Cassie had been sharing amused looks the whole car journey and now he knew why. Above the main entrance, the students had strung up dozens of balloons and home-made banners of welcome. Donald Fisher, who would retire once Barry was back in the swing of things, stood on the top step, one hand placed behind his back like a soldier.

“Welcome back, Mr Hyde.”

“Thank you, Mr Fisher. I am indeed honoured and humbled by the welcome.”

“Daaaddd!” Kim half groaned, half laughed.

Barry and Irene had met Donald and his partner June a few times socially since his return from America and were on first name terms, but in school hours both eschewed informality.

“Old habits die hard,” Barry smiled sheepishly, briefly puzzled as to why Cassie suddenly felt the need to race ahead to join Principal Fisher on the top step, but it all happening too quickly for him to think of any reason.

And then he discovered why. Like the Pied Piper, he seemed to have acquired a multitude of followers. An almost empty yard was quickly filling with students and noise.

“Mr Hyde, on behalf of every student in Summer Bay High, WELCOME BACK! Three cheers for Mr Hyde!” Cassie shouted into the megaphone that Don Fisher had produced from behind, both grinning broadly, for the plan they’d hatched had gone like clockwork. And she waved to the assembled crowd as though conducting an imaginary orchestra.

The would-be orchestra needed no second prompting. Loud cheers and thunderous applause immediately followed. If Barry had had a hand free at that moment he would surely have wiped away the tears that sprang to his eyes. Unfortunately, both hands were required to grasp his crutches and, simply because they could, those damn tears went right on ahead and trickled down his face to glisten on his cheeks and destroy forever his tough, no-nonsense image. If truth be told, however, Barry Hyde was the only one who believed there was a tough, no-nonsense image. The Summer Bay High students had long since seen through his façade, from the very moment he fell in love with Irene Roberts, in fact, and they knew he more than deserved his nickname of Robert Louis Stevenson’s creation Dr Jekyll, the gentle, sensitive alter ego of the fictional Mr Hyde.

And then his street cred, as Kim would call it, was lost forever too. Irene squeezed his arm and kissed his tear-stained cheek and the deafening applause became peppered with wolf whistles and shouts of approval. Forgetting his stern persona, unaware he was the only one who thought it even existed, Barry laughed aloud, no longer the same man who had once been too afraid to show his emotion.

It seemed wherever he went in Summer Bay High there was yet someone else who wanted to congratulate him. Flattered and embarrassed by his popularity, Barry found it exhausted him too. He hadn’t realised just how much being back teaching would tire him out. Irene had some secretarial work to catch up on in the afternoon and he told her he would be fine while she caught up with it: he had a long free period so he would sit in the classroom and read up on some notes until his class arrived.

He never made it that far.

Barry’s arms were aching from the extra effort required for getting to and fro and he had paused outside Year 12’s common room when a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. He leaned against the corridor wall, fighting to catch his breath. Because of the sticky afternoon heat, the common room door had been left wide open and open windows blew inside refreshing breaths of cooling air. Normally at this time, when the study period happened to be a particularly long one, a dozen students or more might have been inside, reading, relaxing or chatting, but the glorious day invited all to study outdoors or sunbathe on the nearby beach. And normally Principal Barry Hyde, a stickler for rules and regulations, would never have dreamed of trespassing on “student only” territory, but his weak body refused to take him much further.

Fervently hoping the students would overlook what he personally regarded as a major transgression, he guiltily limped his way towards a high-back, winged armchair. Having been in Summer Bay High for longer than anyone could remember, it was affectionately nicknamed Alf after Alf Stewart, well known Summer Bay resident, who could trace his ancestry in a direct line centuries back to one of the original founders of what was then a little fishing village named Sun Bay. It was where students would often sit if they wanted forty winks, for it faced the window that looked out on to a corner wall surrounding the little Victorian flower garden and offered the greatest solitude. Not only was there very rarely anyone walking past outside, but inside too the high back concealed whoever was seated. Stretching the crutches comfortably out in front of him, Barry closed his eyes for what he thought would be no more than five minutes…

He awoke to Martha Mackenzie’s distinctive Brookdown accent and from the urgency with which she spoke, he concluded a long and intense conversation must have taken place.

“…so you can’t keep beating yourself up like this. You’ve told Cassie and Hayley you’re sorry. They know you are. You can’t change the past.”

Barry was about to speak, cough, tap one of the crutches on the ground, anything to alert them to there being someone else present at their obviously very private discussion. But it was too late, the talk had already moved on.

“I wish I could though, Mac. I wish I…” the words, choked with emotion, were barely audible.

“But you can hold your head high! Kane, trust me on this,” she added, as a derisive snort met her remark. “Remember what we promised back on the island? That we’d never, ever have a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, but we’d always be friends? And as your friend I’m telling you this, never, ever forget you can hold your head high because you faced up to what you did. Aw, how about we go take a walk on the beach?” She continued gently when her companion, perhaps mulling over her speech, gave no answer except a small sigh. “You say you always feel better by the sea.”

Barry sat there for a long, long time after they’d gone. You faced up to what you did. The words haunted him. He looked deep inside himself and saw only darkness. He had no more excuses to keep his secret. Kim was no longer the small child to nurture and protect. For all the right reasons, he had done a terrible thing. For all the wrong reasons, he had kept his counsel years after the crime. He stared out at the nothingness of the brickwork that must mockingly foretell his future.

Kim and Cassie had the afternoon off and were travelling with a group of friends down to a rock festival. The gang were staying over with cars, tents and sleeping bags and wouldn’t be back for a couple of days. He and Irene were alone that evening when he told her it was time for him to confess.

Weeping softly, she said nothing but took him into the tenderness of her arms. Kissing, holding, taking comfort from each other in the warmth of their entwined bodies, they lay together and gave to each other their love. At last, with heavy hearts, they showered, dressed, packed the few things they thought he might need. Their first stop was at the old red-brick church in Yabbie Creek, where he knelt at the altar and said a prayer to his God. And then, under the harsh gaze of the watching moon, they drove along the steep, rickety original coast road, silent now save for the lapping of the ocean and the cries of silver-tipped gulls flying home to their nests, to the cold, sombre lights of Yabbie Creek police station.

A handwritten, emotional letter to Kim had been placed behind the steady ticking of the mantelshelf clock.

*****

The beautiful music sailed on the air. Thinking of the song's poignant words, Barry wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. Tears of sadness for those gone before and tears of gratitude for those friends who stood with him now.

The jail sentence he expected never happened. In the wake of the massive publicity given his case as a “pillar of the community turned killer” came overwhelming sympathy. Among the hate mail and the crank mail, messages of support flooded in from all over the world. Stories they had heard, that some had even lived through, of euthanasia, of post-natal depression, of those who had killed out of love. Ordinary people like you and I trying to make sense of a world that never will.

He was given a suspended sentence, allowed to continue teaching and instructed he must not leave Summer Bay for a period of five years. The latter was an easy option. His friends were in Summer Bay. His family. Those who would always love and support him.

He felt his hand pulled away from his face and, smiling a watery smile, he locked his fingers into his wife’s own. Their eyes met. It was friendship that had given him the strength to go on. Love and friendship that held them together. His heart twanged in happiness and his voice rose in song.

* “When you’re weary, feeling small

When tears are in your eyes

I will dry them all…”

*Bridge Over Trouble Water (Paul Simon)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: And, after nearly 4½ years, Part Three of this Epilogue will definitely be the concluding part of Summer Bay High!

[I love music]

You, Being One of the Beautiful People, are Cordially Invited to Hayley Smith’s Strictly No Dags, Dropkicks or Uglies

***Party of the Year***

This story is based on an original idea by Skykat

EPILOGUE

JIGSAW

(Part Three)

FINAL CHAPTER

They found Will, badly injured, trapped down a deep pit near Whitelady Woods’ Ancient Path, just in time. Another half hour or so, Dr Williamson said, and he might not have made it at all. Hearing that sombre statement seemed to wake up something in Hayley and Gypsy. Being his sister and his girlfriend, they’d been driven together to the hospital by the police, who’d broken to them the news of Will’s accident. They were quickly enfolded into Hayley’s little family group: her brother Nick, there with his American girlfriend Brooke, and Hayley’s adoptive parents, Julie and George. But, although they stood together and seemed to have called an uneasy truce, there was still a distance between them.

Rain was pattering against the windows, casting gloomy shadows in the little private waiting area, and a sudden gush of wind sent a pile of fallen brittle leaves scurrying along the path. Brooke, who’d never met Will but had been told so much about him, looked up and wiped her eyes. Hayley shivered and her mother’s arm tightened around her.

“I’m glad you’re my Mum,” she whispered, surprising herself.

She had always sarcastically called her adoptive mother Julie just because she knew it hurt. In fact, the more she’d been able to hurt her, the better. Hayley had been delighted when she’d discovered that, as a teenager, Julie had been obese and that her childhood had been lonely and poverty-stricken. She’d loved to hurl cruel jibes about her past, gloating when she saw her pain. She swallowed a shaky breath, expecting to be reminded of it.

But Julie only tenderly swept back her hair as though she were a very young child. “And I’m glad you’re my daughter,” she replied softly.

“We’ll always be here for you, princess. For all of our kids.” George stroked her back and squeezed Nick’s shoulder.

Hearing the catch in his voice, knowing he was trying to be strong for all their sakes, Hayley blinked back tears. All those wasted years when she’d resented Julie and George taking the place of her “real” Mum and Dad. They never did love her brothers more than Hayley. They never did freeze her out. It had been Hayley who froze them out. They loved her every bit as much as her own parents had loved her. Why had it taken her so long to realise?

And suddenly, inexplicably, her heart twanged for Gypsy.

Like Hayley, Gypsy too had been adopted. But Hayley had always had her brothers. She had had her parents until the tragic accident when she was five years old. She had always been loved.

Poor Gypsy was barely a day or two old when someone determinedly climbed jagged cliffs, tied her so tightly that the ropes cut into her skin, then left her to die, naked and alone, in the searing heat of a blazing midday sun.

Gypsy, who’d slept with dozens of guys but only ever truly loved Will, was watching the fallen leaves hurry on by, their day and their lives all done. Perhaps she had a name once. Perhaps she had brothers, sisters. Nobody would ever know.

“He’ll be okay, Gyps,” Hayley said gently.

“I know.” Gypsy returned Hayley’s reassurance in the same conciliatory tones. This wasn’t about them and their petty feuds anymore. It was about a boy they both loved.

And then at last Dr Williamson came to give them all the welcome news that they would allow visitors. No more than two at a time and no more than ten minutes to avoid exhausting the patient, he added, he was still very sick. But, he was pleased to tell them, Will was doing much better than anyone expected. Dr Williamson smiled as Nick punched the air and yelled “Yesss!” and Hayley and Gypsy flung their arms around each other, sobbing with relief.

“Oh, God, you guys are so lucky,” Brooke said poignantly, as Julie and George went in to visit, and Hayley and Gypsy sheepishly broke away from their spontaneous hug. “So very lucky to be best friends and to have each other. I always, always wished I had a girlfriend I could talk to.”

Strangely, Hayley and Gypsy didn’t correct her on the “best friends” mistake.

“You have us…” they both began.

“See what I mean?” Brooke grinned at Nick. “They know each other so well they even say exactly the same thing at the same time! It’s like a telescope connection,” She continued talkatively, turning her attention back to Hayley and Gypsy. “I watched a TV show once about these triplets who had a telescope connection. It was kinda freaky, but cool.”

But Nick, for once, was speechless, staring at Hayley as if he’d never seen her before. And, in some ways, he hadn’t. Not this kind, thoughtful Hayley anyway. Like Will, he’d always stayed out of his sister’s squabbles, but he was well aware that she and Gypsy were far from being friends. Or, at least, they hadn’t been when he’d left for Hollywood. Nick didn’t rate his own acting as highly as others did. Modestly, he reckoned he’d been plucked from drama school more because he looked perfect to play Harry in the low budget movie A Lonely Heart Never Sleeps than because of his skills. But, after years of training to be an actor, he did pride himself on being able to tell what was real and what was fake. And if Hayley wasn’t being genuine right now, then she deserved an Oscar for this performance!

Will, too, was baffled.

“My two favourite ladies,” he croaked, as Gypsy and Hayley sat at either side of his bed.

“Smoothie,” Gypsy teased, a lump coming to her throat, hiding from him her dismay at how vulnerable he looked in the whiteness of the hospital bed, though she shared a telling glance with Hayley. She bent over to kiss him, her gorgeous red hair falling over his face like rain. Despite the agonizing pain in his ribs, Will couldn’t resist cupping her face in his hands and kissing those full, cherry red lips.

“I love you, Gyps,” he said, when finally the need for air forced them apart.

“Will.” she licked her lips as though to taste him again, her beautiful gold-flecked green eyes pensive. “I was a fool to push you away. Can you forgive me?”

“Gyps, are you crazy?” He gasped in disbelief. “Can you forgive me for being such a jerk?”

Gypsy wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “You’ve never been a jerk, Will Smith. I’ve been the jerk. I’m the luckiest girl in the world to have you and I swear I’ll never, ever let you go again. I’m being selfish,” she added guiltily to Hayley. “I’m hogging Will and not giving you two a chance to talk.”

“It’s okay.” Hayley smiled back.

To Will’s amazement, she had said nothing when he and Gypsy smooched. Now she kissed her brother’s forehead.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she admonished. “I thought you were a goner. And, I’m warning you, if you ever do anything like nearly dying again, I’ll…I’ll kill you. Well, you know what I mean.” Hayley, realising the irony of her words, rolled her eyes at herself and Will’s obvious amusement. “I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

For a little while the three chatted and then Hayley, realising the ten minutes was nearly over, stood up.

“I’ll give you guys an alone moment,” she said. “Don’t pash for too long though. Remember it IS a hospital. What?” She queried, as Will gave her a look.

“I was just wondering, sis,” he drawled. “Where’s the nail varnish, the lippies, you know, all the stuff you usually chuck at me when you’re in a strop? You off to fetch an extra large bag?” He grinned although the effort of the long speech had left him breathless.

Hayley only shook her head. “Don’t push your luck, bro. Being an invalid won’t protect you. You’ll need to keep him in his place, Gyps.”

“Oh, I intend to, Hayles.” Gypsy tossed back her striking red hair and winked conspiratorially and, like Nick had been earlier, Will was speechless.

**********

“You know, this is going to sound dumb…” Hayley hesitated, as they stood in the corridor outside Will’s room, having swapped places with Nick and Brooke. “But I was wondering if the real reason we hated one another was…if it was because…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly.

“Because we’re too alike?” Gypsy finished for her, grinning. “Both big drama queens who love the limelight? I was thinking the exact same thing, Hayles. Maybe Brooke’s right. Maybe we do have a telescope connection. Though I just dunno where we’re gonna find time to go up on the roof and do all that stargazing!”

Hayley laughed, both at and Brooke’s confusion with words and Gypsy’s easy acceptance of her suggestion.

“What jerks we’ve been, Gyps.”

“Idiots,” Gypsy sighed.

“Miss Piranha!” Hayley suddenly saw the funny side of the nickname Gypsy had given her.

“Pollyanna!” Gypsy too chuckled at the nickname Hayley had christened her. “Were we for real?”

“We were fools.”

Gypsy nodded agreement. “Saddos.”

“Losers.”

“Brats.”

“Dorks.”

“Schmucks.”

“Friends?”

“Forever!”

***********

“I know it sounds crazy, Mac, but when we were on the island, when I thought I heard someone calling your name…I wonder if he was saying goodbye?”

The gang sat on the steps of Summer Bay High, where the sun was warm and the breeze gentle. Spring made promises and summer’s kisses had begun to filter slowly into the air. It was a day for memories and quiet reflection. Jack’s birthday.

Their first without him.

Nobody could have suspected that Jack had a heart condition. Nobody could ever have dreamed that someone so full of life could be snatched from them so cruelly. One minute Jack, Gypsy, Noah, Kit and Megan had all been fooling around down by the long abandoned River Restaurant. Then, noticing flames licking around Hartwell Mansion, Noah and Jack raced to help. Halfway there, Jack keeled over.

He was dead even before Noah reached him.

The medical authorities diagnosed a heart attack. Cardiac dysrhythmia. Sudden Death Syndrome. All that anyone at Summer Bay High knew was that they had lost a friend.

Kane turned to check on Martha. She sat a step above him her elbows resting on her knees, cupping her chin in her hands. It was still hard for her to speak of Jack without tears but with each day that passed it had gotten a little easier. She’d never been religious but she reckoned there had to be something more. It got her through the dark days. That and her friends. Kane had been a rock.

Martha had persuaded him to confide in Irene and Barry about his appalling home life. They were horrified to learn his mother was in long-term psychiatric care, his violent father in jail and his older brother dealing drugs from the filthy hovel where he slept. Irene had moved out of the Diner to live with her husband Barry, and Alf Stewart, who planned a round-the-world trip with his lady friend and had hired a new manager to run the business, suggested he needed a night-time caretaker who could live rent-free in her vacated apartment. If Irene and Barry could vouch for Kane, that was. They could and they did.

Kane was studying hard these days, determined to repay everyone’s trust in him, hoping to get into TAFE, the first step on the road to his ambition of becoming a sea captain. Martha herself planned to go to Uni. Teaching was what she’d always wanted to do, ever since she was a little girl. For a little while, the dream had been abandoned, swallowed up in illusions of fitting in with the so-called Beautiful People. It seemed strange to think that, back then, so many girls at Summer Bay High had been Hayley hangers-on, keen to aspire to being nothing more than empty-headed social butterflies. But since the night of Hayley’s party and Jack’s death things had changed for them all. Martha wanted to help and influence people, she said. As Jack had, just by being himself.

“Heaps of weird stuff happened that night,” she answered thoughtfully, smiling at Kane to let him know she was okay. “Megs, you saw the White Lady. Did that mean anything?”

Megan Ashcroft stood nearby with her Italian boyfriend Toni Lombardi. She was leaving with him at the end of the week to spend a gap year in Italy. Their bags were all packed.

“The White Lady! Wow!” Kirsty, Dani Sutherland’s younger sister, looked impressed. “She foretells death, don’t she? Did she tell you it’d be Jack? Ow! What was that for?” She frowned as her twin sister Jade elbowed her.

“Lucas!” Jade hissed.

Kirsty looked contrite. “Sorry, Luc. I didn’t think. That’s my trouble. I never do.”

“No. I don’t mind. It’s okay, Jade. I like to talk of Jack no matter what. Makes me feel closer to him,” Lucas, Jack’s younger brother and Jade’s boyfriend, said easily. “Does the ghost of Lady Eleanor Hartwell foretell death, Megan? And did she foretell Jack’s? I’ve often wondered.”

“The old superstition, that she foretold death, was no more than that. A superstition,” Megan replied. “Borne, like many superstitions, out of hearsay and fear. The White Lady has gone forever.”

“How do you know?” Dani asked curiously.

She and Davey Molyneaux were a serious item nowadays. And that was something no one ever thought would happen. But Rhys Sutherland was slowly learning to overcome his prejudices. It was no use pretending. The only reason he’d thought Davey not good enough for his daughter was because Davey was black. But a lot of people had taken a good hard look at themselves since the night of Hayley’s party. Discovered that certain things didn’t matter as much as they once thought they did.

“Lady Eleanor Hartwell, the White Lady, was a lost, lonely soul looking for friendship. Once she found that friendship she could move on. I can’t answer how I know these things but somehow inside my heart I know.”

Megan smiled her slow smile as she spoke. Her grandmother, from whom she had inherited the gift of second sight, had warned her some things were not for telling. She was glad she had heeded that advice. Only she recalled the psychic vision she had experienced down by the abandoned restaurant because she had told no one else.

A picture flashed suddenly and with startling clarity into Megan's mind as an overwhelming sadness enveloped her in its arms. A dark, moonless night, a black river, a weeping bride. The bride turns and lifts her veil.

The face is Gypsy's

She could so easily have given Gypsy the wrong message, that she would lose the one she loved most. Yet Megan had felt something wasn’t quite right and, as her grandmother had always advised, she’d listened to her instincts. Only later did it all make sense. The White Lady foretold the death of no one. She related to Gypsy and her loneliness because Gypsy had been wearing the wedding dress costume and Eleanor had never been more lonely than when she was a bride. When the bond of friendship returned to Hartwell Mansion through Hayley and Gypsy, Lady Eleanor was free once more.

It would do no good now to tell Gypsy of her premonition. Like all of the Summer Bay High students, she had been devastated by Jack’s death. Like everyone else, she was still trying to find ways to cope.

The religious among them had been to church to light candles or offered prayers to their gods. A few, believers and non-believers, had taken part in a quiet little ceremony down by the river near Whitelady Woods. All would attend the special assembly for Jack that would be conducted by Principal Barry Hyde this afternoon.

Megan turned to Kane. “Since time immemorial, there have been those that say the dead return to comfort the bereaved. My feeling is, yes, Jack did say a last farewell. But we cannot know for certain if messages such as these are from the dead or from our dreams.”

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Kim quoted. He noticed his father Barry and stepmother Irene standing at the top of the steps and grinned. “Hamlet.”

Principal Barry Hyde smiled back, a little sadly. Now that there was no pressure on him to pass exams, Kim found he actually enjoyed learning. The old Barry had only ever valued academia. He imagined, like himself, his son would be able to shield himself from what he regarded as a cold, harsh world with facts and figures, with mathematical formulae and logic. But since Irene Roberts had come into his life he knew more than that. He knew Kim was right to choose to work for a pittance, caring for the animals he loved, rather than gain qualifications for a career that paid well but that he would hate every moment of. That love and friendship were more important than material goods.

“School rules dictate I must ask everyone to return inside now for the Assembly and to continue with studies,” he announced. “Jack will always be remembered. We never forget those we loved.”

A tremor crept into his voice as he thought too of his late wife and tragically killed infant son. He felt Irene’s fold around his own.

“Memories stay with us though life moves on,” she said gently.

“Always.” Megan shook back her long, frizzy hair and gazed towards the distant tree tops of Whitelady Woods at something only she saw. “Though Jack is gone his legacy lives on. There is nothing but happiness here at Summer Bay High.”

Her smile was like sunlight, her haunting eyes, one brown, one green, wise as time. She whispered something in Italian to Toni, who spoke little English and had followed some of the conversations with difficulty.

“Yeh, well, can I just say somethin’?”

Kane Phillips rose, dusting himself down. He looked round at the sea of faces. Noah and Kit. Will and Gypsy. Cassie and Kim. Jade and Lucas. Megan and Toni. Davey and Danni. Nick and Brooke. Not everyone was in a couple of course. Pretty Kirsty Sutherland was never short of boyfriends but it was all quite innocent. She told everyone she was way too young to settle down. Truth was, Rhys Sutherland had stopped behaving like a strict Victorian father and it wasn’t half as much fun being a rebel if there was nothing to rebel against.

Hayley, flanked at either side right now by her friends Cassie and Gypsy, dated occasionally but was adamant she didn’t want a serious relationship just yet. She wouldn’t string anyone along like she used to, she said, it wasn’t fair. And, strangely, the new genuine Hayley was even more attractive to the guys than the shallow old one.

Most of their friends thought at first that Kane and Martha must be together. It took a while to convince some that there really was no romantic liaison. They were close, they told people, but it would always be a brother/sister friendship.

“Though it ain’t deep or nothin’,” he apologized in advance. “Just…well, I figure what we most liked about Jack was that he accepted people just as they were. That’s what made him such a great guy. He was just…a great mate.”

He looked surprised when a thunder of applause met his short speech, not just from the listening group but from other nearby students.

Martha laughed at his stunned expression.

“You do very well yourself, buddy,” she said as, one by one, students began winding their way back into the school.

“Wait up, Nick! Something must’ve caught on my shoe down by the river.”

Brooke leaned on him and, hopping on one foot, tried unsuccessfully to retrieve a square white piece of cardboard stuck to her muddied heel. She had been granted an extension to stay in Australia and was attending drama school now, with Nick. But they had permission today to attend the afternoon assembly.

Gypsy stretched across and tugged.

“Got it! Advertising junk,” she said, to quell Brooke’s curiosity, and glancing at the card far too quickly, Hayley knew, to have read anything. “I’ll throw it in the garbo for you. I’ve a chockie wrapper to chuck in anyway. Won’t be a sec, babe!” She kissed Will’s cheek lightly and ran down the steps, ripping up the item as she did so.

Hayley’s shadow fell across her as she finished discarding its tiny white flakes into the litter bin. Gypsy looked up and gave a small shrug.

“But I already know what it was, Gyps,” Hayley said quietly. “I saw the gold lettering. It was one of my old party invitations. Thanks. For not telling Brooke. For not reminding anyone what a terrible snob I used to be.”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for,” Gypsy smiled, slipping her arm into Hayley’s as they walked back towards Summer Bay High. “To pick up the pieces when we’re broken.”

THE END

You never knew my god,

never saw the colour of my skin

When you opened up your heart

and let me walk right in

You help me pick up the pieces

of a broken heart

When it shatters and scatters

like slithers of glass to the floor

Friends hold me together

in life’s crazy jigsaw

Jigsaw (by I love music)

***************************************************************

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Anyone guess the death right...??? Well, some time in the distant future I just might write a sequel to "Years From Now". Otherwise, that's the end of all my H&A fanfics. Hope you enjoyed. Goodbye, and thanks for reading!

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