Love Is Blind by Kathy Lette Read Free Book Online Page A

storm to notice us …’ Jacko turned his attention back towards the blazing bush. He then went so rigid Anthea thought he’d been shot. She watched as he came barrelling back down the slope towards her, his expression fierce. ‘Wind’s changed.’
    Anthea noted that the noise level had gone up around her. Gone were the sounds like hand grenades. The noise now resembled cannon fire. She turned to see the limbs of another big tree on fire. With a roar and a moan, a huge flaming branch snapped free and rolled towards them.
    An unnaturally hot wind gusted down the slope as though also fleeing the hilltop. It was like being blasted by hell’s hair dryer. Smoke rolled over them in waves, hissing like surf. She coughed as ash filled her lungs. The grit seemed to be settling in her stomach.
    Anthea had often worried about life after death. Now she found herself worrying about life before death. Was she going to have any? The fire was racing down the slope towards them. Anthea started squeaking like a lost kitten.
    Jacko grabbed her hand as they groped their way back towards the rushing river they’d just escaped from. Through eyes that were slitted against the smoke, she could see that the water had risen even higher.
    ‘Jump in!’
    Anthea looked at Jacko through the fug of fumes. A direct trip to downtown Kabul seemed like a better alternative than getting back into the roaring torrent. She tried to speak but the smoke made her throat seize up. Death, she realised, gasping, really is a breath-taking experience.
    ‘On the count of three!’ he yelled.
    ‘NO!’ she croaked.
    ‘Get in!’ he ordered.
    Anthea glanced at the writhing river. There was no way she was getting back into the feverish floodwaters. If they were swept downstream, they’d be knocked out on the rocks. Or, worse, killed by a head-on collision. ‘I’m not getting back into that river. I’d rather you shot a bullet through my brain,’ she yelled back.
    ‘Don’t tempt me,’ the big man barked. With that he seized her in a bear hug and leapt. The murky water thrashed around them. It was like getting into a washing machine. Jacko slid the belt free from his jeans and lassoed Anthea’s waist. He then held her against an overhanging branch and tethered her to it. Water slapped against her legs and left them stinging.
    ‘The fire should jump over us …’ All the bush behind them was now ablaze. The wall of heat was overwhelming. ‘Are you okay?’
    Okay? Anthea thought, astonished.
Okay?
He’d rolled the truck. She’d been nearly swept downstream and dashed to death on rocks, barbecued, and now drowned again … Yes, Jacko had been quite heroic. But the whole hideous ordeal was his fault in the first damn place … If she
could
have spoken, it would have been to ask about how to say, in an Aboriginal language, ‘Please make sure this man is mauled very slowly to death by dingoes.’
    The river was now a bubbling soup of creatures, as kangaroos, wallabies, little bush rats, lizards and snakes all writhed and struggled in the rapids. Anthea clung to the branch. Waves smacked her in the face so repeatedly, she felt as though she was being interrogated by the Nazis. She jerked with alarm as she felt Jacko’s strong body pressing her from behind, his arms stretching around her bra-less torso.
    ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ she croaked in her best school teacher voice.
    ‘Protecting you, you idiot.’
    The most dangerous thing Anthea had ever done before this was to park illegally in a loading zone. Overwhelmed by terror, she closed her eyes and prayed to a God she didn’t really believe in, to please take some time off the Middle East and get her out of here.
    Half way through her prayer, a primitive sense of dread electrified her nerves. Her skin prickled and crawled as though invisible creatures were creeping over it. She strained to see through the pall of smoke. As her eyes adjusted, the sensation that she was being watched