Out of the Ashes

By Pauline Montagna

Can a new love be born out of the ashes of an old love gone wrong? This is the dilemma Marian must face when Russell comes back into her life after abandoning her for a job in New York.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pauline Montagna
• Release date: Sep 10, 2012

Pauline Montagna

Pauline Montagna was born into an Italian family in Melbourne, Australia. After obtaining a BA in French, Italian and History, she indulged her artistic interests through amateur theatre, while developing her accounting skills through a wide variety of workplaces culminating in the Australian film industry. In her mid-thirties, Pauline returned to university and qualified as a teacher of English as Second Language, a profession she pursued while completing a Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing. She has now retired from full-teaching to concentrate on her writing.

Book preview

Out of the Ashes

A novelette by

Pauline Montagna

Copyright © Pauline Montagna 2016

Other titles by Pauline Montagna on Smashwords:

The Taming of the Shrew

Not Wisely but Too Well

The Slave

Suburban Terrors

Desideratum

Ever the Bridesmaid

Secrets and Suspicions

Echoes and Other Stories

Table of Contents

Out of the Ashes

Also on Smashwords

The Taming of The Shrew

Not Wisely but Too Well

The Slave

Suburban Terrors

Out of the Ashes

One

Christmas Eve, 2002, Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne

It was the shock of red hair that caught his attention. It was curly and a deep auburn. Her skin was alabaster and her long-lashed eyes sky blue.

What a little sweetie, Russell thought.

Intent on the buckle at her waist, she was oblivious to the heat and the press of Christmas shoppers around her. Occasionally she would raise her eyes to glance across the tramlines at the department store opposite, but Myer’s famous Christmas windows were invisible behind a phalanx of heads.

Suddenly the buckle came apart. With a covert glance behind her, she got up and ran towards him. Russell stepped forward and swept her up into his arms, holding her close. Bells crashing frantically, heavy electric motor whirring, a tram lumbered past them barely an arm’s length away.

‘Hey, kiddo, where do you think you’re going? Didn’t you see the tram coming?’ He squatted and placed the squirming child on her feet. The little girl gazed at him wide-eyed and mute. Amid the gasps and cries of the shoppers around him, he could hear one voice shouting, ‘Alice! Alice!’

‘Are you Alice?’

The child nodded.

Her face ashen, a woman staggered towards them, dragging behind her a pusher laden with her Christmas shopping. She bent over and took the child by the shoulder. ‘Don’t ever run away from me like that, ever! Do you hear me?’

Alice was defiant. ‘I want to see the windows. You promised I could see the windows!’

‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.’ The mother let go her burden and gathered the child up in her arms, burying her face in the red curls that contrasted starkly with her own black hair.

Automatically, Russell shot out a hand and stopped the pusher from crashing to the ground and shattering whatever was in all those plastic bags. For a moment he stood at a loss, holding onto this strange woman’s pusher, then she raised her face to him. She seemed about to say something, to thank him, when her strained pallor turned a sudden red.

He felt the blood drain from his own face. ‘Marian?’

She just looked at him, the child wriggling in her arms.

‘It is Marian, isn’t it?’

Marian nodded, then reached for the pusher. ‘I’ve got to… I’d better…’

‘Here, let me.’ Russell squatted, helping to get Alice’s reluctant legs into the right openings and to find which ends of the harness went with which buckle.

His composure regained, Russell stood and looked at Marian over the child’s head. Her large brown eyes were avoiding his.

Marian took the handles in a firm grip. ‘I’ve got to get going.’ She tilted the pusher to turn it.

Russell blocked her path. ‘Wait. After all this time, is that it?’

Marian looked past him, her face still grey.

‘You’ve had a shock. You need to sit down for a minute, at least. How about a cup of coffee?’

‘I can’t…’

‘Please.