The Hermit Next Door: A Rise To Fame Romance Read online

  The general public couldn’t get enough of the story. The media, desperate for information, hounded the woman, never leaving her alone. Carolyn recognised it as a career changer and so she packed up her parents’ camping gear and prepared herself to stay for however long it would take. As the other reporters thinned out and disappeared, Carolyn would stay until the end. This was her chance.

  4

  Willa peeked through the nail hole of the old tin panel that formed the front part of her wall. Dusk was sitting over the river and she grieved that another day of heated stuffiness had passed, closed up inside her private prison.

  The whole thing was so unfair. Why wouldn’t they leave her alone? This new wave of intruders was even worse than the last lot—at least the reality TV crew had only camped out for a few days. This new wave of media, after almost two weeks, looked like they’d set up enough camping gear to last the summer.

  She could ride into town. Her brother would keep them away, but she couldn’t leave her home and risk them going through her belongings. It was such an invasion. She felt like a caged zoo animal with all of the reasons she lived here in the first place, stripped away. She despised the focus and attention. Why couldn’t she be inconspicuous again? Using music to soothe her agitation had always been her therapy of choice. How stupid, how naïve; to let them see into her soul. The stifling heat combined with her self-berating was beginning to wear her down. She looked longingly at the guitar, knowing it was the both the cure and the disease. She sat on her hands and tried to slow her breathing down, focus on the rise and fall of her chest, nothing else. It’d been a long time since she’d practiced these exercises.

  Things were changing. Without working the factory season, how would she be able to make the payments? Without planting next season’s crop of vegetables, what would she eat? No income, no food, no privacy. Frustration paralysed her mind and restricted her throat. She tried to swallow but her neck cramped like indigestion. Her head pounded. She needed to get outside. To sit under a tree. To listen to the river.

  Not long now. It would be dark, and the strangers would climb inside their tents and sleep away the darkness. Then she could silently feed her chickens and collect enough water to last the following day.

  It was a miserable existence, but it wouldn’t last forever. She knew she could wait them out. They would have lives to get back to.

  And then she could get back to hers.

  The first of the sun was lifting itself onto the horizon when Carolyn saw the man emerge from the bush. He limped slightly, dressed in black patent leather shoes that looked completely inadequate given the terrain, a dark shirt and tie with a suit jacket slung over his shoulder. After a brief survey of the tents scattered about the riverbank, he paused only to remove a stone from his shoe, before making a determined beeline towards the hermit woman’s door.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” yelled Carolyn, running to stop him.

  “I’m going in,” he said to no-one in particular.

  “You just got here, Mister. Come and wait your turn like the rest of us.” Carolyn was feeling a bit panicky. She’d been waiting two weeks for the woman and still had nothing. Of course, she’d tried knocking on the door daily, even peeked her head through the holes to check she hadn’t evaded them. The Mapleton Free Press had demanded a week ago that she go back to her regular story coverage of football stats and school productions, so it was her free time she was giving up now. She deserved the interview. How dare this wowser walk right up and get first dibs on her story.

  “Miss Jones,” she heard the stranger say. “Can I come in? My name is Jack Gilman and I am the CEO of EP Records. Can I have just a moment of your time?” Without waiting for an answer, he rattled the make-shift door handle and then heaved his shoulder against the door.

  He wasn’t an overly tall man, but his shoulders were wide and powerful, and his shove not only broke the lock on the door, but smashed the entire door frame, and dirt puffed into the air as the pieces fell to the floor. The sudden sound of falling tin sent the camping reporters scrambling to their cameras and recording devices. This was the most action they’d seen in weeks and they were hungry for footage, even if the light was low.

  If Jack was surprised by the ferocity of his entrance, he didn’t show it. He crossed the short distance to the woman with her jolted eyebrows and gaping mouth, held out his hand and said, “Pleased to meet you, Miss Jones. May I call you Willa?”

  Carolyn, watched the shock tattooed on the woman’s face and put herself between them to work the advantage. “Willa, please come and sit down. We just want a few moments of your time.”

  It only took seconds before the room was filled with cameras and questions. Seven people crammed into the space of a bathroom. Jack had time to cover his ears before the screaming began. Carolyn and the others weren’t so lucky.

  “Get out. Now. Get out,” Willa raged like a lion cornered.

  In the confined space, even with one wall almost destroyed, it was devastatingly loud. Carolyn watched the woman as the others reacted to her distress. It was hard to guess her age—clean living had obviously been kind. She could pass for early thirties, especially with the wild, captured look that was currently in her eyes. Her hair was long and sun-bleached and fell madly over her face as she waved her arms, trying to shake out her invaders.

  “Get out,” she said. “Get out.” Repeating the words over and over she covered the lens of a camera with her hands, willing them to retreat.

  Jack found a seat and sat calmly on it.

  “What are you doing?” Carolyn shouted at the American. She wouldn’t budge if he wouldn’t.

  “I’, staying until Willa agrees to come to L.A. to record her music.”

  “No,” Willa screamed. “Get out!”

  “I will not,” said Jack. He found a seat and sat down, stretching his legs out in front of him.

  For several hours Carolyn watched the man and woman in battle. She was outclassed here. She remembered a time when she had been seven or eight and had been required to apologise to her hairy-lipped great aunt for one reason or another. Feeling the injustice, and being a stubborn child, she’d refused. As a result, she had to sit in the corner of the living room for an entire afternoon, not permitted to play with her cousins or eat the delicious array of afternoon tea, until she conceded and spoke the words the adults needed to hear. Many, many years later, ‘sorry’ was still the hardest word she’d ever spoken. She knew she was stubborn. Savagely stubborn. But these two were in a league all of their own.

  The American had his legs crossed at the ankles, looking completely at ease—as if sitting in a hot tin shack in the middle of an Australian summer with a hostile hostess was a normal way to spend one’s morning.

  “Get out.”

  “No.”

  “Get out.”

  “No.”

  The hermit woman was furious, glancing from the broken door back to the man in equal measure as if she could telepathically move him through it. Carolyn wondered how helpless the woman must be feeling, having no-one to help her, to stand up for her. How downtrodden she must feel. This American truly was an inconsiderate oaf.

  “Get out.”

  “No.”

  “Get out.”

  “No.”

  Carolyn used the stalemate between them to run her journalistic eyes over the room, working out how she might describe it later in an article. She reached for her phone with the intention of taking some photographs but was distracted by the messages on the screen. Nine missed calls from work. She’d deadlines today and was on her last warning. She bit the side of her mouth, trying to decide what to do. If she stayed here, she risked unemployment. But if she went to work, she might miss out on the story-of-the-year.

  “Get out.”

  “No.”

  Her phone vibrated in her hand and she glanced down at the message from her boss. ‘YOU BETTER BE DEAD OR DYING.’

  As Carolyn reluctantly accepted defeat and began the long walk up the trail to her car, she could still hear them bellowing endlessly below.

  “Get out.”

  “No.”

  “Get out.”

  “No—”

  The words were still ringing in Carolyn’s ears as she started her car and drove to work.

  Jack found the heat excruciating. No breeze and a tin roof for shelter from the sun. The smell of a used bed pot grew as the hours passed. After the initial barrage of consistent screaming, they settled into a mutual silence, staring each other out. For six hours after that, neither moved, despite him hearing her stomach grumbling, and his own throat thirsting for something to drink. Sweat dripped down his back into his underwear and he now longed for the cool, confining comfort of his business class booth. Or a swim. He could hear the babble of the river below them and imagined himself taking his shoes and sweat-soaked socks off, dropping them in the icy coolness of the water as it trundled over the rounded rocks. The desire drifted in and out of his mind as he fought to stay awake.

  Jack was a realist and always been smart at seeing things for what they really were. He was not going to win today, but it was long into the afternoon before he conceded. Standing abruptly up from his chair, he felt his clothes slowly unstick from his skin as he looked towards the broken door. In a deep, penetrating voice that startled the birds, he asked,“Do you have any tools?”

  The force of her voice almost knocked him over.

  “GET OUT.”

  5

  Carolyn watched him from her camp chair and pondered over his strategy. The American was into his second week at the river site and hadn’t wasted any time taking over.

  On the first day he rebuilt the frame and rehung the door that he smashed on his arrival—all with a precision and perfectionism that Carolyn felt had been completely unnecessary given the state of the rest of the building. But then, she couldn’t deny, the woman would be glad of the extra security of her new door.

  On the second day he began tending the vegetable garden beds, carrying over one shovel load at a time of manure from the chicken coop and digging it through until the beds were ready for replanting. He made dozens of trips back and forth from the river carrying a single bucket of water to hydrate the tired and wilted lettuce, bean and tomato plants that had been neglected over the past few weeks.

  Despite the blisters on his hands and sunburn on his face he continued on, collecting and chopping wood, picking ripe produce and leaving it at her back door. He kept the water troughs filled and fed her chickens food scrapes and fresh grass, letting them out during the day and ensuring they were locked up at night.

  By the end of the first week, Carolyn watched him pay off the other reporters and negotiate a price for the use of the camping equipment, including a tent and bedding. Only two tents remained: the American’s and her own.

  She couldn’t help but wonder about him. This city boy with farm boy skills. The whole thing was extraordinary to watch—with a touch of genius. While the rest of them had hounded Willa for images and words, Jack had approached the task from a completely different angle. It was simple really—he had anticipated her needs and fulfilled them.

  The chickens, her garden, her home was quite obviously her entire world and the more the media had forced her to neglect them, the further she withdrew. Now with her surroundings flourishing again, she was beginning to respond—to trust.

  Opening her recently refurbished front door for the very first time in daylight hours since Carolyn had arrived; Willa stepped cautiously outside, with a small package in her hand. When she was satisfied the sky wasn’t falling in on her, and a throng of photographers did not magically appear, she tentatively headed towards the man preparing a new bed of soil.

  Carolyn got the feeling she was witnessing something significant.

  Wordlessly he formed valleys in the vegetable patch, and she placed an evenly spaced row of seeds in the dirt. Without making any kind of eye contact, they worked together, planting, watering and finally marking each row of autumn crop with a stick.

  Carolyn watched from her armchair in front of her tent, surreptitiously taking photos with her phone and taking notes. She was forming the story in her mind, working an angle that made the story bigger than it actually was. Instinct told her to hold her tongue right now and let this moment be. But she was an impatient girl and rarely liked to wait for the things she wanted. When the planting was done, and as the woman wiped the dirt from her hands, Carolyn called out to her. “Willa, would you like some tea?”

  Not waiting for a reply, Carolyn lit the gas ring and placed a kettle on the flame. Not a tea drinker herself, it was purely a social gesture.

  Willa shook her head no and headed back to her shelter but stopped when she saw a basket of fresh fruit on her front step. She hesitated for a second and turned to look at the man responsible, meeting his eyes briefly. Then she turned, gathered the basket and disappeared inside.

  “I’ll have one, thanks,” Jack turned towards her.

  “You can get your own. What am I? Your housekeeper?” Carolyn flicked off the gas knowing there was no water in the kettle anyway. She wouldn’t waste her limited supply of bottled water on the man.

  "No, but you could be. My tent could use a spruce up.” He walked up to her, stood commandingly close, and said lightly, “I think you should leave. Go back to your life. There’s no story for you here.”

  Carolyn couldn’t keep the laughter from her voice. “No story? You’re kidding me, right? Why don’t you leave? You’re the one smashing down doors and making her scream like a banshee. You leave.”

  “I think it’s quite obvious that I’m the one forming the bond here, don’t you think? I’m sure I can convince her of anything I wanted if you weren’t here. You and your phone camera and your little pad and pencil—constantly reminding her how the media ruined her life.”

  “There’s no way I’m leaving. This is my story. I need this.” She leaned back in the chair, opened a magazine and stuck her nose inside it.

  He sat down beside her and asked, “What did you say your name was?”

  She rolled her eyes at his tactics but answered all the same. The more people who knew her name, the better.

  “Carolyn Bunting.”

  “Ok, Carolyn, here’s what I’ll do. I can offer you an exclusive interview, full rights, at her first media launch, once she’s signed with EP Records.”

  Carolyn didn’t hesitate. “Do you think I’m an idiot? I’ll take what I can get, right here, right now, thanks all the same.” She pointed her phone camera and shot him before he had a chance to react and considered working him into her report. She could research him once she got back to work tomorrow.

  He took her wrist and reached for her phone, but she snapped her hand away, turning her head to see him smiling at her. It was a sincere look and not at all what she’d been expecting. He raised his hands in defeat. “Apologies! I was just going to put my number in your phone.”

  “Why would you do that? I don’t want your phone number, old man.”

  He ignored the jibe. “You’re new at this caper, aren’t you? I bet you dream of having your own news desk. A breakfast show perhaps?”

  Carolyn had to lower her eyes, ashamed to think he could read her so successfully. “I’m not leaving, Jack. Knock it off, will ya.”

  “Let me assure you, the key to your career progression does not lie here, in the Australian bush. With one simple call, I can get you an interview with Jeff Winn at Good Morning America.”

  Carolyn felt her heart race a little, but then forced herself back to the real world. He was lying. “I’ll take my chances with Willa Jones, thanks all the same.” She flicked an unread page over in her magazine, trying to hide the light-headed, reckless feeling that threatened to take control.

  “How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-one? This is your time. You have to strike now, while you have your youth and your looks. You can’t afford to be turning down opportunities when they come to you,” he said.

  “I might be young, but I’m no fool. Jobs in the industry are hard to come by. You don’t just get them by making a ‘phone call.’” She used her inverted comma fingers to show how ridiculous he sounded to her.

  “Sure, I get it. I could tell you just about anything to get you to leave. Why should you trust me?”

  “Exactly. I need a big break. I get it. But that big break is living in that shack right over there under those trees. Not in some make-believe far-away world that you’re talking about.”

  “I see.”

  Carolyn watched him take his phone from his pocket and make a call. He stood right next to her, making it impossible for her not to hear his conversation, which she figured was probably his intention.

  “Phil, listen. I need you to get me Jeff Winn on the phone…yeah I don’t have his number on this one…just put me through directly will you?...yeah I’ll hold…what?...yeah I know it’s late, but I know Winny, he’ll still be working…ok yeah…yeah…that’s right…ok I’ll wait…”

  Carolyn rolled her eyes at Jack but then, despite her suspicion, googled Jeff Winn on her phone. Sure enough, he was the studio director of Good Morning America. She turned a few more unseen pages of the magazine while Jack waited on hold.

  When Jack finally spoke into the mouthpiece, his booming voice made her jump.

  “Winny! How are you my fine friend?...Of course…when is it ever but?...the same, the same…you know I wouldn’t ask unless it was important…not this time…I think you’ll thank me for this…I’m sure you do…I’m sure you did…but who can blame her…I will be very glad to give her your contact details…hang on a minute Winny….she’s shaking her head at me…”

  “What is it? Don’t you want an interview?”

  “I want to talk to him myself.” Carolyn reached out for his phone, conscious that Jack could be making the whole thing up.