The Paler Shade Of Autumn Read online

  The Paler Shade of Autumn

  www.escapepublishing.com.au

  The Paler Shade of Autumn

  Jacquie Underdown

  Autumn Leone travels to India to find answers about her unique ability to see into other’s minds. But instead of answers she finds love. It takes one night of passion to fall for Jet Stark, whom fate had sent her half way around the world to meet. But, too soon, Autumn is to fly back to Australia and out of his life.

  When Autumn bumps into Jet back in Australia after five long years apart, it’s difficult to dispute fate’s intention in crossing their paths not only once, but twice. Autumn knows it is a risk to fall for an old fling, especially because Jet now happens to be rich, her new boss, and involved with another woman.

  But a connection like theirs proves impossible to sever.

  Reunited with the only man she has ever truly loved, Autumn thinks their relationship is flawless. But she fails to see that Jet is hiding secrets from his past. Secrets, which threaten to fracture not only their love for one another, and her career, but also her relationship with her family.

  Will the truth about her gift and their unbelievable history be revealed in time before Autumn loses all she cares about? And will the truth be enough to mend old wounds?

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you for each word uttered and every action undertaken that has kept the flame alight.

  For you, who shows me how to love, so that I may share that love via the written word.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Also Available from Escape Publishing…

  About the Author

  Prologue

  “I’m not going, Mummy, I can’t go.”

  Autumn wraps her arms around her mother’s legs and shoves her face into the flowing fabric of her long skirt. Tears leave their damp trace on the bright floral material. Mrs Leone half-smiles at the male teacher who keeps glancing from the watch on his black, curly haired wrist to the classroom full of eight-year-olds, chattering like a cage full of excited budgies, waiting for him to commence their first day of grade three.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening here, she hasn’t been like this in prior years,” says Autumn’s mother, Mrs Leone.

  The teacher nods his balding head, sporting a sparse comb-over, and thumbs his thick glasses back onto the ridge of his nose. “It’s quite normal, Mrs Leone. I can take her in and get her settled?” he says, clasping Autumn’s hand. Autumn twists her hand from his grip.

  “No!” she screams. The children in the classroom snap their heads around in the direction of the commotion, eyes wide. “No!” she screams again. “I’m not going to school, Mummy, please don’t make me go.”

  Mrs Leone feels her stomach tighten and that place in the middle of her chest, directly beside her heart, tingles—her maternal instincts have sounded. She rubs the top of her daughter’s hair, wet with perspiration and nods at the teacher. “I’ll take her home and give her a rest today, and see how things are tomorrow.”

  “It’s up to you, Mrs Leone. I do, however, think it’s best she attends the first day like the rest of the children.”

  Mrs Leone throws her hands on her hips and sighs. “I can’t very well send her like this.”

  The teacher nods. “I guess not.” He bends down so he is at eye level with Autumn, though her face is still buried amidst folds of skirt. The overwhelming stench of his aftershave makes her want to throw up her breakfast, which seems to have worked its way up and lodged halfway between her throat and stomach.

  “Autumn,” he says. She directs her swollen, bloodshot eyes towards his. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Autumn doesn’t answer. If she has any strength, any command, any choice, as an eight year old, she will not be seeing him tomorrow. Mrs Leone clasps Autumn’s hand and pulls her along the wide, corrugated-iron-roofed pathways, out of the school grounds, towards the car park.

  They arrive home to a house still bearing the effects of the Monday morning rush to hustle two children to their first school day of the year. Pyjamas lie crumpled on the lounge room floor and a loaf of bread, a tub of butter and a jar of Vegemite are strewn across the kitchen bench. Breakfast dishes fill the sink and the grey Burmese bleats at Mrs Leone’s feet willing a few shakes of dry cat biscuits to appear in her empty bowl. Mrs Leone flicks the kettle on to boil, pulls a cup out of the cabinet overhead and places it on the bench. She spoons a full teaspoon of coffee into the mug and speaks for the first time since the school incident.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened back there?”

  Autumn’s eyes widen. She fights hard to stay strong and keep the tears away, but her throat is thick and aching. “Mr Mason is not a good man, Mummy.”

  “Oh, really,” she says. “In what way?”

  Autumn shakes her head and lowers her eyes. The topic is forbidden, embarrassing. She opens her mouth, but instead of words she can only find breath.

  “In what way, Autumn?”

  Autumn blinks, but the tears still spring to her eyes. “He’s not nice to some of his students.”

  Mrs Leone’s shoulders gravitate forward. She lowers her voice, keeps it steady. “How so, Autumn?”

  Again Autumn flutters her eyelids, condemning the pesky tears telling her she isn’t as brave as she thinks. Telling her that she is merely an ingenuous eight-year-old girl who has witnessed something horrifying. “He—he likes to, he makes…”

  “Yes, Autumn?” she says.

  “He touches the girls.”

  Mrs Leone’s heart thumps like the hoof of a mad buck. She has to turn to the kettle that has started to boil, angrily whistling its monotone tune, to hide her gaping mouth, her eyes round with horror, instead of their usual almond shape. As she turns back, keeping her eyes on the mug she is filling, focusing on the aromatic stream that rises from it, she asks, “Touches how?”

  “He touches their rude parts.”

  Mrs Leone gasps and fumbles with the kettle; attempts three times to steady it on the bench.

  “The girls don’t like it, Mummy,” Autumn says, a sob lurching from her constricted throat. “They don’t want him to; they cry, Mummy. It’s not their fault.”

  Mrs Leone staggers to her daughter and leans down; looks her firmly in the eyes. “How do you know this, Autumn?”

  Autumn wipes the tears away with the back of her hand. “I saw it, when he touched my hand.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I saw the girls, lots of them. He does it all the time in his special room he has in the classroom. I don’t want him to do that to me, Mummy. Please don’t make me go back there.”

  “Did you see him one day, doing those things?” Mrs Leone asks, each word unaccompanied by adequate breath; her neck is tigh
t, jaw is clenched, and her hands are now trembling.

  “I saw today. When he touched my hand, I saw it in his mind.”

  “You saw it in his mind?”

  Autumn nods.

  “Tell me the truth, Autumn. Now this is very important. Very, very important, because this man can get into lots of trouble if you’re fibbing. How do you know about Mr Mason touching his students?”

  “I’m telling the truth, Mummy, I promise I am.”

  “How do you know this? Did he do those things to you?”

  She shakes her head, tears racing each other down her cheeks, free-falling from her chin. “No.”

  “Are you sure? You can tell me anything. I won’t be upset or mad.”

  “He didn’t do anything to me. But I don’t like him. He’s not a nice teacher.”

  Mrs Leone sighs. “You saw it in his mind?” she asks again, but her tone is tainted with disbelief.

  “Yes. How I always see things. Don’t you, Mummy? Don’t you see that way too?”

  Mrs Leone shakes her head. “No, I most certainly don’t. Nobody does.”

  “But, I do,” she says, barely an audible whisper.

  “This is not something you can fib about. This is a very serious thing to say about somebody.”

  “I’m not fibbing. I’m really not.” She takes her mum’s hand in hers and allows her mind to be flooded with images not of her own possession. She flinches away and looks up at her mother’s tight-lipped expression.

  “I’m sorry, Mummy,” she says. “I’m sorry to upset you. It reminds you of the bad man you knew when you were little, doesn’t it?”

  Mrs Leone stares at her daughter, gaping, eyes madly searching for reason; mind seeking rational explanation. No-one knows about her uncle and what he did to her as a child. No-one.

  Chapter 1

  13 years later

  The plane lands with a shuddering skid along the tarmac of Patna Airport. Autumn looks out the window and smiles; the sun is setting, tainting the sky and the buildings a pleasant red and orange hue.

  Stepping off the plane, Autumn feels the heavy heat and humidity settling on her skin despite a cool night breeze beginning to blow in from the east. She can feel it deep in her lungs as she breathes in the east-Indian air: warm and smoky. The weather is a change from that in Australia where the temperatures have started a decline since early March.

  In the distance, she can hear the faint sound of traffic. The thought of having to brave a three-wheel taxi through the congested streets, battle to communicate with a foreign tongue and bargain a reasonable taxi fare after a twenty-nine hour flight, hurts. But she smiles: a driver is waiting at the crowded luggage carousel holding a sign with her and her travel companion’s name, Thor, scrawled along it in big, black letters. He will transfer them to their hotel where they are able spend one day resting before they make their trip to Bodh Gaya.

  Autumn and Thor squeeze into the backseat of the small, rundown car. The driver, all the while listening to the cricket match screeching from his radio, manoeuvres through the traffic: a varied array of bicycles, cars, three-wheel taxis, motorbikes, pedestrians, and the incessant honking of horns. None of the streets have gutters like in Australia and no-one stays in the designated road lanes, especially at red lights where there is a frenzy to cram in tight like passengers on a peak-hour train. The buildings that flank the road are boxy, tired, unpleasant looking. But the sights of the city will have to wait to be acknowledged tomorrow, without the weariness of travel accompanying them both.

  After checking in to the hotel, Autumn drags her body to her room. Thor silently strolls beside her. Their suitcases trail behind; tired wheels squeaking along the linoleum floor. She opens the door of her small but clean room and lingers at the threshold to confirm with Thor that they will meet in the lobby for dinner in two hours.

  “So,” Autumn says, tensing back a smirk. “Is Thor your real name?”

  Thor grins wide, his acne-riddled cheeks stretch across his face and he runs his hands through his bright copper hair. “If you want it to be.”

  “If we are going to be spending the next few days together, I’d really just like to know your real name. But, if you want to play games, you can count me out.”

  Autumn steps into her room and shuts the door. She spies a queen-sized bed in the centre of the floor; looks up to ceiling. “Thank you, whichever God is on duty, for giving me a clean room.”

  Already succumbing to the soothing fog of sleepiness, she dumps her suitcase on the floor, grabs her pyjamas and toiletries, and showers. She dresses, pulls out her hair-band, allowing her auburn hair to fall down around her shoulders, and collapses onto the bed. Effort isn’t wasted climbing under the covers. She sets her alarm to wake her in a little less than two hours and dives into a heavy unconsciousness.

  Seemingly, a fraction of a second after her eyes close, her alarm buzzes, slicing though the silence with its tinny ringtone. She attempts to drag her eyelids apart, but can only manage a one-eye squint, enough to see the screen of her mobile glowing in the darkness of her hotel room. She texts Thor: No dinner. Too tired. Meet tomorrow, breakfast. Autumn.

  Autumn double checks her alarm is off, switches her phone to silent and throws it onto the bedside table. She rolls over and closes her eyes. Sleep extends its soothing embrace, finding her in seconds, and she maintains a peaceful oblivion until the morning sun peaks through the cracks of the hotel’s curtains, welcoming her to her first full day in India.

  Before anything happens in your life, good or bad, you first have to decide that it will happen. Sometimes the decision is made knowingly, sometimes subconsciously, sometimes it is made and then refuted, but the original decision will usually override the latter.

  When had Autumn first made the decision to visit India? Two years ago she returned from a Contiki tour around Europe and Britain. Braving the hostels and backpacker accommodations, language barriers and culture variations in Western countries, the natural trajectory took her East. And so, two years later, she ends up in India. Why alone? She hasn’t quite put her finger on that, but she’s sure it has got nothing to do with starting a romance with her travelling companion, Thor.

  After breakfast in the hotel restaurant—as organised during her mind-muddled haze the night before—Autumn and Thor embark upon exploring Patna together. Despite his continual drivel, otherwise known as conversation, she is grateful he is here with her. He seems to exude an unfaltering confidence in all things and, despite being annoying in all other moments, as they now brave the unknown streets, language and ways of India, his confidence is an admirable quality.

  This day is all about being a tourist, with no time constraints, and becoming accustomed to all things relating to one of the oldest inhabited cities on Earth. Autumn’s fear of catching a taxi and bargaining the fare is squelched after their first trip, which is from the hotel to Hanuman Temple, right near the rail station they will need tomorrow.

  As she and Thor watch waves of tourists and locals flow through the white, concrete temple, handing over their meagre offerings of rupees in exchange for their wishes being granted by the presiding God Hanuman, her stomach pangs with a conflicting sympathy. In such a place as Patna, it is difficult not to note the absolute poverty portrayed on street corners by beggars and performing children, despite the marked improvements in recent times attempting to reduce the enormous chasm between paucity and surplus. Seeing those with so little offer their pittance, with desperate dependency that their wishes will be granted, creates a dissonance in her soul. She raises the point with Thor who provides an answer that gives her perception a blunt shift.

  “Of course. Even in Australia, it’s those who earn less that are the ones that contribute most to the lottery. It seems the less you can rely on your own ability to earn money the more likely you are to depend on chance or, in this case, wishes to make it for you.”

  Autumn nods. “You’re right. It’s the same problem, simply manifesting itself in
a different way.”

  He winks, clicking his tongue. “You got it. Different culture and to the extreme.”

  She smiles. “You’re quite a surprise package aren’t you?”

  He leans towards her, so close she can feel his warm breath on her face. She edges backwards a step, but is blocked by a brick wall. “I’ve got another surprise package I can show you later.”

  Autumn pushes him in the chest and side-steps around him.

  “Oh, come on,” he says jogging to catch up. “What happens in India stays in India. No-one has to know.”

  Autumn rolls her eyes. I’m not on some sordid cricket tour.

  Her sudden soured mood doesn’t stay low for long as they negotiate a fare to the Patna Museum with a local taxi driver. Thor turns out to be a master haggler; a skill he says he learnt at end-of-year football trips in Bali, along with God knows what else.

  The museum is a surprise: an English-styled monster of a building, painted a soft yellow and rimmed with orange, which gives it a distinctly Indian quality. She is starting to see that the Indian people are not adverse to the aesthetics of bright colours, apparent in their dress and the buildings. Autumn’s gaze is continually drawn to the beautiful silk saris, in a myriad of colours and patterns, worn by the majority of Indian women—a purchase she will have to make before she leaves. Even the men are not afraid to deck a bright shirt.

  They view the many artefacts, statues and paintings, including the cremated remains of Gautama Buddha and a tree root claimed to be two hundred million years old—no creationism is taught here. The museum is beautiful and brimming with possessions showing the spiritual origins and sheer age of India, like the life-size statue carved from a single piece of stone depicting an incredibly voluptuous woman: Didarganj Yakshi, transported from the banks of the Ganges where she had stood since the Mauryan Empire’s rule in 320 BCE.

  Beholding objects from eras long since gone, peering into the tombs of the past, is breathtaking, surreal even. Autumn’s first conscious recognition of the human timeline on Earth was at twelve years of age where she witnessed Aboriginal paintings in a cave in Queensland, perfectly preserved for three and a half thousand years. Despite, as a child, what she had read about Australia’s history, she lost sight of the fact that the country has not been occupied for a mere two hundred years but, indeed, forty-thousand.