Synopsis: "Her Galahad"

by Melissa James

Jirrah McLaren has been declared dead - twice. He no longer legally exists. He did time for a crime he didn’t commit, and his marriage was wiped from all records. His daughter is adopted out and he can’t find her, because he’s the FATHER UNKNOWN. For this nowhere man, getting his room trashed and his car bombed signals a time for vengeance. Though he believes she betrayed him for the sake of wealth and a handsome face, he finds his wife of one day - to help him escape from obsessed maniac Cameron Beller.

But Tessa ‘Honeycutt’ isn’t a rich man’s wife, nor a leader of Sydney’s elite, as he expected. A teacher at the tiny Outback town of Lynch Hill, she starts at the sound of a car and melts into shadows when men come near her. Tessa’s a woman on the run – even bitter and angry, Jirrah can see that.

Blackmailed into marriage to a violent, obsessed man only weeks after Jirrah’s ‘death’, Tessa’s lost her faith in men. She’s lost her only child, was tricked into committing bigamy and has been robbed of her dead mother’s Native Canadian heritage. Labelled suicidal by her father and brother, she spent months in psychiatric hospital before her life on the run. Tessa no longer knows how to separate truth from lies, care from control, love from obsession. All she knows is she never wants to go back.

Yet she must go back to Sydney, to face her family – and even Cameron Beller, the ‘husband’ whose warped love includes stalking and terrorizing her. When Jirrah shows up at her door covered in blood, stating Cameron’s after them both, she’s in shock. Jirrah is alive? Then she discovers her daughter Emily’s also alive! Her father drugged her and tricked her into signing adoption papers. Her family had Jirrah imprisoned on false charges, declared dead, and still persecutes him now – all to keep Tessa from discovering the stunning truth: her husband and daughter are alive!

So Tessa leaves the shadows and walks in the light of day, knowing that with every step she takes she’s in danger. To find justice, she must face her family with the lies they’ve told her all her life. She must help Jirrah find evidence of her family’s guilt in his imprisonment…and use that evidence to hold over them so they can find Emily. And she has to know if they orchestrated this whole campaign against Jirrah from plain, ugly racism – the fact that he’s Aboriginal – or if a deeper reason lies beneath.

And it’s a race against the clock - for Cameron will kill them both rather than lose his wealth, status and the woman he loves.

This journey becomes much more than a time of vengeance and justice for both Tess and Jirrah, as they face their ghosts and fears. They overcome distrust, anger and abuse to find reluctant healing in each other. Healing with words, with their bodies; and passion rekindles to burning flame. Jirrah knows he’s falling for Tess again, and falling hard; but lovers for a week is all she’ll offer him. She won’t even tell him why, even after he sheds his darkest secret: his part in the death of the woman who loved him and bore his son. In a week she’ll be gone, and Jirrah will have only the memory of his mulgu, the black-haired wild swan who haunts his soul, allowing no room for another woman in his heart.

Yet her ‘dark knight’ will protect his lady with his life: after car bombings and house fires, Cameron chasing them in rocky forests and when she faces her inner demons. He stands with her as she faces her family. He’s with her as she hears that her mother’s alive, living in Canada – and that her father Keith and brother Duncan used every legal avenue to keep Rachel out of her life. Jirrah gives her caring without demand, the respect to face her demons and grow as a woman…and a passion that is as addictive as it is terrifying, for how can she live without him when he leaves her?…and he will, when he finds out her deepest secret.

Finally they find their child. Tani is an orphan, living with her grandparents: a bright, beautiful child who wants a white picket fence family, a mummy and daddy who are married and love each other forever. Tessa tells her love isn’t always enough, and Tani runs out. Tessa runs after her daughter, and finds her in the arms of Cameron Beller - and he has a gun aimed at Tani.

Facing Beller, fighting for their lives, Jirrah utters the words to unlock Tessa’s shielded heart: he loves Tessa as she is, even letting her go if she needs to fly. After he overcomes Beller Tessa tells him her secret: she probably can’t carry another baby to term.

The one thing Jirrah’s always wanted - six or seven kids.

Then he remembers his lover’s pain because she was having his child but he didn’t love her, an agony still in her eyes as she lay dying on a Sydney street. Then, after imagining the rest of his life without Tessa, he says two children are enough. That his son, Kalkara (‘storm bird’), didn’t die with Belinda. He tells her two children with her is better than a dozen with another woman, because he’ll never love any woman but her, his wild swan. He suggests to Tani’s grandparents that they all live together in Lynch Hill as one family, for Tani’s sake; and Tessa, after a lifetime alone, finally finds the family she’s always wanted.

Thanks to her dark knight, her own personal Galahad.