I'm a little bit stunned, to say the least, at the number of people who viewed the last chapter :) This is an Irene/Barry chapter, I'll be concentrating more on the other characters in later chapters. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the next instalement.

Chapter 25

written by I love music
ideas and suggestions by Skykat

Guardian Angels

"Irene, I..."

Barry Hyde gulped back his tears, ashamed that he had been unmanly enough to let them fall. Through the wavering yellow candlelight he looked at the only woman other than Kerry he had ever given his heart to. But he could not meet her eyes. Those eyes had once looked at him with love and he didn't deserve her love when he was what he was.

"Only my sister Lorraine knew. Ever knew. Lorraine's dead now. She took our secret to the grave with her." He pressed his palms down hard on the table as if for support, seeking the strength to go on. "Irene, Kerry didn't leave me like I always led you to believe. Kim was a baby..." He swallowed several times knowing his words were about to change everything. "She was trying to drown him, he was just a baby... I'd always suspected she'd killed Jonathan but I didn't know, I didn't want to believe it...And the coroner recorded Jonathan's drowning as accidental death..."

Tears, refusing to be quashed, refusing to listen to his inner voice that tears were weak, rained down his face again at the memory. "It was post natal depression. I should have realised, I should have got her the help she so badly needed. But I didn't. I didn't give her a chance. He was only a baby and she...Irene, I...I flew into a rage and...and...I...I...killed her..."

Breathing quick, shallow breaths as though he'd been running, he dropped his gaze and waited. Waited for the shock, horror and condemnation, for the barrage of questions, for her to recoil in disgust. These hands had murdered. These very hands had taken away the life of a human being. His hands. His hands, being taken into the fold of another's tenderly as a mother takes her child's.

"Irene, how can you...?" He whispered emotionally, trembling. "I thought..."

She squeezed his hands reassuringly. "I know how I should feel but I also know you're a good man, Barry Hyde. And I've lived," she added, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"Okay, who's next? Anyone wanna DARE to take ME on?"

Eleven-year-old Irene McFarlane swung the makeshift weapon - a tennis ball inside a sock - around her head and glared threateningly at the gathered crowd of kids. Of course nobody dared. One look at that furious red face and angry eyes was enough. Not even Eric Sharp, the school bully, the one who'd got his little brother and his mates to carry out Benji's latest bashing was going to chance it. But everybody hoped somebody else would. Wild Irene was like a madwoman when she did her block and it made for great entertainment. However, their hopes were to be dashed. A shrill whistle cut through the crisp breezy air carried from the nearby sea, announcing that recreation had finished and pupils were expected to be back at their desks in ten minutes exactly. The crowd of interested onlookers, careful to hide their giggles from Wild Irene, began to reluctantly disperse.

Seven-year-old Benji, cowering behind the safety of his older sister, tugged on the back of her hand-knitted cardi and announced in a stage whisper, "Irene, our Irene, I think I need...uh-oh!"

The abrupt comment confirmed it. Irene knew even before she turned and saw the trickle of yellow urine running down his leg.

"Aw, Jeez, Benji!" She sighed. "Pin back your bloomin' lug'oles and listen and listen good. You gotta learn to start standing up for yourself, mate. I won't always be around to fight your battles."

Benji looked up at her in alarm and wiped a tear from his eyes with a small brown fist. Did this mean she was abandoning them? It was unthinkable. Irene always looked out for him. She looked out for all the McFarlanes because...because...well, somebody had to. Young as he was, Benji realised they were different . They were dirt poor without a regular Dad and their clothes were charity shop rejects or home-knitted or hand-me-downs and nobody seemed to like that. They shouted names after them in the street, they called them b-----ds and devil's spawn and if they were shopping in the mall with Mum and neighbours saw them they'd look down their noses and move away like she carried some terrible disease, whispering stuff behind her back, nasty stuff, he figured, because sometimes on the way home Mum's eyes would be red and she'd be sniffling a little bit though she tried to hide it. For some reason though Irene got it worse than the rest of them. Irene didn't cry though when folk said she'd probably end up a bludger and cheap like her Mum. She yelled back and occasionally used her fists, but then they called her Wild Irene so she couldn't win even if she won the fight (which she usually did) and next thing their olds would be banging on the door to complain she'd bashed their kid.

His bottom lip wobbled in trepidation. "Where ya goin', our Irene?" He asked worriedly.

Irene felt a stab of guilt. "Nowhere, Benji," she answered gently and spat on the crumpled tissue that she fished from her school dress pocket to tenderly dab yet more blood from his bloodied nose. "There! All done. Now let's get you the dunny and I'll tell the twins to nick you a pair of shorts from the Lost Locker. You've got games this arvo so you'll be right."

She ruffled his black hair and sighed again. Benji was of mixed race and absolutely beautiful. Everyone commented on it. Once a couple of toffs in a limo had stopped and the woman, who'd been DRIPPING in jewellery, as Irene later told her mother, rolled down the tinted window to ask directions - a flimsy excuse, Irene knew, if they'd been truly lost the snooty-looking chauffeur would have been the one making the enquiries.

"What a little sweetie!" The woman exclaimed in admiration, a term of endearment which made Benji squirm and grab Irene's hand in case they wanted to buy him (Benji had lately watched a kids' movie in which a wicked witch had turned all the children of the village into gold coins and it had given him nightmares). "What's your name, sweetie?"

Irene shrewdly weighed up the situation. Normally she wouldn't have given "plastic people", her disdainful nickname for folks with more money than sense who didn't live in the "real world", the time of day, for Irene McFarlane did not suffer fools gladly. But these guys obviously had money and this conversation seemed to be leading somewhere.

"Benji. He's my brother," she said sweetly, when Benji was too tongue-tied to reply, and looking as coy and innocent as it was possible to look with two stolen bottles of pop poking their heads out of her mother's shopping bag as though both bottles were determined to be unashamed and hide their criminal past from legally bought groceries.

The woman wrinkled her nose in distaste. Clearly Irene did not impress her.

"Well, you buy your brother some lollies. I daresay the poor little mite doesn't get many."

The tone was accusing as though she suspected his sister of snatching away any he DID get and she grimaced again as Irene sniffed and absently wiped her nose on her sleeve before happily accepting the ten dollar note that was peeled from a wad of several more while her husband sat beside her smiling indulgently.

"Ta, missus!" Irene winked at Benji, which, he knew, was always their signal to run and to the astonishment of the strangers, the two dirty-faced urchins raced away as though their very lives depended on it, leaving nothing in their wake but a cloud of sandy dust from their stampeding heels.

They had stopped under the cooling shade of a large tree to drink some of the lemonade, giggling as it fizzed up into their hot, perspiring faces the moment the top was twisted off.

"Now it's only cos I'm here that we took the dough. If I'm not here, you mustn't EVER take money or lollies from strangers in case they turn out to be sickos. Remember that or else!"

Irene hammered home the message literally with a series of short, gentle raps on Benji's head every four or five words after they'd each taken a couple of long swigs of warm cherryade straight from the bottle. Out of the whole family, Benji was her favourite. Shy, sensitive, dreamy Benji, with the heart and soul of a poet. It was hardly surprising that when he was seventeen he and a group of like-minded teenagers decided to travel round Oz in a converted bus, living off the land or charity or occasional seasonal work. And sometimes, he told her proudly during one of his intermittent phone calls, he and a couple of the guys busked and sang songs HE'D written and, in his very last phone call, he'd been buzzing because they'd made "heaps of money" and people had been asking who'd written the lyrics of HIS songs.

But this was ten years away yet. Today her current concern was Benji's wet pants. She gave another deep sigh. It was all very well for the bubs in Reception class to wet themselves but Benji was seven now and life wasn't easy for any of the McFarlane kids as it was. He was just lucky her birthday fell when it did else she would already have swapped primary for high school and wouldn't have been around to protect him anymore. And she worried about Benji more than any of their other siblings.

The twins, Katie and Jill, had each other and a father who sometimes called with presents for them and took them to stay with him and his girlfriend every other weekend. The younger kids were too young yet to know how tough things were growing up in a large, single parent family. But Benji had it tougher than most. While he was often admired for his looks the downside was that racists like Eric and Kevin Sharp bullied him. Not that they knew any better, Irene realised. Their bulldog of a father, a squat, thick-necked man with a permanent red face from heavy drinking, was notorious for his racist views and had even been locked up twice for victimizing a black family who'd had the misfortune to move into his neighbourhood.

To Irene's relief, a sudden clatter of footsteps heralded the arrival of their nine-year-old twin sisters who, judging by their worried looks, had obviously just heard the news, and Irene thankfully handed Benji over to the twins' care and squinted up at the town hall clock over the way.

Damn! Small wonder the schoolyard had become so quiet. She was already five minutes late for Cookery and Mrs Buckley would be none too pleased that yet again Irene McFarlane had "forgotten" the ingredients - this time for the choux buns they were meant to be baking. She quickly rolled the tennis ball out of the sock and crammed it into a corner of her school bag to make all appear innocuous, she'd had enough detentions this term for fighting, cursing and a hundred and one other things. Even when it hadn't been her fault - like not having the items required for cookery lessons and the proprietor of the local store who sold required items watching her like a hawk when she'd tried to obtain them since she'd caught Irene stealing often enough before.

"Dark chocolate and double cream. We just can't afford it, dear. I've barely enough left to buy bread and milk till my welfare cheque arrives next week."

Evelyn McFarlane had shown her eldest daughter the few coins left in her purse and shrugged helplessly. She was a thin, pale, pretty woman with baby blue eyes, always up to her eyes in nappies and washing and always tired. Besides Irene, Benji and the twins there was Terry, four, Ruthie, nearly two, and little Christabel, eight weeks old. And she had just had her heart broken yet again. Evelyn fell in love far too easily.

"You can't believe every single thing a bloke tells you, Mum," Irene frequently advised, not quite twelve years old and yet already wise to the ways of the world.

But unfortunately Evelyn did. As soon as a new boyfriend whispered sweet nothings Evelyn inevitably convinced herself he was The One THIS Time and, swept off her feet by the romance of it all, took the relationship further. The Pill was not yet widely available and by the time she was she was thirty-three Evelyn had seven children to five different fathers. Apart from the twins' Dad none of them had stayed around long enough to even acknowledge their offspring - although Terry's father Jeff Maddox, a likeable enough layabout and petty thief, who sometimes worked, often didn't, and who liked to up sticks and move on without telling anyone because he "hated to be tied down", had belatedly reappeared and Christabel had been the result before he was off again.

Irene was never able to discover anything more about her own father other than he'd been in the Army and his nickname was Hal (what his real name was, she never found out) because Evelyn had been so horrified to learn he was already married that, unaware she was pregnant with her first child, she'd cut all ties. Irene vowed she herself would never be so stupid. When she married (she was certain she would marry) it would be for keeps and her kids would be brought up in a secure, stable two-parent family.

But of course when she grew up she discovered it wasn't quite as simple as that. Her own three kids had been taken into care because of her alcoholism and their father was nowhere on the scene. Her mother and siblings were long gone too - the twins, when they were ten, being taken by their father and his new bride to live in San Francisco and, despite his faithful promises to Evelyn, he never did send a forwarding address. And the rest of her family...

Over time things had changed. Jeff Maddox, the father of Christabel and Terry, finally decided to grow up and accept his responsibilities and Evelyn had lately gone through the menopause so there was no possibility of yet another unplanned pregnancy. After all the years of struggling, at last there was light on the horizon and money in the pot at the McFarlane household thanks to Jeff finally settling down to a regular job and even earning promotion and Irene, who'd left home to train as a nurse, sending home occasional cheques from her meagre salary for the youngsters to have treats. Evelyn excitedly booked their first ever family holiday, a week on a farm, and, suitcases full to the brim, they left their little grey town for the glorious Australian countryside.

Irene heard later how they'd all been laughing and singing.

There was a popular summer novelty song climbing the charts and they'd been singing the summer song at the tops of the voices as they took the bend. Mum and Jeff, fourteen-year-old Terry, twelve-year-old Ruthie, and little Christabel, only ten years old, and the sun blazing in a cloudless sky and the fields greener than they'd ever been after last week's rain. The couple in the other car survived. Little Christabel, Ruthie and Terry, Evelyn and Jeff, none of them ever sang again.

Neither did Benji. Benji took his own life the same day.

Tragically he learnt of the car crash through a television news bulletin except they got it wrong and said the victims, named by their neighbours as Jeff Maddox, 44, Evelyn McFarlane, 43, and her children, Terry, Ruthie, Christabel and Irene, had all died. There was believed to be another son, the report said, who had left home some months previously and twin girls, who had apparently emigrated with their father over a decade ago. Benji, who'd been watching TV and drowning his sorrows after a row with his girlfriend, was last seen alive with tears streaming down his face heading for a local beauty spot where his still warm body was found by a man out walking his dog.

The police informed Irene only a few short hours after they'd brought her the devastating news of the car crash. Two of her friends from the Nurses Home caught her as her legs gave way and everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. People were speaking to her but it was as if she couldn't hear, as if her brain refused to function anymore. All she was aware of was that through a window flung wide open to let in the sun-kissed air of that beautiful summer's day a bird was singing as if all was well with the world. Yet it couldn't have been because somebody was screaming.

In the shadowy half light two silhouettes rose without words but as if of one mind and held one another. At last he spoke, his voice hoarse with emotion.

"We chose...we chose together the inscription for his tiny white headstone "The brightest star in Heaven tonight is our little boy saying goodnight". I would stand at the window. Gazing up the stars and wondering if Jonathan was watching. I still do. I wonder if he knows what his father did, if he hates me..."

"Ssh, ssh." Irene spoke softly, stroking his face, touching the tears. "It's alright now. It's alright."

One night, three years or more after their deaths, she stood alone on the beach of the little grey town where she had been born. It was a wind-chilled night and lights flickered in long-ago familiar buildings while the sea gathered all its strength and prepared to rush towards the shore. She pressed her feet into the powdery sand and, wrapping her coat tighter around her shoulders, head down against the wind, she had begun her solitary walk back to the town when a ray of moonlight suddenly cut across her path. She stopped, caught by surprise, to look up at the sky and through a curtain of misty tears she saw dozens of stars twinkling as if she and they were alone in the world. And in the lonely eternity she found herself wondering if some of those twinkling stars were the people she had loved and lost watching over her. So she named them, one by one, from the smallest and shyest for Christabel, to the brightest and most beautiful for Benji. And when she hurried from the beach, wiping tears from her eyes, the tide was already trickling over her toes but her heart was lighter.

Another lightning flash. Two people needing each other captured in the soul of the night.