We didn't go far after leaving the dentist's. The silent suburbs on the city limits seemed more ominous that ever, so we biked out of there as quickly as our legs could take us. Following Dr Nguyen's advice, we found the back road and soon found ourselves surrounded by thick bush; it felt safer immediately.

The night caught up with us, then overtook us. Simon hollered out from the front of the convoy when he saw a twisted track leading into the bush, and we followed it to a small clearing, a round treeless circle in the middle of dark and scrubby trees. "This'll do," Simon declared, and we followed his lead and set up camp.

Our efficiency had improved; in less than half an hour, the tents went up, the fire was lit and we were settled in for the night. Exhausted but not sleepy, I had curled up against the backs of Bailey's legs, using them as support and watching as Bella menaced Chookie in her carrier and Simon taught Mischa how to scramble an egg.

Nev had disappeared into her tent, and a pang of guilt twanged inside me like a guitar string. She was my friend too, but Bailey was hurting more, and although I wasn't openly choosing sides, I had to give more to the person who needed it. Nev had an entire family system waiting for her; Bailey only had me.

My eyes continually flicked back to Rueben, who heated something in a saucepan over the coals. With steady hands, he poured the contents into a plastic bowl and approached me. "Potato and leek soup," he said, handing me the bowl.

I made a face and began to protest, but Bailey cut me off. "Karla, eat the freaking soup."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not." Bailey turned me around, angst on their smooth face. "You haven't eaten in days, and don't think we don't notice. You got lucky today when you fell, but what about if that had happened near a cliff or a bridge? You could be killed. If you'd hit your head harder, you might have died from a brain injury, and there would have been nothing we could have done for you."

"Bailey... I'm sorry."

Bailey wiped their tears away angrily. "I can't lose anyone else, okay? You're my family. So as your sibling, I'm begging you to eat the soup."

Resigned and chastened, I lifted the bowl to my mouth, letting the aroma of the stock and the starchy spuds fill my nose. The first sip hit my tongue, and it was like eating for the first time. The creamy liquid rolled around my mouth as I crushed the slivers of leek and potato chunks, and when I swallowed, I could feel the heat travel all the way down my throat into my belly. I wanted not to love it, to be above such a primal instinct as food enjoyment, but I shivered in enjoyment, helpless to ignore how good it felt.

Bailey nodded in approval. "If you want to go on a health kick when we get to the farm, I'll do it with you. We can make our own bootcamp, eat rabbit food, push around tractor tyres, whatever. But time and place, Karla. Now is not the time to try and lose weight."

"Okay." I sipped the soup again, and watched as Bailey and Rueben shared an approving glance. Sitting between them, I didn't feel pressured or steamrolled into eating; I felt loved and supported. These two people meant more to me than almost anyone in the world, and if they said I was worthy enough to eat, I was starting to believe it.

When my bowl was empty, Rueben said, "Can I check your head again?"

I nodded, and he knelt beside me. His large, warm hands found my face and I only winced slightly as his fingers probed the bump on my forehead.

"I think it's okay. I want to keep you awake for an hour or so now, then you can rest. We'll need to check on you during the night – concussion protocol."

Bailey offered, "I can do it. I normally wake up before dawn, so as long as someone can check on her about midnight, that should work, right?"

Rueben said, "Great, yeah. I'll do the midnight check." He turned to me, mischief in his eyes. "Don't freak out when you wake up with someone inside your tent."

"I won't." I snuggled back against Bailey's legs and let the movement of the camp lull me into a vague stupor. Rueben took Mischa to bed, Nev reappeared and stared at Bailey with wounded eyes, while Simon poured himself a bourbon.

I hadn't realised I'd dropped off until Bailey shook me awake. "Karla? You can't fall asleep just yet."

"Ugh. It's not my fault you guys are so boring." Cranky, I pushed myself up into a seated position and rubbed my face. My head had begun to hurt again, and I needed distraction. "It must be story time again, surely?"

"The only people who haven't shared yet are you and Rueben," said Bailey.

"Well, I'm injured," I protested. "I'll have to do mine another time. Rueben?"

From across the fire, our gazes connected, and I shivered as he seemed to stare into my thoughts. Rueben said, "I can share. I can tell you about the one who hurt me."

"Great," I said breathlessly. I wanted to hear his story, I wanted to know everything. Would I have preferred to hear it over a romantic dinner at a five-star restaurant instead of over canned soup shared with three other people? Sure. But I'd take it. I felt as though I knew who Rueben was intimately, but I barely knew anything about who he had been.

Rueben folded his arms loosely, then spoke. "About ten years ago, I was working as a therapist for the Sydney elite. I can't share names, but I had some pretty well-known clients."

"Oh my god, you have to tell us who!" said Nev, speaking for the first time, lured out of silence by the prospect of celebrity goss. "We won't tell anyone, promise!"

"Breaking my clients' trust isn't about getting in trouble, Nev."

"So then tell us!"

"No."

"Will you at least give us some ideas about who they were?"

Rueben relented. "A few professional footballers, some politicians. Two movie stars and a Grammy winner. And models."

"Models?" I felt my hackles go up. In a world of pretty people, models were the top of the food chain, the effortlessly gorgeous who seemed to be a different species from the mere mortals, and several castes above fatties like me. God, I wanted to be a model. It wasn't fair that some people hit the genetic lottery and others won supplementary prizes like okay hair or nice-ish skin.

"I worked with a modelling agency who wanted to support their models psychologically. There's a lot of pressure in their industry, and the women who came to see me struggled with disordered eating, drug use, PTSD from being forced into situations against their will by people who wanted to take advantage of them." Rueben shook his head in sorrow. "Some of the girls were still in their teens and already dealing with trauma and mental health issues I'd expect to see in war vets."

We were silent, contemplating. The fire popped and I started, words tumbling from my mouth before I could hold them back. "So, let me guess: you fell for a model?"

"It's not like that," he responded, and my soup-filled stomach twisted.

"It must be at least a little like that, or you wouldn't be so defensive."

"I've been defending myself over what happened for nearly a decade," he said, standing and pacing, agitated in a way I hadn't seen before. "I thought I could share with this group without feeling judged."

Bailey poked me, hard, and I backed down. "I'm sorry," I said, feeling wounded and knowing he felt the same. It was like having 'the ex' conversation with my family listening, and I was raw from my injuries and my ebbing self-confidence.

There was also a lingering shadow over me; the flashback I'd had when I was knocked out. The memory was one I hadn't thought about in years, and it wasn't anything I wanted to revisit now. Shoving my shitty feelings aside, I said, "Please, Rueben. Talk to us. No one is judging."

Rueben rubbed his eyebrows, seeming to soothe himself. "Her name was Alena."

"Alena Bykov?" said Nev excitedly. "I know her! She was huge when I was in primary school – everyone wanted to be her, and omg those legs, and wasn't her butt insured for some stupid amount-"

"For the purpose of this story, can we please pretend that Nev doesn't know a disturbing amount about your ex's arse?" said Bailey.

Rueben smiled at them gratefully. "Alena started seeing me because she struggled with body dysmorphia."

"Wait – the hottest woman in the Southern Hemisphere thought she was ugly?" I knew who Alena was, and I remembered her flawless limbs and giant icy blue eyes staring up at me from the pages of glossy magazines, silently implying that I'd never be as gorgeous as she was. "Are you kidding me? That woman is half the reason I hated myself as a teenager, now you're telling me that she hated herself too?"

"I would have thought you'd understand, Karla," said Rueben softly.

"I understand why ugly people see themselves as ugly – not someone who was literally crowned a 'beautiful person' by Who for years."

"Anyone can have body dysmorphia – even 'beautiful people.' Alena always felt that she didn't look quite right, that her facial features were odd, that her eyes were too big, that she was bony and too tall. The modelling world loved her, but she didn't love herself."

Rueben sat back down, saying, "I worked with Alena for months, and we did intensive work. She'd had a brutal childhood, and she was abandoned by her mother very young. Her mother sold her as a child bride to a much older man, but Alena managed to escape. She was homeless for years until she managed to land a job cleaning the airport where a film producer saw her and cast her in a commercial. In her words, she went from street rat to shining star overnight, but she never stopped feeling like the skinny homeless child whose own mother gave her away."

"So how come you can't tell us which footballers you worked with, but you can share all of Alena's details?" I was starting to feel sorry for the girl with the massive blue eyes.

"You can find out all of what I'm telling you in her book. Alena wrote about it in her autobiography." Rueben had become very still, his face strained, and I longed to approach him and hold him. "She and I spoke about everything, and when I realised I'd developed feelings for her, I stopped seeing her professionally and handed her case to a colleague."

"What happened next?" asked Simon, offering Rueben a swig from his bottle.

Rueben refused the drink, saying, "About the same time I stopped our sessions, Alena decided to quit modelling, to write her book and work out who she was. Her agency did not take it well. They immediately blamed me – her agent flat out accused me of trying to ruin them, and said they'd do the same to me. I put my head down, lawyered up, and tried to pretend the whole thing never happened.

"I didn't see Alena again for almost two years." He smiled, lost in memory. "I went to a party on a friend's yacht, and there she was. She was always beautiful, and I'd forgotten how strongly I felt for her. I walked over, practicing what I would say to her, but the second she started talking, I saw."

"Saw what?"

"Saw that she was high, drunk, god knows what else." His teeth ground together, and he spoke with a tight jaw. "Things had gone downhill pretty fast for his once she didn't have work to keep her grounded. She was partying, taking whatever she could to numb the pain. Every guy who interacted with her had used her in one way or another. She was a mess.

"I took her back to her hotel, tucked her into bed, told her to call me. I never expected to see her again."

"But you did?" asked Nev.

"I did. She rang me a few days later, asked me to meet for coffee at Manly beach. She was clean, and she cried as she told me how much she was hurting, how much I'd helped her before, and how abandoned she felt when I handed her off."

In the dim light, I saw Rueben's shame. "I said that I'd never meant to hurt her, and she pleaded with me to tell her why. And god help me, I did. I told her about my feelings, that I couldn't ethically be her psychologist. And you know what she did?"

"She kissed you," I said quietly.

Rueben's eyes lowered. "I shouldn't have let it happen, but she was so beautiful, and I'd had feelings for her for so long. We slept together that night, then she moved in with me. And I was egotistical enough to believe that my love could fix her.

"But it couldn't. Of course it couldn't. The only one who could work on Alena was Alena, and she just wasn't ready."

I saw his tears, and it brought my own to the surface. "Rueben, you don't have to do this."

"I know. But the story needs telling." He blinked hard, steeled himself and continued. "We were only together for a few weeks when we found out Alena was pregnant."

"Omg. Omg! Is Mischa the child of Alena Bykov?" Nev's voice was so high, I heard several bats in the area start squeaking in response.

"Slow down, Neveah, let him tell the tale," said Simon, gruffly gesturing for her to join him on his log.

Rueben looked grateful. "About the same time, someone had spotted Alena and I together, and the photo ended up in one of those trashy magazines. Alena wasn't even famous anymore, but gossip was gossip. The photo made its way back to her former agency, and the next thing I knew, I was called in for a disciplinary hearing."

"Why?"

"The Australian Psychological Society's code of ethics states that psychologists cannot have sex with a former patient for at least two years after the professional relationship has ended. We got together two months too soon, and someone reported us. No, not someone – Alena's former agent. He wanted revenge, and he got it. I was de-registered and I lost my practice."

"Rueben, I'm so sorry."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," he quoted. "I'd lost my career and my livelihood, but I was in love and expecting a child."

"Was Alena excited about the baby?" asked Bailey.

"Yes, and no. She wanted to be – I'd always told her that it was her body and I would support whatever she chose, and she chose to keep the baby freely, but her demons were always circling. She worried she'd be just as detached as her own mother, and she was overwhelmed with guilt about how being with her had ruined my professional life. I spent nine months coaching and coddling and cajoling, anything to keep her clean and by my side. It was exhausting.

"When Mischa was born, all of the effort was worth it. She was a tiny, scrunched up potato with a red face and a bald head, and I loved her from the second I held her in my arms."

"And Alena?"

"She tried. She did try." Rueben's features were wreathed in grief. "She went to her sessions with her new psychologist, did every exercise she was asked to do, read all the books, went to groups. But one day I woke up to the sound of Mischa crying and hungry, and Alena was gone."

"Where?"

"There was a note. She said she was sorry. Said she hoped we'd be happy. Said that she had tried to love us, but she didn't think there was any love inside her, and she couldn't give what she didn't have."

Rueben wept. We held the space for him.

After a few minutes, he wiped his face with trembling hands. "I found out she went back to Russia. I saw a few posts here and there about her but they tapered off after a while. I started working again in the corporate world, and when I could afford it, I hired a private investigator to find her, but they came up with nothing. There were a few theories that she had died of an overdose - just as many rumours that she'd married a sheik and moved to the UAE."

"What do you believe happened to her?"

"Honestly? I don't know. The optimist in me hoped for years that she'd come back – not for me, but for Mish. I love our daughter so much, and I don't understand how Alena could willingly walk away without another word, so then I wonder if she did die. And I'll probably never know, which is just something I have to live with."

Nev asked, "Do you still love her?"

"No. I went to therapy myself, worked with a great psychologist to dig down into my saviour complex. I realised the love I had for Alena wasn't reciprocated, and that I was so caught up in trying to love her, I never realised it was only a shell. It took me a few years, but I moved on. Now, if I love again, I want it to be equal, because loving someone who can't love you back is a hell I won't survive a second time."

Our eyes met as he spoke, and I felt the truth in them. He wasn't pining for his beautiful, mysterious ex. Thank god, because I could never compete with that. "What have you told Mischa?" I asked, my voice husky.

"As much of the truth as I can, at least until she's old enough to hear more. She knows she had a mummy, and that she was created in love. She knows that she doesn't have a mummy now, and she handles it pretty well most of the time." His smile was tragic. "I think she pretends she's fine for my sake. Every Mother's Day, she says she has a stomach ache and she stays home, and is quiet for about a week after. She's had counselling, and they tell me she's doing fine, but I still feel as though it's my fault that I can't be her mum."

"She's an amazing kid," I said, not bothering to disguise the tears that fell freely down my cheeks. "She has you. She'll be fine."

"Thanks."

As if on cue, Nev, Simon, Bailey and I surrounded Rueben and hugged him hard. I felt his sobs shudder through him as we held him tightly. We couldn't take away the hurt or bring back Mish's mum, but for a few moments, we could care for the carer.

Unwilling to break the spell bound between us all, we drifted off to bed without any more words. I popped the last of the precious codeine tablets gifted to me by the good dentist, then crashed out in my tent, feeling waves of emotion lapping over me as if I'd fallen asleep in the shallows of a sandy shore.

The rustling of my tent woke me a few hours later. As the zip opened, I smelled the freshness of the trees surrounding my tent, the ashes of the fire, and the distinctive scent of sleepy male.

"Rueben," I whispered.

He crawled up beside me, his kind face shining even in the dark. "How's your head?"

"Fine." My hand found his. "How's your heart?"

"Fine. Better than fine."

He should have left then; we both knew it. But he teetered for a moment too long, and our lips met in the darkness, a kiss that contained the secrets of everything we weren't yet brave enough to speak out loud.

Chapter pic of Natalia Vodianova, the Russian model, as a reference point to Alena.

Question: do you like the chapter pics? I'd like to know if I should keep posting them with chapters or if you'd prefer to direct the story inside your own mind without my help. Leave me a comment - yay for yes please, more pics, nay for no thanks Kate, we cool, girl.

As always, please remember to vote before you leave our road trip - more chapters on the way soon. xx Kate