While Belle unexpectedly finds herself overcome with grief at Lisa’s death, Lucas has opted to keep himself to busy to take his mind off what’s happened. It takes some well-considered words from Don Fisher during one of their computer lessons for him to finally open up. “I understand you want to ease your pain and focus on something, but let me tell you from personal experience that this is not the answer right now,” Don says sympathetically, offering an anecdote or two to help drive things home. The pair agree to postpone their lesson, allowing Luc some time to reflect and Don the opportunity to familiarise himself with the wonders of technology without a guiding hand. Despite the initial setback of not knowing how to insert Luc’s disc into the computer, Don’s soon well on his way to accessing things he shouldn’t. Before you get any ideas, we are, of course, talking about the novel Luc has been working on. Somewhat unusually for one so accustomed to playing by the rules, Don proceeds to read through the whole thing – a fact that he’s quite happy to admit to Luc when he returns what he now knows to be a backup disc of his work. “The truth is, I did scan a few pages and became quite engrossed in it, but then, when I reached the end of Chapter 3 and realised there was no more, I felt quite disappointed,” Don admits, wrongly anticipating a positive response to his offer of publishing contacts. But, despite Luc’s evident anger at such an invasion of privacy, you can’t deny Don the position of Summer Bay’s resident wise owl; with all his worldly experience, there’s no situation for which he doesn’t have a solution. So when he realises the source of Luc’s anger is, in fact, down to the guilt and embarrassment of writing his best material as a consequence of Lisa’s death, Don’s counsel is enough to see his protégée working through his grief – even going so far as to rally everyone together on the beach to hold a tribute for the departed.Burnt out

“Do you really want a criminal record just to protect some lowlife who couldn’t give a monkey’s about you?” Constable Harper asks Drew, who’s so far managed to remain quiet about Dom’s involvement in the stolen parts racket. But his silence won’t last long if Jazz has anything to do with it.

In fact, she’s prepared to go as far as it takes to keep Drew out of jail, despite the fact that every way she turns she finds herself facing dead ends. To make it worse, Belle, whom Jazz names as the one person capable of convincing Drew to speak to the police about Dom, is so caught up in her feelings over Lisa’s death that she’s incapable of offering Drew the support he needs, and Dom himself is only too eager to make sure that his rival knows what’s at stake if he speaks up: the racket goes much higher, and those involved won’t have any qualms about getting their revenge if they’re exposed.

So, having decided that desperate times call for desperate measures, it’s not long before Jazz returns to the police station for yet another attempt at saving her son. “Could we go somewhere a little more private?” she asks a bemused Harper, who’s clearly not sure what to expect from their one-to-one. Nevertheless, Jazz is soon skipping home ready to break the news to Drew that she’s managed to cut a deal: if Drew gives a statement confirming what he knows about the stolen parts, he'll avoid jail. With Dom’s words still ringing in his ears, Drew’s less than eager to rush down to the station, but “no” not being a word with which Jazz is familiar, he doesn’t have a choice. And it seems to pay off. “We’ve raided the wreckers’ yard and found the shell of the stolen vehicle that we suspect your parts came from,” Harper says, having decided to pay an out-of-hours visit to the Curtis residence to fill them in on progress.

But little does either she or Drew know that the police have made the somewhat questionable decision to impound Drew's car overnight at Ray’s garage, giving him the perfect opportunity to dispose of the evidence. Before the day’s out, Dom’s torched “The Beast” – and with it all certainty of Drew’s exoneration…


Tagged in