The back door of the rental car opened first, and a small, pale blond woman with a familiar nose and jawline got out. Oversize sunglasses obscured most of her face, but her lips were feathered at the edges the way they got after a solid crying jag. Her clothes were a little out of order, rumpled on one side, like she’d been lying down. She leaned on the doorframe, swaying a little. Was she drunk already? A man got out of the driver’s seat. Squinting into the sun, he lifted his hand to shade his eyes and nodded in Alison’s direction. She nodded back.
Simone Arnold’s parents. Anne and Bob looked out of place in the car park of the Imperial in the late afternoon sun. There was something missing, something vacant about the way they covered the ground from the car to the beer garden where Alison was standing in the doorway, waiting for them.
They followed her to a table out of the sun and sat down. They still hadn’t said a word.
“Can I get you a drink? Beer? They’ve got tea and coffee too, if you’re off the stronger stuff.”
Bob Arnold cleared his throat, looked toward his wife, who shook her head with the smallest motion possible, and said, “I’ll have a Fourex if they’ve got it, thanks. And two waters would be great while you’re up.”
Alison smiled, went into the bar and called Molly over, placed the order. Added a vodka soda for herself, extra lime. She carried the tray back to the table and tried not to slop the beer out of the pint glass as she set it down. Waited to see who would ask the first question.
Bob Arnold wouldn’t look Alison in the eye. She wasn’t sure exactly what Detective Mitchell had told them about the conversation they’d had at Alison’s house two days before.
“Detective Mitchell told me Simone lived on the Esplanade, which is where I lived up there. It’s a beautiful spot.” Alison looked at Simone’s parents. Did they too imagine Simone was her friend?
“Did you help her?” Anne Arnold asked, so softly Alison wasn’t sure at first if she’d actually said anything or if she’d imagined it.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I didn’t know your daughter—I told the detective that. When I found her in the driveway, she was already . . . gone.” Alison took a large gulp of her drink.
“You really didn’t know her?” Anne Arnold’s face crumpled with the disappointment.
“No, I didn’t. Why would I lie?” Her tone was agitated despite her attempt to stay cool. She really had wanted to meet the Arnolds, see what they were like, try to find out something, anything, about their daughter, but the conversation with Detective Mitchell had made her change her mind, and when the detective had called to say the meeting was set up, Alison tried to get out of it. But the city cop had talked her round, promised not to be there, said the Arnolds were hoping to speak with her and could she do them the courtesy, since their daughter was dead, and they were grieving? Alison hadn’t expected they too would assume she knew more than she really did. Was the detective trying to trick her into admitting something?
“This is a mistake. Mr. and Mrs. Arnold, I’m so sorry for your loss, but I can’t help you at all.”
Anne Arnold was silently sobbing now, her head resting on her husband’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” Alison said again. “I don’t know what the detective told you, but I honestly had never met your daughter. I’m very sorry she died. I want to help but I don’t know how I can. Anything you want to know about the fire, or how Simone was when I found her, or anything I could tell you that might help you, I’ll do my best to answer your questions. But I can’t tell you why she was here, or what she was doing.”
The Arnolds looked at each other, and Bob shook his head. Maybe she should tell them about the slip of paper with her address on it, but Alison couldn’t form the words, and she didn’t want to be more involved with these people and their grief. It was too much.
“We just want to know anything, anything at all.” He looked down at his shoes and tightened his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“Did she look peaceful?” Anne Arnold asked through her tears.
Alison paused a minute before she spoke again, sanitized her memory to make it easier.
“She looked like she was asleep. There was nothing to show she was dead; when I reached out to her I thought maybe I could shake her and she’d wake up. Her face was kind of blank, and her eyes were closed.”
But she hadn’t shaken her, hadn’t touched her, hadn’t tried to revive her, she reminded herself, the hot shame of her own inadequacy flushing her cheeks pinkest rose.
She was curious now, curious again about the address and the coincidence of them both living in the same place in Cairns. The same age, the same place. According to Patrick—and her own, somewhat hazy memory—the same face.
“Do you know why she might have been in Victoria? What she was doing?” Alison asked, casting around for a place to begin.
“Her ex-boyfriend, fella named Michael, he was violent. When she broke up with him, he wouldn’t leave her alone. One day she told us she had a plan to get rid of him, and then that was it. We never saw her again. For ages we thought he might have killed her.” Simone’s father talked with an even pace and understated volume. When he stopped it took Alison a moment to realize he was finished. He took a sip of his beer.
Alison closed her eyes, saw the headline in the article in the Age a couple of weeks ago. A woman killed by her partner every week last year. She knew—she really did know—how possible that was.
“He did kill her. She was running from him. If it weren’t for him, she’d have been home and safe, not out here in a fire.” When Anne Arnold spoke this time, she enunciated every word like she was spitting out venom.
“The police told me they’re not sure if she died in the fire or from something else?”
“Yeah, someone else,” Bob said. “The Queensland police were supposed to be watching him, but I guess they weren’t really looking so hard.”
“You really think he killed her in the middle of the fire and then escaped somehow?”
The Arnolds looked at each other. Alison remembered that feeling, in the minutes after the fire, on the driveway, that feeling like someone else was there, like she was being watched. She pushed it back down.
“Like Annie said, even if he didn’t physically do it, he’s the reason she was here in the first place.” He pulled a battered photograph out of his pocket. A Polaroid. Slipped it over the uneven wood of the table, his fingers obscuring the faces until he pulled them away and Alison could see them properly. Blue eyes flecked gold, shimmering in the flash’s light, that unmistakable jawline, the sweep of his hair, the smirk-smile.
Gil. Alison blinked. Checked again, to be sure. It was him all right. Her Gil.
Simone beside him, his arm around her as though he possessed her. She felt the pinch of his fingers on her waist like a reflex she couldn’t contain. The piece of paper with her address. The overwhelming sense of unease she’d been feeling. It was him. Alison felt her chest constrict and she tried to keep her breathing steady, tried to keep her expression neutral. She didn’t want them to know. She couldn’t explain it. She needed a minute. To think about what all this meant before anyone else found out.
“I’m so sorry I can’t be more help. If I think of anything, I promise I’ll let you know.” She didn’t tell them about the sounds in the bush, the penetrating feeling like someone was staring in those moments before she found Simone. She didn’t tell them her ex-boyfriend was their daughter’s ex-boyfriend. Gil. He must have been there. Where was he now?
Alison wanted to get out. She felt clammy and cold despite the heat of the day and the warmth from the vodka, which churned in her stomach. She downed the rest of it, shivered a little, and smiled in the Arnolds’ direction. “I’ve got to go, sorry. Please stay in touch, let me know anything, anything at all.” Alison hastily scrawled her number on the back of a coaster, handed it to Bob. He shook her hand, weakly. Anne nodded good-bye, wiped a tear from the apple of her cheek. Alison thought she could see suspicion in the woman’s eyes. A lingering accusation.
As Alison unlocked the door to Sal’s car she looked back into the beer garden, saw a middle-aged man she’d never met before slide into the seat she’d just vacated. He held out a hand to Bob Arnold and shook hard, clapping the spare one on the older man’s back. Journalist, probably, Alison thought, as she slung her legs into the car and twisted the key in the ignition. He reminded her of her father, the way he held himself.
“OK, we have vodka, and we have half a bottle of Chardy, and I know there’s a slab of warm VB in the garage.” Meg whirled around, holding the Chardonnay in her left hand, waggling it. “This is three days old. It’s probably off.” She screwed up her nose and walked with purpose toward the sink, unscrewing the wine’s cap.
Alison rushed to grab the bottle from her before she could dump it out. “Whoa. What are you wasting good wine for?”
“It’s three days old. Mum says if you don’t drink it in the first twenty-four hours, it goes bad.”
Alison laughed. “Your mum is having you on. It’s a screw top. It’s been in the fridge. It’s fine!” She opened the bottle and sniffed. Notes of straw and sugar, nothing sour—crisp apples and new oak furniture. She swigged it back, straight from the neck. It was fine. Nothing more, nothing less. She pulled two glasses from Meg’s cupboard. Filled them up.
Meg picked hers up, examined it. “High tide, huh?”
Alison laughed. “I thought we were getting wasted.”
“Oh, we are.” Meg gulped back the wine as though it were water.
“Well, as enticing as warm VB sounds, I think I’ll chance the Chardy.” She raised her glass and clinked it against Meg’s and they both drank deeply.
“Let’s play a game, Alison King.”
All her life, people had called Alison by her full name. Like it was a joke. Some kind of royal taunt. “What kind of game?”
“Why did you move back to Lake Bend?” Meg was staring at her with an intensity that felt unsettling.
“That’s not a game I’m familiar with,” Alison replied.
Meg smiled. “I’ll go first. After uni, I got a job in the Victorian Public Service. It was my dream job. I wanted more than anything in the world to advise the premier, to make a difference, and suddenly I was in briefings with his chief of staff. But it was so boring and, well, anticlimactic. The political advisers never listened to the public servants, and the politicians only listened to their advisers—if they listened to anyone at all. And then, I was home for a christening, and the mayor at the time—you remember Mayor Jackson? She saw me there, and she said she heard I was in the public service now, and she’d asked around. The council’s chief of staff needed a new EA. Was I interested? She knew every right thing to say. And the money was somehow better. So I quit the public service and moved back to Lake Bend.” She drained her wineglass and refilled it. “Now you.”
Alison didn’t know what to say. So she took a deep breath and decided it didn’t matter anymore. “Well, my parents died. But you know that. So I came to bury them, and it coincided with some other shit in my life and I just . . . stayed.”
Meg shook her head. “No. Not enough detail. What really happened?”
Alison emptied her glass. The wine bottle was empty now too. She went to the freezer and pulled out the vodka. Poured herself two generous fingers. Took a swig. “My boyfriend beat me. And then he cheated on me. And I could stand the beatings, but I couldn’t stand the cheating.”
It was quiet in Meg’s kitchen. Alison thought, What’s that thing people say? You could hear a pin drop. Alison thought that was too loud. You could hear cotton growing. You could hear silk moving. You could hear the sun shining. The moon glowing. Alison could hear the blood in her arteries, pumping around her body, and then, spent, back into her heart and lungs, to try all over again.
“I didn’t know he hit you.” It was odd, the way Meg said this. Like she had known he’d cheated but not that he’d been the total-demon-boyfriend package. Alison thought cheating wasn’t really shocking; lots of people did it. But lots of people hit their partner too. We shouldn’t be shocked by it. It’s utterly, devastatingly pedestrian.
“He did. And then he cheated, and I guess that made it easier for me. He wasn’t obsessed with me anymore, when I ended it. He was trying to control someone else. He was willing to let me go.” It felt weird to say that out loud. She’d never told anyone the whole truth before. “That’s why I’m here. It feels safe. It feels like a home that won’t break me, no matter how sad I am about Mum and Dad. At least here, I can see them—or their ghosts, anyway—on every corner. It’s nice to see friendly ghosts instead of scary ones.”
Meg didn’t say anything for a moment, seemingly gathering her placations and consolations into a delicate bouquet, and then, at the last second, throwing it in the bin. Instead, she raised her glass above her head. Alison lifted hers in reply. They drank, the vodka a flame in her chest. “Welcome home, then. I’m fucking glad you’re here.”
She drove without knowing where she would go. She needed to think it through. If Gil was Michael—if Gil was Simone’s ex—Simone had to have had a real reason to be heading for Alison. What did she want from her? And why did it feel so important to Alison that no one know they were connected? She should tell Billy. She should talk to Billy. She should give him everything. But she didn’t have anything to give him. She didn’t have the note. She didn’t know what Simone wanted. All she knew was that she and Simone shared an ex. And Simone was dead.
Alison decided to keep it to herself for a little while. Maybe she could figure out what it was all about on her own. Maybe no one here ever needed to know the truth about who she was, and who she’d been. Meg knew, but Meg was gone. Gil was unpredictable. And he was terrifying. She didn’t know if he knew she lived here. She didn’t know what was going on, and she needed a lot more information before she told anyone about this connection. Gil could be capable of anything. He was a force all his own, and Alison didn’t know what Simone had wanted from her, but she did know that she didn’t want Gil to know she was here. She didn’t want him anywhere near her. But she also needed answers.
If she told the police about their connection, it would all come out and she’d have no control. But maybe, if she could figure out what Simone had wanted from her, she could deal with it, whatever it was, without him ever knowing. It felt important to try. It felt important to know. It felt important to figure it out on her own.
After dinner that night Alison and Sal went down to the pool and cooled their feet in the water, sitting on the concrete edge and sipping whiskey while the silent bush absorbed the night. Alison wanted to tell Sal the truth. But instead she babbled.
“I can’t get her out of my head. She’s my age. She’s from the same building as me in Cairns. It’s creepy.”
“It might be creepy, but maybe it’s all a big coincidence. You never met her in Cairns?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I guess so. I don’t know. I met a lot of people there, but I feel like I’d remember her—she sorta looks like me.” Alison didn’t say it: She was the woman he beat after me. She kept her mouth shut. Buried it down in the pit of her lungs, where it made it harder to take the deepest of breaths, the ones she really needed now.
“Does she? Or do you want her to?” Sal was gentle, but serious.
Alison looked away, didn’t like the scrutiny. Even concrete things like faces were unknowable now. Nothing was solid. “I don’t know her and I’m not sure what to do.” Lying to Sal felt like dropping an egg on the floor and watching it seep into the cracks in the tile, little flecks of scarlet in the yolk, reminders of the bird it could have been, before now, before it wasn’t even food anymore.
“Why do anything?” Sal asked, sounding like she wasn’t quite convinced Alison didn’t know more about Simone.
“Because what if she needed me, if I was supposed to help her somehow?”
“Oh, please, Alison. Figuring out what she was doing in your driveway won’t bring her back from the dead.”
“I can’t stop thinking about her.” It was a voice she didn’t recognize, smaller than usual, less sure.
“I know.” Sal reached out, squeezed her hand. “I think you should try, though.”
“Easier said than done.” Alison drained her glass. As she reached over to refill it from the bottle, she thought she saw movement in the bush down by the rose garden. She squinted toward the trees but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Nothing that shouldn’t be there. Nothing that couldn’t be explained by her imagination. The breeze rustled the leaves and Alison shivered where it touched her.
He rolled it slow, taking his time to make it tight, the paper fat to bursting with the leaf inside. The ceiling fan clicked around, blades blurred with speed, as it tried to push the heat away. High summer, so humid, it hurt to move; so hot, they never wanted to. Gil held the seam up to the light that snuck between the edge of the wooden blind and the window frame. The thick beam danced with dust and hit Alison across her bare stomach, where the sun raised beads of sweat without even trying. She shifted on the sheet, dug her elbows into the soft of the mattress, and sat up as high as she could.
“You gonna light it or just admire it?” she asked, a little teasing in her tone.
Gil flicked the lighter so the flame burst up and put the joint between his lips. He took his time lighting it. Sucked in the smoke, deep. Once. Twice. Three times. On the final exhale, he passed it over to her. He snapped the Zippo lid open and shut, the light glinting off the spade carved in the side. Alison drew in a deep breath, felt it stick in her lungs like always; it filled her up and made her feel like there wasn’t any air left on earth to breathe. It caught in her throat coming back up and she coughed, tried to mask it, coughed again, forced herself to draw another plume of smoke down into her lungs, and held it there.
He was stroking the skin on the inside of her thigh, just above the bend of her knee. His fingers were even warmer than her skin, and where he touched her, she felt as if she were being scalded. It’s too soon to be stoned. She drew in another puff and closed her eyes. She felt his hand find hers, take the joint gently from her, Gil not ever saying a word. Gil’s other hand kept tracing the skin on her leg, wiping away the sweat that was accumulating. Alison opened her eyes. The fan still beat relentlessly. He was lying with his feet up near the head of the bed, his head hanging over the end, in the shade of the lowest part of the room. His free hand meandered higher on her leg. She focused on the fan, watched it spin, a perfect endless windmill, propelling the air inside the room who knows how far with every spin. The smoke from the joint mixed with the heavy air and circulated as if the bedroom were Alison’s lungs.
“You feel it?” Gil’s voice floated across the space between them, but even though it reached her ears, Alison thought it was too far away to understand it properly. She imagined it climbing down her ear canals, into the cavity of her mind, whispering to her synapses. There was electricity in there, a spark, like the one that lit the flame that lit the joint that she’d just inhaled.
“Do you think, if we put a lot of lighters together, connected them somehow, and then made them spark, you could make them think?”
Gil laughed. “Right, guess you’re feeling it.” How long had they been lying here? The sun still snaked across her skin. The fan still beat about as fast as her heart when he touched her. She understood the question he was asking too late to stop her reply.
“It feels like your fingers are flames.”
He rolled off the bed, set the joint in the ashtray, shuffled out of the room. She heard him in the kitchen, opening the fridge, the seal sucking away from the frame; some rustling. No, he was in the freezer—He’s not in the freezer. She visualized the plumes of fresh cold that would have rushed him when he opened it, the way they peeled off the walls, endlessly frigid. He came back, ran his cold hands over her shoulders, leaned in to kiss her, his mouth like the inside of the freezer, an ice cube stuffed into the side of his cheek. He passed it to her, and instinctively, Alison spat it out.
“Gross, Gil.” She pushed him away gently, laughing. He picked up the ice from where it was melting on the sheet, cradled it in his palm, and ran it all over her stomach. She shivered. Felt the goose bumps rise where it touched her. She was hot and cold at once. “Pass me a puff, please.” Eyes closed, she stretched her hand out. She felt him nestle the diminishing stick between her index and middle fingers. It was almost gone, and she sucked it hard to get what she could from it. The ice on her stomach had made a pool of lukewarm water. She felt Gil take the spliff from her lips and then she felt a quick flash of heat as it sizzled out in the pool. She bolted up, shocked. “Shit. What the fuck?”
“Sorry, I saw the water and I figured it wouldn’t hurt you. I’m always putting out candles with wet fingers. What’s the difference?”
It hadn’t hurt, really, had just shocked her like static electricity. The water had splashed off her when she’d sat up, and there was no crescent moon marking the spot. Her head swam. He leaned in and kissed her where he’d done it. Let the rough wetness of his tongue attempt a physical apology. Alison lay back down. How many sparks did it take to create a thinking, living being? How many sparks did it take to burn one?