Alison didn’t fall asleep again until she heard the first calls of the whipbirds that made their home in the tree outside her window. As the early light of day crept across the room, she allowed herself to relax, and she felt her eyelids, heavy with sleep lost, fall. When she woke up six hours later, the day was humid, and she could hear Sal vacuuming in the hallway.
“I’m up, Sal, promise,” she called out.
“It’s eleven a.m., Alison. You can’t sleep all day, love.”
“I could try,” she responded, with a little too much grit in her tone.
Sal turned the vacuum cleaner off and retreated up the hall. Alison felt bad—she hadn’t meant to snap—but she didn’t feel like explaining herself.
Her phone buzzed on the bedside table and she looked at the number. Withheld. Which meant it was either Billy calling from the station or one of the many journalists who had tried to get interviews all week. She let it go to voicemail, and when the notification of a new message popped up, she played it.
“Alison, it’s Chris Waters here from the Age, checking in to see if you’d be available for a chat today? I can come to you, no worries. Just want you to get your version out there, since right now we’ve only got the police reports and the parents’ interview. Might be a good time to get on the record and say your piece, you know, before the inquiry. You’ll have to give evidence then, so no point prolonging it, is there? Anyway, I’m up here with the premier today, I’ve got a snapper with me, and we’re keen for some local stories, so if you’ve got halfa for a sit-down, that’d be ripper.”
Bloody journalists. Maybe that was another name to add to the list of people who might be watching her at night.
Chris Waters.
Dickhead, most likely.
Malcolm King liked to wear his shirtsleeves rolled up, the cotton tails of the fabric untucked, his chinos rumpled, unironed, seeping bleed of ink spotting through on the pockets where he’d shoved a ballpoint in without securing the cap. He kept a little Spirax notebook in the front pocket of his button-up, and was always pulling it out to jot down something. At bedtime, he’d tuck his arm around Alison’s shoulders and tell her about his day. About the story he’d written for the paper the next day, the way the councilman had tried to avoid his calls but he’d caught him anyway, handing out grants to his daughter’s new shell company.
Alison didn’t always understand the stories for the first few years—tax fraud and car accidents, a break-in at the Imperial, the thoroughbred horses stolen in the middle of the night, the kid from down the ridge who was going to be the first draft pick that year, and the one who hit his head diving into a waterhole and wouldn’t ever walk again. Some of them upset her, but she liked the way he told them, the way he explained how the ink that rubbed gray on your fingers over breakfast got there in the first place. She liked how her dad knew everyone in town and everyone in town knew him. She liked how his name looked in the paper. She liked how what he wrote seemed to carry with it some kind of special power, to change the lives of the people around her.
When she was older, she liked knowing the next day’s news before it came out, would ask him if there was anything she should know before she went to school. But he rarely had anything good, it seemed, when she was older. He’d say things like “Be nice to Mrs. Short today” or “Casey Scroggins is gonna need someone to watch out for him” and Alison would thumb through the paper at breakfast, looking for the reasons why.
Once, when she was little, he’d taken her to watch the presses. The way they rushed giant rolls of whitest paper around the room, zooming through the ink plates, cutting, folding, stacking, whirling, collecting in the gut of a rumbling truck, the thud-thump-thwack of the news a heartbeat, alive. Her dad would talk in lingo about his work. The photographers were snappers; the big story on page one was the splash. The people who chopped up his words were the subs; there were sources, leads, yarns, ledes, slugs, the wheetie spit (details too disgusting to read without spitting out your breakfast); one time an unflattering dinkus made him unhappy enough that he forced them to make him a new one. Malcolm King was shabby, a little overweight, but vain. He liked to be above the fold. He cursed if he was cut to a short. He wrote in centimeters, not words.
And then the internet came along and Malcolm King got made redundant. Small country papers, film cameras, hot metal presses, subeditors, Dictaphones, Malcolm King. All of them superfluous in this new digital age. He went back to his old job, his before job, teaching English at Middle Yarra High. Something changed in him. He spent less time at home. He obsessed over the papers, reading the Age, the Herald Sun (or the Scum, as he said everyone who didn’t work there called it), and tutting over his breakfast about the grammar or the quotes or the way the stories ended. He wasn’t bitter, but he was sad, and Alison missed her dad the storyteller who’d let her into his world and taught her all its secrets, before shutting her out completely.
Alison pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, slipped on some sandals, and gathered her hair up into a ponytail. She smoothed the sheets on the bed and unlocked the door, then stepped out into the hall and almost stood on Sal.
“Shit, Sal, what are you doing?”
“Sorry, I was trying to see if you were up yet. I was going to put the kettle on if you were.”
“Too hot for bloody tea, don’t you think?”
“Never too hot for tea.” Sal hustled up the hallway into the kitchen and Alison could hear her pottering around. She picked up her bag off the hallstand and made the impulsive decision to leave the house for the first time since she’d discovered Gil and Michael were the same person. She needed to get out; it was beginning to feel like she was a prisoner in Sal’s house. The problem was, with all the people she was avoiding—Billy, Detective Mitchell, Chris bloody Waters, that dickhead from the Herald Sun, and, of course, Gil—Alison had thought for the last little while that it was easier to just lie low. Now she wondered if maybe she should get out of town for a bit, go somewhere where no one knew who she was.
Alison King. Simone Arnold. Same age. Same face, kind of. Same scumbag boyfriend. Same bloody apartment block. Alison had felt Simone’s clammy skin, seen her lifeless eyes. Seen them again in her sleep, again in the mirror, again on the canvas. Alison couldn’t get other people to care the way she did. Couldn’t make Sal follow her down the speculation spiral or the feedback loop of her ideas. Sometimes it seemed obvious that Simone had died in the fire, and then other times it was clear that the only explanation was that Gil had killed her. Didn’t he kill her either way? She knew Simone’s mother felt he did. But wasn’t that the same as saying Alison was to blame because Simone had been coming to her, was carrying her address, when it happened? If Gil hadn’t really done it, had just chased her south, then whatever Alison had done to pull Simone to her, well, wasn’t that the same level of complicity? Alison didn’t want the weight of a life on her. She felt the wet wool in her nostrils, the lack of pressure in the air; it was hard to breathe; it was easy to die. It was easy to die. It was easy to run away.
The difficulty was that running away would make it look like she had something to hide. A reason to hightail it out of there. She felt trapped. She’d done nothing wrong, and now she just wanted to get on with her life. But she wasn’t sleeping; she wasn’t able to work. Everyone thought she was part of some ridiculous conspiracy. Maybe if she could solve this, find the reason for Simone’s trip, she could prove she’d never been involved.
She left the house without saying good-bye and jumped on Sal’s bike. Rode up into the town center, stopped in at the bakery for a coffee and something to eat. It was going on midday and there were plenty of people about. She saw Jim sitting by himself in the courtyard, reading the paper.
“Morning, Jim, how’s it going?” He peered over the top of the page reluctantly but broke into a smile when he saw her.
“Ally, how are you doing?” As he spoke, Jim tossed the Herald Sun on the table in front of him, open to a page with the headline NO ANSWERS IN AUTOPSY OF DEAD CAIRNS WOMAN. BLACK SUNDAY CASUALTIES TOP 160.
“It’s been a bit rough. I’m all right, though. Can I sit down?” She pulled out the chair opposite without waiting for a response and sat across from him. They stared at each other for a while, not saying anything. Alison cleared her throat and looked him straight in the eye, daring him to speak first.
“How’s Sal?” he asked her, leaning back in his chair.
“Oh, she’s fine, a real sweetheart actually, won’t let me go two hours without a cuppa and a shortbread. I’ll turn into a card-carrying member of the CWA at this rate.”
Jim smiled, didn’t offer any more conversation. It was quiet in the courtyard, but Alison saw the woman at the next table staring openly at her. She shifted in her seat, scratched the back of her neck, felt pressure in her shoulders.
“Hey, Jim, do you reckon you could drive me out to my place so I could pick up my car? I feel totally stranded at Sal’s without it, and she’s doing so much for me, I don’t want to make her drive back out there again. I should have picked it up when we were there the other day, but I got . . . distracted.”
“I can do that, sure. Is your drive good and clear now?”
“Yeah, it’s fine; they had to clear it because they had to do all the crime scene stuff with Simone’s car and the tree and all that. It’s all good.”
Jim nodded again and took a sip of his coffee. “When do you want to go?”
“If you’re not up to anything after this, that’d work for me.”
He checked his watch and looked at Alison again. “What’s the rush? You’ve been without it for a week or so now. Why do you need it so suddenly?”
“It’s not sudden. I’m just sick of being dependent on other people. I’m not used to it. I don’t like it.” She pushed the ball of her foot into the dirt as she talked.
“All right, meet me out the front of the bank in an hour. I’ll be ready to go.”
She smiled at him and they sat in silence again, eating their pastries. After he finished his coffee Jim got up and dusted his shirt off, clapped Alison on the shoulder as he walked past.
“One hour. Don’t be late. I’ve got plenty else to do today.” Alison waved him off and gulped down her coffee. She’d put it off as long as she could, and now she needed to see Billy.
The texts had stopped before the calls, as though he thought a real conversation would force her to confront her bad behavior in a more satisfying way than a series of text messages ever could. He didn’t want to let her get out of it easily. She felt bad, sure, but she also didn’t think it was fair to expect a drunk wreck of a human being to always do the right thing. She swung back onto Sal’s bike and rode over to the police station, the hot midday sun burning the back of her neck. When she got to the station, she saw Billy’s ute parked out in the lot. Next to it was the car Detective Mitchell had driven to meet her the other day. Alison let out a deep sigh and started up the stairs into the station. She opened the door and pushed into the waiting room.
Three coppers looked up at her from their desks. Billy, that idiot Cameron McDougall, and the station’s sergeant, Andrew Broad. Cameron let out a whistle under his breath and looked over at Billy, winking like an idiot.
“Shut up, Cam.” Billy smacked him across the back of his head as he got up and loped over to the desk. “Ally, hi. Hang on a minute.” He turned around. “Sarge, can I take lunch? I’m due.” His boss nodded, and then nodded again in Alison’s direction.
“Alison,” he said.
“Sergeant, nice to see you, quite a week.”
“Yep. Pretty awful.”
“Your lot all good?”
“Got ’em out just in time, thanks, Al. Lost the shed, back of the house a little beaten up, but we could have done worse out of it.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re all right. Say hi to Laura for me.”
“Will do.” He nodded once more in Alison’s direction.
Billy took off his belt and dumped it on his desk, then came out from behind the counter and pulled Alison out the door by her arm.
“Geez, Billy, calm down.” She yanked his hand away as they stood on the steps to the station.
“I don’t hear from you for a week and then you turn up at my work?”
“Ugh. This is exactly why you didn’t hear from me.”
His features rearranged, mouth and eyes downcast. “Well, I think it’s pretty shitty that you don’t seem to give a fuck about how I feel.”
“OK, forget it. I can’t have this conversation. I came here because I needed my friend Billy to help me with a problem. Not to get a fucking guilt trip.” Alison started to walk away, but Billy caught her by the arm again to stop her.
“Wait, OK, fine. We can park that conversation, but I’m not going to forget about it. What do you need?”
Alison hesitated, but she wanted to know. “What do you know about the boyfriend? Michael whoever.” Did they know about her link to him?
“What?”
“I know his first name is Michael, but I don’t know anything else. I need more so I can figure out what Simone was doing here.” She hoped she was convincingly clueless.
“This is not something for you to figure out. That guy is a potential murder suspect. You think I’m going to give you what we have on him?”
Alison rubbed her hand on his upper arm, tracing the lines of his muscles slowly, and cocked her head to one side and said, “Come on, Billy, please.”
He pulled away from her and shook his head.
“You’re fucked up, Al. You think that shit’s going to work? Come see me when you’re ready to talk for real.” He turned. Then he stopped and looked at her. “Listen, Meg Russell’s parents have asked if you can come help sort through her things. You should call Tina.” Alison nodded, not sure what to say. She watched as he retreated into the station and left her standing there feeling ridiculous and miserable, but she was reassured that her secret was safe for now.
Alison got back on the bike and rode over to the bank. She sat outside, waiting for Jim to turn up. A little farther down Main Street, the state government had set up an emergency support check-in center. The idea was that people who had lost their homes, or worse, could check in there for government support and accommodation services. She watched as families lined up to speak with the caseworker; she was distracted by the blankness of their faces, the quiet patience with which they swatted flies away or shaded their eyes from the sunshine. A man she couldn’t place but knew she’d seen before sat down next to her. Bald, soft in the middle, with a bushy beard, broad shoulders, and a tan like a Surfers Paradise lifer.
“Got a light?” he asked her.
“Nope, don’t smoke, sorry.” Alison pulled out her phone, tried to look busy.
“Are you Alison King?” He was looking at her intently. Alison became slightly concerned.
“Maybe. Who’s asking?”
“Chris Waters, the Age, nice to meet you.”
Alison swore under her breath. Went to get up.
“Wait,” he said. “Hear me out. I just want to tell your side.”
“I don’t have a side. I don’t know anything. I didn’t know that woman. I don’t know how she died. I don’t know why she was on her way to my place. That’s it, that’s the whole story.”
“You can’t tell me anything about her boyfriend?”
“Like what?”
“Like why she’d have been heading to the home of her ex-boyfriend’s ex?”
Oh shit. “What are you talking about?”
“Simone Arnold’s ex-boyfriend is your ex-boyfriend. His full name is Michael Gilbert Watson. I believe you knew him as—”
“Gil.” Alison kicked the dirt, hard. How did this guy know?
“So, you really didn’t know, then?”
She lied as convincingly as she could. “No, I didn’t. Shit. How do you know?”
“Sorry, can’t tell you that.”
“OK, right, whatever. Now you know, I didn’t know shit. Write that story and leave me alone.”
Alison checked the time on her phone and cursed Jim. He was running late. She saw him coming out of the bank and began walking toward him.
“I have to go, thanks for the info,” she said to the journalist, not looking back. He followed her.
“Alison, would you consider a longer interview? You could go into more detail about him.”
“No fucking way. If he is a killer, why would I want to provoke him?”
“Do you think he is?”
“No comment.” Jim was next to her now. “Jim, let’s get out of here.”
“Who’s this?” Jim, as usual, was in no hurry to move.
“He’s a journo, wants a story, can we go?”
Chris Waters opened his mouth to speak, but Alison pulled Jim away forcefully.
“Hold your horses, I’ve got to pop over to the newsagent. You can wait in the ute if you want.” He held up the key fob and the lights flashed on the ute. “Load your bike in and I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Alison hauled the bike into the tray of the ute and secured it with bungee cords. She slid up into the cab and waited for Jim to come back.
It was late on a Saturday night and she’d just come home from a double shift. There was a ship in town and the place had been packed from go to whoa. She’d served a table of moronic bucks, the groom so blind drunk, the hotel would have lost its license had the cops come calling. She hadn’t noticed him slip into the bar, but he’d been there, meeting Johnny, his dealer, and he’d watched as she flirted for tips. Angled her head in the most flattering way as she set down the drinks, made sure she bent low enough for them to get a good look at her tits as she wiped up the spills from the round before. She’d come home that night with an extra one hundred fifty dollars in her purse. As far as drunk idiots went, these guys were a piece of cake. Didn’t want anything other than to look, too scared of getting caught out to try anything more. As if she would have let them. But Gil didn’t care about Alison’s intentions.
She didn’t see it coming.
She walked in the front door and he was waiting with the back of his hand, flat across her cheek before she’d even said hello. She felt the tears well in her eyes, but she blinked them back the best she could and told him to back off. It made him angrier. He pushed her up against the wall and held her wrists high above her head, using one hand to restrain her, as if to prove how much stronger he was. He used his other hand to press her throat into the wall as well. As she stared into his eyes, Alison took the deepest breath she could muster and waited as calmly as possible for him to stop. She felt the pressure of his hand against her windpipe and wondered how long she could go without more air. Her lungs began to ache the way they had when she stayed underwater in Sal’s pool too long as a kid. She closed her eyes and pretended she was back there. Held her breath against the clock, not the man who was supposed to love her.
He let up on her throat and slapped her again, pulling her forward and then pushing her hard into the wall. He groped at her breasts with his free hand and snarled in her ear, “These belong to me, you fucking slut.” Alison tried her best to stay calm and measured. She smiled through the pain and told him she loved only him. When he calmed down enough to let her wrists go, she let him lead her to the bedroom and fuck her. Unable to explain, even now, why she hadn’t walked out the door and never looked back. The way it had ended had made her feel even stupider. His possession of her hadn’t even been exclusive.
Probably he would get away with it. The media got tired of dead women quickly enough. The fire was enough to keep them occupied; no one was going to remember Simone Arnold in a few weeks. Already they had begun talking about the recovery and were looking toward the civil action against the company that owned the power lines that had fallen down in the wind, sparking the deadliest blaze, and the criminal case against the arsonists—kids with lighters who liked playing with fire on extreme-fire-danger days who the investigators said had set off a blaze over in a dried-up creek bed about fifty clicks northwest. There was plenty of fodder for the pulp mill; a B-side mystery about a woman who probably died from radiant heat would fade away in no time. Once the cops were over it, the papers would be too.
Alison felt a fresh flash of anger surge through her. She felt like Simone had died so that she could live. She wanted to make a difference, prove she was worth being the one who survived. Make sure Gil was held accountable. If it was all going to come out anyway, she thought maybe she had the upper hand. She knew him. She knew where he spent time, who his friends were. Alison might have survived only through chance, but she wasn’t going to waste it.
Jim wrenched open the driver’s-side door, surprising Alison.
“Ready to go?” he asked her cheerily.
“Yep, let’s get out of here.”
Jim put the ute in reverse and stretched his arm over the back of the seat and turned around to back out. Alison closed her eyes again and began to trace her steps in her head. She couldn’t shake the feeling that if she didn’t try to fix this, the best it could be fixed, she’d never really be able to go home again. Jim barreled down the main street in silence. The quiet suited Alison just fine.
With her eyes closed the afternoon sun hit her full in the face, her eyelids turning her field of vision a flaming orange as they raced toward the sun. She felt safe in the cab of the ute, the air-conditioning blasting onto her neck, the seat belt snug around her middle. If she spent too much time thinking about the fire, she might go crazy. It came in waves, sometimes when she was sleeping, or when she was showering, or playing cards with Sal, or painting. There was no way to predict when the next panic attack would hit her, the clammy feel of the skin on her face and chest her early warning sign. The only thing that leveled her out was thinking about Simone, about Gil, the quirk of fate that had allowed her to be here but extinguished someone else. She knew now that the next thing was to make it up to Simone. She didn’t really even understand why that mattered to her, but it did. Sometimes she felt as if she were just flailing around, trying anything she could not to feel worse. A cloud obscured the sun and Alison opened her eyes.
“Where’ve you been?” Jim asked her.
“Nowhere yet.”
The ute rocked along the twists and turns of the mountain highway. Out the window, to her surprise, Alison caught sight of budding green shoots on the shoulder. A little life upon the blackened ground.