Anne and Bob Arnold were staying at the pub, in the simple rooms upstairs where a wide veranda wrapped around the building and gave an overview of the whole town and its surrounds. Anne Arnold led Alison outside, apologizing for the unmade bed on the way through. It was a hot afternoon, no breeze on the air, but the sun was behind them now, so their chairs were shaded. Alison clocked the street. Searched it for any signs of Gil. Things were quiet, less traffic than usual. It would take a long time for it to get back to normal, or develop a new normal, whatever that might be.
“I was surprised when Chris Waters told me you were still here. I thought you’d be gone by now.”
“They’ve still got Simone in Melbourne, and Detective Mitchell is here, and we thought, maybe being here, we’d hear things quicker or we’d be able to be helpful in some way. I didn’t want to sit at home all that ways away and wait.” As she talked, Anne Arnold scratched the skin on her forearm, raising red tracks along it.
“I get it. I’m glad you’re still here.” She paused, looked around to make sure they were alone. “Where’s Mr. Arnold?”
“He went for a walk, hates being cooped up. He should be back soon. Do you want to wait for him?”
“No, actually, I think maybe you are exactly the person I need to talk to. I know why Simone was in my driveway.”
Shock flashed across her face, but Anne Arnold quickly reset it, blank, unreadable beyond the ever-present sadness. “How?”
“She sent me something. I picked up my mail at the post office this morning and there it was, a note saying she was worried that Gil would catch up with her before she got to me, so she was posting it.”
Anne Arnold gripped the top of her chair, her knuckles mottled white from the pressure. “What was it?”
“It’s video files. I’m not going to show them to you; they are too awful.” Simone’s mother let go of the chair and sunk onto the wide timber boards, dropped her head.
“Tell me.”
“Gil set up a secret camera at my place, and also one at Simone’s. He filmed us having sex. And he kept the tapes. He even kept tapes of the times he forced it.”
“He raped you?”
“I think he raped us both.”
“I knew he was violent, but Simone never said . . . she never said she was raped.”
“I can’t speak for her, I didn’t know your daughter, but the files she sent me . . . Relationships are complicated and I don’t know anything about Simone and Gil, but I do know that I stayed with him when he treated me terribly and, yes, after he raped me, and I kept sleeping with him and I even enjoyed it sometimes, somehow, but now I think back and I remember how I used to feel afterward, how I’d lie there and wonder what I would do next to upset him, how long it would be before he got mad at me again, and I would remember the first time he forced me and think about how he could take what he wanted whenever he wanted and I wouldn’t be able to stop him and so now I don’t think about the times I felt were good or the nice things he did or any of that. I remember that underneath it all was a feeling of not having control. Not being in control at all. How can sex be consensual ever if that’s how you feel?”
There was a long silence. When she spoke again, Anne Arnold sounded far away. “What do you think Simone was doing with those tapes?”
“I don’t know. But a very wise friend of mine reminded me that parents know their children better than anyone, and I’m hoping you might know.”
“She wanted to get away from him, but she didn’t want to blow up her life. She had a good job, and she loved her friends, and her little sister just had a baby—she was really excited about being an auntie. But he wouldn’t leave her alone and she was really upset about it. She’d met this new man; he was kind and sweet, real good-looking, and she wanted to get on with things with him, but Gil was still hanging around.”
A new man. Alison thought that must be who the Cairns shopkeeper was talking about.
“OK, and you said she called you and said she had figured out how to get him to leave her alone?”
“Yes.”
“And then she disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask the new guy? Did he know anything?”
“No. I never met him. I wouldn’t know where to start. They weren’t really dating even yet, she’d just met him, said he made her feel safe.”
Neither of them said anything. A bee hummed about on the wind, flew a little too close for comfort. Alison swatted at it recklessly until it turned and flew out over the expanse of the street and disappeared from view. Her father had kept bees. He liked the taste of fresh honeycomb more than anything else in the world, so he would slip out to his hive each day and slice a wedge of golden oozing wax from the frame while bees buzzed wildly around him. He’d been stung so often, he never complained. He used to say those kamikaze bees were his favorites, willing to die to protect their queen, their hive, their whole community. Said there was honor in sacrificing yourself to save everyone else. Alison remembered how he would tell her that life is worth living only if you live it with honor. That was before he cheated on her mother. There was honor in staying alive too, Alison thought. As long as you made something out of it.
“I think she must have wanted us to go to the police together, get them to arrest him and put him in jail.”
“Well, we should take the tapes to the police, then.”
“I spoke to a lawyer—a good one, who works in this field. She says the chance of him going to jail on the back of this isn’t good. He might, but with Simone gone, and me having never said anything about his behavior, it’s unlikely.”
“Simone would want to try.”
“I don’t know.”
Anne Arnold pursed her lips into a droop-ended line. She shook her head slowly and turned away from Alison.
“Then I don’t know what you want me to say. My daughter is dead. I don’t know what she wanted. I wish I did. I think she’d want to put him away. But I don’t think she’d have wanted to involve you without talking to you first.”
“I don’t think the police will be able to help.”
“So, what do you think, then?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
“We could give the tapes to that journalist Chris Waters. He could write about Michael. Tell everyone he’s a woman beater and a rapist.”
“I don’t . . . I can’t . . . That’s me, on those tapes. Me.”
“And Simone. Simone is too. You’re not the only one.”
“Simone’s dead. She can’t be . . . No one can . . . She doesn’t have to feel the eyes on her. She doesn’t have to feel embarrassed.” The words were all wrong and felt sharp in her mouth as she spat them out, and she immediately felt awful. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Alison walked quickly away, off the veranda, into the room, out the door, and down the stairs. The carpet in the downstairs hall was threadbare green, the walls of paneled wood. In the afternoon this part of the pub was dim, with no direct sunlight, but no lights were on. The air was thick and yeasty, and Alison paused in the peace of it before pushing out onto the street again. Walked quickly up to the post office, sealed the USB drive in a pouch, and scrawled Luca and Christine’s address on the front. She paid the exorbitant express price, avoided small talk with Tom, and walked back out into the street and looked again, over both shoulders, for any glimpse of Gil.
She legged it to the bakery to get some bread for Sal, exchanged a few words with Cath behind the counter, and stepped backward to begin the retreat from the shop; she felt the firmness of a body behind her and turned and saw Billy there, studying her face for information, not stepping out of her way or taking his hand off her wrist where he’d wrapped it as soon as she’d turned his way.
“Al, saw you coming out of the post office. We need to talk.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“OK, walk me to my car. Honestly, a police escort would make me feel better right now.” Billy didn’t let go of Alison’s arm, even as they walked down the street toward her car. She tried to wrest it back, but he firmly kept her in his grasp.
“If you don’t mind, I don’t feel like chasing you, so I’m gonna hold on until we’ve finished chatting. Three of Sal’s neighbors called in a disturbance at her place this morning. Reported you and Sal chasing away a man they didn’t know. His description matched Michael Watson. Want to tell me anything?”
“Not particularly.”
“I went round to Sal’s and she told me it was an insurance salesman hawking fire coverage. Made her mad he’d be taking advantage of people’s grief, and so, she claimed, she shooed him off with her secateurs.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Sounds like bullshit, Alison.”
She sighed, tried again to get away from Billy, but he was holding too tight. “OK, yeah, it was Gil. He was there, and he was scary, but Sal got rid of him.”
“Why didn’t you call us immediately?”
“I’m sorry, he spooked me, and I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do and then I wanted to pretend like it hadn’t happened, so I asked Sal not to tell anyone. She’s not going to be in trouble, is she?”
“Not if you come in with me now and tell Detective Mitchell everything that happened. I can leave Sal out of it; I haven’t done my incident report yet. Been all over the bloody district looking for you.”
Alison nodded, let Billy lead her down the street, past her car, and into the police station. She was getting way too familiar with that place.