Torrens had just landed his first-ever real job as a boner at the meatworks outside of Earlville. He’d insisted on taking Clementine out for a drink tonight after Tuesday-night training to thank her for giving him a place on the team and starting his journey back into the community. It had been a big day for her, what with Gerard in the morning, then the afternoon dancing around Tiny Spencer’s questions before taking the team through their Tuesday-night training run. She could do with a drink.
Clementine watched Torrens as he lumbered to the bar. The Katinga Arms was a block of a red-brick building, standing two storeys tall in the main street for almost one hundred years. She sat at one of the tables beneath a wall pinned with souvenir beer coasters, close enough to the open fire to feel the right side of her leg start to tingle with heat. Patronage had peaked at about six-thirty, but there were still a few drinkers loitering. Matthew Torrens towered over the bar, chatting to a local she didn’t know as he waited for their drinks.
What a find he’d been, she thought. They’d already won two of their first four games of the season when twenty-four-year-old Torrens had asked her if he could join the team. He was fresh out of jail for she knew not what. When a six-foot-six giant asks if he can play, you don’t ask why—you just invite him to training.
He was way behind on fitness at that point, but he’d worked hard to catch up, meeting with Clementine on Monday nights to train on his own and playing his first game three weeks later. His size and power had been decisive in the ruck for the Cats and the rest of the team grew in confidence with him in the centre of the ground, scowling down at the opposition. He’d blown up early in the third quarter, and she’d taken him off. The team had played out the rest of the game without him, but the lead they’d established by that stage was enough and they won the game by a two-goal margin.
‘Here you go, one for you and one for me,’ said Torrens, easing into the chair opposite. ‘Who would have dreamt I’d be drinking fucking lights, eh?’ he chuckled. ‘A changed man, thanks to you.’ He parked his frame on the wooden chair at the table and raised his glass. ‘To you, Jonesy, for giving me a start.’
She clinked her glass on his and drank to his success. ‘No, you did it yourself, Torrens. You had the guts to join the team, and you’ve worked your arse off ever since. Good on you.’
‘Ha, only ’cos you turned up every Monday to whip me into shape, you bloody slavedriver!’ He laughed again, slapping his meaty fist on the table.
They drank their beers while Torrens explained a few of the finer arts of boning meat using the hotel cutlery and a napkin to demonstrate. It was just after eight when they made their way towards the side door onto Main Street. As they passed the doorway to the dining room, Clementine glanced inside. Two tables of Tuesday-night diners. No one she knew on the first table, but then, over in the back corner, she gasped as she recognised their faces: Rosemary Jenner, in what looked like a wheelchair, and Andrew Hewitt, and opposite them, with their backs to her, Gerard and Bernadette Holt.
Clementine shoved past Torrens and rushed for the door, bumping into a man crouched over the pool table, cue poised. ‘Sorry, mate,’ she mumbled as she made for the exit.
Torrens followed her out, chasing her up the street. ‘What the hell was that about? D’ya see a ghost or something?’
Clementine couldn’t speak. She kept walking towards her car, parked further ahead.
‘Hey, Jonesy, what’s going on?’ Torrens shouted after her.
She spun around. ‘Shhhh. Keep your voice down.’
‘Well tell me what this is about?’ he hissed, hurrying after her.
‘Nothing. Nothing. Just need to get home,’ she said, quickening her pace.
This was a disaster—Rosemary and Andrew, sitting there, and with the Holts! Her old colleagues, they knew everything—the incident, her conviction. Just one word from them and her entire past would be known in Katinga.
She imagined Gerard hearing about what she’d done. Worse, Bernadette and Jen, Torrens, the team. It was unthinkable. Shit, shit, shit. She felt heat rising in her cheeks even as the night air blew in icy gusts onto her face.
The last time she’d seen Rosemary was the deal-closing party on the night of…A shiver swept across the back of Clementine’s neck as the memories arrived, unbidden: techno music blasting, trays of canapés, young associates—chests thrust forward boisterously, the clink of champagne glasses, a waiter topping up her drink. And then there it was again, the image of the woman. The darkening scarlet oozing on white, and the eyes, the eyes. Eighteen months on and she had not found a way to stop it appearing.
Torrens caught up to her, put his big paw on her shoulder. ‘Hey, hey, slow down.’
‘No, no, Torrens, I have to go. I have to go.’ She fumbled in her backpack for her keys.
‘But mate, you’re pale—you’re shaking. What the hell happened in there?’
Her keys tumbled out and fell on the pavement. Torrens was quick for a big man, kicking them away as she reached for them and holding her back with one hand as he scooped them up in the other.
‘Torrens, this is serious, I’m…I have to…’ Her voice was trembling.
Torrens put both hands on her shoulders, turned her round and walked her towards her car. He unlocked the car, opened the passenger’s side door and gently pushed her in. She did not resist. He came around to the driver’s side and got in.
‘Righto. You’re gunna have to tell me now, because I’m not getting out of the car until you do.’
She looked over her shoulder back towards the hotel. ‘Okay, okay, just drive me up the street and around the corner, where we can’t be seen.’ If Andrew or Rosemary saw her, just a glimpse, it would take just one word…
Torrens idled the car forward and turned into Chester Street. They sat for a while in silence while her breathing slowed.
‘I can’t tell you anything about what just happened,’ she mumbled.
‘I’m not letting you drive home until you tell me. You helped me, Jonesy. You really turned my life around. I’m not leaving you in this state, and I’m not getting out of this car until I understand what the hell is going on here.’
Up ahead of them, Andrew Hewitt was driving a black Audi, and in front of him was Gerard’s silver BMW. Torrens hung back, careful not to get too close. They had taken his car so Gerard wouldn’t recognise it. Clementine slunk down low in the passenger’s seat beside him. He’d convinced her to follow them home. She hadn’t told him much—just that she’d seen some people she was afraid of, people who could make her life very difficult, and that their presence in town was enough to make her think about leaving. He had returned the favour she had granted him that first night when they met and not asked questions. And now, despite herself, she was grateful, after everything that had happened that week, to be in this giant of a man’s car, following his lead.
They had waited about half an hour before they saw the two vehicles pull out of the hotel car park and then followed them up to Katinga Heights. Gerard was turning right now, into a street with sweeping views of the valley, then he slowed in front of a large house with a grand, pillared entrance and high fence. Torrens kept driving straight ahead, did a U-turn and then parked at a point a little higher up, where they could see down the street. An automatic gate in the tall fence had opened and Andrew Hewitt’s Audi was disappearing up the driveway as Gerard pulled the BMW up on the street. Inside the yard, under the glow of a street lamp, Clementine could see a manicured hedge rising above the six-foot-high fence and a grove of young trees. Behind that was a series of neatly ordered garden beds. Gerard and Bernadette headed up the driveway on foot. The gate began to close behind them.
Before Clementine could say anything, Torrens was out of the car and running down the street. Oh Christ! He thinks he’s James Bond. He reached the automatic gate just before it closed and snuck inside.
She didn’t like it up here in foreign territory, so far from the sanctuary of her cottage. After the accident she’d heard that Andrew and Rosemary had become a couple. But how did they know the Holts? And why were they here? Clementine waited. The minutes ticked by. A cat sauntered across the road, stopping at the gutter to sniff, then disappearing through a line of shrubs in the front yard of the house opposite.
She jumped as she heard the driver’s side doorhandle click. Torrens. He’d come from the other direction. He eased into the seat, panting.
‘Suitcases, Jonesy, big ones. Looks like they’re here to stay.’