‘So that’s it?’ Tom turned on the brick path to look at me. ‘Frankie eloped with Ennis and they disappeared into the sunset together?’
Late afternoon shadows crept across the grass as the sun retreated over the hills. The scent of jasmine followed us along the wide brick path as we wandered deeper into the garden.
I nodded. ‘Meanwhile Lilly returned to Sydney and kept her sister’s secret.’
‘Do you believe her?’
‘Yeah, I do. Why would she lie about it?’
‘So Frankie could still be alive. Has Lil ever tried to find her?’
‘No, never.’
‘Why not?’
‘They had a row, said terrible things to each other. And then Frankie made Lilly promise not to go after her. And Lil, being Lil, has never wavered.’
Tom stopped beside a wooden arch overrun with clematis. The white flowers had long since fallen and turned to mush in the grass, but the vine was still green.
‘That’s quite a story, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
I plucked a clematis leaf and tore it into pieces. For an autumn day, it was warm. My cardigan felt hot and prickly. I started stripping it off, then realised the cardigan wasn’t the problem.
‘You know, all along I’ve been admiring Lil for how well she survived her childhood ordeal. She created the perfect life with Joe, and enjoyed a fascinating career. She adores helping others with her volunteer work. She’s still strong and fit in her seventies. The way she chops all that firewood and tends the garden, grows her veggies and mows the lawn – I’m really quite in awe of her. But . . .’ I paused, unable to voice the sudden ache I was feeling.
Tom stretched his back. ‘You’re worried that underneath it all she’s unhappy?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, grateful that he understood. ‘I guess I am.’
‘Her turns are a concern. They must put a strain on Joe. But after what she went through as a kid, there’d have to be some baggage.’
‘When we were at the reserve that night, Joe mentioned nightmares, too.’
Tom stared across the garden, ‘I’m not surprised she has her demons. But she and Joe are devoted to one another, aren’t they? That must bring her a lot of happiness.’
‘Definitely.’
‘You care about them, don’t you? Not just because of the diary. You’ve found a bit of a soulmate in Lil.’
I smiled. Right from the start, Lil had seen behind my thick outer shell to the insecure mess I was inside. She hadn’t judged, just acknowledged, and in return had trusted me enough to give me a glimpse of her own private self, the self she kept hidden from most people.
‘We seem to understand each other.’
Tom brushed his fingers along my arm. ‘So now that Frankie’s sorted, where does that leave us?’
I dusted my hands together, dislodging the last crumbs of clematis leaf. Hugging my cardigan tighter around me, I met his gaze with more bravado than I felt. ‘I’ve finished the interview. Care to have a look? The only thing it needs now is your tick of approval.’
• • •
Tom switched on the lamp and climbed into bed. He poured himself a half-glass of brandy, then replaced the bottle on the bedside table and uncapped the lucky red marker he used for all his own editing, settling back against the pillow to read Abby’s interview.
It began with a portrait of Tom as a young man, struggling after his father’s death, and later riding his Harley into the wilderness to fulfil his dad’s bucket list. Tom poised his red pen over the first paragraph, intending to strike it out – it was far too personal – but something kept him reading and before he knew it, he had devoured the entire interview without having made a single red mark.
‘Bloody hell.’
Shuffling back through the pages, he re-read one of his favourite bits.
Gabriel is a formidable man, not just in stature – he’s a glorious six foot three, with a wild mane of reddish-blond hair and river-green eyes – but also in talent. He has the ability to turn straw into gold, quite literally. He bases his novels on the grimmest, most wretched crimes imaginable – abductions, murder, revenge killings – and somehow manages to transform the tale into a story that’s both beautiful and compelling in its portrayal of humanity overcoming the bleakest of odds.
‘A glorious six foot three,’ he marvelled. ‘How does she even know that?’ He had no idea how tall he was, and certainly not to the inch.
He shuffled the pages, pausing to read other favourite sections – it seemed there were quite a few of them – then he went back to the beginning and started reading it again. An hour later, the brandy bottle was empty and Tom’s eyes stung – he’d been awake since five in the morning, and it was now past eleven – but he was too wired to sleep. Damn, the woman could write. He had known she was good and he’d read her New York Times articles, each one riveting and amusing in its own way. But this . . . this was the work of an artist. She must have honed her skills since being back on home turf, because the story she’d written about him had a certain glow about it. It was deeply personal, and gave the impression the reader was getting intimate insights, yet Tom didn’t feel violated. Quite the opposite.
‘She’s turned me into a freaking superhero.’
He laughed to himself, finishing the dregs of his brandy. A glorious six foot three. Hmm. Could there be another reason the story glowed? A more personal reason? Maybe she was up there now, nibbling her fingernails, wondering if he was still awake. Her brow wrinkling as she pondered the idea of creeping down the stairs in the dark. To him.
‘Christ.’ There was a thought. He studied his closed bedroom door. Not very welcoming for a night visitor. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he got to his feet and made his way across the room. Opened the door a crack and peered along the hallway. Just the darkness, but it seemed to crackle with possibility. A rush of heat raced over his skin, and the blood flowed hard through his veins. He went back to bed, a little breathless, but not from the exertion of walking without his crutches.
He slipped off his pyjama shirt, flung it onto a nearby chair, and then settled back against the pillow. To wait.
• • •
From where I sat on the windowsill in my tiny bedroom, the garden stretched away below me, a sea of night-time shadows. The white blur of an owl swept past, vanishing in a blink, and tree shapes crouched in the murky blackness. Leaning out, I looked in the direction of the orchard. Over there, the little vintage caravan slumbered, tucked out of sight among the overgrown trees, its roof arched like the spine of a hibernating animal, its interior foggy with the breath of something old and long dead.
Let it go. You were wrong. About all of it. Wrong about Frankie, and probably Shayla, too.
Stars blazed in the velvet sky, and watching them made it easier to forget the fearful stories I had been telling myself these past weeks. Easier to imagine happier outcomes. Frankie would be an old woman now, and I saw her in my mind’s eye, her dark hair flowing as she strode about her elegant bohemian house, living alone now and reconciled with her childhood ordeal, surrounded by adoring cats. And I pictured Shayla on the coast with her dad, the two of them eating takeaway, Shayla rolling her eyes over something her father said and then giggling because it really was quite funny, after all. She wore her mother’s glittery Kmart jacket, and her dark hair was clean and brushed and pulled back in a scrunchie. There was no wound on her head, no scratches on her hands, no bruises. They all belonged in the nightmare memories of another girl’s past. Alice’s past. My past.
Let it go.
I drank in the cold night air, letting my thoughts unravel. Soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow if Tom was happy with my interview, I’d be leaving this place. Returning to my cottage in town. Writing my Deepwater feature for the Express, and getting on with my solitary life. I breathed deep, trying to fill the sudden hollowness in my chest by savouring the individual layers of scent I could taste on the air. Earth and mouldering leaf litter, eucalyptus and peppery bush flowers. And was that—
‘Smoke?’
Sliding off the ledge, I went to the door and peered out. The smell intensified. Opening the stairwell door, I tore down the stairs two at a time, and ran along the downstairs hallway. Smoke was billowing from Tom’s open bedroom doorway.
I burst in, met by a whoosh of flame as one of the curtains caught alight, then a roar as the other drape went up. Tom was sprawled face down on the bed, one arm flung off the side, the other curled over his head. I shouted his name and shook him, and he woke, groggy at first. Then he registered the fire and hauled himself out of bed, grabbing my arms.
‘Are you all right?’
I nodded. ‘Where’s your extinguisher?’
Coughing, he dragged the woollen blanket off his bed. ‘Under the sink.’
I raced into the hallway and down to the kitchen, and grabbed the fire extinguisher. Then I rushed back to Tom’s room, choking on the thick smoke. As I grappled with the extinguisher key, Tom worked on the worst of the flames at the wall near his bedside table, beating at the fire with his blanket. The fire started gobbling up the windowsill, sending out another spray of embers. The dry wood of the old house reacted like tinder, catching alight and burning fiercely. The fringe of the Indian rug below the window started smouldering. Tom grabbed the extinguisher from my hands and broke the seal, and aimed a stream of white powder at the flames. He doused the wall and the ruined curtains, and finally the rug. As the last flame puffed up its dying smoke cloud, I ran to the window and pushed it wide open.
Eyes streaming, my throat raw, I turned to Tom. He was streaked in soot, his bare chest black in places and for a wild, horrible moment I thought his shirt had burned off and that he was hurt. I flung myself against him, registering the scorching heat of his skin as I held him tight, my face on his chest.
His arms came around me, but only for an instant – and it seemed, only to steer me through the door and into the hallway where the smoke was less intense. Then he held me at arm’s length and searched my face in the hallway light.
‘Are you hurt?’
I shook my head. ‘You?’
‘I’m okay.’ He dropped his hands and stepped away, coughing. ‘So much for my fancy new smoke alarm.’
‘How did it start?’
Tom went back into the room and I followed him into the doorway. His beautiful Indian mat was ruined, the curtains gone, part of the windowsill burned away. A classic old Art Deco lamp lay on the floor, its leadlight shade broken and its cord a charred lump.
‘There’s the culprit.’ Tom nodded at the lamp. ‘I had the place rewired before I moved in, but the lamp came with the house. The old cord was a bit frayed but I thought it’d be all right.’
He crossed the room, slowly, the cast making him awkward without his crutches. He regarded the lamp, then went over and flung open another window. He returned to where I stood in the doorway, and switched on the overhead fan.
I slumped against the wall, watching the blades revolve as I tried to breathe away the image of him fast asleep on the bed while the fire raged nearby. ‘Why didn’t the lamp short the power?’
‘It was plugged into a self-sacrificing power board. Pity it didn’t stop the old cable catching alight, too.’ He moved towards me, and hooked a lock of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. ‘You’re trembling. Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘Yeah, fine.’ I pulled away from him and ducked through the doorway. ‘Though I’d be glad of some fresh air.’
• • •
Tom watched her in the moonlight. Or rather, he watched the cocoon of quilts she had disappeared under several hours before. They had set up camp under the magnolia tree, away from the smoky air of the house, piling blankets and quilts from one of the spare rooms onto the grass. Far above their makeshift nest, the slender crescent moon cast almost no light, while the Milky Way blazed like diamond dust on black velvet.
In the silvery light he could make out a dark coil of Abby’s hair on the whiteness of her pillow, but the rest of her was submerged beneath a mound of quilts. He pictured her hatching in there, like a colourful butterfly. Shedding the woman she’d been with him these past few weeks, and emerging in the morning her old self again, eager to fly back to her cottage in Gundara. Now that she had her interview, and his tick of approval, what reason did she have to stay?
• • •
The outdoorsy scent of damp grass permeated my dream, and I stirred, trying to wake, but the call of the past was too strong. It was afternoon, and Alice was standing with me at the school gates, our faces and arms dappled with tree shadows.
‘We’ll find it,’ Alice insisted, stamping her heels on the footpath. ‘We’ll ride our bikes out there tomorrow, just you and me. We’ll retrace your steps, and find the cave ourselves. Then everyone’ll believe you.’
I shuffled my feet, staring down at my shoes. ‘I don’t know, Alice. Dad says we can’t go there any more.’
‘Come on, Abby.’ She nudged my arm. ‘If we find it, you’ll stop being sad, won’t you?’
I stared at the ground. ‘I’m scared of going there again. What if he’s there?’
Alice wrapped her arms around me and rested her forehead against mine. ‘You won’t be alone this time. I’ll be with you, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. Cross my heart!’ She grabbed my hand and found my index finger, held hers up beside it. The pinpricks we’d made a few days ago had almost faded, tiny red dots on our fingertips. ‘Blood sisters, remember?’
We touched our fingertips and said goodbye, promising to meet first thing the following morning behind the school bus shelter. But when morning arrived, I found myself dawdling. Sweating and trembling as I ate my cereal, heart racing as I walked my bike towards the schoolyard. When I got there, I hid behind a hickory bush. Alice was pacing in front of the shelter, hands on hips, kicking her shoes on the gutter as she searched up and down the road, her ponytail lashing like a thin black tail.
All of a sudden, my body was slick and damp, my throat parched. Tremors began in my chest and by the time they reached my feet I was shivering so violently I could hardly stand. Turning my bike around, I rode home. Alice would understand. She’d wait another twenty minutes, at most. Then she’d give up on me and go back to the little house on Green Street where she lived with her mother.
‘Abby—’
Alice didn’t come to school on Monday. At lunchtime, I rode my bike over with some comic books, thinking she was sick. No one answered the door. I went again the following day, but it wasn’t until Friday that I saw her face again. It was in a colour photograph that the police brought around when they came to question me—
‘Abby!’
I startled awake.
Tom shook me again, his hand warm on my shoulder. ‘Abby, you were dreaming.’ He was slumped beside me, his face rumpled and his brows drawn.
I sat up, pushing hair off my damp face, rubbing my eyes. I breathed in the cold air, hoping it would chase away the remnants of my dream, but instead it filled my lungs with the dankness of leaves and earth, and the image of poor Alice in her shallow grave. Fresh tears leaked out, and I dashed them away.
Tom drew me against him, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and holding me close. ‘Do you want to tell me?’
I leaned into him, breathing in the scent of his warm skin. ‘It won’t help.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Try me. I’m a pretty good listener.’
I wriggled out of his arms and looked at him. I hadn’t spoken about Alice, not since the investigation into her death. Not to Dad, not even to Duncan. But right then I wanted to talk about her to Tom.
‘I was dreaming about my friend. My best friend, when I was twelve. She started at my school mid-year, when she and her mum moved up from Sydney. She was bright and hilarious, and everyone wanted to be her bestie. I don’t know why she picked me. I wasn’t popular. I wore a hand-me-down uniform and big ugly glasses, and I’d recently been through . . . a rough patch. But the minute I met Alice, all that changed. All the old down-at-heel stuff no longer mattered. If we wanted to be duchesses dripping in jewels, then that’s where we’d go in our minds, and it would seem utterly real.’ I held up my index finger, the way Alice had done in my dream, and showed Tom my fingertip. ‘We pricked our fingers with needles one afternoon in sewing class, and became blood sisters. We crossed our hearts and declared we’d always be friends.’
‘You stayed in touch, right?’
‘Alice died five months later.’ My face crumpled, I couldn’t help it. The dream was so fresh, and the events of the past few weeks – finding Shayla, and coming here to Ravensong and learning about the Wigmore sisters, and then hearing Lil’s story – had reopened my old wounds. Silly how events from twenty years ago could still topple me. My hands came up to cover my eyes, but Tom caught my fingers midway.
He drew my knuckles against his lips. ‘How did she die?’
A ragged noise erupted from me. I tried to tug my hands away, but Tom held firm.
‘It’s okay, Abby. I’m listening.’
‘It was my fault.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
A knot jammed in my throat as the images tore through my mind. Alice alone, riding her bike out to the reserve; my funny, kind Alice trapped in the dark, smashing her small knuckles on a door that would not yield; Alice crying in the blackness as she grew weaker, as hunger consumed her thin body; Alice lying silently in the forest under a pile of clammy earth and leaves.
‘Abby, what happened to her?’
‘Deepwater.’
Tom frowned, and then his forehead rumpled. He sighed and lowered his head. Linking his fingers in mine, he gave my hand a gentle squeeze. ‘The local girl they found in the forest, she was your friend?’
‘Yeah.’
‘God, I’m sorry. It must have been tough on you. That’s why you’ve been so worried about Shayla. But how can you blame yourself for Alice?’
‘She was at the reserve alone that day. We were supposed to ride our bikes out together, but I changed my mind. So she went without me.’
‘Poor kid. But you can’t blame yourself.’
There was more to the story, but I’d already said enough. My bones had liquefied, my eyelids had grown heavy. It was always this way after one of my dreams. When I sighed, my whole body shuddered.
Tom released my hand and pulled me against his chest. His pyjama shirt smelled of smoke. In my sleepy state, I wilted against him. Snug where our bodies made contact. If only I had the courage to reach up and pull his face close to mine, to taste the salty warmth of his skin against my lips. To bury my face in his hair, breathe in the smoky fragrance of him. If only I could break free of all my barricades and let the past crumble away. But I didn’t know how.
We sat like that for a long time. Finally, Tom eased himself down onto the blanket and drew me beside him. I yawned, and settled into his embrace, melting against the warm solidness of his chest.
Sometime later, I woke. Tom was asleep, his arms holding me loosely, his body heat warming me. He looked so peaceful in the starlight, sleepy and rumpled, his tawny eyelashes dark against the pallor of his skin, his lips slightly parted. Reaching up, I brushed a lock of hair away from his brow, the silky strands tickling my fingers. Good thing he was a deep sleeper. I inched closer until I could feel the soft beat of his breath on my skin, his body warm against mine. A flush of awareness burned through me.
What was one kiss? Tomorrow, I’d be gone. Out of his life, probably forever. Now that the interview was done, there was no reason for me to stay. Besides, Tom would be glad to return to his solitude, all the better to focus on his book. What was one kiss, especially if I was the only one to know about it? It would only be fleeting. The brush of butterfly wings on skin, there for an instant and then gone.
Tilting my face upwards, I pressed my lips lightly against his mouth. And melted. He was so sweet and warm. I wanted to linger, savour him a moment longer. So I leaned nearer, my blood beginning to smoulder as I tasted him more deeply. That’s enough, warned a tiny voice, what if he wakes up? But I only shifted closer. Tom stirred and rolled fractionally towards me. I held very still, my silent breaths matching his, our lips still touching. Then he growled, a soft rumble in the back of his throat, and shivered into wakefulness. My heart began to punch against my ribs. Tom drew back and blinked down at me, and I stopped breathing. But then his hand slid up to cradle the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair, and with another murmur he crushed his mouth against mine.
As the cold starlight touched my bare skin, I forgot about my dream. I forgot the girls in the hidden room, and I forgot about leaving Ravensong. Forgot everything. There was just Tom and me under the sky, and this smouldering thing between us. I almost forgot to breathe as I roamed my mouth along his whiskery cheek and then back to his lips, and pressed myself so close that his heartbeat raced mine through the thin cotton of his pyjama shirt.
‘This really has to go,’ I whispered, fumbling with the buttons.
He laughed, a delicious husky rumble, and struggled out of the shirt, then flung it into the grass.