Barging into Kendra’s office on Monday morning, I slammed the weekend edition of the Express onto her desk and glared at her. ‘What do you call this?’
She leaned back in her chair, her cherry-red lips curling into a satisfied smile. ‘I call it the sensational front-page feature I asked you to write. The one you so dismally failed to deliver.’
‘It’s a bunch of lies, that’s what it is. I gave you a perfectly good article, with Tom’s approval. How could you do this?’
She scratched delicately at her neck, her amber eyes glinting. ‘How could I not? Especially after how the pair of you carried on at the parade. I had to stay up all night rewriting your puff-piece, and call in a favour with the printers to make the morning news.’ She leaned her elbows on the desk and sighed. ‘I asked for hot gossip, Abby. The juicy details. Instead, you sent me an arty-farty piece about inspiration. Nobody wants to read that.’
‘What you did is unethical. Probably illegal.’
‘It’s a small-town newspaper. A storm in a teacup. Gabriel’s a big boy, I’m sure he deals with bad reviews all the time.’
‘This is more than a bad review, Kendra. It’s a personal attack.’
‘He’ll get over it. And if he sues, it won’t be my neck on the chopping block.’
‘What?’
She gave a breathy laugh. ‘Why do you think I used your byline? I just thank God you left all the interesting research on the flash drive, alongside your drivel.’
I scrubbed my hands over my face. The research on my flash drive? I hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, couldn’t remember if I’d even brushed my hair. But suddenly the pages of notes I had dictated to my catch-all file rushed into my mind with sickening clarity. That was the niggle I’d been trying to remember. Everything I’d learned about Tom was in that file, even personal things I’d sworn to him would never see the light of day. My transcript of our interview, conversations we’d had, and Tom’s entire history – all left on the drive I’d handed in with my finished article.
The magnitude of my carelessness struck home. How was I going to face Tom, to tell him that the whole mess was my doing, after all? How was I going to put things right, expose what Kendra had done, when I was just as much at fault?
Kendra got to her feet. Gripping the edge of her desk, she leaned forward. ‘You were getting too big for your boots, Abby. All your talk about Deepwater, and about warning people – you needed bringing down a peg. So the next time I say leave something alone, then bloody well leave it.’
I went to the door. ‘There’s not going to be a next time, Kendra. You can stick your column. I quit.’
• • •
After the cavernous rooms I’d grown to love at Ravensong, my cottage seemed impossibly cramped. The air was musty, the ceiling too low, and the corners too dark. My collection of small paintings resembled postage stamps after the huge watercolours adorning the walls of Tom’s house. The orchid Duncan had given me last birthday had withered, its bulb wrinkled with stress, some of the leaves turning black. I doused it with water and thought about giving it a feed of liquid seaweed, but it seemed too much effort, so I put the poor thing outside.
At Ravensong I had looked forward to dusting all those interesting surfaces, polishing the big cupboards in the library, flicking cobwebs off the chandelier. Everyday chores were an adventure; there was always a window to peer from, a garden view to admire. An empty room to stand in and dream.
Here, there was just the shell of my old life.
‘I’m here because I want to be,’ I announced to the ceiling. ‘This is my home. It’s where I belong.’
The phone rang constantly the first few days after my arrival home. Tom left messages on my machine, which I deleted without listening to. Just hearing his voice would wreck me. He believed we could work through this and move on; but I’d seen that look of hurt and disappointment in his eyes. A look I’d seen too many times before. Alice when I watched her from the hickory tree; my ex-husband Rowan, when I left him at the airport; my father just before he died. Tom might be able to forgive me, I knew that; but I’d never been all that good at forgiving myself.
So I ignored the calls and after a few days, they stopped. I tried to slide back into the grooves of my old life, to pick up where I left off. I wrote each day and sent some articles off to national papers, but my heart wasn’t in any of them. I had a couple of messages regarding the Express – not Kendra, but a woman from the regional network – urging me to call them back. Flack for the article, no doubt. I deleted those too.
Every day I went into the reserve. Some days I drove out beyond the perimeters of my previous search areas, other times I ran along old familiar tracks. Finally I went to Pilliga’s Lookout. From there I walked north, and when the sun was at its highest point, I unfolded my map and examined my surrounds. All around me stretched a sea of tall eucalypts and areas covered in sparse undergrowth, broken only by granite boulders pushing through the earth. There was no sign of any loggers’ trails, no evidence of ancient trees that had been felled. Not even the stock route. I followed my compass east to the river and then went home. Today I returned, but this time I travelled west from Pilliga’s, making notes on the map, ducking under low-hanging boughs, trekking along the riverbank and even climbing a little way down the steep bank into the gorge.
I returned to my cottage in a far lower mood than I’d been in all week. As I was rummaging in the pantry for something to comfort binge on – where were those Tim Tams? – I discovered the family snapshot I’d deposited there weeks ago, the morning I found Shayla in the campground. The edge of the photo was ragged where I’d torn my mother out, but as I studied the three remaining family members – me, Duncan and Dad – it was mostly my mother I saw. The way she giggled uncontrollably when Dad tickled her, trying helplessly to bat him away, peeping from under her curtain of dark hair, her plump cheeks glowing pink. Where was she now? Did she ever think of us? Did she even know that our father was gone? If only I hadn’t torn her out of the photo. Dad looked lonely without her. I studied his big square face with its frame of wispy fair hair, his lopsided mad-scientist smile.
I had flushed with pride when I told Lil about him, that day in the hospital. He loved his job. Was always going on about the environment and conservation. I guess that’s what inspired my interest in it. But after Mum went, he lost his spark. Withdrew from my brother and me . . .
I ran my fingertip along the photo’s ragged edge. ‘Oh, Dad. At least you had a good reason for withdrawing from the people you loved. Mum broke your heart . . . but what’s my excuse? I just drive everyone away because I’m scared. Scared if they get too close, they’ll realise what a terrible person I am.’ My mother, Alice, even Dad . . . the people I’d lost. The people I had pushed away. I’d been blaming them for my unhappiness, for my guilt. But I was blaming ghosts. I had clung to them too tightly, expected too much. And now I was turning into the sort of empty, bitter person I’d always pitied.
Was Duncan right, was I stuck in a rut, obsessing over ancient history and making myself miserable?
I gazed around. Four weeks ago the cottage had shone. Nothing out of place, not a speck of dust. Now there were unwashed dishes in the sink. Unopened mail cluttering the sideboard. Roses drooping in a big blue vase, their cast-off petals littering the floor. How was it possible that I’d managed to make so much mess in such a short time? Not just of my house, but of everything?