Roy Horton opened his door and sighed when he saw me, but stepped aside for me to enter. I followed him along the hall, weaving between the boxes and broken bike, past the empty bedrooms. In the kitchen, he crossed to the sink and filled the kettle. On the table at the centre of the room was a dismantled Winchester, a can of gun oil and a ratty, grease-stained tea towel.
‘Don’t mind the mess,’ Roy said, when he saw me eyeing the table. Lifting the kettle, he raised his brows. ‘Tea? I’m having some.’
‘No thanks.’
‘So how can I help you, Miss Radley? You want to know some more about my boy?’
I leaned my hip against a chair back. ‘It’s about your father. His name was Harry, wasn’t it?’
Roy’s head jerked up. ‘Pop? He’s been dead for a while now. Did you know him?’
‘Not me, but Dad remembered him. He used to deliver our firewood.’
‘Fancy that.’
‘I’ve recently read his name in an old police report. Back in 1953, you and your dad found a girl wandering out at the reserve road. Do you remember her?’
The kettle began to shriek. Roy went over, poured a mug of tea for himself and brought it to the table, where he stood gazing down at the dismantled rifle. Putting aside his mug, he picked up the barrel and peered along its length.
‘That was a long time ago. I’m seventy-three come July. My memory’s a fickle mistress nowadays. Not as sharp as she once was.’
‘Seemed sharp enough when you talked about Jasper the other week.’
Roy picked up a cleaning rod and pushed the brush into the muzzle, ran it down to the breech. ‘I was just a bean sprout when Pop found the girl. It’s all pretty hazy from where I stand now.’
‘Then let me freshen your memory. You and your dad were cutting firewood at the reserve. You had a full load, and were heading back to town when you saw the girl on the roadside. She was in a bad way, disoriented. Covered in cuts and scratches, and black bruises on her throat.’
The cleaning rod slipped from Roy’s fingers and clattered onto the floor. Roy stooped to pick it up. ‘A bad business, all that. But what’s it got to do with my boy?’
‘I’m not sure if it has anything at all to do with Jasper. But something doesn’t add up. In the report, the duty officer mentioned that your father was nervous. The way he looked at the girl, as if . . . I dunno, maybe he wasn’t telling the full story?’
‘Pop didn’t want any trouble, that’s all.’
‘Trouble?’
‘We didn’t find the girl on the road. We found her inside the reserve, up on the ridge overlooking the gorge. Pop and me had camped overnight in an old logger’s hut. Pop sent me off to collect fallen branches for kindling. We sold bundles for a ha’penny, which Pop let me keep. Anyhow, that was when I saw her.’
‘The girl?’
He nodded. ‘Maybe a half-mile from the hut. She was sitting on a rock, crying. She must’ve heard me because she turned around. She was in a right old state. Covered in dirt and leaves, hands filthy. But the biggest shock was her face.’
He picked up the gun barrel again and started polishing it with his tea towel.
‘Her face?’
He inhaled noisily. ‘A wild thing she was, Miss Radley. A big tall girl with eyes like black holes punched in bread dough. She scared me. I started backing away, and that’s when I saw . . .’ He scrubbed the side of his head with the tea towel, which skewed his glasses and left a black smudge on his temple. ‘Not sure what it was, in all honesty. A pile of dirt and rubble. But I got it in my head to think it might be a grave, and in the shock of the moment I imagined something pale, a foot, poking from it.’
‘You thought you saw a body?’
He glanced towards the door, nodding. ‘It knocked the stuffing out of me, so it did. Sent me tearing back to Pop, yammering in fright. Pop grabbed my shoulders and tried to shake some sense into me. Then he started swearing and went off at a trot. He was gone for an age. Finally he returned with the girl. She still had that blank-eyed look, even after Pop gave her a drink of grog from his flask. He kept telling her, “We don’t want no trouble now, hear?” She didn’t reply. Didn’t seem to even know he was there.’
‘What did your dad mean, “trouble”?’
‘Pop had an illegal still at the farm. Whiskey. Times were tough. We made a living from firewood in the winter, but come summer we’d have starved if it hadn’t been for Pop’s whiskey. He’d been busted a few times during the Depression. Last thing he wanted was the boys in blue sniffing around our place. Cops always gave him the willies.’
‘Did you tell your dad what you saw?’
Roy placed the barrel on the table and began to wipe the oil off his hands with the tea towel. ‘Later, I told him about the foot, or whatever it was, but he said I was mistaken. He reckoned it was nothing. She’d just buried a bundle of dirty old clothes. After that, he made me promise not to tell anyone about the girl, he said she was trouble. I’d forgotten about her until now.’
‘Do you know what became of her?’
Roy’s shoulders twitched. ‘Went back to wherever it was she’d run away from, is my guess. And good riddance to her. Whatever it was she’d done in the forest that day scared the bejesus out of me, and Pop too. We never went back to our old logging spot near the hut. Pop always found places at the other end of the reserve he said were better.’
‘Did Jasper know about the hut?’
Roy shook his head.
I took the map from my pocket and unfolded it, smoothing it onto a clear section of the table. My hands trembled a little and I wondered why Roy hadn’t mentioned the cabin before now. ‘Where was it, Roy? Do you think you could locate it on this map?’
‘Must be sixty odd years since I last went there.’
‘I’m guessing it was a fair drive from town if you and your father stayed there overnight. Do you recall which road you took? Was it the coast highway going east or did you travel north?’
Roy came over and looked down at the map. His finger hovered over the roads I’d mentioned. ‘It were north, though hard to say how far. Back then it seemed to me like hours from town, but it can’t have been. I remember this tiny track that went on forever. I always wanted to stop and pee, but Pop refused to pull over. It was a bumpy track, torture for a kid who’s desperate to go. The damn track seemed endless. The sun was always in my eyes, but by the time we arrived and set up, it’d be night.’
‘So once you got off the main road, the track travelled west?’
Roy studied the map, lank strands of hair wafting as he shook his head. The hand that hovered over the map shook a little, and it drew my attention to something peeping from under the frayed cuff of his shirt. Two deep grazes, dark with dry blood.
Roy caught me looking and withdrew his hand. ‘Damn dog plays a bit rough sometimes.’
‘Oh.’
Roy must have sensed the shift in me. The sudden tension in my shoulders, the careful way I breathed. My gaze now wide and unflinching. He stood to full height and regarded me with eyes that were, though faded, still as blue as a kingfisher’s wing feathers. ‘Sixty years is a long time to be remembering places on a map. I’m sorry, Miss Radley. I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
• • •
‘Lil? Are you there?’
I hammered the back door, but no one came to answer it. There was washing on the line but the place felt deserted. Running over to the garage, I looked through the window. Lil’s Forester was gone. Wasn’t Saturday her drama day? Which meant Joe was probably off fishing.
I walked along the path, past Lil’s veggie patch, and dodged behind Joe’s big barn-like shed.
Those scratches on Roy’s arm. Of course, they might be what he had claimed they were: marks made by his dog. And he might have been cleaning the rifle as part of his usual routine. But his story about finding young Lilly in the forest was bothering the hell out of me.
Pushing through the wrought-iron gate into the paddock, I hurried down the hill, along the dirt track between the grevilleas towards the billabong, following the shriek of cicada song.
As a boy, out cutting wood with his father, Roy Horton thought he saw a body. Or at least part of one emerging from a rubbly grave. Later, his father would convince him that all he’d seen was a pile of old clothes. But the memory of it clearly still haunted him. What had he really seen that day?
Had Ennis murdered Frankie after all, and dumped Lilly with her sister’s body in the reserve? Poor Lilly, I could see her slumped in the bush, her face slack and empty from shock. With eyes like black holes punched in bread dough. I had seen that same look on Lil’s face, the night I found her wandering on the edge of the forest. Her eyes small and hard, her face oddly distorted – as though someone else was inhabiting her body, trying to push their way out through Lil’s skin. Had Lil been looking for Frankie’s grave that night? Was that where she went when she had one of her turns – in search of the place her sister was buried?
The billabong was empty, its muddy edges receded, the swans gone, so I walked back up to the garden. Checked the driveway for Lil’s car but she still hadn’t returned. Changing direction, I headed around the perimeter fence that separated the flat paddocks from bushland. The midday sun was high, the sky clear blue. A breeze ruffled the leaves as I wandered between Joe’s fruit trees.
I needed to find Harry Horton’s old cabin. If only to ease my mind that Shayla was not trapped inside it. And if Lil had been searching for Frankie’s grave during her turns, in the vicinity of the cabin, then there was a slim chance she might be able to lead me to it.
When I reached the rear boundary fence, I slipped through the wire. I planned to walk as far as the tree line and then head back, but as I veered away from the fence I noticed footprints in the dried mud. The tracks led along a wallaby trail and away into the bush. Curious, I followed a little way, but as the ground got harder, the tracks disappeared. I kept going, wandering this way and that until I picked up the trail again. It led me to a tall gum tree with a white trunk. At the base of the tree was a newly dug, cat-sized grave. I’d never seen a cat nearby and neither Lil nor Joe had mentioned one, so what else could be buried here?
The grave was piled with leaves, and under the leaves I found a stone. I kicked the stone away. I found a sturdy stick and, kneeling on the leaf-strewn earth beside the mound, I began to dig. The soil was crumbly, and my stick soon struck a hard object. I dug around it with the stick, and prised up a parcel wrapped in a canvas carryall. Inside was a book.
A diary.
I sat heavily in the dirt. A wasp buzzed past my ear, and dry leaves drifted through the air around me. I opened the diary on my knees and flipped through it – each page was covered on both sides with Frankie’s tiny, familiar blue scrawl. Lil had sticky taped the diary page I had given her back into place, but right at the end of the book was a ragged ridge where the final few pages had been torn out.
Going back to the beginning, I started reading. Frankie’s story unfolded, her voice growing loud in my head as she described the years she had spent locked with her sister in the hidden room at Ravensong. As the years passed, her handwriting became messier, the tiny black letters getting jerkier and smudged, and by the time I reached the end of the diary the paper was splattered with ink and fingerprints, the words almost unreadable.
Thursday, 21st May 1953
Lilly hasn’t spoken a word to me since the day I slapped her. She won’t touch the plates of food I offer, nor the weak tea or cordial. She helps herself to what she wants, ignoring me. She won’t even look my way, and flinches if I try to comfort her, kicking out if I touch her. Last night she fell off the trunk while spying on Ennis out the window and skinned her elbow. She twisted away when I tried to clean it, hissing like an animal.
Part of me feels sorry for her. But the other part – well, let’s just say I’m ticked off. The stupid girl saying those horrible things about Ennis, when all he wants to do is help. Poor Ennis is a wreck. Says he’s at his wit’s end with her. She’s ruined everything, you see. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive her now. Or ever.
The day finally arrived.
Our bags were packed, the old truck crammed with garden produce and spare blankets, Ennis’s best tools. He even showed me the ring. It had belonged to his mother, who died when he was little, before he came to live at Ravensong with his grandfather. The ring is thin with wear, but he’d buffed the surface till it shone. It’s rose gold, and it fits like a dream. The perfect start to our new life.
But then it all came crashing down.
I was checking the room for things we might have missed when Lilly saw the ring on my finger, and got all wild again. ‘Take it off,’ she demanded. I refused and she started railing again. ‘The minute we’re outside these walls, I’ll jump out of the truck and run. Everyone will know how awful you both are. They’ll find you and hang the pair of you. And I’ll be glad!’
Ennis came up then and overheard. He was wretched. I tried to calm him, but he’d have none of it. He pushed me away and rushed out the door. Slamming it behind him, he turned the key in the lock. When I heard him down in the yard, I climbed on the trunk and pressed my face against the window bars. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him clattering and banging, slamming the truck’s doors and kicking the tailgate.
I stalked over to Lilly and nudged her with my foot. ‘You stupid girl. See what you’ve done?’
‘I hate you, Frankie.’ Her words came out like a whispery growl. ‘I wish you were dead.’
‘Yes, well. Thanks to your foolishness, we may both end up in a ditch somewhere. You realise what you’ve done, Lilly, don’t you?’
She glared up at me. ‘You told him you loved him, I heard you. I heard you both down there in the garden yesterday, whispering and giggling. I saw you holding hands. He wants to send me home without you—’
‘Hush.’ Kneeling beside her, I glanced over my shoulder at the door. Then I took her grubby hand and drew her towards me. Close enough to hear me whisper, ‘Don’t you remember our plan, Lilly-bird? Win his trust, all the better to escape?’
Snatching back her hand, she shoved me. ‘You liar! You love him. You’re going to marry him. You’ll forget all about me. All you care about is him.’
‘That’s not true, Lilly-pill.’
‘He’s a criminal. He said he’d chop off my feet if I tried to run away. How can you care for him? You make me sick!’
‘It’s not like that, you know it isn’t.’
‘I won’t go home without you. We made a promise, remember?’
Again I glanced over my shoulder. ‘Calm down.’
‘I’d rather be dead in a ditch.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I’d rather kill you myself than see you go with him!’ She kicked out, and her foot caught me in the stomach, I staggered backwards and fell onto my bottom, and it knocked the wind out of me. When I could speak again, I crawled over to her and stood up, pushing my face into hers.
‘I will marry Ennis, and there’s nothing you can do about it. We’re going to disappear, Lilly. Vanish into thin air. Never to be heard from again. Now, you can come with us and keep your trap shut. Or you can—’
The key turning in the lock cut me off. The door sprang open. Lilly recoiled into a corner with a whimper.
Ennis grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the bright room, kicking the door shut behind us. All of Lilly’s things were piled on the table. The tiny suitcase she had packed her meagre belongings in, the sunhat Ennis bought her a few weeks ago especially for our trip, and the small knitted bag holding her cut-out dolls and other treasures. They had been in the truck, I’d packed them myself.
‘What’s all this doing back here?’
Ennis’s eyes were wild, his hair ragged around his shoulders, the skin on his lips picked raw. He hooked his fingers around my arm and drew me over to the fireplace. ‘She’s not coming with us.’
‘But you promised!’
‘No,’ he said in a dead voice. ‘We’re leaving without her.’
‘Then we’ll let her go. Drop her off on the roadside near a town, let her find her own way back to Sydney.’
Ennis shook his head. ‘She says she’ll tell them everything. Tell the cops what I done, send them after us. She reckons I’ll hang.’
‘Oh, Ennis. Lilly won’t say anything. She blurts out a load of rubbish sometimes, but you shouldn’t listen to her. You know what she’s like. She’d never hurt me like that.’
‘Not you. But she’d hurt me.’
‘No, sweetie.’ I smiled up at him. ‘Once she gets home to Mum she’ll forget all about us, I promise. She won’t say a word.’
But Ennis’s face remained steely. ‘Here.’ He slipped a cold object into my hand. ‘Careful. It’s sharp.’
My lips parted as I registered the knife, but I couldn’t drag my eyes away from Ennis. Despite his ragged appearance, he was calm, speaking rationally. Showing no sign of the raving, irrational boy he sometimes became. There was no fire in him, no fury. He was stony, his eyes flat and empty. I could no longer recognise him. In an instant he’d become a stranger.
‘You’re the one who has to do it, Frankie. She trusts you, it’ll be easy. Look, let me show you.’
I blinked, trying to clear the grey haze from my vision. Trying to hear through the sudden roar in my ears. When his slim fingers tightened around mine, I flinched. He didn’t notice, too intent on positioning my grip around the knife handle.
‘Like this, see?’
He raised the knife to his neck, placed the tip beneath his ear and tilted the blade forward. ‘Rest it here lightly, in this little valley under the jaw. Then a downward push, this way, towards the front of the body.’ He spoke in a matter of fact way, as though explaining how to skin a rabbit. ‘You don’t even need to thrust very hard, just make sure it goes deep. Up to the hilt is best.’
Recoiling, I dropped the knife. It clattered onto the floor. I backed away from it, my insides churning. My mouth started to quiver so I jammed my fingers over my lips. Had I heard right? Had I understood?
Ennis trailed after me. ‘It’ll be quick, Frankie. She trusts you. She won’t realise what you’ve done. Won’t cause a fuss or struggle. She’ll just drift off to sleep.’ He smiled and cupped the side of my face. ‘You can even hold her if you like. Hold her close to you, like a little lamb.’
I backed away, came to rest against the wall. And then I slid sideways along the wood panelling, my fingers clamped to my lips.
Ennis frowned. ‘Frankie?’
I can’t. I won’t do it.
I thought I’d spoken aloud, but Ennis was still staring at me, waiting for my reply. I thought of our plan, our beautiful, magical plan. From the garden you’ll have a view of the sea and we’ll take long walks on the beach. I’ll even teach you how to milk the goat so we can make our own cheese. And our cottage, Frankie, it’ll be so sweet and cosy, just the three of us, a family at last.
Our sweet dreams.
Ever since the day we strolled in the garden making plans, I had dreamed those dreams. Ever since that hungry vine had coiled around my soul, I had gone to sleep with those dreams tucked around me like a downy quilt. Had woken with them shining in my eyes like starlight. My dreams were what kept me going through the dreary days as I trudged through the hours, our chores, our confinement, the patching of clothes, the mending of socks and pillowcases and shirts; the endless dullness of our room with its tiny window to a world that had long since forgotten us. As I lived the life I didn’t want, my dreams made it all seem worthwhile.
‘They could be real,’ Ennis whispered. ‘Our dreams could be real. She’s all that stands in our way.’
I lowered my fingers. My trembling stopped, the haze was clearing. Going over, I collected the knife from near his feet. Then I linked my fingers in his, gave them a squeeze. ‘She won’t suffer?’
He shook his head.
‘She’ll go quickly?’
‘Like a candle winking out.’
‘Oh, Lilly.’ I shut my eyes, reminding myself of all I stood to lose. The cosy cottage with its sea view, the milking goats, the roses and sunflowers. Escaping this place to build a normal life with Ennis. The chance to be part of a proper family, and to be loved. Truly loved.
All the things that Lilly was threatening to destroy.
I blinked and looked back at Ennis. The haze had cleared, so I nodded and slipped the knife into my pocket.