Candice opened her eyes and blinked the sleep away. The clock displayed 5:45. That was good, practically a sleep-in. Most mornings she woke with the birds. She lay there, listening to the natural chorus along with Jack’s snoring and was grateful she was here for another day. Taking stock of your mortality did that to you.
Jack stirred and she turned her head to him. “Morning,” she said when he opened his eyes.
“Hey, baby.” He rolled to kiss her, a brief touch of their lips. “Did you sleep well?”
“Right through the night.”
“That’s great, sweetheart. How are you feeling?” Since she’d been diagnosed with ventricular tachycardia three years ago, this had become Jack’s standard morning greeting.
“Actually I feel good.” It was the truth and a refreshing change. Most mornings she felt like she needed to go right back to sleep and she often had to.
“Magic. I’ll have a quick shower and get some breakfast on the go.”
After another brief kiss, he flicked off the bedsheet and stood up. She never tired of looking at Jack’s naked body. Years of manual labour had kept his figure well toned. He had muscles in all the right places, and even in his early thirties he still boasted washboard abs any twenty-year-old man would be jealous of.
He went to the toilet, but the compact space of their little caravan meant there was little privacy. Sights, sounds and, unfortunately, smells were often shared whether you liked it or not. She tried to block out the noise anyway. He flushed, stepped from the toilet cubicle and into the shower. This was a sight she was happy to watch every day, though. If she could fit, she would have climbed into the shower with him. In their old house she used to do that all the time. It seemed like years, not just eighteen months, since her rising medical bills had forced them to sell their beautiful home.
She cast the thought aside. “Leave the shower running, babe. I’ll hop in after you.”
“Okay.”
He wrapped his wet arms around her when he stepped from the shower, and she breathed in the freshness of his shampoo as she smacked him on the bottom.
It wasn’t until after her shower when she was standing at her barren wardrobe that she remembered the photo of Rachel. “Hey, I saw Rachel in yesterday’s paper. She was at that newsreader’s wedding. She’s so lucky.”
“Lucky? Why?”
Candice walked into the kitchen and switched on the kettle. “Oh, I don’t know. To go from the shy teenage tomboy you told me about to the woman she is now, I guess she’s been lucky.”
“It’s not all luck.”
The instant he said it, he looked like he wanted to retract his statement. “Really? Why do you say that?”
The toaster popped and he plucked the hot toast out and onto a plate. “No reason. It doesn’t matter.”
“Jack, tell me. I thought we had no secrets.”
“It’s not a secret, it’s just… I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.” He placed the buttered toast on the table with jars of both vegemite and strawberry jam.
“You mean Rachel? When did you promise her?”
“When we were kids. She told me something and made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“That was a long time ago, Jack. You know I won’t tell anyone.” Candice placed the two steaming mugs of coffee on the table and slid into the seat. She watched Jack’s face as he grappled with his thoughts. He’d obviously made up his mind, because by the time she’d taken her first sip of coffee, the tangle of emotions that worried his forehead had disappeared.
“I was fifteen. Rachel had just turned fourteen. In fact it was her birthday. We’d been hanging out at the shopping mall with our friends, like we usually did, and eventually there was just her and me left.”
Candice wondered if she was about to hear about Jack’s first sexual experience and suddenly felt foolish for pushing him into telling her.
He spread vegemite over his toast. “She used to brag about her father all the time, how smart he was, the designer clothes he wore, stuff like that. Anyway, she told me they’d been…sleeping together.”
“What? Oh, that poor girl.” Candice put her toast down. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
“But that wasn’t the worst part. I told her to go to the police but she wouldn’t. I couldn’t understand, but Rachel said she actually wanted it. She said she was glad, because it meant he was finally interested in her.”
“Did you do anything?”
“Rachel made me promise not to tell anyone, so I didn’t. Maybe I should have.”
“Did she talk to you about it again?”
He nodded. “About six months later. She told me she was pregnant.”
“Oh dear.”
“She was distraught because she couldn’t get hold of her father.” He looked at his hands in disbelief. “I’ll never forget this. She actually thought he’d be happy about it. I tried to tell her he might not want the baby, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“Did you tell anyone this time?”
“No. A couple of weeks later she told me she’d lost the baby, and I guess I just let it go. It wasn’t until her sixteenth birthday, when she rocked up with a brand-new car, that I found out the real truth.”
Candice frowned as she waited for him to continue.
“Rachel had contemplated running away, but then she realised that was exactly what her mum and dad would’ve wanted. So she sought revenge instead. She videotaped her father demanding she get an abortion. She managed to get him to admit to everything he’d been doing to her and she recorded it all. Rachel had the abortion, but after that, whenever she wanted anything she just sent him another copy of the tape.”
“That’s just terrible.”
“Yeah. I wonder if she still has those tapes.”
Candice recalled the most recent picture of Rachel in the paper. Rachel could be a model, her smile radiated off the page. She didn’t look like a woman who had ever suffered, let alone been through something so calculating and horrific. “She seems completely in control.”
“I’m sure she is.”
The way he said it made Candice wonder if there was something else Jack hadn’t mentioned. But he didn’t say any more. Soon he stood up and started clearing the dishes off the table. Candice stood as well, but she did it too quickly and before she knew it she was on the floor. When she opened her eyes it was like looking at the world through clear jelly.
She felt herself being lifted up and heard the panic in Jack’s voice. She wanted to say she was okay, but her tongue wouldn’t move. Even drawing a breath was a struggle. Aware that she was only seconds away from passing out, she squeezed onto Jack’s leg. She knew he would be scrambling with her medication kit. The syringe was the last thing she saw before everything went black.