Stella walked barefoot along the beach, feeling the warmth of the late sun on the surface of the sand and the damp chill rising up from beneath. Ahead of her lay the narrow channel where Tailwind had been moored. She could imagine the yacht still there, bobbing in the gentle sea. A light breeze rustled the papery heads of a bunch of everlasting daisies that she held in her hand. She glanced down at their stiff petals. They would hold their colour, she knew, and would not wilt. When Zeph returned they would be here to greet him. A bright splash of yellow.
She walked across to the place where the little freshwater creek flowed out into a pool – not far from the rock where the snake had surprised her, the day she’d met Zeph for the first time. When he arrived he would want fresh water, she guessed. He would come straight over here – and see her welcome gift.
A jumble of driftwood patterned the edges of the pool. Stella took her time, choosing the pieces that she liked. Grace was gardening and William had gone to sea. Before leaving, he’d given Stella and Grace strict instructions about listening out for the vehicles coming along the track. He’d explained to Mrs Barron, and to Laura as well, that what Grace needed was rest and quiet – not visitors. But you could never be sure that people would listen to what they’d been told. And if anyone did turn up, Grace had to make sure she was out of sight – resting in her room.
Stella gathered up the pieces of wood that she’d chosen – along with some bits of rope – and took them over to a rocky ledge to study them more carefully. Bending down for too long made her feel faint.
She laid them out side by side. They looked like the bones of an unknown creature – smooth and white and elegantly curved. After examining them for a few minutes she could see how they could be interlocked and tied together to make a shape that would hold the flowers – a cross between a frame and an altar.
She assembled the structure carefully, tying the ropes tightly so that even if a wallaby coming for a drink knocked against it there would be no damage. When it was finished, she carried the object over to a sheltered position not far from the pool. After lodging it there, on a flat boulder, she added the daisies – pushing the bundled stalks firmly into an empty knothole in a piece of weathered timber.
Standing back, she viewed her handiwork. The flowers, displayed so prominently, looked brave and strong. The sight filled Stella with hope. She felt the nightmare of William’s anger and Grace’s dismay fall away. She was certain that Zeph would soon be here. Something had delayed him, but she knew he would still come – even if he thought that she’d already gone to Hobart. He’d leave her a message, as they’d agreed, behind David Grey’s plaque – knowing she’d find some way to get it. He would make a new plan. She just had to wait.
She smiled at the gulls that had gathered to watch her. Don’t worry, she told them. Everything is going to be all right.
Mrs Barron leaned over the freezer, sorting through bags of meat.
‘Here, hold this.’
She handed Stella a large oval package. The meat behind the plastic was a deep red.
‘What is it?’ the woman asked.
Stella searched the frosty lump for some kind of marking, but found none. ‘It doesn’t say.’
Mrs Barron sighed with frustration. ‘I’ve told Laurie, he must always write on the bags. If he’s in a hurry he just piles it in here – bird and beast – and leaves people guessing. One day I’ll just throw it all out the door.’
Stella nodded, but made no comment. Mrs Barron liked to complain about Laurie, but the fact was she relied on the man for most of the meat she sold. The hunter brought in all kinds of game: deer, rabbits, wallaby, wild birds, fowl that had gone feral, goats that no one seemed to own. There were some customers who, like Grace, would never eat any of it. But many families, struggling to stretch their budgets, found it was the only meat they could afford. They swapped recipes with one another, and discussed the best ways of cooking it.
Laurie was a friend of Brian’s, and on several occasions when Stella had been at the house for dinner the hunter had been a guest as well. Unlike other men – who drank beer in the lounge or on the verandah while dinner was being prepared – Laurie liked to stay in the kitchen, helping Pauline cook. Whenever he was there, the meal was especially good.
Jamie and Stella had always been fascinated by him. He was the same age as William and Brian, yet he wore his hair long, tied back in a ponytail. He dressed in jeans and wore boots like a cowboy. People said he could shoot a moving target at twenty feet, with a rifle held in one hand.
When they were young, Jamie and Stella used to hang around his Jeep, looking at dents and stains and speculating about their causes. They peered in at the dashboard, where there was a collection of different shaped wishbones stuck into the air vents. They thought then that Laurie was a dangerous person with a dark and secret past.
Their view of him changed when they became teenagers. They began to see him as an ally – an adult in their midst who challenged the authorities: the council, government departments, everyone …
He was always in trouble with Spinks.
Stella had been at the wharf one morning when Spinks confronted Laurie in the car park. The policeman had taken his notebook out, and was threatening to issue Laurie with a fine.
‘You’ve got no respect for the law,’ Spinks had said.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Laurie answered calmly. He stood by his Jeep dressed in bloodied trousers. Behind him lay the still body of a deer. ‘It’s just that my laws don’t match up with yours.’
My laws don’t match up with yours.
Stella gazed blankly past Mrs Barron’s bent figure as the statement lingered in her head. Laurie had spoken easily, almost casually, that day – but Stella now understood that they were brave words.
It was not easy to live by making up your own rules – especially if you had to keep up a pretence of doing otherwise. To outsiders, Stella was a dutiful daughter who had interrupted her schooling to look after her sick mother. To William and Grace she was a girl who had made a terrible mistake, but who was at least grateful for their help in trying to resolve the situation. To Laura, she was a friend stuck at home with nothing interesting to write about, while her old classmates were busy joining sports teams and choosing exciting new subjects. And all the time, while Stella played these roles, she was just waiting for Zeph to sail in from beyond the horizon and rescue her. She felt like an actor performing in several different plays: there was always the risk she’d mix up her lines.
‘Here it is!’ Mrs Barron straightened up. She held a polystyrene tray of meat in her hand. It had a printed label on the front and the name of the butcher in St Louis. ‘Beef brisket. I knew they sent me some. Just throw that back in, love, and shut the lid.’
Mrs Barron shuffled across to the counter in her soft-soled slippers. She picked up a pencil, licked the tip, and ticked off the last item on Grace’s shopping list.
Stella joined her there. The wooden surface was cluttered with baskets of Easter eggs wrapped in coloured foil. Some of them were decorated with little chicks made of yellow fluff; they had orange feet made of wire and paper beaks.
Stella touched one with her finger. The baby birds were a sign of spring – new life. But, like Zeph’s upside-down stars, they belonged to the northern hemisphere. Easter in Tasmania marked the very end of summer – the last camping trips, the last barbecue parties, and the last quick swims in chilly seas. As soon as it was over, people started looking out for the muttonbirds setting off in vast flocks – crossing the globe to escape the cold.
Stella felt a shiver travel up her spine. Winter was just around the corner.
And still, Zeph had not returned.
Mrs Barron added up the cost of the shopping and entered it in the accounts book. Stella willed her to hurry. She tried not to breathe in the stale-sweat smell that came from the pie-warmer, or even to let her gaze settle on the dried-up pastries that had sat in there all day. If she had to rush outside suddenly, Mrs Barron would definitely start wondering why.
‘Now, before you go, I want to talk to you,’ Mrs Barron said.
Stella froze, staring down at her hand resting beside a paper bag full of mixed lollies. Had she made a mistake? Let something slip?
‘It’s about the thirtieth anniversary of the Fishermen’s Wives Association,’ Mrs Barron said. ‘We had the idea of doing a cookbook, like the CWA ladies do. But we want it to be different. The plan is that we’ll all contribute one recipe that we have made up ourselves.’ She paused to let Stella respond.
‘That sounds interesting,’ Stella said politely. She looked at a packet of potato chips. Salt and vinegar. She imagined the tangy taste easing the churning of her stomach.
‘It doesn’t have to be completely new. It might be one that we’ve improved in some way. But nothing that’s just copied. The Christmas section is still under discussion. We can’t agree on whether to include cold main dishes. Betty thinks they should go in “Tasmanian”, because it’s not traditional. Anyway, I can let you know.’
Stella nodded absently. She ran her gaze along the pigeonholes, each marked with a hand-painted letter. Some were stuffed with mail; others were empty. There was one letter in ‘B’, but Stella could see the St Louis Council emblem on the front – it would be someone’s rates notice or dog licence renewal.
She imagined how it would feel to see a letter lying there and to know that it had come from Zeph – that he’d decided to throw caution to the wind and just write to her anyway. She let the fantasy play out. Perhaps Mrs Barron would have kept his letter aside, guessing its meaning. ‘Something special for you, Stella,’ she’d say with a secretive smile – and slide an envelope over the counter.
Crinkly with salty damp. A black and orange cat’s hair caught in the glue.
‘So next time you come in,’ Mrs Barron continued, ‘it would be nice if you could bring something from Grace.’ She gave a sad smile, as if she’d just spoken of someone who was dead. ‘You can write it down for her if it’s just in her head. We don’t want to bother her. But it would be a shame for her to miss out – especially when she’s such a good cook. In fact, if she can’t decide which recipe to contribute, I could suggest the one she sent along for the church cake stall. Everyone said it was –’
‘But they’re not her recipes,’ Stella broke in. ‘They come from a book of family recipes, written out by my dad’s mother.’
‘Ah yes,’ Mrs Barron said, ‘the mother-in-law’s recipes. Passed on to us so we can cook our dear husbands the food they have been accustomed to.’
Stella studied Mrs Barron’s face. There was a cynical curl to the woman’s lip – suggesting she held a very different view of a gesture Stella had always thought of as being kind and helpful.
‘Grace must make other things, though,’ Mrs Barron said, ‘that aren’t in the book.’
Stella shook her head.
Mrs Barron smiled knowingly. ‘I suppose he wouldn’t eat it if she did. Some men are like that …’
Stella looked at her in silence. She knew it was disloyal to be discussing her father, but the woman was right. It was impossible to imagine William sitting at the dining table, fork poised over a meal that he did not recognise. There were enough surprises to be faced out at sea, he often said. When a man came home, he liked to know what he could expect.
Mrs Barron tapped her cheek with one finger, looking thoughtful. ‘Well, I don’t know. Perhaps she could pretend. After all, no one else will know – if all the recipes come from England.’ She glanced quickly at Stella’s face. ‘I don’t mean to suggest she’d tell a lie.’
‘Of course not,’ Stella replied. She smiled, wanting to end the conversation. ‘Look, I’ll just tell her you asked for a recipe.’
Mrs Barron nodded. ‘Thanks, dear. You let me know.’ She settled herself comfortably, her back resting against the wall. ‘I hear you’ve become quite a little cook yourself.’
Stella studied her hands, unsure what the woman meant. Anxiety stirred inside her again.
‘Miss Spinks said she called in to see how Grace was getting on, and you had a whole rack of fresh biscuits and a casserole on the stove.’
Stella offered no response. She remembered the urgent rush there’d been that day, to get Grace safely into her bedroom before Miss Spinks’ Volkswagen made it to the house.
Mrs Barron smiled warmly. ‘You’re a good girl. It’s not every daughter that would look after her mother so well.’
Stella still gave no reply. She looked past the woman’s shoulder, down towards the wharf.
‘I have to go,’ she said. She picked up the box of groceries and hurried outside.
Salt lay powdery-white in the lines of David Grey’s name. Stella rested against the wall, next to the plaque – postponing the moment when she would go round to the back and seek out the hole in the brickwork.
She rubbed at an ache in the small of her back, then pulled at the strap of her bra. It cut into her shoulder, dragged by the weight of her breasts.
The bra was not the soft-cupped kind she’d always worn, but a new one that William had bought for her in St Louis. He’d appeared in the doorway to Stella’s room one afternoon, and handed her a brown paper parcel without saying anything or meeting her gaze. When she saw what it was, Stella realised Grace must have known she’d need a bigger one and had spoken to William. Stella couldn’t bear to think of how the fisherman must have stood awkwardly in Knight’s Ladieswear – having to quote, once again, the predicament of his wife, confined to her house.
The assistant had picked out an ugly old-woman’s bra with thick straps and four hooks at the back. It was covered with lumpy lace in a grubby beige tone. Stella tried to forget it was there, hidden beneath the old workshirt of William’s that she was wearing. Like the bra, the shirt had been handed to her by William a week earlier – without any comment. She’d understood she was to wear it when she went out in public, to cover the fact that her jeans would no longer do up properly. She had to leave the button above the fly undone, like Laura did when she put on a bit of extra weight.
But it was not fat that pushed against the denim waistband. When Stella lay on her bed and pressed her fingers into her abdomen, she could just feel her womb, a hard round bump set deep into her pelvis. Inside, she knew, was a little curled creature that looked like a newborn rabbit – hairless, with an over-sized head. Stella had studied drawings of foetuses – one for each month of pregnancy. They were cross-sections, as if a series of wombs had been cut open and the contents exposed.
The diagrams were in a paperback book called Your Pregnancy that Stella had discovered in the reference section of the mobilelibrary van. The girl had hidden with the book by the shelf at the back. As she’d flipped through the pages, phrases had lodged in her head.
… nourished by the placenta …
… sucking and swallowing reflexes …
… the liver produces bile …
… it looks almost human now, but could not survive outside the uterus …
… the appearance of tooth buds …
Stella had struggled to memorise as much information about the different stages as possible. Then she’d noticed there were whole chapters on diet, health, labour and birth. So many things she needed to know. A sense of panic grew inside her. The books in the van got changed every month. Next time she came back, Your Pregnancy might not be there.
Stella couldn’t remember deciding to steal the book. Her hand seemed to move of its own accord – slipping the object under her loose shirt and pushing it down inside the front of her jeans, pressing the hard lump back into her body. Then she’d walked towards the librarian’s desk at the front, her heart hammering in her chest.
‘I didn’t know you read crime,’ Miss Morrel commented as she stamped the borrowing card. Her ageing hands fumbled with the inkpad.
Stella looked blank. She had grabbed a couple of novels from the shelf without even reading the titles.
‘I’ll have to recommend some more for you.’ The librarian wrote herself a note.
Stella. Crime.
By the time Miss Morrel looked up, Stella had reached the door. The girl smiled her thanks at the old woman, and disappeared.
The brick wall pressed firmly into Stella’s back. She used both hands to push herself away from it, then she walked slowly round to the other side. She closed her eyes so as not to start searching for clues, omens …
If an ant crosses my path, the hole will be empty.
If a seagull squawks …
If I can just keep breathing evenly, slowly …
She pushed her hand inside the hole in the brickwork, and felt around in the space behind the plaque. She knew the shape of every crack in the bricks, and the width of every line of mortar.
She knew the feeling of a space that was utterly empty.
Turning to face the sea, she curled her hands into fists. He’ll come, she told herself. He will. Something has delayed him.
She blamed Bakti. Zeph’s mother had made him stay longer.
She blamed Tailwind. The yacht had become damaged in a storm and could not be sailed again until she was mended. She imagined Zeph working hard, sanding and varnishing on a stranger’s boat, to get the money for sailcloth, rope, timber.
But there were other voices in her head – ones that were growing stronger with each day that passed. They muttered that Zeph would have been here by now if he were really coming. Or he would have found a way to contact her and let her know what he was doing.
If he were still safe, alive.
If he truly loved her.
A small crack opened up inside her, a chill of doubt leaking slowly into her heart. She turned her thoughts consciously against it.
Deep down, she knew he would come.
I promise to return.