The days flew past and turned into weeks. Every evening Orla planned to buy her ticket home, and every morning she changed her mind. The weather had cooled, and the autumn pruning and weeding was done. She spent more time indoors, perfecting her sourdough and writing articles for Connie. More and more, Connie left her to it and hardly changed a word.
One morning that bleakly presaged the start of winter, Orla was finally booking her ticket home when Rosa turned up at the door.
‘Eddie’s missing,’ Rosa announced breathlessly as soon as Orla let her in.
‘Missing what? Brains? Conscience?’ Orla responded, and went back to her tapping.
‘Now, now. No, it seems that no-one’s seen him for more than a week. I’ve just been talking to his father.’
‘Probably got stuck between someone’s thighs,’ Orla retorted.
‘Even Nick hasn’t seen him,’ Rosa carried on, ignoring Orla’s acid.
‘Am I his brother’s keeper?’ Orla asked.
‘Very funny.’
Orla sighed. ‘So you want me to do what exactly? You’ve got that look in your eye.’
‘Henry wants to start looking for him.’
‘Well, he doesn’t need my permission.’
‘He wants to throw out a net,’ Rosa explained patiently.
‘Net? Then he should contact Vermin Busters. Who ya gonna call —’
‘Orla!’
‘Sorry.’ Orla saw that her ticket purchase had been finalised, so she closed her laptop and tried hard to demonstrate a much-improved attitude.
‘Anyway, I said he could come around.’
‘What?’ Orla was horrified. Their last exchange still rankled. ‘Why doesn’t he just call the police?’
‘The police? Are you kidding? Eddie’s a fit young guy in his own territory. A territory that includes any number of cafés and bars. The police would just laugh.’
‘Yes, but look what happened to William Black,’ Orla argued.
‘Eddie doesn’t ride a horse.’
‘He might have done. I hear Nick has a splendid example of equine muscle. He’s always trying to get folks to sit on it.’
Rosa exhaled loudly in frustration.
Orla felt slightly contrite and although she couldn’t see how it might help she said, ‘Eddie could have done anything. He was always doing something risky. In some places, I’d say what he did was downright dangerous.’
‘Yes,’ said Rosa eagerly. ‘That’s exactly what Henry wants to discuss. The places you went with him.’
Shit, was he also going to ask what they did with each other in those places? Creepy.
‘It’s a bit of a contradiction, your attitude,’ Rosa observed. ‘You know full well that Eddie does dangerous things and yet you seem to think his father shouldn’t be worried about him. Even while writing endless articles about unnatural deaths and people gone permanently missing.’
Orla stood up. ‘I must brush my eyebrows or something.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Rosa responded, refusing to take the bait. ‘I’m sure Henry will want a hot drink on a day like this.’ She began to struggle out of the very soft chair, but declined Orla’s hand when she offered to help her. ‘No, I need to be able to stand up by myself. But thank you.’
From the bedroom, Orla could see Henry Millard’s car moving slowly along the driveway. She went downstairs and flopped into an armchair. No couch now: she didn’t want to end up sitting beside him. Then she grabbed her sourdough book and buried her face in it.
Rosa answered the door when he knocked. Everyone was very pleasant for five minutes, effusively helloing and regretfully deploring the awful weather, but too soon Rosa withdrew tactfully to the darkest reaches of the kitchen. Orla and Henry were left eyeing each other across the neutral expanse of the coffee table.
‘Rosa said you wouldn’t mind talking to me about Eddie,’ he ventured after shuffling his feet nervously for a moment or two.
‘Sure,’ she agreed in a bright, helpful tone that even to her own ears sounded completely false. Not that she didn’t want to help him, but —
‘We’ve looked in all the usual places,’ Henry said, interrupting her train of thought.
‘Which are?’ Orla asked. She was quite fascinated to hear about Eddie’s habitual stomping grounds.
‘Of the bays, Peraki, Raupo, Hickory and Magnet,’ Henry replied, counting the place names off on his fingers. ‘Then the walks and bush areas in and around Ellengowen, Purple Peak and Hinewai. And of course we’ve looked for his car on the sides of the roads, to and from all those places.’
‘Yes, his car is always breaking down,’ Orla agreed, ‘and running out of fuel. But there are an awful lot of roads.’
‘There are,’ Henry nodded. ‘More roads per head of population than anywhere else in the country. Or so I’m told.’
Orla considered this improbable fact. ‘Yes, well, I’d go for the roads. I’m sure you’ll find his car somewhere.’
‘I doubt he’ll be in it, though,’ Henry replied with a tight smile. ‘At least, I hope he won’t be in it.’
It took Orla a second or two to realise what Henry was implying. Then she said hurriedly, ‘He knows the roads really well.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say Eddie was a good driver — his father might have laughed.
‘What about people?’ Henry asked next. ‘Did you accompany him to anybody’s house? Particularly in any of those areas?’
Orla thought about the bays he’d mentioned. She shook her head.
Rosa came over with a tray. She set a coffee plunger, milk, sugar and three cups down on the coffee table. Henry and Orla watched her in silence. Perhaps the interview was over.
‘Are you absolutely sure?’ Henry began again as soon as he’d sugared his drink and taken the first sip.
Orla wasn’t absolutely sure. The truth was, she didn’t like thinking about Eddie. It made her acutely uncomfortable, especially in the presence of his father. She had difficulty focusing her mind. It resisted strenuously.
‘We went to the pub on the hill,’ she said slowly, trying to make an effort.
‘What about that party?’ Rosa put in. ‘You remember, when Eddie ran out of diesel? You thought he’d done it on purpose so you’d have to spend the night with him.’
Henry winced, almost imperceptibly, and dropped his eyes to the floor.
‘Oh, yes.’ Orla suddenly recalled the three giggling teenagers with their skirts hiked up to their Brazilians. How could she forget that ridiculous evening?
Henry looked up, hopefully.
‘It was dark,’ Orla said, struggling to remember where they’d gone. ‘We left Akaroa after a few drinks. We went straight up behind the village. It was sealed for a while, then it turned into a gravel road …’
The image of William Black on his horse flashed into her mind. Of course! They’d taken the same route as he had: straight up the hill to Shakespeare’s Bush and the turnoff to Flea Bay.
‘Flea Bay?’ Henry repeated, when she mentioned the turnoff. ‘Are you sure the party was at Flea Bay?’
Orla wasn’t sure.
‘Why don’t we all go up there?’ Rosa suggested. ‘You might recognise the house.’
Orla had never heard that beseeching note in his voice before. She stood up and reached for her jacket.
Soon they were in Akaroa and heading for the gravel road to Flea Bay. But as Henry turned left down the hill towards the sea, Orla began to feel something was wrong.
‘No,’ she said, ‘we didn’t go down like this. I’m sure of that. The way Eddie was driving I’d have been terrified.’ There, she’d said it in spite of herself — Eddie had been driving like a maniac. She added in a conciliatory way, ‘I’m sure someone would have reported an accident by now.’
Rosa, who was sitting in the passenger seat, looked sideways at Henry.
Henry said quietly, ‘Only if someone had seen it.’
Henry turned the car around and drove back up the hill to the turnoff. He hovered at the signpost. The right turn went back down to Akaroa, and the left went along the spine of the hills to the lighthouse.
‘Perhaps the house is on Lighthouse Road,’ Orla ventured. ‘It was high up. On the flat. Huge surrounding view,’ she added, recalling the beautiful morning that had followed the dreadful night. Eddie had been charming again, plying her with over-sweetened coffee, and, before they got back in the car, running with outstretched arms down the grassy slope into the sky.
Suddenly her heart moved. No, she hadn’t wanted him messing up her life, but she didn’t want him maimed or otherwise harmed. Injuries to that handsome face would be like taking a knife to a painting.
Henry turned off towards the lighthouse and drove slowly.
‘There it is!’ Orla cried. ‘That’s it.’ She might have forgotten its exact location, but as soon as she saw the actual house she was without any doubt.
‘Oh, the Lawsons,’ Henry said. ‘I know them well.’
He turned into the driveway and pulled up in front of the house. A woman came out, wiping floury hands on her apron. She appeared very pleased to have unexpected visitors, and after the introductions she ushered them all into the steamy kitchen. Very quickly she produced tea and fresh scones with home-made raspberry jam, and Orla felt like she’d slipped back fifty years.
Orla felt quite embarrassed talking about the party.
‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Lawson said, narrowing her eyes. ‘That party. I kept finding broken glasses, empty bottles and strangers’ undies for weeks afterwards.’
Feeling her unblushing self become quite hot in the face, Orla wanted to discontinue the whole discussion. But she was the only one who could extract any relevant details.
‘There were three girls there,’ she pressed on. ‘Quite young.’
‘From what I heard, they were all quite young,’ Mrs Lawson said disapprovingly.
‘Younger than the rest,’ Orla amended. ‘They were obviously together, a regular little gang. I was wondering if any group like that springs to mind?’
‘It certainly does,’ Mrs Lawson retorted vehemently. ‘That’s my niece Ashleigh and her two little friends. They stick together like glue. I’ll tan their hides when I see them next.’
Orla took a bite of her scone.
‘What’s all this about?’ Mrs Lawson asked. ‘Did something bad happen at the party? Worse than what I already know about, I mean?’
‘We’re trying to track down Eddie,’ Henry leapt in to explain. ‘No-one has seen him for a week or more.’
‘He was with the three girls at the party,’ Orla clarified.
Without replying, Mrs Lawson stood up and went to the landline. She dialled and talked to someone for about ten minutes, periodically punctuating the conversation with ‘uh huh’ and ‘I see’ and ‘no, not at all’. Then she came back to her chair and announced, ‘No-one’s seen him. And the girls are still grounded. They got three weeks from my sister after the party here, followed by a month from the mother of one of the other girls for sneaking out at night. And then just last week they got another month for smoking at school.’
Orla was in two minds about this information. It might have suggested that Eddie couldn’t possibly have seen the girls since they’d spent so much time sequestered in their respective houses; on the other hand, it also indicated the girls showed no respect for authority and that perhaps they were secretly flouting their parents’ punishments.
‘Well, thank you, Mrs Lawson,’ Rosa said, pushing herself out of the chair with both hands. ‘And thanks for the scones.’
‘No trouble, dear. I love visitors. And I do hope you find your son, Henry. In fact, I’m sure you will.’ She followed them to the door, and was still waving when they’d driven out through the gate at the end of the driveway.
Henry drove out of sight and pulled up under a macrocarpa tree. A light rain had started to fall. ‘Any other ideas?’ he asked, as they all sat and watched the windscreen wipers going back and forth.
‘The lighthouse?’ Orla suggested nervously. Simultaneously thinking: No, Eddie couldn’t possibly be anywhere near that wind-lashed headland; not anywhere near it and missing.
Henry turned on the engine and wordlessly began to drive along the road to the lighthouse. The light rain intensified, and by the time they arrived at the carpark it was pouring. They scrambled out of the car, turning up their collars and hoods against the driving rain and buffeting wind.
‘Isn’t that Eddie’s car?’ Rosa asked, pointing down the hill towards the ruins of the keeper’s cottage.
Orla’s heart leapt into her throat. It was definitely Eddie’s car. Instead of parking it in the carpark as was expressly demanded by the large and prominent sign, he’d driven it down the pitted, rock-strewn road to where the ruins of the cottage lay.
They hurried to Eddie’s car. It was locked. They peered through the streaming windows, but the vehicle was devoid of any clues that might hint at its owner’s whereabouts.
‘What now?’ Rosa asked. ‘Should we —’
‘Let’s go down to the ladder,’ Henry said, striding off without waiting for an answer.
Soon they were standing at the top of the long ladder and looking down into the sea. Huge waves boomed into the narrow entrance to the bay and surged towards the rocky blowhole, exploding there in clouds of spindrift.
‘He loved diving. But he’d never leap off here,’ Henry said, peering down at the rocks.
‘God no,’ Rosa agreed quickly.
Orla felt the rain sting her face. ‘Yes, he would,’ she said.
They both turned to look at her, their faces scrunched against the lashing rain.
‘I’ve seen him do it. On the morning after the party. We came down here with a picnic … and he … he just stripped and jumped. I was terrified. But eventually he bobbed up again. He was so thrilled by it all. Swirled around in the sea with a gorgeous seal …’ She felt the tears pricking at her eyes.
Her audience stared in shock at the surging seawater as if willing it to give Eddie up.
‘He said he did it all the time,’ Orla added in a voice hoarse with yelling above the storm, but also with emotion from the memories stirred. ‘He wasn’t just trying to impress me.’
‘I’m going down the ladder,’ Henry responded, a grim set to his mouth.
‘You can’t do that!’ Orla protested.
But Henry was already taking off his shoes and socks. On the surface he might have been a sophisticated businessman in a suit, but at heart he was a country boy who knew that bare feet would grip the wet rocks better than any shoes.
Orla didn’t know what to do. What if he were swept away? She sat down and started pulling off her own boots.
‘No, Orla!’ Rosa cried, the wind whipping her hair around her face. ‘You can’t —’
‘Go and find some shelter,’ Orla yelled back, and before Rosa could prevent her she’d reached the ladder and was starting down the slippery, wet rungs. She could see that Henry had already reached the bottom and was carefully picking his way across the treacherous rocks.
When Orla reached the bottom, every second wave broke alarmingly over the rock she was standing on. Henry had gone left; on her right, a baby seal, eyes as big as saucers, regarded her with solemn concentration. Oh sweetie, Orla thought, no problem for you, is it? All this mayhem is just your natural element. Still, fancy being abandoned there while your mother fished. If she were eaten by an orca, how long before hope ran out?
‘I’ve found something!’ Henry yelled.
Orla picked her way carefully to where he was standing. He was holding a sodden hoodie in one hand and a dripping T-shirt in the other, and was looking from one to the other with an expression of mounting horror.
‘Are these Eddie’s clothes?’ he finally managed when Orla reached him.
‘I don’t know,’ she was forced to admit after she’d studied them carefully. And then she added emphatically, ‘When he was with me, he took his clothes off at the top of the ladder.’
‘They could have blown down here,’ Henry replied.
It was true. The gale was so strong that the clothes could well have been blown down from the top. Couldn’t they? Could a sodden jacket, almost flat to the ground, be lifted up? Or had the wind started before the rain? Orla felt like the farmer who’d found William Black’s saddle without its owner or the horse.
‘What should we do?’ she asked miserably.
‘I think I’ll have to call the police,’ Henry replied, and without further ado he marched towards the ladder.
Back at the cottage, Orla was alone. Henry had wanted to go to the police station by himself, and he’d dropped her off before taking Rosa home. Orla had crept inside to take a hot bath and to confront her deep fear in the billowing steam. Yes, at one time she’d wished a pox upon the whole Millard household, but lying in the bath she experienced a hideous mixture of fear and self-recrimination. Her mind kept replaying memories of Eddie in his glory.
Why had she taken such a negative view of him? Thought that he was a monster without feelings, even without a conscience? Very few people were really like that. Was it just so she could tell herself that ‘liking Michael’ wasn’t the new ‘liking Eddie’? But did she have to demonise one person to justify preferring another?
A new burst of heavy rain began drumming on the roof. Wouldn’t it ever stop? She sat up and pulled out the plug. Then she wrapped herself in one of Rosa’s huge bath towels and thought about lighting the wood-burner. She would never have admitted it to anyone, but she’d never lit a real fire before. Heat had always come from appliances with switches.
Kindling. That was what she needed first. She’d seen Jack using bundles of dried cabbage-tree leaves, but that was a vain hope in this weather. It would have to be newspaper.
After several minutes watching single pages of newsprint burst into flames and then just as quickly go out, Orla hit upon the idea of scrunching several sheets into balls. Luckily this finally produced enough flame to set light to a tent of twigs, and a short time later she was the proud owner of a warming fire that was happily consuming small branches.
Orla quickly got dressed and went in search of bigger logs. Of course Jack had already planned for the coming winter, and a neat pile of firewood was stacked under a shelter in the lee of the cottage. She carried an armful back to the wood-burner and began feeding it. Making the fire had distracted her from thinking about Eddie, but now that it was crackling and spitting almost maniacally, she had nothing to do but sit back and endure the endlessly unspooling horror.
A sudden loud bang made Orla jump. What the hell was that? And … and the bloody house was shaking! Shaking like it had come alive, and noisily, too, groaning and banging like an animal. Surely the gale hadn’t picked up to that level — it would blow the roof off. Then the shaking subsided. Silence reigned for a minute and a bellbird emitted a tentative note.
‘Hello,’ Rosa said. ‘Everything all right up there?’
‘I think so,’ Orla replied nervously.
‘Just another aftershock,’ Rosa explained, obviously realising Orla didn’t have a clue what had just happened. ‘We don’t get them much anymore, so they can take you by surprise.’
Surprise was surely an understatement!
‘I’m sure everything’s okay,’ Rosa carried on. ‘But maybe stay indoors till Jack gets a chance to check the trees. With all this rain and wind …’
She trailed off, and Orla pictured huge eucalypts and macrocarpas crashing through the flimsy roof.
There was a pause, and Rosa said softly, ‘I’m sure they’ll find Eddie.’
‘Still swimming around like a seal?’ Orla couldn’t help but retort.
‘Of course not. I meant … Anyway, we don’t even know if they were his clothes.’
‘That was his car,’ Orla objected.
There was a silence on the other end.
‘And who else strips up there?’ she pushed. She didn’t want Rosa giving her bland assurances; she wanted to be strong enough to face the awful truth.
‘Strips? There was only a T-shirt and a hoodie.’
‘So the rest of his stuff was washed off the rocks by the sea. There’s no mystery, Rosa.’
‘I don’t think we should jump to conclusions. It’s Eddie we’re talking about, remember.’
What was Rosa saying? Eddie was too unpredictable to drown? Too unreliable to keep his own appointment with the Grim Reaper?
‘We don’t even know what day he went swimming,’ Rosa carried on, firmly refusing to catastrophise. ‘It might have been a perfect day. The sea might have been completely calm.’
Orla sighed. ‘And pigs might have grown wings.’
This time the silence was longer.
‘I’m sorry. I’m just so upset,’ Orla apologised, feeling that she’d gone too far. It wasn’t Rosa’s fault. Eddie hadn’t drowned because Rosa didn’t like him.
‘It’s all right, I understand,’ Rosa said quietly. ‘Look, I’ll send Jack up as soon as I can. In the meantime, sit tight.’ She hung up, leaving Orla listening to the dial tone.
Orla threw another log on the fire and looked out of the window at the weather. The rain wasn’t letting up and the wind appeared to have decided some competition was in order. She watched it slowly growing dark. She had a vision of Eddie being tossed around in the dark, freezing ocean. She couldn’t stand it. She grabbed the phone and dialled Michael.
‘Hello?’ he said, sounding tired.
‘It’s Orla.’
‘Oh,’ he said in surprise. ‘Orla.’
‘Did you hear about Eddie?’ she asked, completely incapable of making small talk.
‘I did. Terrible. But no-one’s found a …’
‘Body?’ She filled in for him. ‘No, not yet.’
‘Where there’s life, there’s hope,’ he responded in an inscrutable tone of voice. Was he making fun of her?
Orla didn’t know what to say next. Abruptly she realised she hadn’t thought it through. She’d solved one problem by creating another.
An awkward silence ensued.
‘Well,’ Michael finally said, ‘be sure to let me know what happens.’
‘I will,’ she replied. Her mind had started to race: was this it? This was all he was going to say? Would she see him again before she left? If the worst happened, would he even come to Eddie’s funeral? And then what? In her mind’s eye, she saw them both standing in the rain in funereal black, the distance between them constituting an entire lifetime.
‘Wait,’ she said urgently.
‘Yes?’ he enquired, and she could hear him breathing.
She fumbled in her mind for the right thing to say. ‘I should come over,’ she finished lamely.
‘Yes. Long ago. In fact, you should have come back to the barn.’
‘I actually meant … come over to say goodbye.’
‘So you are leaving?’ he replied after a long pause. ‘In your indecent haste, how long have you allowed for the authorities to locate Eddie?’
‘Please let me come.’ It wasn’t exactly pleading — but close enough. ‘I could make it tomorrow morning. Jack’s coming over to look at the trees —’
‘Why? What’s wrong with them?’ At last he sounded genuinely concerned.
‘Oh, nothing probably. Just with that bit of a shake we had, and all the wet soil and the wind … Anyway, I thought he might be coming this afternoon, but now I suppose it’ll be tomorrow morning. I can come over after that.’ She held her breath.
‘Fine,’ he replied.
She could detect a small, badly suppressed laugh in his tone of voice: bitterness or scorn? He could hardly be amused, could he?
‘Good,’ she said as enthusiastically as she could. ‘Tomorrow morning, then. Most likely it’ll be late-ish, perhaps lunchtime.’
‘I’ll have your meal on the table,’ he rejoined.
It poured and howled all night. Orla woke up from the sleeping nightmare of Eddie endlessly dog-paddling under a baleful, marmoreal moon to the waking nightmare of monstrous trees threatening to crash through her roof. Towards dawn she finally threw off the covers, having decided being up, dressed and ready to run was far more conducive to her peace of mind than trying to get sufficient sleep.
She thought about going down to the barn for a hot shower. Yes, she’d had a long bath the previous afternoon, but what was she going to do till it was time to start the day? The morning already seemed long enough, what with waiting for Jack and worrying, without having further extended it by getting up so early.
Grabbing a towel, she started walking towards the door. Then she stopped in her tracks. What exactly was the relationship of the ring of thrashing trees to the barn roof? A little further away, yes — but more directly in the fall zone? And was the old barn roof even more flimsy than the one atop the cottage? She put her towel down and decided to relight the wood-burner for comfort.
A couple of hours and three strong coffees later, the storm still showed no sign of letting up. If anything, Orla believed it had intensified, especially the rain, which now sounded like a waterfall pouring directly onto the roof. Maybe a stream had burst its banks higher up. But she certainly wasn’t going to take a look. She was sitting so tight that her muscles hurt.
Distraction, she thought. Hot buttered toast. She forced herself to her feet and was getting out the bread knife when — ping! — the lights went out. All of them at once. As she expected, and dreaded, the toaster didn’t work. She looked around the kitchen: yes, the oven light and the fridge lights were both off. A power cut. No doubt about it.
Panic welled up inside her. Calm down, she told herself. And check the landline. She’d once believed that the phone was so intimately connected with the power that it wouldn’t work without it, but Michael had laughed so hard when she confessed this fact that she’d never again forget that this wasn’t the case. She picked up the receiver. A dial tone. Thank God.
But who could she call? Rosa had already promised to send Jack as soon as he was free, and no doubt they had their own problems. And Michael — well, she would be seeing him soon, and the last thing she wanted was to appear needy or, even worse, desperate.
She decided to call the power supplier. There was a recorded message indicating that the linesmen were working as quickly as possible to repair a ‘major break’. Customers should be patient. Major? Orla wondered, replacing the receiver. Patient?
Still, it wasn’t a big problem. If power hadn’t been restored by nightfall, she could go down to Rosa’s or … or maybe she wouldn’t even come back from Michael’s in the first place. He’d hardly give her lunch and then force her to go home alone in a storm and face a night without power.
She grabbed her cell phone. As expected, there was no signal. Crossly she threw it on the couch, wondering why townies were so sure cell phones were superior to landlines. No, you couldn’t take your landline with you and show it off, but in many emergencies cell phones just didn’t work.
God, what was the time? She looked up at the old clock stolidly ticking away, oblivious to storms and power outages. 11.30. Should she forget about waiting for Jack? Just leave a note so that he didn’t worry? He hardly required her ignorant opinion on the trees.
Orla jumped up and decided to get ready. After all, nothing had fallen down so far, and how likely was it to happen now? Wouldn’t any tree that’d had its roots loosened by the aftershock have already toppled?
She didn’t have to spend very long deciding what to wear for her visit to Michael. In the back of her mind she’d been carefully planning her ‘look’ all morning. Casual but attractive. Not a try-hard and certainly not a frump. When she took her coat off, a bit of bright colour and a bit of plunge to get Michael’s imagination working. City jeans just a smidgeon too tight in order to bring up his body temperature. Hair very loose. Perfect.
Just before leaving the cottage, Orla decided to check the power supplier’s recorded message again. Perhaps they’d changed it, indicating less patience was needed: not to worry folks, upon further inspection, major has turned into minor.
To her horror, the landline was now dead, too.
Just as well she was leaving. No way would she spend another minute alone in this death trap.
Grabbing her keys, she locked the door and braved the stinging, slanting rain. She’d taken an umbrella so that her hair and makeup didn’t take too much of a hammering, but it was hopeless. It blew inside-out in a trice, and when she tried to shut it the wind tore it out of her hands and sent it sailing down the valley.
She reached her car soaked and wind-buffeted, but otherwise unscathed. I suppose the next cliché will be that the stupid thing won’t start, she thought, but the motor flared into life as soon as she turned the key. She started cautiously along the driveway.
Already she was feeling better. Every second was a metre away — a metre? how fast would she be going if — oh, what the hell, further and further away from the huge roaring trees! The lacebarks that lined the driveway were sturdy, young and innocent. They looked like they’d put up with anything.
But what was that in front of the gate? The gate didn’t look like that. Oh shit, it was a tree! And not a lacebark either. It was a … she leaned forward and peered between the frantic windscreen wipers. It was a macrocarpa.
Orla pulled up and jumped out of the car. Towering high above her was the huge root-ball of an enormous macrocarpa. The rest of the tree covered the entire driveway and extended far across the boundary fence. Its journey was plain to see: a smashed fence gave way to huge gouges of wet mud dotted with uprooted flax.
Orla stared at it. Her brain whirred, but she came up with no solution. There was no solution. It was immoveable, unclimbable, and, from her vantage point, just about immeasurable. She couldn’t see how far its huge limbs and sticky leaves extended on the other side of the massive trunk. She couldn’t even see the gate.
No point standing in the rain, she told herself sharply. Any decision is as good — or as bad — taken under shelter. Besides, it was demonstrably dangerous where she was standing. She looked up fearfully at the other threshing trees.
Back in the cottage, Orla rekindled the wood-burner and soberly considered her options. Of course when Jack finally came, he would see the problem immediately. If he could come. Maybe the road was blocked higher up or lower down. Maybe there was serious flooding down at the bay …
Orla stood up and began preparing her lunch. A cheese omelette and fried sourdough. Thank God for gas. She took her seat again in front of the wood-burner. It now looked like her own little nest: cushions, a mohair throw, empty coffee cups, discarded magazines.
Cooking and eating distracted her and cheered her up, but there was only so much time these activities could fill up. Soon enough, Orla was again staring into the flickering flames, her mind working overtime trying to terrify her.
The drenching rain continued. Periodically she checked the phone and glared at the lights, willing them to come back on. Then she decided she might as well go to sleep. Jack or a crashing tree might soon wake her up, but in the meantime she’d have some respite from her anxiety.
Orla lay down on the bed and pulled on a blanket. She was now so exhausted that she expected to fall asleep as soon as she shut her eyes, but every time she did so Michael’s face appeared. Yes, he’d know about the storm — he wasn’t blind — but he wouldn’t necessarily know about the power cut, flash flooding or blocked roads. Maybe he thought she’d just changed her mind. Was re-running the evening of the barn. Tormenting him for her own pleasure.
Orla woke up. How long had she been asleep? She padded downstairs to check the old clock. Five o’clock. She’d been asleep for a couple of hours at least. She fetched more wood, and piled it onto the glowing embers of the fire. The intense heat surprised her, as did the way the flames roared into life as soon as she threw on the logs. Better not burn the place down, she thought, as she shut and carefully latched the woodburner’s heavy metal door.
Orla checked her cell phone: dead.
She checked the landline: dead.
She made another coffee.
She opened the front door and studied the unrelenting storm.
She searched and found candles, matches, torches, batteries.
Six o’clock. She knew for sure that Jack wouldn’t be coming that night.