Finn’s breath came hard in his chest, rasping in and out. Sweat dripped down his forehead. He sucked in another lungful, paused momentarily, braced himself. Looked up.
Mount Wellington’s summit was ahead, not far, he knew. The clouds had sunk down to hang from the mountain’s shoulders. Sandra was up ahead too, out of sight, and he wondered how he’d become so unfit since moving north. It was too damned hot to exercise there. In Hobart he could walk out the back door and hike the lower levels of Mount Wellington’s slopes and be back in a few hours. Any North Coast walk was a hot, sweaty exercise, peppered with ticks, mosquitoes and leeches.
He shifted his pack, gulped water, set off again. It was shameful for her to beat him to the top by too much. Shameful to arrive sweaty and red-faced and gasping too.
Around the bend she was sitting on a rock, waiting.
‘Nearly there, buster,’ she said, pushing up to her feet in a fluid movement. ‘Race you.’
‘It’s only gentlemanly,’ Finn panted, ‘to let you win.’
She smiled and set out ahead of him. He didn’t mind. Sandra looked pretty good from behind, much better than he did. It was definitely his preference for their walking order. The sight of her bare calves gave him something to focus on. Something other than remembering the last time he climbed the mountain, with Toby in his backpack, when Toby was still small enough to be toted around.
His chest was really hurting by the time they made it to the top. They emerged into the car park, strode across the tarmac, scrambled up a shortcut. Avoiding the main tourist lookout, they headed in silent assent to the spot where locals waited to see if the clouds would part for them.
No sign of it today. The clouds swirled damply across the view, and Finn felt his sweat begin to chill. Sandra pulled a couple of nut bars from her pack and tossed him one.
‘Let’s give it a while,’ she said. ‘You never know.’
She was cheerful and he liked that. No one else dared be cheerful around him.
Something had happened in the ten days since he’d come south. The dream of coming home had fallen apart, but it wasn’t just that. It was being apart from Bridget and Jarrah, being alone.
Seeing Sandra, that first time, had crystallised it. He’d wanted to snatch her up, crush her to him, bury himself in her. A feeling so much stronger than their previous flirtation, savage in its intensity. He wanted them to go, that moment, run together into some new world, leave their spouses, their children, all of it. Wanted to throw himself into the heat of it, cauterise his wounds with desire’s burn.
She’d responded in kind. Held him hard, let him sob raggedly, kissed his head and said his name. In that moment he could have done it.
But a squall had blown in across the water and they’d escaped its stinging rain in a nearby pub, and the warmth and the smell of beer and the act of ordering food had killed the moment so thoroughly that Finn doubted he’d really felt it, or seen it in her, and the pain claimed him again, snatched him back from any hope of reprieve, and soon they were eating hot chips across the table from each other and the moment was gone.
And by the time they’d ordered their second drinks she’d dispelled any lingering doubt. ‘It won’t ever happen with us, Finn. It was a flirtation that went too far. But I never would have done it.’
It was so ridiculous that Finn had found himself laughing. ‘Right. Well, thanks for breaking it gently. Maybe you could have told Bridget that.’
‘Of course I told her, but it was too late. We crossed her boundary of betrayal. It was different with Hans. He knows what happened. I had to tell him why we couldn’t come to the funeral. He’s OK.’
‘OK?’ Finn asked, incredulous.
‘Well, not thrilled obviously. But he understood. We moved on.’
‘Just like that?’
Finn had been chewing over that ever since. For him, the attraction had set off a domino cascade of disaster. Sandra and Hans had simply moved on. It was hard to comprehend.
The clouds swirled and lightened around him, and Finn glimpsed for a second the harbour far below before they closed in again. Sandra finished her nut bar and tucked the wrapper in her pocket.
‘Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?’
Finn sighed. ‘I don’t think forgiveness is her strong suit.’
‘Does she blame you for Toby?’
Finn didn’t know where to start. The question of blame, the question of paying for it, the question of guilt, the question of the gate, the question of forgiveness, all so tangled together.
‘It was my fault. You’ve read the papers.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘Not according to the law.’
‘It’s almost like you want to go to jail.’
‘I almost think I do.’
‘Finn!’ She pushed herself up off the rock. ‘That is fucking crazy!’ She came over, put both hands on his shoulders. ‘You’re not still carrying some stupid guilt about you and me, are you?’
He shook his head.
‘Then what? What makes Bridget such a saint and you so evil?’
Finn stared back at her, feeling the heat come to his cheeks under her gaze. He wavered. So alone in this choice. So many secrets. He could tell Sandra. It might help.
‘If it was Bridget’s fault, could you forgive her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then give her the chance to forgive you.’
Finn shrugged, confused. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
She looked around. ‘I don’t think the clouds are going to clear and it’s getting on. Should we head down?’
Finn exhaled. The moment was gone. He wouldn’t tell.
‘Could you give me a few minutes on my own?’
She stepped back, shouldered her pack and strode off. The mist swallowed her in moments as if she’d never been there.
The truth was, Finn had no idea how Toby got into the pool. He hardly knew what he was doing any more, except that he had to stick to the path he was on, take everything that came with it. Pay the price, carry out the penance, and hope that somehow, at the end of it, Bridget might still be there.
Was that what Sandra meant? That in taking the blame for Bridget, he’d given her the harder task – of having to forgive him?
It was too much of a head-fuck; he couldn’t make sense of it. He had to trust his first impulse, the deep knowing that he had to carry this for her, and it was better for her never to forgive him than never to forgive herself. He had to remember that one thing and stick to it, stand up and plead guilt, knowing it was the best chance of saving them. Or at least of saving her.
The solicitor had sent down a pile of paperwork and he’d signed various parts of it. In the normal course of events his wife would have taken the power of attorney, but Malcolm had warned him against it and advised appointing Conor instead. He’d had some strong words to say about the house sale, suggesting that the money went into a trust in case anything happened while he was inside. ‘Anything’ presumably meaning Bridget leaving Finn, something Malcolm clearly considered a strong possibility.
Finn looked around to make sure he was alone, then eased his backpack to the front and opened it. Unzipped an inner pocket and drew out a small wooden box. Something he’d carved years ago from a single piece of Tasmanian Huon pine and assembled without nail or glue, using only dovetail joints and fine timber pegs.
It might have been, he knew, his greatest betrayal yet, but he couldn’t come back to Tasmania without bringing something of Toby with him. It could have been a toy or piece of clothing, those were the things he’d thought of, but when the moment came, the only thing that would do was a handful of ashes from the box under the bed. Some tiny part of his son to put to rest, there at home. Was it some kind of sacrilege, separating the ashes of Toby?
He took out his penknife, kneeled, scraped a shallow hole in the soil beside the rock. He eased the lid off the box and looked down.
He was crossing some line, taking some irrevocable step. He tilted the box, saw the ashes shift and begin to slide. Had a sudden image of Jarrah’s face and the way his older son had looked at Toby sometimes.
Stopped himself. Righted the box. Snatched up the lid and pressed it back on. He wouldn’t do it, not alone and in secret like this. Not without Jarrah and Bridget. He wouldn’t split his grief from theirs.
The things no one knew. He’d told no one about almost losing Jarrah too, and remembering that night flooded his body with adrenaline. It had been bad enough saying goodbye in hospital. He’d known Jarrah was being discharged the following day, that everything was set up at home, that Bridget would be there. Known he had to go to Tasmania and see his father. But leaving Jarrah had been torment. In the end he’d done it the coward’s way, kissing the boy’s forehead while he slept and writing him a note. Every cell in his body screaming its protest as he walked away, down that long squeaky corridor stinking of antiseptic and death.
He couldn’t go home to Murwillumbah before the case. He only had it in him to leave Jarrah once.
He slid the box into his shirt pocket, feeling it bump against his skin as he put his pack back on. He’d keep it with him, hold Toby close.