The phone rang on his way back into the apartment. It was almost seven and he felt a tenseness move through his body like the tightening of screws. He needed a period of silence in order to process the photographs he’d seen and the time he’d spent with Phoebe. He didn’t want to be distracted by speaking to another person straight away.
‘Hello?’ he said sharply, hoping to make it clear to the person on the other end of the phone that he had no time to talk.
‘Hello. It’s Renee Rothwell speaking.’
‘Hi,’ he said, wondering what she had to say to him now, after the coroner’s findings had been handed down, when there was nothing more that could be done. He wondered if she knew that he’d seen her other daughter, if the two had discussed him since his last visit, if she was calling to ask him to explain himself. Perhaps he was walking unknowingly into some sort of bitter domestic dispute. Outside his apartment, night had fallen.
‘Well, I hope I haven’t disturbed you?’ she said in the same breathy voice he had heard her use before. She paused. Everything about her was poised and timed for effect. She was a woman unable to live by impulse; she interacted with the world in a very calculated manner. ‘I wondered if you would have time for a coffee with me?’ Her voice had a haltingness to it now; she knew she was asking him for a favour. ‘I could come to you. You needn’t come back all the way back over here again, I mean.’
The overwhelming feeling he had was one of curiosity. What was it she thought he could offer her now?
‘Sure. What about tomorrow? Bar Coluzzi at eleven?’
•
He chose Bar Coluzzi because it was central and he thought it would be easy for her to find. But seeing her there before him, squatting on the small wooden stool so close to the footpath, he regretted his choice. She looked awkward with her legs bent up. He looked down the street and wondered if he should suggest they relocate.
‘Hello,’ she said when she looked up and saw him standing there.
She was the sort of woman who was used to being in an environment that was familiar to her and he could tell that finding herself there in an unknown place caused her some unease. He sat opposite her. She wore pearls and pinched the strands between her fingers, pulling each one out and shaking it, as though they were making her hot. Her handbag was on the ground beside her and she wore tan stockings that seemed out of place—too demure for Darlinghurst.
‘You can put that on the table if you’d like. There’s plenty of room,’ he said, pointing to her handbag and moving the sugar sachets to one side of the small table between them. Behind them, a small white dog was straining on its leash.
‘No.’ She shook her head. The skin under her eyes was dark, bluish, like the bruise left behind by a thumb. Their coffees arrived in small brown cups and she didn’t speak straight away. She took small sips, holding her cup carefully, observing him over the rim.
‘Did it take you long to get here?’ he asked. His feeling of responsibility for bringing her there clawed at him.
‘No. Not very long. I had to come into the city anyway.’ Her voice sounded as though she was thinking of a faraway place. He wondered whether he should say something about the coroner’s findings, if that was what she had come to discuss with him. He cleared his throat to speak.
Renee made a small movement, slipping her hand into her handbag surreptitiously. She left her hand in her bag as she continued to speak. ‘I was on our computer last week. At home. It’s my husband’s computer, for work, and I don’t use it very often. I found some photographs.’ She paused, looking up, and he had the feeling that she wanted him to anticipate what she was about to say so that there would be no need for her to say it herself. He tipped forward on his seat.
‘I printed them out.’ She pulled an envelope from her handbag that was large enough for building plans. She laid it on the table.
‘What are they of?’ he asked. Their conversation seemed to be hovering on the border of strangeness.
‘Kirsten,’ she said, holding her coffee over its saucer. ‘They’re of Kirsten.’ She spoke with her face down, her voice lowered, like some kind of admission.
‘Do you know who took the pictures?’ He picked up his cup and sipped, but the coffee had already lost its heat.
‘I think she took them herself.’
‘Herself?’ He still didn’t understand why Renee thought he should see the photographs. It seemed there was some crucial piece of what was taking place before him that he didn’t fully comprehend.
‘Yes,’ she said and nodded towards them. ‘I made copies. They’re for you.’ She started sipping at her coffee more quickly. Hurrying. ‘I’d like you to have them.’ She patted the envelope and withdrew her hand, as though from something hot.
He wanted to rip the envelope open immediately and see what was inside, convinced those photographs were the crucial detail that had eluded him, the thing that would help him to understand why Kirsten had acted as she did that day, why her life had taken such a wrong turn and whether it had anything to do with him. But the way they were sitting there, so carefully positioned on the small table between them, made him think he did not want to look at them in front of her. They sat together on their small stools, saying nothing and sighing, like two weary travellers crouched by a fire.
The silence grew between them and he wondered whether she was there because she wanted someone to talk to. He thought of his mother in the years after his father died, when he scuttled around the house quietly as a child, not daring to cry himself for fear of upsetting her. He thought of Renee’s husband and how he had not looked like a man who was prepared to discuss things that were difficult. Maybe all Renee wanted was a witness to her grief. Someone, in other words, to cry to.
Before he could speak again she stood suddenly, the movement quick and awkward. She slipped her weight forward and stood with her feet apart, splayed like a weightlifter’s.
‘Thank you for meeting me,’ she said, looking down at him, and something about the way her voice changed made him think that she preferred this position, that she would rather he didn’t look at her so directly.
‘Thank you for the photos.’
She nodded and he watched her walk to the car. It was dark and new. She was a woman who would always be driving cars that were new. She had arranged her life in order to make it that way.
•
In his apartment, he opened the envelope. The photographs had been taken at close range. Some of them didn’t catch all of Kirsten’s face and he thought she must have used a self-timer. They had been printed on paper and the colours were too strong, cartoonish, the ink bleeding out from the edges of her face. It was difficult to look at someone who was now dead depicted in such striking tones.
He laid them out on his kitchen table, standing over them as though he was examining a contact sheet, taking in the images one at a time, attempting to understand each photograph. He forced himself to look at her eyes first and then he moved to her mouth, the way she held it, looking for the words it was holding back. The differences between the photos were so pronounced he might have been looking at photographs of different people, except there was one thing that was consistent about each of the photos: Kirsten looked at the camera as though she wanted something from it. She wanted it to find the beauty in her.
He put the photographs back in the envelope Renee had given him; he felt that in giving these to her Renee was somehow reaching out to him. He thought of the last look she gave him, over her shoulder, a lingering look, and he knew she had something else to tell him, but it was something that was not easy for her to speak about.