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The man from the power company arrived early in the morning, two days later. He was a portly, balding man with a round friendly face and blue overalls with the logo of a running man holding a bolt of lightning stitched on the front. He introduced himself as Edward, circled the house from the outside, then asked if there was access to either the ceiling or underneath the house.
Sara had to admit she didn’t know about either.
In the few days she’d been living here, she’d cleaned, dusted and aired out every room she could find in what had turned out to be the most bewilderingly designed house she’d ever stayed in. The layout was almost as if three or four houses had been squashed together like warm marshmallows, blending and sticking until the seams melded together and the resultant shape made no sense. It twisted and turned back in on itself, one room leading to another, hallways ending in blank walls. At the back of the house was a conservatory filled with wicker furniture that overlooked a strange mix of orchard and native bush, as though the colonial influence of the fruit trees had somehow been absorbed into the punga and totara forest.
The floors were covered in threadbare carpets in some areas, and polished wood in others – some of which she would have sworn were kauri, which, if true, would have been worth a huge amount. The warm golden glow of it was a comfort somehow, despite the tendency of the old house to creak and groan alarmingly while she was alone in the dark at night.
She’d chosen a bedroom for herself the first day – no more sleeping on the couch for her. A huge, four-poster bed dominated the room and the romance of it called to her despite the sagging mattress. It’d taken her a good part of an hour to drag a second mattress from another room and drop it on the first before the bed was comfortable enough to sleep on. It raised her very high above the floor and she felt like the princess and the pea, as she drifted off that night. Even more so when she added a candle and matches to the old style writing desk in the corner. She might as well have been a Jane Austen heroine in some grand, gothic tale.
“Well, I wouldn’t have believed it, but you’re right,” Edward said as he climbed down out of the attic. “I can’t find any original wiring at all. I’ve lost a bet back at the office.”
Sara chuckled. “Sorry about that. It’s as strange to me as it is to you! I can’t believe nobody thought to wire up the place before now. Have you ever seen a house without electricity before?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say I have. I can connect you to the grid today and install a meter box, but you’ll need to get a local electrician in to wire up the place for lights and wall sockets. Not to mention hot water.” He shook his head again.
Sara bit her lip. “Could you put in at least one wall socket before you go? It could be a while before I can get anyone else out here.”
He looked her up and down. “Missing your TV shows, are you?”
“Hot food, mostly.”
He grunted. “Fair enough. I’ll see what I can do if I have time.”
“Thanks.” The only local electrician Sara knew of was Nate Adams – and she wasn’t ready to go to him for help again after the debacle she’d made of herself last time.
She had to admit, he’d been friendly enough. And he certainly was quite easy on the eyes. With his dark brown hair, very slightly too long, curled down over his forehead, muscular arms and broad chest filling out his t-shirt, he’d made an impression. Unfortunately, she suspected she’d made an impression too – the wrong kind!
She cringed inwardly as the power company man brought in his bundles of cable and the fuse box. The look on Nate’s face when she’d launched into him for wanting to condemn her house – and all because she’d made the stupid assumption that he and Moana were married. She should have known a man who had been nothing but helpful wouldn’t be paired with that trouble maker.
She left Edward to his work and wandered the rest of the house, making mental notes of the work that needed to be done. Where the priorities were for wiring needs, what walls or floorboards looked like they might need replacing, where the ceiling was discoloured, suggesting a leak in the roof.
Try as she might to focus on the tasks at hand, her mind wandered back to Nate Adams. At least she’d managed to make herself seem intelligent for a few brief moments before running from the house like some emotionally damaged Cinderella at midnight.
She sighed. Why did he have to ask her about children?
Even now, her hand strayed to her stomach. It was stupid, but she couldn’t help doing it. The child that had been there was gone. A little girl, they’d told her.
She took a deep, steadying breath, and pulled her hands back to her sides, fingers curled into fists so tight her nails dug into her palms. The pain felt good. She deserved it. This was not the time to be thinking about a man. Her weakness with a man was what had caused all her trouble.
Her weakness over Greg.
She’d only been in art school a year when the handsome young man had swept her off her feet. He’d come to an exhibition one of her friends had been a part of and they’d spent the entire evening chatting in the corner. He made her laugh and he thought she was an artist until she’d admitted none of the work was her own. He’d told her she looked the part and that it suited her and asked her to coffee. Then, when an argument with her mother led to her deciding she needed a place of her own, he came to the rescue with a spare room at his flat and he helped her move.
It’d been an organic, wonderful relationship after that. They would make love in the mornings, he would go to work and she would study, draw and paint, then they’d spend their evenings together talking about the world and its problems, and solve them over a glass of red wine.
It was one such evening that they’d hit on the plan for their future.
“We have the tools,” Greg said. “We could really set things up for ourselves. I have some money saved up and you’ve got the design talent. What if we buy old houses and do them up together for a profit?”
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. A bit of work but something they could be doing together and the outcome would give them a future their friends wouldn’t have. It was a good plan.
Sara shook her head wryly thinking about it. That first house had been a disaster. Almost as run down as this place and much less structurally sound. They hadn’t known what they were doing and it was a harsh life lesson to learn on the job. They’d paid far too much for tradesmen to do things they could have done themselves and tried to do things themselves they’d have been better to hire professionals for. They had to jib and plaster twice to make up for their lack of skill the first time and the budget blew way out of control.
It was hard not to see it as her own fault. Greg had to continue with his day job to bring in the finances – her student debt and meagre part time work did very little to keep them afloat. Her job was to ensure the house was aesthetically pleasing enough to sell for a good price at the end of it. She also had the time during the day to make sure things got done. She began skipping classes to keep an eye on the tradesmen and to keep up with Greg’s expectations for how quickly the work would be done.
“I can’t keep us afloat like this forever,” he told her. “And it’s not like you’re going to be much help getting us out of debt with an art career. You’re not exactly Picasso.”
Sadly, that was true. Her grades diving, Sara eventually admitted the truth and changed degrees. Her early childhood education qualification could be done partly by correspondence and she was able to work part time in a local day-care centre to gain credit as well as pay. But it wasn’t enough.
The house sold at a loss. And that night Greg hit her for the first time.
She couldn’t blame him. The emotional and financial stress had been unbearable and they’d both made the mistake of drowning their misery with alcohol. She remembered the look of horror on his face the second he realised what he’d done. That expression stung her much more than the pain in her cheek.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it!”
She stroked his arm and soothed him, testing her jaw. No real harm done. “It’s okay, babe. It’s fine. Just...settle down, okay?”
He nodded, his face crumpled into tears. Actual tears. She’d never seen him cry before, no matter what had gone wrong with the house. “I’m sorry. I just...lost it for a moment. God, are you all right?”
She forced a smile even though it hurt. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s been a hard day. Don’t worry about it. Let’s forget it ever happened.”
He reached out and gently traced along her cheek. “I will never do that again, Sara. I promise. I just...”
She nodded. “I know.”
“God, what do we do now?”
She made her voice gentle, soothing, like she would for the kids. Full of hope. “Well, we’ve learned heaps, haven’t we? It would be a pity to waste that.”
He tilted his head and looked at her. “You think we should try again? You’d do that?”
She’d never be able to pay him back for the money he’d lost on this venture if they didn’t. “Of course. We won’t make the same mistakes this time. We know what we’re doing. We chalk this one up to experience and we go from here. Next time we spend less and we sell for more. But no more hitting! Deal?”
He gave that boyish, rueful smile that melted her heart. “Yeah. I promise. Never again.”
As Sara stepped out into one of the halls of the big old O’Neill house, she wondered if she were even the same woman any more. Greg wasn’t the same man...yet, horribly, there were glimpses still. Her heart ached, not for the man she had left behind, but the man who had somehow faded from their relationship so long ago, whose body and mannerisms had been inhabited by...something new.
Sara sighed. Hardly new. She had to face that. She’d been hiding from it for far too long.
She looked up and the old sepia toned portrait on the wall looked back. A stern woman with her hair up in a bun and a blouse buttoned tight up her throat with a broach locking it in place. On her lap sat a huge tabby cat, proud as an Egyptian goddess. The woman stroked the cat with a hand weighed down by an enormous gemstoned ring.
“You wouldn’t let a man mess you around, would you?” Sara asked the portrait. “You’re far too sensible for that.” For a moment, she could have sworn the woman in the old photograph winked and she chuckled at her own imagination. “Us girls have to stick together, sister.”
As she turned away, a voice whispered, “Yesss.”
“What?” Sara spun around but the hallway was empty. Nothing but shadows, old furniture and framed portraits looked back at her. “Who’s there?”
A scream came from the front of the house.
Sara ran for the exit. Her chest felt as though she’d swallowed acid, her lungs tight with panic. For a moment, she forgot the way out and opened the wrong door. Shelves of musty linen blocked her path and she stared at them in shock before realising what she’d done. She slammed the cupboard closed and grabbed the next door handle instead, at last finding her way to the lounge and then out onto the porch.
The sun blinded her for a few seconds as she gasped in lungsful of fresh air, still uncertain of what had happened. As her eyes adjusted and her heart rate lowered, she became aware of a buzzing sound coming from the ground below the porch. She leaned over the rail and looked down.
Edward lay beneath a tangle of cable, his body thrashing against the ground. Sparks of electricity danced around his overalls, seeming to bring the lightning bolt monogram to harsh, shocking life. A ladder lay across his stomach, pinning him and the live cable together as the current passed through his body in a rush to reach the earth.
“Shit!” Sara took the steps two at a time, instinctively trying to get to the injured man and pull him away from the wires. But as her feet touched the ground, the world whirled around her as though she’d stepped onto a merry-go-round. Dizziness overwhelmed her and her vision blurred, morphing the garden into a photographic negative of the portrait in the hall. She thought she heard the voice again. “Stay back!”
Sara pulled herself back to the solid wooden boards of the porch and the feeling passed.
Electricity. What did she remember about dealing with electricity? It was dangerous and the longer she left Edward laying there, the worse it would be for him but if she got too close and there was no one else to help... She grabbed her phone and dialled 111, requesting an ambulance in short, tense sentences.
The operator tried to keep her calm. “Stay clear of the wires, ma’am. You’ll only hurt yourself if you get close. Do you know where to switch the power off the mains?”
“No.” There wasn’t a main circuit board installed yet! Edward had have tapped into the supply from the street. Surely he would have had the company turn it off first?
“The ambulance is on its way. They’ll be there soon.”
Sara could see the edges of Edward’s overalls beginning to singe and melt. “Not soon enough.”
She put the phone down and took a deep breath. This had to be fast.
She ran down the stairs and leapt toward the dying man, pushing with all her might at the ladder and its deadly tangle of live wire. The force of electricity hit her like an angry slap and the world went grey.