Someone knocks at the door of my Sydney hotel room.
I haul myself off the bed and go to open it, finding only an envelope propped against the door frame. I glance up and down the corridor, but there’s no one there. I pick up the envelope.
Inside it, is an engraved platinum ring.
To the love of my life.
My blood runs cold, then scorching hot, burning behind my eyes. It’s my wedding ring. The one I put into the coffin.
Only one person could have that ring. Or, at least, only one person could have it and have followed me halfway across the world.
My husband. He’s still alive.
‘This is nuts.’
Two days earlier, I’m facing Jim over a metal bistro table, outside a coffee shop in the western Sydney suburb of Ultimo. Even though it’s mid-winter, the weather is mild and the sunny skies so bright, they’re making me screw my eyes up.
‘What the hell are we even doing here?’
‘That’ll be the jet lag talking,’ Jim says sagely. ‘Maybe you should bend the pregnancy police rules and have some caffeine?’
‘Maybe you should let me go back to the hotel and have a nap.’
Our flight landed early that morning, and despite having dozed on the plane, all I wanted to do was go straight to bed. But Jim insisted that staying awake until the evening, local time, was the only way to beat the jet lag. So, at two in the afternoon, we’re round the corner from the New South Wales Registry of Births, Death and Marriages, with him drinking double espressos and me sticking to mint tea.
A helpful woman on the reception desk at the Registry tells us we can do an online search for a birth.
‘I already tried that,’ Jim explains patiently. ‘But I don’t know the name of the child or the place of birth, so I can’t pull the record. We only know the parents’ details.’
‘And a rough idea of which year,’ I add. I’m so tired, I’m leaning on the front desk for support.
The receptionist tells us we need to make an email request to one of their family history researchers and gives us a slip with the details. ‘They can use our databases to access linked records for the mother, if her details are correct.’
‘How long will it take?’ asks Jim.
‘I’m sorry, I really couldn’t say. It will depend on how many enquiries are ahead of yours in the queue.’
We walk to Wentworth Park and sit on a bench. I give a long, guttural groan and rest my head on my knees. ‘So what do we do now?’ I mumble.
Jim reaches for my hand and pulls me to my feet. His skin feels smooth and warm against my palm. ‘We get a cab back to the hotel and you take a nap. And then, when your head’s cleared a little, we’ll talk about where we are and what we need to do.’
‘I thought napping wasn’t allowed. I thought we were supposed to “power through”. Your words.’
‘Yes, but I forgot that I was dealing with an expectant bloody mother.’
He holds on to my hand for a few seconds as we head towards the park gate. I feel the tiniest bit sorry when he lets it go.
It’s only early evening when we meet in the hotel bar, but it might as well be the middle of the night. I’ve slept for a couple of hours, but it’s only made the cotton wool feeling in my brain worse. Jim was right about trying to keep going until bedtime, but I don’t tell him as much.
‘I really fancy a cocktail,’ I sigh, as a waitress passes with a tray of stylish drinks in pale pink and acid green. ‘Only another nineteen weeks to go.’
We sit in leather armchairs, at a low table. I order a passion fruit and ginger mocktail and Jim has a local lager. The bar area is busy, mostly with Asian tourists, and in the corner, a man in a white tuxedo is playing classic lounge music on a grand piano.
‘Okay,’ says Jim, digging his huge fist into a bowl of peanuts. ‘Let’s not worry about tying your husband to Malcolm and Ellen Henderson. Not for now at least. I’ve emailed the family archivist at the New South Wales Registry, and we’ll just have to wait and see if they can help us. We need to focus on Holly Galea. She’s the one who’s brought us all this way.’
I take a sip of my drink to try and clarify the fog in my brain. It’s icy cold and delicious.
‘We know that your late husband knew her – Holly. She came to your house, and your husband pretended she was called Shona Watson to throw you off the scent.’
‘Well, it worked,’ I sigh. ‘Of course, it’s obvious now that the accent was Australian. I couldn’t quite place it at the time. I’m kicking myself about that.’
‘Well, don’t,’ says Jim bluntly. ‘It doesn’t achieve anything. But given you only saw her briefly, in the dark, are you sure it was her?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Did anyone else see her?’
‘No… oh yes, wait, they did. My neighbour, Jeremy, came out to see what was going on.’
‘Right. That’s good.’ Jim helps himself to more nuts and waves over a passing waitress to ask for a bar snacks menu. ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a scabby kangaroo… Right, where were we? We also know that your ex made regular payments to a fictitious fund, which he gave Holly’s surname. There’s no way that’s a coincidence; it’s not exactly a common name.’
‘D’you think he was making the payments to her?’ I ask, helping myself to the olives that have just been brought to our table.
‘I think that’s highly likely, yes. What we don’t know is why. But there aren’t that many reasons if you boil it down. Either she had a legitimate claim on him, like alimony or child maintenance, or she was extorting the money. Which wouldn’t be much of a stretch, given how much he had to hide.’
I exhale slowly, placing my glass down on the table. I’m so reluctant to ask the question that I can’t even look in Jim’s direction, but there’s no avoiding it. ‘Do you think he killed her?’
Jim leans forward, his forearms on his knees. ‘It’s got to be a strong possibility, given how and where she died. But more than that is just speculation at the moment.’
‘And what about the police?’ I’d been worrying over this as I lay on my hotel bed in a shallow half-sleep. ‘When your friend Margaret put you on to the discovery of Holly’s body,’ I stumble over the words, pushing the images from my mind, along with the sound of footsteps pursuing in the darkness, ‘did you say anything to her about the possible link to my husband?’
Jim shakes his head. ‘It was only the vaguest hunch until I showed you the photo and you identified her as the girl who’d been to your house. Twenty-four hours later and we were on the plane.’
My mind lurches back to that night, to her words: ‘…all the stuff your husband’s been up to!’
‘But surely we should? We need to share what we know. It’s only right.’
Jim is tucking into a plate of sliders. ‘Look, don’t worry, we will,’ he says, speaking round a mouthful of cheeseburger. ‘Just as soon as the opportunity arises. But first I want to talk to Holly’s parents, up in Queensland. I completely understand if you don’t want to get on another plane. It’s fine if you just want to hang out here, while I go on my own.’
Every cell in my body is screaming out to go to bed and stay there, for days. But I give a brief shake of my head. ‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Not now we’ve flown halfway round the globe. I’m coming with you.’