Hana felt physically sick. The blonde tennis player was Renton Dobbs. The tennis player was dead. Renton Dobbs was dead. He wasn’t coming home ever again. Who was it who decided the body belonged to Lachlan Reynolds? Obviously they were wrong.
It wasn’t Hana’s place to tell this poor woman her son was dead. It was a job for the cops. Hana’s heart began to pound in her chest, giving her a sensation of light-headedness. Knowing she needed to get out of the woman’s company, she rose shakily to her feet and indicated towards the baby. “I need to get Phoe home. Logan’s waiting for me,” she lied. He didn’t even know where she was. Dora rose in her seat too, looking desperate, wringing her hands together as though furiously washing them under burning hot water. “I’m sorry...about Alan and everything,” Hana said with futility, cursing her own ineptitude and knowing she was out of her depth. She shouldn’t have come. She definitely shouldn’t have brought Phoenix with her.
Hana bent down next to the car seat, lifting the carrying handle and locking it into place. Phoenix slept on, blissfully unaware of the trouble her mother had gotten herself into. Dora plonked herself back down at the kitchen table behind the food mountain. Its surface was stripped pine, but only the sides were visible. Hana was reminded of childhood images of mountains of milk powder and grains, when the European Common Market went through a stage of enthusiastically stock piling. African families had starved, but the food mountains grew to the size of football pitches, filmed in shaky black and white footage for news items. Poor Dora. Hana knew from experience there was nothing she could do to help. She needed to get home, ring Bodie and let him deal with it. The double grief would be far too much for Dora to handle on her own.
Hana turned to leave, pausing at the door to bid goodbye to the broken woman in the kitchen chair. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Dobbs. I’ll leave you in peace now.”
Dora looked exhausted and met Hana’s gaze with eyes glossed by defeat. “You won’t be able to leave,” the older woman said quietly.
Hana contemplated the steep driveway and the horrid reverse manoeuvre to get back up it and sighed. It would have to be ok. She wasn’t that bad a driver. “I’ll be fine. It can’t be that hard.”
Dora’s words took on a whole new clarity when turning towards the door into the hallway, Hana came face to face with the dead man himself.
Whereas Renton Dobbs had changed completely, growing up and outwards into a handsome, blonde, muscular man, Lachlan Reynolds hadn’t changed at all. He was still the proud owner of the nondescript sandy red hair and the same freckled face. He wasn’t good looking, but nor was he ugly. He was simply forgettable, just like he always had been. His body shape was thin with very little muscle tone and his face held a look of cruelty and deceit. Hana gasped and took a step backwards, shaking her head to clear the image of the ghost in front of her, but he didn’t go.
Vik hadn’t liked the child and Hana remembered his words as a rush of realisation. “He puts the other boys down and they don’t like him. I overheard him bullying Renton Dobbs. I’ve spoken to Angus about it; hopefully he’ll punish him.”
Lachlan held his hand out for the car seat and Hana swung away from him in an instant maternal reaction. No way was he getting Phoenix. A nauseating sense of evil had entered the room with him. “Goodbye,” Hana said confidently, trying to push past him. His deceptively fragile frame didn’t shift against her and panic lit a fuse in her heart. He indicated the kitchen table, as though inviting her to partake in the feast and one look at his closed face showed Hana he wasn’t messing around. She moved towards her seat and stuck her backside to the chintzy pad, nursing the car seat on her knees.
Lachlan didn’t sit. He leaned against the doorframe and pulled a pistol from the front of his jeans. He stared at Hana but it didn’t produce the desired reaction. “You don’t scare me,” she said with a sneer. My brother had a gun licence growing up and my husband has a gun cupboard bigger than your wardrobe.” Hana didn’t like guns, but there were always different weapons lying on her mother’s kitchen table in various states of dismantling. Black powder on the carpet was a common point of argument in their house. There were guns up at Logan’s hotel, literally all over the place. The stockmen wandered around with them slung across their backs, dirty great shotguns which they used to keep down the possum population. Logan bought Hana a pistol last summer and taught her how to use it.
Even to Hana’s inexperienced eye, she could see the safety catch was on, rendering ineffective Lachlan’s frantic brandishing of it in her face. He was a pitiful boy and he had grown into a pathetic man. Dora Dobbs reacted differently. She panicked, a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She put her head in her hands with her elbows resting on the table and huge wrenching sobs escaped her, seeming to come straight from her stomach. “How long have you been here, terrorising her?” Hana asked Lachlan and he smirked.
“Just since yesterday. All these years she’s had to see me in secret and now we can meet out in the open, she doesn’t want to know.”
“I wonder why,” Hana mused sarcastically to herself, just loud enough for him to hear.
“Please don’t antagonise him?” Dora Dobbs begged and Hana silenced herself, purely for the other woman’s benefit.
The little King Charles Cavalier pit-patted into the kitchen and began to slurp water from a terracotta bowl in the corner. Its huge brown eyes watched Lachlan nervously and the little dog’s presence seemed to make Dora even more upset. Hana saw why when Lachlan lifted the pistol and aimed it at the dog’s furry little bottom and swaying tail. “No, no!” Dora screamed and stood up. Lachlan switched the gun’s open mouth onto her and she stilled.
“I need to separate you from that baby, I think,” Lachlan mused out loud, turning the gun on Hana.
False bravado burned in her veins as she struggled to keep herself calm. The last thing she needed was her pacemaker to detect a spike or dip in her heart rate and give her a shock. She fixed Lachlan with a determined stare. “Go on,” she egged, “try it. That’s only a rabbit gun and will leave a nasty bruise. After which, I will rip your damn head off and make sure when my husband gets here, he kicks it into next week.”
Two things occurred to Hana in quick succession as Lachlan peered at the pistol with a look of confusion. The first was that he had obviously raided Alan Dobbs’ gun cupboard and grabbed what he thought would be an intimidating weapon. Hana with her big mouth and brave talk just alerted him to the fact it wasn’t. Downstairs would be an array of hunting guns, according to Logan, who hunted with Dobbs numerous times, as recently as the previous month. If Lachlan fetched one of those, it might not go well for her or her baby.
The second issue was Lachlan had no idea how to use the gun. Whilst an incompetent gun-wielder could be a good thing, Logan had drummed into Hana it was actually a very bad thing. Because it led to fatal accidents. Hana held her breath and wished her husband were there. She imagined him telling her to shut up. The gun might not kill her but if it hit the baby in the wrong place, it could do serious damage.
Hana eyed the man warily sideways and spun the car seat so Phoenix’s feet rested against her stomach, presenting the hard body of the car seat towards him. Hearing her husband’s wisdom in her head, she dutifully shut up. Lachlan seemed happy with the change in his captive and relaxed, shoving the gun down the front of his jeans again. Hana prayed hard the safety slipped and blew his nuts off. It was nothing less than he deserved, threatening her baby and the cute little dog.
“Get me something to eat, Mother,” the man demanded, indicating the food on the table with an outstretched hand. As Hana watched in amazement, the proverbial penny dropped into place in her slow brain. Dora rose like a spectre from the table and began mechanically assembling a plate of the various goodies for the man with the gun.