Henny checked on Dover before going back into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. She glanced up at the wall clock: it had been just over half an hour since Stephen had called her so she figured he’d be arriving soon. Pouring the water into her cup, she heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. Good timing, she thought, and reached up to grab another mug from the shelf.
She walked to the front door and yanked it open.
‘I was just making some tea . . .’ she said, expecting to see Stephen standing there. ‘Oh Dan, sorry, I thought you were Stephen—he’s on the way.’
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,’ he said.
Henny could smell the alcohol on his breath from a metre away. ‘So what can I do for you?’
‘I was just looking for Stevo and Mr Drake thought he was here.’
‘Well, he will be soon enough. Did you want to come in and have a coffee?’
‘Nah, it’s alright—I’ve got this,’ Dan said, holding up the whiskey bottle and wiggling it at her. ‘I might wait until he gets here, if that’s okay. I just need to have a word with him and then I’ll get out of your hair.’
‘Sure, if that’s what you want.’ Henny sensed that there was something wrong. She’d seen Dan drink before, that wasn’t new, but this was something different.
‘Think I might just hang out here, I could do with the fresh air.’
‘Alright,’ Henny said as she watched him sit down on the couple of steps that led up to the verandah. ‘I could bring some chairs out.’
He shook his head. ‘This is fine. So I heard you had some trouble this morning?’
‘Yeah, my back window was broken. I’ve got it boarded up at the moment and the glazier is coming around tomorrow afternoon.’
An unusually long silence spanned between them and it wasn’t comfortable. Henny racked her brain to think of something to say. After another awkward minute Dan shifted on the step.
‘I was talking to Leon the other day. He said that you’re writing some sort of article about what happened at the res,’ Dan said, glancing up at her.
‘Yeah, maybe. I got thinking after the anniversary that it might be a nice thing to do. There’s still a few of us in town who were there so I thought it could be interesting to gather everyone’s memories of the day. You know, to help the healing.’
‘I guess. It’ll stir up some bad feelings as well. Some wounds just don’t heal,’ he said as he stared ahead, making Henny wonder what exactly he was talking about. ‘So, are you going to ask me about it?’
‘I’d like to, if you wanted to participate, that is.’
‘Maybe it’s time to clear the air. I mean, maybe that’s just what the town needs. We’ve all been living under a cloud for ten years.’
‘I hope you’re right. Those deaths changed and affected us all in different ways. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if that platform never collapsed.’
‘I’d like to say better, but life tends to turn to shit whichever way you come at it.’
‘That’s pretty cynical,’ Henny said as she leant against the verandah rail.
‘It is what it is,’ Dan said with a shrug.
‘So, what do you remember of the day?’
‘It was hot and the water was cool and I spent hours mucking about in the shallows with my mates.’
Henny smiled as she thought back to sitting under the dappled shade of a tree talking to Georgie. ‘Yes, there’s a lazy feel about the day in my mind, almost as if time slowed down.’ ‘Yeah, the afternoon seemed to go on for ages,’ Dan agreed. ‘I remember talking to Stevo and Harley,’ he said with a turn of his lip. ‘You know, when Harley was actually still Harley.’
‘Hmm, I remember.’
‘Later on I remember sitting on the platform with Georgie and Ethan being an idiot. If my memory serves me right, he’d brought in some extra booze and he and some of his crew were throwing a few back.’
‘I didn’t know that—they were drunk?’
‘Nah, not really. I don’t think they could get their hands on much. But you know, Ethan could never hold his booze very well.’
‘It always made him want to prove himself,’ Henny replied. ‘Which is why I suppose he caused a scene on the platform.’
‘Yeah, that and the fact that he never really got over you,’ he said with a smile. Henny glanced at him. ‘You knew that, right? He made a big thing about ditching you and then taking up with Kylie. But he always knew he’d made a mistake and he never had the brains to work out how to fix it. I guess we all do stupid things, some worse than others.’
‘I guess.’
‘Do you believe in forgiveness, Henny? Could you forgive someone who wronged you?’
Henny shifted from one foot to the other. Everything about this conversation was off. ‘I guess that depends what they had done. Although Mum always told me to take the higher ground—so yes, I suppose I do believe in it.’
He didn’t answer straight away and Henny pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the time. How long until Stephen got here?
‘Do you remember the noise that bloody platform made as it collapsed?’ Dan asked before he took a sip from the bottle.
Henny put her phone back in her pocket. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. It was like a clap of thunder right above your head. I never want to hear anything like it again.’
‘I’m with you on that,’ Dan said.
‘Listen, Dan, I’m not sure how to say this but I’ve found out that there were traces of drugs in Georgie’s system. We all know that she never did anything like that, so I’ve been wracking my brain to try and work out how it was possible. You were the last person to see her—did you notice anything?’ The light seemed to go out of his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I said. Did you notice anything different about her or see who she’d been talking to before the platform collapsed?’
‘No, I mean I don’t know who she was talking to.’ He shifted his position on the step a couple of times. He took another swig from the bottle before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Well, I just thought I’d ask,’ Henny said as she realised that Dan seemed agitated.
‘It sounds like a bullshit story,’ Dan said, looking over to her. ‘Someone is playing with you.’
Henny drew in a breath and shook her head. ‘It’s not bullshit, Dan, it’s part of the official report. Georgie took drugs and I’m just trying to work out who gave them to her.’ ‘I don’t know why you’ve got to keep asking all these bloody questions . . .’
‘Well, I think that’s pretty obvious—I want to know what happened to my friend.’
‘Nothing will bring her back.’
‘No, it won’t—but the whole truth about that night needs to be exposed.’
‘That’s your problem, Hen, always sticking your nose in where it’s not wanted—just like your mum.’
‘My mum? What has she . . .’
Dan cut her off. ‘The past is over, just let it go. Stop asking all these bloody questions and just let everyone get on with their lives. The memorial was a piss-poor idea, we should have just left it alone,’ Dan said quickly.
‘I don’t understand why . . .’
‘Because Harley would probably still be alive if we hadn’t had the damn thing. We should have just forgotten the whole thing ever happened. Remembering doesn’t do the dead any good—it’s just to make the living feel better.’
‘Well, you’re probably right but that’s a bit pessimistic don’t you think?’ Henny asked.
‘Just leave it, Henny. I don’t know what happened that night, I don’t know anything about drugs,’
‘I never said that you did.’
‘But that’s what you implied. I know what you’re like, Hen, clever and sharp. You pretend to be all sweet and caring but you’re trying to trip me up.’ Dan stood up. ‘You go on and on with your questions until . . .’
‘I think that you need to leave,’ Henny said. ‘Maybe go and sleep it off—I’ll tell Stephen that you wanted to see him.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. It’s just another one of your ploys.’
Henny frowned. ‘I’ve got no idea what the hell you’re talking about, Dan. You’re ranting and I don’t have any idea why.’
‘Because you don’t know what it’s like to carry around this guilt. It gnaws at you day and night until you’re hollow inside. It makes you do things that you’d never thought you’d do. I never meant to hurt her, I just didn’t know what the stuff would do to her.’
A cold stone of dread settled in Henny’s stomach. Her back stiffened as she stepped away from the verandah rail where she’d been leaning.
‘Oh my God. You killed Georgie.’
‘Henny, just stop for a minute,’ Dan said, starting to rise. ‘I need to explain.’
She shook her head before spinning on her heel and running through the front door, slamming it shut and locking it. Henny leant against the door and took a deep breath, then pulled her phone out of her pocket.
***
Stephen had just made it into Lawson’s Bend when he pulled off the road to answer his phone.
‘Hey, Mark,’ Stephen said.
‘Hi Stephen. Listen, my great-uncle has spent the last hour trying to get me to change my mind, but I can’t come back to Lawson’s Bend—at least, not yet. But there’s something that you should know.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Why I can’t come back. I’m guessing that you and Henny may have thought that I had something to do with Harley’s death but I didn’t. His death is not on my conscience—but Georgie’s is.’
‘I know some things that happened that day—things that could change the way people remember it.’
‘Enough with the riddles, Mark. What happened?’ Stephen said. He could hear Mark take a couple of breaths on the other end of the phone, as if steadying himself.
‘Dan had brought drugs to the break-up, and I was the one who bought them for him.’
‘Okay, stupid move for both of you but I don’t see what—’
‘Just let me finish,’ Mark said. ‘After the platform collapsed, I challenged Dan about what happened to Georgie. I asked if she’d taken any, and he said that she had. But Georgie was not that kind of person—I didn’t believe that she would’ve taken them by choice.’
Stephen thought about Georgie for a second. Mark was right, she wasn’t a party girl—it just wasn’t in her nature. ‘So what happened?’
‘He told me that he had slipped it into her drink. You know what that means, Stephen? Georgie drowned because of the drugs. She was a good swimmer; she would’ve been okay if Dan hadn’t given her the stuff. And I got them for him. I killed Georgie!’
‘He told you that?’ Stephen asked. He was blindsided by what Mark was telling him. If it were true this was a whole side of Dan that he had never seen.
‘Yeah, and when I said that I was going to tell the police, Dan said that he’d tell them that I was a drug dealer, and . . .’
Mark went on, his voice sounding haunted by memories. ‘He got angry and attacked me, and then he pushed me off the cliff.’
‘This is nuts,’ Stephen said. It felt like a bad dream. ‘And then what happened?’
‘Well, this is the worst part . . . I never told anyone. I was too scared of being found out, so I just shut my mouth and ran away. That’s why I’ve never came back. How could I? How could I face Georgie’s family and her friends? How could I live there when every part of the town will remind me daily that I killed her?’
‘You didn’t kill her. Stop saying that. You were stupid and scared, that’s all.’
‘I got him the drugs—and I knew he wanted to get with Georgie. It doesn’t matter what you say, I know my own guilt.’
‘Look, that’s something we can talk about; but I need to know something . . .’
‘What?’
‘Was Harley there? Did he see any of this?’
‘No. The last I saw of him was when I pulled him out of the water. He was down at the shore.’
Stephen glanced at his phone. ‘Listen, I’ve got an incoming call. I’ll phone you back as soon as I can. Oh, and Mark—thank you.’ He switched to the other call. ‘Henny, you’re not going to believe this.’
‘Stephen, I need your help. Where are you?’
‘Just got into town. What’s the matter?’
‘Dan’s here and he’s been drinking. Stephen . . . he killed Georgie. He just told me. This sounds crazy I know, but it’s true.’ Henny explained quickly. ‘He slipped some drugs into her drink, and that’s why she drowned.’
Stephen’s heart was immediately racing, and then a noise in the background threatened to send him into full-blown panic. ‘Henny, what’s happening?’
‘He’s trying to get in—he’s trying to break down the door! I’ve got to go. Hurry, Stephen, ring the police!’ Henny said before the line went dead.
‘Henny, wait—damn it!’ Stephen punched triple-O into his phone before pulling back out on the road and driving as fast as he could towards Henny’s cottage.