Sweet Wattle Creek, 1986
I had almost reached the pepper tree now. I looked back, my heart pounding hard in my chest, and I saw that it had worked. Walter was following me. Dillon was safe. But my relief was short-lived because by sacrificing myself I knew I was on my own. Ahead of me were the shadows of the creek, and Walter was already gaining.
I’d been jogging for a reason. Keeping strong. Even in the dress that clung to me too tightly and impeded my stride, I was faster than Walter. He’d never been that big on physical exercise, unless you counted assaulting his wife.
I told myself I could beat him at this, I could get away, I could.
I was in the trees now, the foliage clinging to my clothing and scratching my legs. My stockinged feet were already bruised. But the creek must be close and perhaps I could hide down there, and … That was when the ground suddenly gave away. I lost my footing. For a moment I thought I’d saved myself, but then I was rolling. I didn’t feel the scrapes and knocks of stones and undergrowth. Down the crumbling bank, down into the creek.
It seemed to take ages for me to come to a stop, and then ages for my head to stop spinning. I lay there on my side, and there was solid mud beneath me, dried out over the summer. I just wanted to stay there and catch my breath, assess the damage. I wanted to stay there and I thought: he won’t find me. I’m safe here.
But I wasn’t. I could already hear him above me, up on the bank I’d just fallen down. Something else I could hear, but further away. The voices of my rescuers.
That gave me hope. They were coming and all I had to do was stay alive until they reached me.
I scrambled to my feet. My legs felt wobbly, and I knew that my knee wasn’t working properly. I’d hurt it when I fell and it was only now that the pain was kicking in. I reached down, supporting myself with one hand, and there was a rock there, just large enough to fit into my palm. So I picked it up.
The skin on my legs was stinging where my stockings had torn and I’d been cut and grazed. Christy’s beautiful dress was muddied and ripped where it had caught on some branches, and that upset me, despite my precarious position. And then I thought how silly it was to be worrying about a dress when in a heartbeat I could be dead.
I crouched, the rock in my hand, and I tried to listen, tried to hear above the bumping of my heart and the harsh sound of my own breathing. I tried to hold my breath but my head went fuzzy and I had to take a great gulp. It sounded so loud.
‘Sophie!’ Someone was calling. ‘Sophie!’ They were closer now, but still too far away.
Walter was here with me. I knew it, sensed it. It was very dark, here in the creek, with the trees leaning over me and the banks rising to blot out any light. But he was here and my skin prickled in awareness.
But I was going to fight him. I wasn’t going to go down without hurting him as he had hurt me and Dillon. So I stood, trying to quieten my breathing, listening and waiting.
‘Sophie.’ His voice was like a whisper on the wind. ‘It doesn’t matter what you call yourself now. We don’t need names, you and I. You’re mine …’
He was behind me. I turned, slowly, trying not to sob. My knee wouldn’t hold me up properly, and I was suffering from shock. And yet I turned to face him.
The voices weren’t close anymore, they seemed to have drifted off further down the creek, away from me. We were here alone, he and I, and I knew if I was going to get out of this alive then it was up to me.
‘Did you really think I’d let you go?’
His voice had moved around to be behind me again. This time I turned jerkily and my knee hurt so much that I groaned and fell to my knees. And there he was, standing in front of me. A shadow in the darkness.
‘You’re mine,’ he said. ‘That was the deal. To have and to hold, till death us do part.’
The strange thing was he believed it. I knew he did. I was his and that was all there was to it. He began to walk forwards and it occurred to me that my being on my knees was actually a good thing. He saw me as no threat. I’d given up and he could do what he liked with me.
Walter had always said when he killed me then it’d be with his bare hands. No blade or gun for him. He’d do it flesh to flesh, and feel my life leave me as he squeezed my throat tighter and tighter.
But to strangle someone you have to get in close to them.
As he bent towards me, his fingers brushing my skin, I swung my arm up and hit him as hard as I could with the rock. I heard something crunch and I felt the jolt of connection right up my arm, and then I dropped the rock and began to scream.
My rescuers weren’t as far away as I’d thought. I’d hardly begun to drag myself up the bank on the other side of the creek when hands were reaching for me, pulling me over the brink, and torch lights were shining.
I remember turning my head just as I came up over the edge. The torch beams were illuminating the creek bed and I could see Walter. He was lying on the ground on his back, his arms thrown up, and his face was clearly visible. And there was blood. Lots and lots of blood.
I put my head down on the dusty earth and I thought: he must be dead, I’ve killed him. And I felt a strange sense of elation and sickness. Because if Walter was dead then all my troubles were over. And if Walter was dead, maybe they’d just begun.
Someone had scrambled down to him and now they shouted up, ‘He’s alive!’
That was a bad moment.
And then Ian was there, and he had his face against my hair, and he was saying, ‘Ah, Sophie, oh, God, Sophie,’ in a voice that sounded choked and very unlike him.
They had a stretcher for me because I couldn’t walk. There seemed to be an awful lot of policemen, as if they’d known all along Walter was here. And of course they had.
Later, when I’d been to the hospital and they’d strapped up my knee and treated my cuts and bruises, they sat me down in the police station and told me. They’d been setting a trap, only they hadn’t wanted to tell me. They thought I’d give myself away in typical girly fashion.
That made me angry. And then they told me that Walter was in hospital and it didn’t look like he’d regain consciousness, or if he did then he wouldn’t be able to do much more than lie there.
So perhaps there was a God after all.
* * *
My house looked unfamiliar, and then wonderfully ordinary. This was where I belonged, this was my home. I lifted my head and the air felt cooler—while I’d been going through all the questions and signing statements, there’d been a change in the weather. I stood and let it dry my tears.
‘Mum,’ Dillon said, sounding as if he was crying. ‘It’s over.’
I didn’t want to disillusion him. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t, but whatever happened from now on we had won. Walter was finished. I told myself I had beaten him once and I could do it again.
Smithy came up and licked my hand and I laughed and manoeuvred my crutches so that I could bend down to hug him. Ian was behind me. ‘I had a surprise for you, Sophie. You ran off before I could show you.’
‘I think I’ve had enough surprises,’ I told him.
‘I promise you’ll like this one.’
I sighed. I didn’t really want to do anything more than lie on the couch with my two best men and close my eyes, but it seemed I wasn’t going to be allowed to do that. And who knew, perhaps it would be something really nice. In fact, I looked up at Ian’s worried face, if it was a surprise from him then it had to be.
‘Okay, then.’
We were inside now, and Dillon switched on the lights. My head ached. Well, why not, everything else did.
Ian was looking for something in his jacket, and slipped out a photograph. He held it turned away from me, but I’d already seen it was one of those box-brownie type of photos, small and sepia.
‘You remember the board I was doing with the airman on it, Michael Maxwell? Well, this turned up. Guess who gave it to me? Gwendolyn South.’
I tried to take it in. ‘Stop teasing,’ I said, my voice hoarse from all the screaming I’d done.
‘Show her, Ian,’ Dillon added, leaning back with his arms folded and trying to be cool, but there was something in his face that told me this was a good surprise and he wanted me to enjoy it.
Ian handed me the photo.
It was a man and a woman, close together, smiling at the camera. Behind them was an aeroplane, and there was some sort of bird sitting on one of the wings, a cockatoo maybe. But I was looking at the couple. The man was the same one as I’d seen before, only he was older and he was wearing a mask over one side of his face. The woman was petite with pale-blonde hair and a lovely smile, and she was nestled against him as if he was … well, the love of her life.
‘Belle and Michael,’ Ian said quietly, almost reverently.
When I had stopped crying, and they’d sat me down and made me a hot tea with lots of sugar, Ian told me the rest.
‘Gwen said they went up north, to the Gulf Country. Michael bought a plane and he started a company, flying out to all the stations there, taking them mail and supplies. He did okay, she said. She went up to see them in 1949, and that’s when she took this.
‘They were out together—sometimes Belle flew with Michael just for the hell of it—and there was a storm. Gwen said they never returned. She said they searched but never found them, and that they’re still out there. She likes to think that they’re still flying together. Somewhere.’
* * *
Ian lay down on top of the bedcovers with me. Dillon said he was cool with that, in the circumstances, as long as he could have Smithy with him. That made us all laugh. Ian gave him a little talk about being a serious chap who had serious feelings for me, and that he was going to be around a lot from now on. Dillon took it well, I thought.
‘So are you moving up here with us?’ Dillon asked.
‘I can work from here as well as anywhere else. There’ll still be travelling to do. If that’s all right with Sophie, of course. I know it might take some adjustment … some give and take.’
They both looked at me as if expecting some profound words of wisdom. ‘Cool,’ I said.
I slept okay, considering, although I kept thinking I was somewhere in an aeroplane, flying. There was a phone call sometime around seven am, and I reached across and picked it up.
It was Josh Davies.
‘My Aunt Jo is awake,’ he said, and he sounded pretty happy. ‘Don’t worry, she doesn’t want Smithy back. She was happy to know he has a family who loves him. But I asked her about the wedding dress and she said that she found it in the pawnbroker’s in Riverton. The guy had tried to sell it to the mayor for his daughter but she didn’t want anything old. He wasn’t very happy so he gave it to her for a discounted price. She recognised it, you see. My mother used to talk about that dress, so she’d have known it was Belle’s, even if the pawnbroker hadn’t told her. I think Aunt Jo liked Belle a lot, but there were reasons she didn’t feel she could reach out to her. So she bought the dress. It was her way of being Belle’s friend.’
‘Make sense?’ Ian asked, when I told him.
‘Yes, I think so.’ I sighed. ‘Why do all the best love stories end tragically?’
He blinked at me. ‘God, please don’t say that. I have no intention of ending tragically, and I certainly don’t want you to end at all, not for many, many years to come.’
I was laughing.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Come here, then.’
And he did.