TESS

At first she was a blur of light and movement on the steaming road. The rain had stopped and the sun was breaking through the cloud in bright patches. Lewis wound down his window to let the stream of sweet fertile air pour over his face as he drove. His foot came off the accelerator and the car slowed as it topped the hill. That’s when he saw her, moving through fresh light. She had a pack on her back and her hair hung in wet strings on her shoulders.

He could feel the car’s weight, its urge to roll downhill and coast the straight, but he braked and changed down a gear, prepared to stop though she didn’t have her thumb out. He let it roll, engine slowed to a walking pace. She walked on as if the car wasn’t there, and he wasn’t sure what to do. She either didn’t want a ride or didn’t want to risk a ride, even though she was soaking and in an hour or so it would be dark.

He accelerated and changed gear to drive away, but the car jerked to a halt and the engine stalled. He swore and hit the steering wheel. He’d spent hours on the clutch last summer. He’d fixed it. At least he could fix that.

The young woman was looking back at him. He gave a brief impatient smile. She didn’t smile in return, and now the anger he’d contained all afternoon rose up and buzzed in his ear.

She walked over to the passenger window, pushed her hair behind her ears, bent down and looked in at him.

Her eyes were glassy and she stared hard. He felt she was looking right through to the white noise of him, and his face flushed. She gave him nothing in return, only searched him as if she was reaching into his pockets, his ears, mouth, throat. He could feel the air pressure change.

Overwhelmed, he broke her gaze and stretched over to the passenger window and wound it down. She stepped back one pace.

‘I was going to offer you a lift. And then I thought you didn’t want one and then … problem with the gears. Where are you going?’ he said.

‘That way.’ She tilted her head.

‘I’m going to Masterton, if you want a lift.’

She looked south, gauging the distance, and clasped the edge of the door where the window was down. The rings on the three middle fingers of both hands were silver, turquoise, brass—junk found at market stalls. She peered in through the window.

He felt it as she looked—a pure intelligent animal intent—but he couldn’t read her in return, could only be seen, and his skin bristled. It was as if she was below the surface of him, looking through him the way he’d search a water hole before diving in. Jean flashed before him, eyes glaring, mouth spitting names, the slam of the door and the long empty silence. He hadn’t heard from his daughter in six months.

The young woman’s rings drummed a light pattern on the passenger door.

‘Sure.’ There was a mountain ahead of them, and the road wound around it. ‘I’m soaked through,’ she said.

‘My kids peed on these seats when they were little,’ he said. ‘But I cleaned it up.’

She didn’t return his smile but she opened the car door and got in. A fresh earth smell came with her. She put her pack at her feet.

‘What’s this car?’ she said.

‘A Mark IV Zephyr. 1970. I’ve worked on it, you know, over the years. I don’t get to take it out much.’

She said nothing more, and sat looking straight out.

‘You should do up your seatbelt,’ he said. ‘You know, for safety …’ He heard himself as he pointed at the belt and knew he sounded uptight. Why do you always talk like we’re five? Jean would say. Because you act like you’re five, he’d reply. The girl clicked in the belt, then sat back in the same passive position. ‘I’m Lewis, by the way. Lewis Rose.’ He felt he should hold out his hand but he wasn’t sure if she would take it.

‘My mother’s name was Rose,’ she said.

She didn’t offer her own name and he didn’t feel he should ask. What was she? he wondered. Petty thief? Boyfriend trouble? Christian parents and pregnant? He started the engine and the car pulled away easy as if there was no problem. It picked up speed on the straight and he felt it glide over the road. A shaft of sun hit the mountain, and the green bush was lit and brilliant ahead of them.

‘Look at that,’ he said.

She nodded.

The mountain got closer and closer, and then they were on the winding road that had been cut in the side of it.

‘Were you out in the rain the whole time?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, canvas shoes.

‘You must be freezing.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘There’s a rug, um …’ He pointed behind and took one hand off the steering wheel to reach under the seat. She moved forwards at the same time and his hand brushed her bare arm. She jumped. The car swerved. He sat up and steadied the wheel with both hands.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘The rug …’ Then he remembered the rifle.

She reached further beneath the seat. He felt her hesitate. The rifle was hidden under the rug. But she pulled the rug out anyway and wrapped it around her, no eye contact.

He thought to explain, then thought better. He remembered the times he’d hitched as a young man. The uncertain people you went with, being grateful when someone stopped and seemed normal. And being hungry.

‘There’s energy chocolate in the glove box,’ he said. ‘It might help warm you up.’

She nodded and found the chocolate. She opened the wrapper, snapped off two squares and ate them quickly.

‘Want some?’ She held the bar out to him.

‘No. I had a big lunch.’

She didn’t offer again and continued to eat the whole bar. When she finished she made a small satisfied noise.

‘That was some rain,’ she said.

‘Spring rain. The farmers will be pleased. Although I don’t know what it takes to please farmers. They only ever seem to moan about the weather, the government.’

‘I guess you’re not a farmer.’

‘No. But I see a few of them in town when their teeth are sore. I’m a dentist. They’re not so fond of me. Lots of them have bad teeth.’

‘A dentist,’ she said, as if she didn’t believe him. ‘Is that how you got this nice car?’

‘Ah. No. I bought it for nothing when I was a student and did it up myself. I used to do up cars in my spare time.’

‘Mouths and engines,’ she said.

He wasn’t sure if she was teasing him. ‘Yes,’ he said.

In the silence she could hear the oncoming hum, like a large flock approaching. She didn’t want to hear his story, she’d had enough of them. She turned away and kept her eyes on the view in front, though every now and then turned her head to peer out at the thick bush that lined the sides of the valley. The bush had its own peculiar language, unconcerned with human noise.

‘I don’t take this car out much. I’ve been to see my mother in Palmy today. She’s in a rest home there.’

She looked down at her hands, fingers pale and wrinkly from the rain, and willed him to shut up. But she could feel it: he was desperate for company, for anyone. She looked back up at him.

‘She’s been there for four years now. It’s nice enough. My mother’s seventy-nine. Not so old, but she doesn’t know who I am anymore. Today she called me a nice young man and asked me how my wife was.’

He didn’t meet her gaze because there was the road and he was ashamed of how needy he sounded.

His mother was gone. She wasn’t angry, as she had been when it had first come on, the rage that came with losing herself and the bearings in the town she’d lived in all her life, losing the names of her friends, of things. Now she was blank-faced Dorothy, staring Dorothy, who barely seemed to notice he was there. She’d been silent for two hours before she’d turned and said, Where’s your wife? The pretty one?

‘You staying in town?’ He wanted the girl to stop staring now.

‘Hm.’

‘Family?’ he said.

‘Huh?

‘Are you staying with family?’

‘No.’

He tried to quell his frustration. This young woman didn’t owe him anything. She hadn’t even asked for the ride. And Dorothy, her mind was gone, that was the simple truth of it.

They drove out of the valley onto the plains. Neat grids of paddocks stretched out either side of them, their boundaries lined with tidy rows of eucalypts and macrocarpas, wire fences beneath them. Sheep and cows dotted the grass like a scattershot of ornaments. He felt the pleasure of the green wash over his eyes.

Lewis looked at his passenger. Her hair was pulled to one side, and he noticed her neck. It was long and slightly gawky, because she was still growing into her body, the skin youthful. He felt a pull in his groin and he turned away. He guessed she was his daughter’s age.

‘How old are you?’

Their eyes met and he saw her face pull into a scowl as if she’d seen his want. He composed an approximation of calm and turned his eyes on the road.

‘Nineteen, if it matters.’

‘Oh. It’s just … my daughter Jean is around your age. She turned eighteen in October.’ The twins turned eighteen and he didn’t talk to either of them. ‘It’s a good age. Hannah and I married at twenty. I’ll be forty-five in January. When I was your age forty-five seemed so old.’

‘It still does.’

‘Thanks. I was going to say, I don’t feel any older, not really. It’s just that everything in life seems to happen so quickly. You see,’ he said, ‘my wife is dead. I told my mother that three times today. Hannah is dead, Mum, Hannah is dead. And she just kept asking me where my wife was, over and over like a broken fucking record.’

She was quiet, but it seemed to him actively so now, giving his anger some space.

‘Sorry. I know it’s not her fault but I got angry at her and walked out. I’m still angry. But at least she won’t remember any of it.’

‘You remember.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you should forgive yourself.’

‘Oh. Well. I hadn’t thought of that.’

She shrugged.

Outside, inch by inch, night was coming on. The sky had a streaked ruddy hue. Tomorrow will be fine, he thought, tomorrow will be a good day.

They drove the rest of the way in silence and it wasn’t until Lewis reached the roundabout by the supermarket that he thought to ask her where she wanted to be dropped off. He was unsettled and his thoughts raced with the voice of his mother, of Hannah and Jean. People used words like brave and strong. He was neither. And forgiveness? That was one thing his will failed with. ‘I need to go to the supermarket,’ he said. ‘But I can drop you anywhere you like. There’s a hostel down the end of this road.’

‘It’s okay. I’ll just get out when you stop.’

‘It’s no problem. It’ll be dark soon.’

Lewis left it at that. Jean would get so angry when he worried that she be out alone after dark. As if a woman walking alone after dark was asking for it, she’d screamed at him. In this town, she is! he’d shouted back.

He parked the car by the supermarket. The young woman got out and hoisted her pack onto her back. Lewis pointed out the three blocks she’d need to walk to reach the hostel.

‘I could draw you a map?’ he said.

‘No need.’

‘Well, good luck.’

Lewis wanted to give her something or at least touch her arm. But she lifted her hand in a small wave, so he copied, and then she turned and walked away. He watched her move down the empty main street, deserted because it was a Sunday evening in early spring. The air felt damp already. It would be cold tonight. He walked across the carpark and entered the brutal fluorescence of the supermarket.

She did not like to take offerings from people. Not just strangers but anyone, and as she walked away from Lewis she chastised herself for eating his chocolate. To steal it would have been easier, more honest somehow. Now she would owe him for the bar and the ride and he would want something in return. That was how guys were.

But she’d run out of cash and the chocolate was the first thing she’d eaten that day. She’d stupidly put the bread she’d stolen in the top of her pack and the rain had gone through the paper bag it was stored in. Her fingers had sunk into the soggy paper loaf and she’d tossed it in the ditch. She couldn’t eat that mash even in her hunger. It was a rookie’s error to pack that way and she should know better.

From now on she would concentrate on simple things. Saving and storing her food, planning a way to the next meal. She’d thought there would be a paddock with a crop she could eat—spring carrots and early potatoes—but instead there were sheep and cows. If she could get close enough she could pull a teat of milk right into her bottle, it would be something to keep her going, but it seemed wrong somehow, to the cow, having a stranger steal milk from it.

She was aware that some switch had been tripped. There was an overload in her mind, distracting her from the few practical tasks she had to attend to in her day. She made herself think of the egg, of its simple oval shape and of containment within that perfect shape. And then she thought of eating an egg, of how good eggs were to eat and how her mind wouldn’t stick to one thing anymore. She shivered at the idea of the night ahead. But she had to deal with now, with what was before her.

Shops lined either side of the street—a pharmacy, a stationer’s, a coffee shop and a $2 Shop. They all looked run down, in need of a good scrub and a fresh coat of paint. The street was ugly, but it declared its status, not like Auckland where it’d been all shiny glass and polished metal which only showed you looking back at yourself.

The orange crumbs of someone’s Saturday-night vomit were splattered on the window and tile wall of a Giftworld. Birds had been at where it had dribbled on the footpath. She gagged.

The man, Lewis, had been hard for her to see at first and she wondered why. What she had wanted was a day without the distraction of people, a day just to rest her mind on the green and the blurry white dots of sheep and the dark road bending away from her. And when he stopped his car she had wanted to ignore him, but she was wet and hungry and the road went on and on. When lonely men stopped on the road their intentions were clear. All of them wanted something but most of them didn’t know how to ask for it or how to take it, which made them less dangerous than the ones who did.

He wasn’t like that, that’s why she’d got in his car. When she felt the rifle under the seat she thought she’d been wrong: that not seeing didn’t mean safe, it meant he was clever. But he’d shown her enough. There was something about him she liked, despite his noise, his fear and sadness which seemed to have no end point. He tried to hide it, to be polite. People always thought they could hide their shit, but no one could, not her, not anyone. He’d been embarrassed by the gun, not defensive. But her own lack of concentration, just getting into his car like that bothered her. She wondered what was wrong with her, with her soggy loaf and her giving in and accepting the ride.

Still her feet carried her forwards. They ached. Her whole body ached now, and the rest she’d had in his car had only brought the sorry state of her feet into relief. The ball of her foot was wearing the sole thin on the left shoe. Her heels hurt and she could feel she had blisters on the knuckles of her toes. She’d heard someone say that climbing a mountain was just one foot after the other. But those people had money—you needed money to climb a mountain. They always skimmed over those details.

She heard the men before she saw them. They were half a block away, and when she heard their shouty, bored bravado she knew she should turn and walk away. But to do so would be to call them to her anyway, so she kept going.

There were four of them. One leaned against a wall, the others stood holding Tui cans and smoking. Three competing for the attention of the one who was leaning. He was holding court, nodding or laughing every now and then at one of their jokes. He was short and would be good-looking if he wasn’t so mean-looking. He was sprung tight and his punches would weigh hard.

He raised his brow at her and nodded to his mates at the woman walking with a pack on her back towards them. The other three turned around and laughed, and their laughter made her empty stomach clench.

‘Eh,’ said one of them. ‘Eh, girl! Where you going?’ He sounded lazy, as if his mouth wouldn’t open well enough.

‘Shut up, Spud.’

The leader spoke as a farmer does to keep his dogs in line. He was still leaning back casual against the wall.

She should have crossed the road but she was so close now, just walking through them was as easy as walking off a cliff.

‘Haven’t seen you before.’

They were wasps, and simply by being there she’d upset the nest.

‘Oh, come on. Can’t you talk? Want a drink? It might loosen you up.’

They all laughed, and the one closest to her stepped forward and held his can out.

‘What’s wrong? Me and my mates, we’re just having a drink, hanging. We’re gonna play pool soon and Josh here is shit so I’m looking for a new partner.’

She was beside them now and could smell them, stale beer, sour sebum, oversweet scent of pot.

She kept moving, not fast but moving and not looking, and then she was past them with her back to them, which felt worse.

‘Eh!’

She knew without turning that it was the leader calling out, and a cold fear filled her and she ran her finger over the loose metal shard she’d made on the middle ring of her right hand, her punching fist. She turned the shard so it sprang out when she curled her hand. She wouldn’t look around until they forced her.

‘My mates are trying to be friendly. Shit, girl! Didn’t your mother tell you it’s rude to walk away when someone’s talking to you?’

A pressure on her pack spun her around. One of them pulling her back. She jerked away, making a yelping sound that embarrassed her. She should have been running now, but her pack weighed her down and she didn’t want to dump what little she had.

The guy grabbed at her again and she tried to force him off, but he jumped back, out of reach. She was awkward and slow. The leader pushed off the wall and walked over to her. The other one had his arm on top of her pack so that she felt the weight of it pushing her down. The leader had his face up close to hers. His breath was hot, his eyes large.

‘It’s rude to walk away when someone’s talking to you.’

She could see it well enough, the blank eye of a boy who has learned not to care. Nothing on the surface, just a cold silence because anything in him would be pushed down so far it was no longer part of him. They were most dangerous.

‘All we wanted was to say hello.’

Her arms were still free, she could go for the eyes. Force the shard of metal into the jelly of the eyeball, run the metal along the bridge of the nose so it cut that too as it moved into the other eye. He deserved to go blind. But her intent betrayed her and he swung his arm around her neck in a lock, stopping her from swinging out, forcing her head down so all she could see was the concrete she stood on and the feet of the two others that closed in and she was caught. Still she brought her fist around as hard as she could, aiming for his stomach, genitals, any soft flesh she could connect with, but the ring had turned to the side and the blow she brought was nothing to cut with.

‘You’re a scrapper aren’t you, you little bitch.’

One of them called his name, but he didn’t let go and they called again, ‘Let her go, Cody.’

Then she heard the car. She heard it stall abruptly and the door swing open and the feet of the other men move out of sight. The pressure went off her back and she straightened up.

Lewis stood on the road by where he’d stopped his car. He was pointing the rifle directly at Cody.

‘What the fuck are you bastards doing?’ Hard voice.

She sprang off the footpath and towards the boot of his car to put some distance between her and the men.

‘Get in the car.’ Lewis gestured at her but didn’t take his eyes off them.

‘Hey man, chill. It was nothing,’ said Cody.

‘Didn’t look like that to me,’ said Lewis.

Cody snorted. ‘I didn’t think they’d let you out with a gun.’ The others laughed.

She opened the passenger door and got in the car.

Lewis cocked the rifle.

Cody held his hands up. ‘Easy man, it was nothing. We’re going, okay.’

‘You were pinning her down, you prick. How is that nothing?’

‘We’re going. Come on, guys, we’re going.’

‘And keep the fuck away from my family!’ Lewis shouted.

‘What family?’

‘I’m fucking warning you!’

‘Lewis,’ she said from inside the car, pleading.

Cody gave a laugh, then the group turned and walked away from Lewis, who kept his rifle on them until they were a good twenty metres clear. He got in the car, put the gun on the floor and started the engine. They drove past the men who looked but didn’t start yelling until they were further away, their threats lost in the engine noise.

‘Are you okay?’

Her heart hammered against her ribs and her T-shirt, which was wet again with sweat. She was sitting now, but her legs still shook.

What was okay? Not dead? Not raped? The bar was pretty low. ‘Kind of,’ she said.

He reached down with one hand, pulled the rug loosely over the rifle and pushed it under the seat. ‘It’s actually only an air rifle, for target shooting. I mean it would hurt but it wouldn’t do enough damage to those shitheads.’

He was shaking his head. He slammed his hands down on the steering wheel and gripped it for a few seconds.

‘You don’t have anywhere to stay, do you?’

She shook her head. She felt disconnected from the car and the sound of him speaking. Her body was back on the footpath, staring at the crack in the concrete where the leader forced her head down. She was preparing herself for whatever they would do next. She was taking herself out of herself so she wouldn’t have to be there when they did it.

‘Look. I have rooms to spare at my house. Rooms. Just take one.’ He paused and then breathed out heavily. ‘I don’t mean you any harm.’

She was nodding and saying okay but it was as an automatic part of her. There were the nerves in her skin and the sweat that covered it but her mind had gone out the window, birdlike.

The car turned into a long, wide street that ran up a slight incline. Trees lined either side, their leaves light and new. Houses hid behind high fences. The car bumped over a railway line and the space between houses grew wider. Small plots appeared with a few animals grazing—horses, a goat. The car slowed down.

‘Here we are,’ he said.

Two massive pohutukawa hung like tall dark clouds above a high fenceline. The property could not be seen from the street, only guessed at. Lewis turned in at the open gate. A dog barked. The car wheels crunched over a gravel driveway that went up the side of a large lawn and the house.

It was grander than anything she’d seen in real life but not fancy. A deck wrapped the house on all sides, and a dog stood tall and alert at the back door, wagging its tail as the car approached.

‘That’s Toby. He’s friendly,’ said Lewis.

On the deck there were some chairs, a hanging seat in one corner, and it looked like a nice scene from a magazine where people might sit and talk or read books. Lewis stopped before a double garage and pressed a remote button on his sunshade. The garage door clanked and lifted, and he eased the car in and turned the engine off.

‘Right.’

He didn’t look at her, but got out of the car, opened the back door and took out the rifle. The dog rushed up to him and he patted it, talked to it in a soft voice. Then it came over to Tess and sniffed her legs and hands, wagging its tail. Its eyes were large and watery.

‘I’ll go lock this up first. Not that those chumps have a leg to stand on but it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve done this week, wave a gun in the main road.’ He laughed to himself. ‘Let yourself in the back door. It’s unlocked.’

She got out of the car. Her legs felt weak and her T-shirt stuck to the cold sweat on her back. A security light turned on as she neared the house. She heard him call out from the garage. ‘If you want a shower, there’s a bathroom down the hall. You could take the bedroom opposite that.’

She knew she stank. She hadn’t had a proper wash for over a week.

Two boxed gardens sat either side of the steps that led up to the deck and the back door. She saw in the light they were tangled and bare, the sage gone woody, dead plants not replaced. She could help once she’d slept. There were ways to repay strangers. She turned the handle on the door and pushed it open. The light from the deck came on and she saw she was in a washroom. The smell of the house was musty and shut-up.

She felt for a light on the washroom wall and the next room lit up as well. Giant spoons and pots hung on metal hooks above the cooker; a fridge rattled and sighed. A mantel above an old fireplace held pictures of children, a blond girl and boy facing each other in a diptych, the woman who must have been his wife. The long sink bench had some dirty dishes. A large wooden dining table took up the centre of the room. A fruit bowl, a half-read newspaper. It was exactly what a kitchen should look like.

She walked over to the table and touched its surface. The wood was smooth, but bore the dents and discolouration of wear, scratches and scrapes where children had pressed down hard with a pencil, or a knife. She heard the dog patter in behind her, his nails clicking on the floorboards. He came up beside her and she put her other hand on his head and said, Hello fella. His fur was silky beneath her hand and she ran her other hand back and forth across the surface of the table, feeling the grit of toast crumbs, the grain of the wood. She felt and saw the world narrow in on her. All her senses came to the room where she stood, the dog under one hand, the table under another, and she thought it was herself returning. Then a harsh dissonant music rang in her ears, blotting out any other sound, blocking every other sense. Her sight reduced to a single point of light in front of her and then went blank. Her legs gave out beneath her and she crumpled to the ground.

When Tess was very young she went with her mother for a long walk in the country. They took a bus all morning and got out at the edge of a town where the houses stopped. They walked for hours, or so it seemed to Tess, up a long road. She did not like to walk so far and she complained and asked where they were going, but Rose just pointed out the plants you could eat and the ones you were never to touch—blackberry and puha, Datura and ragwort. She had stories for all the plants and the insects on them. There were kingdoms on the leaf of each plant, she told Tess. She squeezed Tess’s hand, and Tess could feel the tremble in it steady just for a moment.

On this trip her mother carried a small brown suitcase with rusted silver clasps on the lid to hold it closed. The case still had Rose’s name printed on it in fading red ink, and now it also said Tess in black, and her mother had packed it for her. You get to go on a wee holiday, she said. And when Tess asked where, Rose held her finger to her lips and said, Shhh, it’s a surprise.

The day was overcast but bright with a light that hurt your eyes. Her mother wore large white-framed sunglasses and said that she should get Tess some—how nice they’d look together in their print dresses and sunglasses. Cars passed them and every now and then one would slow to see if they were lost, if they wanted a ride. Tess’s mother would thank them and shake her head. Then they came to an intersection and walked down a metal road and didn’t see another car again.

Tess looked down and saw that her legs and her mother’s legs were growing dusty on the dirt road and her shoes were covered in a film of grey. Her suitcase banged against her mother’s knee as she walked but Tess looked away from it.

Her mother pointed out a horse standing on the far side of a paddock, and they jumped over the ditch to stand at the fenceline and watch it. Her mother called out and the horse saw them looking and ambled over. Out of her handbag her mother pulled two apples that she’d stored there, gave one to Tess and waved the other at the horse.

‘It’s a chestnut,’ her mother said, and Tess thought she was talking about the apple.

The horse came closer and her mother held the apple on a flat palm, offering it. Tess watched the horse turn its head to the side and open its big horse lips to show its teeth, which looked like old man’s fingernails, large and yellowed. The horse wrapped its meaty tongue around the apple and pulled it into its mouth in one piece. It crunched down and small pieces of apple iced with long threads of white saliva fell from its mouth as it chewed. Her mother ran her hand over the long bone of its nose. It seemed to Tess that its face was mainly made up of its nose. Rose asked Tess if she wanted to do the same. Tess looked at the horse’s eyes, large and shiny globes, and thought she did want to touch it, but then it spluttered from its nostrils and shook its head and Tess said no.

That was the first time she’d ever seen a horse in real life. She watched her mother touch the horse, how her hands pored over its nose and neck and how she leaned in and whispered things to it as if she herself knew horse, was horse.

Their walk led to a house sitting lonely in the middle of its own paddock. The house was shabby pink and though the grass was mown around it no attempt had been made at a garden. Rose stopped at the gate and turned to Tess. She looked at the old letterbox, which had no number on it and was rusting and leaning over so that if pushed it might fall. Tess shook her head.

‘It’s okay,’ said her mother.

She held out her hand and her voice was soft, and Tess followed not because she thought it okay, but because she had no choice.

The door opened when they reached it, and Tess saw an old woman standing in the hallway. She peered down at Tess.

‘Hi Mum,’ said Tess’s mother.

The old woman looked Rose up and down and then said, ‘What have you been feeding her on. Air?’

The house smelt animalish and sweet.

When her mother had gone, the old woman sat down in a chair by the table. Tess felt a lump well up in her throat. A cat came and sat beside the woman, and the woman placed her hand on it, and said, Good boy, Tama, and the cat purred loudly. Tess wanted to cry, to call out to her mother, but she was scared of the old woman.

‘So,’ said the old woman. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

Tess shook her head. Did she not know that children didn’t drink tea?

‘Well, I do, so put the kettle on.’

Tess got out of her chair and moved over to the kitchen bench, but couldn’t see a jug to switch on. She looked around blankly, as if she couldn’t even remember what a jug might look like. The Formica was peeling off at the edges of the bench and the top was covered in tea stains. Tess felt small and useless. The silence between her and the woman was heavy with the woman’s judgement of her. She could feel tears welling and an ache in her body for her mother. Her chest was tight and it rose up high with her quick short breaths.

‘What’s your mother been doing with you aside from not feeding you properly?’ said the woman. She grunted and stood up heavy out of her chair. ‘Watch,’ she said.

She pulled a dark pot off the stove and filled it with cold water. Then she took a match and turned a dial on the cooker and lit the match and held it to the cooker top. A flame burst out and lit the ring. The old woman put the pot on the flame.

‘I don’t keep the electrics turned on,’ she said. ‘Just gas, which they bring me in bottles. You never seen gas? Well, don’t let it frighten you, but give it respect. Now come here.’ The old woman held her hands out. ‘I won’t bite. Come on.’

Tess didn’t want to touch her wrinkly old fingers, but she had no choice so she moved closer and let the old woman pick up her hands. She wouldn’t look up at her, didn’t want to see her old face. The animal smell of the house hung about the woman’s hands.

‘Look at me, child.’

There was a needling quality in the woman’s voice, gentle but urging, that forced Tess to look up at her. She saw then that the woman’s eyes were a faded blue and small milky flecks sat on the blue but the black circle of her eye grew large and concentrated as she looked straight at Tess.

‘Your mother thinks you can see, but you look blind to me.’

Tess thought this yet another strange thing to say. Everything about the old woman, her house and her black pot and her fire to heat the pot, was strange and ancient. Did the old woman think she was blind because she couldn’t see the gas or the stupid pot?

The woman kept staring at Tess with those big dark circles, and Tess felt her cheeks heat up. She thought of a young girl, like herself, feeding a horse like the one she had just fed with her mother. Her mother. She felt a sharp shock of sadness and a tear escaped her eye and ran down her cheek. The old woman blinked and she looked disappointed. ‘Hm,’ she said like something was stuck in her throat.

Tess had heard what Rose said when she came back from the toilet. Just for a few months while I get it together. The old woman had made the same thinking growl. Please Mum, help me.

‘Moss,’ said Tess.

She had no idea where the name came from, only that it was the horse’s name. That’s what the girl like her called the horse.

The woman looked at her sharply.

‘What did you say?’

‘We fed a horse on the way. Moss. It ate an apple.’

‘Moss died of a bad temper,’ said the old woman. ‘A bad temper and a bad investment, but still your mother loved him. She’s always been good with animals.’

That was true, but her mother did not allow Tess to keep any, even a centipede or the pupae of a butterfly. Her mother always made her put them back in the garden. It isn’t fair, her mother said. They don’t ask to be kept.

‘Did Rose tell you about Moss?’ said the woman.

Tess shook her head. Her mother didn’t talk about when she was little. Until now Tess hadn’t even known Rose had a mother.

‘Are you sure? How would you know about Moss if Rose didn’t tell you?’

Out the window by the side of the house was an empty paddock. The long grass was being blown sideways in the wind, like a shiny mane of hair.

‘It was just a name in my head,’ said Tess.

She looked back at the old woman, who gave her a patient, satisfied look.

‘So,’ she said.

Tess looked around the kitchen to the funny old pot that was the woman’s version of a jug steaming over the ring of fire. Something clicked into place. The gas made the fire. It was part of the flame. She nodded at the old woman.

‘I can see the gas now,’ she said. ‘It’s blue.’

‘But you’re none too bright,’ said the woman. ‘That much is obvious. Can you read yet?’

Tess shook her head. She liked the pictures, but the letters in the books made no sense to her.

‘Hm. What about piano? Can you read your notes and play with both hands?’

‘We don’t have a piano,’ said Tess.

‘What happened to the piano?’

Tess stared at the old woman. The question was a test, like the kettle that was actually a pot.

‘We don’t have one.’ She was defiant. Rose hadn’t wanted the piano to go. When the men came and collected it, she cried.

The old woman shook her head and released Tess’s hands and stood to attend to the boiling pot. ‘You’ll learn some basic chords while you’re with me. And Tama and I will teach you how to make a proper cup of tea. What you looking at me like that for?’

‘A cat can’t teach a person how to make tea,’ said Tess.

‘This cat can, can’t you, Tama?’ The old woman looked at the cat, but the cat ignored her and continued purring, content in itself. ‘And other than that, you can do what you like. A childhood’s for playing in, that’s what I say.’

Tess felt bold now, because the old woman was as stupid as her if she thought a cat could make a cup of tea, so she said, ‘When is Rose coming back?’ It was the first time Tess had used her mother’s real name. It made her sound older than she felt. It side-stepped the ache that made her feel heavy and slow.

The old woman looked at her. ‘Have you ever grown a carrot, Tess?’

Tess shook her head.

‘I’ll teach you then. It will fill in the time until Rose comes back.’

‘When is my mummy coming back?’

She heard the old woman breathe in. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She needs to get well, and I don’t know when that will be.’ She sat down in the chair again and poured tea from the teapot into a cup with a chipped saucer. ‘This teacup was Rose’s when she was a girl. Would you like to use it?’

Tess nodded. She could feel her tears wanting to come back again and she swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. The old woman put two teaspoons of sugar in the cup and stirred it, then she pushed the teacup towards her.

‘Drink it, it will help.’

‘Am I going to live here?’ she said.

The old woman nodded. ‘Yes. And you can call me Sheila because that’s my name.’

From the kitchen doorway, Lewis watched the young woman’s legs fold beneath her. He rushed to her side. Toby barked and Lewis shushed him. He checked her pulse, which was beating fast, and also felt the hot damp of her skin. There was no colour in her face. Her body twitched as if in seizure and she groaned. He put a hand on her side and told her it was all right, all right. He waited for her body to calm, which it did. He told her he would go and get a blanket. Toby stayed with her.

When he came back, her eyes were blinking open. He knelt down and covered her with the blanket.

‘I think you fainted,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s due to a fever.’

She murmured, and closed her eyes. He held out a thermometer. ‘I’m going to put this under your tongue,’ he said. He gently placed the glass rod in her mouth and held his hand under her chin to keep her mouth closed. When he took it out he saw the mercury sat just on 40.

He rinsed a cloth out under the cold tap and came back and laid it on her forehead. She shook as the cold touched her.

‘Does it hurt?’

She nodded her head a little.

He went to the door of the pantry, opened it and pulled down the box he kept the medicines in. He found some codeine. A few years old, but it would do the trick for the pain. He took it to her and explained what it was. She nodded and he helped her sit up, take some water and the pill in her mouth. She lay back down.

‘Can you walk?’ he said.

She tried to sit up, but her head throbbed and she groaned and lay down again.

‘I’ll carry you then,’ he said.

Very slowly he put one arm under her neck and the other under her legs and lifted her. She didn’t weigh enough, he thought as he stood. She grumbled as he carried her through to the closest room, Jean’s old room. He put her gently down on the bed and took off her shoes. He left her clothes alone. If she wanted them off she’d have to do it herself. He pulled a couple of blankets over her and thought to open the window. The night air was cool.

‘I’ll check on you in the night,’ he said. ‘Hopefully you’ll sleep through. I’ll get a doctor if you’re still like this in the morning.’

Her eyelids were closed and he could see her eyeballs twitching beneath them.

‘Okay?’ he said, worried.

She moaned and rolled away from him.

He watched her for a few minutes, and, when he was convinced it was sleep rather than unconsciousness, he went back to the kitchen and poured himself a whisky. Toby padded through and sniffed at his food bowl. Lewis fed him and watched him eat. The dog always had an appetite. Sometimes Lewis wished he could trade places.

He stood in the doorway to the room before he went to bed. Toby was lying on the floor beside her, and raised his head from his paws to look at Lewis. The girl was still facing away from him, from the light in the hall, and didn’t stir when he called out softly, ‘Hey, how are you feeling?’ He still didn’t know her name. ‘Don’t die,’ he whispered. I can’t deal with another body. She was still but he could see the blankets covering her thin frame rise and fall. Toby yawned, then put his head down on his paws again. He was a dog who liked a vigil. ‘Good boy,’ said Lewis, then he turned the light out in the hall and walked down the other end to his room.

There was a girl on a swing and she was climbing higher and higher and Tess could feel the roll and pitch of the movement in her stomach and head, it was making her dizzy, and then it wasn’t the swing anymore but men who were rocking her back and forth, pushing and pulling her as if she were a log or a piece of seaweed. Then her fear grew too great and she woke in the dark, sweating and disoriented. She sat up, her mind half in her oily blue dreams. She was burning. What was wrong with her? The day came back to her. The long walk through the rain. The ride in the car. Lewis holding a gun to the young men. In her dream they’d done what they wanted to do.

She touched her lower back and felt that her T-shirt was wet through. Her hair stuck to her neck with sweat. She quickly pulled the T-shirt over her head and undid her bra and threw them both on the ground. She lifted her hair up in a bunch and let the cool air calm the skin around her throat and neck. Her body felt hollow and achy. It’s bad, she thought, and knew now it had been coming on for a day or two.

She wanted to stand up and open a window but her head was pounding with pain and she suddenly thought she might vomit, so she lay down again on the damp sheet and immediately felt chilled. She pulled the covers up. Her skin and muscles, even her bones were trembling with the fever and the hot-cold. She tried to focus, to hold her body still and make the nausea subside. She could smell herself, the sickness infecting the limp blankets and the pillow beneath her head, and she wondered if the bitter metal taste in her mouth was part of the rising stink of her?

Any good that was left was being overtaken by decay, by her own body’s failure to keep what was bad at bay. It was as though she called darkness to her, like her blood contained the positives to all the world’s negatives. She was afraid now and tried to call his name but it came out as a scratchy whisper, nothing anyone would ever hear.

Then she heard a whine and a movement beside her bed. A wet tongue licked her hand and she felt the dog’s whiskers tickling her arm. She knew she must taste salty from sweat, but she also felt the dog was keeping her steady, keeping her still in her body. When he’d finished licking, she kept her hand on his head. ‘Stay,’ she said, and although her voice had no command, he did.

The sun was bright behind the gaps in the curtains when Lewis woke. He checked the clock and swore—he’d forgotten to set the alarm. In his mouth was a sour taste. His tongue felt sticky. He sat up and swung his legs out of bed, let his feet thump to the floor. His thighs looked pale, hairy and toneless. He thought of his father’s legs in the hospital nightgown. Withered trunks. That’s what my legs will be one day. Lewis kept telling himself to get more exercise. He groaned and stood, and only then did his mind flick to her, the girl in Jean’s room. He pulled on his dressing gown and padded to the toilet. He pulled the door closed so she wouldn’t have to listen to him piss. He’d not bothered pulling the door for six months. Jean hated it when any of them went with the toilet door open. Men are disgusting. That’s what she’d said.

He walked into the doorway of Jean’s room. The girl was lying on her side, facing him with her eyes half open. Toby was still beside her, but he sat up and shook his head. Lewis glanced to the floor, to her T-shirt and bra flung there, and quickly looked back to her. She blinked a few times, and gave him that wide-eyed look.

‘How are you feeling?’ he said.

She groaned. The sound was small and dry.

He walked over to the bed and picked up her glass. ‘You need to drink water,’ he said, and squatted down and held the glass to her. She lifted her head, and he held the water to her mouth and she drank a bit. He put his other hand on her forehead. She was still sweating, and her head was hot to touch.

‘I’m going to call a doctor,’ he said. ‘I’ve known him a long time. He’ll come here.’

She made a soft noise.

Lewis spoke quietly. ‘I don’t even know your name,’ he said.

‘Tess,’ she said. ‘Tess.’

At first he heard her saying tisk, tisk, telling him off.

He hadn’t spoken to Alan for a few months, but he asked if he’d come in on his way to work, not saying what for. Lewis led him through to where Tess was lying in Jean’s bed.

‘This is Tess,’ he said. ‘She collapsed last night.’

Alan looked at him the way Lewis expected him to, but he didn’t care. For all Alan’s judgements of people, he was still a good doctor—perhaps that was why he was a good doctor, because he’d spent his life weighing up the ways in which people’s bodies and minds failed them.

‘I’ll make coffee,’ said Lewis, and left the doctor to his work.

After ten minutes Alan came through and washed his hands in the kitchen sink. Then he stood watching as Lewis poured the coffee and handed him a mug.

‘I think it’s the flu,’ said Alan. ‘She has a high temperature. No rash, but you’ll need to keep an eye on her.’

Lewis nodded.

‘She needs someone monitoring her in case she gets worse.’

‘I’ve got no appointments today.’

Alan raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought things had picked up.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is she a friend of Jean’s?’

Lewis shook his head and blew into his mug. The steam from his coffee rose into his eyes. It felt soothing.

‘I picked her up hitching, dropped her off in town. Then I found her later. Some guys were hassling her right out on the main road.’ He paused. Alan didn’t need to know about the air rifle.

‘Does she have family here?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you know who she is?’

‘No, I just said … I picked her up hitching.’

‘Maybe you should call the cops.’

‘Because she was hitch-hiking?’

‘You don’t know where she’s come from, who she is … she’s sick in your house.’ Alan shook his head.

‘They were holding her down. They meant to hurt her. They only stopped when I—’ Lewis stopped himself.

‘What?’

‘Oh, you know, I had to threaten them.’ He shrugged like it was nothing. ‘I knew one of them.’ He changed tack. ‘I went to visit Dorothy yesterday. I cleared some stuff out of her house on the way out of town. She’s getting worse.’

‘She won’t get better.’

‘No, of course she won’t. I don’t fucking expect her to get better.’ Lewis jerked his hand in anger, and the coffee spilt over the side of the mug and onto his hand, burning. ‘Fuck!’

‘Cold water!’ Alan’s command was a bark. Lewis did as he was told, ran the cold water over his hand. Alan stood beside him. ‘Hold it there.’

Lewis looked up at his old friend and could see Alan studying him. A small circle of pity rose in him, then fell away just as quickly. The pity wasn’t for Alan, no. It was for himself. It was he and Alan who’d identified what remained of Hannah’s face. Alan had vomited.

Things could have been so different. That’s what he’d said after her funeral. They were both drunk and Lewis hated him then. He hated the implicit judgement, the blame in Alan’s voice that he didn’t try to hide.

Lewis lifted his hand out of the water and inspected the pink skin.

‘Keep it there,’ said Alan. ‘So what are you going to do about the girl, Lewis?’

‘Her name’s Tess.’ Lewis’s voice was tight. ‘Do you think she’ll be all right?’

‘You’ll need to monitor her.’

‘Please. Don’t call the cops. I think she’s just a kid who needs help.’

Alan’s face was set, cold. ‘You’ll need to be here though, at least for a couple of days. She’s too sick to be left alone. Have you got enough paracetamol?’

Lewis nodded. ‘I gave her codeine last night. It seemed to help.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Lewis! You didn’t know if she was fucked up on drugs or sick. Please don’t take it upon yourself to do that again.’

‘I’m not stupid,’ said Lewis.

‘Why do you act it then?’ said Alan.

Lewis saw that he meant it as a joke. The things Alan meant.

‘If my hand wasn’t burnt I’d swing it at you.’

‘You’d lose,’ said Alan. He turned and sat down at the table. ‘I’ll write her a script. I can pick it up for you. No codeine though, unless I judge she needs it. And I judge she doesn’t.’

Alan sat there scrawling across the pad. Lewis turned off the tap and held his hand up to inspect it. It was red but not blistered.

‘I sincerely hope she doesn’t cause you trouble.’

‘She can barely move,’ said Lewis.

‘How’s the hand?’

‘Burnt.’

Alan stood up, his chair scraping the floor behind him. ‘Say hi to Jean, when you’re talking with her.’

Lewis had told no one but Anne, his receptionist, about the six months of nothing from Jean. He was ashamed, and Alan was the last person he’d want to admit the most recent failure of his life to. There was this swaying in him between worry and anger and shame. But Jean would be okay. He could only think of her out in the world making her way. She didn’t need him. Jean would survive a nuclear winter.

Lewis walked Alan out. He held his burnt hand on the cool edge of the door.

‘Put some aloe on it,’ said Alan.

Lewis nodded and watched him walk out onto the deck. Because Alan’s back was turned, he felt bold enough to ask, ‘Has Lizzie caught up with Jean?’

Alan’s youngest daughter and Jean had been best friends at school. They’d had a falling out, though Jean never said why.

Alan paused before turning around, and Lewis saw then that he knew what had happened—about why the girls fell out, about Jean leaving home and not calling. The ones talked about were always the last to know.

‘Lizzie ran into her on the street.’

‘Oh, when was that?’ said Lewis.

‘She told me Jean likes her job.’

There was something satisfied in Alan’s face. Something that made Lewis want to drink.

‘Yes,’ said Lewis. ‘Yes she does.’

Alan looked out onto the lawn and the trees surrounding it. ‘You need a gardener, Lewis.’

Lewis nodded, then turned and shut the door.

The next few days were slow. Tess’s fever burned on. Lewis brought her tea, water, cold flannels and painkillers. She ate a little soup, and barely spoke, and he didn’t say much either, thinking she needed quiet. Toby lay on the floor beside her each night and was constantly pattering in and out of her room during the day. Lewis joked and said that the dog was her nurse. She seemed to like that.

In Tess’s dreams Benny accused her of taking something of his. Give it back, he kept saying. Give it back. In her brief waking moments she was fearful that he’d been there, by her bedside, holding out his hand and demanding something of her—she thought it was the money. She told him it was gone, that it had been stolen from her. She sweated and slept and woke and slept and woke, and somewhere in the delirium Benny found her and she saw he had a knife in his hand. He came to her as if she were a patient laid out on a surgery table. Hold still, he said, and he took the knife and made an incision in the top of her forehead and removed a tiny round ball. It’s mine, he told her and then he left.

When she woke she touched her forehead. There was no wound. But still she couldn’t quite believe it was only a dream. It was a matter of waiting. Benny would come. He would find her.

Four days after she’d collapsed in his kitchen, Lewis saw her sitting up for the first time. She was staring out the window. He stopped by her door and she pointed to what she was looking at.

‘There’s a bird,’ she said. ‘It’s making a nest in that ash tree. I’ve been watching it fly in and out all morning.’

He walked in and looked at her.

‘You’ve got some colour in your cheeks.’

‘I feel a bit better. Can you open the window?’ she said. ‘Your dog stinks.’

‘So do you,’ Lewis said, laughing. He opened the window.

‘That’s why he likes me,’ she said, and smiled. Then her voice was quieter. ‘Did anyone ask about me?’ she said. ‘While I was sick?’

‘No.’ Lewis turned around to her. ‘Are you expecting someone?’

She shook her head. It still ached when she moved too quickly and she chastised herself because if she was properly well she wouldn’t have asked him that, she wouldn’t have said anything. But she wasn’t ready to leave. She couldn’t face the thought of walking again, of the road and the no food and the constant threat from men.

‘Thank you for looking after me. I’d like to repay you somehow.’

‘That’s not necessary.’

‘I don’t have any money,’ she said. ‘I just have …’ She pointed at her pack on the floor where he’d placed it four days ago. She signalled out the window. ‘But I can garden. I don’t mean to offend you, but from what I’ve seen your garden’s a mess.’

‘My wife was the gardener,’ he said.

‘I won’t do anything much, just get it back in shape.’

‘It’s fine, you can do what you like.’ He smiled at her and she smiled back. ‘Actually, it’s nice to have someone else in the house. Not that you’ve been very lively.’

She could see him better now. He was more open to her, perhaps relieved that she was well, and when she looked at him she could see his wife, the gardener. It wasn’t a specific picture but a complex, cross-hatched patchwork of colliding images. His dead wife was like the tangle of convolvulus growing up the ash tree the bird was making its nest in. She would clear that first.

Wandering around the house two days later, Tess could see that Lewis didn’t really clean. She was weak and her thoughts airy, but she could feel the illness receding and she didn’t want to lie down any longer. Lewis had gone back to work. That morning, she did the dishes and vacuumed the kitchen floor and the hallway and her own room. She took the dirty sheets off her bed and washed them along with the towels in the bathroom.

She collected a cloth from under the kitchen sink and walked through to the living room for the first time. Toby, following her, jumped up onto one of the sofas and started to clean between his paws. The sun was coming through the window in a strong shaft of light, dust motes floating. The room was large, with a piano at one end, its lid closed. A dark leather sofa and two matching armchairs were arranged around a low, solid coffee table stacked with a pile of old National Geographics, some books with scenes of mountains and rivers. One inside wall had a large open fireplace, and on the other was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, custom-built to contain a stereo with a record player as well as books. Tess could imagine the family reading or playing games in here on a wet Sunday afternoon. In the winter the dog would be by the fire. That sort of house.

She walked over to the windows. There were cobwebs in the corners where the panes met the sills and she rubbed at them with her cloth, then lifted the sash. It gave a loud moan as it went up. She took her time as she wiped down all the surfaces, moving the rag over the bookshelves. She lifted up each photo frame on the piano, inspecting the faces in the photos. There were Jean and her brother as babies; there was a young Lewis in front of the Zephyr, looking proud. And there was Hannah, looking down at the baby in her arms and smiling the warmest, most personal smile. Hannah was beautiful, and her smile was quiet, joyful. Photos told a certain kind of truth.

After she’d finished these jobs she made herself a cup of tea and went out to sit in the morning sun on the deck. Toby followed and sat beside her. The sun warmed her and the dog was quiet company, and in the enormous overgrown garden something in her body let go. She could feel the rough painted wooden boards beneath her legs, her hands wrapped around the cup of tea, the birds flitting from one branch to the next. The garden in front of her was a total mess but it was better than all the concrete she’d been living amongst, where the only green that grew came through cracks and got sprayed with poison by the council every six months. Better than being surrounded by people who wanted something from her, people whose blackness threatened to swallow her up. People with no hope. They were the ones she had to look away from.

Tess put her cup down and stood up. She’d seen the tools in the garage the night she’d arrived. Gloves, loppers and a wheelbarrow—that was all she needed. She walked over to the side door. The day was bright, and when she opened it the contrast between the dark garage and the brightness rang like a gong in her head, temporarily blinding her.

Through the haze she saw the woman, a rope around her neck, hanging from the garage rafters.

She gasped and stepped back, slamming the door shut as she fell into white light of the day. Her heart was racing and she heard the buzzing, faint static that followed her waking from bad dreams. Tess was crouched down on the grass, her hands held over her eyes as if to block what was really in front of her, then the image passed and she realised she was rocking herself back and forth, trying to find some comfort. Toby came over and sat behind her, so when she rocked back she could feel him. She turned and put her hands on him.

In the garden everything was as it had been a moment before, peaceful and green with life. What Tess could see was attached to people. So either there was a woman hanged in the garage, or she was still sick and hallucinating.

She focused on the blue sky, the hundred different greens in the garden, her hands on the dog’s back, soft and warm.

Tess forced herself back. The pulse in her ear thumped as she opened the garage door. The woman wasn’t there. The bench on the other side was tidy, and the garage carried its ordinary smell of oil and motors, metal tools. Tess did not step over the threshold, but slowly closed the door and walked away.

She stood beneath the ash tree. It arced over her like a giant umbrella, its soft leaves at the top the only ones free of the convolvulus that was smothering it. She would do the work without gloves, even though it would wreck her hands; that was how she’d started out gardening, fingers in the soil, dirt rimming her nails. She wouldn’t go back into that garage.

Working from halfway up the trunk, she started to pull at the convolvulus, ripping it away from the bark of the tree, and the physical feeling of tearing the vine off with her bare hands was good, separating the parasite from its host.

When other girls her age were reading Sweet Valley High and Flowers in the Attic and Go Ask Alice, Tess had been looking at the pictures in Sheila’s gardening books. Together they’d transformed the raggedy old lawn behind the house into a place where potatoes and lettuces and tomatoes had thrived. At the A&P show, Tess had won a prize for the most unusual vegetable—an eggplant. Nobody in the district had ever grown one. The other gardeners had congratulated her but were puzzled by this strange girl who grew vegetables there was no use for.

Not Sheila. ‘You have a gift,’ she said. ‘A real gift.’

Sheila liked to make the world seem mystical, but Tess knew gardening was the opposite of that. It was what she liked about it. She learned what the garden needed from her through slow observation. Seasons brought different demands, and she watched the proliferation of aphids in late summer, the dying away of the pests as the winter came on, curly leaf on peach trees in spring. She learned about companion planting, and about putting a sheet under the tomatoes so that when she squashed the stink bugs and all the other stink bugs played dead and fell to the ground she could capture them. Mostly, the garden wanted to be left alone. Feed it up with compost and leave it alone. In the garden she could lose herself, she could think about Rose and not feel sad. Sheila taught her the Latin names for the plants she tended, and she repeated them like a song in her own secret language: Daucus carota, Allium, Lactuca sativa, Pisum sativum, Solanum tuberosum. But her favourite crop, which bit and fought with her when she tried to collect it, needed no tending at all because it ran wild down the back paddock. Rubus occidentalis, blackberry.

Tess did what she always did when she gardened, she lost track of time. In her way Sheila had been right, but it was the garden that was a gift to Tess; it was a place where she could simply be. Toby barked and ran out to meet Lewis’s car. She heard Lewis whistle in astonishment as he walked towards her.

‘Christ,’ he said. ‘You did all this?’

They stood beside the enormous piles of weeds she’d made as she worked along from the ash tree almost to the back corner of the section. The hedging she’d cleared the weed away from looked bare and forlorn.

‘It’ll take a bit for this to come back, but it will. Did you know you had a row of daphne bushes in there?’ said Tess.

Lewis nodded. ‘Hannah loved them,’ he said. He looked at her bare hands. ‘You’re not wearing gloves! There’s a ton of gardening gear in the garage. You should have helped yourself.’

Tess wiped her brow. It was sticky with sweat and gritted with dirt. She held her arms out to inspect them. Beneath the grit she could see they were scratched up. She didn’t want to mention the garage.

‘It’s so hot,’ she said. ‘The heat just grew and grew all afternoon. That’s why I stayed on this side, for the shade.’

‘Yep. It’s unbearable by February here.’ Lewis looked again at the work she’d done and shook his head, smiling. ‘I was going to suggest the first swim of the season. There’s a swimming hole up the road. Five-minute drive.’

Tess looked at him blankly.

‘Come on! It’s just what you need after working this hard. I’ll buy us fish and chips for dinner.’

‘But I don’t have any togs.’

‘Oh, you can wear Jean’s old ones, she’s got loads of them. She used to swim competitively.’

Tess could see his pride in his daughter’s abilities.

‘Let’s go.’ He gestured to her as he walked away.

Tess looked around at the piles she’d made, and suddenly felt exhausted.

He took a track that led down to a bend in the river, Tess behind him, Toby at her side. The bush around them was dense and pulsing with birds and insects. Then the track opened up and they were on a shallow bank by the river, the ground bright and uneven with large boulders and small stones. From where she stood Tess could feel the heat radiating off the rocks. On the other side the bank rose steeply to hills that were covered in native bush and trees. The trees moved like they were breathing, giant lungs expanding and contracting, and the wind through them sounded like running water, imitating the river.

‘Right.’ Lewis pulled his T-shirt over his head. ‘Straight in, no hesitating.’

His torso was pale and slender, his chest and stomach covered in curly greying hairs. He walked over to the river and went straight in, ducking under the surface. When he came up he gasped.

‘It’s good!’ he said. Then he went under again and swam to the other side of the river, where he pulled himself up out of the water and onto a rock. Tess watched him dive off it into the water. He kept his body neat when he entered the water.

Her fear was outweighed by her desire to cool off, so Tess walked in up to her knees. Within seconds the cold of it made the bones of her feet ache, and although her head still felt hot from the day of work she hugged her sides.

Lewis surfaced. ‘Come on!’

She shook her head. ‘Nice dive.’

‘Thanks. I was a diver, once.’

He swam over to the rock, climbed out again and stood there, peering into the river. The water darkened his hair and held it close to his head, and for a brief moment she saw him as a young man with a fine-boned, innocent face. She moved further into the water until she was up to her thighs. The cold felt like a pure metal and she could feel her skin numbing. The water shone under the bright sun and the world was all surfaces and senses—the rough cry of cicadas, the rushing sound of the trees, the glittering light on the leaves, the fire of the sun radiating off the rocks and the icy river.

Tess watched Lewis climb higher up the rock. ‘Will you dive from there?’

He didn’t answer but stopped and looked down, then went onto a higher ledge.

‘Can you see underneath?’ she said.

She felt anxious. There was a boy in her school who had jumped from a bridge into water that was too shallow. He had cracked his neck and drowned. Lewis looked over to her and she saw what he remembered—a crowd of people, his own feet on the edge of the board, the still clear blue below him.

‘Pike and single twist,’ he called out to her.

He raised his arms and she watched him take the dive. His body curled tight and turned in the air. He was falling but somehow he was using his body to pull against the fall as if slowing gravity’s force, twisting himself into another shape. Then he suddenly straightened himself as his body cut the water.

Tess held her breath and waited for him surface. He didn’t come up, and he didn’t come up. She held her hand above her eyes to scan the place where he’d gone in but the sun reflected off the water and all she could see in it was the sky. Toby was behind her on the river bank, barking and barking.

‘Lewis!’ she called. ‘Lewis!’ She started to walk deeper into the pool. She went up to her chest. She could feel her feet losing their anchor on the river bed, her body wanting to float off in the current. She hadn’t told him she couldn’t swim.

‘Lewis!’ she called again, and then she lost her footing and went under, forgetting to move her arms and legs to keep afloat. She panicked. The cold water, tasting of minerals and leaves, entered her nose and mouth. Adrenaline flooded through her and her mind flashed black, and red and black. Lewis! She tried to shout his name again, but all it sounded like was bubbles and water entering her mouth.

Then she felt someone beneath her, an arm around her waist, and she was being lifted. Her head came above the surface again and she spluttered and took a gasp of air, then coughed and spat out some water. He dragged her to her feet in the shallows and she sat down on the rocks, coughing out more water.

‘You’re okay, you’re okay,’ he said. ‘What were you doing?’

She was breathless. ‘I thought you’d hit your head. You didn’t come up.’

‘I was just underwater. I like the quiet down there,’ he said. He wiped the water on his brow. ‘You can’t swim?’

She shook her head.

‘That’s …’ He stopped himself. ‘Did no one ever teach you?’

She shook her head.

‘You never went to the pool?’

‘No.’

‘Not even with school?’

‘Um, I skipped those days.’

They were quiet a moment, then Lewis said, ‘I could teach you, if you like. Not here, it’s too cold. The town pool is better, quiet in the evenings. I used to teach swimming when I was studying. I taught Jean.’

‘Uh-huh,’ she said. She didn’t know how to tell him, I won’t be here that long.

The fish and chip shop was busy, and the other customers stared as they walked up to the counter to place their order. Tess’s hair was dripping on her T-shirt, her shoulders were wet.

‘Y’all right, Lewis.’ The woman at the till said this as a statement rather than a question. She looked from Lewis to Tess and back to Lewis, waiting for him to introduce his companion. The woman’s cheeks were made ruddy by broken capillaries, by hours over hot oil. Her thin blond hair escaped from its ponytail and stuck in sweaty strands to her forehead.

‘I’m good, Jan,’ said Lewis. ‘How’s business?’

‘S’all right,’ said Jan, looking at Tess. ‘You got a visitor.’ Her tone suggested nothing could or would ever surprise her.

Tess cleared her throat to say her name, but Lewis got there first.

‘This is Tess,’ he said loudly, like it was a full stop.

Jan grimaced and then nodded at Tess. When Tess turned from the counter, she saw a few heads switch quickly away. An old man who was sitting in the window called out Lewis’s name and pointed at his jaw. Tess thought she saw Lewis roll his eyes slightly, but he walked over to him. She was relieved to sit down in the only spare chair. She picked up a well-worn woman’s magazine and flicked through the pictures, happy to have an excuse to ignore the glances of the other customers.

The sun was going down when they got home, the changing light making a dense texture of the sky, like velvet.

‘We’ll sit on the deck,’ said Lewis, then he disappeared inside. In a minute Tess heard music leak through the open living-room windows.

Lewis came out and handed her a beer. ‘You cleaned the house as well?’

‘A bit,’ she said.

He beamed at her and sat down beside her on the edge of the deck. They ate the fish and chips out of the paper.

‘When the kids were little we used to sit out here for meals all the time if the weather was good, playing records. They never wanted to sit at the table.’ He sipped his beer, then said, ‘It’s nice having you here, Tess. I’m so used to my own company.’

‘Everyone seemed to know you at the fish and chip shop.’

‘Yep. One of the things about living here is everyone knows you. Knows all your business. Although I don’t think Jan knew what to make of you.’

At Sheila’s, people never came out to visit and she and Sheila never visited anyone. Except for occasional trips to the supermarket and the TAB, they kept themselves apart. Tess went to school, but the other children were distant, as if her difference was a smell. She knew people talked about them and she saw the way people looked at Sheila, their fear which sometimes presented itself as disgust.

‘After Hannah died, my life became public property. People either wanted to help, or they would just look at me like they suspected me of something.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Like I could have done more. Like I’d been careless.’

It was the first time he’d said anything about Hannah’s death. Tess thought about the woman in the garage. ‘Were you careless?’ she said.

Lewis took another mouthful of beer and shrugged. ‘Maybe. People want reasons for things happening, but sometimes there is no proper reason.’

‘How did she die?’

‘She was shot. The safety wasn’t on. It was just …’ His voiced trailed away. Tess saw Hannah missing one side of her face. The bullet had gone in above her right eye. ‘An accident.’

She looked away and blinked fast. She wouldn’t ask him more questions. She was not the people in town. The evening air was calm and warm, like a bath, and she held her arms out and raised them up and down in time to the music, as if she might wave away the nightmarish image.

‘Where’s home, Tess?’ said Lewis.

It was the first real question he’d put to her since the night he picked her up.

‘I grew up in the country,’ she said. ‘My mother died when I was fifteen, but I grew up with my grandmother anyway.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’ She shrugged.

‘Where in the country were you?’

‘East Coast,’ she said.

She didn’t want to name the town where Sheila was still, wheezing away in that grotty room. Tess couldn’t go back there even though Sheila was the only other person she could trust with every inch of herself, the only person in the world who truly knew her. Every day she thought of things she’d like to ask Sheila. Like, who was the woman in the garage? Was that a memory or was she, Tess, going crazy?

‘When I picked you up …’ Lewis hesitated. ‘Were in you trouble?’

She took a large gulp of beer. She could feel it in her knees, how it made them soft. That’s where she always felt the effects of alcohol first. You can’t hold your booze, is what Benny always told her.

She swung her legs a little, let her heels bang against the wood under the decking. ‘I had an ex, I wanted to get away from him.’

‘On the East Coast?’

‘No. I was living in Auckland but I didn’t like it.’

‘Was he violent? Your ex?’

‘No. Why?’

‘You just seem a bit, I don’t know how to say this politely, but you get this look in your face. Like you’re scared.’

‘So do you,’ she said.

He laughed and said, ‘Another beer?’

She nodded. He went inside and she heard him humming, opening the fridge door for the beer. Getting drunk was something she’d stopped doing when she was with Benny, but she was enjoying the feeling tonight. The sky was darkening above them, losing its grain as a few stars appeared.

Lewis sat down beside her again. ‘So do you think the world is going to end, you know, on New Year’s Eve?’

Everyone had been talking about it, about computers and dates and how planes would fall out of the sky. Mostly she ignored that stuff. She didn’t bother with the news, and at the tree nursery she was outdoors most of the time. She’d never had a job at a desk with a computer.

‘People talk about it like it’s some sort of reckoning, like doomsday.’

‘People are nuts,’ said Tess.

‘Yeah, you’re right. We use a computer at work for our database, but Anne says she’s got it sorted, so …’ Lewis shrugged. ‘I think I should care more than I do. I prefer machines I can understand, mechanical things. Anne tells me I should get a mobile phone too, that everyone is using them now.’

‘Not me,’ said Tess. ‘They’re expensive.’

He nodded. ‘Do you have any resolutions?’

‘For the new year?’

‘Yeah, but it’s a new millennium. That’s kind of exciting in itself, isn’t it? Like we should think big.’

‘It’s just a date.’

‘For someone so young, you’re rather cynical.’

‘I’ll grow out of it.’ She gave him a smile. ‘What are your wishes, Lewis?’

He took a while to answer. ‘I think I’d like to stop being a dentist. Gosh. That’s the first time I’ve said that out loud.’

‘What would you do?’

‘I don’t know. I like working on cars, building stuff. What else is there? I guess I’d just like to have a sense of possibility. Of there being more than this.’ He held his arms up.

‘This is pretty nice,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But I guess I’d like to be with someone, to share my life with someone. It gets lonely by yourself.’

Tess thought of the woman in the garage. Having her was worse than being alone.

‘What about you, Tess? Do you have any things you want for your future?’

Tess found it hard to think ahead. How did all those other people do it? All those people living normal lives like Lewis’s. Did they plan them out? Go to university or get a job and save up money and buy a house. She couldn’t see how she could be a part of that world, although the idea of staying in one place, having her own garden, with little interruption from the outside, was a nice one. It was how Sheila had lived for a long time, until she got sick.

Tess should’ve been with her. If she’d been good, she would have stayed.

When Benny took the knife to Doug’s thigh, Tess had shouted, Mind the artery!

Mind the artery, but Benny’s grip was tight around the knife and when he looked up at her she knew to be quiet or he would do worse.

He had promised. Benny had promised he’d only hurt Doug enough to get the money. But Tess had seen the look in him, murk. It was pitiless and it was impossible to tell where Benny’s limits were. She’d seen it before, when he hit her. Afterwards, he’d cry, saying, Sorry sorry I’m so sorry I love you, and he was sorry and maybe he did love her. So she forgave him because she could see how it came over him like a thick fog sealing him in, making him blind.

And now there was a gash in Doug’s jeans and the spreading blood was a dark patch on the denim. The colour in Doug’s face had run down into his leg. His mouth was going open shut open shut like a fish. He’d already given them the money, but Benny had to hurt him for what he’d done, and when he put the knife in again it was as if he was stabbing someone only he could see. Tess thought of it as a nebulous form, a memory he’d turned into his constant shadow, his monster, the place where his rage fed.

Over the next two weeks Lewis took her to the town pool. They went in the early evening when there was a lull while most people were at home eating dinner. Later, when the swimming squads arrived for training, they’d leave. Lewis stood in the water at the shallow end with her and made her float along with a board held between her arms. At first the feeling of holding herself up in the water was strange and she felt how her legs kept sinking. She felt that it was something she’d never be able to do.

‘You’re forgetting to kick,’ he said. ‘Of course you’ll sink if you don’t kick.’

He held her legs and moved them in the water for her while she held on to the board. It felt odd, having someone manipulate her legs like that. But then she tried it herself and it worked. By moving her legs and feet she could propel herself forwards. Lewis showed her to push herself off from the wall to give herself some momentum. He cheered when she kicked with the board halfway down the length of the pool. The effort made Tess tired, but then she kicked back to him. He was smiling right across his face.

Then one night Lewis said she had to put her face in the water.

‘But I can’t breathe,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how breathe with my face under.’

‘You’re not a fish!’ he said. ‘You breathe out underwater and then you bring your head up again to breathe in.’

Tess laughed at her mistake. And when he said, ‘Are you ready?’ she put her face into the water. It felt terrible, like suffocating, and she came up and spluttered. She felt like kicking him, except he was too patient, too kind.

‘You just need to practise,’ he said.

He showed her what he wanted her to do, then he held her head gently and showed her how to turn it one way and breathe in, head down and breathe out, then head to the other side and breathe in again. His hand on the back of her head was firm, but it felt safe. She could see how much he was enjoying teaching her. After a few nights she managed to float with the board and breathe and remember to kick. It was a lot to remember to do at once. But Tess felt good. Lying in bed at night she imagined herself kicking and breathing, kicking and breathing. As she dissolved into sleep she could feel the motion of the water against her as if her body were a boat, her arms and legs its oars.

Her days started to have a rhythm to them—gardening in the day with Toby at her side, swimming lessons in the early evening. After her lesson they’d eat something she’d made, sitting either at the kitchen table or out on the deck. Lewis said she didn’t need to cook every night, but she wanted to. By two in the afternoon it was too hot to be outside anyway. She’d come in and read for couple of hours, then prepare a meal.

The heat seemed to build each day and Tess watched as the grass slowly turned brown.

‘This is what the summer is like here,’ said Lewis. ‘Hot and dry. It’ll be a fire hazard by February, but your vegetables will be growing like crazy if you water them.’

For once Tess didn’t stop to think she wouldn’t be here to see the crop. Each day she stayed, it got harder to leave. She could feel herself attaching, the fine threads of roots spreading out. If she kept her eyes averted she could get carried along on the day’s rhythm. Even her dreams left her alone, and when she woke each morning she no longer wondered where she was. Her bearings felt solid as she remembered the room, the house, the garden outside, the sound of Lewis bumping around in the kitchen before he left for work.

At the pool she was learning to enjoy being under the water. She told Lewis one night she wanted him to teach her how to swim along the bottom of the pool.

‘You’ll have to learn to move your arms then,’ he said.

They’d finished eating and he pushed his chair back from the table. ‘You should practise the movement out of the water. It’s good for your muscle memory.’ He stood up and showed her how, moving his arms in large circles in front of him.

Tess copied him.

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘But you need to put some reach into it.’ He stood behind her and held her arms, moving them in circles for her, instructing her to keep her fingers together, like paddles, to catch the water. He’d touched her in the water like this, manipulating her body to show her how to place it in the water, but in the room it felt different, his hands on her bare arms, guiding them.

Tess felt the dreamy mood she’d allowed herself to fall back into, as if she were already on the pool floor, looking around at the watery, slow-moving world. Lewis stopped moving her arms and leaned down and kissed her on the neck. She froze, uncertain what was happening. Then he bent her around towards him and looked at her questioningly. But she saw what was in his eyes—not her but another woman. She pushed him away and stumbled back.

‘Tess?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have …’

‘I’m not …’ she said. She was still underwater, unable to breathe. It didn’t feel right. It was the same feeling she’d always had when a guy tried to kiss her: numb.

‘What?’ he said.

‘I’m not into you, not like …’ she said. Her voice sounded harsh. She softened it. ‘Anyway, you were thinking of someone else.’ As soon as she said it, she wished she could take it back.

‘No, I …’

‘Don’t lie.’

He sank back down in his chair and put his head in his hands. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I just … I didn’t think.’

Without coming closer to him, she leaned forward and picked her plate off the table. She held her other hand out. ‘Pass me your plate.’

‘You don’t have to do the dishes. You don’t have to do any of this work. I don’t expect it.’

She didn’t answer him but kept holding her hand out until he gave her his plate. Behind her she heard him stand and walk out of the room, out onto the deck. She heard his footsteps on the gravel and she guessed he was going out to the garage. She filled the basin with water and started to wash the dishes. The water was too hot, but she kept her hands in it because the scalding on her skin distracted her.

It was what she hated most, watching people lie. She couldn’t always see it. Sometimes, when she realised later that someone had lied to her, she liked that she hadn’t seen it, that she’d had to rely on her instincts the way everyone else did. Lately, her instincts hadn’t been that reliable. Benny was full of lies. His lies were tangled up in knots that he couldn’t untie. That’s why she couldn’t hate him. Not even after what happened. Why, though, was Lewis trying to kiss her? She’d begun to trust him and feel safe here. Was there nowhere she could relax? And she’d promised herself during all those days walking after she left Benny that she would only get close to people who felt true and right. Lewis had felt like that, but she’d been wrong. If only she could take people at face value. Sometimes it was unbearable this thing she could do.

When she finished the dishes she made a cup of tea and sat down at the kitchen table. She would wait here until he came back. She picked up the book she’d been reading, a children’s novel about some kids on an island trying to find an ox carved out of gold. The adults in it were bad. She’d found a stash of children’s books in Jonathan’s room when she was cleaning the house. One afternoon she’d lain down on the bed in that room and started a book about a boy who finds a caveman living in a chalk cave near his house. She liked the way the children in it were smart and the adults were mean and dumb. She liked being in Jonathan’s room also. It was darker and cooler than Jean’s, and the curtains had characters from The Empire Strikes Back, which was the only movie she and Rose ever saw at the cinema together. This was where she came in the afternoons to read, and it comforted her.

But now at the table she could hardly focus on the words as they ran and blurred before her eyes. She must have been staring at the page for half an hour before Lewis came back in again. He paused in the doorway and looked at her, his face calm. He came over to the table and sat down opposite her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to kiss you. I don’t know what came over me. I like you being here and you should stay for as long as you need to.’

She was silent. He wasn’t going to get away with it that easily.

‘I’m old enough to be your father.’ He paused. ‘God, that sounds awful.’ He put his head in his hands and looked down at the table.

Tess turned to him. The sadness had been there in Lewis from when they met and now she saw it clearly, the part of him that he was no longer hiding from her. The grief he carried had burrowed in under his skin and fixed itself to his bones—that’s how she saw it now, as part of his body affecting the way he moved and thought and acted and slept. There was no way to distinguish him from it. It got into her, got beneath her resolve to punish him. She wanted to give him something.

She spoke slowly. ‘I left someone in Auckland … I guess I’m still getting over him.’ She trailed off because she didn’t know how to match Lewis’s openness, nor how to talk about the knot of yearning and confusion she felt inside. Benny was the only boyfriend she’d had and she’d just allowed it to happen when she should have walked away. The idea that they’d ever slept together made her feel ill. What he’d offered was a temporary place to stay. What Tess wanted was a home. She didn’t care about Benny. Leaving him was relief.

He nodded. Perhaps there were things that people didn’t need to say; perhaps it was all in the way you stood, the tone of your voice. There was what people said and what they thought, two different things. She couldn’t absorb it all.

‘There’s something I don’t quite understand,’ he said.

She rubbed her finger on the book’s edge, which was soft and rounded with wear. She knew what he was going to ask but she’d wait for him to ask it. She had no idea what she should say. You must never ever tell anyone. That’s what Sheila had said. She’d told Benny, and look what had happened.

‘About what?’ She kept her eyes on the book.

‘You said I was thinking of someone else, and you were right. I didn’t think I was, but … I was. How did you know? I didn’t, ah, I didn’t say her name, did I?’

His cheeks reddened. Tess felt the spool inside her unravel a little more. She could lie. She could say he gave himself away.

‘No, you didn’t.’ Her voice was quiet but firm, and she was surprised by this, the confidence of her negation. ‘She has brown hair and a mole on her cheek—’ Tess pointed at her own cheek ‘—here below her eye. She wears a white coat. She looks very clean and you like her a lot.’

He was looking at her now, his eyes wide, taking in everything she said.

‘Nicky,’ he said softly.

‘Nicky,’ said Tess.

‘I worked with her. She was my dental assistant. We …’ He was running his fingers over the surface of the table now. ‘How did you know?’ He looked around the room as if searching for clues. His tone became accusatory. ‘What have you been doing while I’m at work?’

Tess’s anger flared. She hated people thinking that she was a sneak, going into their cupboards and drawers, finding out all their secrets. She didn’t need more than she had seen in him. She could guess the rest.

‘You were with her when Hannah died, weren’t you?’ she said. ‘That’s why you’re alone in this house.’

He looked up sharply and jerked his head back, wary. ‘Who are you?’

She could see he was hurting, but his eyes were clear. His question poked at the truth of her better than most people could manage, most people who had ever accused her of being strange. It was genuine. Who was she?

‘I’m no one,’ she said.

‘You’re not no one.’ He gave a frustrated sigh. ‘But I barely know anything about you and you seem to know a lot about me. Has Alan been around? Is that how you know about Nicky?’

The reel that had been unwinding in Tess for weeks now came to the end of its thread. She couldn’t lie to this man anymore. Not because she owed him or she felt that he wanted something from her, but because he didn’t.

‘I can see things in people.’ She glanced up at him as she said it, to see if he was judging her, but he was listening, and patient, so she continued. ‘When people talk they remember stuff. If a memory is vivid enough in someone, I can see it. When you kissed me you were remembering your friend.’

His face was still, taking in what she had said. He was not trying to deny what she was and neither did he look disgusted, which was what Benny’s first reaction had been.

All she could see was some sort of shifting emotion in Lewis’s face, like a cloud making shapes over a landscape, as he tried to understand what she was telling him.

He paused, weighing his words. ‘The way you look at me sometimes. Like you’re looking through me.’

Tess blinked like she wanted to cry. There was something sharp in her, and the cutting felt like a form of release.

Lewis’s voice was gentle, calmer. ‘When I picked you up, you were running from something, weren’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You looked scared. I can’t imagine your life is easy with this—’ he cleared his throat ‘—this ability.’

‘I had a boyfriend, and we broke up. I just needed to get away, you know, forget him.’ Tess stopped. She could tell Lewis about seeing, but not about Benny, not that.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it ever gets any easier with love. I used to think it might, but I guess I haven’t had much luck.’

‘Yeah.’ Let him think her heart was broken. Perhaps it was. Although she wasn’t sure it was Benny who had done it to her.

‘So you can see what people are thinking?’ said Lewis.

She shook her head. ‘No.’ Benny always thought that’s what she could do. He said it was why he got high. He called her a freak.

‘It’s hard to explain. It’s more like, you know when you dream, the pictures you get in your head?’

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s like that, but I can see other people’s pictures. Not all the time, just …’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘It sounds dumb.’

‘Does it embarrass you?’

‘I’m a weirdo.’ She kept her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to look at him, and her voice was muffled by her hands. She felt him touch one of her hands lightly, pull it away from her face.

‘We’re all weirdos, Tess.’

She felt shy but she looked at him. He wasn’t judging her. His mind was elsewhere.

‘I loved her.’ His voice had a crack in it. He looked at her again and she saw who he was thinking of. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

There was such discipline in the way he hid his grief, but it strained him.

‘What happened to your wife?’ she said.

Lewis breathed out heavily. ‘Do you really want to know?’

‘I do.’

He tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling. ‘Nicky and I had arranged to go away, just for the day, an outing. I had a locum in, and I told Hannah that I was going to visit Mum. She was starting to decline, forget things, so I’d go visit once a week.

‘Nicky and I went on a day walk, in the bush. We had to go out of town if we wanted to spend any real time together.’ He paused and took a breath. ‘I used to hunt, it was a way to get time by myself, the twins were full-on when they were little, and Jonti …

‘Anyway, that morning, God knows why, he had the hunting rifle out and was cleaning it. He was always good with machines, like me. He could work out how anything operated. I don’t know why but he had it on the deck.’ He shrugged. ‘Jean said he’d just carried it out to get the new cleaning fluid that was in the laundry. Anyway, the safety wasn’t on, even though he swears he checked it because I always told him to and he wasn’t stupid about that stuff. Hannah came out to tell him to get a move on for school, and the gun went off. She was shot through the head.’

Lewis touched his forehead, where Hannah was shot.

‘She died instantly. Jean came out and found her brother with the gun, her mother dead on the ground, blood and brain tissue everywhere. She tried to call me first. When she couldn’t get hold of me, she called Alan, who called the police and the ambulance. Then me again. No one was picking up the phone at surgery, because Nicky was with me. The cops tried to find me all day, trying my mum’s place and the office, and no one could find me. My kids were alone all day without me, and their mother was dead.’

He stopped. He wasn’t crying, but his face had a strange frozen look. ‘I was going to leave Hannah. Things had been bad for a few years. But she was depressed, and just so angry a lot of the time with Jonti, with both the kids. God, it was such a mess. It still is.’

‘It’s the first time you’ve really mentioned him, Jonti.’

‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘You see, Jonti can’t say a thing about it. He can’t remember anything that happened that day, like his memory just disappeared. From the trauma.’

All the old hurt, the stuff she knew he kept at bay with whisky and sleeping pills, she could see it flood back into him. He made a low moaning sound, a naked sound, and then he began to weep. He let himself go in front of Tess, and she watched as everything he’d anchored so deeply in himself rose to the surface. After a few moments she placed her hand on his back, tentative but soothing all the same. He didn’t move and neither did she. He continued to cry and she continued to comfort him.

After some time, Tess said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Yes, that would be good.’

Tess busied herself at the bench. She could feel Lewis watching her and she kept her back to him. She knew what he was going to ask next, she probably would too. But she hated it. She wasn’t a crystal-ball gazer, a witch. That’s how Benny had treated her.

‘I’d like you to meet him.’

She turned to him, the teapot in her hand, and gave him a hard look. Then she turned back and busied herself at the sink.

‘Why?’ she said.

‘I just thought you might find it—’ He stopped, perhaps realising how he sounded.

When she turned back, she was trembling slightly and her cheeks were red. ‘That is why I don’t tell people, Lewis. It’s why I can’t live around them. I can’t help you. I can’t help your son.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Or maybe I did. I don’t know. You won’t meet him anyway.’

‘Why is that?’

‘He’s in an institution. He’s heavily medicated and he won’t see me. He sees Jean, but Jean won’t see me now either. We had a fight six months ago. She stormed out and I haven’t heard from her since. So—’ he held his hands in the air ‘—that’s why I live alone.’

‘That’s quite a shit story, Lewis,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he said.

Tess had another picture of him in her mind, of the day they met, the determined look on his face as he pointed the air rifle at the thugs who were threatening her.

‘Given what happened, you were pretty crazy to get a gun out in the main street that night.’

‘The Roses are the crazy family in this town. Well, until someone else does something worse, which is possible.’ Lewis laughed, but it was bitter. ‘Small towns are a special kind of hell.’

Tess handed him a cup tea. ‘I know. I grew up in one.’

They sat drinking their tea, gently picking at the scabs in their heads. Pain had carved itself into the lines in his forehead, around his eyes, into his eyes. Somehow he’d taken the pressure out of the air. She saw he didn’t expect anything of her—of anyone, quite possibly, and that realisation made her sad. He was just like her. Neither of them thought anyone could love them. They were outcasts.

He touched the cover of the book she’d been reading. ‘I read this to the twins. It was old-fashioned even then. The story was so slow.’

‘I like it.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going to bed.’

‘Yes, it’s late. I should get to bed too and pretend to sleep.’

She was at the door of the kitchen when he called her name and she turned to him.

‘I’m very pleased we met,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry about, you know, before.’

‘Kissing me?’ she said.

‘Yes, that.’

‘It’s okay. Let’s pretend it never happened,’ she said. It sounded harsher than she meant it to. Even though he’d been thinking of someone else, there was a gentleness in the way he’d kissed her, so different from Benny. But she couldn’t say that, so she said, ‘I’m pleased I met you too, Lewis.’

She walked down the hall and climbed into bed, bone tired. In the dark she listened to Lewis doing the things he did at night. The clink of the whisky bottle against the glass, five minutes later him washing the glass out, turning off the lights, moving down the hallway to his own room. She thought of his son, Jonti, killing his mother by accident.

But who was the woman in the garage? She had assumed it was Hannah. But she hadn’t seen her face, just her hair, and from that she’d made assumptions. Why did she even see her? A chill ran down her body, she could feel it lifting the hairs on her arms, bristling on her spine. There was something wrong with her brain still.

She lay in the dark for hours, restless and rolling over and over, and when she finally fell asleep she dreamed of him, a faceless boy she knew in her dream was Jonti. He was outside her window, and he was softly calling her name. Tess, he was calling, Tessie.

The next day Tess was back working in the garden when Toby started barking. She heard footsteps on the gravel driveway. A man around Lewis’s age came around the back of the house and stood by the garage, looking out at her. Toby rushed over to him, and the man patted the dog’s head and called him by his name.

‘Hello?’ Tess shaded her eyes to see him better.

‘Tess, I’m Alan. I’m the doctor Lewis called when you were sick. I’m an old friend of the family.’

She walked over, taking off her gardening gloves and dusting her hands on her pants. He held out his hand to shake. Her memory of him was vague.

‘You look well,’ he said. ‘Much better than last time I saw you.’

He had a cool gaze, and a will to contain himself. He looked from her to the garden, surveying the boundary she’d been working on, then back to her. There was possessiveness in the way he looked at the property.

‘You’ve done all this work?’ he said.

‘Yep.’

‘I’ve been on at Lewis to get the garden sorted for a while.’

Tess met his gaze, but his eyes remained glassy, unavailable.

‘The garden was Hannah’s, of course,’ he said. ‘She was a wonderful gardener.’

Something in Tess bristled, and she straightened her back a little. ‘She did some interesting planting. I’m discovering all sorts of things under the growth and weeds.’

‘Ah, so you’re a gardener also?’

‘Yes.’

He watched her, as if adjusting weights on a scale.

‘Where are you from?’ he said. His tone was suddenly chillier, the question pointed.

‘I’m travelling,’ she said. She dug her toe lightly in the gravel. ‘I’ll head south when the apple season comes.’

‘Ah, not at uni then?’

‘No.’

‘My daughter is studying law. She went to school with Jean.’

Act bored, Tess told herself. ‘Okay,’ she said, and she could hear the hint of sarcasm in her voice but she didn’t care. She just wanted him to leave. He wouldn’t be played by white trash, though.

‘I care a lot for the Rose family,’ he said.

Bullshit, she thought.

‘They’ve had a hard time, and I’d like to make sure things go well for Lewis.’ His tone was smooth, used to being listened to.

‘So would I.’ Her voice was hard and she was pleased by it.

‘Would you?’ he said. ‘So once you’ve got the garden in order you’ll be taking off again. Picking apples?’

‘I’m an arborist,’ she said, lying. ‘I advise on tree health, and I can pick if they need extra hands.’

‘Ah,’ he said. Whether he believed her or not, neither of them cared now they were locked in battle. ‘I’m sure you’ll be needed elsewhere then.’

Tess met his eye. The glassy surface looked darker, cold, and still gave her nothing to see. Evil, she thought. Not like Benny, but still evil because you fear and hate anything different from you. Anything you can’t control you want to be miserable. ‘You must have patients waiting. Doctor,’ she said.

Tess turned and walked back to the garden. She could feel him behind her, mind ticking over. He was not the sort of man to allow someone like her the last word.

‘I’ll come again soon, Tess,’ he called out. ‘To check up on the tree health here.’

Tess didn’t acknowledge him, but pulled the finger as she walked away. He couldn’t see it but it made her feel better. She listened to his footsteps fade down the gravel path, then she started the endless task of pulling weeds.

She cut into weeds, working hard so she had a sweat. Toby sat on the deck and watched her. The sky was covered in cloud, a welcome break from the sun, but still it was hot and she couldn’t clear the doctor’s tone of voice, his smug face, from her mind’s eye. What a creep. The evening swim would help. She would drown him as she swam.

As she thought of the diving in, her attention slipped and the knife she’d been using to hack at a branch nicked the side of her index finger. She yelped. Blood ran out of the wound and down her arm, but her other hand was covered in dirt. She felt faint, so looked away from the bleeding and walked as steadily as she could manage back to the laundry. She wrapped a clean rag around the cut and went through to the bathroom to find the first-aid kit. Her finger was throbbing and she felt irritated for allowing Alan to distract her. She cleaned and dressed the wound.

Tess went into Lewis’s study. It was a room she’d dusted lightly, not wanting to invade his privacy. But now she walked in and went directly to his upright filing cabinet. She opened the top drawer and leafed through the files with her good hand. School reports for Jean Rose and Jonathan Rose, tax forms for Lewis Rose Dentistry, manuals for kitchen appliances, expired passports. The letter from the hospital was at the back. Tess looked at the top of the page and started to read slowly.

Jonathan Michael Rose, admitted 15 February 1997. At the bottom the form had two signatures, Alan Williamson, MD and Lewis Rose. Alan had admitted him, and Lewis had signed the form. Tess read the address for Lakeview Institute. They always gave these places nice names, as though the residents went there for a holiday. She folded up the piece of paper and put it in the back pocket of her jeans. It was one o’clock. Lewis wouldn’t be home for at least three hours. God knows what he did all day. He didn’t seem to have many patients.

She changed out of her dirty clothes and went out to test the old bike that was leaning up against the side of the house. Its chain was rusting but the tyres were okay. Her finger was sore. Still, she could ride one-handed if she needed to. At the sight of the bike on the driveway, Toby started barking and running around her in circles.

‘You like a ride?’ she said to him. Toby eyes were wide, his whole body wagging.

She set off, the dog running at her side.