After the Darkness Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  The Good Daughter

  Author Interview

  1

  We made love that morning. It was the last day of our holiday and it seemed like a perfect way to end the trip. The light in the hotel room suited sex – the drapes were drawn, sunshine fell in a thin line across the carpet. I reached down and touched my husband while he slept. He was a morning person, and only needed a few moments of sleepy contemplation before a smile stretched across his face.

  We spooned. It was good not to have to arch and grind, wriggle and writhe; pressing back against him was enough at that early hour of the day. Close like this, he knew what I wanted, and was in tune with me. He growled in my ear, and was manly without having to beat his chest. Leaping around naked and clambering over the furniture had its place, but not that day. An orgasm eluded me. I didn’t mind. I liked that he climaxed, though, and that his fingers gripped me, bit into my flesh. It was sexy to feel him lose control while I was so content.

  Afterwards, he threw back the covers, got to his feet, clasped his hands, shivered his shoulders, and hotfooted it to the bathroom. I stayed curled beneath the quilt and closed my eyes to his eight a.m. exuberance. My morning contemplation lasted hours, and held fast through morning sex. He began calling questions from the shower, and I lay thinking how strange it was that after twenty years of marriage he had not yet modified his behaviour to better suit mine. He broached the big subjects at this early hour, with water falling all around him and shampoo in his eyes.

  ‘Are we selling the Smith Street property when we get back?’ he called. ‘Hey?’ he said, as though I’d answered.

  I didn’t want to make decisions at that time of day. He knew this.

  While he dried himself and dressed he persevered with his morning behaviour and I shuffled to the bathroom and sat dozing on the l00, persevering with mine.

  We went down to the hotel dining room for a buffet breakfast. I read the paper and he looked out the window at the ocean. He had black coffee and bacon and eggs. I had green tea and a sample of all the food on offer. My plate was piled high. Food usually roused me from my slumber.

  ‘I think this is a nicer spread than they had out last night for dinner,’ I managed to articulate.

  ‘We should come back here with the kids. I can take them diving. I saw a hire place with all the gear. Remind me to ask for some brochures at reception when we check out.’

  I tried a Danish pastry. While on holiday I ate without fear or favour. Just as well our breaks lasted no more than a fortnight, or I would spend the whole year losing the weight I’d gained. The newspaper was another thing that woke me up. A story could flick my on-switch.

  ‘There’s a bit here about that couple who jumped from the burning building.’

  ‘Were they a couple? I thought they were strangers who jumped together?’

  ‘Married, I think.’

  My husband’s name was Bruce. Our surname gave his first name a little more pizzazz – Harrison. Bruce and Trudy Harrison. Some of his friends called him Harry. He was as perplexed by this as I was. Some of my friends called me Gertrude, as a joke. Bruce’s term of endearment for me was sweetheart. Spoken with a fair whack of Aussie drawl. He looked across at my paper.

  ‘Is that them?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s the woman. The man is in hospital with burns.’

  ‘So were they married?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How high up?’

  ‘Four floors.’

  The hotel dining room had a wall of panelled glass curved around the front, to make the most of the ocean view. The room jutted out, slightly, over the cliff. We were sitting in this overhang. I looked out the window and peered down to the beach below.

  ‘How high up do you think we are?’

  Bruce pursed his lips and made a squeaky sound between his teeth. He loved questions of this nature. I could always lift him from a bad mood by asking him something like: What sort of timber have they used in this bench? He would have to touch the wood and look for the grain; he would always answer, and any stalemate would be broken.

  ‘Four storeys up,’ he said. ‘Did they land on concrete?’

  I skimmed the article. ‘Doesn’t say. She’s got a broken arm and minor burns. Hey, what’s the point at which you reach terminal velocity?’

  ‘You have to be falling for eight seconds or so to reach that. You’re dead if you reach terminal velocity, no matter what you hit. The beach is probably about …’ he looked down at the sand again, ‘a three-second fall.’

  ‘The man is more smashed up, by the sounds of it. I think it’s annoying when there’s a story like this – when someone escapes death – the way the spin is always so positive. Death isn’t always the worst outcome. Permanent injury is the worst outcome. That guy in hospital might be wishing he were dead. Death is death,’ I said, ‘it’s a done deal for everyone involved, whereas serious injury is pain and suffering and cost and mental fatigue for everyone involved.’

  ‘Death isn’t a done deal.’

  ‘It misrepresents the truth when someone is dragged from the rubble of an earthquake or dug out from beneath the snow and everyone stands around cheering. They’re happy because they want to be – they feel like they’ve been a part of something exciting. But the survivor has to go off and survive; that’s not exciting. They’re probably made to feel bad if they’re not celebrating their miraculous escape. I don’t imagine it feels like a miracle if your face has melted off or your hands have to be amputated.’

  ‘Maybe if this man who jumped was ninety, I’d agree – he is better off dead. But not if he’s young, with kids at home. Death isn’t clear-cut to kids. They don’t deal with death like adults do. They’d rather the ones they love be around, in whatever shape.’

  ‘That’s because they’re selfish.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re children; they trump us.’

  I folded up the paper and pulled my chair in closer to the table. I leaned my elbows either side of my plate and smiled across at my husband. I studied his face. Months could pass without me properly looking at him. He could see I was doing one of my rare physical assessments of him. He crossed his eyes. Inside my chest was that warm liquid feeling. Love. My body got all tingly.

  ‘You’re a super spunk,’ I told him.

  He went a little red.

  He would fall quiet now. After compliments or recognition he always did. That wasn’t why I’d given him my full attention, though, to shut him up. My actions were pure and my heart was light. The stress-free days had relaxed me. I appreciated him, flaws and all. I knew him too well to be a good judge of his face-value handsomeness. To judge how well he was wearing his years I had to look at other people’s reactions to him. The woman going from table to table topping up cups of tea and coffee had already given him the once-over. She’d checked him out when he’d walked to the table, watched him when he’d pushed back his
chair to pick up his serviette, and she would probably glance at him more yet. She was about my age – mid-forties – but thinner than me, with way better legs. She was just the type of woman to scope Bruce in an instant. He was popular in supermarkets and department stores for this same reason. The stomping grounds for women of a certain age and restlessness were the new danger spots for me – not nightclubs or beaches any more. Girls didn’t see Bruce. Women did. He was greying at the temples, he’d been beaten around the head by the sun, his body had fared better for someone who gave it little regard, and his teeth were in good order. He wore long pants and long-sleeved shirts rolled up to his elbows. Under my direction he left his shirts untucked. He would lose some points if it weren’t for me. He would hitch up, belt in, wear his hair too long, and maybe even go out in light-blue jeans, sneakers and polo shirts. What self-respecting divorcee would take him then? Not that I wanted that to happen. But I liked him feeling good about himself. It made him easier to be around.

  If I hadn’t been sitting opposite him that day, I guarantee the woman with the pots of tea and coffee would be topping up his cup all right. Whether or not he would be topping up hers was an age-old question, pertaining to males in general, and something, as a woman, I couldn’t answer.

  We took our time at breakfast. He gazed out to sea. I grazed the buffet. We held hands on the way back to the room. I felt proud to be his wife. He had a twinkle in his eye because of the sex we’d had that morning. He grinned stupidly while we waited with our bags at reception.

  It was a ten a.m. check out, and we had the day ahead of us. We had planned a leisurely drive home, lunch somewhere nice, and dinner at a roadside takeaway.

  When we were in the car and on our way I sent a text to my mother.

  ‘What did you say?’ Bruce asked.

  ‘Home lateish,’ I answered, reading directly from the text, ‘thanks for having kids tonight as well. Nice not to rush. Will see them at school pick-up tomorrow.’

  ‘We should buy your mum a present.’

  ‘We will. That can be our mission today.’

  The hotel we had been staying at was ten kilometres out from the small coastal town of Wensley. The main street was quiet. Soft autumn sun brightened the faded shop fronts. Most of the tourist places were closed because it was a Monday. We headed out of town and towards the long and winding coastal road – the scenic route. I took off my sunglasses and pulled down the passenger-side visor, squinting to see the depth of my crow’s-feet in the mirror and pursing my lips to see the lines around my mouth. I wasn’t a smoker, but I had those nasty creases, as though over my lifetime I’d set my mouth into a grim line too much. I checked my cheeks for sunspots and discolouration, pressed down my hair to look for any grey roots showing in amongst the blonde.

  ‘What a disaster,’ I said, sitting back and flipping up the visor. I put on my sunglasses with a firm shove of the frame between my eyes. ‘Remind me today I must not remove my sunglasses.’

  ‘You look nicer without make-up. It’s weird the way you trowel it on.’

  ‘Thank you, darling, I’m glad you think I trowel on make-up. I’m going to sit across from you sans make-up at lunchtime, in the harsh light of day, and see if that doesn’t put you off your toasted foccacia.’

  ‘You’re already thinking of what to eat next.’

  ‘I am.’ I laughed.

  The road hugged the coastal cliffs. At times the sheer and sudden drop was disconcerting. The ocean rose and fell in a calm, shifting mass. It splashed softly against the cliff face and against the rocky outcrops. It seemed as though it were a feat of great restraint for the sea to remain so placid. I closed my eyes. The ocean was present in the brooding sound above the noise of the engine. When I woke, we were travelling on a section of road that took us through flat and dusty farmland. To my right, in the distance, was the cliff, although from where we were I couldn’t see the drop-off. The ocean was a dark-blue line below the light-blue sky, the land a yellow layer beneath. Round hay bales dotted the paddocks. There were few trees about, and no stock that I could see. Bruce saw I was awake.

  ‘There are some two-hundred-year-old fences up ahead,’ he said. ‘They’re original dry-stone walls, been there since settlement. I want to have a look at them. I’ve passed them before and never stopped.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘At our Cove Street site there are some leftover rocks,’ he continued. ‘I reckon they’re small enough and heavy enough to build a dry-stone wall. I might build one around the orchard. I think it would look nice.’ He opened his hand and moved it up and down as though to judge the weight of an invisible stone. ‘In a load delivered to the site there were these smaller rocks in with the bigger boulders, football-sized but heavy, and all different shapes. I’ve collected a pile of them.’ He pointed to the sky. ‘Look,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘a wedge-tailed eagle.’

  I could tell my husband had been waiting for me to wake, wanting to chat as we drove along. I looked up at the bird. It was drifting like a black kite above the paddocks.

  ‘See if you can spot his mate,’ Bruce said.

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yep.’ He looked to the road so as not to give any clues of where the second bird might be. ‘But hurry up …’ he eased off the accelerator, ‘or you’ll miss it.’

  I looked across the paddocks, and along the tops of the power poles. He slowed the vehicle to a crawl. I looked around at the barren paddocks.

  ‘You’re gunna miss it …’

  I leaned over to his side of the car and looked where he was looking. ‘It has to be in the air, or we’d have passed it.’

  His eyes darted to the rear-view mirror. I turned around in the seat.

  The second eagle was flying low over the road behind us, three hundred metres or so back from the car, its wings beating rhythmically as it began its slow ascent. Its size was impressive. The wingspan was easily two metres across. Bruce craned his neck to look back at it. The car drifted onto the gravel verge.

  ‘Careful,’ I said, reaching for the wheel, though we were travelling too slowly to lose traction.

  The bird rose above the car and out of our line of sight.

  ‘How impressive was that?’ Bruce said.

  ‘Which would it be – the male or the female of the couple?

  Do they have roles, where the female hunts and male just cruises around being big and burly all day? That’s usually the case, isn’t it?’ I teased. ‘The females do all the work?’

  Bruce scoffed.

  As I relaxed into my seat I saw a small roadside sign ahead of us. If we had been travelling faster I doubt we would have noticed it. It was out the front of what, at first glance, looked to be private property. The house was set back, close to the cliff. I could only see the roof and what looked like the top storey. The lettering on the sign was faded.

  ‘What’s this place?’ I asked.

  Bruce had better eyesight. ‘It’s a gallery.’ He slowed the car.

  ‘It probably won’t be open.’ He pulled off the road and parked beside the sign. ‘The Ocean View Gallery,’ he read. On the sign was a picture of a square house perched on the edge of the sea cliff. ‘An art gallery high above the ocean,’ Bruce read. ‘A sensory experience.’

  For something that looked and sounded fairly spectacular, the sign was low-key.

  ‘I’ve never heard of this place. You’d reckon it would be in the tourist pamphlets?’

  ‘I’ve never read anything about it either. Will we go and have a sensory experience?’

  ‘Is it open?’

  ‘The gate is open.’

  I looked up and down the road for other cars. There were none. I eyed the long grass beneath the sign. I was inherently more suspicious than Bruce. I didn’t share his unfailing conviction that things would always turn out for the best. I screwed up my nose.

  ‘I’m not sure. If it’s not popular, it’s probably past its use-by date.’

  Bruce wound down his win
dow. The air moved with the sea breeze. The day was heating up. The property’s driveway was sealed, which was surprising, because of the length of the track. The house looked to be about half a kilometre from the gate.

  ‘Well, we’re here now,’ my husband said. ‘Let’s drive down and have a look.’

  2

  My spirits lifted as we approached. The house was large and modern, with soaring three-storey windows and panelled walls.

  The plainness of the place was a statement in itself. There were no gardens, nothing to soften the square structure. The house sat alone in its empty paddock, hard up against the openness of the ocean. How it should fit so well with its surroundings was hard to say. As we parked, and the size of the place became apparent, I began to think it was the dimensions that made the house blend in – it was an extension of the rock face and as hulking as the ocean. The tinted glass was thick. The walls were stone, the timber panelling bolted on. The area in front of the house was fully sealed, a square of jet-black asphalt that was almost like the building’s shadow.

  At the bottom of one panelled section was a horizontal line, at car height, and about the width of two cars, but it was the light fixtures, more than anything, that gave away the existence of the garage. Other than this, there was no obvious entry point to the house.

  A small wooden sign pointed to a path running down the right-hand side of the building.

  I was drawn by the order, the tidy lines, and by the unmistakable air of wealth. I wanted to stickybeak, see how the top echelon of society spent their time and their money. I breathed in as I stepped out of the car.

  ‘I want this as our holiday house.’

  ‘Not much of a holiday – stuck in a box. Do you abseil down to the water?’ Bruce climbed out the driver’s side.

  ‘A helipad over there,’ I said in a playful, deliberately pretentious voice. ‘Pop in a landing strip perhaps.’

  ‘Are you leaving your handbag?’

  ‘Take some money in your pocket. Make sure you lock the car, though.’

  ‘You carry your phone. I’ll leave mine.’

  Bruce took two fifties from his wallet, and then stashed it in the centre console. He leaned across and pushed my handbag under the passenger seat.