The Wife and the Widow

by Christian White

  Abby inhaled slowly. ‘So you did go to her place yesterday?’

  He was silent for a moment. He then rolled over in bed to face her and asked, ‘Where else would I have gone?’

  ‘Stepping out on me with another woman, obviously.’

  He laughed, then looked into her eyes sincerely. ‘I would never cheat on you, Ab. You know why?’

  ‘Because I’m a dreamboat?’

  ‘No, because this island has a very limited pool of eligible women.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ she said.

  He pecked her on the cheek, then rolled over to switch off the bedside lamp. Within minutes, he was snoring.

  * * *

  For reasons she wouldn’t understand until much later, Abby tossed and turned for most of the night, slipping in and out of sleep like a boat through rough seas.

  7

  THE WIDOW

  Kate didn’t know how long she’d be staying in Belport. She had made up her mind that, for whatever reason, John was staying in their holiday house on the island. He had tripped the house alarm – again, for whatever reason – and all she had to do was go and bring him back. Simple. It didn’t matter that the alarm company sent a security car to check the place out and found nothing. John would be there. She would drag him home and they would worry about the shattered remains of their marriage later.

  Unfortunately, Kate wasn’t an idiot. She knew it wouldn’t be so easy. She might need to spend a night or two on the island, so she packed as if she were heading off to spend six months in Europe. Zipped up inside the suitcase she was now dragging out to the car were six bras (strapless, sports and push-up among them), two winter parkas, three pairs of jeans, one dress, three pairs of shoes (she had to remove a fourth pair to get the suitcase shut) and, most bizarrely, a swimsuit. It seemed she couldn’t even pack a suitcase anymore.

  Since John’s disappearance, such simple things had become near impossible. Preparing meals, for example, now seemed like a bizarre foreign custom, needlessly complicated. She had attempted to cook noodles for Mia the previous night and quickly found herself lost in a sea of utensils. She had eventually folded to her knees on the kitchen floor, called for pizza and cried until it arrived.

  Mia, who’d be spending the next few days at her grandparents’ house, had packed far more sensibly. Everything she needed was slotted into her pink backpack. Mia hadn’t insisted on coming to the island, to Kate’s relief. No doubt her daughter wanted to come, but in a wise, old-soul sort of way, she’d known better than to ask.

  They bundled into the Lexus and Kate started the engine.

  ‘You sure you don’t need to pee before we go?’

  It was only a short drive to Pam and Fisher’s place, but Mia had a habit of suddenly discovering she needed the bathroom seconds after the electronic gate clicked shut behind them.

  Mia looked down at her bladder as if consulting it, then shook her head. ‘I’m alright.’

  Kate looped the car around the top of the driveway, then crept slowly towards the road. It was a gloomy morning, and traffic was sluggish. Kate inched through it, like wading slowly through deep water.

  They arrived at Pam and Fisher’s three-storey Brighton townhouse a little after nine am, and Kate turned to look at her daughter.

  ‘Two sleeps,’ Kate said in a reassuring tone, as much to herself as to Mia. ‘Three at the most.’

  Mia nodded stoically, unfastened her seatbelt and sighed. It was a heavy sigh. Too heavy for someone her age, and too loaded with pain and worry.

  ‘Are you going to be alright?’ Kate asked.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Mum. Are you?’

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘Are you going to be alright?’

  ‘… You don’t need to worry about me, monkey. I’m okay. And in a couple of days, I’ll come home.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  Fisher and Pam came out to meet them. Fisher, who had insisted on coming to Belport too, had an overnight bag over one shoulder. The thought of spending so much time with her father-in-law filled Kate with a very particular brand of anxiety, but if given the choice between that and going alone, she would have picked Fisher.

  Mia climbed down from the passenger seat and Fisher lifted her into a hug and said, ‘Do me a favour and look after your gran while I’m gone, okay?’

  ‘Okay, Grandpa,’ she said, mournfully.

  Pam crossed the yard behind him in slippers, leaving deep footprints in the wet grass. She took Kate’s hands in hers and kissed her softly on the cheek. ‘I know you have to head off soon, but there’s something I need to tell you before you go. It’s important.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Pam pulled back but held tightly onto Kate’s hands. ‘John is fine,’ she whispered.

  ‘I know. I think he just needed some time out. We’ll bring him home, Pam.’

  ‘John is fine,’ she said again, and Kate wondered if she’d heard a word Kate had said. ‘I had a dream.’

  ‘A dream?’

  ‘You know those dreams I have now and then – I can always tell when they mean something real.’ Pam gazed skyward. ‘I was standing at the gates of heaven. I wasn’t shown through them, of course, but I was allowed to look inside. I could see all the way to John’s throne, and you know what?’ She laughed; a short, maniacal snort. ‘It was empty. John’s throne was empty, because he doesn’t need to sit in it yet. He’s still alive, Kate. He’s still alive, I’m sure of it. Just you wait and see I’m right. Just you wait.’

  Kate and Fisher exchanged a concerned glance over the bonnet of the car. As if reading her mind, Fisher said, ‘Pam’s sister is on her way down from Beechworth to help out with Mia.’

  Kate nodded, smiled nervously. She knelt to look Mia in the eyes and said, ‘You don’t need a reason to call me. Day or night, whenever you feel like it. I need you to be a big girl for me while I’m away, alright?’

  She nodded. ‘Two sleeps.’

  ‘Three at the most.’

  ‘And, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, monkey?’

  ‘You be a big girl too.’

  * * *

  Belport Island was accessible only by a thirty-minute ferry ride from a port on the Bellarine Peninsula, a little over a two-hour drive away. It took them a while to get out of the city, but then the traffic parted, and the highway turned clear and straight.

  Kate stuck to the slow lane and kept the car a few kilometres under the limit. Her slow driving must have frustrated Fisher, but he didn’t ask her to speed up. Unlike him, Kate was in no hurry to get there. For her, the island represented a cold exclamation mark at the end of a sentence: whatever drama John was caught up in would be revealed, and her life would be up-ended. Out here on the road, rolling on with commas and semicolons, it was easy to believe that it was all a mistake, that John would have a simple explanation for everything. While the sentence was still open there was still room for hope. Hope was one word for it, anyway. Denial also worked.

  The heavier the silence grew between Fisher and Kate, the deeper her mind slipped into fantasy. Embarking on the familiar route to Belport, she was lulled into thinking John had gone on ahead to set up the beach house for their arrival. The air in the house was always stale when they first got there, so John had gone in advance to sling open all the windows. He had removed the protective sheets from the furniture, put fresh covers on the beds, and was waiting for her and Mia to arrive.

  She imagined the weight in the passenger side was her daughter instead of her father-in-law. It was easy if she kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, just so, and didn’t turn to look in his direction. Yes, Mia was in the car with her. She’d have fallen asleep by now, tired after spending the first leg of the trip discussing the shells she’d collect when they made it to the beach, and playing I-spy and punch buggy. When they finally arrived, it would somehow be summer again, and a warm breeze would be bl
owing. John would be sitting on the swing chair on the front deck. He’d watch them roll up the driveway, a warm smile on his face. With his free hand (the other would be holding a beer) he’d pat the space next to him, inviting Kate to join him. And she would.

  ‘He’s probably just taken himself off somewhere. He used to do it sometimes, when he was a teenager,’ Fisher said. They were the first words either of them had said since leaving the city, and they broke through Kate’s fantasy like the snap of a dry branch.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Once, he’d told us he was on a school camp, but when Pam washed his jeans a few days later she found a receipt from a McDonald’s in the city. He’d just gone off for a night and stayed in a hostel. When we confronted him about it, all he said was that he needed a little time to himself.’

  He took out a cigarette but knew better than to light it. Instead, he rolled it on the palm of his hand. ‘I understand why he did what he did. Not fully, I suppose, but I know what it’s like to have to be alone. What I don’t understand is, why did he go to Belport? He’s always hated it there.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘You didn’t know that?’

  ‘He usually groans about going, but I thought he liked it there as a kid.’

  Fisher sighed. It was a loaded sigh, spilling over with things unsaid. ‘Once upon a time, maybe. But even as a kid he never quite relaxed while we were on the island. When we gave you the place I thought he might finally see Belport the way I used to – as an escape, somewhere to decompress. But he never did.’

  She watched the road. Scrubland peeked out from beneath the steel safety barriers that lined the highway. One stretch had seen a bushfire roar through a summer or two earlier. The shoulder was still burned black, but the vegetation beyond was lush and green.

  ‘Did John ever tell you he asked for my blessing before he proposed to you?’ Fisher asked. ‘He came to me looking for approval. I told him it doesn’t usually work that way. Usually it’s the father of the bride that a man needs to convince. But he just wanted to know if I thought it was a good idea, that you were a good match.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ she said.

  He glanced down at his wedding band, polished gold and half a size too small. It made Kate picture cooking twine wrapped around sausage casing.

  ‘He spent his childhood seeking other people’s approval. Pam thinks it’s because I was too hard on him, and that I didn’t give him enough praise as a kid. But I just think that’s who he is. He’s a thinker.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him you were a safe bet,’ he said.

  A safe bet. Had he intended that to be a compliment?

  It had taken Kate a long time to understand why John chose to marry her. There were plenty of other women in his life who were much more attractive and interesting. He could have had his pick. Kate had forgettable looks. She was quiet, like a duck slipping silently through a pond. Yet John had courted her, aggressively, like a man who knew exactly what he wanted.

  Over the years of their marriage, Kate had peeled back the layers of her husband and caught a glimpse into his past, and she came to understand why he had chosen her. John had one other serious relationship before Kate. Her name was Audrey Finn – a movie star name. She was stunningly beautiful and a gifted artist. More than once, Kate had stalked her on Facebook after one or two glasses of white. Audrey Finn knew sign language because her sister was deaf. Her father was some sort of diplomat, and she had spent parts of her childhood in Japan and the United States. What John had told her implied that he simply couldn’t hold Audrey’s interest.

  Enter: Kate. Two years out of university, working at a low-level accounting firm in the northern suburbs. She had never had a serious boyfriend and had never travelled. She’d be crazy to abandon someone like John, and he knew it.

  ‘Kate, this should go without saying, but whatever happens, whatever we find out on that island, you and Mia will always be supported.’

  ‘Whatever happens?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to figure out why John would go to Belport, why he’d lie to you about leaving his job, why he’d lie to us. I’ve come up with a couple of theories, and, well … none of them are good.’

  Kate wet her lips and stepped harder on the accelerator. The speedometer crept up towards the speed limit, then over it.

  ‘All I’m saying is, we should prepare ourselves,’ Fisher said. ‘Mentally. We might be about to learn some things about John that we’d be better off not knowing.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Fisher looked out the window. ‘We all have things that ought to stay buried, things a person should keep to themselves. Things that, if they were ever dragged into the light, would change the way people saw us. I suppose my point is, how well can you really ever know anyone?’

  Kate wondered what dark things Fisher had buried.

  ‘You think he’s been having an affair, don’t you?’ She kept her eyes fixed on the road but felt his gaze on her. ‘He could have met someone there in the summer. A local woman. They could have stayed in touch. It’s easy enough nowadays.’

  ‘John wouldn’t do that,’ Fisher said, but his words were like a backdrop in a Hollywood studio, held together by balsawood and coated in cheap paint. ‘You’re speeding, Kate.’

  She slipped into the passing lane, cruised around a silver BMW and pulled hard back into the left lane.

  ‘Straight talk, remember?’

  ‘Straight talk,’ he echoed. ‘Yes, I did wonder if he was seeing someone else at first. When men do something out of character, there’s usually a woman involved. Now, in a strange sort of way, I hope that’s what this is.’

  ‘You hope he’s having an affair?’

  ‘Compared to the alternative, frankly, yes.’

  She eased off the pedal. ‘What’s the alternative?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what his boss told you. Spiritual distress. I hadn’t heard that term before, but it pretty much sums up a long period in John’s teen years. For a while there he got … dark.’

  She nodded. ‘I remember the photos from his deb. It looked like Alice Cooper’s wedding.’

  ‘It wasn’t just the black clothing and the heavy metal music,’ Fisher said. ‘He was obsessed with spirit boards and demonology and murder. He started reading horror novels by this mad American – Lovecroft? Something like that. And he was constantly researching a hundred-year-old poet called Aleister Crowley, who ran an occult religion. Pam pushed the Bible on him, which went about as well as you’d expect. That’s when she started volunteering at every mass, like she thought she could make up for it.’

  ‘That was a long time ago, Fisher. We all go through phases when we’re young and trying to figure out who we are. You might be putting things together that don’t really fit.’

  ‘Yeah. I suppose I’m just trying to find something to explain all this.’

  Kate was troubled by her father-in-law’s words, but she was also relieved to see him so emotionally vulnerable when for so long he’d appeared cold and distant. It made him seem three-dimensionally human.

  Fisher turned, looked out the window, and didn’t talk for the rest of the trip.

  * * *

  The giant steel doors of the ferry opened like the jaws of a leviathan, and Kate drove inside. Ahead of them was a rusted out old campervan with a bumper sticker on the rear window that declared, We’re spending our kids’ inheritance.

  The last time Kate had come to Belport was six months earlier, when the weather was so hot you couldn’t sit out on the top deck without 50+ sunscreen. People were getting around in board shorts and bikinis, and there was a fifteen-minute wait at the kiosk. The undercarriage of the ferry had been jammed with traffic: cars filled with camping equipment and kayaks tied to roof racks. Now the ferry was practically empty.

  Fisher went to the kiosk for coffee while Kate walked out onto the front deck and stood in the icy air. The fe
rry ride was only half an hour, so soon Belport rose ahead of her like a giant turtle shell spotted with moss. A bank of late-morning fog was rolling in across the water, shrouding parts of the island.

  She thought about what Fisher had said, about being prepared for what they might find. If they didn’t talk about the monsters in this world, then they wouldn’t be ready for them when they jumped out from under the bed. What monsters were waiting for her in Belport?

  8

  THE WIFE

  Lori stood on the front verandah, madly chewing the nail of her pinkie finger, wearing the face of someone who had just made a wrong turn in a bad neighbourhood. Eddie had gone ahead of her to catch the bus, but she was hovering. There was something on her mind.

  Abby watched her from the kitchen window, skulking behind the succulent planter box that lived on the windowsill, like a documentarian waiting to see what her subject might do next. Lori, with no idea she was being spied on, took two steps off the verandah. She then turned, marched back to the front door, hesitated, then turned again.

  Abby knocked on the glass. Lori flinched.

  ‘Something on your mind?’ she called. ‘You look like your father on the night you were born.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Lori called back, then started down the steps and into the front yard.

  Abby stepped into her sneakers and caught up to her. She was still in her pyjamas, but there was nobody around to judge.

  ‘What’s going on, Lori?’ Abby asked.

  ‘It’s nothing. Honestly.’ She looked down at her boots, kicked them against the bottom verandah step. ‘I was just going to ask, is everything okay between you and Dad?’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Abby said. ‘Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s probably nothing. I’m gonna miss my bus.’

  ‘Jesus, Lori, shit or get off the pot.’