by Anna Romer
‘You ran off that night,’ he said gruffly. ‘Before I could explain.’
‘Your explanation was clear enough.’
He shuffled, his boots scraping the brick path. ‘It came out all wrong. I made a mess of it, and by the time I’d collected myself, you’d gone. I’m sorry I hurt you,’ he added softly. ‘It wasn’t my intention.’
I wanted him to move into the light so I could see his face. I wanted to watch his eyes when I said the words I had travelled halfway across the globe to tell him. I don’t love you, Morgan. I made a mistake. It wasn’t love, after all. A girly crush, nothing more. You’re well and truly out of my system. Besides, I’ve met someone else, someone amazing, and we’re getting married . . .
I took a breath, but then he shifted into the lamplight and the words died on my tongue. There was that almost-smile again. The curve of his lips, the eye contact. The slight leaning forward as though drawn to me by gravitational force. I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets.
‘I’m not inviting you inside, if that’s what you’re hoping.’
‘Then will you walk with me?’
I almost said no. I almost turned and let myself into the silent house, escaped into the unfamiliar darkness. Almost. But here was an opportunity to hear the words I’d suspected all along. Words that would cure my Morgan fixation forever. I shrugged and went back down the steps, along the path, past my van and back out onto the deserted street.
We walked the block in silence. I drank in the damp air. Bright winter stars glittered overhead, and our shadows leaped along the footpath ahead of us, Morgan’s bearlike, mine willowy.
‘I’m listening,’ I prompted.
Morgan gave me a sideways glance. ‘I wish I could take back what I said to you that night. I wish we could forget it happened, start over. Go back to how things were before. I’ve missed you, Luce. Five years is too long.’
My words came out in a rush, my carefully rehearsed speech forgotten. ‘How can we ever go back? I’m not that smitten girl anymore, Morgan. You can’t give me the brush-off the way you did back then. All that stuff about the gap, about being old enough to be my father. I was twenty-one, not twelve. It was humiliating.’
He tried to take my arm, tried to swing me around to face him, but I shrugged him off and kept walking.
He caught up, kept pace beside me. ‘I wasn’t giving you the brush-off. It was more complicated than that. We had a past together. I’d known you since you were little. You were like family. Besides, you’d always been—’
‘A kid sister,’ I said bitterly.
‘Out of reach, I was going to say.’
The way he said it, the wistful catch in his voice. I almost dropped my guard. Out of reach? Stupid, how desperately I wanted to believe him. ‘Apology accepted,’ I said tersely. ‘Let’s just forget it ever happened.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
My skin began to flush hot and cold. A trembly sort of dread was setting in. I twisted my ring around so the diamond sat hard and solid in my palm. I gave it a reassuring squeeze, like a talisman.
‘It’s ancient history, okay? Water under the bridge. Anyway, I’ve moved on. Met someone, Dad must’ve told you? I’m getting married.’ My cheeks burned. Grateful for the dark, I put my head down and kept walking, but I could feel Morgan’s eyes on me.
‘So we’re good, then?’ he wanted to know.
‘Yeah.’
‘And you really love this guy?’
‘Why else would I be marrying him?’
‘Ron thinks you’re making a mistake.’
‘Oh, great. My father and my self-appointed big brother sitting in judgement of my life, how reassuring. For your information, I’ve known Adam for two years. He’s kind, intelligent, rich, and thoughtful. He has a good sense of humour—’
Morgan lifted a brow.
‘—and,’ I continued, flourishing my fingers as we passed beneath a streetlamp, ‘he bought me a freaking great diamond. What’s not to love?’
Morgan stopped walking and grabbed my hand, pulling me around so I had to look at him. He barely gave the diamond a glance, but searched my face.
‘Why are you trying so hard to convince me?’
‘I’m not.’
He was very near. When he spoke, his voice was low, his gaze intent on mine.
‘What really brought you home, Lucy?’
The ocean murmured in the bay, and a distant truck rattled along Elsternwick Road. I thought of the letter sitting on my bedside back at the house, my grandfather’s spidery writing barely legible. I thought of the object he had tucked into the envelope, and I shivered.
‘Just a visit.’
‘I think there’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘Why should I care what you think?’
Morgan let me go. ‘You shouldn’t care. Not if you’re certain Adam’s the man you really want.’
‘He is.’
‘Then I sincerely hope you’ll be happy together.’ He continued walking, shrugging deeper into his heavy coat, patting his ribcage as if absently searching his pockets, a sign he was deep in thought.
The action jogged a memory. A beach picnic, some years ago. A glimpse of Morgan’s perfectly flat stomach, tanned and hairy above the frayed waistline of his Levi’s. Not exactly a ripped six-pack, but an impressive effort for a man approaching forty.
I blinked away the vision. Morgan was now forty-three. Seventeen years and two months older than me. I didn’t need to calculate. Each year on my birthday, my first thought was always the gap. The gap mattered to me, because it mattered to Morgan. It had drawn a line in the sand that he simply would not cross.
I’m old enough to be your father, he’d told me that long ago night in the garden. Seventeen years is too much. You’re the same age as my son . . . besides, there’s still a chance to fix my marriage. Oh hell, Luce . . . we can’t do this, you know. Not now, not ever—
Eventually I had realised the truth. Morgan’s argument about our age difference was an excuse. A gentle way of breaking the news that he didn’t feel the same way, that he didn’t love me, would never love me, couldn’t. Weeks later, he and Gwen patched things up, and by then I had fled to the other side of the world.
Morgan stopped walking. ‘Did you hear that?’
A mournful yowl drifted from somewhere beneath us. Going over to the curb, he crouched unsteadily on the roadside. I joined him, and together we looked into the drain. A large whitish cat peered back at us. Morgan went to his knees and reached in. Grasping the animal by the scruff, he drew it out. Ribs and hipbones jutted from its filthy fur, its ears were bitten and bloodied. It struggled feebly, but made no attempt to scratch or bite. Morgan got to his feet, cradling the cat in his arms. It paddled its paws for a moment, but then settled against his chest.
‘It likes you,’ I said.
‘They don’t call me the cat whisperer for nothing.’
He looked so pleased with himself, and the cat seemed so quickly at home, that I almost laughed. Warmth flooded through me. I touched my fingers lightly to the cat’s soft belly. ‘Morgan, they don’t call you the cat whisperer, full stop.’
Our eyes met for a second, and then Morgan looked down at the cat. ‘Someone needs a good feed,’ he told it. ‘Here you go,’ he added, delivering the creature into my arms. ‘My wedding gift to you.’
I started to protest. I didn’t want a cat. I was only here for a month and there was no way I could take it back to London with me. Besides, Adam was allergic. Then I gazed into its enormous green eyes. It was cold and half-starved, frightened. I drew it against me. It squirmed but then curled in the warm crook of my arms, burrowing against my chest. An unfamiliar feeling came over me. Tenderness, I realised. My arms tightened protectively, and the cat began to purr.
By the time we reached my verandah, it was sleeping.
Morgan unlocked the front door for me. I couldn’t quite see his face in the semi-dark, just the outline of his featu
res etched silver in the moonlight. I took back the keys, but he lingered.
‘It’s good to see you, Lucy.’ Reaching over, he cupped the side of my face. His hand was calloused and warm, his touch distantly familiar. He traced his thumb across my cheekbone, and then leaned in to press a light kiss on my forehead. ‘I hope everything works out for you. You of all people deserve to be happy.’
I shivered, instinctively raising my face, but Morgan was already retreating across the verandah, his shadow briefly eclipsing the moonlight as he went down the stairs, into the yard. A moment later, his motorbike roared to life and he was gone.
For the longest time I stood there, watching the gap in the hedge, imagining what would happen if he reappeared. What would happen if he rushed back to me, pulled me into his arms and kissed me properly. Of course, he didn’t. I touched the place above my eyebrow where he had pressed his lips, and shivered again. Morgan was my first love. I would probably never forget him. But the last five years had changed me. The naive young girl was gone. In her place was someone less trustful, someone who guarded her heart more carefully.
I went inside and shut the door. Dad’s friend who owned the house was an artist, and all her rooms smelled vaguely of Venetian turpentine, which I found reassuring. Her walls were crowded with artworks and the rooms furnished with a comfortable jumble of second-hand finds and battered old antiques. Breathing in the sweetly tart air, I carried the cat upstairs to the sunroom, where I made him a nest from a cardboard box lined with an old jumper. I fed him tuna straight from the can, and then watched him sniff around his new home. Ten minutes later, he was curled in the box, purring noisily.
I stood at the sunroom window, my fingertips resting on the cold glass as I gazed over the treetops and houses, across Port Phillip Bay. The water looked icy and desolate. A small thornlike pain pricked my heart. If only, it seemed to say. If only you hadn’t rushed off that night. If only you had waited, bided your time, maybe then . . .
‘Sparks are overrated,’ I reminded myself.
Beyond the window, the stars and moon disappeared behind a bank of clouds. The water in the bay turned black. Tiny lights glittered along the esplanade, houses and streetlights, and there in the distance, a solitary vessel inched its way slowly out to sea.
4
Victorian coast, 1929
Orah huddled beside her mother in the belly of the lifeboat, thigh-deep in water, freezing fingers clamped to the crossbench. Staring over the rim, she searched the moonlit waves. Splintered planks swirled like matchsticks in the black water. Barrels bobbed among the wreckage, a suitcase and a small chest swirled past. Once, she glimpsed something white that might have been a man. It turned out to be an empty nightshirt. The current churned the shirt on its foamy surface, and then sucked it away.
Hot tears stung her eyes as she looked for the shore.
‘Mam, we’re drifting out to sea!’ She hadn’t meant to sound so small and frightened, not when she’d made a private promise to be brave. They only had one oar, and no rope nor anchor. Not that it would have mattered. A weaving woman and her thirteen-year-old daughter from the cobbled heart of Glasgow were no match for the sea. The Lady Mary’s captain and his crew had gone down. The strong labourers, the midshipmen, the navvies and stewards – all of them gone. Orah and her mother were the last survivors, and the sea was hungry for them too.
Mam grasped her hand. ‘We’ll be all right, love. The coastguard will find us, and before you know it we’ll be with your pa, snug in warm blankets, sipping sugary tea.’
When Mam pressed her lips to Orah’s brow, Orah began to weep. The kiss was warm, the only warmth apart from her tears that Orah had felt in hours. She clung to her mother, and Mam stroked her cold face. Orah found herself drifting into an uneasy stupor, rocked by the swell of water beneath them, cradled in Mam’s arms . . .
But then Mam cried out.
Orah lurched up in time to see an outcrop of rocks loom out of the water into their path. Mam flung herself to the edge of the boat, grappling for the oar, but she was too late. The lifeboat struck the rock. The impact threw Mam off balance, and before her daughter’s frozen senses could react, she had gone overboard.
Orah launched after her, but the vessel lurched violently and almost sent her into the water too. Mam surfaced and Orah reached down and grasped her hand, but she was too heavy to drag over the rim and back into the boat.
Orah clutched her tightly. ‘Mam!’
‘Hold on, Orah,’ Mam said. Clamping her free hand on the edge of the boat, she tried to heave herself up, but again the little vessel listed dangerously, sinking lower in the water.
‘Let go of my hand,’ Mam ordered.
Orah let go. The boat sat low in the water, rocking and dipping wildly as Mam struggled to pull herself up over the side. Her arms shook and her wet dress dragged her backwards with each wave. Orah gripped her under the arms, but again and again the swell threw them off balance. Mam was growing tired. For a while she rested her head against the rim of the boat, panting. When she looked up again, her eyes held a glimmer of her old fire.
‘Hold tight,’ she instructed. She edged along the boat and grasped the bow, then began to paddle with one arm. Slowly, the lifeboat began to move through the water towards the shore.
Just when Orah thought they were safe, the swell retreated and another bank of submerged rock broke the surface nearby. The current foamed and swirled, rushing the lifeboat towards it.
Orah screamed.
Mam wrenched around. Her face was chalky, her eyes widened when she saw the rock. Her mouth opened in a silent cry as the wave hollowed out and sucked the boat swiftly towards the rock. Her body struck it soundlessly. She buckled like a rag doll, and the tide dragged her under.
Orah threw herself to the front of the boat and straddled the edge, somehow managing to grasp Mam’s sleeve, then her wrist. Mam’s skin was slippery, and Orah almost lost her. Then their hands locked and Mam’s face broke the surface.
She gasped. ‘Orah . . . Orah!’
Orah hung on hard. Her hands were strong. After Pa’s departure for Australia six years before, Mam had kept them in food and board by spinning raw yarn and weaving woollen cloth for a tailor. Orah had helped to spin and card the yarn, a job she had come to love. It had given her the gift of physical strength, which until now she had taken for granted.
She tightened her grip, but seawater found its way through her fingers, into her palm, weakening her hold. Mam’s lips moved. As if from a great distance, her voice spoke softly in Orah’s mind.
My clever girl, one day you’ll leave the nest and make a great life for yourself. When you do, remember that whatever else changes, your old mam will always love you.
Mam locked her gaze on Orah. Her fingers slackened. ‘My darling girl, I love you so.’
‘No,’ Orah cried. What was Mam doing? ‘No, no!’
Mam released her grip. Her eyes widened as she slipped from Orah’s grasp. Mam cried out, a single word, a final haunting wail that was lost forever as the black water claimed her and took her under.
Orah couldn’t remember how the lifeboat had capsized, only that the lower half of her body was now in the water. She grasped the splintered hull with frozen fingers. Debris bobbed past, chests and lifebelts, scraps of wood. Black waves slapped against her, foul-smelling and oily.
She wanted to sink into the darkness and be with Mam. She was so very tired. The effort of staying alive was wearying, and she wished it over. All she had to do was let go. The seawater would rush in and fill her lungs, all the bubbles of her breath would escape, and she would sink down and join her mother in slumber.
She glared at her fingers, willing them to loosen. Mam, wait for me. Don’t leave me alone. Tears began to burn down her cheeks. Her brain was punishing her, throwing out sweet memories that here, in the vast cold hell of the sea, made her ache with longing: Mam’s lips on her brow, Mam’s gentle voice, her big soft-bodied embrace, her reassuring presence. Only
now, there were other memories: Mam’s worried eyes, Mam in the water, the slow horrible slide as Mam slipped through Orah’s fingers and away. If only she were still here. Orah screwed up her eyes, searching the dark water, wishing hard. Perhaps Mam had surfaced again, too far away for Orah to see. Perhaps she was, at this very moment, searching the wreckage for a sign of Orah.
‘Mam!’ she shouted. ‘Where are you?’
Orah’s cry ended on a shriek as something nudged her shoulder. She wrenched around, alight with frantic joy. Mam’s survived. She’s not dead at all, and now she’s found her way back to the lifeboat, back to me—
But it wasn’t Mam.
It was a boy. Treading water an arm’s length away. His brown face peered at her through the half-light. Wild wet hair jutted from his head, and his straight brows furrowed over midnight eyes. Eyes so dark they surely belonged to a devil risen from the deep.
‘Give me your hand,’ he said sharply.
Orah’s mouth opened, but the scream stuck in her throat. She tried to thrash away from the boy, but lost her hold on the broken hull and slid into the water, swallowing a mouthful. She began to cough so hard she couldn’t breathe.
The boy grasped her arm. She shoved away from him, spluttering and gasping, managing to scramble back to the upturned boat. He tried to take hold of her again, but she lashed out, clawing at him with frozen fingers.
‘Let me help,’ he said more gently. ‘Put your arms around my neck and hold on. I’ll swim you to shore.’
He pointed to the headland, and finally Orah’s fearful mind began to jostle together a sort of sense. She looked at him. He was no devil from the deep. Just a boy, not much older than her. He patted his shoulder and said, ‘Here, climb on my back. Hold tight. Don’t be afraid. I’m a good swimmer.’
Orah made no move to let go.
‘Will you let me help?’ he asked.