by Jane Harper
The Surf and Turf looked exactly the same as it had three years ago. Ten years ago, even. One whole side of the weatherboard building was still adorned by an outline of a giant crayfish, fashioned entirely from sun-bleached shells glued to the wall. A painted sign at the entrance read: In here for fish from there, with an uneven arrow pointing to the ocean that lay a stone’s throw from the outdoor dining deck.
Kieran and Mia, zipped into jackets that barely had cause to leave the wardrobe back home in Sydney, crossed Beach Road without bothering to look either way. Evelyn Bay’s main drag had the ghost-town feel that Kieran had always associated with the end of summer. Parking spaces so coveted in mid-season that they sparked incidents of road rage now lay empty and unloved. Every shop, including the small supermarket, had shut for the evening, and blank windows indicated more than one business had closed its doors for good for the off-season.
It hadn’t always been like that, apparently. Evelyn Bay lay sandwiched between native woodlands and the sea, and its fortunes had been driven by fishing and forestry back when Kieran’s parents had been his age. Now the next generation drove dolphin-watching boats during the summer and scrabbled for labouring and casual work in the winter. Or they left town altogether.
The Surf and Turf was busy, which at that hour of the night and that time of the year meant a handful of people scattered across half-a-dozen tables. No-one paid Kieran any real attention as they entered. He hadn’t expected them to – twelve years was a long time in anyone’s book, and the few people who’d felt the burning need to have a crack had mostly done so – but he still felt a bit relieved.
A couple of young guys Kieran didn’t recognise were drinking on the outside deck, pretending not to be cold in their t-shirts in the twilight, and he was glad to see Ash had already commandeered an inside table near the back. Ash had a beer in one hand and his phone in the other, and put both down on the chipped surface as he saw them heading over.
‘Verity stepped up with the babysitting duty, eh? Good on her.’
Kieran nodded. His mum had, without complaint. She’d simply cleared a collection of half-filled moving boxes before settling down on the couch with her husband and grandchild for a long evening of low-verbal, high-dependency companionship. Kieran and Mia had exchanged guilty looks and hovered in the hallway, taking their time putting on their shoes and finding their phones, until Verity had got up off the couch and opened the front door for them herself, rolling her eyes as they at last stepped out into the evening air.
Ash’s phone buzzed on the table and he checked the screen. ‘Sean’s on his way. He had to fix something on the boat.’
‘Anything serious?’
‘Probably not, think he’s just flat out.’ Ash took a sip of beer. ‘Even Liv was saying –’
‘What was I saying?’ A waitress appeared at the table, pad and pen in hand and sporting the Surf and Turf’s distinctive uniform of orange t-shirt and skirt. She didn’t listen to Ash’s answer, instead moving around the table. ‘Oh my God, Mia, hello.’
Olivia Birch held her arms out to Mia, who was already rising to greet her. The two women hugged, then leaned back to examine each other properly.
Kieran’s guess had been right. Even more than a decade out of high school, in garish orange and with her thick curly bun already collapsing mid-shift, Olivia was still, by any objective measure, the most striking woman in the room.
‘Hi Kieran,’ she said, over his girlfriend’s shoulder.
‘G’day, Liv.’
She looked like she might say something else, but then simply let go of Mia and opened her notebook. ‘So, drinks?’
‘Liv, thanks so much for the little outfit you sent for Audrey,’ Mia said, when Olivia returned with the tray. ‘I’ve got a photo –’
She pulled out her phone and Olivia put down the drinks and peered over.
‘God, she is so cute. Where is she anyway? With Verity?’
‘Yeah,’ Mia said. ‘We’re here all this week, though. I’ll bring her in.’
‘Do. Or stop by my place anytime. I’m only a few doors up from you.’
‘Yeah, Ash said. We kind of met your housemate earlier, actually.’
‘Bronte?’
Olivia glanced across the room, and for the first time Kieran noticed the girl from the beach, now also wearing the orange t-shirt and skirt. She was younger than he’d initially thought, only twenty-one or twenty-two, maybe. She was short, with a neat round face and wide eyes that made her look uncannily doll-like. Her hair was tied back now and Kieran could see that the colour that had looked simply dark blonde on the beach was in fact created by the kind of intricate highlights that were common on the streets of Sydney, but in this context looked exotically groomed.
Bronte was carrying a glass of red wine to a corner table, where a man sat alone glaring at a laptop screen. She made an inaudible remark as she placed the drink on a cardboard coaster and the man smiled despite himself. He sat back, stretching his shoulders, and took a decent swallow of wine. He mimed tipping the rest of the glass over the keyboard in mock frustration and they both laughed. She turned away and the man put his glass down carefully, watching Bronte over his laptop screen as she threaded her way through the tables.
‘She’s not local, is she?’ Kieran asked.
‘No.’ Olivia shook her head. ‘Summer.’
Ears possibly burning, Bronte’s gaze fell on Olivia, before clocking Kieran and Mia. She smiled in recognition, then held up a finger in a wait-a-moment gesture. She disappeared through the swinging door labelled ‘Staff Only’ and re-emerged a few seconds later holding a battered cardboard box with ‘Lost Property’ scrawled on the side.
‘Not the same, I know,’ Bronte said as she made her way over. ‘But it might save you having to buy another one.’
She passed the box to Mia. Inside Kieran could see dozens of sunhats of different sizes and colours, some virtually new.
‘We were getting about five a day left behind at one point, so if there’s anything in there for your baby, you may as well take it.’ Bronte picked up a small yellow floral hat still with the sales tag attached. ‘No-one’s coming back for them now.’
‘Thanks very much,’ Mia said, sifting through the box as she introduced them both. ‘That’s so thoughtful.’
‘Guilty conscience.’ Ash grinned as he took a slug of beer. ‘Eh, Bronte? Least you could bloody do after letting us all down before.’
‘Get lost. That water was freezing.’ Bronte’s laugh trailed off a little under Olivia’s cool gaze, and she launched into the story – how she was minding her own business on the beach, and Kieran and Mia were there, and then Ash arrived – flapping the floral-patterned hat about as she spoke. The incident sounded faintly odd in the re-telling.
‘Ah,’ was all Olivia said when Bronte ran out of steam.
Bronte barely drew breath before turning to Kieran. ‘So Verity’s your mum, is she? She’s so nice. She was clearing out her shed a few weeks ago and she gave me some wire for these little sculptures I’ve been messing around with. I ended up giving her a hand and she let me take a few useful bits and pieces.’
‘Are you an artist?’ Kieran said.
‘Yes. Well –’ Bronte paused as Olivia, who was leaning against Ash’s chair, shifted. ‘Art student. I’m at uni in Canberra.’
‘Cool. What kind of art?’
‘All kinds, I haven’t decided what to focus on yet. But I want to do a big coastal series this term, so I thought this seemed a good place to, you know –’ She made a sweeping gesture. ‘– get inspired.’
Even Kieran caught a flicker in Olivia’s neutral expression that time. Bronte blinked, suddenly self-conscious. She was saved by a call from the kitchen hatch and, not bothering to hide her relief, hurried away.
Olivia glanced sharply at Ash, responding to something Kieran hadn’t caught. ‘What?’ she said
.
Ash looked up. ‘Nothing.’
‘I didn’t say a thing to her.’
‘I didn’t say you did, Liv.’
When Olivia didn’t respond, Ash reached out and pulled her closer.
‘Come on. Does she really matter?’ Ash grinned at her until finally she smiled back. ‘Don’t let yourself get wound up.’
‘No. I know.’ Olivia shrugged, a little embarrassed now as she turned to Kieran and Mia. ‘But she is only a student. Same as me. Or if she doesn’t like that, she can say she’s a waitress, same as me. But she’s no more an artist than I am an urban planner. Which I’m not anymore, obviously. I just think it’s disingenuous to go around saying something that’s not the case.’
Mia nodded sympathetically. She put a couple of baby hats on the table and pushed the box aside. ‘There’s nothing at all around here that’s more in your field, Liv?’
‘Not really. I mean, at the firm in Melbourne my specialism was zoning issues for buildings over twelve storeys – for which the demand around here is clearly zero –’
She was right about that, Kieran thought. The tallest building in Evelyn Bay was the former Captain’s Quarters in the old colonial part of town. The heritage-listed sandstone building, now a bed and breakfast, had an upstairs.
‘– but I knew it would be like this,’ Olivia was saying. ‘When I realised I was going to have to move back, I applied to do a Master’s online, so at least that’s something. Try to keep my hand in the industry. For whatever it’s worth.’
She didn’t sound optimistic.
‘How is your mum these days?’ Mia asked.
Olivia shrugged. ‘She’s fine. She’s okay. Happy I’m back. She’d prefer me to be living at home with her, but there’s no way. I’d go crazy in five minutes. Although –’ They could see Bronte now wiping down the outside tables, her hair blowing across her face in the wind. Olivia smiled, attempting to lighten the mood. ‘Frying pan, fire.’
Mia laughed. ‘Is she really that bad?’
‘No, to be fair, she’s not. She’s just –’ Olivia watched as the two young guys shivering in their t-shirts attempted small talk. Bronte smiled and shrugged and continued wiping. ‘– young. I mean, she literally didn’t even know that you have to book hard waste collections. She was dumping all this art stuff next to the wheelie bins and honestly expecting it to disappear. It’s as if –’
She stopped as Ash rested his hand on her waist.
‘She’ll be gone soon,’ he said. ‘How long to go? Three weeks?’
‘Two weeks, five days.’
‘There you go. Keep your eye on the prize.’ He grinned. ‘You’ll be back to walking around the house naked before you know it. You’ll love it.’
‘I’ll love not having to chase up her share of whatever bill she owes me. Oh –’ Olivia looked across the dining area. ‘Hang on, I’d better see to that.’
The t-shirt boys, their arms only the faintest shade of blue, had admitted defeat and come inside to pay. Kieran watched with interest as Ash’s eyes followed Olivia all the way to the cash register. He had never known Ash and Olivia as a couple. They weren’t quite how he would have imagined, but then he’d never really imagined them together. Ash almost certainly had, though. Kieran would be surprised if the idea of being with Liv Birch hadn’t crossed the minds of most blokes in town at one time or another.
As he reached for his drink, Kieran felt it before he saw it. The prickling sensation of being under scrutiny. He didn’t move his head, instead sliding his gaze slowly around the room. It took him a second to locate the source, but when he did, it was with a sinking feeling.
The boy – man, really, these days – was standing behind the kitchen hatch. He was broad-shouldered and wearing a grease-stained apron and an expression that made Kieran wish he were anywhere else.
From the guy’s size and stance he could have been in his mid-twenties, but Kieran knew for a fact he was nineteen. He was wearing a nametag too small to read, but Kieran didn’t need it anyway. Liam Gilroy.
Kieran took a breath, then another, and forced himself to make eye contact. Liam immediately pretended to be looking past him, then turned back to his grill. Kieran waited for a feeling of relief, but none came. There would be no real trouble, he knew, there never was, but the room suddenly felt stifling. Kieran checked if Mia had noticed the exchange, but she was absorbed in picking a loose thread off one of the hats without unravelling the whole row of stitches. He stood, a little too quickly, and his chair squealed against the floor.
‘Back in a minute.’
Ash and Mia immediately looked up, both flashing an identical don’t leave me plea with their eyes. They got along fine in wider company, but struggled with small talk one on one, Kieran knew. Still, that couldn’t be helped.
He left them to their slightly strained smiles and made a beeline for the toilets. There was no-one else there, and he stood in the quiet. The mirrors above the sinks were streaked and in the harsh bathroom lights his reflection looked a little older than his thirty years. He was always tired these days. The lack of sleep since Audrey had arrived had been brutal. He washed his hands slowly, debating whether he and Mia could decently leave before Sean arrived. Probably. He and Sean went back far enough that he could get away with it. But at the same time, it went against the grain a little.
Mia didn’t really get it.
‘Male friendships are so weird, you guys barely keep in touch,’ she’d said to him as they were packing to come here.
‘Yeah, we do. I see them every time I visit.’
‘In between, though. I mean, you never even speak.’
That was true. Kieran had heard about Ash and Olivia getting together through Mia, who had heard it from Olivia in one of their thrice-yearly catch-up emails.
‘I suppose,’ he’d said. ‘Works out, though.’
And it did. Kieran was never worried about that. Partly because when the three of them did see each other they really were able to pick up where they’d left off. But mostly because if they had been going to fall apart, it would have happened twelve years ago. Kieran turned off the tap and looked away from his reflection. If they’d managed to survive that – those really dark days of blame and reckoning – they could certainly survive a couple of years of sporadic text messages.
Kieran dried his hands, checked his phone and, unable to string things out any longer, finally pulled the door open. He’d barely stepped out into the tight vestibule separating the toilets from the dining area when he heard the familiar voice floating from the kitchen. The words were muffled by the whine of the industrial fan, but were clear enough to make him stop short. Kieran stood very still, knowing with an instinct that he’d fine-tuned over the years that the conversation was about him.
‘If it was up to me, he wouldn’t even be allowed in here.’ Liam sounded very pissed off.
A girl’s polite laugh. ‘Well, last I checked, nothing around here was up to us.’ It was Bronte speaking; Kieran recognised her voice now. ‘Anyway, he seems all right.’
‘And how would you know that?’
Bronte seemed taken aback. ‘I don’t, really –’
‘You don’t know anything about him.’
‘No. I suppose not. I just –’
‘What?’
‘I don’t get why you’re giving him a hard time, that’s all.’
‘No?’
Kieran realised he was holding his breath. He let it out. There would be no surprises in what was coming next.
‘Well, whatever.’ Liam’s voice was hard. ‘But the way I see it – you kill someone, you deserve all the shit that’s coming your way.’
Chapter 3
It was lucky – or perhaps unlucky – that Sean was sitting at the table when Kieran re-emerged into the bright lights of the dining area, because otherwise he would have grab
bed Mia’s hand, said a swift farewell to Ash and left. He was still strongly considering this course of action when Sean stood to greet him, a broad lazy smile spreading across his face.
‘Good to see you, mate. Sorry I’m late, you know what it gets like with the season change.’ Sean pulled his chair around next to Kieran’s and after a moment, Kieran sat down too. ‘I’m glad you’re still here. I thought new parents would be crashed out by this time of night.’
‘Yeah.’ Kieran could feel Mia watching him closely and cleared his throat. Tried to remember what his normal voice sounded like. ‘Well, usually we are, but –’
‘Let me guess. But Ash bullied you into coming out anyway.’ Sean gave a knowing nod and held up a palm. ‘Say no more.’
Kieran’s smile was genuine this time. ‘But we wanted to say hello, mate.’
He meant it. Kieran couldn’t remember a time when he and Sean hadn’t been friends. Sean had always been there. There were photos of them as infants at each other’s first birthday parties, and Kieran’s earliest memory was of the two of them on the beach, their parents chatting while the boys dug holes in the sand and kicked water at each other.
Sean had grown from a quiet, skinny, hippie kid into a thoughtful, rangy, eco-conscious man who was at his happiest out on the water, watching the horizon rock gently from the deck of a boat. His hair was still short enough to dry with a single swipe of his hand, and he always gave the vague impression that he’d emerged moments earlier fresh from the sea and thrown on whatever clothes were to hand.
He wasn’t quite the same person he’d been in the time Kieran now simply thought of as before, but none of them were. Mia, Ash, Olivia, Olivia’s mother, Kieran’s own parents. Liam. Kieran himself, obviously. No-one had come through the storm unscathed.
Kieran glanced now at the kitchen hatch. At least he couldn’t see Liam anymore. He sat back in his chair and tried to relax.
‘Hey, hey, no-one’s been bullied into anything,’ Ash was saying. ‘I’m insulted by that on Kieran’s behalf. He and Mia are here of their own free will.’