After the Darkness

by Brown, Honey

  ‘We’re not in any trouble with anyone.’

  ‘As long as you don’t lose the house or some stupid shit like that – that would really piss me off. If we’re going to go totally broke, will you tell us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you coming inside now?’

  ‘In a minute. I’ll make sure this thing doesn’t explode.’

  Steven wandered off in the direction of the house. His figure grew pale and ghost-like in the dark.

  8

  I got up early. It was a cold morning. I went quickly into the bathroom and saw that my eyes had improved. Before turning on the shower I leaned back into the bedroom and asked Bruce to switch on the news. He was still asleep. I padded out to unplug the clock radio and brought it into the bathroom with me. I set it up beside the sink, tuning it to the ABC, cranking up the volume. I listened to the news while I showered. At each introduction to the news items, I leaned away from the noise of the water. If it wasn’t about a man found dead or murdered, I went back to showering. With a towel wrapped around me, I put the TV on in the bedroom. Bruce stirred in the bed.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  He didn’t answer. I went around to look at his face. His complexion was healthier.

  ‘How are your ribs?’

  ‘Hard to tell right at this moment.’

  I left him alone to wake up.

  In the walk-in robe the 99/2000 box at the end of the shelf kept catching my eye. I’d returned the empty carton to the shelf. I’d been relieved as I’d slid the vacant box back into place. It had seemed prophetic that my orderly line was still achievable. Nothing was noticeably out of place. But it niggled at me that inside the box was nothing but air. The box was a placebo.

  I heard Bruce making his way to the toilet.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I called.

  ‘Yes,’ he mumbled.

  I pulled on a pair of tight-fitting black jeans, an open-collared white shirt, a fitted black jacket and my knee-high leather boots. Power dressing wasn’t something I usually did. I often wore these boots with a long skirt to soften the sadomasochist vibe they gave off. The jacket felt too tight and constricting. The collar on the white shirt was pointy and the cuffs were stiff and theatrical. I didn’t stop there though – I returned to the bathroom and spent time on my hair, flicking the ends, feathering my fringe over my eyes. I applied my make-up, softly shading my tender eyelids, hiding what I could. Then I went to my dresser, opened my jewellery box, and put on a long silver chain.

  Bruce had returned to bed. He did a double take when he saw me. His eyebrows drew together. His head tilted. ‘What are you doing, sweetheart?’

  ‘If we’re getting back to it, this makes me feel a bit more like I can.’

  ‘Don’t go in today.’

  ‘I’m interviewing a tenant for Tyler Street. I have a stack of contracts that I have to go through. The septic thing at the block has to be worked out. We’ll probably have to get a tradesman in to replace the Kew Street boundary fence. You were meant to start on that today. I have to ring and let the Sedjaks know it won’t be happening. There are bills —’

  ‘Don’t go in.’

  ‘I have to take the kids in to school anyway. I’ll go to the office, put in a few hours, and come home. Otherwise, work will build up and build up.’ I moved closer to him. ‘We can do this. Right? This is probably more common than we could ever know. I don’t mean this exactly, but tough situations, bad things. Bad things happen all the time, it’s just that no one ever talks about them.’

  He was watching me. The light was dim, and I couldn’t see his eyes clearly. His body language was difficult to read.

  ‘Do you agree? Do you think it’s common that people don’t report things, more common than going to the police?’

  ‘I guess.’

  I collected up my wet towels and went into the bathroom to hang them up. ‘How are your hands?’ I asked, returning.

  ‘They’re okay.’

  ‘Ribs?’

  He moved uncomfortably. ‘Still sore.’ He pulled himself up to sit with the pillows against the headboard behind him. ‘What about your eyes?’ he asked me. ‘You need to go to a doctor and make sure there’s no permanent damage.’

  ‘They’re fine. Bruce, I burnt our clothes last night. I burnt the tax and did the clothes with it. Steven came out and saw me. He thinks we’re in financial trouble.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘I had to burn them. We couldn’t keep them in the house. But I’m worried that the soles of the shoes didn’t burn. If they didn’t, we should bury them. And, also, I wanted to talk to you about the internet – we should be careful about what we google. Can’t the police tag certain words? Key words or phrases can be traced back to people’s computers. I’m pretty sure they can do that. If we typed in his name, for example, it might set off an alert. I was worried you might search the internet for things. Maybe they don’t release details for that reason, so they can use the internet as a tool? That makes sense – once the story has broken, everyone is googling it.’

  I was talking fast, ideas tripping over one another and on my tongue before I knew what I was saying. Bruce’s tone when it came was a blow to my stomach – it was so measured and so at odds with mine.

  ‘You burnt the clothes.’

  ‘You think I’ve done the wrong thing?’ I asked, breathless.

  ‘No, I’m surprised, I’m just …’ His hands must have been sorer than he was letting on, because he turned his head and used his shoulder to rub his jaw. ‘I’m thinking …’

  Before my eyes, my husband came back. It wasn’t a click of the fingers and he was right, nothing like that, not at all, but it was as though he could suddenly think and move a little more freely. It was like a noose had been removed from around his neck.

  ‘Did they burn completely?’ he asked.

  I realised, for him, it had all hinged on the clothes. Without them he believed he had a better chance of covering up details of the attack. His jeans, his socks, his shirt, his shoes, his underwear; they’d all held traces of what he wanted hidden.

  ‘They’re all ash now,’ I said.

  He nodded as he thought. ‘We might have been wrong in not going to the police,’ he began. ‘I think we’ve been in shock. Our decision might have been rash. We panicked. We don’t know enough about what happened to try and deal with it alone. What if someone else —’

  Summer came into the bedroom, carrying our breakfast on a tray. She fussed about, smoothing out a flat surface on the bed for the spread. She’d garnished an omelette with thin curls of orange rind. She’d found some bacon in the freezer and fried it in strips, grilled tomatoes. Her small face was flushed with pleasure and the heat of the cooktop.

  Bruce held my gaze.

  ‘You look a bit better,’ Summer said to him. She snuck a glance at his wrists. His long-sleeved pyjama top covered them. Her gaze danced over his battered hands.

  ‘This looks amazing, Summer.’ Bruce tasted the omelette. He made all the right sounds.

  Summer began swaying from foot to foot. ‘This is going to be good. You can get better on my food. Mum doesn’t have to cook. I’ll be helping.’

  Her excitement was as much for her father’s returned appetite as it was for his enjoyment of her food. When Bruce smiled there was no culpability evident any more; there was tightness and regret. Summer deserved more than our secrets.

  Once she left, he said, ‘What if someone else was in the house? I keep thinking I remember hearing someone else. Things are coming back to me. We can’t deal with this on our own. It’s too big to keep to ourselves.’

  ‘I burnt the clothes.’

  ‘We’ll say we weren’t thinking straight.’

  ‘It’ll be obvious we were trying to cover it up.’

  ‘We’ll say we panicked.’

  ‘Bruce … we’d be interrogated even more now; you’d have to be so careful about what you say. Leaving like we did will make it
seem like we were guilty of something. The system isn’t always fair.’ I said below my breath, ‘We would have to lie about him being unconscious. Even then you could be charged.’

  ‘What we’re doing isn’t right.’

  ‘We don’t know that. Maybe this is the right thing for us, for the children. What’s going to happen if you’re charged? How will we explain that we haven’t got our clothes? How do we know it won’t be turned around on us? I know what you’re doing, Bruce. I know what you’re thinking. But burning the clothes doesn’t make it better. We’ve destroyed evidence, on top of leaving, and his death. It’s too much. We can’t go to the police now.’

  I climbed into the four-wheel drive. The car we’d taken on holiday. The vehicle Reuben had moved. Goosebumps formed on my arms. I tried not to inhale, for fear of smelling him. I closed the door and wound down the window. Renee sat in the front passenger seat. She smelt of hay and horse manure. I could breathe more freely thanks to my eldest daughter. There were flecks of chaff on her school blazer.

  ‘How smokin’ do you look?’ she said.

  Steven climbed in the back seat. His hair was a carefully constructed bird’s nest. I could tell by his sucked-in cheeks that he wouldn’t be involving himself in conversation with family members this morning. Summer was last into the car.

  I backed out of the carport.

  Renee had her schoolbag between her legs and was fossicking through, dragging out folders and homework, piling them on the console between the two front seats. She stopped. ‘What’s that?’ She moved her foot and leaned down to look at the floor mat.

  My body froze. A sharp pain shot behind my eyes.

  ‘What is that?’ Renee asked again.

  I stared ahead, not taking my eyes from the driveway. Renee pulled her bag up onto her knee and drew up her legs. ‘Is that blood?’

  ‘Roll up the mat.’

  ‘Mum, is that blood? How did it get on the mat?’

  We were at the front of the property. I pulled up and put on the handbrake. I got out and walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle. It was a foggy morning and the air was wet. I opened the car door. Renee was curled up on the seat, her face screwed up in disgust. My eldest daughter had an aversion to blood and all bodily fluids. Nursing would be a poor choice of vocation for her. I reached in and rolled up the mat. It was smeared with blood from Bruce’s boots. If I had more experience in such matters I would have remembered the mat and burnt it last night with the other bloodstained items, but I was a beginner, I was bound to make mistakes. I took the mat and shoved it into the boot.

  The kids were silent all the way to school. Because of the fog I put the headlights on low and took it slow. Visibility was down to zero in some spots. Steven opened up his laptop, Renee filled in her school diary, and, behind me, I sensed Summer was staring off into the middle distance, all at sea.

  I parked behind the line of school buses. The large secondary campus was positioned higher than the valley farmland around it, and foggy mornings only ever lapped at the oval edges and curled weakly through the admin buildings. The day was clear and warm here. The children climbed out of the car.

  Summer was a cusp-child. Her birthday fell in the school age cut-off month. We could have held her back a year, but we chose to enrol her with her fifth birthday barely under her belt. She was a bright girl. We figured she’d fit in. Amongst the other Year Seven students though, she was small. Into the second school term and she remained a loner in her class.

  Renee came around to my side of the car and kissed me. She levelled a serious gaze at me. ‘Did Dad go totally spare on one of the muggers?’

  ‘We’re not talking about it.’

  ‘God, it’s all so weird and heavy. Okay. See ya!’ She bounded off.

  Steven stalked away without a goodbye or a backwards glance. I watched as a group of three girls standing on the footpath fiddled with their hair in an attempt to camouflage their stares. They were younger than he was. The girls in Steven’s grade were more brazen than that; they emailed him semi-naked pictures of themselves and sent him suggestive texts. Or so Renee had informed me. Girls courted Steven, not the other way around. Steven’s steps slowed as one of the girls from his year approached. Carissa was a big-boned, fun-loving girl, not unlike Renee – a busty brunette with a devil glint in her eye. She bit her bent finger as she summed up Steven for the day, and then her lips smacked together. The girl could swallow my boy whole. He hunched his back and curved his hand around the nape of his neck. She reached up to tousle his hair, and he twisted his head to avoid her touch. I saw the wide smile on my son’s face. I changed my mind about him still being a virgin.

  Summer came around and gave me a peck on the cheek.

  ‘See you tonight, Mum.’

  ‘Summer, don’t worry. Everything is under control.’

  On the outskirts of town, down a fog-enshrouded street, I stopped and took the rolled-up mat from the boot. I stuffed it into a bin out on the kerb. It was rubbish collection day. A boy dressed in the local primary school colours saw me do it. He grinned and gave me a cheeky thumbs-up.

  9

  Our town was called Delaney. The name meant ‘grove’. Poplar trees lined each side of the main street, and the symmetry of the trees gave the town an organised feel. For me, they also added a fairytale enchantment. At the moment the trees were green, but with a smattering of toasted-brown – the first touch of autumn. Visitors admired the grove. Locals had meetings about it, how best to maintain the trees’ iconic status.

  Bruce and I had rented office space within the shade of the poplars. If the leaves fluttered across the footpath outside your business, it meant you were in the best position to do well. Poplar foliage was like fairy dust. Bruce and I barely scraped in, but the lightest sprinkle of glitter was enough. Our office was in a bank of one-room businesses – a nail technician, a hemp clothing store and a shonky investment broker. Bruce and I could have run our projects from home, but we didn’t want to meet new tenants at coffee shops or have them come all the way out to the house. The office made things easier.

  MAD was stamped into a silver plaque hanging in our window. Bruce and Trudy Harrison, Property Developers and Managers, was written on the door. We now owned eleven rentals, all townhouses. We’d discovered that there was too much work involved in family homes on big blocks, and too much coming and going of tenants in units. Townhouses were for us. I loved my places. They were my babies. I’d get cross if a tenant treated one of them with disrespect. There was a certain Harrison touch to each place we built – recurring colours, favourite bricks, quality windows, classy gardens. Our townhouses were never vacant for long. Plus I didn’t over-charge on the rent. Resentful tenants were destructive ones, I’d discovered. I made sure my small stable of leaseholders never felt ripped off. And when the houses needed maintenance, I’d dispatch Bruce with toolbox in hand, or, if he was busy, send a reliable tradesman in his place.

  I unlocked the office door. The air inside was stale. I’d stopped by our post office box on the way and the mail was in a bundle under my arm. MAD headquarters was rudimentary. There was a desk, chairs for visitors, a coat stand, a two-seater couch and a low coffee table. We had a small fridge and a sink, tea- and coffee-making facilities, a bank of timber filing cabinets and a big meeting table. At the moment the table was covered with fabric swatches for our latest job. Displayed on a big pinboard on the wall were pictures of each townhouse, drawings of some of our favourite developments, and before-and-after shots of our property makeovers. Renovation was the part of the business Bruce enjoyed most. His skill lay in spotting the potential in a rundown place, buying it cheaply, giving the place a facelift and selling it on, sometimes at double our purchase price; all it took was a lick of paint, some outdoor paving, and a new bathroom and kitchen. At the moment, though, all Bruce’s time was spent at the Cove Street building site, nearer to the city. Cove Street was our most ambitious project to date – an enclave of two-storey townhouse
s, eight in all. We hadn’t planned on keeping them, but with the market flattening out there was a chance we’d have to hold on to them for a while. It would stretch our finances thin. There wouldn’t be any fun fix-it jobs for Bruce until they sold. If only the economic uncertainty had been enough to have us cancel our holiday to the coast …

  I put the mail on the desk and pulled up the blinds. The fog was dissipating. I propped open the door to let in some fresh air. There was no back entrance to the office, and no toilet – the four offices shared a bathroom at one end of the small complex. It was the street frontage we paid for, not the quality of the space. I put the potted jade outside the door, laid down the welcome mat, and lit a scented candle.

  During our time away, I’d let the work calls go through to message bank. I sat down at the desk, pulled the diary close, and began listening to the messages. The first two calls were from people interested in leasing 17 Tyler Street. My thoughts returned to Bruce. I had the feeling my husband was pacing the house, still considering the police route. I turned on the desktop computer. The phone messages were a distraction. I wished the townhouse would lease itself.

  ‘Hello.’

  A young couple had stuck their heads in the door.

  I looked at my watch. ‘Hello?’ I ventured.

  ‘We’re an hour early,’ the young man confirmed. ‘We’re the ones who wanted to put in an application for 17 Tyler Street …’

  The man had curly red hair, a friendly face and was a little overweight. The girl was a mousy blonde, with a meek smile and baggy clothes.

  ‘We can come back,’ the man said, ‘I saw you arrive and thought I’d let you know we were here, if you wanted to get the interview out of the way.’

  I looked in the diary for their names. Bridget Browder was all I had.

  ‘I’m Trudy,’ I said, getting up. ‘I spoke to Bridget on the phone …’

  ‘I’m Finn,’ the man said as I shook his hand. ‘This is Bridget.’ I didn’t shake Bridget’s hand. She didn’t look like the handshaking type.