by Kaye Dobbie
‘He was roaring like a bull. He was so angry. He came at Pete, swinging his fists, and Pete tried to fend him off. Pete was strong, but he wouldn’t have hurt him unless he had to.’ She stopped, taking her time, telling herself she was nearly finished.
‘Pete hit him again,’ Faith guessed. ‘And this time he didn’t get up.’
‘Yes,’ Hope whispered. She cleared her throat. ‘He’d broken the whisky bottle and he was threatening Pete with it, saying he was going to kill him. He tried to slash him with it and cut Pete’s stomach. It was bleeding, and although afterwards we could see it wasn’t deep, at the time I didn’t know that. All I could think was that we were going to die, and I believe Pete thought so, too. And that was why he hit him with the bat the second time.’
Dalzell went down. He made a noise, a horrible croaking sound in the back of his throat, and then there was silence. Pete turned him over and felt for a pulse, but he was dead.
Hope lost it then. Pete carried her inside and ran a bath for her and washed her clean. He held her until she calmed down. ‘We’ll go to jail,’ she kept saying, because it was Bert Dalzell they’d killed.
But Pete thought of the plan. He went around, gathering up anything that would give away the fact that they’d been there, and then he went outside into the garden and told her to wait inside the house. When he came to get her, he looked pale despite his tan, and he washed his hands with hot water and soap, although Hope couldn’t see any marks on them.
He said that Dalzell was in the boot of his car.
‘I’ll drop you off at the cottage, and then I’ll take him somewhere no one will ever find him. You don’t have to worry, Hope. Everything will be all right, I promise.’
They took the back roads, avoiding meeting any other traffic, and whenever they hit a bump Hope kept thinking of Dalzell’s body, in the boot. After Pete let her out at the cottage, he turned around and drove away again. Hope stood, watching him go, and then she ran. She was crying again, and her throat was hurting, and she burst inside the cottage, the door slamming behind her.
‘It was only then I realised Mum was home.’
‘She came pelting in through the door like the hounds of hell were after her,’ Lily said, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘I could tell something had happened, but at first I didn’t think she was going to tell me.’
‘If I’d been able to calm down, I probably wouldn’t have spoken, but seeing Mum like that, and it all so fresh … It all came flooding out.’
Faith looked between the two of them. ‘But neither of you ever said anything!’ she cried and Hope saw the hurt in her eyes.
‘What was the point?’ Hope’s voice was resigned. ‘Did you really want all of that on your mind? You were getting married, I couldn’t do it to you. Pete went off to training and was shipped out to Vietnam, and then he was killed. I found out I was pregnant. Wasn’t that enough to be going on with?’
For a while they were silent, and Hope could see that Faith seemed to be deep in thought. ‘You said that when he offered you a lift that Dalzell was driving towards the cottage. That doesn’t make any sense. Who would he be going to see at the cottage?’
‘I didn’t know that either, until I spoke to Kitty and she told me that you were involved in bringing Dalzell down. And that he knew about it.’
Faith shivered. Her sister had demons of her own. ‘He came looking for me,’ she agreed. ‘Yes, I can see him doing that. Repaying me for the wrong I’d done him. Perhaps when he saw you on the road and stopped his car, he thought you were me. But then he realised you were my sister—he’d know I had a sister. If Kitty hadn’t told him then he’d have found out. And you were definitely his type, Hope.’
Hope nodded. ‘What Kitty said, about you helping the police. Is it true?’ she asked. Faith didn’t look like Joan of Arc, sitting on their mother’s sofa in her black cargo pants and short green top, with her fair hair loose around her shoulders.
‘It was Avery who charged him.’ Faith gave a wry half-smile. ‘The man was obsessed with the girl who was murdered. He would have done anything to see Dalzell punished.’
‘Avery?’ Hope frowned, something stirring in her memory. ‘I wonder if …?’ It was unlikely, probably not relevant, but she decided to tell them.
‘Pete told me that last time he was on leave, an ex-policeman had come to see him at the training base. He said it was fine, nothing to worry about, but someone had seen Dalzell’s car that day and thought they’d recognised Pete as the driver and me as the passenger. Of course Pete had pretended it was nothing, but he’d needed me to know, in case this ex-policeman wanted to talk to me, too. I’m sure his name was Avery.’
‘Did he? Ever talk to you?’ Faith asked, a gleam in her eyes.
‘No. And neither did the police investigating Dalzell’s disappearance.’
‘Avery had a way of finding information that others missed,’ Faith said.
‘I remember Pete saying he kept telling Avery that he wasn’t there, it was a mistake, but he thought … he wondered if maybe Avery knew the truth. He wondered if he’d tripped up somehow. There was a moment, a silence, as if Avery had realised the truth. Pete was scared, he said he was sure he was going to arrest him, but the next moment Avery was smiling and patting him on the back. He said something like, “That’s fine. I’ll just stamp it no further action”.’
‘All Avery wanted was justice for Melanie, the girl he believed Dalzell had killed.’
‘Pete said he didn’t look well.’
‘If it was Avery,’ said Faith, ‘then I’m glad he knew about Dalzell before he died. I hope he did.’
Lily adjusted her sling. Their mother’s cast was covered in signatures and cartoons. ‘Hope is going to tell the police,’ she said.
‘Hope, are you sure?’ Faith half stood up, clearly rattled. ‘You know I will never say anything!’
Hope smiled, and reached for her hand. ‘I know you won’t. It’s not that. Mum has had to hold on to this secret for thirty years, and it isn’t fair to make her wait any longer. Pete’s dead, there’s no one they can punish.’
‘And if they try I’ll have something to say to them,’ Lily muttered.
‘The media will have a field day,’ Faith warned her.
‘So what? I’ll make use of it, sign some interview deals, write a book. Make a movie,’ she added softly.
Faith rolled her eyes.
‘Sometimes,’ Hope felt as if she was far away, ‘I wonder if Pete let himself be killed. He spoke about “a life for a life”, and said his two years in the army, fighting for his country, was going to be payment for what he did. But maybe, when he got to Vietnam, he changed his mind. Maybe he didn’t think two years was enough. He wasn’t religious, he used to laugh at the whole concept of it, but his mother was. He’d been brought up to always believe in the sanctity of life.’
Faith put an arm around her, squeezing her close. ‘If he’d wanted to be punished for what he did, why not just turn himself in to the police?’ she said, the voice of reason.
Hope let her head drop onto her big sister’s shoulder and sighed. She was feeling very tired. ‘Because if he did that then they would have known about me. Pete was protecting me, just as he always said he would.’
Just as I have protected him for all these years.
SAMANTHA
14 February 2000, St Valentine’s Day
There were more people at Estelle’s property than I could have imagined a month ago, when she first came up with the idea of her fundraiser. Now she was talking about making it a yearly event.
‘They’re here because you do such a wonderful job,’ I’d told her, but secretly I thought it probably also had a lot to do with Lincoln, and Hope, and my mum’s delicious Cantani Desserts.
‘Don’t forget to take Bonnie and Clyde when you go,’ she’d called out to me as she hurried away.
I wondered if Lincoln would notice the two goats in the back of the ute when it came time to leave. Of cou
rse he would. He’d laugh himself silly.
Jason Miller hadn’t been able to make it. He was back in Melbourne, and very relieved, according to Lincoln. He said he was still planning to open the Golden Gully restaurant; however, the date kept getting pushed further into the future. Derek was staying on at the house, renovating it on his own, but he still wanted me to do the garden.
‘No hurry,’ he kept telling me, and as he was always adding to or changing my plans, that was just as well. One day, I thought.
I looked down from my seat on the slope above the stage. Estelle had an area on her property that was like a natural amphitheatre, and she was making the most of it. You could sit on the grass on the slope, or there were chairs down on the flat area, closer to the stage.
Gran was down in one of the chairs. I’d seen people signing her cast and shuddered to think what we would find when we took her home. There had already been a few comments that had to be erased, when we explained to her what they meant.
I had chosen the slope because it gave me a better view of Lincoln on the raised stage below. He had his guitar with him, and he was adjusting the microphone, about to start.
He’d been nervous on the drive over, but he said he was always nervous before a performance.
‘It doesn’t matter if they hate my new stuff,’ he’d said, as if he really believed that. ‘I got an order for another gate yesterday.’
I’d smiled over at him, pausing before I answered as I made a turn into Estelle’s road. ‘I love your gates.’
‘What about my music?’
‘I love your music, too.’
‘My new music?’
We’d had this conversation so many times I knew it by heart. He wasn’t going to get me to admit I preferred his old stuff, no matter how he tried. ‘All of your music.’
He laughed. That was one thing about Lincoln, he wasn’t a sulker. He had some dark moments, sure, and didn’t we all, but they didn’t linger. He picked himself up and got on with it. Just as he had when his record company dropped him and he started making metal sculptures.
It was still early days, but I thought we got on pretty well. I knew I only had to look at him to feel that slow curl of heat in my stomach. Was that a sign of compatibility? I thought so. There were others: how we could make each other laugh; how he was a softy when it came to animals; how he listened so intently to Gran waffling on; how much Dad and Mum enjoyed his company. I could go on.
Mum had agreed to have another unveiling of her latest Cantani Dessert. She hadn’t been able to move the original date, but it didn’t matter because the first one was for the buyers and her bigger customers, and this one was for the locals and us.
She’d had to hire a refrigerated truck, and Dad had been busy putting out notices to publicise the event. After I’d seen the way they were together, the day Mum came home, I knew I would never again question just how much they loved each other. I couldn’t believe I’d had those weird suspicions about Hope, or Bert Dalzell.
I hadn’t asked to hear the rest of her story, or learn more about Ray Bartel. I’d decided that could wait until some other time, or maybe I wouldn’t ever want to know. Dad had sat down with me and told me how sorry he was about keeping the secret, and how much he loved me. Even though I thought I should still be feeling hard done by, I was actually feeling pretty special. Life seemed pretty good just the way it was.
I could see Hope over near the stage, saying something to Lincoln, probably offering him encouragement. There hadn’t been any more talk about her going back to the States. She’d had some harsh words to say about Looking Back. She got an apology out of them for bringing in the pit bull, Frances Durant, and the awful Ken. Eventually, Hope and the producers had come to an agreement about her show. She had brought me in, too, and Mum. We all had to agree, and we all did.
Hope is going to do a one-off interview. She is going to talk about me, and Pete, and Mum and Dad. She is going to let Australia, and the world, into our secret. Prue is arranging everything—that was part of the deal—and Hope is going to use the money to set up a trust for people who are looking for their birth parents and need help finding them. Prue is going to run it.
There’s another story, too.
Hope said she wouldn’t tell it to me until after I’d read Pete’s letters, because she wanted me to know him better first. It took me a while to read them. And when I did, I cried, because he sounded so young and so … well, so nice. He loved her, you could hear it in every word, every sentence.
‘Are you going to tell me the other story now?’ I’d asked her, when I gave them back.
Hope looked down at the letters and smiled. ‘Very soon,’ she’d said. ‘That is going to be quite complicated and I’ll need some advice. Let’s get Estelle’s fundraiser over first.’
I have a feeling we’re in for more drama, but we’ll get through it. We always have.
Hope was right when she told me she was only technically my mother. In all the ways that matter, Faith and Joe are my real parents. Still, I get on well with Hope, we have a lot in common, and it’s good to know that she’s there if I ever need her.
Lincoln ran his fingers over his guitar strings, and people grew quiet. I felt a shiver run up my spine, seeing him down there. It was getting dark now, but they had a light rigged up, and it was shining on him.
He started to sing.
At first I didn’t recognise it, and then I realised it was ‘Dark Star’, my song. He was right, it was stripped down and raw, and as I listened I felt my old sense of excitement rising. At the end I was applauding as loudly as everyone else.
I didn’t enjoy the new stuff as much, except for the last song. It was one of the ones he’d written recently, about five boys sleeping head to toe in a bed in a cottage, far from home.
Came all the way out here on a sailing ship, Taylor boys, Taylor boys.
It gave me chills.
When he was finished he made his way up the slope to me. I could have come down to him, but I enjoyed watching everyone patting him on the back and shaking his hand, saying how great he was. By the time he reached me he was flushed and laughing.
‘That was so good,’ I said. ‘The very best.’
‘Yeah?’ He sat down beside me and gave me a sideways glance. ‘What about the last song?’
‘You wrote a song about the cottage and my family. No wonder I love you.’
His eyes lit up, and then he wrapped his arms around me. A few onlookers cheered, but I was too busy kissing him to care.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly, to everyone at Harlequin Mira Australia for making writing my books such a pleasure. Special thanks to Rachael Donovan and Alexandra Nahlous on their very good advice in the editing process.
Gratitude to my agent, Selwa Anthony, who as usual gave me wonderful support while this book took shape, and thanks to Linda for finding the perfect face for the cover.
My appreciation to the State Library of Victoria and the National Library of Australia, who comprehensively answered my questions on aspects of the social scene in 1960s Melbourne.
I’ve dedicated this book to Sandy Curtis. Her memories of Melbourne during her time working as a cocktail waitress were invaluable, and she shared them most generously. And no, she isn’t in the book, this is a work of fiction.
I’d like to mention the Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary, which was an inspiration during the writing of this book. The world needs more kindness.
I couldn’t write anything without the support and encouragement of my family, so a huge thank you to them!
And most importantly, to my readers, thank you one and all!
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ISBN: 9781489245489
TITLE: WILLOW TREE BEND
First Australian Publication 2017
Copyright © 2017 Kaye Dobbie
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