They were nearing their hotel; Krystal could see it on the destination map of the satellite navigation system on the dash.
‘I worry about my dad,’ Gabby said, still clutching her phone in her hand. ‘My mum died just over a year ago and he’s never really been the same. I miss her fiercely; I can’t even imagine how difficult it is for Dad.’
‘How long had they been married?’
‘Forty-five years.’
‘Wow.’ Krystal wondered if she and Evan would have made it that far, especially if she’d known about this woman in Sydney. The other night she’d wanted to believe it, though now she wasn’t so sure. ‘That must have been really hard on him.’
Gabby shook her head sadly, as though she still didn’t quite believe it. ‘It was. It still is.’
They arrived at the hotel and Krystal paid the driver. Gabby tried to give her some money but Krystal waved it away. ‘It’s my husband who’s haunting you,’ she said, trying to joke.
‘True!’ Gabby smiled, closing the door behind them. The cab drove off, leaving the smell of exhaust lingering in the air. ‘But I owe you.’
Krystal felt another stab of guilt but put on a smile. ‘Forget it. Let’s check in and have a rest before we go and look for some dinner. I need to call my boys and it sounds like you’ve got a bit to catch up on too.’
‘Okay, let’s meet down in the lobby at seven?’
‘Sounds good.’ They had agreed to go after dark to capture the mood of the surroundings at the place where Evan had been hit by the car. The idea of it made her sick, but they were determined to get the answers they needed.
After checking in, Krystal went to her room and collapsed onto the bed. She had a harbour view, which seemed ridiculous. She was here to uncover buried secrets, things she might then wish she’d never known. It was obscene to have such a gorgeous view of the water outside her window, charming her into thinking she was on some sort of adventure, when the night loomed ahead, dark and dangerous.
23
The trunk of a tall, stately gum tree glowed ghostly white against the velvety sky on the corner of Ritchie Lane and Upper Almora Street in the affluent waterside suburb of Mosman, which was where Krystal had asked the cab driver to drop them off. Gabby exited the vehicle first, taking a moment alone to get her bearings while Krystal sorted the fare, then Krystal appeared at her side and the taxi zipped away, its vacancy light turned on.
‘Here we are,’ Krystal said, slinging the strap of her small purse diagonally across her body.
‘Here we are,’ Gabby repeated. Without further discussion, they began to walk.
Ritchie Lane was a narrow one-way street lined on one side with three-storey apartment blocks and modern, geometric balcony gardens sporting trimmed hedges, and on the other with houses behind six-foot-high rendered fences abutting the footpath and white agapanthus flowers reaching up into the night air. It was dimly lit – just one streetlight about halfway up. Wheelie bins stood like sentries, lined up along the kerb. Not a scrap of litter in sight. No loud music or televisions. An occasional yappy dog or a car a street away were the only real sounds.
‘What was he doing here?’ Gabby asked, then instantly regretted the absent-minded question. If anyone had any clue at all, it was most likely to be her.
‘No one knows. Some people who live in this lane heard the screech of brakes and the –’ Krystal’s voice faltered – ‘the impact.’
Gabby blanched.
‘A man came out but only saw the colour of the car as it drove away. He couldn’t give any details, the model or the numberplate. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and it was dark. But he called the ambulance.’
‘So, it was probably a hit and run?’
‘The police investigated but never found the driver.’
They walked on in silence, and Gabby tried to imagine Evan here in this laneway – running, as she’d experienced in her visions. But why was he running? He’d been afraid, she knew that.
They were almost at the end of the lane when Krystal halted, staring at the bitumen beneath their feet. Black sky above. Black road below. Just ahead of them, the laneway swung sharply to the left.
‘What is it?’ Gabby asked, but by the way the hairs on her arms were standing up, as though they had suddenly become antennae to the dead, she knew exactly why Krystal had stopped.
Here. Right here was where Evan had hit the ground.
Krystal didn’t answer. She was breathing erratically, and just as Gabby stepped towards her, Krystal buckled at the waist and fell to the ground. On her knees, Krystal placed her palms on the road, moving them about as if trying to find the exact spot, the exact moment when everything had changed.
‘Ritchie Lane, just before the intersection with Beach Lane – that’s what the police told me,’ she said, still moving her hands over the rough surface of the road. Gabby swept her gaze across the ground for clues, hoping for a vision, but there was nothing yet.
Just then, a jogger rounded the corner, coming straight towards them, his shoes slapping, his breath bursting from him in raspy puffs. Both women recoiled and Krystal staggered to her feet.
‘Watch it!’ he called, leaping to the side but not pausing in his stride. ‘Idiots.’
Startled, neither of them said anything for a moment. Then Krystal gathered her wits and hurled some abuse at his retreating back, for which she was rewarded with a middle finger raised in the air as he pounded along.
‘Wanker,’ she yelled at him. ‘Wanky Wank from Wanksville!’
‘Good to see the gravity of the moment hasn’t diminished your fighting spirit,’ Gabby teased, which made Krystal snort, the mood lightened.
‘Come on,’ Gabby said, starting to head back the way they’d come. ‘Let’s walk up the street again. You can talk to me about Evan and maybe something will come to me.’ She put her arm lightly around Krystal’s shoulder and while the other woman stiffened a little, Gabby was pleased that at least she didn’t pull away. Maybe one day they’d be friends after all. Gabby dropped her arm and they walked at an easy pace back up the street. ‘Tell me five random things about him.’
Krystal was silent a moment as she thought. ‘Well, he was a big fan of the Australian Open. He took me with him one year before Jasper was born. He splashed out on really great tickets and we got to watch a fantastic match between Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka.’ Gabby could hear the smile in her voice. ‘It almost converted me to being a tennis fan too.’
‘But not quite?’
‘No. I don’t have the patience for it. But he just loved it. He wasn’t into a lot of sports, thankfully, but he was mad for tennis.’ They sidestepped a small pothole in the road. ‘He also followed AFL – he was a Carlton fan, but didn’t go crazy. He was pretty good at the footy tipping competition at work though.’
‘At the restaurant?’
‘Yes.’
Gabby was enjoying hearing more about the person Evan was. So much of her contact with him had been frightening or stressful or guilt-inducing. It was nice to think of him living his life.
‘He got funnier as he got older.’ Krystal’s voice was warm with remembrance. ‘We laughed, so much.’
They were almost back to where they’d started at the corner with the ghostly gum. Gabby looked at the tree and felt a tug in her chest.
There was something about that tree.
‘He was a smoker when he was young, till his early twenties.’
Gabby couldn’t speak. She had a smoker’s heart inside her?
A swirl of emotions enveloped her. She felt cheated, and then ridiculous, because without this heart she would be dead anyway, and then angry because there would always be things she didn’t know about this heart, and guilty for wanting not just a heart but a perfect heart, one that would give her the best chance to be here for as long as possible for her kids, and furious that young people were always so flippant about their lives. She’d read about a young woman in England, barely in her twenties, who
received a new set of lungs, got on with her life and planned to marry her love, only to discover less than twelve months after her operation that her lungs had come from a man who’d been a heavy smoker and she had stage four lung cancer. She’d gone through all of that only to receive someone else’s death sentence.
Would that happen to Gabby now too?
She wanted to ask Krystal other things – had he ever taken drugs, was he a big drinker, had he eaten a lot of saturated fat? – all things that were part of his lifestyle history and were now part of hers. But of course, she couldn’t ask. She took a breath and put these things aside to think about them later. Or not. Sometimes, thinking was overrated.
She stopped at the tree, looking up into the sky, where its mighty branches swayed gently.
Beside her, Krystal was counting on her fingers. ‘Is that five? I think I need one more. Um …’ She stopped, looked up into the sky where Gabby’s face was turned. ‘What is it?’
‘There’s something here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know, exactly.’ Gabby stepped off the road and onto the footpath, her hand outstretched, and laid her palm on the tree. It was warm from the day’s heat and pleasantly rough beneath her skin.
‘Do you think something happened here?’ Krystal joined her, also placing her hand on the tree.
Gabby shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She stepped back and looked around. ‘Here, come this way.’ Her stride lengthened as she picked up her pace, passing big houses with big fences. They were heading downhill now, towards the water. They could see the lights on boats bobbing up and down. ‘This way!’ She turned down Superba Lane, driven by nothing other than instinct. Krystal jogged slightly to keep up as they passed a vacant lot on the left, bordered by commanding houses with views of the bay.
‘What are you looking for?’ Krystal asked.
‘A house.’ The words were out before she had time to think about it. Yes, it was a house she was looking for. They were jogging at a decent pace now, taking a sharp turn to the right, then to the left, getting closer to the water. She’d lost track of the street names, simply following her gut till she found what she was looking for – an aged brick home with whitewashed walls, blue trims and a red roof, squatting on the slope of the hill.
Gabby stood at the gate, hands on hips, trying to catch her breath.
‘W-what is it?’ Krystal puffed.
Gabby took in the details of the white wooden fence with blue trimmings and the archway over a stone path to the front door, a lush but rambling garden. The house was like a key that opened the lock to the memories she’d been unable to reach. She knew what was on the other side of that door.
It was a woman, the woman she’d seen in her vision and the woman she now knew had been running by Evan’s side just moments before he was hit by the car.
‘Gabby, what is it?’ Krystal reached out and clutched Gabby’s arms with both hands. ‘Tell me,’ she said, her voice low.
Krystal looked over her shoulder to the blue and white house, a lone light from one shuttered window over the garden. A bedroom, perhaps. Someone in there. Someone she needed to know about. Gabby allowed her mind to race through all the possibilities, from the ridiculous to the vividly realistic and sordid. A large possum suddenly dashed across the road and scaled the fence and the small tree just inside the yard, clinging to a branch that shook and swayed beneath its weight. Somewhere nearby, happy voices and a burst of laughter drifted out from the rear of a house. A new moon hovered behind a thick pelt of cloud, as though it too was waiting for answers before it would make an appearance.
‘I –’ Gabby started, then stopped. She needed time to think.
‘I’m going in.’ Krystal let go of Gabby and strode towards the gate.
‘Wait!’ It was Gabby’s turn to reach for her arm, but Krystal shook her off, her boots landing with purpose on the pathway, loose pebbles crunching under her soles.
‘Ro-ro-ro-ro!’
A booming bark came from inside the house and both women faltered. Security lights came on, illuminating the front garden.
‘Krystal, I think we should wait, take some time to think about this, come back in the morning.’
But Krystal wasn’t listening, too desperate to get answers. She rapped her knuckles on the metal frame of the grilled security screen, making it rattle loudly and aggravating the barking dog on the other side.
‘Please, Krystal. Let’s go. This is not the time to –’
Another light next to the door turned on. Gabby flinched against its sudden brightness. A deadbolt turned, the front door swung open into the house and the aroma of a lemon-scented cleaning product, or maybe a room spray, wafted out. Standing on the other side of the security screen was a woman, shorter than Krystal, wrapped in a red and white kimono, her long curly hair falling in soft waves to just above her breasts. Her chin was lifted, on guard. She clutched the open wooden door with one hand, while the other rested on the head of a Rottweiler emitting low, threatening growls.
‘Yes?’ the woman asked, her face in shadows behind the door.
‘Who are you?’ Krystal asked, the words rushing out.
‘Who are you?’ the kimono woman countered. ‘And what are you doing on my doorstep at this time of night?’
Krystal stood mute.
‘We’re friends,’ Gabby offered lamely. ‘We mean you no harm,’ she said, holding her hands chest-high in a pose of surrender.
Krystal came to life and rolled her eyes. ‘Jesus, Gabby, we’re not aliens that have just landed in a wheat crop.’
To Gabby’s surprise, the kimono woman laughed softly.
‘Okay, friends, how can I help you?’ The dog had quietened but still watched Krystal stiffly, Gabby noted. Unlike Sally, this dog meant serious business.
Krystal hesitated. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she began carefully. ‘My friend Gabby and I are up from Melbourne. We were out walking, and then we took a turn, and then another …’
‘Are you lost?’ the woman asked. ‘Would you like me to call you a cab?’ She’d half turned away from the door as though about to get her phone. The Rottweiler eased its muscles.
‘No, it’s not that.’
The woman inched back again, waiting for an explanation.
Krystal scratched at her temple, seemingly searching for a brilliant plan, but then groaned in frustration. ‘My name is Krystal Arthur. Do you know who I am?’
The woman shook her head. ‘No.’
Liar. Gabby squinted through the grille of the security screen and into the dim hallway, trying to wordlessly convey to the woman that she’d seen her with Evan. They were all quiet a moment until the roar of a motorbike in the distance broke through the stillness.
‘Are you sure?’ Krystal asked, her voice quiet, a small tremor in her words.
‘Very sure.’ There was an uncertain waver in the woman’s voice too.
Krystal’s chin lifted. ‘I don’t believe you.’ The woman stared at Krystal from behind the door but said nothing.
‘Krystal, let’s go,’ Gabby said, pulling at Krystal’s arm, trying to break the tension.
‘No, wait …’ Krystal began.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ the woman said, beginning to close the door. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Please, can I just –’ Krystal begged, but the door closed in her face, the deadbolt clunking into place.
Gabby put her hand on Krystal’s elbow to guide her down the steps. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’ They began walking back the way they’d come.
‘You have to tell me what you saw that took us to that house,’ Krystal demanded.
‘I really don’t want to lead you up the garden path with this. I need some time to sit with it and make sure I know what I saw. I could be completely wrong and I don’t want to … to …’
Krystal stopped walking and turned to face Gabby. ‘Upset me? Is that it? What you saw was bad, wasn’t it? Was it more than an affair? W
ere they planning on getting married or something?’
‘I just …’ Gabby had no idea how to finish the sentence. She’d seen the woman running with Evan in that dark street before he was hit. She couldn’t explain it.
‘Just tell me, please. I know she’s lying. She totally knows who I am.’
Gabby took a deep breath, forcing herself not to lose it with Krystal, who didn’t seem to realise – or simply didn’t care – that all of this was terribly difficult for her too, that having someone else’s heart in her chest, having their cells speaking through her body and seeing someone else’s memories was fucking disturbing.
She blew air out slowly. Krystal had a lot on the line here too, she knew that. And it was Gabby’s duty to repay her gift of life in any way she could. Soon this would all be over and they could both go on their way. Up until this moment, she’d thought it possible that they might be friends, but now she could see clearly just how much her very presence upset Krystal. Before she’d met Krystal, she’d fantasised about one day meeting her donor family and about tearful reunions and that Gabby’s life might be a salve for their loss, that the evidence of her living a great life would heal their lingering pain. But it was so much more complicated than that – like a marriage that was once forged with the best of intentions but had now come to a place of irreconcilable differences.
‘Krystal, I’m really tired. It’s been a big day …’
‘Wait!’ Now Krystal was excited, bouncing on the spot. ‘Evan was taken from here to the hospital. There’s one more thing we can do. We need to visit the ICU at the hospital.’
‘What?’ Gabby stared at Krystal in the dark, the whites of her companion’s eyes glinting under the streetlights. Visiting the actual ICU where Evan had been was a ghastly notion.
‘Please. If we go there, maybe we can trigger some more memories for you. Maybe his last hours were still fresh in his mind. We’ve come all this way.’ Krystal reached out and took Gabby’s hand in both of hers, pleading.
Gabby didn’t want to open a doorway between this real life and the unknown of the spiritual world. She placed her hands over her eyes and squatted down on her haunches on the footpath to think for a moment.
The Gift of Life Page 22