In the driveway of the blue and white house, the kimono woman was talking to a young girl wearing a green and white uniform and polished black shoes.
Krystal stumbled slightly on a patch of uneven concrete in the footpath. The kimono woman – with fair hair, in the sunlight, and now in a black jumpsuit and gold accessories – looked up and spotted Krystal as she stood gawking at them. The girl stopped too, looking from Krystal to her mother.
‘Who’s that?’ the girl asked. Then, to Krystal’s surprise, her sweet little face smiled brightly at her. ‘Hello!’
The woman frowned at her. ‘Get in the car, sweetheart. We’re running late.’ She clicked the remote control and the car’s yellow indicator lights flashed.
The girl shrugged and pulled open the car door and climbed inside. ‘Can I have your phone?’ she asked, holding her hand out to her mother.
The woman handed it over, then shut the car door. She stood and stared at Krystal a moment, turned to leave, then changed her mind and spun around and came to the fence.
‘What do you want?’
Krystal approached her. ‘I know you know who I am. My husband was – is – Evan Arthur. I know you were there with him the night he died. Please, you have to help me.’
The woman’s face paled and her hand went to her stomach as though she was about to be sick.
‘Please! I have to know what happened.’ Krystal reached out her hand and grabbed the woman’s forearm. ‘I have no idea why he was here in Sydney that night. He told me he was going to work at the restaurant in Melbourne and the next thing I know he’s here, dying. No one has been able to explain why. Please, please! I’m desperate! You’re the only person who can help me.’
The woman, shorter and slighter than Krystal, took in a shuddering breath.
‘I’ve got to take my daughter to school. Wait here. I’ll be back in half an hour.’ She didn’t look Krystal in the eye. She pulled her arm away and walked back to the car, then reversed out of the driveway.
Krystal paced back and forth on the footpath, not daring to let the house out of her sight. She doubted the woman was really coming back to talk to her as she’d said, but since she lived here, she’d have to come back eventually. If Krystal had to camp here all day and all night, she would.
Roxy texted to say that the boys had had a great night and had gone off happily to school this morning, though she confessed to giving them hot chocolate for breakfast, which had probably made them slightly hyper. Krystal assured her it would be okay, stopping short of unloading all the crazy new information she had learned in less than twenty-four hours.
Then she texted Gabby, begging for more details. But Gabby remained silent.
She sat down on the footpath, her back against the fence. The dog must have been locked inside the house, thankfully.
When the white sedan returned, Krystal thought she might explode with relief and anxiety. She leapt to her feet and hurried to the car’s door.
‘You’re back!’ she said, as the woman climbed out.
‘I said I would be.’
‘Yes, but – I’m so grateful, thank you.’ Krystal made a conscious effort to back off a little. The woman was here but she was clearly not thrilled to be speaking to her.
‘Come inside.’ The woman led the way to the front door and Krystal heard the fast clicking of claws on floorboards as the dog came to meet them.
‘What about your dog?’ Krystal asked, bracing herself.
‘She’ll be fine if you’re with me.’
They entered the house, the woman disabling the alarm system and greeting the dog, Krystal trying not to make eye contact with it so as not to alarm it.
The woman led her down a short hallway and into a black and white kitchen with red highlights, where she indicated that Krystal should sit at the round breakfast table. The dog hovered for a moment, then trotted to the couch to have a nap.
‘Tea?’ the woman asked.
‘Okay, thanks. With milk, please.’ Krystal would have been happy to skip the tea and get straight to the answers, but the woman was clearly nervy and reluctant, so she forced herself to slow down. ‘Do you mind if I ask your name?’
The woman’s shoulders hunched as she threw teabags into mugs; she didn’t turn around as she replied. ‘Rebecca.’
Krystal scanned through her memories to see if she could recall any mention of someone named Rebecca, but she came up blank. ‘I don’t recall Evan ever mentioning you.’
‘He wouldn’t have,’ Rebecca said, fetching milk from the retro red Smeg fridge, her back still to Krystal. ‘Our meetings were secret.’
This jolted Krystal. Secret? Her fears returned to the obvious. ‘Were you having an affair?’
Rebecca scoffed. ‘No.’
‘Then why were you having secret meetings?’
Rebecca sighed and spun around, leaning against the kitchen bench, her hands on the edge behind her, propping her up. There was a gorgeous red and blue stained-glass window behind her, casting her in pink and indigo hues. ‘He was helping me. In a legal sense.’
‘Legal? But he’d given up practising.’
‘Yes.’
Krystal ground her teeth, frustration and urgency tumbling through her. ‘Could you use a few more words? I’m lost.’
The kettle boiled, Rebecca filled the mugs with water and milk and brought them to the table. She sat down opposite Krystal. ‘I can’t tell you everything.’
‘Why not?’
‘For the same reasons Evan and I were meeting in secret.’
‘You were in trouble?’ Krystal hazarded a guess.
‘I thought my life was in danger. My life, maybe my daughter’s life. Talking to you now … it still feels risky.’
‘Then why are you talking to me?’
Rebecca raised a shoulder. ‘Because you’re here. Because Evan risked his life – no, he gave his life – trying to help me. Because two years have passed and I haven’t seen the car again. I suppose I think I owe him.’ Rebecca sipped at her tea then jiggled the teabag while she collected her thoughts.
‘What car? Please tell me what happened.’
‘I used to work for Farner Seven. Do you know who they are?’
Farner Seven. The name startled her, a ghost from Evan’s past suddenly appearing here in this room. Of all the things she’d imagined had been going on between Evan and Rebecca, Farner Seven had not featured.
‘Yes. It was Evan’s final case before he quit. He didn’t like the fact that he and his family had got them off the hook. He felt so bad about it that he decided to leave the law firm.’
Rebecca nodded; clearly, this wasn’t new information to her.
‘That’s right. I’m a scientist and I used to work for them. They employed me as a contractor and asked me to research the effects of their chemicals on water quality. I bred generations of fish – carp, mostly, not that it matters – in water supplies affected by their chemicals. I did the same with mice, using the water as drinking water. In all cases, the offspring had developmental deformities and cancers.’
Krystal frowned. ‘But I remember Evan saying that the reason the case against them was unsuccessful was because there wasn’t any evidence.’
Rebecca smiled, sadly. ‘I gave the evidence to Farner Seven, along with my report and recommendation that their chemical plant be shut down and relocated. But it was never used during the case.’
‘Why not?’
‘The evidence was destroyed. Evan went ahead with what they had in front of them, as any tactical lawyer would. But years later, you had your first son.’
‘Jasper.’
‘Evidently, it changed Evan. He truly realised what an injustice it had been for all those families and their kids who that had suffered because he’d been a part of helping the company. He wanted to make amends, and about a year after Jasper was born he approached me to help.’
A clock was ticking somewhere nearby and its rhythmic sound filled the moments while Krystal tri
ed to piece this together. ‘You were a whistleblower.’
Rebecca tapped the side of her mug absently. ‘It wasn’t something I ever imagined I would do. But, like Evan, I was full of guilt. I had spent years telling myself that it wasn’t my fault, that I’d done everything I was supposed to do and that the result was out of my hands. I’d thought about blowing the lid on the case, but there are enough stories in the media about how whistleblowers’ lives are ruined – how they are sent to jail for breaching confidentiality agreements, how they are threatened, attacked and even killed. I have a daughter to think of. But then there was Evan, persuasive and compelling.’
Krystal smiled despite the gravity of this news. When Evan was passionate about something it was hard to refuse him.
‘The stress was terrible. So many times I almost cracked and pulled out, but Evan stayed strong and kept encouraging me. We were building a case of evidence against Farner Seven. I couldn’t talk to anyone else about it, but he was my rock.’ She paused, her eyes suddenly bright. ‘Sorry.’ She sipped her tea some more.
The idea that Evan had been another woman’s rock in her time of need was unsettling for many reasons, but she couldn’t afford to lose focus right now. She was here for the answers she’d been so desperate to find for so long.
‘How did you end up in the street with him that night?’ she asked, wanting to know and not wanting to know in equal measures.
‘About six months into our meetings, I began to notice a black car with heavily tinted windows in the street. I didn’t think anything of it at first, just that it must belong to someone who lived in this street or visited often. But then I started to notice it at other places, too – at my office and then at my daughter’s school.’
‘That must have been terrifying.’
‘It was.’
‘Did Evan know about it too?’
‘Yes. He said Farner Seven must have caught on to what we were doing and wanted to intimidate us but we couldn’t let them get to us. He helped me organise extra security measures about the house.’ She pointed to the Rottweiler, now snoring on the couch. ‘He also bought me a puppy.’
The thought of her husband buying a puppy for another woman brought up yet more confusing emotions for Krystal.
‘He said we had to stay strong, for the sake of all those families and children, and that it would all be over soon enough. On the night of the accident, my daughter, Sarah, was at her father’s place and Evan was here. We were sitting in the lounge room.’
Krystal remembered Gabby saying she’d seen Evan in a woman’s house.
‘I was falling apart under the pressure. He suggested we go for a walk and get some air. He checked at the window to see if the car was outside and said there was no sign of it.’
Krystal’s gaze fell on the window over near the lounge, security bars bolted over it on the inside.
‘I shivered while we walked, whether from the cold or fear I’m not sure, but I couldn’t see the car either and slowly we began to relax. Evan kept telling me it would all be okay, that we just had to keep our eyes on the finish line, that we were nearly there.’ Rebecca picked up her mug again but only got it halfway to her lips before putting it back down on the wooden table. The refrigerator gurgled then sighed, and the dog’s tail thumped on the couch while he dreamed.
‘We’d only been walking a few moments when I heard a car approaching slowly behind us.’ She paused, closing her eyes as if not wanting to remember. She opened her eyes and when she spoke, her voice shook. ‘I was terrified. We had no idea who was driving, but they didn’t give up. Evan told me to look straight ahead. We kept walking but they kept following.’
The images Rebecca painted were vivid in Krystal’s mind. She sat frozen.
‘Suddenly Evan became furious and spun around to challenge whoever was in the car. I panicked and called out to him, but he kept going, charging straight towards it. It swerved away from him at the last moment and disappeared around a bend. “Come on,” he urged, and we kept walking … But then the car returned.’
Krystal’s heart raced, as though she was there at that moment and could somehow stop what was about to happen.
‘I started to cry. He put his arm around me, half holding me up as we hurried along, looking for somewhere safe to go. But the faster we went, the faster the car followed. We broke apart and began to jog, with no plan or discussion, just needing to escape. We ran, one block, two blocks. Still the car followed. Evan pulled me behind a huge gum tree and the car flew past.’
The gum tree. Gabby had known there was something important about it.
‘“Hurry!” he said, and we started to run again. We ran down Ritchie Lane and just when we thought we’d lost it, the car ambushed us from the front. It must have sped around the block to come from the other direction. We headed down a driveway to duck behind an apartment block. Evan was behind me, but then …’ Rebecca raised her shoulders, as though she still couldn’t understand what had happened. ‘I guess he wanted to lure the car away from me, so he doubled back. I yelled out to him to stop but he jumped in front of the car. He leapt to get out of the way at the exact same time the driver spun the wheel to avoid him and he was hit.’ She wiped at the tears on her cheeks. ‘He flew through the air and landed on the footpath. I’ll never forget the sound.’
Hearing Rebecca describe Evan’s last night was horrendous but also, weirdly, a relief. Finally, Krystal could put pieces together. Not all of them, but a lot. She knew so much more now than just an hour ago. She could finally begin to try to understand.
It made sense. Though shocked, she was proud, too. Evan was a good man and he died trying to make a big wrong right.
‘But why didn’t you stay with him when the car hit him?’ Krystal asked, fishing in her bag for a tissue.
Rebecca looked to the ceiling. ‘I’d run down a driveway and Evan had turned back and had a head start on me. When the car hit him …’ She paused, reliving the moment. ‘… A man rushed out of his house straightaway and got to him first. I saw him pull out his phone and call the ambulance. I panicked. I was terrified the car would come back for me, so I took my chance and ran as fast as I could. I heard the sirens moments later and knew he was being taken care of. It was days before I found out he’d died.’ She swallowed a sob. ‘I’d never have left him if I thought he was dying.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘He didn’t deserve that.’
‘No, he didn’t.’
Rebecca told Krystal that she’d shared everything she could. She pushed her chair back and rose, waiting for Krystal to do the same. Krystal took the hint and picked up her bag.
‘But what about the car?’ Krystal asked. ‘Who was it?’
Rebecca blinked. ‘Farner Seven, of course. The scientific evidence I’d submitted had been destroyed during the trial – burned, Evan said. But they knew I could recreate it, which I did, and I gave it to Evan. It was one of the pieces of evidence we were putting together for him to call for the trial to be reopened.’
‘But the car just stopped coming?’
‘Yes. I haven’t seen it since. I presumed they went into hiding to avoid the police. And Evan had the evidence. Once he was gone, they must have hoped I’d be too scared to do anything more, and they were right. They’d won.’
Krystal gave her thanks and left, shell-shocked, numb, and with no clue what to do next, except to board a plane to get home to her boys.
27
With Celia, Charlie and even Summer back at school today, and Monty still pensive but in better spirits than yesterday, Gabby headed into work with renewed optimism and an action plan. She was going to do something risky – well, risky for her. Butterflies fluttered in her belly as she entered the cafe, but her attention was diverted to the music. Brisbane indie band Sheppard was pulsing through the speaker system. Kyle looked over from the coffee machine and grinned cheekily.
‘Don’t give me that look, Gabs,’ he said, frothing milk. ‘Someone had to take control. There was discussion o
f an intervention but I said it could be a bloodless coup, so I took control.’
‘Intervention? Bloodless?’
‘The music’s been sad and old lady-ish lately.’
‘Has it?’ Gabby halted, her hand on the strap of her handbag, trying to recall what she’d been playing recently. There’d been Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Celine Dion and Adele. Hm. Perhaps he had a point.
‘I distinctly heard John Denver the other day, and as much as I love myself a good country boy I just couldn’t take it any more.’ He banged the stainless-steel jug on the bench to settle the froth as though he was banging a gavel and eyed her firmly.
‘I see. But Jack Johnson’s not old lady-ish. He’s cool and hip. Isn’t he?’ she asked, taking off her bag and setting it temporarily next to the swing door.
Kyle began to pour milk into two mugs, using a spoon to hold back the foam till the cups were almost full. ‘The very fact you used the words “cool” and “hip” illustrates my point.’
‘Well, what’s the right word?’
‘Oh, Gabby, sweetie,’ he said, shaking his head of green hair and passing her the mugs. ‘These are for table twelve.’
‘Remind me to fire you,’ she said, taking the mugs.
‘Right you are, captain.’ He saluted.
‘Love your pants,’ the woman at table twelve said, taking her cappuccino. The woman looked particularly stylish herself, so Gabby took the compliment with pleasure. It reminded her why she’d taken so much trouble to find the right outfit today. She’d chosen soft chambray pants, with extra material fluttering down the sides like the petals of a tulip. She’d matched them with a white scalloped-edge blouse patterned with dark-chocolate blossoms, and mules and dangly earrings.
‘Thanks. Enjoy your coffees,’ she said to the woman and her friend. Then, before she could change her mind, she strode out back.
Luciano was well into a roasting session. The beans inside the drum rattled around in the heat, the gas hummed, the cooling tray spun with the fan roaring below it, and the scent of freshly roasted coffee was thick in the air. His head was bent over the computer watching the coloured lines on the graph, his fingers on the dials, dark curls gently caressing the olive skin of his neck, all the lovelier against his white collared shirt today. Lin was washing dishes and she waved to Gabby, and Gabby smiled and waved back as she passed on her way to see Luciano.
The Gift of Life Page 25