by Anne Buist
Mala looked at Natalie with an unwavering stare. ‘You wanted his baby too, I could tell. They all did, like bitches on heat.’
Mala had shaken free of Frank’s hold and walked towards her. ‘But you got pregnant anyway didn’t you?’
Natalie felt no fear, though she had a second to think how does she know?
‘That’s why I wanted Jasper to kill you; when the stupid bastard found out from Eliza that Frank wasn’t his father he wanted to kill you both.’
Natalie didn’t wait to listen to any more. As she left she removed the wire the police had placed under her shirt and gave it back to Damian in the next room. Then she kept on walking. She was at the end of the corridor before Damian caught her.
‘What did she mean about you being pregnant?’
Natalie stopped dead and took a breath before looking at him. ‘They did a blood test last week after the fire. When I was hospitalised. I didn’t know before that. I put the nausea down to my meds.’
He stared.
‘I’m about eight weeks.’
He kept staring, refusing to make it easy for her.
‘I’m sorry, Damian.’ One in a million, he had said. But he’d been eating better, drinking less, was less stressed. Maybe his fertility had improved. ‘I don’t know whose it is. Because we weren’t using…’ She faltered, watched the pain in his eyes. ‘It was only once and I…’ No, she hadn’t looked for it. But she hadn’t stopped it either.
‘O’Shea.’ His mouth was hard. ‘Does he know?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to keep it?’
She had been thinking no for the last week. She still had time to make a decision. She had no religious beliefs about it and had never wanted to raise a child without the child’s father—repeating her mother’s mistake. Yet here she was, contemplating that exact course. Repeating patterns. She thought of the dead infant under the boathouse, of Vesna’s children in the pet cemetery. Of Reeva and Alison’s babies. Of Georgia’s dead children and the foetus that had died with her. She took a breath.
‘Yes. I am. I just can’t…I don’t have the stomach for any more death. When the DNA results come through I’ll let you know if it’s our mistake. Or…’
Much later that night she was still ruminating about something she had missed, and a thought came to her. The bag Frank had with him. The one he had hidden in his office fridge, the one she should have examined more closely. She’d ring Damian in the morning, or maybe text him. She was probably wrong anyway.
‘Let it go!’ she told herself out loud, wanting this case to be behind her. There were more important things to worry about.
She looked up, across the ocean and thought of Liam. Liam who had now left his wife, who had tried to back off her in court. Who had wanted her, and maybe still did. Liam, who when she was honest with herself, she still longed for. She texted him.
EPILOGUE
We expected the police of course, but there was no rush.
The hospital would need to keep me for several weeks at least, and even after that I would need to return regularly as part of the long, slow process that would never truly see me heal. And the police needed to brief the prosecutor to decide if there was enough evidence to charge Mala.
I have had plenty of time to reflect, to remember walking in on Antonije and Eliza. Her look of shame. She had followed him, rubbed up against him, wanted to show me that I was nothing and that she would submit to the master after rejecting the student.
But I thought most about Mala. How I had stood by waiting for Antonije to die, so that I would be the one that she would come to rather than him. I was always about protecting her, because from the moment I saw her I loved her.
I have so many regrets, and one of the last is Natalie. I met my match in her. Perhaps we could have made beautiful babies. Perhaps with her I could have left my ghosts behind and moved on.
But I also know that there could never be anyone for me except Mala. My Achilles heel.
I never meant it to happen, but we both learned at Antonije’s side that sex was about comfort, and about power. And Mala likes power. We slept together just one time before she went to Oxford. I was drunk; not an acceptable excuse I know, but Mala orchestrated it. She had been waiting for the moment all her life. She wanted power to wield over everyone, whenever she chose. I knew this; and yet, even so, without her I felt incomplete. No one could ever quite measure up. Separated by thousands of kilometres, I hoped to grieve and move on. I didn’t expect anyone ever to be as perfect. But without her there, and with no constant reminder of the specialness of my soul mate, I could have made a life with Reeva.
At Oxford Mala had any number of lovers of both sexes but I imagine they were all too easy for her. I am not stupid; I know that she doesn’t have empathy for others. Except, I like to think, for me. If it was my baby she would have kept it.
I will never know whether she and Jasper were still working together when he ignited the gas tank. She says not, but she is such a beautiful liar.
She thinks now that she will get away with it, with killing my two wives as well as her own child, that nothing she said was damning enough, that there is no real proof. I have underestimated Natalie in the past and I will not do so now. My poor darling sister. The only woman I ever truly wanted. Our perfection blinded me to her paranoid rage.
Did I suspect her, after Reeva died? Perhaps at the edge of my mind it niggled; something made me pack up my wife’s insulin so there would be no further risk. And I did warn Alison, after all. I told her to go and stay with her parents.
Mala knows I have the insulin; it was she who found the little bag for it, the one I kept in my office. She knows I am not prepared to live as anything except perfect. I will ask her to lie with me, for what more fitting way to be seen out of this world? But I could never leave her alone. We will go together. We will have a final drink and I will use the insulin I have there, sewn into the side pockets of the bag, well away from prying eyes, carefully refrigerated all this time. I will have to roll over onto her, subdue her and inject her with the first syringe. She will think as I am preparing it that it is for me. I wonder if she will protest, or if, in the end, she will see that I really did understand?
We were perfect. Now, in death, we always will be. And, finally, I win.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Apologies to Professor Michael Berk, his wife Lesley and the rest of the (full) research team in Geelong (they do exist)—they bear no resemblance to my fictitious characters!
Also, apologies to the Lorne police and those who know the Great Ocean Road well: I have taken some small liberties with the geography around Lorne, for which I hope I will be forgiven; and in normal circumstances the local police wouldn’t need the Melbourne homicide guys interfering. There were some amazing storms in Victoria in the last couple of years but the timing of the one in this book may not correlate accurately with the exact date. This is set in the winter of 2015, before the devastating bushfires of Christmas 2015 destroyed much of the area. The pub and the stilt house did survive.
This is a work of fiction and all the characters are fictitious: where real cases are mentioned, I had no involvement in any capacity. My thanks to all the people who helped make this book possible:
Victoria Police Media and Corporate Communications department were very helpful with details around Damian’s job, even if the more senior officers were a little shy.
Tania Evers, who reviewed the legal aspects for me. My first readers, who had wrestled previously with Medea’s Curse and told me they liked this more: Sue Hughes (who also loaned me her house to write in—the inspiration for Natalie’s stilt house), Karin Whitehead, and my daughter Dominique Simsion and son Daniel Simsion. And to the intrepid readers who helped me make it stand alone: May Ralph, Angela Collie and Robin Baker.
The team at Text: you’re all so enthusiastic, it’s a pleasure to work with each and every one of you. Mandy Brett is an author’s dream of an editor (well, m
ine anyway), Lea Antigny and Jane Novak are fabulous publicists and Chong—I never got to thank him for the amazing cover of Medea’s Curse (a last-minute change!) and now another thanks for this one.
The helpful suggestions and encouragement from Antoni Jach and his masterclass were again much appreciated—thanks Erina Reddan, Emilie Collyer, Anna Dusk, Tasha Haines, Clive Wansbrough and Rocco Russo.
The sources Natalie refers to are the Adult Attachment Interview by George, Kaplan and Main—the gold standard for adult attachment—and Kay Redfield Jamison’s autobiography, An Unquiet Mind.
As always my husband Graeme, soul mate, mentor, sounding-board, inspiration…and tough editor, has been a key component to helping this book get written, at every level. I hope we survive as many books together as we have years of marriage. And keep surprising each other.
Table of Contents
COVER PAGE
PRAISE
ALSO BY/BIO
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS