by Lucy Clarke
He climbs onto the deck and hooks the key out from under a cluster of pebbles. He unlocks the place and walks in, the smell of mildew and damp salt hitting him. He pulls up the blinds and cranks open both windows to let the breeze in. He hopes Eva isn’t too prissy as the shack isn’t in the sharpest condition. But when he glances around, he sees she’s just standing on the deck, staring out to sea.
He pulls out some of the junk cluttering the living area: canvas chairs, a grill, a fraying windbreak, and puts it all on the deck to make some space. “It’s basic,” he tells her, “but there’s a bed in the back room and the sofa folds into a bed, too. There’s a shower—an outdoor one—but the water runs hot. I’m just gonna check the gas is on.”
He goes around the back to the gas locker and is pleased to find it is all connected. He checks the shower, too, and finds a big huntsman spider sitting in the shower tray along with a collection of leaves and sand. “Sorry, mate,” Saul says as he scoops up the spider and chucks it onto the beach.
Back in the shack, he runs the tap and the water tank seems to be working just fine. He offers to bring some food from his place, but Eva says she’ll be okay, and he gets the impression that she just wants to be on her own.
“I’ll come back in the morning. Run you to your car.”
“Thanks.”
“If you need anything, my place is just up there,” he says, pointing to the other end of the bay.
He says good-bye and climbs down from the deck, relieved to be on his way. Then he remembers he hasn’t checked whether there was any bedding. When he turns back, he sees Eva has already sunk down onto the sofa, her head cradled in her hands.
When Dirk had told Saul what he knew on the bleak afternoon of Jackson’s memorial, Saul had slumped back in his seat, stunned. He’d said right then that he didn’t want anything to do with it, didn’t even want to meet Eva.
Yet here she is.
He sees her shoulders begin to shake as the tears come. He takes a step toward the shack, then hesitates. Something tells him it’s cleaner not to get involved. So Saul ducks his head and walks on.
LATER THAT EVENING EVA manages to fall asleep, but she wakes hours later gasping into the pitch-black. Disorientated, she struggles free of the covers, her skin damp with sweat. She flails for a light switch, but her wrist bone connects with something hard and the crash of broken glass fills her ears.
Finally she finds the light. A glass has smashed, water pooling over wooden floorboards. She can’t place the room she’s in. Her gaze darts around, then halts on a large driftwood mirror at the end of the bed. The image reflected back is of a woman with ghostly white skin, her eyes sunken in shadow, her face gaunt.
Then Eva remembers: she’s in Tasmania.
Jackson is dead.
She is carrying his child.
She leans against the bedroom door, feeling the coolness of the wood through her T-shirt. Her head bows into her hands and she closes her eyes, battling against tears.
The quiet in the shack rolls over her, only the low murmuring of the bay audible. Somehow the near silence feels wrong, smothering. Her jaw tightens as she strains to catch some sound. Anything.
Panic spikes over her skin as she realizes what it is she’s listening for: Jackson’s breathing.
She is expecting to hear the soft draw of air in and out of his lungs, which was the rhythm she fell asleep to every night. The absence of it fills her with a crushing loneliness. She wraps her arms tightly around herself, feeling the rapid thud of her own heartbeat. But there’s no comfort in it, so she crosses the room and digs in her suitcase, pulling out a red-checked shirt.
It was Jackson’s favorite, the one he’d change into when he got home from work, pushing the sleeves up and leaving the collar wide open. It was a shirt so loved that he didn’t mind that it was missing two buttons or that the collar was starting to fray.
She pulls it on now, her fingers drawing the fabric tight to her body, and picks up her phone.
She is contemplating calling her mother. She’d like to hear her familiar voice right now; it’d be midmorning in England and her mother would be home, perhaps ironing with the radio on, or putting something in the slow cooker for dinner. But then Eva pictures herself saying, I’m pregnant—and realizes she’s not ready to make that call. Not yet.
She fetches a blanket and walks out onto the deck. The air is cool, scented with salt and a faint tang of wood. There are no lights other than the stars, and the darkness is unsettling. Looking toward the edge of the bay where Saul’s house stands, she feels a thread of unease snake through her. He is the only one who knows she is here, a man Jackson told her he couldn’t trust. She wishes she hadn’t left her car at the jetty; she would feel safer knowing that she could leave.
She settles into a canvas chair on the deck, the seat damp with dew. The sound of her cell phone suddenly ringing makes her jump, the screen flashing like a siren in the darkness.
Pressing the phone to her ear, she answers. “Hello?”
There is the sound of a connection at the other end, a distant line. But no voice.
“Hello? Eva speaking.”
She waits, hearing only the bay murmuring beyond her.
“Hello?” she repeats. “Sorry, I can’t hear anything. Hello?”
Silence.
Then there is a faint noise and she is almost certain that it’s the sound of someone drawing a breath.
A moment later, the line goes dead.
Eva stares at the phone in her hand. The display shows that it was an international call, but there’s no number. She waits, hoping the caller will ring back. She is desperate to hear a familiar voice from home, someone to remind her that she’s not alone.
But the caller doesn’t phone again. Eva draws her knees to her chest, and pulls the long sleeves of Jackson’s checked shirt down over her hands. She buries her face into the open collar and breathes in deeply, trying to draw his scent from the fabric.
But there is nothing.
HAZY MORNING SUNLIGHT TEASES Eva awake and she opens her eyes to the shimmer of the bay. Her clothes feel damp and her neck aches. She rolls her head from side to side to loosen the muscles in her shoulders. The blanket has slipped to the ground and she sees her hands are resting on her abdomen.
She removes them in a flash and holds onto the sides of the chair. She sits like this for a moment, looking as if she is bracing herself.
Then very slowly she draws her hands back to her stomach, sliding them beneath her shirt. Her fingertips move in a slow circle across the warm skin of her lower belly. It is faint, but it is there: the swell of a baby.
Jackson’s baby.
She realizes that a part of Jackson is still here, still living. He has left a piece of himself behind for Eva to nurture. She feels a surge of love for him that enfolds her like an embrace. The corners of her lips lift into a quiet smile as she imagines Jackson watching her as she sits here looking out over the bay, their baby growing in her stomach.
She stays on the deck with her hands on her stomach for some time, letting her thoughts settle around the idea of their child. Eventually she goes into the shack, changes into a pair of shorts and a cardigan, and packs up her bag. She makes a cup of instant coffee and sits on the edge of the deck to drink it, wondering when Saul will come for her. Looking toward the far end of the bay, she can just make out his house. Tall trees clamber up a rocky hill and at the top there is the slant of a roof.
Her gaze sweeps away over the bay, which is glistening beneath a rising sun. There’s an outcrop of dark rocks at the edge of the water, and beyond them the contours of Tasmania are mauve shadows in the distance.
At the edge of her vision she notices someone down by the shore. She shades a hand in front of her eyes and sees Saul at the water’s edge, slipping on a pair of fins. He moves into the shallows and seems to melt into the water, kicking with powerful strokes.
She watches him swim until he’s right out in the middle of the bay
. There he stops and floats on the surface, arms outstretched at his sides.
After a minute or two he makes a smooth dive and the sea settles around him as if he had never been there.
Eva waits.
Time passes slowly.
She knows he will come back up, yet she feels her heart quicken.
Twenty seconds, now. Thirty, perhaps?
She becomes aware of her pulse ticking in her throat and the cold Atlantic sea dripping into her thoughts. The flash of an orange lifeboat. The roar of a helicopter in the sky.
Her mouth turns dry as she waits, her gaze pinned to the point at which he dived down. He has to come up. She knows he must. Yet her heart is drilling against the cage of her ribs.
Without thinking, she is suddenly jumping from the deck and jogging toward the water. With each step, she is back on that Dorset beach in December, gusts of sand sheeting along the beach, the wild, gray seascape empty of Jackson.
Eva stops at the shoreline, panting. The sun glances off the water, making her squint as she scans the bay for Saul. But it is mirror flat; there is not a ripple.
Sweat prickles underarm. Could she swim out far enough to reach him? Would it be better to call for help? Would anyone even hear?
More images flood through her mind: a policeman speaking into a radio; a crowd of people huddled together, waiting; a lifeboat making a search pattern in the raging sea.
Then suddenly there’s movement out in the middle of the bay. Saul breaks through the surface. She imagines the water pouring from his face as he gasps for air.
She steps back, the tension in her muscles sending tremors through her body and making her knees shake. She waits for the tide of relief to fill her, but it never comes. Because all Eva is thinking is: It’s not Jackson.
WHEN SAUL WADES IN, he finds Eva standing on the shore, her expression taut. He puts down his mask and fins and wipes the salt water from his face. “Everything okay?”
She nods quickly. She takes a breath, then asks, “Good dive?”
“Like glass out there.”
She glances over the length of the bay. “It’s quiet here.”
“Yeah, every so often you get the odd fishing boat or kayaker passing. That’s about it.”
Silence follows. A gull soars above, white wings struck with sunlight. They both watch as it glides beyond them, dipping low to the water.
Saul shifts on the spot. “The shack all right for you?”
“Yes. Very comfortable,” she answers banally.
“Good.”
“Thanks for organizing it.”
“No problem.”
Small talk sets like a cast around the delicate bones of what they’re both afraid to talk about: Jackson.
“I can run you to your car in a bit?”
She nods. “Thank you.”
“Where’ll you go next?”
“Hobart, I suppose. Maybe I’ll try and get in touch with some of Jackson’s old friends. I’ll figure it out,” she says with a brave smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
Saul thinks about her drifting around Hobart, asking questions about Jackson—and he knows that’s not a good idea. All the tension that his dive had eased now begins to creep back into his body, tightening in his temples and the base of his jaw.
He looks toward the shack, turning an idea through his head. Out here on Wattleboon barely anyone will remember Jackson, as he hasn’t been on the island since he was fifteen. But in Hobart there are people who know.
After a moment Saul says, “The shack’s free for a while. You’re welcome to stay on, if you want?”
You asked me once why Saul and I fell out, so I told you.
But it was only half of the truth.
I was shaving at the time, and carefully smoothed foam over my jaw as I contemplated my answer. I needed to get it right.
“It was my birthday,” I began, feeling my heart start to pound. “I had a barbecue down on the bluff near where I was living. I didn’t organize many things like that, but I wanted to that year because there was . . . this girl. Someone I thought was special. I wanted to introduce her to my friends.”
I drew the razor over my cheek, pulling my lips to the side to keep the skin taut as I told you, “Saul turned up late—and drunk—but I was just pleased he’d come. I slung an arm over his shoulder and walked him to the barbecue, where my girlfriend stood. Before he’d even said a word, I knew he was gonna make a play for her. I could see just by the way he was looking at her.”
“Did he?” you asked carefully, watching my reflection in the mirror.
I laughed, a dark sound. “Couldn’t help himself. He always had to get the girl. I saw him with her later that night. Right in front of me—like he didn’t even care. Like he wanted me to see.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged, tried to brighten my voice. “Maybe it worked out for the best. Saul kept on seeing her, so I ended up getting out of Tas for a few months.”
“That’s when you went to South America?”
“Yeah. Traveled up through Chile and Peru, then across to Brazil. I surfed, hiked, got some work building trail paths, bought a motorbike in Brazil. It was a good time—a good thing for me to do.”
“What about when you came back?”
“She and Saul were livin’ together up north. I stayed down south. We didn’t see each other.”
“They’re still together?”
“No. Not now.”
“And you can’t forgive him?”
I put the razor down and clenched the edge of the sink, lowered my head. “He’s a liar. I can’t trust him.”
You crossed the bathroom and placed the flat of your hand in the space between my shoulder blades and ran it in smooth strokes. It was like you were reaching inside me, soothing somewhere that I didn’t know still hurt.
I looked up and our gazes locked in the mirror. “Do you think people can change, Eva? Do you think it’s possible?”
I think the intensity of my voice startled you because you dropped your hand and said, “Yes. People can change.”
But here’s the thing that terrified me: What if they can’t?
8
Eva drifts through the shack as her mother continues talking. She catches the words scan, due date, trimester—words she associates with work, not her own pregnancy.
She pauses by a photo of her and Jackson she’d brought with her from England. It was taken last summer at a 1920s-themed jazz festival in London. In the picture Eva is wearing a drop-waisted flapper-girl dress and a beaded headband, and Jackson has one hand around her waist, and with his other he’s touching the brow of his black hat, laughing. There’s sun flare behind them and they both look tanned and happy, in love.
Tucking the phone under her ear, Eva takes down the picture. It’s housed in a thin glass frame, and she uses the hem of her dress to clean her fingerprints from it. She moves the fabric in slow circles until the glass is polished clear, and then she sets it back on the shelf.
“So you’ll be coming home?” her mother is saying.
“Home?” Eva repeats, tuning back in. “No. Not yet.”
“What?” The pitch of her mother’s voice rises.
“It hasn’t changed my plans out here.”
“What about your scan?”
“They do have hospitals in Australia,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, Callie will be out here in a few days.”
Eva doesn’t need her mother to worry about all the details; she just needs to hear someone tell her, This is fantastic news! You’re going to be a wonderful mother, Eva.
“You’ll worry me to death traveling around out there on your own, pregnant.” Her mother’s emotional fragility has always meant any problem instantly becomes hers. The pregnancy would become about her anxieties, her involvement, her fears. “What about if you have your old room back and I make the spare into a nursery—”
“Mum,” she cuts in firmly as she pushes away from the wall and step
s out onto the deck. The beach is empty and sunlight shimmers tantalizingly over the bay. She’s been on Wattleboon for three days now and already feels a strangely intimate tie to this island, knowing that Jackson spent his summers here as a boy. He would’ve played on many of these beaches, surfed and dived in the waves, fished from the jetty and from his father’s boat. And now, all these years later, Eva and the baby she carries inside her are also here—walking the same shorelines, seeing the same vistas. It’s as if she can feel Jackson’s footprints still warm under the sand.
She tells her mother, “Right now this is where I want to be.”
THAT EVENING, EVA GRABS the bottle of wine she’d bought earlier and sets out along the shore toward Saul’s house. He hasn’t visited her at the shack and has only cast a cursory wave in her direction when he’s been going out diving in the bay. It feels as if he’s purposely keeping his distance.
The smell of seaweed is ripe in the air and crabs scuttle between the tide line and their holes as she passes. At the end of the bay, stone steps cut into a rocky, tree-lined hill. She follows them up into Saul’s garden. Set back in the gum trees is a modest wooden house built on stilts. A wide deck runs along the front and the whole place blends so seamlessly into the surroundings that it could almost pass as a tree house.
She finds Saul gutting fish on an old wooden workbench, beside which is a faded blue kayak. He has his back to her and is wearing a dark T-shirt with canvas shorts, his feet bare. She watches him for a moment, her gaze lingering on the broadness of his neck—the shape so like Jackson’s. Her fingertips twitch as she imagines touching the soft dark hairs at the nape of her husband’s neck, then running them beneath the starched cotton of his shirt collar, where the smell of aftershave always lingered on his skin.
Without realizing, Eva sighs and suddenly Saul’s head snaps up. His hair is mussed around his face, the dark brown sun-lightened in streaks. “Eva.”
“Hi,” she says, uncertainly. “I . . . I brought this.” Saul stares at her, then at the bottle of wine in her hands.