by Lucy Clarke
“I know. I know. I just . . . I’m not sure what to do.” She sighs, running out of steam. Eva is a decisive person, someone who’s always steered her own course in life rather than letting life lead her; at least, that’s who she used to be. Now she isn’t sure who she is—or what she wants. She’s lost confidence in her own judgment, a voice in her head constantly taunting her: Look how monumentally wrong you got it with Jackson.
She’s talking herself in circles about whether to leave with Callie: she’s already been here longer than she had planned; her mother is desperate to have her home; she needs to get back to work.
Yet she also feels an inexplicable desire to stay: to wake up on the beach for a little while longer, knowing the day is hers to do with as she pleases. She feels connected to Wattleboon as if part of her has taken root here. To go now would be to leave something—she isn’t sure what—unfinished.
“Eva,” he says, causing her to look up.
His expression is deadly serious.
“I understand how hard all this must be on you. I’m Jackson’s brother and maybe you feel guilty because of that. I know I do. But there is something between us. I can feel it and I don’t want to give up on that. If you leave with Callie, then we’ll never know. You won’t have given us a chance.” He stares at her, unblinking. “After what happened before, I promised myself I’d always be honest with you. So this is me being honest with you right now: I’m in love with you.”
Heat rises to the surface of her skin. She can hear the drumming of her heart. He is in love with me. Her head fills with images of Jackson telling her he loves her: on a packed bus with a wet umbrella gripped between his knees; over lunch at her mother’s when he was carving the beef; in bed as he kissed her bare ankle.
Eva is hesitating, not sure what to say.
Saul watches her closely.
“I . . .” She cannot seem to find any words. Her lips open and then close again, a fish without water. “I see.”
Saul’s gaze falls away to the ground. He runs a hand back through his hair and exhales hard, as if pushing something sharp out of his chest. “I get back Thursday night. I guess you’ll tell me then if you’re leaving.”
“Okay,” she manages—and then he’s gone.
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, CALLIE pulls out the grill tray with a clatter and drops the toast onto two plates. Toast has always been her and Eva’s comfort food, and she thinks Eva could use some comfort right now. “Jam or peanut butter?”
“Please,” Eva answers distractedly. She is looking through the photo album Saul delivered, her lips pressed together as she absorbs each picture.
Callie fetches the jam and gives the lid a fierce twist to remove it. As she smears black currant into the edges of the toast, she wonders about Saul and Eva. She’d seen the way they looked at each other yesterday before they realized she was in the doorway. Eva told her what Saul had said afterward—that he’s in love with her—but what Callie can’t get to the root of is what Eva feels for him.
Callie likes Saul; she thinks he’s a man of great value, and in truth, she wishes it was Saul whom Eva had met two years ago, not Jackson. But she can’t help thinking it’d be cleaner if Eva returned to London and let go of Wattleboon. And of Saul.
She slices the toast into triangles and then carries both plates to the sofa, where mugs of tea wait. “Any good pictures?”
“Thanks,” Eva says, taking her toast. “A few. Look at this.” She holds up the album with one hand and lifts her toast to her mouth with the other.
Callie sees a picture of the brothers as teenagers in scruffy jeans with bare chests and skateboards. “The Kurt Cobain phase,” Callie says, looking at their shoulder-length hair and sullen faces.
Eva flips through a few pages to some shots where the brothers are older, in their twenties: Jackson making the peace sign in the middle of a crowd; the two of them doing a backflip from the side of a boat, ribs protruding as they arch.
Callie reaches for her tea, and as she does so, something on the next page catches her attention. She pauses, leaning closer to the album. “How strange.”
Eva glances at her. “What?”
Callie’s concentrating on a photo of a woman with her waist encircled by Saul’s arm. “I’m sure I recognize her.”
She angles the album toward her, light bouncing off the image. Saul must have been in his midtwenties when the photo was taken—there are fewer lines on his brow and his hair is cut shorter. Then her gaze returns to the woman. “I’m just trying to think where I know her from . . . Maybe I’ve worked with her,” she says, her fingertips lightly drumming her thigh. “Yes, that’s it. She’s a client of Jackson’s.”
“She can’t be . . .”
“I’m certain,” Callie says, confident now. “I met her at Vernadors. They were having a client dinner. That was when I ate those bad mussels—I told you about it.” Callie remembers the woman’s fox-red hair, which she wore loose over her shoulders. “It’s definitely the same woman.”
“It can’t be,” Eva repeats so sharply that Callie looks up. “The woman in this photo is Jeanette.”
EVA WAITS, HER PULSE ticking in her throat as Callie stares at the photo again.
When Callie finally lifts her gaze and speaks, her words come out carefully and precisely, as if she knows they are lighting a fuse. “I’m certain, Eva. I’ve met this woman.”
All the blood seems to drain from Eva’s head and she feels as if the sofa is giving way beneath her. “No . . .”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. That’s who Jackson was having dinner with.”
“Then . . . Jeanette was in England. But she said she’d never been . . . She told me she didn’t even know that’s where Jackson was.”
Callie opens her palms. “She must’ve been lying.”
Eva presses her fingertips to her mouth, her thoughts scattering. If Jeanette and Jackson had been seeing each other in London, were they still in a relationship? Had Jeanette known about Eva all along? Her voice is breathless as she asks, “You saw them together? Just the two of them?”
“They were sitting in the far corner of the restaurant, near the piano. But honestly, Eva, I didn’t think that anything odd was going on. They were just sitting there, having a meal.”
“And he saw you? You spoke to Jackson?”
She nods. “When I arrived I just waved hello as we were being seated across the room. But I went over later. Jackson introduced her. Said she was a client. I don’t think he gave her name.”
“How was he acting?” Eva asks, her hands running back and forth along the neckline of her top. “Did he seem nervous?”
Callie looks up toward the ceiling concentrating. “I can’t remember. I don’t think so. Maybe . . . I can’t really say. Shit, I’m sorry.”
“What about her? Did she say anything?”
“She didn’t speak. She seemed a bit cold, I suppose. She just sat back, looking at me.”
“When was this?”
“It was our wrap party, so that must’ve been the end of November.” She thinks for a moment, running a knuckle over her lips. “That’s right—it was David’s birthday the following day. So it was November twenty-seventh.”
Eva remembers the night now. It was a few days before they left for their trip to Dorset. She’d been in bed when Jackson got in. As he undressed he’d mentioned bumping into Callie at Vernadors. Eva hadn’t even asked how his client dinner went, just said, “How is she?” They talked for a minute or so and then he’d slipped into bed, pressing his body against hers, and they’d fallen asleep, waking in the morning still in each other’s arms.
“What are you thinking?” Callie asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Eva says, getting up and pacing across the shack. “Maybe they were still together.” Just saying these words makes the muscles in her throat constrict. She had believed that Jackson loved her, just like Dirk said. But maybe Dirk was wrong.
“Do you think Jeanette
knew about you all along?”
Eva is about to say no, but then she hesitates. She is thinking about Jeanette’s reaction when Eva turned up in Warrington. Her thoughts are whirring back through every detail of that meeting. Now it strikes her as odd that Jeanette had asked so few questions. Surely she’d have wanted to know why Jackson had married Eva, how long they’d been together, whether he talked about his life in Tasmania. She remembers how quick Jeanette was to tell Eva that she was his first wife, the woman Jackson loved, as if she’d been waiting for the chance to prove herself.
Eva’s throat feels dry. She goes to the sink, fills a glass with water, and swallows it back too quickly, making her cough.
“Eva? Are you okay?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t understand what any of this means. Why was Jeanette in London? Were they still together?”
Eva had wanted to let go of all her questions about Jackson and focus on the one thing she did know: that Jackson had loved her. But hearing this is like ripping open stitches to find an infection beneath the skin.
“You know how we can find out, don’t you?”
Yes, Eva thinks. I do.
SAUL STAKES OUT HIS tent by head lamp, forcing a peg down into the hard earth with his heel.
“We’re in business,” Tom, his lab partner, calls as he stokes the fire with a branch. They’ve decided to camp out since the nearest motel is about thirty kilometers south. Plus, this way, they’re right by the water, ready to start again in the morning.
When Tom’s cell phone rings, he yanks it from his pocket and his whole face stretches into a grin as he says, “Hey, Tina! How’s it goin’?” He walks off a little way to speak to his girlfriend in private.
Saul is shattered. He was up at five to get the first ferry off Wattleboon, and then he had to swing by the lab and pick up the final pieces of equipment before gunning it up the east coast. They were on the water by midday and made three dives in different spots. Their supervisor will be pleased because they found exactly what they came for: rows and rows of southern calamari eggs nestled into the sea grass beds. They logged the GPS coordinates and still had time to hook themselves a couple of flatties for dinner. The fish are gutted and wrapped in foil, ready to throw on the fire with a pan of noodles. Perfect camping food, Saul thinks. Quick and easy.
He grinds in the final peg, annoyed that he forgot his pack with all his gear and sleeping bag. He can picture exactly where he left it—right by the door, so he actually walked past it on his way out.
Saul does up the fly sheet and then goes back for the pot. As he’s walking, a light in his peripheral vision catches his attention.
He is turning toward it, his legs bending into a run before his mind has actually connected with what’s happening. A spark from their campfire has ignited the saltbush beside it, the dry leaves starting to burn. He acts on instinct, stamping down on the flames. They lick at his ankle and every time he lifts a foot, they seem to come back higher. “Christ,” he says as he feels the heat against his skin. He eventually manages to suffocate the flames and soon all that’s left is a patch of charred earth.
He pokes a stick at the campfire, shifting the wood around to keep the heat more central, then bends down to inspect the singed hair above his ankle. God, the smell! Lifting up his foot, he sees that the sole of his right shoe has blackened from the heat. As he’s feeling the place where the rubber has melted and thinned, something from his memory is pushing forward, trying to surface.
He’s thinking about the day of the bush fire, when smoke billowed into the sky. He’d found Jackson at Jeanette’s shack, coolly disinterested in the drama outside. Studiously cool? Then he thinks of the nightmares Jackson still had as a grown man, the ones Eva mentioned where he’d search the blazing bush for his mother and wake coughing and choking.
Saul looks into the glowing red pit of the campfire. His skin grows hot as he begins to see what has been there all along.
31
The knot in Eva’s stomach tightens as they pass the sign for Warrington. In a matter of minutes they’ll be at Jeanette’s house. Her throat burns with all the things she wants to say—and this time she will not be leaving without answers.
“Try him again,” Callie says, who is at the wheel. They have been taking turns driving. They left Wattleboon yesterday afternoon, only pulling in at a motel when dusk fell and the wallabies and possums emerged, bright eyes glinting in their headlights.
Eva dials Saul’s number, then lifts the phone to her ear. She is eager for the reassurance of his voice, but instead the call goes straight to voicemail for the third time this morning. She ends the call without leaving a message.
“Still no answer?”
Eva shakes her head. “He’s avoiding me.”
“He’s probably out on the boat without reception.”
“Maybe,” she says, without conviction. She knows how hard it must have been for Saul to open up to her and tell her how he felt—and all she’d said in return was I see. The last thing she wants is to hurt him, but love feels like dangerous territory right now. Everything she believed in was shattered by Jackson and she’s just not sure she’s strong enough to take that risk again.
When Eva looks up, she recognizes the line of poplar trees and the stock grid ahead. “It’s the next house on the right.”
They turn into the gravel driveway and find two vehicles parked outside the house. “That’s like Saul’s truck, isn’t it?” Callie says, pulling up beside it.
Eva studies the faded blue paintwork and the rusted bull bar on the front. She twists around to peer through the truck windows; inside there’s just a road map on the passenger seat and a carton of iced coffee in the cup holder. She glances in the back cab, where two fishing rods lie across the shelf. Plenty of Tasmanian’s drive blue trucks—and most of them probably own fishing rods, too—but what makes Eva’s mouth turn dry is the sight of masking tape wrapped around the base of the second rod. She recognizes it because she has fished with it.
“Saul’s here.”
SAUL HAD WOKEN AT dawn knowing instinctively what he must do. He’d packed up the tent, dusting off ants clinging to the ground sheet, then shaken his lab partner awake, explaining why he had to shoot through. He’d driven for five hours straight—and now he’s here, walking down the hallway of Jeanette’s house.
He follows her into the living room, stepping over the vacuum that’s plugged into the wall. On the coffee table the browning skin of a banana lies beside an empty mug. “Where’s Kyle?”
“Mum has him Thursdays. Gives me a chance to get stuff done.” Jeanette indicates for him to sit. “Push that aside,” she says, nodding toward a sewing box and a purple coat strewn on the sofa. He places them on the armrest, then lowers himself down.
Jeanette sits on the adjacent sofa, arms folded. She is wearing a loose V-neck sweater over leggings and her hair is piled on top of her head. “Twice in a month. You’re starting to make me feel very popular.”
He’s not in the mood for small talk. His palms are damp and he wipes them against his jeans. He looks at Jeanette closely as he says, “I know Jackson wasn’t Kyle’s father.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Do you, now?”
“Let’s not mess around here, Jeanette. Jackson told Dad.”
“I thought Dirk must’ve known. He never visited Kyle after Jackson left.”
“Why did you tell Jackson the baby was his? So he’d marry you?”
“I wasn’t trying to trap him, if that’s what you think. When I found out I was pregnant, I honestly wasn’t sure who the father was. I hoped—I wanted to believe—it was Jackson.” She looks down at her lap, where her hands are loosely clasped, her nails bitten to the fingertips. “I loved Jackson. I didn’t want to lose him.”
He could tell her that that’s not love, or that she cheated not only Jackson, but Kyle and Kyle’s real father, too. Instead, he says, “Tell me about the bush fire, Jeanette.”
Her head jerks up. “Wha
t do you mean?”
“I know you and Jackson were there. I want to know what happened.” He holds her gaze, wondering if she’ll see through his bluff. He doesn’t know they were there, he only suspects it. Last night he’d lain awake in his tent as one theory rolled into another—and now he needs Jeanette to provide the facts.
He lays down his next card, speaking slowly to give his voice a quiet authority. “I’ve been going through some of Jackson’s things and I came across an old diary of his.”
Jeanette is listening closely; her fingers slide to her wedding band and she twists it around and around. “What exactly do you think you know, Saul?”
“He wrote about what happened that day. The bush fire. I know the diary only tells Jackson’s version of events.” He continues pinning Jeanette with his eyes. “So now I’d like to hear yours.”
Her eyes close and that’s when Saul knows he’s got her.
She exhales, her shoulders rounding as the air leaves her. “I just happened to be with him. That’s all.”
He nods at her to continue, trying to keep his expression neutral and not give away the fact that his heart is thundering.
“We were in the woods—up near the cape. We used to go there sometimes for a smoke. That day wasn’t anything different. We hung out for a bit, smoked a couple of cigarettes, then left.” Her gaze drifts beyond Saul, out toward the garden. “Only, as we were going, I saw a curl of smoke coming from the ground. Jackson hadn’t stubbed out his cigarette properly and the leaves were smoldering, starting to flame. He ran back and tried to put it out—but it caught so quickly.”
She looks back at Saul, imploring. “There was nothing we could do. We didn’t have any water, not even a blanket or a jacket to smother it with. Nothing. The flames were too big to stamp out. So we ran. We had to.”
Saul tastes something acidic at the back of his throat. He wants to open a window, let fresh air into the room, but he can’t move.
“We went back to my shack,” Jeanette is saying breathlessly, “and I grabbed the phone to call the fire department. But Jackson stopped me. He said, ‘Let someone else make the call. We’ll be in the shit if our folks find out.’ ”