The River Home : A Novel (2020)
Page 29
She looks around at the river, the jetty and the charred remains of her mother’s old studio hidden in the shadows of the tangled undergrowth. This place has haunted her for so long. It has born her deepest shame and held her darkest secrets. It has reared up in her nightmares and held her caught in a past she hasn’t yet outrun. Yet looking again, she sees the old rowboat where Eve would sit and read her books. She sees the rocks where they scrambled up to leap out into the water. She sees the smooth surface of the river where Lucy would float, face turned to the sky. She sees all her family memories nestled in this one place.
Something Lucy had said to her chimes: where there is love.
For too many years, this river has been a place of pain. Yet is also a place of joy. Perhaps, this place – this silent river – is all of these things. Or perhaps it is none. Perhaps it just is. Margot understands now that what she has been frightened of facing is not her mother’s studio, nor the river, nor Windfalls but the hurt place inside of her – the dark wound she has carried for so long. This is what Lucy has been asking her to confront.
Joy. Pain. Life. Death. Each casts the other in sharp relief. Sitting on the jetty, thinking about Lucy’s life – and death – it’s as if Margot can feel her heart beating a little more fiercely, her breath coming a little more forcefully. It takes courage to love.
Feeling the chill of the March morning seeping into her bones, Margot stands and makes for the gate leading up through the orchard. With her hand on the metal latch, she hesitates. She turns and eyes the timbers of the old studio lying slumped in the shadows. The clouds shift overhead, sending a shaft of sunlight strobing across the valley. Margot’s gaze is caught by something pale, glinting in the long grass near one of the collapsed beams. She moves closer and bends down, her hand closing around a egg-shaped object. She knows what it is before she has even brushed the layer of dirt from its surface. She remembers the rose-pink crystal, the treasured piece of quartz that had sat on her mother’s desk for all those years. Weighing it in her hand, she recalls the night of the fire and the sound of smashing glass as she had thrown it through the studio window. Has it been lying here forgotten all this time? Turning the stone, it glitters pale pink in the morning light, refracting the sun like ice. She holds it in the palm of her hand. Something important – something to be returned.
*
The trees in the orchard stand like old friends marking her path back to the house. She enters through the back door. Upstairs, Jonas waits for her. In a moment, she will follow the steps to her bedroom. She will lift his arm and nestle in beside him, pressing her body against his, holding his warm hand against her heart. His other arm will wrap around her, his fingers unconsciously tracing the ink on her upper arm in what is now a familiar gesture, mapping the vines and the small dark heart in the crook of her arm. He will murmur soft words into her hair and Margot will close her eyes.
She hesitates at the bottom of the staircase, one foot on the lowest step. The rose quartz crystal is a warm weight in her hand. Slowly, she turns to the open doorway of the kitchen, to where Kit now sits alone, staring out of the window. Margot hesitates. She hears her mother’s soft sigh. She lifts her foot from the step. ‘Mum,’ she says, going to the open door, squeezing the quartz in her hand. ‘Mum, can I talk to you?’
Kit looks up. She gives a slow nod and pats the empty chair beside her. ‘Come,’ she says.
Margot takes a breath and enters the room.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my agent, Sarah Lutyens, and all at Lutyens and Rubinstein for their continual support. Thank you to the publishing teams at Orion in the UK, Hachette Australia and HarperCollins in the US, with special thanks to Clare Hey, Vanessa Radnidge and Emily Griffin for their clear editorial vision and care.
Huge thanks to all the booksellers and librarians shepherding books to readers and keeping the love of the written word alive and thriving.
Lastly, but most importantly, thank you to my family and friends, for their love and support, especially my parents, John and Gill, my sister (and first reader) Jess, my brother Will, and, of course, my very best creations, Jude and Gracie, for putting up with me and making me smile through it all.
This book is dedicated to my brother, Will – one of the kindest, most generous-hearted men you could hope to meet.
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Copyright
Published in Australia and New Zealand in 2020
by Hachette Australia
(an imprint of Hachette Australia Pty Limited)
Level 17, 207 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000
www.hachette.com.au
Published in Great Britain in 2020 by Orion Books
Copyright © Hannah Richell 2020
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be stored or reproduced by any process without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the National Library of Australia.
978 0 7336 4367 5 (ebook edition)
Cover design by Christabella Designs
Cover photograph courtesy of Trevillion
Author photograph courtesy of Claire Newman-Williams
Text design by The Spartan Press Ltd, Lymington, Hants
Table of Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Also by Hannah Richell
Dedication
Prologue
Monday
Chapter 1: Tuesday
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6: The Past 1986–1987
Chapter 7: Wednesday
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15: The Past 2005
Chapter 16: Thursday
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19: The Past 2009
Chapter 20: Friday
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25: The Past 2009
Chapter 26: Saturday
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33: The Past 2009–2010
Chapter 34: Sunday
Chapter 35: Six Months Later
Chapter 36
Acknowledgements
Copyright