by Sarah Bailey
‘You and I are the only ones that heard her that night,’ says Candy, her bright red lips moving so fast I feel dizzy. ‘And Rodney, of course.’ She acknowledges his presence with a flip of her hand. She paces at the end of my hospital bed like a puma, her dark skin offset by a tight white dress. ‘She was out of her mind at the thought of losing him. There is no doubt in my mind that she did it.’
Candy saw me leave the school and chase Rodney, then saw Donna follow us and trailed her to the tower, watching as she picked up a rock and crouched on the stairs. Candy heard Donna attack me and take my gun. She texted for help and flicked on her audio recorder to capture everything. She threw her shoe at the critical moment and cradled my broken body afterwards, holding her lightweight jacket hard against my wound to stop the bleeding as Donna howled at the moon, clinging to her bleeding son.
‘I thought you were a goner,’ Candy tells me sunnily, but I know she was terrified.
One way or another I probably owe my life to her.
‘I was scared, I have to admit.’ She leans closer. ‘And you are never allowed to tell anyone that my recorder didn’t work. Worst moment of my career, I swear.’
I can only laugh. ‘Same,’ I tell her.
We are tentative friends now, bound by the tragedy we witnessed. I admit I look forward to her visits. She still makes me roll my eyes but she also makes me laugh and that can only be a good thing.
I have an impressive scar that will be with me until the day I die. The bullet entered my flesh just below my collarbone and exited clean out the other side. I lost a lot of blood, but thanks to Candy I will be fine. I trace along the bandage with my fingers as I fall asleep, staring at the mountain of flowers I’ve been sent. So many roses.
Rosalind remains a mystery to me. So many contradictions. Alive now only in my memories. Anna is sure that she was as close to a psychopath as we will ever see in Smithson.
‘A manipulative bitch,’ she says cheerily, bringing me yet more flowers to look at from my hospital bed. I suppose Anna is probably right. I can see how dangerous Rosalind was. She used people, chewed them up and spat them out, looking for something, but never finding it. She continues to float in front of me, just beyond reach. My eyes, which always sought her out at school, now roam around the corners of my brain, still fixed on her: remembering things, turning them over.
Of course, if I’m honest with myself, I used her too. The thought of us being more alike than different scares me most of all.
Three weeks after the night on the tower, I go home and relearn how to do my life. I let the basic things make me strong again. I cook dinner, I read in the sun, I play with Ben. I can’t get enough of him: his tiny body, his heart-shaped face, his endless questions. Scott and I talk, cautiously at first and then with more confidence, making plans. I will return to work—it’s part of who I am—but it will be different this time. We will try to do it together. I vow to keep no secrets from him. I tell him about Jacob, about Rosalind, all of it.
Felix hovers between us but I push him aside: my final secret. Only time will tell if I can keep him buried in my past.
Five weeks after the shooting I visit Jacob’s grave. The sweet smell of a dying summer rolls across the hill. Bees fly low around the headstones, flitting over the recently turned earth, before settling on their chosen flowers. Rosalind is buried in the Ryan plot on the other side of the hill near the rose garden, right next to the grave of George Ryan. I try not to think about her. I need to row my boat towards calm waters. I pull tails of weeds from the concrete cracks on Jacob’s headstone and smooth my fingers over the chiselled letters, laying my carefully picked bunch of wildflowers across the top.
I breathe in the fresh air and read his name over and over.
I gently run my fingers across my scar as I remember him. Remember how much he loved me.
I sit down on the soft grass next to his grave and stretch my legs out in the sun. Two little sparrows near my feet weave around each other, playing an elaborate game of chase, before jumping into the air and flying into the sky.
acknowledgments
Although I wrote alone, I have quite a few people to thank for The Dark Lake becoming an actual book.
To Tom, for the gift of extra hours and for wrangling our small humans so I didn’t have to deal with reality quite as much as usual.
To my early readers, of which there are a few, you are all excellent people. Thank you for taking the time and for caring enough to give feedback. It was incredibly important to me. My parents, Kevin and Susan, were especially helpful early readers, which appeals to my strong sense of irony, seeing as they taught me to read (and write) in the first place. I would like to thank them also for lots of general things, as well as several of the commas that appear in this book.
To Deanne Sheldon-Collins, for giving me ‘proper’ writing advice and a much-needed confidence boost at the halfway mark.
To my amazing agent, Lyn Tranter, for responding to my pitch email in the first place, and to both her and Sarah Minns for helping me to shape my story, name it and save one of the characters from an untimely death.
To Jane Palfreyman, Ali Lavau, Sarah Baker, Louise Cornege, Kate Goldsworthy and all the other magicians at Allen & Unwin, thank you so much for your passion and enthusiasm. Thank you also for being very good at your jobs and making my book SO much better than it was when you met it, and for introducing it to so many people.
I would also like to thank the stranger on the plane who read sections of my draft during a long flight and who, when I noticed, told me that it was ‘quite good’ and then begged me to tell her what happened next. Your unprompted interest was strangely motivating.
And, to the difficult-to-define but reliably awesome New York City, the magical place in which I wrote a decent chunk of this book and where I decided once and for all that I would finish it and get it published (so presumptuous!)—thank you for the epiphany.
Writing a book really is such a ridiculous thing to do. So ridiculous that I might just go and do it all over again.