Only We Know (3 page)

But she didn't want to be the one to crush anyone else's hope. ‘Where do you want to go?'

‘Adelaide. Maybe Melbourne.'

‘You should go, then. There's a big wide world out there across the water. There are lots of places you could see.'

The kid's eyes brightened. ‘I hope so.' She handed Calla the receipt with a friendly smile. ‘Thanks. Well. Have a nice time on KI.'

‘Thank you.' Calla gave the girl a wave and picked up her cardboard box of groceries. After she'd negotiated the electric doors, she loaded it into the hatchback of her little red car, slamming the tailgate twice because the first time the dodgy catch didn't connect. One day, maybe, she would spend money on a new car instead of renovating her house. Then again, maybe not. It had been faithful to her since she'd bought it second-hand a decade before. It got her where she needed to be and that was all she needed it to do. Her house, however, was far more precious to her than any four wheels and a chassis could ever be.

‘Need a hand?' It was Mr Nice Guy from the boat.

‘No, I'm good. Sorry if I kept you waiting.'

‘You didn't. Here's your jacket.'

He held it between them and she lifted it from his hand with a restrained smile. Her fingers flew immediately to the breast pocket. Bingo.

‘Thank god they're still there. My glasses.' Calla dug them out, unfolded the arms and slipped them on. ‘Can't see much without them,' she admitted with a rueful laugh.

‘Glad to be of service,' the man said.

Now Calla was restored to 20/20 vision, she made sure the brooch was still there too. She'd come so close to losing almost the dearest possession she had. She ran her fingers over the cool of the ceramic, marvelling once again at its smoothness, the precision of her mother's beautiful strokes and the delicate swirls of blue.
Rest in peace, Mum.
It had been five years since her mother's death and she still had to fight the tears when she remembered her. God! The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass herself by looking like a big girly sook in front of a total stranger who'd already seen her puking. She tried to regain some dignity.

She looked up past said stranger and for the first time saw Kangaroo Island in focus. At the end of the street, which dipped down to the cliff overlooking the ferry landing, there was ocean — miles and miles of it, a deep sapphire blue, and in the distance the mainland shimmered. The colours were vivid and dramatic, as if painted by an eighteenth-century landscape artist. Calla propped her elbows on her car door and simply stared at the sky. She'd never seen anything like it.

‘What a stunning view. Don't you think?'

‘Sure.' Mr Nice Guy didn't sound that convinced.

‘Thank you for finding me. That was very … nice … of you.' Calla turned her full attention to him. Whoa. Handsome guy. Like
oh wow
kind of handsome. He was a little older than she'd thought at first, late thirties maybe. His dark, almost black hair was very short over his ears and collar, a little longer on top, and there were touches of grey at his temples. His stubbled chin shadowed his jaw and highlighted the dips under his cheekbones. His full lips were lifted in the corners in a smile and the move creased his forehead and the corners of his eyes. His dark-chocolate eyes.

Calla could appreciate handsome without going all wobbly at the knees. She, in fact, wasn't going wobbly over a man ever again. She had sworn off them entirely. That knowledge came with a certain confidence: she could check him out and be totally unaffected by the chocolate eyes or the shoulders or those little eye crinkles that only came from laughing a lot. So he looked like a man in a magazine. She could easily turn the page.

‘You don't need to thank me. It was nothing. And you weren't hard to find. You do stand out in a crowd, you know.' His eyes drifted to the top of her head.

‘I get that a lot,' she said.

‘Well,' he said, apparently distracted for a moment. He glanced down the street and back again to her face. ‘Safe travels. Watch out for the kangaroos.'

‘I've been warned not to drive at dusk.'

He took two steps back and opened his car door. ‘That's good advice.'

‘Thanks again for keeping my jacket safe.'

‘No worries.' He lifted his hand in a casual wave.

‘Safe travels to you, too,' Calla called.

Mr Nice Guy grinned at her again and walked back to his car. Instead of getting in, he leant in and reached across for something in his shopping before turning and walking back to her.

‘Here. This is for you.' He held out a small, round lollipop on a stick.

Calla regarded it mock seriously, crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. ‘I don't know. I've been warned about taking lollies from strangers.'

He laughed. ‘It's for your return trip on the ferry. Suck it and it'll help with the seasickness.'

She took it from him and twirled it around and around on its white stick, the bright colours of the cellophane wrap whirring around like a kaleidoscope in her hand. ‘Thanks,' was all she could manage.

The man dipped his head and shot her another smile, his teeth bright against his tanned face. Calla sighed. He looked like a freaking toothpaste commercial.

As his big car roared to life with a gruff throb, Calla got in her little one, wistfully wishing she'd had the heater fixed, and reversed out of her park. Ahead of her, the handsome man's silver beast had driven off towards the green hills at the end of the road. When he lifted a hand to wave to her in his rear-vision mirror, she waved back with a smile all to herself.

‘Goodbye, Nice Handsome Man,' she said out loud. ‘Here's hoping I never see you again.'

CHAPTER

4

Sam zipped up his heavy navy coat against the wind sweeping up the cliffs to the Penneshaw Cemetery and freezing his ears. The tall gums rustled and whispered as he walked through the white-painted metal gates. The last faint light of the day was almost gone behind the horizon and the blue of the ocean was shifting to black. To his left, two tall, neatly trimmed topiary crosses grew green and abundant, and there were gravestones laid out neatly on either side of the path. There were no streetlights on Hog Bay Road but he didn't need a torch. He knew the way. His boots crunched the gravel as he walked, warnings signs to the dead that someone was approaching.

The two small headstones were white stone, neat. Tidy.

Jean Anne Hunter (née Christie).
Sam's mother. Charlie's wife.

Andrew John Hunter
. Charlie and Jean's son. Sam's older brother.

Sam glanced around. He was alone. Who else would be there on a wet and frigidly cold winter's afternoon? He wondered for a moment whether the old man had been by to visit but then dismissed the thought. Charlie wasn't the sentimental type. Had never had deep and meaningfuls with his son; or anyone else, Sam imagined. Hell, his father was a bloke — and a country bloke at heart — and of a generation and character that didn't dig down deep about anything. Charlie wasn't the type to swing by and lay flowers on the graves of his wife and son.

And neither was Sam. He'd never understood the point of flowers, hadn't brought any to their graves for years. They were a show for other people, he'd always thought. And he didn't need to put on a show. He'd learnt over the years to hide grief, not to expose it with displays like that. Everything in life was safer if you kept that stuff hidden away. He'd seen too much grief, raw, uncensored grief, to let himself wallow in his own. The things a firefighter saw on an average day were best put away at the end of the shift. They were the kind of things he'd long stopped sharing with anyone outside the fire service. Or even with people in the service, to be honest. No matter what you'd seen, when the bells dropped on the next shift, you had to get back in the truck with your crew, put away the previous day's memories and start afresh.

In the same way, he tried not to think about the two white headstones in the dirt or all the other shit that had happened to him. Back home, he had lots of distractions to keep those memories away. When he wasn't at work, he rode his bike from his house in the 'burbs up into the hills or down to the beach. He worked out at the gym. Walked to his local and caught up with his mates from the fire service, or blokes from his football-playing days. He went to the movies, if there was a new action film to see. Sitting in the dark and watching stuff get blown up could always be relied on to take you out of your head for ninety-eight minutes plus trailers.

But here, back on the island, when the memories of those he'd lost came back, unbidden, there was only one way to obliterate them.

He needed a drink.

And he knew just where to get it.

What should have taken Calla five minutes ended up taking her fifteen. She'd tried to read the map the tourist office had emailed her, with what they'd promised were clear instructions on how to get to her cabin, but she must have taken a wrong turn because she was now on the other side of Penneshaw. Instead of a sea view, there had been nothing but rolling fields of green. Wheat? Grass? In the distance were a couple of horses. It all looked rather lovely, but she was lost.

She pulled over to the side of the road and gave herself a headache trying to read the map. But she wouldn't be defeated by this detour and by the time she found her way back to the supermarket and set off again in the right direction, it was dark. Really dark. No streetlights kind of dark. Middle of winter early sunset kind of dark. There was an outside light shining at the little beach house she'd rented and she sighed out loud as she pulled in to the short driveway. The brochure had featured a brilliant sea view over Penneshaw Beach, which she'd hoped to sketch, but all she could see as she stepped out of her car and looked over the roadway was black. An inky black. A few stars had begun to light up the night sky, but not enough to illuminate much of anything.

She easily found the key, left exactly where the letting agent had promised, and let herself inside. It looked simple, pleasant and clean. Three bedrooms, not that she needed more than one. A small kitchen with a simple wooden dining table, and a bathroom off to the side. She wheeled her suitcase through the living area and into the main bedroom and looked around. As far as she could tell by the bedside table lamplight, it was tidy and neat. Fresh white sheets were stretched flat on the bed. A chair by the window held folded white towels and there was a framed photo of a stunning summer-day beach scene on the wall above the cane bedhead. Not a bad place to base herself. Back out in the main living area, there were two sofas and wide sliding doors leading out to a small deck, which was barely visible in the light from inside the cabin. She found the remote control for the heating system and cranked it up to high.

Four nights there would give her a chance to talk to the locals and start investigating. Yes, she thought, as she glanced around, this will do nicely. Even more nicely if she could find one of the bottles of red she'd brought from Adelaide.

Half an hour later, Calla flopped onto the sofa and dialled her sister for the promised check-in call.

Rose picked up almost immediately. ‘Are you there yet?'

‘Yes, Rose. I'm here. I'm showered and warm and in my pyjamas and Ugg boots. I have a glass of fine red wine in my hand.' Calla sipped it and it smoothed its way down her throat. ‘Mmm, drinking red wine as we speak.'

‘And are you okay?'

‘I'm fine,' Calla said and then paused for dramatic effect. ‘Except for the part where I threw up over the side of the boat.'

There was a gasp down the line and then a hearty laugh from Rose. ‘God, no, don't make me laugh. My pelvic floor is under enough stress as it is.'

Calla took up the challenge. ‘It wasn't my finest moment. And then, after I puked, I lost my denim jacket with Mum's brooch on it
and
my glasses.'

There was another muted laugh down the line. ‘You idiot. Why don't you get one of those string things that the nannas wear?'

‘Because,
Nanna
,' Calla said, ‘I'm thirty-two, not eighty-two.'

‘Thirty-two is old.'

‘Thanks for that, little sister. Lucky for me, both were found, safe and sound. But then, wait for it, I got lost on the way to the cabin. In the pitch dark. And I nearly drove off a cliff.'

‘Cal, you're hopeless. Why didn't you get like a Sherpa or a guide or something?'

Calla had to laugh. This was such a turn about for the books. Growing up, they'd had their roles to play: Calla was practical and Rose was wild. Calla had always liked her world ordered and organised. She would no more throw some things into her car and book a one-way trip to Kangaroo Island than leave crumbs on the kitchen bench. Rose was the one who borrowed Calla's clothes and never returned them. Rose was the one who didn't do her homework but got into university anyway; the sister who had her heart broken eight times before swearing utterly off all men in the summer of the year 2010 … and who then fell madly in love with the next guy she met. In contrast, big sister Calla spent every Saturday night studying when she wasn't waiting tables, and didn't have her first boyfriend until she was twenty-two because she weighed up the pros and cons and decided it would interfere with her studies and her practice and her dreams of being an artist. She'd half-heartedly dated a few guys after number one broke up with her. Number two was boring. Numbers three to five only lasted two dates and number six had provided a year of mutually satisfying casual sex. It was a long time before she'd met number seven. Three years, in fact. Number seven had been Josh. Number seven had split her heart in two.

‘What's it like, the island?'

Calla thought back to the afternoon she'd had. ‘It was about four when the boat got in and so far I've really only seen the inside of a supermarket and the darkness. But,' she paused, trying to get it right, ‘the winter colours and the sky and the sea are incredibly beautiful; and wild and dramatic. The air smells different. And it feels, I dunno, mysterious? Even mystical.' She'd have been embarrassed using words like that with anyone except Rosie.