Jill's hearing returned in stutters. She listened to Cutter living and dying with each breath. The death rattle.
She couldn't move. She lay there breathing in this man's soul as it left his body. She felt close to him, part of him, dying there with him. Her mouth on his neck, she whispered into the blood. Not long now, she told him.
But Cutter first had something to say.
Because they made no sense, and she'd never been certain that she had actually heard them, Jill had never repeated the words to anyone.
'Coming, Grandfather.'
'Thanks,' Jill managed in the back of the ambulance.
'Sorry,' said Gabriel.
She couldn't hear him, couldn't hear anything at the moment actually, as the deafness had returned, but she'd seen him mouth the word. She nodded and tried to touch her face. The medical attendant pushed her hand away. The bullet had been so close that her cheek was seared. The ambo sprayed something cold on her skin that felt wonderful.
'Tell me you're a great shot,' she said to Gabriel. She couldn't hear herself. She was probably shouting.
He smiled at her, reached forward and gently smoothed her fringe from her forehead.
'I'm a great shot,' she saw him say.
Gabriel's hand continued down the length of her hair and onto her shoulder, then stopped. Emotions scudded across his dark eyes like a storm across a night sky. She saw grief, guilt, hope. A question.
She reached up and found his hand, held it tight and closed her eyes. She rested her injured hand on her chest.
Underneath, the butterfly pendant seemed to tremble against her heart.
35
OCCASIONALLY CHLOE HEARD someone sobbing. Felt a little sorry for the girl. At least, it sounded like a girl. You never can tell, she thought sleepily, it sounds kinda muffled. Hands bound behind her back, ankles shackled to the bolt in the brick wall, Chloe Farrell no longer recognised the moans as her own. The gag in her mouth had long ago dried her saliva; her throat rasped raw from screaming through the cloth, but this discomfort and the spasms from her contorted muscles now failed to register. The thirst and pain had pushed her to an altered state of consciousness, a nowhere land, which she accepted, matter-of-factly, as the waiting room for death. After four nights bound and gagged on the floor in Cutter's subterranean room, squashed between his bed and a wardrobe, Chloe was comfortable in the silent softness of her mind.
She was careful, however, to stay away from the edges of this dreamlike state. If she let her mind wander too freely it found the memories – the consciousness of what had happened to her. The images stabbed into the protective bubble surrounding her psyche and filled it with blood.
When the memory played, the recording didn't stop until it had gone right through. Forced to watch it all, what the man had done to his stomach on the bed above her, Chloe had at first tried screaming to herself to run instead of entering the room with Henry Nguyen. Now, she just waited until the memory played out and the muffled nothingness returned.
He'd be back, he had told her, four nights ago.
On the floor, bound to the double-brick wall, the girl whimpered and sobbed. In her mind, far away, Chloe Farrell tuned out the sound and waited to die.
Maryana Miceh couldn't figure out why Mummy had been crying all morning. Probably Daddy said something mean again, she thought. She and Uncle Ken had been watching the boring news all morning. Maryana hadn't even been allowed to watch Hi-5. She had thought that her mum would have liked watching Hi-5 better, because the news just made her cry harder. When she asked Uncle Ken what was wrong, he told her everything was going to be fine, and picked her up and squashed her in a hug. She told him to put her down because his whiskers were scratchy.
When she'd tried to see what they were so interested in on television, Uncle Ken had led her away. Then he had scrooched down to her height and put his hands on her shoulders. He went all serious and she had wanted to smack him because he looked like he was going to cry too. Uncle Ken never cried and he shouldn't start now, while Mummy was so upset. But all he told her was that Henry wouldn't be renting with them any more. Maryana had felt mean and happy at the same time, because she really didn't like Henry. She knew that was un-Christian, because he had always been nice to her and because he had a sore stomach, but she couldn't help it, and she had smiled. Then it had occurred to her that this was probably a Bad Thing. Probably that's why Mummy keeps crying, she thought. We need the money from the rent.
Maryana wondered what would happen to Henry's room now. Maybe she and Eva could use it for playing again. She had been nowhere near the room since she'd seen that man's sore tummy. Now, knowing he wasn't coming back, she ran down into the backyard and squinted through the crack in the wall. Henry had left all his stuff in there. Maybe he didn't want it anymore. That wardrobe looked pretty old. Kneeling on the grass peering in, Maryana thought about the money. Maybe we could have a fete like they did at school last month, she thought. She had heard Mrs Marshall telling Mr Jacoby that they'd made shitloads. That sounded like a lot.
Maryana stood back up. It was hot today. Probably soon they'd be allowed to go swimming.
What was that? She jumped at the sound, dropping back to her knees in the grass.
Again!
Someone's crying in there!
Maryana Miceh ran as fast as she could up to the kitchen, and she could run pretty fast. She'd beaten Jasmine Hardcastle in cross-country last week.
Epilogue
SWEAT STUNG HIS eyes and he used the hand holding his knife to wipe his brow. The scrub here was the thickest he'd encountered, and he hacked at some tangled vines draped like a monstrous spider's web between two trees, blocking his path. Joss had come at this clearing from a different approach yesterday. But he knew it was around here, somewhere.
Shirtless, he tucked his knife back into the equipment belt slung low around his hips. For the tenth time in as many minutes, he pushed dirty blond hair out of his eyes. Maybe he should cut it all off again, he thought.
Just when he was beginning to worry that he'd gone completely off course, Joss found the area he'd been searching for and pulled an axe from his belt. He set to work chopping branches from the fallen tree, the timber dry and covered in papery bark, perfect for firewood.
He didn't stop until there was way too much to carry back. He doubled over, hands on hips, and caught his breath, staring at the sandy soil around his feet; he studied a rivulet of sweat slipping over an ankle and into his sneaker. Fitter than he'd been in a long while, he recovered quickly and straightened, then set to gathering all the wood he could carry into a sling he'd brought for the purpose.
Striding from the scrub that bordered the isolated beach, Joss was forced to squeeze his eyes tight when the brilliance threatened to overload his senses. He opened them again, blinking, and made his way towards the camp. The colours were amazing. The perfect white of the sand and impossible turquoise of the ocean ahead; the honey- tan of Charlie, now five, shovelling sand into her little yellow bucket; and the molten-red of his wife's bikini. She lifted her huge sunglasses and winked at him, a small smile on her lips.
Once he'd stacked the firewood near the tent and the embers of last night's campfire, he kicked off his shoes and walked back through powdered sand. He dropped onto his towel next to his family, and grabbed the bottle of water next to Isobel. As he drank, an image of cold beer flicked up, a mental advertisement, but he quickly changed
