‘Where are you two living now?’ she said. ‘Still out by the marina?’
Ash nodded. ‘Yeah, same place. Got a few things that need fixing, but suits us both for work.’
Kieran pictured the sprawling beach house Ash and Sean had shared for at least the past six years. It had always been a little ramshackle, but there was no criticising the location, and it was an upgrade from the smaller and even more ramshackle place they’d shared before that.
Mia turned to Sean. ‘How’s the business going, anyway? We saw you out there earlier. Or the boat at least.’
After Ash had left them at the beach that afternoon, Kieran and Mia had looked at each other, then at his parents’ house where they knew a mountain of moving boxes awaited.
‘I guess we should go back,’ Mia had said.
Kieran had glanced down at his baby daughter. ‘Or we could show Audrey the sights of Evelyn Bay. First time she’s been here.’
‘Where were you thinking?’
‘The lookout?’
Mia had shrugged. ‘It’s up to you. You’re the one who’s going to have to carry her up that cliff path.’
‘No worries.’ Kieran had slipped on his t-shirt and shaken the sand off the baby sling before clipping it around him. ‘Too easy.’
In fact, the well-worn trail winding up and away from the town had been harder going than he remembered with the extra weight against his chest. Part-way up they had passed the gates leading to the rear of the town’s cemetery, before the path narrowed and grew steeper. Kieran had been glad to reach the top. Twelve years ago, the former whaling lookout had been little more than a flat clearing with a single faded sign that implied, as Kieran remembered it, that it might not be the greatest idea to go clambering about on the cliffs but, hey, live and let live.
Now the lookout was a small but formal decked area, enclosed by a wire fence topped by a thick wooden railing at waist height. Next to smart laminated boards offering illustrated information about whale migratory patterns and the nesting area of crested terns, a very legible notice warned that trespassers on the cliffs risked a $500 fine, enforceable under local by-law Section D, amendment 16.1.
There had been no-one else up there, and Kieran had sat next to Mia on a bench that had also appeared in recent years and looked out at the sea as the wind snatched at their hair. The water, which could be a thousand different sparkling colours, was that afternoon an undulating plain of dull grey-green. Some way out beyond the rocks, an anchored catamaran listed gently. Sean’s boat, the Nautilus Blue.
‘Is he under?’ Mia was squinting at the deck.
‘Looks like it.’ Kieran could see the hoisted flag flapping its message. Blue and white. Diver down.
Kieran had scanned the water for the dark slick of a wetsuit, a head bobbing amid the waves, but the surface remained unbroken. He wasn’t really expecting to see him. The wreckage of the doomed SS Mary Minerva lay thirty-five metres deep. Sean could be gone for a while.
The memorial commissioned in tribute to the fifty-four passengers and crew who had lost their lives nearly a century ago now stood on a rocky outcrop, facing out towards the site of the sinking.
The memorial was said to be visible from both land and water in all weather. It wasn’t, though, Kieran couldn’t help but think with a sting of bitterness every time he saw it now. Not all weather. Still, people seemed to like it. And it was more recognition than most shipwrecks ever got. The Tasmanian waters were notorious for having claimed more than a thousand vessels, their rusting skeletal remains decaying slowly, turning the island’s waters into an underwater graveyard.
‘Business is good, thanks,’ Sean was saying now, raising his voice above the noise in the Surf and Turf. ‘Had a busy summer, which helps. Glad it’s over now, though.’
‘Time for the fun stuff?’ Kieran said.
‘Yeah.’ Sean smiled. ‘First booking’s in a couple of weeks. Got a group flying out from Norway.’
‘You ready for them?’
‘Getting there.’
This had always been a demanding time of year in the business, Kieran remembered, and nothing would have changed. Sean would have spent all summer taking tourists fishing and snorkelling and on easy shallow-water dives, making the money while it was there to be made. When autumn came and the algae that clouded the summer sea cleared, the serious cold-water divers would start flying in from around the world to take advantage of the few short months of peak underwater visibility, and Sean could do what he loved best – go deep.
The Mary Minerva was one of the few accessible shipwrecks in the state, but it was only for divers who knew what they were doing. And divers who knew what they were doing didn’t want to waste the experience in suboptimal conditions, so the window of opportunity was limited. By July, winter sea conditions would become so treacherous that it would be impossible to reach the wreck, and the Mary Minerva would be left in its submerged solitude for another year.
‘I was planning to be a bit further on with the safety checks by now,’ Sean was saying. ‘The Norwegians want to get into the engine room, but I dunno about it this year. I don’t like the feel of that north-facing wall. I really need to get right in and have a look but I think my good torch has gone overboard somewhere.’
‘I lent it to the girls.’ Ash didn’t look up from his phone.
‘My yellow torch? The waterproof one?’
‘Yeah. Sorry, thought I said.’
Sean blinked. ‘I’ve been looking for that for weeks, mate. I was literally about to buy another one.’
Ash saw Sean’s face and laughed. ‘Come on, don’t be like that. I thought I’d said. Anyway, they needed it. They only had a small crappy one.’
‘It’s expensive.’ Sean still seemed a bit annoyed. ‘And you’re not supposed to use
