‘I suppose so.’
‘No.’ He repeated, with emphasis, ‘It is all over. The coroner has accepted the police report. There’s no suspicion attached to yourself or Ms Green.’
I looked at him in astonishment.
‘Mary asked me to keep an eye on things. I really think this business …’ He hesitated, then seemed to think better of what he’d been about to say. ‘Mary tells me you’re considering your career options.’
‘Well, um, yes,’ I said, and then, since he seemed to expect something more, I added, ‘I enjoyed my experience in London, but I’m not sure that I want to continue in that path.’
‘The Venezuelan business, eh?’
I gawped at him.
‘Banker friend of mine at the club,’ he said. ‘He was one of the people your bank tried to cheat. He was interested when I mentioned your name, told me the story.’ And he proceeded to relate it exactly as it had happened.
I was shocked, though it all seemed rather trivial now, compared with everything else that had happened since. ‘They told me nothing would be said.’
He chuckled. ‘No use having an anonymous scapegoat. Wouldn’t be believed. You’re quite famous, apparently, in a select circle.’
I groaned.
‘Sometimes these experiences can be the most valuable. And not necessarily a liability-shows you were in the thick of it. Best to move boldly forward now. Put the past behind you.’
He’d been discussing it with Mary, of course, and this was now the official line. They were really talking about Luce, and my unhealthy obsession with her death. This had to mark the end of it.
‘My friend has an interest in a boutique investment company. They specialise in ecological investments-carbon trading, stuff like that? I don’t pretend to understand it. But he thinks your background and experience might be just what they need. You might like to give this chap a ring.’
He handed me a card, just as Damien had once done. It had very discreet small lettering. I thanked him and promised that I would.
I assumed that was the heavy agenda business over, but then he came out with the big surprise.
‘Er, Mary and I have decided to get married, Josh. Mary wanted to tell you, of course, but I asked her to allow me …’
It was almost as if he was asking me for her hand or something, and I couldn’t suppress a big grin. He seemed discomfited by this response. ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’m just so pleased, Rory. For both of you.’ I didn’t go so far as to say I’d love to have him as an uncle.
‘I’m afraid it’ll mean letting the hotel go. Mary’s very reluctant, understandably, but you know about her heart, don’t you? The specialist’s told her she must take it easy, and I intend to make sure she does. I, too, will be retiring, from the bench.’
‘I see. Anyway, congratulations.’ I raised my glass.
‘Yes, well … it’s been a long time for both of us, but it’s never too late, Josh, that’s the thing.’
It’d be nice to think so, although Marcus wouldn’t have agreed. Several weeks later I got a call from Suzi. She asked how Damien was, and I told her that he was now at home. I pictured him in his wheelchair on his ledge on the twenty-eighth floor. His brain had been severely damaged by his heart stoppages, and he had not spoken a word since. He was not expected to improve.
Suzi explained that she hadn’t been in touch with anyone since she’d read about Marcus. She confessed that she’d never felt very comfortable with him. Then she asked if I’d like to call in for a cup of tea or a drink. I must have hesitated, wondering what this was all about, and she added hurriedly that she had a little problem she needed someone’s advice on, and she thought I might be the one.
I called in the next morning and she made coffee. Young Thomas was playing contentedly, a far cry from the screaming child Luce and I had babysat. We exchanged news without Suzi getting to the point of the visit. Then, when we’d finished our coffees, she asked me to come with her to the backyard, which apparently was where the problem lay. Beyond a sandpit and a small rectangle of grass, Owen had converted most of the backyard into an immaculate vegetable garden. Raised beds were lush with beans and tomatoes, lettuce and silverbeet, and though weeds had begun to invade since Owen’s death, it didn’t look too problematic to me.
Suzi led me down a central brick path towards the back wall, against which was a compost bin and a small greenhouse. It was filled with potted shrubs, and when I looked through the glass at them I felt a little jolt of recognition. They looked to me like melaleuca, and the last time I’d seen that tight-knit foliage, twisting like green coral, was on Gannet Green, a hundred odd metres up Balls Pyramid.
‘You can’t see them now, they come out at night, but Owen brought back these funny kind of stick insects from Lord Howe Island, that time that poor Luce died. He said he shouldn’t have, really, and we mustn’t tell anyone, especially Marcus or Damien. I really didn’t see why, but he was adamant. Only, there are quite a few of them now, and I don’t think I can look after them properly, and I don’t want them getting out-they’re big, you see, and I don’t know if they bite. They’re horrible things, they give me the creeps, and the thought of them getting onto Thomas or the baby … I almost called the pest exterminator, but Owen was so attached to them. I thought I should speak to you first. What do you think I should do?’
It was a good question. She had no idea how good. For a moment I pondered, the fate of perhaps the rarest creature on the planet in my hands. I decided that if I thought about it for a month I still wouldn’t know what was the right answer, so I just went with gut feeling. Luce had sacrificed her life for these horrible things, after all.
‘I know someone at the Australian Museum,’ I said, ‘who I’m sure will be delighted to arrange for them to be taken away.’
‘Just so long as we don’t get into trouble.’
Actually, it was more difficult than I’d anticipated. The nice lady at the museum thought I was playing some kind of practical joke on her, and became convinced I was from one of those candid camera TV shows. She kept peering over my shoulder, expecting a cameraman to burst in. In the end I had to tell her that Marcus had been instrumental in bringing them back from Lord Howe, and had given them to Owen to keep for him. She knew of Marcus’s reputation, and had read about his suicide, and she didn’t think that any TV show would be sick enough to exploit his death like that. I wasn’t so sure, but at least she was listening to me.
And so arrangements were made to give the phasmids a new home, where they would be nurtured, studied and eventually returned to their island. I was there when the team came to collect them, and watched them being teased and coaxed out of their bushes, awkward, archaic but also rather dignified in their survival. There were seven of them in all, and when they were all rounded up I looked at them and thought how bitterly ironic it was that a woman such as Luce should have died for such ugly little creatures. For a moment I felt angry at the grotesque imbalance, and then it occurred to me how much Luce would have appreciated it. You might say they were her bronze sandal.
26
I am sitting now with Anna on the hotel terrace with a glass of wine, looking out at the last glimmer of evening sunlight glowing on the far side of Elizabeth Bay after several days of storms. I look at her profile, the thoughtful honest eyes, the little vertical crease at the left edge of her mouth made by her lopsided grin, the small scar on her temple, and I remember the moment, a year ago, when I first caught sight of her standing there at the reception counter.
We have been discussing some changes she wants to make to our website. I say ‘our’ because I am a partner in this business now, the Harris Hotel, if a relatively dormant one, enabled by a favourable loan from the boutique investment company for which I now work, following Rory’s recommendation. He and Mary are the other sleeping partners, following their wedding, made remarkably boisterous by Rory’s ebullient friends from the legal fraternity. The other partner, and manager, licensee and driving force, is Anna, who bought her stake through the sale of her flat in Blacktown. She lives here now, in Mary’s old apartment upstairs, and I visit frequently, and often stay, increasingly for longer.