Kelmscott Heights had a small driveway entrance flanked by two dark brick piers crawling with ivy. The drive itself was gravel and crunched under the tyres of Katharine’s car. Old camphor laurel trees lined the drive; their crocodile-bark trunks cast cool shadows and their branches met overhead, creating a cosy leafed tunnel. At the end of it was the main building of the retirement home: a two-storey brick house with steep eaves and, like the front fence, frocked in dark green ivy. A newer wing ran off at an angle, and separate cottages were divided by neat hedges, politely pruned citrus trees and red-flowered bottlebrush. Kelmscott Heights, Katharine realised, was no ordinary retirement home. Pamela’s family must have money.
The young man at the counter seemed delighted that Pamela had a visitor. His name badge read ‘Nathan’, and he gave Katharine very clear, if slightly patronising, instructions to Pamela’s room in Roseleigh. ‘That’s the AR wing,’ he explained in a stage whisper.
Katharine just bet his boyfriend liked Nathan to whisper ‘Come on my face’ in that exact tone of voice.
‘And “AR” is. .?’
Nathan rolled his eyes, as if Katharine were joshing; surely a good friend who visited often would know that? ‘Assisted Residents. Pamela requires quite a bit of care now.’ He let the last word linger like an accusation.
Katharine smiled thinly and leaned closer. ‘Couldn’t give a fuck. I’m just here to see what I can steal,’ she stage-whispered back. She enjoyed the shocked expression on Nathan’s young face. ‘Kidding, of course.’ She waved and headed to the lifts.
The walls of the AR wing were adorned with bright pictures painted by residents’ grandchildren and dozens of photographs that invariably showed smiling faces anchored by the blank stare, scowl or confused off-centre look of an elderly wrinkled man or woman. They’re mostly senile, realised Katharine. She started reading door numbers, and found her way to room sixteen.
Pamela Ferguson was sitting under the window reading a Tami Hoag novel. The room was surprisingly large, and furnished with some pieces that must have come from Mrs Ferguson’s own home: a blackwood bookcase, a small china cabinet full of Lladro figurines, a small silky oak coffee table on which sat a Chinese abacus that looked — and may well have been — five hundred years old. On the bedside table was a fading framed photograph of a jolly-cheeked man with wrinkly eyes and a bad combover; the deceased Mr Ferguson, guessed Katharine. She realised suddenly that even though she’d shopped at Mrs Ferguson’s greengrocery for nearly two decades, she had never asked Mr Ferguson’s first name.
Katharine coughed into her fist.
Pamela Ferguson looked up and pulled her bifocals down on her nose to peer over them. Her eyes brightened in recognition. ‘Katharine!’
They hugged and exchanged pleasantries. Pamela Ferguson had shrunk with age — nature’s way of finally letting us buy smaller dress sizes, she explained — and Katharine watched with sadness as the once sprightly woman strained to reach into the bar fridge for milk as she made tea for herself and her guest.
They sat and chatted for a while. Katharine complimented Pamela on the lovely grounds and the gorgeous view; Pamela explained her brother had developed and sold a software company and had left her quite a bit when he died, which allowed her to stay here.
‘Pam, this is going to sound. . honestly, a bit stupid. You seem just fine. Why are you in here?’
‘In the Alzheimer’s Revenge wing?’ suggested Pamela. ‘It’s temporary, until a cottage becomes vacant. And the only way to speed that up is to sprinkle a bit of rat poison in someone’s cacciatore.’
The women laughed. The easy silence that followed encouraged Katharine to state her business.
‘Have you been watching the news, Pam?’
Mrs Ferguson shook her head. ‘I’ve given it up for Lent. Sudoku, that’s my thing now.’
Katharine nodded, then recounted how Nicholas had returned from London, how the Thomas boy went missing, and later was found with his throat cut. The man who confessed to his murder died in prison within days of the crime. Katharine looked carefully at Mrs Ferguson. The older woman drew a deep breath through her nostrils.
‘Anyway, all this got me thinking of when Nicky’s friend Tristram died,’ said Katharine.
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Ferguson. ‘All a bit similar, isn’t it?’
Katharine nodded. ‘Suzette asked me if I remembered Mrs Quill.’
She watched the older woman. Mrs Ferguson said nothing. She nodded to Katharine, go on.
‘Mrs Quill,’ repeated Katharine. ‘She used to scare Suzie, remember? Do you know. .’ She hunted for the right words. ‘Why do you think she worried her?’
Mrs Ferguson drew in another of those long breaths. It was a sad, finite sound. ‘I worked next to Mrs Quill from the day I took the lease on my fruit shop to the day I dropped the shutter for good. And not one second in between did I like that woman.’
‘Why not?’
Mrs Ferguson fixed Katharine with a firm stare. ‘Baobhan sith.’ Then she laughed and shook her head. ‘Fiddlesticks. That’s my nanna talking, superstitious Scot she was. I just never took to Quill. She was always polite. Always said hello. She always paid her rent, never a day in arrears, though who knows how she turned a quid in that haberdashery. There were days went by when I never saw a soul enter her shop.’ Mrs Ferguson shrugged and looked again at Katharine. ‘But nights when I worked back, making fruit salad from the bruised stock or cleaning up the grapes where such-and-suches went picking at them, and I knew Quill was still in her store two doors up. .’ She shivered. ‘I didn’t want to go up there. I thought if I did, I wouldn’t come back. I have to say it was a happy day when I heard her sister won the lottery and bought her a house in Hobart.’
Katharine frowned. ‘I heard she moved to Ballina and died.’
Mrs Ferguson’s eyebrows rose. ‘Oh? Well. That’s funny, because I also heard. .’
She looked out the window at the gently swaying callistemon. Bees hummed on the red fluffy flowers. Clouds had crept over the sun and the day had gone dull and cool. She fell silent.
‘Pam?’ said Katharine. ‘Pamela?’
Mrs Ferguson jerked at Katharine’s voice and turned. Her eyes widened in surprise.
‘Katharine! What are you doing here? How lovely. Here. .’ The older woman stood and shuffled to the kettle, switched it on. ‘I should be at the shop, but I’m not a hundred per cent today. How’s your Donald? Where’s little Suzette?’
Mrs Ferguson peered around the room. Katharine realised Pamela’s placement in AR was no temporary measure.
‘She’s at home, Pam. So’s Nicky.’
‘Oh.’ Mrs Ferguson was disappointed. ‘You don’t look well, Katharine.’
‘I’m fine. Pam, can I ask you something?’
‘Don’t ask me for limes. The markets want eighty cents a pound for them and that’s robbery, I won’t pay it.’
‘No. What’s a. .’ She hoped she had the pronunciation right. ‘What’s a baobhan sith?’
Mrs Ferguson’s eyes brightened. ‘Baobhan sith? I haven’t heard that since my nan passed on. Funny old cow. She was sure there was a woman in her street when she was a lass who was one.’ Mrs Ferguson looked at Katharine slyly. ‘The white women of the Highlands. They sometimes appear in a green dress. They prefer the night. They seduce young men, charm them with their dancing. . then drink their blood.’ She chuckled at the foolishness of it.
Katharine stayed just a little longer, waiting until Mrs Ferguson was again staring out the window before she quietly stood and crept from the room.
She was glad to get to her car.
Singing.
A woman’s voice from across dark air, a siren song; faint, tugged at jealously by the wind.
Awareness swam up out of nothingness, like a slow bubble rising through the night sea. Nicholas realised he was moving. His feet and hands felt a million miles distant, ice cold and unreachable. He could not command his legs, arms, lips, eyelids. But he could sense the subtle rise and fall of his chest, although there was a heaviness there. He could hear the rustle of leaves, a surf-like whisper. He was supine and yet he was moving. Under his back, his buttocks, the underside of his thighs and calves, under his forearms and head, were thousands of tiny shifting knuckles. He willed himself to breathe deeper, but his lungs kept at their shallow work, tight and pained as if labouring under a weight.