Pritam didn’t know what he was looking for, so he took down the first box, removed its lid and sat on the floor. He pulled out the topmost piece of paper and began to read.
While Pritam was unpacking boxes, Laine was taping her last one shut. That was the last of Gavin’s belongings put away; some for charity, some for the tip, some to be saved for a happier ‘one day’ that Laine felt, right now, was as distant as the stars.
She and Gavin had moved into the house fourteen months ago to look after his mother. Mrs Boye’s husband, Gavin’s father, had passed on two years earlier, and the widow’s decline had accelerated in those twenty-four months. Three personal carers had quit, finding her manner too abrasive even for their seasoned experience.
Twelve months ago, the arrow on Laine’s marriage fire-danger sign had pointed to ‘moderate’. Over the subsequent six months it had escalated to ‘high’. She and Gavin had been trying for a child for more than a year, and had finally started IVF treatment. The hormone injections gave her an immovable headache that soured every heartbeat. Waking up sick, commuting to her grinding job at a graphics company that seemed to tender only for redesigns of cereal boxes and fridge calendars, then returning home to Mrs Boye’s increasingly nonsensical and voluble rants made it hard to unearth even minuscule moments of pleasure.
Gavin got a promotion: sales executive, Asia Pacific. He wasn’t the brightest man, but he was good-looking and seemed to get along well with everyone. He had a natural charm. He’d certainly charmed her.
But he had also put her through the humiliation of two affairs. Both times Laine had caught him out, and both times he had collapsed at her feet in a ball of remorseful tears promising never, ever to be so stupid again. While most of her softened to his grief, one deep part of her remained ice, half-wishing that he had stood his ground and explained his infidelity without remorse. If you’re going to pretend your wife doesn’t matter while you’re fucking another woman, show that same face to me, she’d thought. Sure, I might slap it, I might leave it, or I might forgive all of you instead of most of you. But he’d simply sworn never, never, never again. . then landed another overseas job that would deliver him into temptation for weeks on end. The needle moved to ‘extreme’.
Then, the unforeseeable. A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks notice. ‘I’ll get a job around here,’ he’d told her. ‘Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We’re not paying rent, and Dad’s left us plenty. You should quit too.’ A year earlier, this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a gruelling routine of shitty work, shitty weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grown-ups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn’t keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn’t trust it.
But Gavin seemed to mean it. He began eating properly — health food and raw vegetables. It should have been good. It would have been good. Had he not started talking in his sleep.
In the middle of the night, when the huge house ticked uneasily, Gavin’s whispering would wake her. She had to lean close to hear his words. ‘Bird. Tris. Back. Dead.’ By the watery light coming through the window, she could see he was deep asleep as he spoke, yet his expression was adulating, hungry. ‘Bird. Please. Bird. Dead.’ The words kept her awake long after he’d rolled over, snoring. Two people muttering to themselves in the house made her feel guiltily glad she hadn’t fallen pregnant; she didn’t want a child infected with this family’s madness. She stopped taking the fertility drugs, but didn’t tell Gavin.
Then, just a few days ago, Gavin had risen early. Laine had been so exhausted, having finally fallen asleep at four, that she hadn’t stirred. Mrs Boye had slept uncharacteristically late too. They’d both been roused at seven by police knocking to bring ‘some very bad news’.
And now? Her lawyer was battling with Gavin’s life insurer, but Mr Boye’s inheritance was hers. She would find a carer for Mrs Boye and get the hell out of this quietly haunted house. Two nights ago she had been in the shower making plans for just that when Nicholas Close had visited.
Close was pale and odd-looking. Not unhandsome, but held together inside by wires stretched too tight. Laine had heard that his wife had died, and that he’d been with Tristram when he was taken way back when. Close had said he wanted to talk about Gavin, and she’d had to clamp her mouth shut. She had wanted to yelclass="underline" Tell me about the bird! What does it mean? What bird?! But that would have signed her application into Bedlam, so she sent him on his way.
Now it was done. The last box was packed. She could go and put all this behind her.
Except she wanted to know.
Gavin’s brother had been murdered. His killer had suicided. A boy had gone missing a week or so ago. His killer had suicided. Gavin had suicided. What linked all this death? Nicholas Close.
She was leaving this awful city. Who cared if he thought her mad?
She would go to see him.
20
Hannah Gerlic was so angry she could spew. Miriam, who was two years older and in year seven and supposed to be more adult about things, had chucked the most dangerous kind of spaz when she caught Hannah using her lip gloss. Jeez, come on! Miriam knew Mum wouldn’t let Hannah buy her own lip gloss! But catching her, Miriam hadn’t yelled and spacked out; she’d gone silent. This meant one of two things: either she’d march straight to Mum and reveal some secret she’d crossed her heart not to tell, or she’d Get Even Later.
As Hannah stumped along alone, she understood very clearly that Miriam had chosen the latter.
They’d walked off towards school together, Miriam all sweetness and light and miss-you-Mum. But out of sight of home, she had turned on Hannah, fast and harsh as those peregrine falcons you see on TV documentaries, diving like lightning on field mice and ripping their guts out. ‘Just wait, you little bitch,’ she’d hissed, and then had given Hannah eighteen-carat, diamond-studded, first-class silent treatment the whole two kilometres to school.
Once there, Hannah quickly forgot her older sister’s fury and the day ambled along nicely to its final (and Hannah’s favourite) lesson: Art and Craft. Hannah was good at art, and loved the luscious sense of creation that came from spooning thick acrylic paint onto a brush and sliding it over pristine white paper, of making something out of nothing. Mrs Tho (who Hannah thought was the prettiest woman in the world and who was always patient) said Hannah’s paintings were magnificent and told her to keep in mind that the school fete was coming up, where she might be able to exhibit some of her work. The idea plucked pleasant shivers inside Hannah, and the thought of other people seeing — and maybe buying — her work was. . well, just awesome.
Afire with this, she had attacked this afternoon’s blank paper with excitement, and come up with something vibrant and pretty and deliciously weird. It was a horse in a man suit in a supermarket aisle shopping for seahorses. Where the image had come from, who knew? But it made her classmates laugh and Mrs Tho smile. Hannah couldn’t wait to show Miriam, who was usually the biggest fan of her creative talents.
Not this afternoon, though.
A glacial freeze surrounded Miriam as they started to walk home. Hannah tried to engage her older sister by telling her about the fete. She started to unroll the new painting, but at the top of the hill past the school Miriam stopped in her tracks.
‘I don’t want to talk to you, you thieving little dog. I’m going along Silky Oak Street. You walk the other way.’