Shallow Breath (23 page)
Desi goes to the window. ‘Is it the police?’ Pete asks.
Her heart is thundering. ‘No, it’s Rick.’
As she watches, Rick climbs out of the car and looks towards the shack. Even in the dim light, Desi can see the wild glaze in his eyes. Just as his vision fixes on her, she closes the curtains and checks the lock. Then she backs away from the window.
Pete flicks the light off and moves to one side of the verandah door. He glances at Desi and Marie, who have their arms around each other, and puts a finger to his lips.
They all jump as a fist slams onto the glass. ‘Marie,’ Rick growls. ‘I know you’re in there.’ He pauses. ‘Come out, Marie,’ he warns in a horrible, raspy singsong, ‘or I’ll break this window and come in and get you.’
Desi feels Marie go rigid, as Pete steps forward and moves
the curtain across slightly. ‘We’ve called the police!’ he shouts. ‘Go home, Rick.’
Desi watches Pete facing down a man twice the size of him, and thanks God that he is here tonight. She shudders to think what might have happened otherwise.
Rick has cupped his hands around his eyes so he can peer in, and he fixes on Desi and Marie, still clutching one another in the gloom. ‘You’ll keep,’ he snarls, and they hear him move off. Moments later, his ute drives slowly away.
The police come to take statements, and, even though Marie doesn’t want to press charges, they promise to visit Rick with a warning. Although exhausted, Desi barely sleeps that night, and is grateful when light begins to filter through the windows and it’s time to swim.
As she passes the spare room, she sees Marie curled tightly into herself. She tiptoes past Pete’s still form on the sofa, and goes out onto the verandah. Her heart swells as she sees the familiar silver-grey silhouette cruising slowly ten metres out.
She hesitates, then walks back through and puts a gentle hand on Marie’s shoulder. ‘Marie,’ she whispers, ‘are you awake?’
Marie rolls over, her eyes red and tired, looking uncertainly at Desi.
‘Can you come with me for a moment? There’s something I want you to see.’
Marie sits up wordlessly and lets Desi take her hand. They move to the verandah. ‘There.’ Desi points across to where Finley is gliding beyond the breakers. ‘Come on.’
Marie follows Desi to the beach. At the shoreline, Desi wades in and turns round. ‘Come on, come and say hello.’
Marie points to the pair of pyjamas that Desi has lent her, wrapping her arms round herself. ‘No, it’s okay, I’ll watch from here.’
Desi moves towards her and offers a hand. ‘Marie, come. The pyjamas will wash. I promise it’s okay.’
Marie sighs, and steps in up to her knees. Desi can see how tense and stiff she is, and debates how far to push her. Finley might help her to forget her troubles for a little while, but it’s not Desi’s place to insist.
As she pauses, to her surprise Finley glides into the shallows and rolls on his side right in front of Marie. As he waits there, Marie looks to Desi for direction.
‘I think he’s letting you stroke him,’ Desi laughs.
Hesitantly, Marie brushes her fingers across his lightly speckled belly. Immediately, he swims away, but returns to Marie moments later.
Before long, Marie is thigh deep in the water, as Finley continually allows himself to be petted before moving away and back, rolling on his side, one small eye regarding Marie unabashed. Pete and Maya join them in the water, but this time Finley pays no attention to anyone else. Everyone is entranced, watching the creature circle round again and again to Marie, and Marie’s fingers gently stroking his silken skin each time he hovers in front of her. Time pauses, trapped in the same spell as the rest of them, and when Finley finally decides to swim away the sun is high enough to have shrunk the shadows near to nothing.
When Marie gets on to the beach, she sits on the sand and stares out at the ocean. Desi sees a few teardrops escape down her face. ‘Happy tears,’ she says quickly when she notices Desi watching. ‘Happy, happy tears.’
Pete comes to join them. ‘I think we should get ready to go now, Marie.’
They head up to the shack, and Desi lends Marie some more clothes. By this time, they hope, Rick will be far away on the boat. Just in case, Pete will accompany Marie to her house to collect her purse and pack her bags.
As Marie turns to Desi, her eyes are lit with a new fire.
‘I see Finley worked his magic on you,’ Desi smiles.
Marie brushes her cheek. ‘Thank you for everything,’ she says. ‘Look out for my Rebecca for me.’ And then she is gone.
For a while, Pete stays at the shack as often as he can, in case Rick turns up again once he discovers Marie has left for good. But as the weeks go by and nothing happens, they slowly relax, and life settles into a steady routine. Finley continues to visit regularly, although Desi still catches herself thinking of him as Frodo. On the days he waits close to shore, she is uplifted. On the mornings he doesn’t come, his absence permeates the tedious hours of work and chores. If he is away for a few days in a row, she finds herself growing tense as she awaits his return, praying he is still safe. But, she reassures herself, if it really is Frodo, he has survived eight years in the wild already. He is a veteran of the open ocean now.
The phase of life that began with one unexpected visitor ends with another. By the time her father parks his ute in the driveway, Finley hasn’t been seen for over a week, and she has felt edgy the whole time. Hester and Jackson had stayed a few days earlier, and she had noticed the same tension in them, as they all scanned the empty ocean in the morning.
As Charlie gets out of the vehicle, Desi waits warily on the verandah steps. She has barely spoken to him since she moved away from Lovelock Bay, and he has hardly seen Maya. She
observes his solemn demeanour, and briefly imagines he might have come to call a truce, but as he speaks the words take the balance from her, make her grab onto the banister for support.
‘You need to get to the hospital.’ His voice is grim. ‘Your mother’s in a bad way. She’s had a stroke.’
B
y the time Jackson decides he’s well enough to get out of bed, thirty-six hours have passed since he last saw Kate. His throbbing head has finally quietened, and the wretched nausea has given way to an incredible emptiness that makes him search his neglected food cupboards in despair. The nearest shops are in Two Rocks, so, after he has staggered across to the camp bathroom and tried to freshen himself up a bit, he heads for his car.
The landscape is immersed in a heavy mist this morning, and he cannot see more than a few metres ahead of him. Yet that’s far enough to notice that Kate’s tent has gone, and he does his best to stall the dejection that threatens to send him back to the bottles by his bed.
As he drives down the track towards the gate, his father suddenly looms into view, waving at him to stop. Jackson winds down the window and leans out.
‘When you see Maya, or your girlfriend, tell them it’s not
acceptable to take the dinghy out without permission,’ Charlie grunts. ‘Next time, they need to come and ask me.’
Jackson is confused. ‘You mean Kate? Kate and Maya took the dinghy out?’
‘Yep, in the middle of the bloody night as well. God knows why they felt the urge to go diving in the dark.’
His father marches off in the direction of the office, and is swallowed alive by the fog. Jackson sits there astounded for a moment. As far as he knows, Kate and Maya have hardly spoken to one another. Now they are going night diving together? What the hell…?
He considers turning around and finding Maya to ask more, but his cramping stomach impels him to keep going. The blanket of mist adds a surreal air to the journey, making him momentarily unsure of turnings he knows off by heart. When he gets to Two Rocks, he finds a small cafe open and comes out with a greasy sausage roll. He sits on the marina wall while he eats it, contemplating what to do with his day. Although he can see nothing of the water, he can smell the briny air, and taste the salt, and he watches two old seadogs moving in and out of view as they load up their boat for a trip. Gulls whirl and swoop overhead, calling to one another, and a few land nearby, sidestepping closer and closer, their envious yellow eyes fixed on his food. One begins to caw angrily at the rest while they wait for errant crumbs.
After Jackson screws up the empty packet, he stares into space for a while, trying to collect himself. The gulls gradually lose interest and fly off into the void. Eventually, he makes a decision, stands up, dusts himself off and walks back to the car.
The shack is hidden by the fog as he drives up the short track. When it looms into view, it seems larger and more forbidding than usual. Although Jackson was born here, he has
few memories of the place before it belonged to Desi. Yet the times he’s spent here have been some of the happiest and saddest of his life.
He heads up the verandah steps to knock on the door.
‘Hey, little brother.’
He jumps, startled. Nearby, Desi is sitting on the verandah seat, a blanket over her legs and a mug in her hands.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to give you a shock,’ she says, a teasing gleam in her eye.
She seems entirely at ease with him. Perhaps she hadn’t minded that he had hardly been to visit her in prison. He smiles in reply, his awkwardness making him rub repeatedly at the base of his neck. Eventually he sits next to her, staring out towards the invisible ocean.
‘What are you doing out here? There’s not much of a view today.’
‘It’s easier to think in the fresh air.’ She throws the blanket over his legs. The gesture reminds him so unexpectedly of Hester that he experiences a surge of longing in his chest, and an alarming prickle in his eyes. He breathes steadily, trying to push it all away.
‘You okay?’ Desi is watching him, concerned.
‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘Pete tells me you’ve been to the Galapagos. Was it amazing?’
He scuffs his feet against the old wooden floor. ‘It was.’
‘I can’t wait to hear about it.’
Jackson pauses, takes another breath. ‘Des, I’m so sorry I didn’t come and visit you much this last year or so.’
She waves the apology away. ‘Don’t worry, I understand. If I’d had any choice in the matter, I wouldn’t have gone near the place either. That’s why I asked you and Pete to keep Maya away.’
‘It wasn’t just that.’ He hesitates, but he doesn’t want to leave the truth unspoken between them. ‘I felt responsible. I was pretty sure it was what I said that day that made you go after Rick.’
She doesn’t look at him. ‘Yes, it was. But the fault was all mine, Jackson, never yours.’
‘You told the lawyers you didn’t remember.’ He looks at her and she turns to him. Their faces are so close that there is no misreading one another.
‘I still don’t remember getting into the car and going over there,’ she says, her eyes not leaving his. ‘I must have been incoherent with rage. It was like I was sleepwalking – and when I came to I was standing in front of our wrecked cars, and Caitlin was in Rebecca’s arms on the floor.’ She sighs. ‘It was a waking nightmare. But I always knew what had driven me to it.’ Her voice cracks. ‘It will never leave me, but I’ve had a lot of time to contemplate how I might learn to live with it. That man has taken enough away from us. He won’t take any more.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’ he asks, still staring out towards the absent sea.
‘I’m going to get my life sorted,’ she replies. ‘One step at a time. Starting with being here for Maya.’
Jackson grimaces. ‘I haven’t even seen her since I got back.’
‘Ah yes, been busy, have you? I met your girlfriend, if you remember.’
Jackson’s heart sinks. ‘That’s not the case any more.’
‘Want to talk about it?’ He notices she doesn’t sound surprised.
‘She’s got issues at the moment, apparently.’ He looks at her again, apprehensive. ‘Do you know anything about that?’
Desi doesn’t respond right away. As he follows her gaze towards the water, he sees that at last the mist is finally clearing. Beyond it, the ocean waits, pensive, no life to it yet today.
‘I do know something,’ she says. ‘But I promised her that I wouldn’t tell her secrets.’ She makes an apologetic face at Jackson. ‘Are you okay with that? If it helps, I think she might come and spend time with us again in a little while, if she can.’
Jackson shrugs. ‘Yeah, well, whatever. I saw Dad this morning and apparently Maya is her new best friend.’
‘Really? What made him say that?’
‘It’s a bit strange, actually. They went on some night dive together last night, and used Dad’s dinghy without permission. So now Maya is in Dad’s bad books for a change.’
To his surprise, Desi suddenly sits bolt upright, knocking her mug against his leg and sending warm tea sloshing over his jeans. She doesn’t even notice. ‘A night dive? I didn’t even know Maya
could
dive.’
‘I taught her while you were gone.’
In the many hours Jackson has spent in the water with Maya, he’d always imagined how pleased Desi would be when she discovered what they’d been doing. Instead, she looks at him in horror. ‘Oh my God, Jackson.’
‘What?’ he asks in alarm, but she has already run inside. She comes out carrying a slim DVD case.
‘Do you know about this?’
He takes the case and looks at it. ‘
The Cove?
Yeah, I saw it up in Exmouth a couple of years ago. Don’t watch it unless you have to, Desi, because it’ll really upset you. It’s horrific what those fishermen do to those dolphins.’
Desi’s face has drained of all colour. ‘This’ – she brandishes the case at him – ‘is Kate’s big secret. She’s part of a group trying to stop it. She asked me to help, but I couldn’t. I never thought…’
Jackson is on his feet. ‘Jesus Christ!’
She glares at him. ‘We need to find Maya right now.’
