Lighthouse Bay (24 page)

And the first thought of it creeps in: Xavier would be better off with her, in New York with Victoria.

She banishes the thought straightaway. It is madness. She has frightened herself, though, and it has made her indignant. Why should she not reach such a conclusion, when she loves the child so dearly and all around him seem incapable of love? She doubts Katarina would even miss him; Ernest certainly wouldn’t. And if Xavier stays with them, he will become just like them. It is inevitable. He will learn that money is more important than people; he will become a cold, hard man.

Would Daniel have become that way too? No, surely not. For Isabella would have been a guiding hand in his life, her love would have shaped his values and softened his contours. She can do the same with Xavier, at least while he is under her charge.

She turns back again and catches Xavier’s eye, waves to him brightly. He beams and waves back. Katarina sees her and puts a protective arm around Xavier, distracts him with a word in his ear. But Isabella doesn’t mind. She knows whom the child really loves.

I
sabella knows she shouldn’t, but sometimes she thinks about it: the long journey across the ocean with Xavier. Just the two of them. The things they would see when they reached the other side. His hand in hers, forever. She tells herself she’ll think about it for only one minute every day, but the one minute always bleeds into five minutes, and soon her idle thoughts take a detour down the same path. She tries to stop herself. She knows she will never do this. She loves Xavier, and because she loves him she will not remove him from his parents and his home and thrust him into a world of uncertainty as a fugitive. But the fantasy becomes a familiar pleasure to roll between her fingers when other, darker thoughts come to hand.

Ernest leaves early one morning the following week for a business trip to Brisbane, a large city many miles to the south. Xavier has been awake half the night with a mild fever and a cough. Isabella is consumed with keeping him warm to sweat the fever out: a child’s illness is a terrifying thing for her; it makes her stomach loose. She keeps Katarina updated throughout the day, but Katarina appears indifferent. The weather has turned wild and the rattling of the eaves intensifies Isabella’s anxiety, as though nothing in the world is secure.

“He had the same thing about three months ago,” Katarina says. “He’ll be better in a day or so.”

Isabella doesn’t know whether to interpret Katarina’s dismissal as callousness, or as simply the calm wisdom of a mother who has known her son his whole life. She returns to the nursery where she sits with Xavier until the afternoon shadows grow long outside, then leaves him awhile to help Cook with dinner.

At the end of the hallway, the door is locked. Already. Isabella missed lunch and her stomach is grumbling. It isn’t nighttime, so why has she been locked in? It doesn’t matter. She knows how to get out now. She pops the key out and drags it under the door on a piece of paper, and heads to the kitchen.

Cook is not about, though, nor is Katarina. The rest of the house is in quiet darkness, except for the sound of the carriage clock ticking on the bookshelf. Isabella strains her ears for any sound of them, but hears only the faint ring of silence in the house, a contrast to the rushing wind outside. She lights a lamp in the kitchen and goes to the icebox. Xavier is sleeping and shouldn’t eat while feverish, but surely nobody will mind if she cuts herself some bread and cheese.

She eats in silence in the dim flickering lamplight, then returns to Xavier.

Her hand, almost without thought, goes to his forehead. It is clear immediately that his fever has broken. Her hand comes away damp with cool sweat. The weight lifts off her heart and she realizes she has been holding back a tenth of every breath all day. She sits on the edge of the bed and gently strokes his hair away from his brow, talking to him softly under her breath. He stirs but doesn’t wake. She feels ridiculously happy.

Then she hears a thump from downstairs—a door closing?—and remembers Katarina. She will want to know that Xavier is well again. Isabella decides to slip downstairs to see if the thump was Katarina, or Cook, who might know where Katarina is. If it is neither of them, then she will keep the news to herself and feel all the more special for being the only one who knows.

She takes a lantern and makes her way down the back stairs. The grass is wet with the day’s rain and the air is chill. A rough
wind shakes the branches in the tall eucalypts, and they make a rushing sound to rival the crashing of the sea. She goes into the laundry and stops, listening. Nothing . . . nothing . . .

Then something. A woman’s voice. Low and soft. Isabella’s skin prickles. Is it Cook or Katarina? She sounds as though she is in pain.

Isabella presses on into the dark under-house area and realizes the noise is coming from the forbidden room; realizes at the same moment that this isn’t the sound of a woman in pain. It is the sound of pleasure.

The cigar butts outside the window. Ernest away in Brisbane.

It all falls into place quickly, and Isabella knows she should turn around and go back upstairs to the nursery and forget what she has guessed. That is what staff are meant to do. But Isabella is not staff. Isabella is a woman just like Katarina, and Isabella already suspects Katarina is not a fit mother. Or rather: Isabella
hopes
Katarina is not a fit mother, because that would legitimate all her fantasies.

Her fingers are on the door handle before she can withdraw them. Of course it is locked. But she has the key still, in the front pocket of her apron. Isabella hears a rough male voice. She must know who it is, how many of them there are, what foul things are taking place in that locked room. She must know it
urgently
if she is to keep Xavier safe in the world. She cares nothing for being quiet now; her heart is thudding too hard in her ears for her to hear the reasonable voice saying,
Stop, no good will come of this.

The door swings inwards. The room is dimly lit, but she can see there is only one man, and nothing more sinister is taking place than the oldest act of love in the world.

Katarina lets out a half-shout, half-screech. Abel Barrett pulls the bed covers over his head too late. Isabella feels herself freeze:
the ice moves from her feet, up her veins to her knees, thighs and so on, finally reaching her heart and shoulders and head. Katarina is screaming at her to get out, out, out.

Isabella has lost it all. She has lost Xavier. There will be no going back to the quiet nursery to lie curled on her side and dream of being in New York with him. The fantasy is unraveling faster than she can comprehend. Katarina has wrapped herself loosely in her dress, retrieved from the floor, and prods Isabella away, shouts at her to pack her bags and be gone.

Isabella cannot move. This is not happening. Reality billows around her.

Then Abel is there, miraculously dressed while Isabella was paying no heed. He hauls her by the arm, out into the garden.

“You have five minutes to pack your things and go,” he says. “Or I will call in the local police constable, who is my very good friend.”

Self-preservation galvanizes Isabella. She runs up the stairs and to the nursery, clattering in so loudly that Xavier wakes. She folds him in her arms and sobs, “I have to go. I will find you. Don’t be sad. I can make things well again, I’m sure. We are both still alive.” She realizes she is rambling and stops.

Katarina, dressed now, is standing at the door. “Get out! Get your hands off my boy! Get out and never come back!” She begins to slap and punch Isabella, raining down the blows with all the intensity of her fear and anger.

Xavier scrambles out of bed and tries to seize Isabella, but Abel intervenes, picking up the child under his arm and telling him to be still. Xavier starts to scream, and it is a noise to tear Isabella’s heart. White heat flashes through her. If she thought she were capable of it, she’d kill them both and take the child and . . .

Isabella gathers herself. It will be easier on Daniel if she just
leaves . . . No, not Daniel. It will be easier on Xavier if she leaves quickly and quietly. Somehow she can make it well again. Surely.
Please, God, surely it isn’t over. Surely it isn’t over.

“I’m sorry,” she says, to Xavier, Katarina, Abel, but mostly to herself. For she is very, very sorry that she acted blindly.

Xavier starts to scream, “Mary! Mary!” Katarina looks at him, startled to hear him speak. Isabella leaves as quickly as she can, with the child’s voice following her all the way down the stairs and out into the evening shadows.

“Mary! Mary!” The wind and the sea distorts the name, and it sounds like “Mummy! Mummy!” And she has to walk away. There is nothing for her to do but to walk away. There is nothing she can do. Nothing at all. He is gone. It is over. Her knees shake.

She heads for the lighthouse.

I
t seems a million miles, although it is only one. Rain begins to sheet down. Clouds cover the stars. All around her comes the roaring of the wind, the roaring of the sea, the roaring of her sobbing heart. Matthew’s light is shining through it all, clear and bright, reaching out to sea. She stumbles up the path, mud in her shoes, cold rain and hot tears, and hammers on his door.

Waits.

She hears his footsteps clattering down the stairs. Then the door swings in and he is there, and she collapses into his arms. He hesitates. She says, “I have lost him.” And Matthew’s arms fold around her tightly and his hand is in her hair and he is kissing the top of her head. “My pretty bird,” he murmurs. Desire ignites as it never has before in Isabella’s body. Matthew reaches over her to close the door, shutting out the wind and the rain. Her clothes are dripping, so she begins to unfasten them: the buttons on her
wrists, the laces at her throat. Matthew’s hands are moving in tune with hers, stripping the wet clothes from her. They gather in a pool on the floor and Matthew’s warm fingers are running over her cold collarbone. Her skin prickles into goose bumps, her nipples harden to tight peaks. He reaches down and picks her up as though she weighs nothing, takes her to his bedroom and lays her gently among the covers. The familiar smell of them—his smell: man and soap—overwhelms her and she closes her eyes. His lips touch her throat. She arches. Tears are still running from her eyes, skidding onto the pillow. He kisses her face, licks the tears from her cheeks. She feels his desire in the hot tautness of his body. When she opens her eyes, she sees he is naked in the lamplight. She reaches for him. His heart, her heart, in faultless rhythm.

I
n the dark, much later, he says, “I will find your sister. You can’t stay here with me. You have to go to her.”

“I have no money. I’ve lost everything that’s dear.”

“I kept the mace.”

She sits up, looks down at him. His eyes seem black.

“Are you angry?”

“No,” she says. “I am tired of doing the right thing. If necessity dictates, why should I not take something that isn’t mine?” And while she says this, she is not thinking simply of the mace. She is also thinking of Xavier.

2011

A
light shower moved in after the afternoon-tea rush and Juliet hesitated before going out. But the clouds were only pale gray, and at least the beach would be deserted if it was raining. She hated it when she went down there to think and dogs or children kept running into her.

She left Cheryl and Melody in charge of cleaning and locking up, something she rarely did. Once a year now. At first, in the early years, it had been once a week, then once a month she came down here. But grief can’t hang on forever and now she only really came because it seemed wrong to
not
remember the date.

Twenty years since Andy died.

Juliet found the spot on which she always sat, up on the grassy part of the dunes looking down on to the soft white beach. She put her umbrella up and sat down, crossing her legs. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The breeze coming off the water was soaked in the scent of rain and salt. Her hair caught in it and flicked across her face. She gently pushed the strands back.

If she had been sitting in this spot twenty years ago tonight she would have seen it all unfold. She would have seen the headlights
shining down from the park onto the sand. She would have heard the emergency sirens. She would have seen herself down on the beach, frantically pacing and crying, while friends tried to hold her still. She snapped her eyes open. There was no point reliving old misery.

For a long time, she’d come down here to talk to Andy, as though his spirit might have soaked into the sand and sea when he died. Juliet had no firm ideas about the mysteries of life and death, but she had long ago released the idea that Andy was here in any way. But today she found herself wanting to talk to him because he knew Libby. He knew what had happened. So he was one of the few people who could give good advice.

What was she to do about Libby? The short time since her unexpected arrival had been tumultuous. On rare good days Juliet managed not to think of it at all: her life was busy and she was used to Libby being out of it. Some days she remembered with a jolt that Libby was in town, just a five-minute drive away, and guilt shook her and told her to make amends. Family, blood, all that. Some days there was panic, some days anger and some days an inexplicable sinking dread. Life had grown quickly and unmanageably complicated the day Libby arrived. Granted, life wasn’t easy before, but it was predictable. Time ticked away: twenty years since Andy died. Twenty whole years lived between breakfasts and morning and afternoon teas, between stripping beds and making beds. She had kept her head down, she had kept life simple. But then Libby had come back.

Guiltily, she hoped that Libby might leave again just as quickly. Libby had always been confident; in her youth she had even been conceited. It would be unsurprising if she decided—once again—that Lighthouse Bay was too small for her and were to
head off to whatever exotic destination she felt suited her best. If Paris had lost its gloss, perhaps it would be London or New York next. If Libby went, then Juliet could get on with living her quiet life.