‘It’s okay, you know.’
‘What is?’
‘I know you’re not gay. I can always tell when someone isn’t. It’s okay just to have a bit of fun, you know.’
Well, screw you. Pam sat up and gave her lover a slap on the butt. ‘Stay as long as you like. But I’m going for a walk on the beach.’
A few kilometres to the east, Scobie Sutton was faintly irritable. ‘Well, what’s it entail?’
Roslyn Sutton stuck her jaw out, bottom lip pouting. ‘You don’t want me to do it.’
‘I didn’t say that. It sounds like a big commitment, that’s all.’
His daughter put her little fists to her breasts beseechingly. ‘It would be so much fun.’
Sutton was setting the table for lunch-cheese, tomatoes, bread, butter, olives, lettuce, tahini, sliced beef from last night’s roast-and Roslyn was hovering with a handful of knives and forks. His grumpiness increasing, he slammed a plate onto the place mat in front of his wife, no response in her mute, helpless face. Beth should have been spending the day out, as she did every Sunday, but this time her mother and sister were coming here.
He took a deep breath, looked at Roslyn and said, ‘I can see it would be fun, but there are things to consider. How many performances?’
‘Four.’
‘When?’
‘Two weekends in November.’
‘How late are the rehearsals?’
‘Sundays between one and five, and Fridays between seven and ten.’
Scobie knew he’d capitulate. It wasn’t as if his daughter wasn’t a terrific singer and dancer.
‘What about netball?’ he asked glumly.
‘I won’t do it this term.’
‘What about your homework?’
That bottom lip again. ‘I’ll fit it in. Plenty of kids do this every year, Dad.’
‘It’s a lot of driving around for me. What if I’m working a big case-like now?’
‘You never let me do anything!’
Sutton made a mental list: lifesaving, netball, sleepovers, birthday parties, dancing classes…‘Ros, within reason, I have never denied you anything.’
There had been a time when he’d have said ‘ We have never denied you anything.’ A time when the burden had been shared. He snatched the knives and forks from Roslyn’s sulky hands and dropped them in place around the table. The running around would leave him ragged with tiredness. Resentment would grow corrosively. Right at that moment, he hated his wife.
‘Please, Dad.’
Scobie drew in a breath. And just at that point a quiet voice said, ‘Let her do it if she wants.’
Father and daughter stopped what they were doing.
‘Mum?’
‘I can drive you around, I don’t mind,’ Beth Sutton said. She glanced at Scobie, a little steel in it. ‘No need to stare at me like that.’
*
Challis was trying to unwind. Uncertainty was an ever-present condition of his life and he was beginning to hate it. He wanted Ellen Destry close, he wanted to be able to speak his mind in public and generate debate, not opprobrium. He wanted simple pleasures, in fact, like seeing his house in full daylight occasionally. The place was always draped in long morning shadows when he left for work and a humped shape in starlight when he got back. And so he spent the first part of that Sunday morning with a newspaper, toast and coffee at his kitchen window, watching shadows wind back from his yard. 8 a.m. 9 a.m. 10. Sunlight of great clarity, silently foraging ducks, a great beckoning stillness. He pulled on his old Rockports and walked up the hill, passing the orchard, the stockbroker’s weekender cottage, the farm dogs that saw him as a new threat each time he approached their boundary. Then down the laneway beyond the brow of the hill.
A second coffee on his return, and then the sunlight beckoned again. He needed to be out in it, mowing, weeding.
Then it was mid-afternoon and he decided to wash his car, which wore a patina of dust once more. He fetched the keys and got in, intending to drive around to the garden hose in the back yard.
Nothing. Not even enough juice to turn the starter motor over.
Challis was trying again when a car turned in from the dirt road that ran past his house. He got out, poised and wary. He didn’t get many visitors-an occasional neighbour, lost tourist or someone looking to buy a hobby farm-and always, at the back of his mind, was the expectation that an enemy would come for him one day, someone he’d put away. Perhaps a posse of Ethical Standards officers, keen to stitch him up for embarrassing the government. He glanced around quickly. A shovel that he’d forgotten to put back in the garden shed; tree cover on the next property, a tangle of peppermint gums, bracken and pittosporums.
A grey Mazda. It pulled up behind the Triumph and the driver and his female passenger got out, the driver lifting a hand to him. ‘Hal.’
‘Alan.’
Challis didn’t relax, not fully. Ellen’s ex-husband was a big man. Relations between them had always been awkward.
‘Hope we’re not interrupting anything.’
‘Just pottering,’ Challis said.
‘I don’t think you’ve met Sue Wells, my significant other.’
When Ellen had heard about the girlfriend she’d said sourly, ‘I bet she’s young, no brains, boobs out to here,’ but Challis saw a short, round, greying woman aged in her forties, wearing faded baggy jeans and a tired smile.
He shook her hand. ‘We spoke on the phone. How’s Larrayne holding up?’
‘Sleeps a lot,’ Wells said. ‘A bit teary sometimes, other times angry, but basically she’s fine.’
Alan Destry shifted on his solid feet. ‘That’s why we’re here, Hal. It was great what you did. I can’t thank you enough.’
Challis rolled his shoulders, looking for an escape. ‘Coffee?’
‘Just had afternoon tea in Flinders. Need to get back before the weekend traffic gets too busy.’
Challis felt a fugitive regret for the leisure time that had been lost to him over the years, and envy for the early stages of love, when there is only promise, not heartache, in the air. He missed Ellen.
As if reading his mind, Alan Destry said, ‘Heard from Ells?’
‘Most days.’
‘Good, good.’ Destry toed the ground uncomfortably, then glanced at Challis. ‘Read what you said in the paper.’
Challis was silent, gave a short nod.
‘Took guts.’
‘Fat lot of good it’s done me, or the rank and file in general.’
Destry had run out of steam. ‘Well, we won’t keep you.’
‘Actually,’ Challis said, ‘would you have a set of jumper leads in your car? Flat battery.’
Alan Destry was more comfortable with dead batteries than live emotions. ‘Gis a look.’
With Challis behind the wheel, ready to turn the key, Destry raised the bonnet.
‘Rats.’
Challis got out. ‘Your leads won’t fit?’
‘No, rats. Furry animals with sharp teeth.’
Challis peered in. Holes in the radiator hoses, exposed wiring, and rat droppings and flecks of chewed rubber and insulation scattered on and around the engine.
He saw it as a sign. When the others had gone, he washed, polished and photographed his creaky old car, fired up the Internet, and posted it for sale.
Finally it was evening and he could log on and talk to Ellen, who was in Glasgow. Her tiny image on the screen was a tonic as he outlined his day. ‘So in the end I went over and fetched your car.’
‘Good.’
‘Thought I’d buy an old MG this time.’
‘Like hell. Describe the view from your window,’ Ellen said. ‘Describe it exactly. I want to see it in my mind’s eye.’
Challis told her about the play of failing light and deepening shadows on the stretch of lawn and trees between his house and the road, surprising himself. ‘After years of report writing, I didn’t think I could be so poetic.’
‘Oh I miss that, I miss you…’ ‘It’s only been a few days,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘How’s the sex crimes business where you are?’
‘Same crimes, same criminals,’ she said. ‘Probably more sex slavery and human trafficking. Same police culture.’