by Lilly Mirren
In the cove, a pair of hooded plovers stood side by side, black heads with keen eyes over sleek white and grey bodies. They launched into the air at the sight of Bindi invading their space and circled above her, calling out their haunting cries. She watched them, squint-eyed, then strode in long steps towards the wet sand and away from their territory. One of the birds swooped her a few times, a half-hearted attempt to push her away from their nest. She waved a hand over her head and hurried along the beach without looking back.
Soon, the beach fell quiet as the plovers returned to their vigil on the sand. Bindi slowed her pace and inhaled a long, slow breath of the fresh, salty air. One of her favourite things about moving back to Cabarita Beach were the solitary walks. Feet slapping the wet sand, thoughts curling with the waves, she was able to work through problems, figure out her way forward. Her thoughts seemed to untwist and smooth out as she paced and by the time she got back to the inn, everything seemed better. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed all those years in Melbourne, without those walks. She’d hurried, hunched over between meetings and appointments, through stories and business functions. She didn’t miss much about those days, though she did miss having someone waiting for her at the end of the day. Even if it turned out he hadn’t loved her all along the way she’d loved him.
Brendan had emailed her last month, suggesting he’d like to come to the Waratah Inn to see her. She wondered what he wanted from her. She hadn’t heard from him since, but the thought of him visiting niggled at the back of her mind all the time. She chewed on one lip as she walked. What would she say to him if he did come?
After six years together, during which he’d assured her he wasn’t the marrying kind, he’d broken it off abruptly and quickly become engaged to someone else. It’d hurt in a way she’d never thought possible. That, along with the loss of her job, had left her in a funk. Then, when Nan died, she’d come to Cabarita Beach for the funeral and never left. The inn was her home now, and the pain of losing Brendan, her career and her grandmother in such short order had begun to fade, until his email arrived in her inbox.
When she reached the end of the beach, Bindi sat on the sand next to the outcropping of black rocks that marked the curling ends of the cove. Castle Rock loomed high in the water in front of her. Waves crashed against it, salt spray leapt into the water with each collision, white against the deep blue of the spring sky.
She opened Nan’s journal and lay it in her lap to read. The words drew her in. She felt as though she were living in pre-war Bathurst, the wind blowing through her hair as she rode her horse over the rolling hills of the Watson farm.
If only Nan had spoken to them about her childhood more often. She’d never wondered why Nan didn’t talk about those times until now. The journal gave some insight as to why — there was pain in Nan’s past that would’ve been difficult for her grandmother to face. Speaking about it might’ve been more than Nan could bear. She couldn’t blame her for that.
It was hard enough for Bindi to tell her sisters about how life in Melbourne had fallen apart, why she’d lost her job and what’d happened between her and Brendan. And that wasn’t nearly as painful an experience as what Nan had endured, losing the love of her life and her brother to a harsh and violent war. Not to mention birthing a son, out of wedlock, in wartime Australia. She couldn’t imagine what Nan must’ve endured; the journals gave some insight but couldn’t cover it all.
After a while, the sun warmed the top of Bindi’s head and she looked away from the aged pages of Nan’s diary to study the horizon. She’d get sunburned if she stayed on the beach much longer, besides there was a lot of work to do at the inn. She had bills to pay, supplies to order, and employees to manage.
With a sigh, she heaved to her feet, tucked the journal beneath her arm again, and ducked her head to walk back to the inn. She made it past the plovers without incident and hurried up the path, sea grasses tickling her legs and the sand warm between her toes.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the letters in the box with Nan’s journals. Reeda had said they were from Charlie, written to Nan during the war. She hadn’t read them yet, but she’d stared at the handwriting on the envelopes that encased them. Thinking about it sparked a memory. A few weeks ago, she’d been rooting through the crawl space beneath the inn’s staircase, looking for one of Nan’s old files of ledger books, when she’d come across a box of letters. Some of the envelopes were addressed by the same hand, she was sure of it.
Excitement buzzed through her. Perhaps those letters were from Charlie as well, and maybe they contained some of the answers her sisters had been searching for. She picked up the pace, hurrying through the yard, past the horse stables, the chook pen, and the garden shed, then skipped up the back stairs and into the inn.
The noise in the kitchen had picked up and she scooted past the scurrying wait staff.
“You’re back!” called Kate.
Bindi waved a hand over her head with a smile. “Yeah! Looks like you have your hands full.”
Kate shook her head with wonder. “You’d better believe it.” She grinned.
Bindi could tell her sister loved it. The inn was booked solid for the New South Wales school holidays, and Kate loved a crowd. It was her dream to build a restaurant on the property that would be open to the public, turning the Waratah Inn into a destination not only for guests but for anyone looking for a world class meal by the beach. Bindi thought it was a good idea, though it was her job to manage the books and it made her stomach clench to try to figure out how they’d pull it off.
She tugged open the doorway beneath the staircase, got down on hands and knees and crawled inside. Dusty air assailed her, and she coughed once, then sorted through the boxes. She soon found the box she was looking for, pulled off the lid, and began flicking through its contents. It was crammed with letters.
With determination, Bindi sorted the envelopes into piles based on the return addresses on their backs. There were some letters from Diana Watson, Nan’s mother. Others were from Jemima Everest, or Mima as everyone knew her now. Still others were from people whose names Bindi didn’t recognise. The entire box was filled with correspondence. None of the addresses were typed; all were written in neat cursive. Almost all were worn, weathered, and stained.
Some of the envelopes looked to be newer. Then, Bindi found one addressed to Edith Watson, without a postage stamp or a return address, with a date etched onto the top right corner in Nan’s familiar hand. The envelope had been opened but not torn, it wasn’t stained or aged in the same way as the other letters were. She set it to one side and continued sorting. By the time she’d emptied the box, there were five envelopes, addressed to Nan in the same hand, all without postage or return addresses, and all with dates added. And if she remembered rightly, the handwriting used to form Nan’s name appeared to be the same as on the envelopes she had hidden away in the wooden box upstairs. Charlie’s handwriting.
Bindi’s heart thudded against her ribcage. She piled the rest of the envelopes back into the box, pressed the five letters into the inside cover of Nan’s journal and crawled out from under the staircase. A waiter hurried by, shooting her a startled look, then recovered, a stack of dirty plates swaying between his hands.
She pushed a smile onto her face and nodded at the waiter’s retreating back. She must look a fright. No doubt she had dust bunnies in her hair and dirt smudged across her face or something just as bad.
The only thing she could think of was taking a look at the letters. She climbed the stairs two at a time to her room, locked the door behind her, and hurried to the desk by the window. She sat, pulled Nan’s timber box towards her, and opened the lid. Charlie’s letters were beneath the rest of the journals. She took them out and lay them on the desk, then compared the newly discovered envelopes.
Yes, they were definitely written in Charlie’s hand.
She slid her finger beneath the flap at the back and extracted the letter as carefully as she could manag
e. The letter was dated October 1952. How had Charlie gotten this letter to Nan? When had he written it, or sent it? And from where? The last she’d heard of Charlie’s fate had been from Reeda’s account of her meeting with an Italian man called Stefano. He’d told Reeda that he thought Charlie had been shot by the German army outside a small village in Italy after his escape from Campo 78. Had he survived? If he had, why didn’t he come home to Nan and their father? Her heart in her throat, she unfolded the pages, set them on the desk and began to read.
4
September 1994
Melbourne
The noise of the newsroom always soothed Bindi. She loved the bustle, the clack of fingers on keyboards, the hum of conversation. It spoke of excitement, adventure, the important work they did in bringing truth to the community, in making sure governments were held accountable and people were kept informed about what was going on in their communities.
It was the career she’d always dreamed of having, and now it was hers. Sometimes the realisation of that was hard for her to grasp. She was ready to admit that it wasn’t everything she’d thought it would be, that sometimes the truth was harder to dig for than the sensational, and that often her bosses asked her to scrap stories in favour of others that she knew would bring a benefit to someone in power. Still, for the most part, she was proud of her work.
The lift doors whirred shut behind her and she balanced the cup of takeaway coffee in one hand more carefully as she strode forward.
It’d been four years since she’d gotten her first job at the Channel Four. Directly out of uni, she’d been an intern at first, an unpaid position that’d had her brewing jugs of tea and coffee, delivering mail through the rabbit-warren office, and cleaning up spills while she listened in on meetings, one ear pricked to catch the most important discussions.
It had taken her a full year to get promoted to fact checker, then another year to be given a chance to produce her first story. And finally, she’d become the journalist she’d always dreamed of being. The camera trained on her hadn’t been the goal, telling the story was. She’d always thought she’d write for a newspaper, but she’d landed an internship at a television station instead. She still wasn’t entirely comfortable having her image blasted into living rooms across Australia every night, but her producer said she’d get used to it. She wasn’t sure.
As she moved through the open office, some staff greeted her, others ignored her completely, their attention firmly fixed on the screens in front of them. She found her cubicle, set down her coffee on the desk and pulled out her chair. When she sank into it, a head emerged from behind a partition.
“Good morning, Bindi.”
She smiled. “Hi Debbie.”
Debbie was her full-time fact checker. She’d only recently graduated from university and was keen to get ahead. Her enthusiasm made Bindi feel tired, even though Debbie was only four years younger than she was. Still, it seemed like an age since she was that bright-eyed graduate looking for a way in the door at the television station.
“Where are you going today?” asked Debbie, her eyes gleaming.
Bindi shrugged. “Don’t know yet, actually.”
“Did you stay late last night?”
Some of the staff from the office had gone out for drinks to celebrate a birthday for one of the more senior journalists. Bindi wished she hadn’t stayed out as late as she had. There’d been karaoke involved, a new craze in Melbourne’s CBD, and she’d humiliated herself with an off-key rendition of The Sign, by Ace of Base.
She ran a hand over her eyes with a sigh. “I stayed too late, I’m afraid.”
Debbie giggled. “I heard about Ace of Base. Sounds like you had a good time.”
Bindi shook her head as she logged onto her computer. “Remind me not to sing in front of a crowd again. I actually think I heard dogs howling throughout the streets of Melbourne.” She chortled. “Where did you go after you left?”
Debbie’s lips pursed. “I went to my boyfriend’s place.”
Debbie’s boyfriend was a mystery over which Bindi had speculated many times. Since the fact-checker refused to tell anyone his name, Bindi could only imagine he must be someone high up at the television station, otherwise it wouldn’t matter.
“Why won’t you tell me who he is?” she asked, frowning as her inbox filled with email messages.
“I can’t. Trust me, I want to, but he’s asked me not to say anything. He’s adamant about that.” Debbie pouted as she wheeled her office chair into Bindi’s cubicle, her feet pushing across the carpet. “Although, I really don’t get why. He’s an adult, so am I. We can make our own choices.”
“If he’s your boss, there are company rules against that,” murmured Bindi, clicking through her emails one by one to see if there was anything urgent.
Debbie grunted. “I don’t see why.”
Bindi spun to face her with brows furrowed. “He is your boss?”
“I didn’t say that,” huffed Debbie, wheeling back to her own desk.
“Yes you did!” called Bindi at her retreating back.
“No, I didn’t. And anyway, even if he was, I still don’t see why it’s anyone else’s business.”
Bindi shook her head and returned her attention to her screen. “Did you get the fact checking done for that piece on Bilton Global?”
Debbie sighed. “Yep, all done. Everything’s good to go on that piece.”
“Are you sure? Because I wasn’t certain the quotes they gave us and attributed to Barney Caine were quite accurate. Did he confirm?”
Debbie groaned. “You mean I have to call him?”
Bindi’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, you have to call him. You didn’t call him?”
Her heart skipped a beat. What else hadn’t Debbie checked thoroughly? Mentally she ran through all the recent stories they’d run, wondering if they’d missed anything.
“We’ve got the status meeting in a few minutes,” reminded Debbie, clacking away at her keyboard.
Bindi sighed. The status meeting. She’d better gather her thoughts. Tim Hutchinson, her boss, would expect her to give him a full run down of her current stories and what was coming through the pipeline.
She opened the spreadsheet she used to keep track of everything she was working on, ran through it and made notes on a notepad.
Her phone rang, and she picked it up, pressed the earpiece between her shoulder and ear, and answered. “This is Bindi.”
“Hey, sweetheart.” Brendan’s voice brought a smile to her face.
“Hi, honey, how are you this morning?”
“Better than you, I think. I didn’t humiliate myself by singing and grinding in front of all my colleagues.” He laughed.
Bindi feigned offence with a huff. “It was a brilliant rendition of a piece by a masterful pop icon, thank you very much.”
“Hey, listen, hon, I’m not going to be able to get together tonight after all.”
Bindi’s lips pursed. “Oh?”
“Yeah, I’ve got to get this piece finished, you know how it is. Newspaper journalists never sleep, unlike you television news-oh’s.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah, yeah…that’s what you always say, and yet you seem to find an awful lot of time to go surfing.”
He laughed. “You got me on that. So, I’ll see you tomorrow instead. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Just as she hung up the phone, it rang again. When she answered, Tim’s distinctive voice echoed down the line. “Can you come to my office please, Summer?”
She hurried to Tim’s office, which was at one end of the open space. The only office with a door, although the wall was made of glass so everyone could see through to where Tim sat behind a large, mahogany desk.
She shut the door behind her and took a seat opposite her boss. He was occupied with something on his computer screen, clicking the mouse rapidly, his brow furrowed. He tapped furiously on the keyboard, clicked again, then leaned back in his chair with a sigh, linking his hands b
ehind his head.
His piercing brown eyes fixed on hers, making her sweat.
“Summer, you know we pride ourselves here at Channel Four News, on making sure that we report the truth. The objective truth.”
She nodded. It wasn’t entirely accurate, everyone knew Tim had a thing for the Labor party, but she’d play along.
“Yes, of course.”
“And what’s the one thing I don’t want?”
“To get sued.”
“That’s right, to get sued. Because if that happens, we might all be out of a job, pan handling on the streets of Melbourne by next month. Right?”
“Right,” she said, her heart hammering against her ribcage. Where was this going? She didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking.
He sighed, leaning forwards to steeple his hands on the desk. “I heard from Mark Romney, over at the Premier’s office.”
Bindi’s stomach twisted into a knot. She’d run an expose on the Premier’s office and their tendency to use taxpayer funding for private holidays and jets to exotic locations. The entire story had been based on statements made by former staff members. She hadn’t liked the tone of the piece, but Tim had pushed her to do it. After all, it showed the Liberal state government in a bad light, and that was something he was adamant about doing and he didn’t care who knew it. Still, the way he was eying her now, she knew something had gone wrong.
“Oh? Was it about that piece we did on funding personal travel with public funds?” she asked.
He nodded, one eyebrow quirking. “That’s right. He says it’s not true. Says he can prove you got false information from your sources, that they’re slandering his staff because of a grudge, and we’re slandering his office with our story.”
“But Debbie called the Premier’s office to confirm the facts…”
“Did she? He says no one from our office called anyone in his.”
Bindi’s heart fell. “But Debbie…”
