Promises

by Cathryn Hein

  ‘You were young, Aaron.’

  ‘No. I was stupid and I was weak, just like I’ve always been.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Why not? It’s true.’

  ‘Aaron —’

  ‘Don’t, Soph. Just let me get this over with.’ He sat stiffly upright, as though she’d placed him in a dock, forcing him to give sworn testimony. ‘It was a simple betting scam. I dosed the horses. Mum placed her bets. Normally, it’d be hard to get away with, but Mum was careful. She knew not to bet big and after that first stuff-up we took a lot more care.’

  ‘But surely she knew she’d get caught.’

  ‘Oh yeah, but by then she’d be long gone and I was there to take the fall. I was fifteen, about to turn sixteen. Young. She figured I’d just get off with a warning.’

  Sophie looked at him in dismay. ‘And you were willing to do that?’

  ‘To save this place? You bet.’ He gazed around the yard. ‘This place is all Dad had. It’s all I have.’

  ‘No, Aaron. You also have me.’

  He stood, took a few steps into the yard, and kicked at a clod of dirt. ‘I wanted her out of here so much I didn’t think about the consequences of what we were doing. I didn’t question why she had to do it that way. If I had, I might’ve worked out it wasn’t all about the money – it was about hurting Dad too.’ He blinked rapidly, his chest heaving. ‘You know what I found out later?’

  Sophie shook her head.

  ‘She didn’t have to do it. Dad would’ve taken out another loan and paid her off just to get rid of her. He knew Mum was screwing your old man, but he never bothered doing anything about it.’ His eyes shone in the bright morning sunshine. ‘I’m so like him it’s not funny. We never stand up for anything.’

  ‘You stood up for me,’ she said, rising from the step and holding out her hand, begging him to take it. If he’d let her, she could soothe his turmoil, give him back his pride.

  He eyed her. You really think so? You really think giving Danny a bit of a smack is standing up for you?’

  ‘Yes, of cour—’

  ‘I’ve never stood up for you, Sophie. Not once.’

  The hand she’d held out dropped to her side and she stared at him in disbelief, her mouth open. What was he on about? He’d not only protected her from Danny, he’d protected her from himself when he’d felt the truth would only hurt her.

  ‘I made a promise to you when I was sixteen that I’d look after you, but not once have I done that. Not once!'

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your mother!’

  Sophie gaped at him, her insides coiling. This was going to be bad, she could see from the look on his face.

  Her voice seemed to come from far away. ‘What about my mother? What did you do?’

  His shoulders sagged. Slowly, he walked back to the step and sat down. He wouldn’t look at her.

  ‘When the stewards finally launched an investigation, it didn’t take Dad long to work out what had happened. I always assumed it was Mum who’d told him I’d done it, but now I know it was Danny all along. Dad got it into his head that a conviction would ruin my life, so the stupid bugger told the stewards he did it. He lost his licence. Then he started drinking. I don’t know why he bothered protecting me. My life ended up ruined anyway.’ He stared at his hands. ‘I dropped out of school. Danny moved in to help. I couldn’t figure out why – he was bloody hopeless – but Dad insisted on paying him to work around the farm. I found out this morning he was blackmailing Dad too. Filthy little bastard.

  ‘I was so angry with everyone. Mum, Dad, your old man – I was furious with them all. But you know who I decided was to blame for all this? Your mother, that’s who. It was her fault Ian was screwing Mum. It was her fault Dad was drinking himself to oblivion every day. Her fault my life had turned to shit. I blamed her for everything.’

  A tear dribbled down Sophie’s cheek.

  His tone became brutal. ‘One day, Dad was so drunk he couldn’t even make it to the toilet. Christ, I was angry. I was sixteen years old and cleaning up my father’s piss when I should’ve been out chasing girls or playing footy or doing whatever it was that normal teenagers did. When I tried to put him to bed, he thumped me. I left him on the floor where he fell, stuck a bandaid over the cut above my eye, then got on the bike and rode straight round to Vanaheim, crying the whole bloody way.

  ‘Your mum comes out of the house, sees me standing at the gate snivelling like a bloody kid and runs up to me all hugs and concern, and what do I do? I tell her everything. Everything, Sophie. I take all my bitterness and frustration out on her simply because I can’t take it out on my own mother. And so I blame her. I tell her it’s all her fault.’

  Sophie began to shake.

  ‘And you know what she does? She tells me I’m right, it is all her fault. And then she hugs me again and tells me that she’s sorry but she’s going to make it better now, and I should go home and look after my dad because he needs me.’

  He took a deep breath. Sophie wanted to slap her hand over his mouth, to stop him saying what she knew was coming, but her body had turned numb.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No.’

  ‘That afternoon,’ said Aaron, his voice cracking, ‘your mother killed herself.’

  Twenty-six

  It felt like an hour passed before her sobs quietened to shallow hiccups. Sophie pressed the side of her head against the verandah post, blinking against a morning that seemed far too vivid. Tiredness seeped through her body and her bones began to ache, the way they did whenever she came down with the flu.

  Aaron sat still on the step staring blankly at the yard. She remembered him trying to hold her and her shoving him away as she succumbed to her all-encompassing grief. He glanced at her.

  ‘I went to the funeral, you know. You were there standing between your father and your aunt. You kept looking around as if you expected your mother to turn up, and then you looked at your father and tried to take his hand.’

  ‘He snatched it away,’ said Sophie, closing her eyes at the memory.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then I started to cry.’

  ‘No, Sophie. You started to scream.’

  She opened her eyes and stared at him. ‘Did I? I don’t remember.’

  ‘I made you a promise then that I’d look after you.’

  ‘But you didn’t..’

  ‘No. I should have been your friend, but I wasn’t.’ He stood and looked down at her. ‘I’m so very sorry, Sophie. For everything.’

  She watched him as he walked toward Rowdy. He’d warned her multiple times that she’d never forgive him for what he’d done. You won’t be able to scrub hard enough to clean yourself of me. He’d cautioned her and she’d heard him, but not once had she believed him. She’d never comprehended it could be this bad.

  This was the man she’d loved, suffered sleepless nights for, endured endless doubts over. And he’d let her, knowing he’d done this. She bowed her head and waited for the nausea she knew was coming to wash over her. It didn’t arrive. Instead, all she felt was sorrow.

  Aaron tied Rowdy to the side of the float and moved to the back to unlock the ramp. He glanced at her, as if checking to see he was doing the right thing. She felt swamped by inertia, unable to rise and help him, lacking the energy to tell him to stop.

  Rowdy walked up the ramp without hesitating. Aaron fixed the breech door and locked the tailgate into place. He patted Rowdy’s rump, and came to stand in front of her with his hands in his pockets.

  ‘He’s right to go. Will you be okay, or do you want me to drive you?’

  Sophie swallowed. She didn’t know if she was capable of even making it to the car.

  He crouched down. ‘Sophie?’

  She tried to speak, but her throat closed over and it was hard to breathe. She reached out to touch his face. He took her hand, stopping her.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you,’

&nbs
p; She let him pull her upright and lead her to the Range Rover. Words swarmed through her head, confetti pieces printed with all the things she wanted to say, but too scattered to make sense of.

  She sat in the passenger seat staring out of the windscreen, wishing her brain would start working again. Aaron stepped into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The Range Rover chugged into life. Music filtered through the speakers and into her head. The latest hit for a former boy-band leader turned solo artist. A love song.

  She stared at the radio, wondering what the hell that idiot would know about love. The internet was full of his kiss-and-tell stories. As if reading her mind, Aaron switched it off. She returned her blank gaze to the windscreen.

  They didn’t speak on the short drive to Vanaheim. Sophie still didn’t know what she wanted to say. She didn’t even know how she felt. Except that she was tired. So very, very tired.

  When they pulled into the yard, she sat in the car with the door open but didn’t get out. Aaron unloaded Rowdy, and put him in his box. He circled the stable, sniffing. A horse called from the front paddock. He lifted his head, ears pricked and alert as though his ordeal had never happened. Sammy and Del sat by the open door with their heads cocked, whining for attention. She couldn’t even find the energy to pat them.

  ‘Here,’ Aaron said, holding out his hand. ‘Let’s get you inside.’

  She looked up at him. All she saw on his face was concern, not love. Maybe love had never been there. Maybe it had been an illusion projected by her need. She dropped her eyes. ‘I’m okay.’

  She wasn’t. She wasn’t okay at all, but she still couldn’t find the words to express her feelings. She loved. She hated. But she didn’t know where those emotions were directed. Towards him? Her mother? His mother? Her father?

  He took her hand anyway. She didn’t resist, following him into the house like a child.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ he said, when they reached the kitchen.

  She shook her head. Her mobile phone sat in the middle of the breakfast bar where she’d thrown it. She stared at the icon-lit screen, her back to him. She reached out a finger and pressed the button for her message bank. Ben’s tinny voice echoed through the speaker.

  ‘Sophie, it’s Ben. I just wanted to wish you luck today. I know how important this race is for you. Ah, anyway, good luck and I’ll talk to you next week about those soil tests we planned.’

  ‘He really likes you, Soph.’

  She deleted the message. Her hand shook. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I want to go to bed.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She heard him move toward the door, and her stomach filled with dread. He was leaving.

  ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘Sophie —’

  She turned to him. ‘Please.’

  He stared at her, his eyes luminous. She held out her hand. It still shook. ‘Please,’ she whispered.

  She led him to the bedroom. He stopped in the doorway but she pulled on his arm and forced him to follow her in. She lay on the bed. He stood by it, looking down. She stroked the space beside her and pleaded with her eyes.

  ‘Hold me,’ she whispered and he did, cradling her gently, as if she were the most precious thing on earth.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  She knew he was. He’d been sorry for years, weighed down by the terrible consequences of his actions. Guilt was the heaviest of emotions. She knew, because she’d carried it herself. Her mother’s suicide had scarred them all.

  She pressed her mouth against his throat. His pulse beat against her lips. He swallowed and tensed. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t what he thought. She wasn’t coming on to him. She just wanted to feel life.

  He pulled away from her, his eyes travelling over her face, trying to read what she was thinking. ‘I have to go now, Sophie.'

  She clutched at him. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s better this way.’

  ‘No. You don’t understand. I still love you.’

  He pressed his head against her forehead. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I can. I do. I love you. Don’t go. Please don’t go.’ She began to cry again. ‘I don’t care what you did. I don’t care. She would have done it anyway. You were just an excuse.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I do. I know what she was going through. I know what she was feeling. I’ve been there. Another day, another time, it doesn’t matter. She would have found an excuse to do it.’ Sophie held out her arms to him, showing him her scars. ‘Look, look. I did that, Aaron. I know. If it hadn’t been Michael, it would’ve been someone else, something else. You were an excuse, just like Michael was an excuse.’

  He held her to his chest, soothing her as she cried. ‘Shh, shh, it’s okay. It’s okay.’

  But it wasn’t okay. If he walked out of Vanaheim, she knew he’d never come back. There’d be nothing left, because he wouldn’t let there be anything. The idea sent her into freefall. She pushed away from him so she could see his face.

  ‘Don’t leave me. I couldn’t stand it.’

  He stroked her cheek. ‘You’ll feel differently tomorrow.’

  ‘I won’t. I love you.’

  ‘You’re upset. In shock. You need time to think.’

  She shook her head. When it came to him, she didn’t need to think. She knew.

  Very gently, he pressed his lips against her forehead and held them there. Then he rolled off the bed and sat at the edge. He said nothing for a moment, just sat with his back hunched and his head down.

  ‘I can’t forgive myself for what I did, Soph. It’s too big.’

  She kneeled and draped herself over him, pressing her mouth against his ear. ‘But I can forgive you, Aaron. The past is over. We can’t change it no matter how much we might want to.’

  ‘If you still feel the same tomorrow morning, come and see me,’ he said, but there was no hope in his voice. Then he prised her loose, stood and walked to the bedroom door. His hand gripped the jamb as though he was trying to stop himself stepping through. He looked at her over his shoulder. ’Will you be okay?’

  She nodded, feeling numb.

  ‘Promise me, Sophie. Promise me you won’t —’ His head dropped. ‘I know you said you’re fine now, but I worry about you. All the time.’

  ‘If you’re worried, then stay.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not, Aaron? Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to see the look on your face when you wake up and realise how much you hate me.’

  Sophie wished she could find the words to convince him, but her head still felt groggy. ‘I won’t hate you. I love you,’ she said, though she knew it wouldn’t be enough. He needed proof. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Aaron. First thing, I promise.’

  They stared at one another, and she saw it. The feeling he refused to admit, the single thing that could sustain them through this.

  ‘Aaron, do you love me?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I have to go.’ He gave her one last look and then disappeared.

  Sophie got up and ran out into the hall after him. Aaron was at the back door. She took two steps, then halted. The door closed with a quiet click. Her shoulders sagged, weighed down by a fatigue she’d never encountered before, the aftermath of her fear, adrenaline and shock-filled morning.

  With dragging steps, she walked back to her bedroom. She picked up a photograph of her mother from the bedside table. Fiona Dixon smiled happily at her.

  Summoning all the energy she had, Sophie threw the frame at the wall.

  Twenty-seven

  The morgue hadn’t changed. If anything, it was even colder and more dismal than when Aaron had last experienced its grey-walled desolation.

  He sat on a creaking plastic chair staring at his hands. He didn’t want to be here, he wanted to be home, at Hakea Lodge, waiting on the verandah step for someone he knew would never come. But Danny had no next of kin and so the police h
ad called him, and now he was here, at Harrington Base Hospital, surrounded by the bleak memories of another time.

  The phone call had come just after three a.m., waking him in a panic, frightening him into saying Sophie’s name down the mouthpiece. No, they said. Not Sophie. Danny. He’d collapsed back onto the bed saying, ‘Thank God’ over and over like a mantra until the caller coughed politely and dragged him back to the matter at hand.

  Motorbike accident, they told him. Head-first into a tree. Dead on impact. Too drunk to feel anything anyway. Then they asked if he knew where the hospital morgue was and he’d told them that, yeah, he knew. He would find it again. He didn’t want to, but he would.

  The morgue was where they had taken his father. Cerebral aneurism, they’d told him then. No, he’d replied, Shame. The doctor and attendant had looked at one another, and then left him alone in that frigid room with the corpse of his father and his dry-eyed but gut-wrenching grief.

  He’d stroked his father’s hair, grey where it had once been as blond as his own. Then he’d leaned down and kissed his forehead, all the time swearing that, somehow, he’d make it up to him. He’d turn Hakea Lodge around, become a trainer his father could admire, a son he could be proud of. It wasn’t a promise he had fulfilled yet, but he would. It was all he had left.

  Aaron rubbed a hand over his face, trying to erase the picture of his father on the trolley, dreading seeing the same thing again. He didn’t want to crack in front of these people. He didn’t want them thinking he was crying over Danny.

  It hadn’t surprised him to get the call. Danny drank too much, smoked incessantly, made enemies. If it hadn’t been a motorbike accident, it would have been a street fight or drunken walk into traffic.

  He supposed he should feel sad. A man had died, after all, but he couldn’t raise an ounce of feeling. If anything, fluttering in the back of his mind was a profound sense of release. Danny was dead. He couldn’t hurt any of them any more.

  An attendant called his name. He rose and followed him into the room. He did what he had to do quickly and walked out, his nostrils full of the antiseptic harshness of that place of death.