‘I keep seeing her dead face but how could I have seen that unless …’
He would have heard her footfalls above him but even so it’s hard to tell if he’s talking to her or to himself. Downstairs he seemed to be handling the alcohol better than Ana but she can hear it now in his voice. How drunk he is. How haunted.
She waits but he says nothing more.
What does she say to him? What can she?
Her mind jumps to Rebecca. Her face. So alive.
She continues to her room, leaving Luke to dig up his own dead.
As expected she finds River in his bed but as soon as she sees him she knows something is wrong.
Not now. Please don’t let it be now. It’s too cruel.
‘River?’
She takes a step closer. Close enough to see his eyes are open but no longer gazing back into hers. No longer looking at anything.
He’s so still. She wants to go to him but she can’t make her legs move. Once she touches him it’ll become real.
Ana feels the round edges of his medication bottle grasped tightly in her hand.
You weren’t there for him. You weren’t there.
‘I’m sorry …’
She sinks down on the floor next to him.
‘It’s okay, boy, I’m here now …’
Ana rests her hand on his side, feeling his warmth through her fingers, focusing on that rather than the absence of his breath.
Gathering his limp body close, she cradles him in her arms before gently repositioning him on his bed. Her movements are calm and methodical as she carefully arranges his body so it looks like he’s just sleeping, her hands not leaving him for a second.
He looks so peaceful she can almost believe he really is just sleeping. They can both rest now and at dawn they’ll take a walk in the forest as they used to. The day will begin and life will just go on as it always has. The two of them together.
Ana’s hand shakes as she opens the safety catch on River’s medication. She kneels there staring down at it. It’s not enough, not to take it all away, but it would help with the pain.
She senses Luke the moment he appears.
He’s stopped in the doorway, exactly as he did the night she imagined him there.
She puts the medication bottle aside but keeps one hand tethered to River as she looks across at Luke. She sees his gaze shift to River. Sees her own sorrow reflected in his eyes.
This is his fault. He was the one who kept her down there with him, probing her with his questions.
‘Why are you still here?’
Luke slides his body down the doorway to the floor and sits there just inside the room.
Ana clutches River’s fur, her fingers kneading him. Her other hand roughly swipes at her face. She can’t let herself cry. If she does she’ll never stop.
She takes a ragged breath, trying to summon up the rage.
‘Are you deaf or just stupid? I don’t want you here.’
Luke remains where he is.
‘What can I do? Tell me and I’ll do it.’
Ana looks away. She doesn’t want the human being right now. She wants the killer.
She focuses on her hand, still attached to River. It takes an enormous amount of will to relax her fingers. To let him go.
‘Pretend I’m her.’
Luke shakes his head. ‘No, you don’t want that.’
Ana gets up but she doesn’t go to Luke. She opens the bedside table and pulls out the scarf.
‘Then take this and get the fuck out of my house.’
Luke looks up at her, his eyes dark. A look she’s never seen before.
*
She expected him to panic, or become defensive, or fly into a rage. She didn’t expect tears. She didn’t expect the truth.
He tells her how it started, that first moment he felt Rebecca’s presence in the dark of the cinema. He tells her how he followed her. How he waited on tenterhooks each time to hear from her. How he worried every time that he wouldn’t. He tells her of the obsession they both felt but only she fought.
As he talks, the rain starts, a steady downpour battering the roof above them, but Luke doesn’t seem to notice it. He’s disappeared into his story, as if he really is back there and Rebecca still alive. As if in the telling he can bring her back to life. Ana sees it all through him, and by the time he reaches the point when their story intersected with hers, she is as lost inside it as he is.
Ana believed she was the last person to see Rebecca alive but she was wrong. It was hours before their final night together would end.
It rained that night too. They got soaked as they ran to her car after one last drink together turned into another and then still more. This was it. She was going home and he’d never see her again. He was angry, he remembers, but didn’t want to show it. He was so sure she would change her mind.
She went willingly with him back to the van having no idea that this time for him the game was real. That neither of them would be going back to that other world.
He always thought it would be her. That she would be the one to go too far. And he gave himself over to that possibility. It was what made it so powerful, knowing he’d let her go all the way. They both liked it. The danger of the game. The giving over of control. And taking it back.
In the end it was him that didn’t stop. His hands that pulled the scarf too tight around her throat. Him who ignored her struggles.
When his confession is done Luke remains there, silent, hunched against the wall.
Ana doesn’t know what to say. How to bring him back. Or even if she should. She was the one who summoned up the killer and now he’s here all she feels is the terrible loss of it all.
Luke is the first to break away.
‘It’s dark. I should go.’
Go where?
Ana looks across at River. As always, patiently waiting for her.
‘It’s raining.’
She takes hold of Luke’s arm, encouraging him up. He gazes back at her, a look of surprise on his face. He lets her lead him over to the bed where he lies down on his side, face to the wall.
Ana lies down with him, spooning herself around his body. After a moment she feels his hand settle on her arm, pulling it around him, holding her there. She fights the urge to pull away, focusing instead on the sound of the rain on the roof above them.
She lies there quietly, letting exhaustion and grief take her, surprised that she has the strength to offer comfort to this man. As the heat of his body warms hers she feels herself start to drift, only to be pulled back by his voice.
‘We should bury River.’
‘Tomorrow.’
The last thing she remembers is the light of the hallway framed by her bedroom door.
FORTY-FIVE
The morning light edges its way in through the curtain. It sends stray flickers onto the bed where Ana lies with one hand resting on River, having returned to him during the night. Her fingers ruffle his fur as she wakes, registering first the cold tightness of his skin and then the subtle scent of death in the air.
She opens her eyes slowly, afraid of what she will see. She shouldn’t have been. He no longer looks like he’s sleeping but he’s still beautiful. Still her River.
Letting go of him, Ana sits up, glancing at the now empty space on the bed beside her.
She looks at the doorway.
The house beyond is still and quiet, the light she always leaves on in the hall turned off sometime during the night.
*
A towel lies discarded on the bathroom tiles.
A sudden dribble of water escapes the shower and Ana moves into the room to tighten the tap before continuing on to the kitchen.
There’s an empty plate and mug on the table. The remnants of vegemite toast and black tea.
She heads for the bench and feels the kettle. It’s cold.
Her hand settles on the monitor, listening for a moment to the dead air of the basement. Turning it off she heads out to
the garage.
As she expected her car is gone. The garage doors now closed.
Her eyes find the entrance to the basement.
The stairs disappearing down into darkness.
She doesn’t need to go any further.
*
The first thing Ana sees when she returns to her bedroom is the scarf, still on the floor where he dropped it. She’s surprised he didn’t take it with him. It is evidence after all. She hears Lynch’s voice in her head. Maybe a part of him wants to be caught.
She sees Luke again in her mind, hunched there against the wall.
In the light of day it’s tempting to question how much of what he said was real. How much even he believed. In his telling, Rebecca’s death could be seen as a tragic accident, the result of a dangerous game taken too far. It doesn’t exonerate him. He might have wanted to forget but he knew what he was doing. He admitted it. He knew he was killing her.
The fact that he left in the dark means he’s probably still running from it but wherever he runs the horror of what he’s done will find him.
Unless he was the psycho.
‘Shut up, just shut the fuck up!’
She says it out loud even though the voice is in her head.
Ana only has her instincts to guide her but she chooses to believe that the connection between her and Luke, as twisted as it was, was real in the end.
She chooses to believe him.
Ana picks up the scarf and folds it carefully, placing it on her bedside table.
Then she sits down on the edge of the bed, her gaze returning to River.
He’s waited for her long enough.
*
Ana digs a grave under the big tree at the very back of the garden. River’s body lies by her side, shrouded in his blanket. His ball resting on the ground next to him.
The soil is soft from all the rain but it’s still hard going. She needs to make it deep enough so no other animal will be tempted to bring him back up.
She remembers her dream. Luke’s hand sprouting like a flower out of the earth.
She’s chosen the same place for River.
When the hole is deep enough Ana stops and stands in the dirt, leaning heavily on the handle of the shovel.
What are we going to do now, Rabbit?
She feels her there now, her mother. In an instant she’s twelve again, reeling from the pain of having her so violently ripped from her life. Ana thought she’d left her a long time ago but she hadn’t.
Ana puts the shovel aside and crouches down to pick River up. She holds him close as she steps down into the hole and settles him into his grave. She kneels there in the dirt, her face resting against him. Then she picks up his ball and lays it beside him. Ana sits there quietly for a moment longer before she once again reaches for the shovel. She doesn’t get any further before she hears something behind her.
Her first thought is that it’s Luke. That he’s come back. She feels her fingers tighten on the handle of the shovel as she forces herself to look behind.
There’s no one there – it’s just the old tree tapping on the roof of her house – reminding her that Ray will be coming soon.
She needs to work out what she’s going to tell him.
She thought she might tell him a story of the frightened girl who was forced to harbour a killer. Like all good lies it would be based in truth and she knows how convincing she can be but that would mean she would still be hiding.
She wants to own it now. Who she is. Who she’s always been.
She hears a car pulling up out the front.
The pills he told her to get rid of are still there in the kitchen drawer. She’ll start with them. That’s the first step. After that she’ll take another step. And then another.
She hears his car door close and turns back to River.
It’s time to let him go now.
Time to let them all go.
She thought she’d only feel pain and there is that but there’s also an unexpected feeling of relief.
Her life has ended. Her life has begun.
Ana takes a deep breath of the clean forest air, the pungent smell of dirt.
The voices in her head, silent now.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This story began as a screenplay and I am grateful to the many people and organisations who contributed both financially and creatively to its development but especially to script editor Rob Festinger and to my brilliant producer Sam Jennings, without whose unwavering faith and fine story instincts this novel wouldn’t exist.
Writing the novel has been the most creatively rich experience I’ve had and I owe special thanks for that to Alex Alexander and Haylee Nash, for taking a chance on a first time novelist.
Over the past three years I have had the privilege of working with an amazing team of individuals at Pan Macmillan, who have supported, challenged and empowered me in telling this story – Mathilda Imlah, Rebecca Hamilton, Georgia Douglas, Jo Jarrah, Clare Keighery – I am a better writer, and the novel so much stronger, for your guidance and creative inputs.
With gratitude to my family for lighting the spark of imagination and to my creative family for helping me keep it alive – Anika Mostaert, David Newman, Giula Sandler, Jen Kent, Karena Slaninka, Sarah Burns, Sally Regan, and Stephen Boyle, I love you all, and am especially besotted with Elin-Maria Evangelista and Mish Moore for their generous feedback over many drafts of the manuscript. You both brought me back from the edge and pushed me over it when I needed it.
With thanks to Peter Howard – the look on your face when you glimpsed the basement in my mind was the inspiration I needed to start writing again – and to the people of Hobart who I hope will excuse the creative liberties I have taken in giving place to Lonely Girl.
Finally, to Winnie, whose beautiful soul was the purest inspiration of all.
About Lynne Vincent McCarthy
Lynne Vincent McCarthy is a screenwriter and script editor and has worked as a development executive at Screen Australia, Screen NSW and Screen Tasmania. Lonely Girl is her first novel. She lives in Sydney with her dog Nellie.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously without any intention to describe actual conduct.
First published 2018 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Lynne Vincent McCarthy 2018
The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
EPUB format: 9781760781408
Cover design: kid-ethic.com
Cover images: Shutterstock
The author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders for material used in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked should contact the publisher.
Extract on pvii taken from Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, published by Faber and Faber Ltd. Used by permission.
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