by Rebecca Lim
She never looked it, but Mum was strong and wise. And now I have to be all that, too, because I am the last Crowe left behind in this world.
Simon’s taught me how to turn that sound off, that sparkly bling thing. He’s taught me lots of things, in the days and hours since I looked for Death in the basement of the oldest theatre restaurant in Melbourne. When you’re as damaged and spiky and House Aries as the two of us are, it is never exactly boring. More like a game of combat where we make up the rules as we go along and the play never, ever stops.
But he’s refusing to cut a deal regarding the prize money. We’re going to hear any day now, which one of us is officially more alpha than the other. But I’m holding to my side of my one-sided bargain. If I win it, he gets a car. On condition that he’ll take me driving up the coast so that I can see it for myself, see Mount Warning.
They haven’t found a body, and I’m holding on to that.
If there’s magic up there, Crowe magic, I like to think that I’ll feel it and figure out what really happened.
So. I could confine it all to paper, run my divinations, pierce the veil between now and what comes after. But this way, my way; there’s no messenger, no message.
The future’s just wide open, the way I like it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With loving thanks to my husband, Michael, and to our beautiful children, Oscar, Leni and Yve; who every day put up with me and love me exactly the way I am.
With thanks also to my parents, Yean Kai and Susan, and my sisters, Ruth and Eugenia, and new brother-in-law Quino Holland, for distracting the little people with games of Candyland and Connect Four and Uno. Thanks also to Barry and Judy Liu, Ben and Michelle Lee, and Sally and Marcus Price for their unflagging support.
To Michael Heyward, International Man of Mystery and Publisher Extraordinaire, and my editor, the fabulous and enormously dedicated Rebecca Starford, manifold thanks for letting me retreat to my cave and just write without expectations of suitability or marketability—how intensely liberating.
A huge thanks also to rights ninja Anne Beilby, marketing genius Kirsty Wilson, super publicist Stephanie Speight, design sorceress Imogen Stubbs, and to all at Text Publishing who have championed my work and given it wings.
Grateful thanks also to Mark Battye, Suzy Roberts, Sharne Bryan and Caitlin Bryan for reading my manuscript and gently pointing out the many glaring errors, inaccuracies and pacing issues. It would not be the book it is without your help.
Thanks also go to Alicia McLeay, Cassie Pittman, Kara Bobbera, Ainsley Hallman, Ben Doughty, Kirby Spicer, Regan O’Cleary, Daniel Mills, Sarah Beassley and Katie Kletzmayer for feeding and watering me during the writing year and keeping that corner table free.
Also, in memory of Ray Factor, master astrologer. I’m only sorry that this didn’t make it into your hands before you left on your great journey.
And last, but not least, to Alison Arnold—who took a punt on a complete stranger—with thanks and best wishes always.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, horoscopes, readings and events in this book are entirely fictional, and all opinions expressed by the characters are expressed by the characters, whose preferences and attitudes are also entirely their own. Any errors are entirely mine.
The extract from John Donne’s sonnet ‘A Fever’ that appears in the epigraph, is taken from the 1635 compilation (made after his death) of some of his songs and sonnets. The extract from ‘A Valediction forbidding mourning’ that appears on page 92 and the extract from ‘The good-morrow’ that appears on page 270 are both taken from Seven Centuries of Poetry in English, edited by John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1988.
Certain authorial liberties may have been taken with those buildings and places that do actually exist in the real world and, for those, the author apologises and begs your leave.
