Second Sight

by Aoife Clifford

  Tess and Gavin expected me to leave Kinsale once it was done but I’m not ready. I want to choose when I go this time. My lungs feel like an ashtray but the bandages come off and I am getting stronger, walking further along the beach every day. Breathing in air can still feel like swallowing stones, but occasionally I try to run a few steps, to punish myself physically so there’s a normal explanation for my wheezing.

  I don’t talk as much.

  One cold grey morning, Amy, with Sophie strapped to her, marsupial-like, walks along Main Beach with me.

  ‘Are you still getting flashbacks?’ she asks.

  ‘Less often.’

  ‘What’s it been? Five weeks?’

  ‘About that.’

  ‘If they keep coming, tell me,’ she says. ‘We can help you.’

  ‘Are you making sure that I’m not falling apart?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s what doctors do. Friends, too.’

  ‘I thought I saw Dad the other day. Sitting next to me when I was driving the Mustang. Is that normal?’

  ‘Nothing much about grief is normal but it is common. Did he say anything?’

  ‘That I need to hurry up and order the window seals.’

  Amy smiles as she reaches into the pocket of her jeans and checks her phone. A quick glance and then she puts it away. ‘I’ve seen Grace,’ she says. ‘Never saw her all those years I thought she was alive, but now we know she’s dead, I see her.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Sometimes in the distance, like she’s walking up ahead and any moment now she’ll turn back to wait for me.’

  ‘Is she happy?’ I ask. ‘Does she look OK?’

  Amy takes a while before answering. ‘She’s home. I think that’s the best we can hope for.’

  It is.

  Amy checks her phone a couple more times.

  ‘Everything good?’ I ask, when she pulls it out yet again.

  ‘This one will wake up soon and want feeding,’ she says. ‘You going to stay here for a bit?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I watch her trudge up the beach, and then I walk down to the wet sand to listen to the thrum of the ocean. I don’t yell at the sea anymore, my throat is too sore, but I’ve cried a few times. Not today, though. At the water’s edge I breathe in the salt, exhale the smoke and remember Dad and Grace. I watch the deep swell moving parallel to the beach, the way the waves break a translucent green and the yellow-tinged froth and bubbles close to shore. Seagulls hang-glide on air currents above the water, unperturbed by the world below. I envy them. Amy keeps telling me to take one day at a time so I only think ahead as far as this afternoon. I’ll visit Mary and see if she wants to go for a drive with me.

  Clambering up the wooden stairs to the car park, brushing my feet clean, I see a man bent over, peering into the Mustang.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I ask his back.

  ‘I think I left something of mine behind, a while ago.’ He straightens up and points to the green hat sitting on the front seat.

  It is Donal.

  His grin falters. ‘Jesus, Eliza. What did they do to you?’ He puts out his arms but then stops. ‘Can I?’ he asks, and I wrap my arms around him instead. It hurts but it’s good pain. He lifts a hand and tenderly cups my face.

  ‘How did you know?’ I ask.

  ‘Tony,’ he says. ‘He told me.’

  ‘Everything?’

  Donal nods. ‘Paul, Janey, the whole mad lot. And the bits he didn’t know, Amy and your sister filled me in.’

  ‘Tess?’ I say.

  He laughs. ‘You know she isn’t as bad as you made out,’ he says, and then he becomes serious. ‘I had to see you.’

  I reach out and slip my scarred hand into his.

  His fingers clasp mine.

  Here it begins.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book about a policeman’s daughter started from a conversation with Melissa Owen, who is one. Liz McQueen was also incredibly helpful as was Kelly Wan and Retired Victorian Police Assistant Commissioner Sandra Nicholson, who spoke to me about their own service. Melissa Lowe and John Gallagher patiently answered continuous medical questions and changed the course of the novel for the better. Thanks to Leanne Hunter-Knight for fortuitously buying an old Mustang and Colleen Miller who thought if I was going to mention wine, it should be her Merlot (delicious!). Sophie Osborn and Paul Wenk advised on legal matters. My brother-in-law, Jonathan McAleese, gave me a firefighter’s view of fires big and small and my mother-in-law, Glenys Harris, cast her eagle eye over every draft. My discussion with Dr Soren Blau was so fascinating that I had to include a forensic anthropologist as a character. All mistakes and twisted truths, deliberate or otherwise, are down to me.

  I owe much to my writing pals. Ruth Cooper for being a constant virtual companion during the process, Carolyn Tetaz who I still pretend lives around the corner, Anna George for all our book and writing discussions and Tom Bromley for your expertise.

  Thanks to my agent Clare Forster and the team at Curtis Brown and also Catherine Drayton at Inkwell Management. To all at Simon & Schuster Australia, especially my editor Roberta Ivers who made this a better book, Dan Ruffino, Fiona Henderson, Vanessa Lanaway and all in sales and marketing, for their expertise, hard work and constant support. Not forgetting Anna O’Grady who does all this plus gives the best book recommendations.

  And thanks lastly to Kerry Ruiz for the support and wise words and to Richard, Aidan, Genevieve and Evangeline with all my love (again and always).

  If you enjoyed Second Sight, you’ll love All These Perfect Strangers also by Aoife Clifford. Read on for a sneak peek.

  ‘This is about three deaths. Actually more, if you go back far enough. I say deaths but perhaps all of them were murders. It’s a grey area. Murder, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So let’s just call them deaths and say I was involved. This story could be told a hundred different ways.’

  Prologue

  I am sitting in the waiting room looking at the painting on the wall. It has different-sized circles splattered all over it, every single one of them red. The first time I saw it I was worried it was one of those inkblots where you have to say whatever comes into your head. Stupid, I know, but I was only fifteen. All I could see was blood, which I knew was not a good answer. I decided if anyone asked me, they would be balloons because no one could make a big deal out of that.

  The Rorschach test is what those inkblots are called. I looked that up at the town library straight after my first appointment. The only thing that painting actually reveals is how untalented Frank’s wife, Ivy, is. She did it at an adult education class. Frank had an affair with her when his first wife had cancer. The whole town knows that, and they haven’t forgotten. Neither has Ivy. That’s why she’s the receptionist and glares at all his female patients, including me.

  Today, Ivy is wearing lipstick the exact same colour as the circles, but her mouth is always a thin straight line. She is making me sit in reception for ages, before letting Frank know I am here because I called her ‘Ivy’ instead of ‘Mrs Hennessy’. I wanted to show her that I’m different this time around and I guess she wants to show me that she isn’t.

  While I’m waiting, I pull out the criminal law textbook from my bag. I’m reading about police cautions today but I’m not really in the mood to take it in. On afternoons this room is chock-full of school kids and parents from all over the district. Mostly anorexic girls. Occasionally you get a gay boy with his mother hoping that it’s just a phase.

  It is much quieter this morning. Ivy is sorting the mail and there is a farmer with a crumpled brown-paper face, staring into the middle distance. A shotgun accident waiting to happen. His pear-shaped wife, with a tight twisted mouth, almost sits on top of him, worried he might make a bolt for the door. She recognises me and pokes her husband in the ribs, but Frank appears, and I slip the textbook back into my bag without him noticing. That’s the sort of thing he’d ask questions about.

&nb
sp; Ivy announces, ‘Doctor will see you now,’ as if Frank is a train about to leave the station. Standing by the reception desk, Frank brightens, the way you do when you see a friend, and a smile leaks out of me in return. Frank is thin and wiry. His mouth stretches all over his face, so even a small smile from him is a broad grin. He looks like a farmer, but that’s probably because everybody looks like a farmer around here.

  ‘Hi, Frank,’ I say to wind up Ivy, who insists upon ‘Doctor’. She opens the next envelope as though she is gutting a fish.

  ‘Penelope,’ Frank says in return. He knows what I am up to.

  His office has a new plant, but the same old chair. He doesn’t have the fancy ones that you lie down on. It was a deliberate choice, he told me when I was fifteen, but now I think they probably cost too much.

  ‘So, Pen, how are things?’ he asks, as he closes the door behind me. Frank never asks ‘how are you?’ because he says people automatically say ‘fine’, which must be a lie, because you wouldn’t be seeing a psychiatrist if everything is fine.

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  Next to the box of tissues for patients who cry is my file, fatter than I remember it. Frank has the patient file in his office for appointments but usually it’s locked away in a cabinet in the kitchen. No one can access it but him, he claims. I don’t believe that for one second. I bet Ivy spends every lunchtime reading all about Frank’s patients.

  Frank opens my file and looks at the first page.

  ‘October 1987, not so long ago,’ he says.

  He’s wrong, of course. October 1987 is a lifetime away. Everything has changed since then. For starters, I don’t need treatment, not like when I first arrived here. Today’s session is about money, a tactic. My lawyer, Bob Cochrane, has arranged it. He’s talking about suing everyone, the college, the university and anyone else he can think of. I’ve been a victim of a terrible crime. All Frank needs to do is write a report demonstrating my pain and suffering and then I’m out of here.

  ‘When did I last see you, Pen?’ asks Frank, shuffling through the pages. ‘July 1988, just on two years ago. You stopped treatment quite suddenly, if I remember correctly.’

  I don’t see why we are going over ancient history. None of this is relevant to what we are supposed to be discussing now, so I tell him that actually the last time we saw each other was just before Christmas, when he wrote a reference for my bursary application for college.

  He nods his head slowly, like he’s taking my point, and then starts with the standard questions and I play along. Am I living back at home? Yes. How am I sleeping? All right. He pauses before asking if I’m taking any medication.

  ‘No painkillers?’ he says, and he gestures towards my face. I have taken the bandage off so he can see the cut. I thought it might be helpful for the report. When I tell him no, he nods his head.

  He puts down the notepad, and resettles himself in his chair, like we are in a game show and the next round of questions will be more difficult.

  ‘We are going to have to discuss those murders at university and your involvement.’

  I am surprised by his bluntness. Other than the police, hardly anyone else has tried to talk about it with me, as if it would be bad manners to pry. But that is what psychiatrists do best, find pressure points.

  He waits for me to speak, but I can’t quite form the words for this conversation, so I look out of the window to avoid his gaze. There is a giftware shop across the lane that Tracey used to steal from. She said it was easy because the owner hated working and never paid attention to the customers. But the owner’s mother did and that was the start of the trouble.

  After a couple of minutes, Frank says, ‘Pen, by the end of this session, I have to decide if I am the right person to make the assessment your lawyer is asking for.’

  I turn away from the window. Frank is the only psychiatrist in my town. Frank is the only psychiatrist in the district.

  ‘I have an arrangement with a colleague who travels to this clinic once a month to see . . . particular patients. It may be more appropriate for you to see her.’

  I shake my head violently. I don’t want anyone else to read my file, to ask me questions, to make judgments.

  He leans back on his chair, pressing his fingers together, which he always does when things are serious.

  ‘Then we are going to have to go through what’s happened. I understand parts may be difficult to talk about so I am proposing that you write it down.’

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘I want you to put in writing what happened at university, the events, your thoughts and feelings, so we can discuss it.’

  ‘But how does that have anything to do with your report?’ I try to keep my voice light and conversational, like this is an interesting development, rather than something really annoying.

  ‘Bob has asked me to evaluate if I think a return to treatment is warranted. Between that and the report, it’s going to take at least a couple of sessions before I’m prepared to make that assessment. It will require your commitment to cooperate. No disappearing acts or long silences this time.’

  The only appropriate answer to this is a long silence as I try to work out my strategy. Frank eventually interrupts. ‘And don’t worry, I’m sure the university will cover the cost.’

  That isn’t what I am worried about. I remember what I was reading in my textbook when I was waiting.

  ‘You are not obliged to say or do anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say or do may be used in evidence. Do you understand?’

  The police say it whenever they arrest someone. Three years ago, they said it to me. But what is more interesting was the footnote at the bottom of the page. It cites a study that found, despite the warning, almost no one stays silent. People feel compelled to talk, to excuse, to explain or confess.

  I know that is right because I talked last time. I still don’t know if I talked too much or not enough.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be anything special,’ says Frank. ‘It’s a technique to assist our discussions. A simple exercise book will do. Bring it along with you and read out what you have written. I don’t even need to look at it. It will just be the starting point for each session.’

  I wonder if this could be a way I can tell my story and be silent as well. Could I write down ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’? That phrase isn’t in my criminal law book. I expect it’s in the evidence textbook, which you don’t need until your final year. Telling the whole truth means more than just an absence of lies. It means revealing all the secrets you know. I didn’t tell the whole truth when I was sixteen and went to court. I haven’t told the whole truth about what happened at uni. Perhaps I could tell it this once and then never again. Write it down but only read out the parts I want Frank to hear.

  It’s risky.

  He must sense my weakening because he makes it a condition of continuing to see me.

  ‘We will explore what you have written and then you can take the book home with you.’

  In other words, Ivy won’t get her hands on it.

  So I give in.

  • • •

  When I get home, Mum is still at work, so I hunt around for some paper to at least make a token effort because I need that report from him. I’ll rewind the clock to six months ago when I left for university and start from there to keep him happy.

  Eventually, I find a diary that belongs to Mum. It has a hard blue cover, a day to a page and holidays I’ve never heard of. Her work gave it to her as a Christmas present last year. She says they’re cheapskates and could at least have bought a ham or some chocolates.

  I’m still not sure how I feel about this but I take it to my bedroom and lock the door. Propped up against my bed, I start writing on the page that has 1 January 1990 at the top of it, even though today is Tuesday, the 17th of July and the first event I am going to write about happened at the end of February. Still, New Year’s Day feels right.

  After some
false starts, words crossed out, sentences left abandoned, I begin.

  ‘This is about three deaths . . .’

  READING GROUP QUESTIONS

  1. Eliza absorbed a lot from her father about policing. In what ways does that help her solve Grace’s disappearance and deal with challenges along the way? Does her amateur sleuthing ever cause trouble? Eliza also uses other expertise and training that’s different from her father’s – what kind of expertise, and how does it help her?

  2. How did Eliza’s perceptions of Tess – for instance, that she is the beautiful sister and her father’s favourite – influence how she sees herself? How does our perception of Tess change when she reveals the secrets she has been hiding for years? Do you think some of Eliza’s ideas about herself will now change? And what do you think their relationship will be like now the family’s secrets are out in the open?

  3. Early in the book, we learn that the Carmody family is not the sort that says ‘I love you’, but shortly before his death Eliza says those words to her father and forgives him. Is it important for Eliza to say the words regardless of whether he can hear and understand her? Does it matter that he cannot say ‘I love you’ back? Why?

  4. How does your perception of Eliza’s role in Grace’s disappearance change as you progressively see different characters’ perspectives of the night and start to get the bigger picture? Unlike this novel, where we see events from multiple viewpoints, in life we have only our own perceptions to go on – do you think we can ever be sure we know the full truth?

  5. Several of the characters in the novel are weighed down by guilt for things they did in the past, or things they think they did. How much of a role might guilt play in Eliza’s zeal to solve Grace’s disappearance? How has mistaken guilt for Grace’s death affected Tess’s relationship with Eliza?