by Kim Lock
About Like I Can Love
On a hot January afternoon, Fairlie Winter receives a phone call. Her best friend has just taken her own life.
Jenna Rudolph, 26 years old, has left behind a devoted husband, an adorable young son and a stunning vineyard. But Fairlie knows she should have seen this coming.
Yet Fairlie doesn’t know what Jenna’s husband Ark is hiding, nor does she know what Jenna’s mother Evelyn did to drive mother and daughter apart all those years ago.
Until Fairlie opens her mail and finds a letter. In Jenna’s handwriting. Along with a key.
Driven to search for answers, Fairlie uncovers a horrifying past, a desperate mother, and a devastating secret kept by those she loves the most.
Heartbreaking and terrifying, Like I Can Love explores love in all its forms – from the most fragile to the most dangerous – and the unthinkable things we do in its name.
Contents
Cover
About Like I Can Love
Dedication
Chapter One: Now
Chapter Two: Then
Chapter Three: Now
Chapter Four: Then
Chapter Five: Now
Chapter Six: Then
Chapter Seven: Now
Chapter Eight: Then
Chapter Nine: Now
Chapter Ten: Then
Chapter Eleven: Now
Chapter Twelve: Then
Chapter Thirteen: Now
Chapter Fourteen: Then
Chapter Fifteen: Now
Chapter Sixteen: Then
Chapter Seventeen: Now
Chapter Eighteen: Then
Chapter Nineteen: Now
Chapter Twenty: Then
Chapter Twenty-one: Now
Chapter Twenty-two: Then
Chapter Twenty-three: Now
Chapter Twenty-four: Seven Months Later
Acknowledgements
About Kim Lock
Copyright page
For Stace
1
NOW
From inside the handbag trapped between her hip and the front door, Fairlie Winter’s phone begins to ring.
She curses as she knees at the door, swollen in the heat and stuck to the jamb. For the third day in a row, she has forgotten to buy cat food. Fumbling her keys around an armload of groceries, she hopes Yodel won’t mind having Corn Flakes for dinner again.
Her breath labours as she props the screen door open, the phone in her handbag maintaining its clamour against her side. The fabric straps of the grocery bags cut into her fingers; the flyscreen bounces on her arse. Wincing, she kicks at the inner door but the weight of the bags tugs her off-centre and the keys slip from her fingers and jangle on the doorstep. A box of cinnamon donuts that was supposed to be her dinner escapes a bag and tumbles onto the ground, spitting out a puff of sugar. A single fat donut lolls out onto the concrete. Exhausted, the phone goes silent.
‘Shit,’ Fairlie whines.
Although it is after six in the evening, dull heat radiates from the front wall, the taupe bricks baked by a January sun. As she stoops to retrieve the keys, Fairlie catches a heady whiff of sweat from under her arms. There’s a rip in the hem of her navy crepe work pants. The sight of it makes her sigh; her mother will surely berate her for her untidiness, tsk-tsking as she nimbly sews up the hole with cotton thread and affectionate rebuke.
‘Twenty-six years old and still ripping clothes like a toddler,’ Fairlie mimics.
Across the road, naked and scrawny sheep bleat plaintively, small hooves scuffing the dusty bare earth. A dog barks twice, sounding bored.
‘Well Yodel,’ she says to the plump ginger cat oozing from the couch, roused by her untidy struggle through the doorway, ‘it looks like we’re both having Corn Flakes for dinner.’ A limp brown curl falls across her eyes and she backhands it away. ‘Why doesn’t Mrs Soblieski leave a casserole on my doorstep when we actually need one?’ Leaving the donuts she scrambles inside, ducking away from the screen door as it slams shut, the sound reverberating through the pokey front courtyard of the six-unit complex.
The phone begins to ring again.
‘Where’s the bloody fire?’ she mutters. Brushing aside a rolled-up Penola Pennant to dump her grocery bags on the kitchen counter, Fairlie scrabbles through her handbag.
The number displayed on the caller ID causes her a flicker of hesitation. Accepting the call she blurts, ‘Hunks of Spunk, you’ve reached Dominic.’
Apart from a strange grating noise, there is silence.
‘Hello?’ Fairlie says. ‘Jen? It’s me. I was kidding.’ As she begins banging cupboard doors she feels a bit like Old Mother Hubbard, searching for something to feed the cat winding around her ankles. Eventually Fairlie says, ‘You drop the phone or something?’
A throat clears down the line. ‘It’s me, Ark.’
Surprise halts her by the open pantry door. To combat the brief awkward silence she forces a casual cheer into her tone. ‘Oh, hi.’ Her voice sounds squeaky. ‘Long time.’ She can’t help it.
‘It’s Jenna,’ Ark says. ‘She’s –’ His voice tears off.
‘What?’ Fairlie clutches an open box of breakfast cereal. ‘What about her?’
Flakes of rolled corn scatter across the linoleum as the box falls from her hand when Ark says, ‘She’s dead.’
*
Fairlie’s mouth feels like sand. It’s over a year since she’s been here but from the outside little has changed.
Late afternoon light fades across the front of the long, limestone home with its maroon corrugated iron roof; shadows from two ancient red gums fall across the cluster of sheds behind the house. Orange sunlight slinks through row after row of grapevines bordering the house and driveway, dripping with lucrative clusters of purple-black fruit, limbs like gnarled and groping old fingers searching for a way out. A roller-doored shed sits alongside the house, and Fairlie can see the lawn has long ago reclaimed the wheel ruts that once marked a permanent car park by the shed wall. Now, a blue-netted trampoline stands there instead, a Tonka truck stalled by the stairs.
A stranger’s car is parked at the end of the sweeping crushed gravel drive. A late model Holden Commodore, its paint white and nondescript, sits with two wheels on the dry clipped grass under a wattle tree.
Fairlie feels herself moving out of the car. She hears her footsteps echo across the timber decking of the vast, dim verandah as she catches a sickly breath of the young jasmine that winds up the verandah poles; she and Jenna had planted it in an old wine barrel an earlier spring, using a two-dollar bag of chook poo they’d hauled into Jenna’s hatchback from the side of the road. The saccharine scent of it makes her head spin. It feels so long ago.
The front door is ajar, bordered by a shaft of weak light from inside. Fairlie knocks softly then pushes the door open and steps into the hall, purposefully stepping on the board that squeaks to announce her entry.
‘Ark?’
Light spills from the lounge room with the low rumble of male voices. She finds Ark with his back to her, staring out the window into the darkening evening. Another man is seated on the couch, hands clasped loosely between his knees. The flow of this other man’s words halt mid-sentence as Fairlie steps into the room. The stranger’s head swivels to her.
‘Ark,’ Fairlie says.
Muscles stiffen across the slab of Ark’s back. Arms like tree branches are clamped tightly behind his body, as though handcuffed, one hand clenched white around the opposite wrist. Coiled as tensely as he is, Ark’s presence still balloons in the room. He doesn’t turn or off
er her acknowledgement.
‘You must be Fairlie.’ The other man stands. When he comes to her, he limps with an old wound – the favour of a limb with a calcified joint, not in pain. Generous streaks of silver brush the dark curls at his temples. Above a strong nose his eyes are widely set, kind, the surrounding skin webbed with lines. He regards her intently.
‘I’m Detective Dallas Morgan,’ he tells her. ‘I’m from the Mount Gambier Criminal Investigation Branch.’ He takes her hand in his palms; his skin is even darker than hers.
Criminal investigation? Fairlie snatches her hand away.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Wait. What?’ Fairlie frowns.
Finally Ark turns to her. Lips clamped thinly, a betrayal of emotion in the swollen red rims of his eyes and the damp cling of hair at his neck. Obscenely, his t-shirt is inside-out and the exposed seams hit her with a pang of embarrassed sympathy, like a glimpsed nipple. It’s wrong. Everything is wrong.
As they stand in an awkward triangle, paused somewhere between approach and escape, the detective speaks again but it sounds distant.
Jenna can’t be dead, Fairlie decides as she steps towards Ark. She can’t be dead. She resolves it isn’t true as she searches his expression and finds it numb with pain.
Jenna can’t be. Dead.
Her rib cage feels too small for her beating heart. Ark’s shoulder hitches. A stunned silence swells between them and in that moment, in that onion skin shaving of time, Fairlie comes to the sickening realisation that she isn’t dreaming.
‘No,’ she whispers. ‘Oh no.’
There is quiet authority in the detective’s voice and something else she can’t quite place. Regret? Resignation? He speaks slowly and evenly as he explains that he has finished with his investigation of the scene, that Fairlie will need to make a statement before he can prepare a full brief for the state coroner.
A statement? Coroner? Fairlie shakes her head. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Jenna killed herself,’ Ark says plainly, like pointing out the time.
‘But she couldn’t have,’ Fairlie argues. ‘I sent her a message today. Before work. She actually wrote back. We talked about casserole. My neighbour, Mrs Soblieski . . .’ She tosses an apologetic glance at the detective, excusing the stranger who won’t understand the inside joke. ‘She thinks I’m useless. Because I’m single and twenty-six and I live alone.’ Her voice breaks on that last word. ‘It . . . it must be a mistake.’ Twenty-six. We’re only twenty-six.
‘I’m sorry,’ Detective Morgan says with sympathy. ‘You were very close with Jenna.’
‘Yes.’ Glancing down at her hands she adds, ‘We were. I mean, lately . . . But I’ve known her forever.’ Ark clenches his stubble-lined jaw. ‘She’s my best friend, that never changed.’ Looking from one man to the other, Fairlie implores, ‘What happened?’
Ark picks a glass from the coffee table, a slosh of brown liquid in the base. ‘In the bath. She . . . she cut her wrists.’ He swallows the drink in one gulp.
If she were to take a dozen steps down the hallway and turn left before entering the open-plan kitchen, she would walk into the bathroom.
Fairlie moves down the hall: tentative, unconscious steps. What would she see if she went into the bathroom now? Where she’d once squatted on the floor, painting Jenna’s toenails bright purple when her belly had grown too large to be able to bend and do it herself. Back when they still saw each other.
The bathroom looms closer. Does Jenna’s blood still line the white insides of the tub, like a bone sucked of its marrow?
Where is Jenna? Where is she now? An image of the cold steel of the morgue at work flashes before her.
A frigid elastic squeezing her snaps tight, jerking breath from her lungs. Her muscles slacken and her bones liquefy as the floor begins to rise and rush towards her face. But before it can hit her, everything goes strangely, silently, black.
*
‘Ms Winter?’
The voice comes to her from far away, like a dream. On the creaking deck of a ship she lies, gulls reeling on currents above. It looks so calm up there, the graceful sea-birds stretch-winged against fluffy clouds. The voice comes to her again, a man’s voice, and her body begins to rock, the warm slats beneath her sway and roll.
‘Ms Winter? Can you hear me?’
Whose voice is that?
‘Fairlie, come on, get up.’
Why is Ark Rudolph on the boat?
A hand closes over her elbow and, as she struggles to sit upright, reality comes sweeping back. Ark’s breath is a wash of just-mouthed alcohol. Jenna is dead. A thin moan escapes her lips.
‘Here, let me help you.’
The detective takes her other arm and together the older man and Ark haul Fairlie to her feet. Ark grunts and hisses, carrying on like a weightlifter, but the detective is polite and silent in his labour. Upright, saliva floods her mouth, then the contents of her stomach splat onto the hall runner. Ark swears, jumping backwards.
‘I’m sorry,’ Fairlie says weakly.
‘Don’t worry about it.’ The detective’s tone is practised reassurance. Taking her arm, he drapes it over his shoulders and steers her into the living room. ‘Here, sit down,’ he says, lowering her to the couch. ‘Put your head between your knees and take some slow, deep breaths. I’ll be right back.’
Fairlie complies. With her arse sinking deep into the leather and her body folded forwards, her heart thuds against her legs and the beat of it pulses through her whole body, rocking her head hanging pendulum-like between her knees. The detective places a towel next to her and presses a glass of water into her hands. A bucket surreptitiously nudges against her ankle.
Lifting her head, she sees Ark staring out the window again, motionless as a tree stump. His hands are clasped behind his body, the hands that she imagines had lifted Jenna’s wet, bloodied and lifeless body from the water.
Jenna is dead. Jenna has killed herself.
The words don’t make sense in Fairlie’s head. Nausea lingers and a morphine-like numbness washes through.
Jenna has killed herself. Slit her wrists open in the bath.
The body has been removed. Carted away in an ambulance, its lights extinguished and sirens muted, unhurried – no point in rushing, no point cutting corners and stopping traffic when life’s already spent, drained away down the plughole and dissolved like greasy soap foam.
‘What now?’ Fairlie hears herself croak. Does it matter? It’s too late.
‘Well,’ the detective begins, seated on the edge of an armchair adjacent to the couch, ‘as I said, I’ll need you to come to the station so you can make a statement about Mrs Rudolph –’
‘Jenna,’ Fairlie corrects automatically.
‘Jenna.’ Dallas Morgan leans forwards in his chair and fixes her with a steady look of concern, elbows on his knees, blue shirtsleeves over dark skin. ‘It won’t take long, I just need to ask you a few questions.’
Cold fear threads down her limbs. ‘What kinds of questions?’
‘Very simple questions, I promise,’ he answers. ‘Just to get to know a little more about Jenna, and her mental state.’ He adds this last sentence with great care.
Fairlie pushes her fingertips into her eyelids until painful stars explode.
She should have seen this coming.
Ark, like that ambulance, is voiceless – pathetic and resigned. Fairlie can’t look at him. Her gaze moves away, taking in the peach-coloured walls Jenna wanted to repaint a butter yellow, the neatly stocked bookshelf, the arrangement of dried banksias filling the unused open fireplace. To Fairlie’s right, an upright piano waits against the wall, timber panels gleaming, hinged lid closed over keys like a row of pearly teeth. Once, she’d watched Jenna play Chopsticks on it. After three ciders, the tune had been less than flawless.
; Hastily, Fairlie looks away. Under the bay window that Ark stares through, a row of wicker baskets holds Henry’s toys. Some have escaped, coloured blocks and an overturned plastic truck scattered on the carpet. Fairlie’s spine snaps straight. ‘Where’s Henry?’ Had he followed his mother to the bathroom, where she’d locked the door on him? Had he cried for her, waiting outside the door?
‘He’s asleep, now,’ the detective answers.
‘But where was he when –’
Ark turns on his heel. ‘It was hours ago, Fairlie. I was working. Henry was fine when I got home, playing with some blocks or some shit while she . . .’ He clenches his teeth and stares back out the window. ‘I know as much about this as you do.’
Hours ago. Leaping from the couch, Fairlie stumbles across the room and along the hall. In the second bedroom, she holds her breath as she takes in the space where the cot used to be. In its place is a small single bed, low to the floor. Crossing the room in the dim light, Fairlie kneels alongside the bed. Pastel cotton sheets are crumpled around a stuffed giraffe, a colourful clump of Duplo.
He’s grown so much.
Henry sleeps peacefully. Little arms flung out, cherubic cheeks rosy, strawberry curls fanning around his head. He wears lime green pyjamas with blue elephants printed across the fabric. Beneath his pyjamas she can see the padded bulk of the nappy he still wears at night. As she stands, hovering over Henry’s bed, the detective asks her something: he wants to know how Jenna was with her son.
In his sleep, blissfully unaware, the two-year-old grumbles and shifts his head.
‘She loves him,’ Fairlie whispers. Her throat feels as though it might fold in on itself. To convince herself, she repeats it: ‘She loves him.’
Detective Morgan apologises again and Fairlie wonders when she will wake up from this bizarre and nonsensical nightmare. Recently Jenna mentioned that Henry had blossomed through the language explosion young children have, confident yet clumsy blurted sentences that unroll like a verbal carpet for the rest of his life. So Jenna couldn’t be dead, because Henry needed to talk to her.
Sensing their presence, Henry’s fine limbs begin to move restlessly, and he blinks and cries. Subtle at first then growing more insistent. With trembling hands Fairlie reaches down and lifts him into her arms. Quietening, Henry studies her face. A kind of breathless silence falls as Henry stiffens, staring at her. Then he relaxes, even smiles a little.
