No Safe Place

by Jenny Spence

  Yours in eternity

  Carlos

  The bastard! He’s got me crying, right there in Dennis Crowne’s office. Of course, Dennis Crowne’s seen it all, and he just sits quietly waiting for me to compose myself, then he starts pushing bits of paper across the desk, murmuring:

  “Now, if you’d just sign here . . . and here . . . and here . . .”

  Two weeks pass before I venture to West Melbourne to size up Carlos’s place before I put it on the market. I take Miranda with me. Big mistake.

  “Oh, Mum!” she says, practically swooning. “I’ve seen this place in a dream. If I could live somewhere like this . . .”

  “You’d have to pay me some rent,” I say sternly after she’s finished.

  “Anything! Anything!”

  I won’t tell her until she gets herself a job, but the rent will just be the council rates and other fixed expenses. For now I tell her she has to understand it’s only for a couple of years, until she gets on her feet. And of course she’s in complete agreement.

  I give all the electronic gear away to Steve, Luke and Ravi, telling them they can do what they like with it.

  “Are you sure?” says Luke. “Some of this gear’s worth a lot of money, Elly.”

  “You lot saved my life,” I say. “What’s that worth? Oh, and you’d better give some of it to Nick, too.”

  I thought that was the bulk of it, but bank accounts keep turning up with enough money in them to pay off my mortgage. Then I discover Carlos had a healthy superannuation account, with me as beneficiary. I don’t know where it’s going to end. Derek has some codes in the safe that he says relate to offshore accounts. Just take them to Switzerland, he advises me, and let them sort it out.

  I finally finish Wolf Hall. Well, they get to Wolf Hall and I get to the end of the book. But the story doesn’t end there after all. After a sneak preview on the Internet I can see I’ll have to read Bring up the Bodies, and there’s another one after that. It doesn’t look like things go well for Thomas Cromwell. If he’d known what was in store for him, I wonder if he would have had the courage to continue. Well, he probably had some idea. The best I can do is imitate his forbearance, and be thankful for what I’ve got.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Louise Thurtell, for making the phone call every new writer wants to receive, and for her insightful editing; and to Ann Lennox, for completing the job so meticulously. Thanks to my agent Gaby Naher and my dear friends Tina Smith and Tamara Winikoff who all give me invaluable feedback. Above all, thanks to my soulmate Bruce, our wonderful children Tom and Jessie, and our beautiful and inspiring granddaughters Sigrid and Ariana.