‘Whoa,’ he called out.
She startled and looked up at him with narrowed eyes. ‘Oh, shit, sorry.’
Sam smiled. Definitely not a tourist. Thank god she was as Australian as he was, which would make explaining about the jacket a hell of a lot easier.
‘This trolley is a shocker.’ Calla winced. She took a couple of steps backwards and yanked the contraption out of its entanglement. She looked up, tried to focus on the face of the person she’d hit. All she was getting was a blurry haze of tall, dark hair and maybe navy blue where his jacket might be. Her glasses had of course been safely tucked inside the pocket of her denim jacket while she was hurling over the side of the ferry and now both precious items, as well as most of her dignity, were lost.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ the man said. ‘No injuries to report from this end.’ His voice was deep and kind of rough round the edges. Something pinged in her head.
‘Good to know.’ Calla was curious now and took a few steps towards him to try and get his face into focus, narrowing her eyes and leaning in close. His features became clearer about two inches from his face — at exactly the same time she felt the heat rise in her cheeks.
Damn it. She couldn’t be entirely certain, but she was pretty sure it was the guy from the boat. The tall, rugged, rude one with the short, dark hair and the eyes to match. The one who’d gripped her shoulders and shot her a look of disgust before spinning her around and pushing her towards the cabin door to avoid being puked on. Calla felt the flush deepen and explode on her cheeks. Seasickness had been bad enough without having a stranger as a witness. Thank god she’d changed out of her vomit-splattered clothes in the car before she came into the shop.
‘You were on the boat just now,’ he said.
‘Yeah, that was me,’ Calla said, rolling her eyes in the sure knowledge of what was going to come next.
She could hear the smile in his voice and then he chuckled. ‘Puking Girl.’
Calla’s embarrassment warred with indignation in her throat. ‘Excuse me?’
He held a hand to his heart. ‘Apologies. Puking Woman.’
She pulled and shoved the trolley hard to the right so she could move around him. ‘Oh, that’s hilarious. If you’ll excuse me, I really must get going.’
Before she could get around him, the man had angled his trolley to block her path down the aisle.
‘Wait,’ he said.
She pulled in a deep breath and tried to focus on his face in an attempt at righteous indignation. So what if he’d helped her on the boat? That didn’t give him the right to be an arsehole. ‘Can I get past? I’m actually in a hurry.’
‘Are you feeling any better now you’re on dry land?’ The tease in his voice had gone. She wished she could see his face properly to see if it had disappeared from his eyes as well.
Was she feeling better? She had been, until just then when he’d mentioned it. She held her stomach, swallowed. ‘Sort of. Yes. No.’
‘It goes away, the seasickness. You might want to pick up some water crackers while you’re in here. They’ll help settle your stomach.’
Damn it. Now he was being nice.
‘Thanks for the medical advice. Now, if you wouldn’t mind moving your trolley, I’ve really got to go.’ She found a smile to flash in his general direction and moved off. She wasn’t lying about being in a hurry. She’d been warned about driving around the island at night; apparently, at dusk, the kangaroos emerged and enjoyed waiting by the side of the road to bound across just in time to be hit by any passing car. She’d read all sorts of stories about the damage a 90-kilogram kangaroo could cause to a regular car, not to mention to itself, much less to the old bomb she got around in.
‘Listen,’ he called after her, ‘I was actually hoping to run into you.’
Calla sighed. ‘Got some more vomit jokes up your sleeve, have you?’
When he laughed, deep and heartily, she turned back.
‘Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to have a go. I actually went looking for you on the deck after you went outside to —’
‘Yes, I get it. Why?’
‘To see if you were all right.’
‘Still alive and kicking, as you can see.’
‘And while I didn’t find you, I did find something that I think belongs to you. A denim jacket. With some kind of jewellery pinned to it?’
Calla gasped. All her annoyance disappeared. He had it. Her beaten-up denim jacket. More importantly, he might have her glasses too, as well as her mother’s precious brooch. She started to shake. ‘That’s … that’s great news.’
‘The jacket’s in my car and I’m parked out front.’
Her sheer relief bubbled out in a nervous scatter of words. ‘I didn’t realise I’d left it behind until I drove my car off the boat and then I figured it was too late to go back and look for it. My glasses are in the pocket. I can barely see without them. So thank you. You’ve saved my life.’
The man smiled at her and, even though he was fuzzy, it seemed like a nice smile.
‘I’ve got a few more things to pick up. Why don’t I meet you outside when we’re done?’
Calla nodded frantically. ‘Sure. I won’t be long.’
‘No rush.’ He shrugged.
She breathed a huge sigh of relief. She was back on track. She tried not to skip like a loon as she headed for the confectionary aisle.
CHAPTER
3
Step away from the Nice Guy.
And also, step away from the chocolate.
Calla urged her trolley round the end of the aisle with a frustrated shove and then stopped and glanced down at the display before her.
The first was easy. The second? Not so much. Even without her glasses, she recognised the distinctive red wrapper of her favourite bar and snuck one into the trolley. Okay, maybe she’d put two in there. She’d been advised to pick up food supplies when she hit the island, instead of lugging everything from Adelaide, and it didn’t take her long to pick up the things she needed for dinner for a few nights and the extras: milk, a loaf of bread, some apples. She’d booked a Penneshaw cabin with sea views, but four nights was all she could afford. She hoped that would be enough time.
She was there to find her brother, Jem, the sibling she and Rose hadn’t seen in two years.
The brother who had fallen off the map.
The brother they’d thought was dead until two weeks earlier.
Calla felt a shiver across her shoulders and knew it wasn’t from the icy gust of winter wind sneaking in through the supermarket sliding doors. It was fear, plain and simple. What if this sudden trip to Kangaroo Island turned out to be a huge mistake? What if Rosie was right, and this was a fool’s errand that would only break their hearts all over again?
Calla reached the checkout and the young cashier began tallying up her items with a broad smile.
‘Hi there. You here for a holiday?’
Telling the truth to a total stranger was way too complicated. ‘Yes, here for a few days. It’s my first time here on the island, actually. Anything you recommend I should do?’
Cashier girl rolled her eyes and lowered her voice. ‘To be honest? Get back on the boat. I’ve been stuck here my whole life and I can’t wait to get out.’
Calla realised there was no point in telling a teenage girl who’d grown up on an island with a population of just under four and a half thousand people that life wouldn’t be more exciting somewhere else. Anywhere else. Calla looked at the wide-eyed hope in the girl’s eyes and recognised herself. She’d been that girl, once upon a time, harbouring big dreams and fantasies about what the world might have in store for her. She’d gone out into the world and been as disappointed and crushed by it as anyone else. She was now a woman who’d learnt the hard way that big dreams and fantasies rarely came true.
But she didn’t want to be the one to crush anyone else’s hope. ‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Adelaide. Maybe Melbourne.’
&n
bsp; ‘You should go, then. There’s a big wide world out there across the water. There are lots of places you could see.’
The kid’s eyes brightened. ‘I hope so.’ She handed Calla the receipt with a friendly smile. ‘Thanks. Well. Have a nice time on KI.’
‘Thank you.’ Calla gave the girl a wave and picked up her cardboard box of groceries. After she’d negotiated the electric doors, she loaded it into the hatchback of her little red car, slamming the tailgate twice because the first time the dodgy catch didn’t connect. One day, maybe, she would spend money on a new car instead of renovating her house. Then again, maybe not. It had been faithful to her since she’d bought it second-hand a decade before. It got her where she needed to be and that was all she needed it to do. Her house, however, was far more precious to her than any four wheels and a chassis could ever be.
‘Need a hand?’ It was Mr Nice Guy from the boat.
‘No, I’m good. Sorry if I kept you waiting.’
‘You didn’t. Here’s your jacket.’
He held it between them and she lifted it from his hand with a restrained smile. Her fingers flew immediately to the breast pocket. Bingo.
‘Thank god they’re still there. My glasses.’ Calla dug them out, unfolded the arms and slipped them on. ‘Can’t see much without them,’ she admitted with a rueful laugh.
‘Glad to be of service,’ the man said.
Now Calla was restored to 20/20 vision, she made sure the brooch was still there too. She’d come so close to losing almost the dearest possession she had. She ran her fingers over the cool of the ceramic, marvelling once again at its smoothness, the precision of her mother’s beautiful strokes and the delicate swirls of blue. Rest in peace, Mum. It had been five years since her mother’s death and she still had to fight the tears when she remembered her. God! The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass herself by looking like a big girly sook in front of a total stranger who’d already seen her puking. She tried to regain some dignity.
She looked up past said stranger and for the first time saw Kangaroo Island in focus. At the end of the street, which dipped down to the cliff overlooking the ferry landing, there was ocean — miles and miles of it, a deep sapphire blue, and in the distance the mainland shimmered. The colours were vivid and dramatic, as if painted by an eighteenth-century landscape artist. Calla propped her elbows on her car door and simply stared at the sky. She’d never seen anything like it.
‘What a stunning view. Don’t you think?’
‘Sure.’ Mr Nice Guy didn’t sound that convinced.
‘Thank you for finding me. That was very … nice … of you.’ Calla turned her full attention to him. Whoa. Handsome guy. Like oh wow kind of handsome. He was a little older than she’d thought at first, late thirties maybe. His dark, almost black hair was very short over his ears and collar, a little longer on top, and there were touches of grey at his temples. His stubbled chin shadowed his jaw and highlighted the dips under his cheekbones. His full lips were lifted in the corners in a smile and the move creased his forehead and the corners of his eyes. His dark-chocolate eyes.
Calla could appreciate handsome without going all wobbly at the knees. She, in fact, wasn’t going wobbly over a man ever again. She had sworn off them entirely. That knowledge came with a certain confidence: she could check him out and be totally unaffected by the chocolate eyes or the shoulders or those little eye crinkles that only came from laughing a lot. So he looked like a man in a magazine. She could easily turn the page.
‘You don’t need to thank me. It was nothing. And you weren’t hard to find. You do stand out in a crowd, you know.’ His eyes drifted to the top of her head.
‘I get that a lot,’ she said.
‘Well,’ he said, apparently distracted for a moment. He glanced down the street and back again to her face. ‘Safe travels. Watch out for the kangaroos.’
‘I’ve been warned not to drive at dusk.’
He took two steps back and opened his car door. ‘That’s good advice.’
‘Thanks again for keeping my jacket safe.’
‘No worries.’ He lifted his hand in a casual wave.
‘Safe travels to you, too,’ Calla called.
Mr Nice Guy grinned at her again and walked back to his car. Instead of getting in, he leant in and reached across for something in his shopping before turning and walking back to her.
‘Here. This is for you.’ He held out a small, round lollipop on a stick.
Calla regarded it mock seriously, crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been warned about taking lollies from strangers.’
He laughed. ‘It’s for your return trip on the ferry. Suck it and it’ll help with the seasickness.’
She took it from him and twirled it around and around on its white stick, the bright colours of the cellophane wrap whirring around like a kaleidoscope in her hand. ‘Thanks,’ was all she could manage.
The man dipped his head and shot her another smile, his teeth bright against his tanned face. Calla sighed. He looked like a freaking toothpaste commercial.
As his big car roared to life with a gruff throb, Calla got in her little one, wistfully wishing she’d had the heater fixed, and reversed out of her park. Ahead of her, the handsome man’s silver beast had driven off towards the green hills at the end of the road. When he lifted a hand to wave to her in his rear-vision mirror, she waved back with a smile all to herself.
‘Goodbye, Nice Handsome Man,’ she said out loud. ‘Here’s hoping I never see you again.’
CHAPTER
4
Sam zipped up his heavy navy coat against the wind sweeping up the cliffs to the Penneshaw Cemetery and freezing his ears. The tall gums rustled and whispered as he walked through the white-painted metal gates. The last faint light of the day was almost gone behind the horizon and the blue of the ocean was shifting to black. To his left, two tall, neatly trimmed topiary crosses grew green and abundant, and there were gravestones laid out neatly on either side of the path. There were no streetlights on Hog Bay Road but he didn’t need a torch. He knew the way. His boots crunched the gravel as he walked, warnings signs to the dead that someone was approaching.
The two small headstones were white stone, neat. Tidy.
Jean Anne Hunter (née Christie). Sam’s mother. Charlie’s wife.
Andrew John Hunter. Charlie and Jean’s son. Sam’s older brother.
Sam glanced around. He was alone. Who else would be there on a wet and frigidly cold winter’s afternoon? He wondered for a moment whether the old man had been by to visit but then dismissed the thought. Charlie wasn’t the sentimental type. Had never had deep and meaningfuls with his son; or anyone else, Sam imagined. Hell, his father was a bloke — and a country bloke at heart — and of a generation and character that didn’t dig down deep about anything. Charlie wasn’t the type to swing by and lay flowers on the graves of his wife and son.
And neither was Sam. He’d never understood the point of flowers, hadn’t brought any to their graves for years. They were a show for other people, he’d always thought. And he didn’t need to put on a show. He’d learnt over the years to hide grief, not to expose it with displays like that. Everything in life was safer if you kept that stuff hidden away. He’d seen too much grief, raw, uncensored grief, to let himself wallow in his own. The things a firefighter saw on an average day were best put away at the end of the shift. They were the kind of things he’d long stopped sharing with anyone outside the fire service. Or even with people in the service, to be honest. No matter what you’d seen, when the bells dropped on the next shift, you had to get back in the truck with your crew, put away the previous day’s memories and start afresh.
In the same way, he tried not to think about the two white headstones in the dirt or all the other shit that had happened to him. Back home, he had lots of distractions to keep those memories away. When he wasn’t at work, he rode his bike from his house in the ’burbs up into the hills or down to the b
each. He worked out at the gym. Walked to his local and caught up with his mates from the fire service, or blokes from his football-playing days. He went to the movies, if there was a new action film to see. Sitting in the dark and watching stuff get blown up could always be relied on to take you out of your head for ninety-eight minutes plus trailers.
But here, back on the island, when the memories of those he’d lost came back, unbidden, there was only one way to obliterate them.
He needed a drink.
And he knew just where to get it.
What should have taken Calla five minutes ended up taking her fifteen. She’d tried to read the map the tourist office had emailed her, with what they’d promised were clear instructions on how to get to her cabin, but she must have taken a wrong turn because she was now on the other side of Penneshaw. Instead of a sea view, there had been nothing but rolling fields of green. Wheat? Grass? In the distance were a couple of horses. It all looked rather lovely, but she was lost.
She pulled over to the side of the road and gave herself a headache trying to read the map. But she wouldn’t be defeated by this detour and by the time she found her way back to the supermarket and set off again in the right direction, it was dark. Really dark. No streetlights kind of dark. Middle of winter early sunset kind of dark. There was an outside light shining at the little beach house she’d rented and she sighed out loud as she pulled in to the short driveway. The brochure had featured a brilliant sea view over Penneshaw Beach, which she’d hoped to sketch, but all she could see as she stepped out of her car and looked over the roadway was black. An inky black. A few stars had begun to light up the night sky, but not enough to illuminate much of anything.
She easily found the key, left exactly where the letting agent had promised, and let herself inside. It looked simple, pleasant and clean. Three bedrooms, not that she needed more than one. A small kitchen with a simple wooden dining table, and a bathroom off to the side. She wheeled her suitcase through the living area and into the main bedroom and looked around. As far as she could tell by the bedside table lamplight, it was tidy and neat. Fresh white sheets were stretched flat on the bed. A chair by the window held folded white towels and there was a framed photo of a stunning summer-day beach scene on the wall above the cane bedhead. Not a bad place to base herself. Back out in the main living area, there were two sofas and wide sliding doors leading out to a small deck, which was barely visible in the light from inside the cabin. She found the remote control for the heating system and cranked it up to high.
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