Through the Cracks

by Brown, Honey

  ‘My son was betrayed. He suffered at the hands of those men. I sent my son in good faith to the Mission. My faith is absolutely shattered.’

  Nathan wondered if Gerard had told Mrs Benson to deliberately avoid using Billy’s name. Maybe all she was doing was shifting attention from him. She was better able to cope with it. Nathan sensed that Billy was in the house, not watching, turned away.

  Since seeing him again, Nathan felt as though he could feel his friend, able to tap into Billy’s heart and mind. Maybe it was because they’d been in the house together, or because of the week of escape they’d shared, or because Nathan could imagine the dark compressed memories in Billy’s head, the squeeze of confusion and pain in his chest. Whatever it was, Nathan knew he had access to his friend despite their physical distance. What Nathan felt was that Billy had gone quiet. Motionless inside. Years of being strong, being fierce, had come about through winding the cogs inside him, up and up, faster and faster, tighter and tighter, louder . . . Now Billy had wound down. No one could do what he’d done forever. No one could fight that hard and that long and not reach a point of stopping. He’d wind back up eventually. It was perhaps not even up to Billy how much time that would take. For now, he was hushed. In Nathan’s mind Billy was the tiger, resting on his side, tail winding, head up, watching, out of the glare of the sun and in the cool shade of a tree.

  The news report switched to footage of a church. The doors were closed. A notice taped to them.

  Nathan’s mum turned the sound down.

  Above the house a helicopter circled.

  ‘They’re not allowed that close.’

  ‘I’ll ring Gerard.’

  ‘Why are they even here? Why can’t they leave us alone?’

  Tamara pointed at Nathan’s shoes. ‘It’s his fault; it’s him.’

  Nathan looked down at his feet. The soles of his sneakers were dirty.

  ‘Don’t say that, Tamara, please. The floor doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Not now it doesn’t matter. If it’s his shoes it’s fine. It’s all the way down the hallway. I got yelled at, it wasn’t even me.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘And it wouldn’t be if I’d done it.’

  ‘We’ll leave it to dry,’ Nathan’s mum said, ‘it’ll vacuum up.’

  Vacuum. Nathan could hardly believe it. Fate, something like that, was telling him to take the poster down, telling him he should have never put it up.

  ‘I don’t get you two,’ Tamara said.

  ‘We struggle to get you.’

  ‘I think it’s wrong the way you —’

  ‘We don’t care what you think.’

  ‘Oh my god.’

  ‘That’s enough. Your mother didn’t mean it. It’s hard when the media is here.’

  The carpet was cream coloured. Nathan took off his shoes and carried them to his room. Dirty footprints led all the way to his door, continued as scuffs within his room.

  Down in the lounge room the arguing got worse. His mum’s voice was rising. Tamara began to shout.

  ‘Someone has to explain things to him! Someone has to tell him he has to say something sometimes! You have to tell him when he’s doing something wrong. Sarina thinks the same thing. You two are turning him into a mental case because of the way you treat him like a mental.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Nathan’s mum screamed.

  Nathan’s father came into his bedroom. He shut the door.

  The one time Nathan needed for him not to do that. January was right there. Naked. On a car. Spanner between her breasts.

  ‘That was always going to happen,’ Nathan’s dad said. He motioned behind him. Thankfully didn’t look behind him. ‘It’s not you. You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just everything.’

  Nathan nodded. He felt himself sway back and forth with the action. Dared not blink. Tears would spill.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  No matter what Nathan said or did, his father was going to see the poster. If he asked his dad to go, he’d turn around and see it, if he didn’t ask him to go, he’d eventually turn around and see it anyway. It shouldn’t matter. But it did. It shouldn’t feel scary. But it did. Nathan’s pulse was racing, fear was building, terror nipping, no amount of deep breathing was slowing it . . . His head knew his father wasn’t going to hit him. His body wasn’t listening.

  The door swung open and his mum came in, Tamara too. The door flung back, hit the wall, swung forward again. Halfway closed. January was there again.

  ‘Pauline, no, not now.’

  ‘Apologise to your brother.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Tamara, apologise.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Mitch, I can’t deal with her.’

  ‘Tamara, go to your room.’

  ‘You guys went mental at me!’

  ‘Stop saying that word. Say it again and I swear I’ll hit you!’

  ‘Pauline!’

  She covered her mouth. Tamara spun around and reached for the door, grabbed the handle, saw the poster, halted.

  She straightened her shoulders, leaned her head to the side. Tamara looked over her shoulder, clamped her teeth on her bottom lip. She grinned at Nathan. He held his sister’s gaze, saw her amusement. She strolled out of the room, pulling the door partway closed behind her as she went.

  ‘I bet he’s allowed to keep that too,’ she said from the hallway.

  His mum and dad saw January.

  They stood there in silence, staring at her.

  ‘This is what you took from Scotty’s?’ his father said.

  Crouch, a part of Nathan was shouting, cover your head, protect your face, curl into a ball. Another part of him, a different voice, screamed hit, fight, stop this, punch it away. Nathan was caught between those impulses. He felt like a flattened piece of nothing in between them. He barely managed to whisper, ‘Yes.’

  Nathan’s parents were smiling. His dad was crying, happy tears.

  ‘All I ever wanted was you home walking mud through the house, putting up posters in your bedroom, annoying your sisters. I didn’t dare believe it would happen. But look at you. You take my breath away, son. I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of you. You don’t know how happy you make me, how happy you make us.’

  It was then for Nathan, months after leaving, days in the sun, safe night after safe night, good meal after good meal, baths, warm clothes, shoes on his feet, trips in cars, phones ringing, doors unlocked, paddocks, sky, clean air, kindness, but only then, right then, that Nathan felt free enough to let go. It wasn’t until he was free that he could let himself feel how frightened he had been. Banked up, the feelings released as a torrent. They flooded over him. He heard himself cry out. The water came and came, no time to brace for it, no warning of its strength. It pushed him. He had to reach out. He had to take hold of something, to stop from being swept away. He felt his mother’s hands, felt his father pull him in. The river water wouldn’t stop. Nathan couldn’t breathe in it. It was like drowning. He could feel himself going under. His parents had him, though. They’d waded in, long ago; they’d been there since that day at the market, never left the stream, there for when he surfaced. They weren’t going to let him go. They held him up.

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2014

  Text copyright © Honey Brown, 2014

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Cover design by Alex Ross © Penguin Group (Australia)

  Cover photograph by Mohamad Itani / Trevillion Images

  penguin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74253-834-1

  ALSO BY HONEY BROWN

  It’s Christmas morning on the edge of the rugged Mortimer Ranges. Sarah Barnard saddles Tansy, her black mare. She is heading for the bush, escaping the reality of her broken marriage and her bankrupted trail-riding business.

  Sarah seeks solace in the ranges. When a flash flood traps her on Devil Mountain, she heads to higher ground, taking shelter in Hangman’s Hut.

  She settles in to wait out Christmas.

  A man, a lone bushwalker, arrives. Heath is charming, capable, handsome. But his story doesn’t ring true. Why is he deep in the wilderness without any gear? Where is his vehicle? What’s driving his resistance towards rescue? The closer they become the more her suspicions grow.

  But to get off Devil Mountain alive, Sarah must engage in this secretive stranger’s dangerous game of intimacy.

  ‘One of those books that has to be read again to see how she does it.’

  Lucy Sussex,Sunday Age

  ‘A ripper. Brown keeps the pages turning and the pulse racing with a masterful, sexy and chilling plot.’

  Weekend West Australian

  ‘A taut suspenseful psychological drama of the best kind.’

  The Hoopla

  It’s only by chance that Trudy and Bruce Harrison notice the isolated Ocean View gallery on their way home. It’s not listed on any tourist pamphlet. There are no other visitors. Within the maze of rooms the couple begins to feel uneasy.

  And they are right to. The next few hours will rip them from their safe, comfortable existence forever.

  Bruce and Trudy escape from the gallery, bruised and brutalised. But a man is dead. Was someone else there that day? Did the attack even happen the way they remember it? Their doubts grow until they can no longer trust anyone – not even each other.

  There is no return from the dark places their fear will take them. Thrilling, stylish and strikingly atmospheric, After the Darkness is an extraordinary psychological suspense.

  ‘Achingly powerful.’

  Australian Women’s Weekly

  ‘Excellent.’

  Sun Herald

  ‘Enough twists and turns, mystery and gruesome touches to keep all psychological fans satisfied.’

  Weekly Times

  Rebecca Toyer and Zach Kincaid each live on the outskirts of town, but come from very different sides of the tracks. When Zach’s wealthy mother goes missing, Rebecca – the truckie’s daughter – is implicated in her disappearance. In the weeks that follow, Rebecca and Zach are drawn into a treacherous, adult world. Eager to please, Rebecca finds herself in danger of living up to the schoolyard taunts she so hates, while Zach channels his feelings through the sights of his gun.

  In the fading summer light, grudges are nursed and tempers fray, and as old lies unravel it seems nobody can be relied on. But beyond the fallout, the hard lessons in love and betrayal have not been wasted. Rebecca and Zach realise that judgements can be flawed – and that trust is better earnt than given.

  Original, unsettling and compelling, The Good Daughter is the much-anticipated second novel from Honey Brown.

  ‘A force to be reckoned with . . . [Brown is] a gifted novelist and a natural writer, her style subtle, elliptical and spare. There’s something shatteringly archetypal about The Good Daughter, as though Brown has somehow hit an artery in the soul. It recalls songs, stories, movies, novels and writers from both Australia and the US, from Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy to Kenneth Cook’s classic Wake in Fright.’

  Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘A thrilling read – one that captures the brutal essence of Australian small-town life, in which characters shift along a sliding moral scale. Honey Brown’s writing carries the same dark, atmospheric weight of Sonya Hartnett’s books, with an authenticity that will resonate with teenage as well as adult readers, particularly fans of crime fiction.’

  Bookseller+Publisher

  Shannon and Rohan Scott have retreated to their family’s cabin in the Australian bush to escape a virus-ravaged world. After months of isolation, Shannon imagines there’s nothing he doesn’t know about his older brother, or himself – until a stranger slips under their late-night watch and past their loaded guns.

  Reluctantly the brothers take the young woman into their fold, and the dynamic within the cabin shifts. Possessiveness takes hold, loyalties are split, and trust is shattered. Before long, all three find themselves locked into a very different battle for survival.

  Daring, stylish and sexy, Red Queen is a psychological thriller that will leave you breathless.

  ‘Riveting, atmospheric and tautly written, Red Queen is a remarkable debut.’

  Michael Robotham

  ‘These characters are superbly drawn and Brown’s manipulation of her stylish, erotic, unusual cinematic story firmly places this novel into the welcome league of must-reads.

  Courier-Mail

  ‘HM Brown’s Red Queen is a cracker. There’s a good chance you may miss your train or bus stop, or show up to work with Vuitton-like bags beneath your eyes from a sleepless night trying to race to the last page.’

  Vogue

  THE BEGINNING

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