{"id":2494,"date":"2013-04-14T19:36:28","date_gmt":"2013-04-14T19:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2494"},"modified":"2013-04-29T15:19:55","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T15:19:55","slug":"visiting-edie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2494","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Edie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sewing<\/a><\/p>\n

Pebbles shifted underfoot as Luisa walked up the driveway to Edie\u2019s house. The rain had stopped but everything was sodden: the grass, the earth, the dark green moss that edged the drive. Droplets of water plopped from the undersides of leaves. Sandflies had found Luisa\u2019s exposed skin and their bites had swollen into large, irregular white welts, each with a red puncture mark at the centre. You must taste sweet \u2013 that was what her mother used to say when, as a child, she was persecuted by insects which left her sisters, with their olive complexions, alone.<\/p>\n

The house, small and square, stood on stilts in a hacked out gap in the bush at the base of a ridge. It was encircled by a balcony which sagged on one side; wooden steps led up to a door on the other. Luisa tried to smooth her face dry with wet hands as she climbed. Her soaked dress clung to her thighs.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t how she\u2019d imagined it. She had flown down from Auckland that morning and picked up a rental car from Greymouth airport; Barrytown was to the north, marked on her map with a black dot. Fearful of being late, she\u2019d allowed plenty of time for the drive, planning to sit in a caf\u00e9 while she waited. But it turned out there was no caf\u00e9, no shops, no town to speak of, just an occasional letterbox at the roadside suggesting a house somewhere out of view, and a squat, brown-roofed pub, its doors closed and its windows dark.<\/p>\n

She took the turn-off because she felt conspicuous waiting on the main road. It took her west, towards the sea, through flat green paddocks punctuated by nikau, their bulbous crownshafts balanced on slender trunks. At her back, visible in her rear-view mirror, bush-clad hills loomed. After a while the road began to dwindle. She didn\u2019t know why she kept driving. She should have doubled back earlier. By the time she did, the road was no more than two tyre tracks with a hummock of grass along the centre. The ground was marshy. Particularly the spot in which she chose to turn. The engine whined and the back wheels skidded, digging trenches in the mud. She tried reversing, she tried going forwards; but the car wouldn\u2019t budge.<\/p>\n

She turned off the ignition and listened to the engine tick as it cooled. Fat raindrops began to spatter her windscreen.<\/p>\n

\u2018Shit,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

She took her phone out of her handbag and called the emergency number printed on her rental car agreement.<\/p>\n

\u2018Where did you say you were again?\u2019 said the call handler. \u2018I can\u2019t seem to find it on the map.\u2019<\/p>\n

She put Luisa on hold and when she came back she said it would take two hours for a breakdown van reach her. Luisa told the handler she would have to call back later; she couldn\u2019t wait that long. There was somewhere she had to be. She took her handbag, locked the car and walked back up the road, her heels leaving little round indentations in the soft earth.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Edie\u2019s door was slightly ajar. \u2018Just a minute,\u2019 said a man\u2019s voice, in response to Luisa\u2019s knock. The door shuddered, then heaved open. It must have swollen or sunk on its hinges; repeated use had carved a semi-circle of scratches in the lino.<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh dear,\u2019 said the man, looking at Luisa. He was short and balding, with an oval of velvety fuzz on the top of his head.<\/p>\n

\u2018It was raining,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Evidently.\u2019<\/p>\n

Luisa stepped through the porch into a cluttered kitchen, which opened to the right onto a room full of people talking in subdued voices. Luisa scanned the room for anyone who could conceivably be Adele … or Kit. There was a man who might have been him \u2013 the right age, round-shouldered, wiry. But the face was wrong.<\/p>\n

\u2018If you go through there\u2019 \u2013 the balding man was pointing down a hallway \u2013 \u2018you\u2019ll find the bathroom. I imagine there are towels.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Do you think it\u2019s okay for me to \u2013?\u2019 said Luisa.<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh yes, yes, I\u2019m sure Edie wouldn\u2019t mind.\u2019<\/p>\n

The bathroom smelt of Palmolive soap and the creeping black mould that coated the tiles and joinery. A pair of slippers lay on a faded blue bathmat. Four or five damp towels were crowded over a single rail. Luisa took one and rubbed at her hair. In the mirror, her face looked washed-out, wary. Under the basin she found an old box of sticking plasters, Dettol, toothpaste, Disprin, a hairdryer. She took the dryer, plugged it in and dried her hair, then took off her clothes one by one and blasted them at close range. Her dress was silk: it puckered and shrank under the heat.<\/p>\n

There was a knock at the door.<\/p>\n

\u2018Just a minute,\u2019 she called, dressing quickly. She stepped into the hallway to find herself face to face with a woman. They stood wordless for a moment, staring at each other.<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh,\u2019 said the woman.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hello Adele,\u2019 said Luisa.<\/p>\n

\u2018You came.\u2019<\/p>\n

Luisa nodded. Her eyes flicked past Adele down the hallway.<\/p>\n

\u2018I wouldn\u2019t go down there,\u2019 said Adele. \u2018Kit\u2019s just gone into the kitchen.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Ah.\u2019<\/p>\n

Adele looked tired. Or perhaps just older. Her hair was in the same style as she had worn it the last time Luisa had seen her \u2013 long, with a fringe, the front tied back with a velvet scrunchie in a half-ponytail \u2013 but her face had aged, was thinner, her skin grown sallow. It must have been ten years. Adele had been pregnant then, plump and rosy-cheeked, and had exuded an almost evangelical warmth, evidently so content with her lot that she was eager to encompass Luisa in it. She had unbuttoned her cardigan and invited Luisa to place her hand on her bump. \u2018After all, you\u2019re my sort-of sister-in-law,\u2019 she\u2019d said. \u2018And this is your sort-of niece or nephew.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Does Kit know I\u2019m here?\u2019 Luisa had said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Not exactly,\u2019 said Adele. \u2018Put your hand here! I think that\u2019s an elbow. Or maybe a foot.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018How do you mean, not exactly?\u2019<\/p>\n

Adele had half closed her eyes and shaken her head, as if to shake away the question. But now, in Edie\u2019s hallway, it seemed that her eagerness for any connection with Luisa had ebbed. There was a flatness about her, a disinterest that was almost hostility. It made Luisa wonder why Adele had phoned her at all.<\/p>\n

\u2018Did you want to see Edie?\u2019 Adele said. \u2018She\u2019s in there.\u2019<\/p>\n

She pointed at the door opposite.<\/p>\n

Luisa hesitated.<\/p>\n

\u2018Of course, it\u2019s up to you,\u2019 said Adele, and disappeared into the bathroom.<\/p>\n

Luisa looked at the door for a long time. It was only when she saw her hand reach out and clasp the handle that she realised she was going to go in.<\/p>\n

The coffin was resting on trestles next to a bed. The face of the woman who lay in it was yellow-skinned and waxy. Her eyebrows, thinned with age, had been drawn in with eyebrow pencil and her lips were an unnatural pink. Luisa swallowed. The air in the room was moist, botanical. The walls seemed to veer inwards; they were covered with photographs and children\u2019s felt-tipped pen drawings, many of them faded and curling. A bookshelf had warped under the weight of its contents: National Geographics, foreign language dictionaries, atlases, encyclopaedias. On a dresser was a dusty necklace of turquoise beads.<\/p>\n

Luisa stepped closer to the coffin. It was lined with cream satin, ruched around the top. She waited. Surely this moment should be imbued with meaning; she searched her heart for some swelling of emotion. But there was nothing. Was that formaldehyde she could smell? Was this even Edie? She looked nothing like the Edie Luisa remembered. Of course, she had been a lot younger then. And alive.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s me,\u2019 she said. \u2018Luisa.\u2019<\/p>\n

The woman\u2019s hands were cupped together at her pelvis, liver-spotted and pale. Luisa reached out and touched one. It was cool, slightly spongy. She had once seen a TV documentary in which elks nuzzled hopefully at the dead body of one of their herd. She shared something of their bewilderment. And also, because she was a human and not an elk, a dawning sense of self-disgust. What was she doing pawing at this stranger\u2019s body? She pulled her hand away.<\/p>\n

Whatever she had come for, it was not this.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The service, brief and secular, was held in Edie\u2019s lounge. The coffin had been positioned at one end of the room, and mourners were clustered around it in the shape of a horseshoe. Luisa stood at the back, her clothes still clammy. Adele was with Kit at one of the horseshoe\u2019s tips; with them were a plump, unhappy-looking girl of around ten, and a younger boy who seemed incapable of standing still. Kit had grown a beard. His hair was almost completely grey. He looked in Luisa\u2019s direction, but appeared not to recognise her.<\/p>\n

It turned out the balding man was the celebrant. Luisa listened to him sum up Edie\u2019s life, or at least the publicly acknowledged parts of it. Edie had accompanied her husband on diplomatic missions to Chile, India and China. It was in Chile that Kit had been born. Luisa glanced at him. There was something about the way he was rocking from foot to foot that made her wonder if he was drunk \u2013 drunk but practised at concealing it. The celebrant ploughed on. Edie had once hosted a dinner party for Jimmy Carter. She had ridden an elephant. She spoke fluent Spanish. Each vignette was an irritant to Luisa, almost physically stung her, yet the thought of never knowing these things at all was even worse.<\/p>\n

The celebrant invited the guests to share their memories of Edie. Someone told how she was often seen walking on the shore at low tide, stooping every so often to pick up pieces of pounamu which, despite her failing eyesight, she still had an uncanny ability to spot. Adele spoke about Edie\u2019s kindness to her when she went through what she called a \u2018difficult\u2019 time after her daughter was born, and described how Edie doted on her grandchildren, gave them far too many lollies \u2013 here the granddaughter\u2019s face broke into a shy smile \u2013 never believing them to be in the wrong, no matter how naughty they had been. The image of Edie as a loving grandmother was the most painful of all; Luisa felt a flash of anger towards the granddaughter, or Adele, or Edie, or possibly herself.<\/p>\n

\u2018And anyone else?\u2019 asked the celebrant. There was silence. Luisa looked at the coffin, then back at Kit, who was chewing his lip. She dropped her eyes.<\/p>\n

\u2018Well then,\u2019 said the celebrant.<\/p>\n

Pallbearers carried the coffin out the door and down the steps to the waiting hearse. Mourners walked in twos and threes down the driveway to their cars. Luisa hung back till Kit and Adele had passed.<\/p>\n

\u2018Is it far?\u2019 she asked the celebrant.<\/p>\n

\u2018Too far to walk,\u2019 he said, glancing at her muddied shoes. \u2018Do you need a lift?\u2019<\/p>\n

He led her to a van parked on the lay-by near Edie\u2019s letterbox.<\/p>\n

\u2018Did you know Edie well?\u2019 he said, as they drove.<\/p>\n

\u2018Not really,\u2019 said Luisa. In fact, she had only met Edie twice. The first time was in the tearooms at the Wellington botanical gardens in 1981. Edie was taller than Luisa had expected, her hair combed into an elegant bun. She took careful sips of her milkless tea and told Luisa that she couldn\u2019t risk her husband and son finding out about her \u2013 she was sure Luisa would understand. The second time was in 1994, in the bar of the James Cook Hotel. This was not long after Edie\u2019s husband had died. Luisa had thought this might change things, had imagined a cautious blossoming between them; had rehearsed in her head and sometimes spoken aloud, while in the shower or driving, her answers to all the questions Edie might have asked. She would gift herself to Edie, package herself up and present herself as a successfully completed project, so that Edie would be able to say, \u2018I can see I did the right thing.\u2019 Their meeting lasted fifty-five minutes. Edie had something urgent to do, something that couldn\u2019t wait. No, she didn\u2019t think that she would be able to meet with Luisa again.<\/p>\n

The celebrant turned the van down a side road, following the modest line of cars ahead of them. Luisa glimpsed Kit in the driver\u2019s seat of a blue station wagon. It was after she\u2019d met with Edie the second time that she had decided to contact him \u2013 she had imagined he might be able to talk Edie round. Things didn\u2019t go exactly as she had hoped. She didn\u2019t like to dwell on what was said the afternoon she\u2019d turned up at his house in Wainouiomata, under the cold shadow of the Eastern Hutt Hills. A young Adele had followed her to the taxi, oven cloth in hand, and said, \u2018It\u2019s a shock, that\u2019s all\u2019; Luisa had handed her a slip of paper with an address and phone number, and said, \u2018Call me. Please.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Edie was a true Coaster,\u2019 said the celebrant. \u2018All those countries she lived in, but she came home in the end. People end up where their heart is, I reckon.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Sometimes, perhaps,\u2019 said Luisa. \u2018But not always. Sometimes they can\u2019t.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I think people find a way,\u2019 he said, and smiled lazily. He had mean little eyes, at odds with his cheerful demeanour. He pulled over behind a ute with two dogs yelping in the back. The door of the ute opened and a woman in a plastic poncho climbed out and slammed the door. Her unbrushed hair, henna red with silver roots, frizzed around her face in the damp, windless air.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ngaire,\u2019 nodded the celebrant, and the woman nodded back.<\/p>\n

The cemetery was in a small field bordered by a wire fence. Many of the graves had sunk; several headstones lay in the grass where they had fallen, blotched with saffron-coloured lichen. Most of the mourners were already in position. The ground was muddy under its green synthetic covering, the coffin suspended in a chrome stand over a waterlogged hole.<\/p>\n

As Luisa joined the group, Kit looked up. She dropped her eyes, but felt the pressure of his gaze.<\/p>\n

\u2018Is that who I think it is?\u201d she heard him say.<\/p>\n

\u2018Who?\u2019 said the boy.<\/p>\n

\u2018No one,\u2019 said Adele.<\/p>\n

\u2018But Mum \u2013\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Shush!\u2019<\/p>\n

Adele gave him a sharp slap on the top of his head.<\/p>\n

Since that day in Wainouiomata, Luisa had not seen Kit, and had spoken to him only once. She had been in Wellington for a conference, had walked down Edie\u2019s street and stood for a while under the huge rata opposite her house. The house had looked empty: lights off, doors and windows shut. But Kit had phoned her a few days later, his voice slurred and dangerous. He mentioned trespass, though she had been on public land. He told her to keep away; called her desperate, pathetic. Luisa clenched her eyes shut while he talked, then sat for a long time in her quiet hallway, her throat burning with words unsaid.<\/p>\n

\u2018And so we say our final farewell to Edie,\u2019 the celebrant was saying. The undertaker, a young man with an acne-scarred neck, pressed a button; with a mechanical whirr the coffin began to lower. A pukeko that was moving purposefully down the fenceline froze, one leg raised in the air, and cocked its head. Luisa stole a look at Kit. He was standing a little apart from Adele and the children, his expression fierce, bereft. Luisa felt a flicker of what it might have been to have loved Edie. And then there was a crunch as the coffin hit earth.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In Edie\u2019s house, the wake was in full swing, numbers swelled by latecomers. The mood had changed: people were talking more freely, laughing even, as if no longer in danger of being overheard. The kitchen bench was cluttered with beer and wine bottles. Corn rolls, skewered with toothpicks, were lined up like little soldiers on an inlaid mother-of-pearl tray. Someone had found a sitar and was plucking it tunelessly. Adele and Kit\u2019s son was stationed next to a bowl of salted peanuts, his hand darting from bowl to mouth with joyless urgency.<\/p>\n

Luisa\u2019s senses were attuned to Kit, wherever in the house he might be. She had found a position in the lounge next to a group of women whose collective solidity and generalised good humour formed what she hoped was an effective buffer. Jutting out into the room was a freestanding shelving unit, cluttered with ornaments collected by Edie across continents and decades. Luisa picked up a jade elephant, which had dust in the creases behind its ears, and was stroking its back with her fingertip when she heard Kit\u2019s voice. He was in the kitchen. She put the elephant down, and edged behind the broadest of the women.<\/p>\n

\u2018Do you often get stalkers at funerals?\u2019 she heard Kit say.<\/p>\n

Someone laughed \u2013 perhaps the celebrant.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not a joke,\u2019 said Kit.<\/p>\n

\u2018Excuse me,\u2019 said Luisa to the women, and pushed her way through the crowded living room, through the sliding doors at the far side and onto the balcony. It had grown dark, and the clouds must have thinned, even lifted in places, because Luisa could see patches of stars, and the bluish glow of a rising moon. The temperature had dropped; she retracted her hands inside the sleeves of her jacket.<\/p>\n

To her right, there was a plasticky rustling. The ponchoed woman was leaning against the balustrade, smoking a joint. She offered it to Luisa, who looked at its crushed and soggy tip and shook her head. The woman shrugged. She took a drag and closed her eyes, then opened them sleepily, like a cat, and squinted at Luisa.<\/p>\n

\u2018You\u2019re not from round here, are you?\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

Luisa was about to say no. Her earliest photograph showed a blonde-haired baby sitting on the golden sand of Auckland\u2019s North Shore, the legs and midriffs of two older girls a blur as they ran by.<\/p>\n

\u2018Actually,\u2019 she said, \u2018I was born near here.\u2019<\/p>\n

At that moment there was a shout from the lounge, followed by a crash. Luisa turned to see the shelving unit upended, its contents scattered. Adele was screaming. Kit was on the floor. Someone pulled him to his feet and righted the shelf. \u2018Bloody thing\u2019s always been wobbly,\u2019 he said. Adele dropped to her hands and knees and began picking up ornaments. \u2018Mind the glass,\u2019 she said. The son dived forward and tried to retrieve the scattered peanuts. When he stood, there was blood running from his hand, a shard of glass embedded in the palm. He stared at it, perplexed. He held his hand towards Adele.<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh, for God\u2019s sake!\u2019 she said. \u2018Didn\u2019t you listen to what I just said?\u2019<\/p>\n

Luisa edged along the balcony and around the corner, so she was no longer visible from the lounge. Light from the house poured through an uncurtained window halfway along the wall, illuminating the balcony and, dimly, the ground below. Luisa peered over the balustrade. She could make out a mass of agapanthus, a pair of gardening gloves left on a pebbled path. She thought she saw something move. Possum? Stoat? The bush was alive, breathing. She felt unmoored, as if her Auckland life did not exist. She moved further along the balcony, to the lit window, and looked in. Adele and Kit\u2019s daughter was lying on her stomach on Edie\u2019s sagging bed, an atlas propped against the pillow in front of her, poring over a map. Luisa froze, but realised she was invisible to the girl who, thinking herself unwatched, was sprawled with a complete lack of self-consciousness, her legs entwined at the ankles in the air behind her. Tracing a coastline with her finger, then pausing, flicking through the pages of the index. There was a silver charm bracelet on her left wrist; Luisa hadn\u2019t seen one of those in years. She\u2019d had one herself at around the same age, and found herself touching her wrist at the ghost of its memory: horseshoe, feather, padlock, key.<\/p>\n

From the far side of the house there were voices, then footsteps on the driveway, a car\u2019s engine. People were beginning to leave. Luisa continued around the balcony towards the door. Someone, surely, would give her a lift \u2013 to Greymouth, or anywhere she could get a hotel for the night.<\/p>\n

She pushed the door open and there, in the porch, was Kit.<\/p>\n

He was sitting on the stoop, trying to pull on his gumboots. They were on the wrong feet.<\/p>\n

\u2018Stupid fucking things,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

He looked up. Something in his faced changed.<\/p>\n

\u2018What are you looking at?\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Nothing,\u2019 said Luisa.<\/p>\n

Kit fixed his eyes on her, fierce and challenging. She should have known this was coming. She had known. She had sat on the plane and tightened her lap belt and eaten her almond-flavoured biscuits and flown all the way down here knowing. Yet she had the strange sense that whatever Kit was now going to say, whatever he was going to do, was somehow mapped out; that each of them, he as much as she, was on a course not of their own making, had found themselves washed up here, in this porch, on this night, with the dark bush heaving around them, at the house of a woman whom one of them had known and one of them had not. And as she watched, Kit\u2019s shoulders seemed to slump. She looked at his hands clutching his gumboots, the stubby fingers with the nails wider than they were high. Like her fingernails.<\/p>\n

\u2018She didn\u2019t want you here,\u2019 he said in a low voice.<\/p>\n

Luisa thought about that.<\/p>\n

\u2018I know,\u2019 she said. \u2018But I had to come.\u2019<\/p>\n

Kit was silent. There was a rustle in the bush, the sound of some bird alarmed. A mosquito hovered around his face. He slapped at it with his hand. Then he nodded, so faintly Luisa wondered if she had imagined it, and leaned sideways to allow her through. She stepped past him, her skirt brushing against his shoulder, into the kitchen with its pitted floor. The guests had begun to thin out. Abandoned glasses were balanced on mantelpieces, on shelves. Someone was collecting beer bottles and putting them in a black bin liner.<\/p>\n

Adele appeared from the hallway, holding her son by one hand; his other hand was bandaged. Her face was flushed.<\/p>\n

\u2018Is everything okay?\u2019 said Luisa.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m just trying to find someone.\u2019 Adele paused. \u2018Actually,\u2019 she continued, \u2018have you met Ngaire? Big woman, red hair.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018The one in the, um, rainwear?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s her. She does Edie\u2019s cleaning. Did it. Could you give this to her?\u2019 Adele held out a Yale key, attached to a green tab by a piece of greyish string. \u2018Tell her I need her to lock up the house.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Are you going already?\u2019 said Luisa.<\/p>\n

\u2018I have to. Kit\u2019s not \u2013 well. I need to take him home. So if you could \u2026?\u2019<\/p>\n

Luisa reached out and took the key, and put it in her pocket.<\/p>\n

\u2018Of course,\u2019 she said. \u2018It\u2019s the least I can do.\u2019<\/p>\n

Adele turned to go.<\/p>\n

\u2018Adele,\u2019 said Luisa.<\/p>\n

She turned back to face Luisa again, and Luisa was struck by the weariness in her eyes.<\/p>\n

\u2018I just wanted to say \u2026 thanks \u2026 for phoning me and everything.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I thought you should know.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I really appreciate it.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Like I said,\u2019 said Adele. She paused. \u2018But I do think \u2013 you\u2019re not going to go calling us or anything, are you?\u2019<\/p>\n

Luisa felt her cheeks go hot.<\/p>\n

\u2018No,\u2019 she said. \u2018Of course not.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Because, no offence, but \u2013 will you stop that!\u2019 said Adele, interrupted by her son, who was tugging on her arm. \u2018I really have to go,\u2019 she said to Luisa.<\/p>\n

Luisa watched them leave, the boy still grabbing at Adele. The daughter materialised from somewhere and followed them. When they had disappeared Luisa scoured the kitchen for a cleanish glass, rinsed it in the sink, and poured herself the dregs from a bottle of red wine.<\/p>\n

\u2018Waste not, want not,\u2019 said the celebrant, appearing at her side. He was putting on his jacket. His upper lip glistened.<\/p>\n

\u2018Do you need a lift somewhere?\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Luisa glanced out the door. She could see a dark, ponchoed shape moving down the steps towards a ute parked in Edie\u2019s carport. She tightened her hand around the key in her pocket and smiled at the celebrant.<\/p>\n

\u2018No thanks,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Luisa stood at the sliding door and watched the last of the cars drive off, each set of tail lights winking out as it reached the bend in Edie\u2019s driveway. She had an overwhelming sense then of the house, its contents \u2013 as if, now all the people had left, it had reasserted itself, and had shown their noise to have been only bluster. She listened for its sounds. The drip of a tap in the kitchen, the flap of a curtain at an open window. She walked through the house, picking up ornaments and putting them down again. She ran her finger through the dust along a bookshelf, then wiped her hands on her dress and stood perfectly still. She had felt sure that somewhere, hidden from view, she would find it: the thing she had been looking for most of her life. She didn\u2019t know what it would be. An unposted letter, or a photograph, not Blu-tacked to the wall like the others but kept nonetheless, or a lock of hair in an envelope, the gum on its flap yellowed and dry.<\/p>\n

At the doorway to Edie\u2019s bedroom she stopped. Desperate, Kit had called her. And perhaps he was right. Was that what Edie had sensed, that afternoon at the James Cook Hotel? Had she tried too hard? Had she wanted too much?<\/p>\n

She could picture herself on her knees on Edie\u2019s floor, rifling through her things, opening drawers and tipping their contents onto the carpet, pulling clothes from the wardrobe, turning out pockets. Ransacking jewellery boxes, prising apart lockets, shaking books by their spines. Reading letters not written for her. She could scour Edie\u2019s whole house if she chose to, pull it apart, piece by piece.<\/p>\n

And even then, she would never know.<\/p>\n

Luisa brushed her hair back behind her ears. She smoothed the wrinkles from her dress with her hands. And then she walked to Edie\u2019s bed, picked up the atlas left askew on the pillow, and slid it back on the shelf. Straightened the bedspread. Shut the door behind her.<\/p>\n

In the pantry, on a shelf sticky with kitchen grease, she found a bottle of Cognac and a cut crystal glass. She poured a drink, went into the lounge and switched off the lights. Her reflection in the sliding door disappeared. The sky was now completely clear, brightly pebbled with stars. In the distance, she could just make out a silvery line which could have been the sea. Somewhere out there the rental car was still stuck in a field. Tomorrow, she would call the emergency number again. A truck would come and tow the car to the road, and she would drive to the airport and get on a plane and fly back to the life of the person she became when Edie made the decision she made all those years ago.<\/p>\n

But tonight she would sit in Edie\u2019s chair, and drink from Edie\u2019s glass, with the windows open to the sounds of the bush, which, if she closed her eyes, she almost fancied she could hear growing, unfurling its fronds and shedding its spores, snaking its green tendrils closer and closer, encloaking Edie\u2019s house, wrapping up its secrets, and laying them to rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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