Lyrebird Hill (38 page)

The sound of a car motor drew me back to the present. I peered along the track into the early light, expecting to see Pete’s ute emerge through the trees. So when the sleek black Jaguar appeared and rolled to a stop in the circular drive, my heart kicked over.

Rob got out and walked towards me. He was wearing jeans and polo shirt, his gleaming Hugo Boss brogues unnaturally shiny in an environment that coated everything else in a fine layer of dust.

‘Hey, babe.’

I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, suddenly aware of my bruised and bitten lips; they felt swollen, chafed pink from stubble-burn. Folding my arms across my chest, I summoned a glare.

‘It’s six o’clock in the morning.’

Rob smiled. ‘The best time to catch someone at home.’

‘What you want?’

He sighed. ‘You haven’t returned any of my calls. I was getting worried. Look, Ruby, I feel wretched about what happened last week. You took off before I had a chance to explain.’

‘What I saw in your bathroom was pretty self-explanatory.’

Rob dragged his fingers across his scalp, and his face was suddenly tight, furrowed with frown lines. ‘Trust you to freak out like this. It was a mistake, okay? A stupid mistake. I’m really sorry.’

‘And the bra?’

He sighed, and glanced along the track, his gaze roaming the shadows. ‘I was an idiot, but when you walked out, I got a
shock. I’ve spent the last week thinking about you. I don’t want to lose you, Ruby. You’re my world. Do you think you could try to forgive me . . . and come home?’

I pinched my lips together, feeling their rawness. I had a flash of silvery moonlight, and a hillside belonging to a mythical realm, full of shadows and promise. I glanced along the track at the sky. It was turning light, the night escaping.

Rob’s presence here seemed suddenly invasive.

‘You really hurt me,’ I told him. ‘I don’t think I can forgive you. Besides, I’m not ready to go home.’

He studied me for a long time, then said quietly, ‘You’ve started remembering, haven’t you?’

I shrugged. ‘So what if I have? It’s not your problem anymore.’

He stepped closer, his gaze sharpening. ‘Maybe not, but I still care about you, Ruby. And I still believe you’re treading dangerous ground by coming back here.’

He had spoken those same words to me countless times before, but all of a sudden they sounded like a warning.

‘What are you saying?’

‘It’s clear you’re nowhere near ready to cope with your suppressed memories . . . or with the shock of what you might remember.’

He held my gaze, and I sensed that he wanted to say more but was holding back. His lips parted, and his eyes narrowed on my face. A feeling of unease swept over me, and I pulled my cardigan tighter across my chest.

‘I might be more ready than you think.’

Rob let his gaze drift over to the house. ‘You’re out here alone, are you? Today, I mean,’ he added quickly.

I didn’t answer straight away; it seemed crazy that I should feel guilty about kissing Pete on the hillside last night, when Rob had just admitted his own infidelity. Old habits, I thought ruefully . . . and guilt was certainly one of mine.

Rob stepped closer, searching my face. I sensed that his uncanny body-language radar had switched to overdrive. Before I could move away, he reached towards me and cupped my cheek, pressing his thumb against my tender bottom lip. I flinched and stepped back.

‘Oh Ruby,’ he murmured, his voice husky with emotion. The pain of understanding dawned in his eyes, and his pupils grew dark. ‘Don’t give up on us so easily,’ he whispered. ‘I love you, babe. I couldn’t bear to lose you.’

This was a side of Rob I rarely – if ever – saw. He had always been a master of drawing forth emotion from other people, meanwhile remaining calm in the midst of their teary outbursts. Seeing him like this, suddenly vulnerable, with welling eyes and uncertainty etched in his handsome features, made me hesitate.

But only for a moment. Rob and I had crossed a bridge of mistrust, and now stood on opposite banks of a vast divide. For me, at least, there was no going back.

‘It’s too late, Rob,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘You’d better go.’

Rob tensed, but then he nodded. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, babe.’

Then he was striding back to his car, getting in, firing the engine and cruising slowly around the circular drive.

I stood there shivering in the farmhouse’s shadow, hugging my cardigan about me, watching Rob’s Jag disappear along the track and into the trees, heading back to the outside world. As the silence settled back into place around me, Rob’s words replayed in my mind.

You’re nowhere near ready to cope with the shock of what you might remember.

But he was wrong. I wanted to remember, and suddenly I felt ready to deal with whatever those memories revealed.

‘Okay, Ruby, I’m going to count backwards from twenty and I’d like you to listen carefully to my voice. Are you comfortable?’

‘Yep.’

‘Good. Now settle back into your chair. Take a deep breath and let it out. Start to feel your limbs growing heavy and your eyes slowly drifting shut. That’s it. We’ll begin at twenty, feeling relaxed. Nineteen, letting go and drifting deeper . . . eighteen . . . seventeen . . .’

Rob’s visit earlier that morning had rattled me. I wanted to prove him wrong, to prove that I
was
ready to face the past. So I hadn’t gone to Pete’s as I’d planned, but had instead taken Esther’s car and driven into Armidale. Hypnotherapy was a long shot. It might dredge up the truth, yet there was every chance I would emerge from the experience empty-handed. Even so, I was swamped by a feeling of urgency, and was ready to try anything.

I was staring at the spot on the wall I’d chosen, but in my peripheral view I could see the deep red curtains drawn against the light, and the glass table upon which sat two tumblers and a jug of water. Nearby, seated on a huge leather armchair that matched the one I sat on, was Flora, the hypnotherapist I had picked out of the
Yellow Pages
. Her face was turned towards me, and her chair was pushed close to mine. I could have reached out and touched the sleeve of her smart pink suit. I didn’t, of course, because my arm suddenly felt like a lump of stone. As I settled deeper into my chair, her words seemed to echo from inside my head.

‘Fourteen . . . thirteen, your eyes are closed now, Ruby . . .’

Darkness then, but I didn’t feel sleepy. Rather, I felt almost preternaturally alert, as if I were rigged up to a drip bag of coffee. I was twitchy, worrying I was doing it wrong, scared it wouldn’t work, and terrified that it would.

‘Nine . . . eight, you’re walking down a staircase, it’s very dark. Candles light your way. Seven, deeper now, the stairs are taking you very deep . . . six . . . five . . .’

Rats moving in the shadows. The scurry of motion, the echoey drip-drip of water. A damp smell, like moss on a riverbank. But they were just weird random images that had nothing to do with the past. I wondered if I should tell Flora that her hypnosis wasn’t working; she might want to stop and try a different tack. I must have been one of those people who resisted any form of hypnotherapy, because I was fully alert, so on edge my blood was humming—

‘Three . . . two . . .’

—and I was getting more jittery by the second. I really should tell Flora I wasn’t responding; what if something went wrong? I engaged my neck muscles and attempted to turn my head, and—

‘One.’

—I was standing on the riverbank. Below me, the river rushed past. Trees swayed in the shimmering air, the sky was littered with remnant storm clouds. All around me, the landscape hazed into a blur of brightness and light.

A human-like shape hovered before me. Slowly, it morphed into a girl, into Jamie. Her face was contorted as if she was shouting, but all I could hear was the hissing rush of the river. Jamie grabbed my arms, her fingers digging in as she tried to shove me away. I felt angry and afraid, and there was a great weight dragging at me, a shadow the size of the moon. As I tried to shake off the shadow, Jamie slipped from my grasp. She toppled backwards and her head cracked on the wall of stone behind her. I reached for her, but somehow her head hit the wall again. Her mouth opened, but her scream was silent and her head kept hitting the wall. Her face twisted in pain, and a bubble of blood came out of her mouth.

‘Ruby, I’m going to start bringing you back now.’

The bright sunlight was suddenly blinding. Jamie began to dissolve into it, and I gripped her tighter, trying to hold onto her, but she was slipping—

‘Counting from five . . . four . . .’

Struggling now, time was pulling me back to the present but I couldn’t leave Jamie. I blinked hard but could see nothing in the dazzling light. Groping for her in the haze, trying to find her, fearing she’d already gone.

‘Three . . . two . . . one . . . and – eyes open.’

My lungs expanded suddenly, and I dragged in a gasp of air. The room was dark, stained red by the murky late-afternoon sunlight that seeped through the curtains. My face was wet, and as I pulled breath after breath into my airless lungs, I heard my mother’s voice inside my ear.

There were so many questions. So much poking and prodding and trying to get you to remember.

Later, as I walked along the street to where I’d parked Esther’s car, my mother’s voice became more insistent. Other snippets drifted back, snatches of conversation I’d overlooked at the time, or deemed unimportant, now seemed darkly significant.

. . . the notion of bad genes crossed my mind . . . I started thinking about your father’s death, and all the old guilt bubbled up . . .

Brenna, June 1898

C
ries drew me to the window. Flinging up the sash, I leaned out into the cold morning air and looked towards the stable yard.

Adele was calling to Carsten, and the shrill edge to her voice had me ducking back inside, dragging my coat over my nightdress and rushing down the stairs. As I burst through into the garden, Adele’s distress reached a new pitch.

‘Stop it!’ she cried. ‘Carsten, you’ll kill him, please stop.’

Tearing along the path, I reached the stable yard and met a wretched sight.

Carsten held a stockwhip, and his shirt and trousers were flecked with blood.

It took me a moment to notice the man slumped behind him, against the tether rail in front of the stable barn. He had crumpled to his knees and fallen forward. His hands were roped above his head; he was bare from the hips up, his strong, lean torso scored with deep gashes that oozed dark-coloured blood.

‘Lucien.’

I raced towards him, but Carsten intercepted me, grabbing a handful of my loose hair. He jerked me to my knees and bent to meet me face to face.

‘Take a good look at your handiwork, Brenna. Do you think him so worthy of your artist’s brush now?’

I could smell blood on him; salty, sweat-infused blood. Lucien’s blood. My hand shot up and I clawed my nails at his face. He flinched back with a cry, and it was only when I felt the sticky warmth of blood between my fingers that I realised I had broken his skin. Spiteful gladness filled me.

‘You wildcat,’ he spat and slapped me sideways into the dirt. Gravel bit my palms and knees and the wind tugged open my coat and whipped my nightdress.

‘I curse the day I married you,’ Carsten said. ‘My only solace is the pain I know is coming for you. Now get yourself back to the house, woman, before I take my lash to you, too.’

He strode away, the whip coiled loosely in his fist; the leather tail quivered as if with its master’s agitation, its fine tip flicking droplets of blood onto the path in a sticky crimson trail.