Flowers were peeking up through the grass. Red, blue, and yellow flowers—of what genus, she did not know. Insects were hovering over the flowers, and little birds were swooping everywhere, eating their fill.
“Heather! Heather!”
Olivia was calling her. She walked back to the brother and sister. “I’m here,” she said.
“Matt wants to speak to you,” Olivia said.
She nodded and took the walkie-talkie. “Matt?”
“We need to get this sorted today. Now. Where are you, Heather?”
“We’re north of…we’re somewhere.”
“Can you walk to the farm?”
“Yes.”
“Are the kids healthy enough to walk or should we get a car for them?”
“The kids are healthy.”
“OK, so just walk to the farm. Come in with your hands up. We’ll see you soon.”
Her head was throbbing.
“No,” she said.
“No, what?”
“I’m not going to do that. You killed Petra, you tortured Hans. You’ve got Tom over a barrel, and I don’t trust you, Matt.”
“You’re going to screw everything up again, Heather,” Matt said.
“I want…I want…”
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk to Tom in person. I want him to tell me it’s OK to trust you.”
“Nah, mate, a deal is a deal. It’s done. You come to the farm.”
“I won’t do that deal. Tom is under duress; I don’t know what you’re threatening him with. I have two conditions. First, I want to talk to Tom in person, alone, with none of you around, before I agree to give us all up. Second, I stay here as your hostage, not the kids. Me. Tom takes the kids with him when he goes to get the money. The kids leave this island with Tom and they never come back. When you get back here with the money, you let me go.”
Matt took a long while before coming back on the walkie-talkie.
“We agree to the second condition,” he said. “Tom can take the kids to Melbourne as long as you stay as a hostage. But we can’t agree to the first condition. Tom can’t be moved.”
“I’ve got to meet with him, I have to talk to him, I need to know it’s safe. I need him to convince me to trust you after everything I’ve seen,” Heather insisted.
There was another long pause before Matt came back on. “OK. Tell you what—northeast of the farm there’s an area of burned heathland. The grass has been completely torched. No places for anybody to hide there. There’s a black, dead eucalyptus tree.”
“I know it,” Heather said.
“You can meet Tom there. We can get everything prepared for later today. Six p.m.”
“I’ll be there,” Heather said.
43
After strapping the Lee-Enfield over her shoulder, Heather gave Owen the binoculars and Olivia the canteen.
She held Olivia’s and Owen’s hands and they walked south through the blowfly grass and the spinifex and the kangaroo grass and the bladygrass.
She didn’t feel the blades or thistles anymore.
She didn’t feel anything.
Not the flies.
Not the heat.
No one spoke.
They were going to make a deal. It was the best deal possible. She wanted the kids off the island.
She would stay here.
Danny and maybe some of the others would try to rape her. Matt might try to stop them, but he was a brother-in-law, not a brother.
Tom would know this. He was a good man, a moral man, but he was a desperate man too.
Each footstep brought her closer to the horror.
She racked her brain for alternatives.
But there were none.
A miracle had happened. Tom, whom she had seen killed, was alive!
He was the smartest man she’d ever met. And if he trusted them, she would have to trust them too.
They continued walking in silence.
The sun would set in an hour or so.
They were close now.
The farm itself wasn’t really visible, since it lay in the gully between two hills, but she could see a plume of white smoke from a cooking fire. They must be boiling the well water to drink it.
She smiled at that.
Despite what Matt had said, she was glad she and Hans had inconvenienced them. They deserved it. And her plan might have worked. She had made them sick, killed their dogs, destroyed their fuel. If she had gone on to do a series of raids and make their life hell, perhaps they would have given her the ferry just to get rid of her.
Perhaps.
They reached the brow of the hill and now on the other hill they could see the dead eucalyptus tree surrounded by scorched earth.
“So this is it,” she said, smiling at the children. “You’ll get to see your dad and you’ll get to go home.”
“What will happen to you?” Olivia asked.
“We’re going to do a swap. I’m going to stay with them as a sort of, well, a sort of hostage, I suppose. When you’re back in the city, Tom’s going to give them money and they’ll let me out.”
“We’re going to trust them?” Olivia said.
“Yes. Your dad thinks it’s OK. They saved his life.”
Owen shook his head and sat down in the grass.
“Come on, Owen.”
“Sit, please,” he said.
He was looking at her seriously. His gaze was determined. She’d never seen him with such a steady look in the year she’d known him.
“What’s up, Owen?”
“Please sit—if we stand here for a long time, they’ll see us,” he said.
“OK.”
She and Olivia both sat down in the long grass.
“I don’t want you to make this deal,” Owen said.
“I don’t want to make it either, but it’s the only way we can get your dad back.”
He was struggling with his words.
She waited.
“I—I want to stay with you. I don’t want Dad back,” Owen said.
“What are you talking about?” Heather asked.
“You know I build this wall in my head out of Minecraft bricks. And I hide stuff behind it that I don’t want to think about or see ever again,” Owen said.
“I know.”
“Sometimes I hide behind the wall, and sometimes I hide things back there that I don’t want to see again.”
“Sure.”
“And if you build the wall thick enough and high enough, you forget what’s back there.”
“It’s fine, Owen, it’s a coping mechanism. You and your sister have been through so much in the past year. Lord knows—”
“No. You don’t get what I’m saying. Neither of you do. You don’t know what’s behind the wall. Neither did I, really. Or anyway, I didn’t want to think about it. But my head’s been clear lately. At least since we got the water.”
“Well, that’s good, Owen, it—”
“Please just listen. What did Dad tell you about what happened to Mom?” Owen asked.
“That it was just an accident, that’s all. Your mom was a very brave woman. All those years with MS. And then when she began to deteriorate…looking after you guys, doing her work. She sounds like she was an amazing person.”
“What did Dad tell you exactly about the accident?” Owen asked.
Heather began to feel cold again.
“What he told everyone. He found her. She fell down the stairs. She’d been unsteady on her feet.”
“He left out the bit about the drinking?”
Heather nodded. “Yes…well, no, he told me the truth eventually. I don’t blame your mom. I’d drink too if I got diagnosed with something like that. It’s not her fault. She was a good mom and she was trying to cope.”
“My mom didn’t drink. Not heavily. And she didn’t commit suicide either.”