Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Kim
Kim stares at the closed door. Blue, with paint worn at the point where you’d push it open.
What was she thinking? What in holy hell made her get up this morning and think that while Bella was at soccer, she’d drive to the other side of the Melbourne metropolitan area and confront Danika with her findings?
No wonder Danika doubts her. No wonder she closed the door in her face.
Kim turns and descends the two steps from the veranda, walks down the uneven brick path, through the sprawling grevillea and out the blue gate to the road. For a moment, she looks again at the house. The door is closed and there’s no sound.
Danika had looked at her in irritation, then anger, then disbelief and finally anger again.
But somewhere between the last two emotions, fear had flashed across her face.
Not fear for her safety—Kim is hardly physically imposing, just another alternatively dressed, hippie-type woman with hair that’s a perpetual wiry mess, and not a scrap of makeup.
It was fear that, maybe, just maybe, Kim was right.
Her car is parked a few doors up the street. She unlocks the door and slides into the driver’s seat. For a moment, she rests her head on the steering wheel and closes her eyes.
What had she expected? Really? That Danika would welcome her with open arms and proclaim that Bella must come and meet her sister, and then she and Bella would move in to live like one big, unconventional happy family?
An image of Camille flashes into her mind. She was so like Bella. Darker hair than Bella’s dirty-blonde mop, but the same narrow face shape. The same lopsided smile. Seeing Camille was more of a blow to her heart than seeing Danika.
She raises her head and fumbles for the car keys.
She needs to get out of here, to be away before Danika drives out.
And she must cross the city again to pick up her own daughter.
How strange that both girls love soccer.
Or maybe not so strange. They share the same blood, the same genes, and Chris was a very sporty person.
That had been their first date—playing tennis.
Had Danika shared that interest with Chris?
Kim huffs a laugh that is part wry humour, part hysteria.
Danika doesn’t seem the sporty type. Her too-thin frame seems fragile, as if Chris’s death sucked away her essence.
Unlike Kim, who channelled her confusion and grief into activity.
She joined a netball team, and for the months that Bella took swimming lessons, Kim churned laps up and down the pool, staring at the lane markings on the bottom until she was light-headed and breathless.
She starts the car, sets the GPS for home, and pulls away.
There’s a sports field near the highway.
Kim sees kids Bella’s age in their red-and-blue soccer kit running around.
She hesitates and slows the car. Maybe this is where Camille plays.
Maybe, if she climbs to the top of the stand and sits quietly, she’ll see Camille playing soccer.
Danika wouldn’t notice her, and if she did, maybe it would make her rethink. Come over and talk.
She’s passed the field. She pulls into a bus stop. Turn around or go home. Go home or turn around. The pull to see Bella’s half-sister is strong.
No.
She should never have gone to see Danika.
She’s upended the life of a grieving woman, and for what?
Her own desire for answers. For closure.
Going to see Camille play, well, it would be stalking.
If Danika did notice her, she’d probably call the police.
Kim pulls out into traffic and continues along Belgrave-Hallam Road.
And if she looks in her rearview mirror, well, she’s checking traffic, not looking at the sports field and wondering.
Bella comes running to where Kim stands at the front door talking with Jorie’s mother, Suze. She flings her arms around Kim’s waist. “I scored twice!”
“And I scored once,” Jorie says.
“You’re both amazing,” Kim says. There’s still a tremor in her voice, but the girls won’t notice.
They disappear to the living area to continue whatever game they were playing.
Suze cocks her head. “You okay? You look…I don’t know…a bit spaced out.”
Kim manages a half smile. Suze is her mate as well as being Bella’s best friend’s mother, and she can usually talk about most things with her. “Not really. But I don’t want to talk about it yet. It’s complicated.”
Suze nods and touches Kim’s arm. “Any time you want to talk, give me a shout. We’ll ship the kids off to Sab’s for a sleepover and have ourselves a night in.”
“Sounds good.” Her smile is more solid now. Suze is a sympathetic soul, and she’s a clam with confidences. She’ll tell her eventually, when it’s all settled in her mind. What happened today. What she’s going to do next.
She wishes she knew the answer to that one.
“Do you need more time to yourself?” Suze’s dark eyes shine with empathy. She was the person Kim called when Chris disappeared, the person she confided in when it seemed Chris wasn’t who he’d said—although she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Suze the details.
“Jorie and I are going to choose a birthday present for Jaylyn’s party next week,” Suze continues. “Bella can come too.”
Relief trickles through Kim’s chest. Not relief that she can shunt off her daughter—Bella is her heart—but relief that she won’t have to pretend she’s okay in front of her. A few more hours to regroup, to slip her reassuring everything-is-okay mummy-mask back into place, is perfect.
“Thank you.” She squeezes Suze’s hand. “You always seem to know what I need.”
“No worries. You’d do the same for me. You have done—often.”
That’s true. Kim was there for Suze when her partner left her—not in a car crash, but for a younger woman with better bodywork, as Suze put it.
Kim takes a twenty-dollar note from her purse and hands it to Suze.
“I’ll check Bella’s okay with this—I’m sure she’ll be delighted.
If she goes, she can pick a present for Jaylyn too. Can you hang on to this for her?”
“Perfect.” Suze tucks the note into the pocket of her jeans.
Kim follows the sound of giggling to the back of the house and asks Bella if she wants to go shopping with Jorie.
“Duh,” says Bella. “Of course.”
And that’s sorted, and Kim suddenly has precious hours to herself to let the events of the morning settle into some sort of place.
With a wave to Suze, she returns to her car and drives off.
Where to go? A walk, she thinks, not a run or a swim.
The gentler exercise will allow her to process what’s happened.
She drives further around Port Phillip Bay, parks by Sandringham Yacht Club, and sets her feet to the Coastal Trail.
It runs alongside beaches and clifftops, and there are cafés and places to sit along the way.
As her feet beat an even rhythm along the gravel path, she untethers her thoughts and encourages them to fly free.
Kim doesn’t let herself think about Chris, about Danika and Camille, about the shitstorm her life has become these past months.
She concentrates on the bay, the water, calm today, and blue, like irises, like her daughter’s eyes.
She thinks about her latest client—an older lady who’s hired her to declutter the family home after her husband’s death.
Her children are both in America, and they don’t want heavy furniture, their father’s shirts, or printed photos.
The widow, Eleanor, can’t face the cleanout, so she’s hired Kim to do it.
It’s what she does—help people sort through the detritus of their homes and decide what to keep, what to sell, and what goes to the op shop or the tip.
It’s ironic that Kim does this so well for others, when Chris’s shirt still hangs on the chair in the bedroom, a pair of his tennis shoes are in the wardrobe, and his favourite breakfast cereal is in the pantry.
She and Bella hate the stuff, but Kim still bought another box last week as the old one had expired.
And then, despite her best intentions, her mind is full of Chris again, although he never really left it.
Every time she looks at Bella, she sees Chris’s blue eyes and dirty-blond hair.
She sees his echo in the way Bella tilts her head when she’s concentrating, and the way she spreads Vegemite so thickly on her toast. Kim sucks a deep breath, and the familiar cycle of emotions cascades through her: sadness for a life lost too early, worry for Bella and how she’s coping, and anger.
A deep, dark anger at what Chris did—his deception, his lies—so many lies, so many enormous, unforgivable lies.
It was that anger that drove her to Danika’s door this morning. She’d wanted to see the other woman.
It was the wrong thing to do—she realises that now. Wrong to upend Danika’s life without warning, without preparation. Wrong to appear, throw something so unbelievable at her—and then disappear. Although Danika asked her to leave. Guilt intertwines with acid in Kim’s stomach.
She walks faster, powering along the coastal path like a woman on a mission.
And she is, in a way—she’s trying to shed her guilt in the sweat of effort.
At Red Bluff Lookout, she stops and sits on a bench.
It wasn’t as if she’d just found Danika’s address.
She’s known about her and Camille for the last five months, ever since the private investigator she’d hired to find out what happened to Chris requested a face-to-face meeting.
She should have run back then. Refused the meeting, and skipped off into the sunset with Bella, leaving Chris as an unsolved mystery.
But now, she’s come face-to-face with his widow. His legal widow, unlike her, who was his de facto. Not illegal, but definitely very, very unethical.
Even now, that makes her want to spit.
Kim rises and starts walking back the way she came. There is nothing more she can do about Danika. She can’t return there, and Danika is unlikely to contact her, even if she remembers her last name.
So she’ll return the way she came, albeit at a less heart-pounding pace. She’ll find a café where she’ll drink something strong with almond milk, and treat herself to a slice of cake, gooey and decadent, and hope the saying is true—that time heals all things.
And then, she’ll go home and clean the apartment until it’s time to collect Bella.
Because she needs to forget about Danika and Camille, and she might as well have a clean apartment.