Nora’s cheeks still burned when she thought back to the extravagant way she’d behaved when he went away to the war: twelve years old, but she’d wailed and raged like a distraught little child. Four years later, when the letter finally arrived to say that the war was over and he was coming home, she felt as if she’d been reborn. He had written again from London on the morning he set sail, promising a big surprise. Nora had hoped for a portion of Liberty fabric, suspected he would bring a book, but in truth wanted nothing more than to have him back.
She doubted anything could have prepared her for what he brought with him. “Are you ready?” he’d said, on the morning she met him off the boat at Circular Quay. Nora had followed his gaze when he glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see a porter bringing a trolley with his bags. Instead, a woman stepped forward, and Nora was immediately conscious of the slipped stitches in her own hand-patched dress. The other woman was elegance personified. Her skin was like alabaster, and Nora was reminded suddenly of the admonishments of various governesses over the years to wear a hat in the scorching midday sun.
“Nora Turner,” Thomas had said, with the broadest of smiles, “meet Isabel Turner.”
Funny to think about it now, but Nora’s first thought was how extraordinary it was that this woman, this friend of Thomas’s from England, could possibly share their surname. (Her second, third, and fourth thoughts were all to do with the tiny bundle in the other woman’s arms.)
Also amusing in retrospect: Nora had refused initially to give away her allegiance. For her brother to marry was bad enough, she’d felt, but to do so without her—that was impiety, plain and simple. To have a baby? Unthinkable. But Isabel was like no one Nora had met before. She was beautiful, of course—the otherworldly clarity of her English skin!—and possessed of the sort of poise Nora could only dream about. Beyond that, she was magnetic. Try as Nora might, she couldn’t resist her brother’snew wife. First, there was her voice when she spoke, that crisp accent and authoritative diction that made Miss Perry (strictest in a long line of governesses) seem like a drover’s wife by comparison; next, there was her laugh, which rose like bubbles in a glass of champagne.
And then there were her stories. True tales of adventure and daring, rivaling anything Nora had read in herGirls’ Crystal Annuals: during the Blitz, Isabel had handled secret papers in Whitehall and later worked in some sort of capacity that she wasn’t able to speak of at length (at least not then and there). Even more excitingly, she was an orphan—a real one, just like a girl in a book, whose parents had died in tragic circumstances when she was only young, casting her out of the nest and into a childhood of boarding schools and midnight feasts and hockey sticks and daring japes. Nora couldn’t think of anything more romantic.
Finally, there was baby Matilda, Nora’s very own niece, born en route to Australia and the most precious child imaginable. Little wonder Nora had come to love Isabel like a sister. An older sister, just that bit further ahead on life’s path: a sympathetic ear, a giver of advice, a funny, clever co-conspirator who always had the courage of her convictions yet could send Nora into peals of laughter with an unexpectedly ribald joke. It wasn’t her fault that things came easily to her—her marriage to Nora’s brother; her charm; her beautiful, healthy children, one after the other. If it were anyone else, Nora’s admiration might have curdled into envy, but never with Isabel.
“Have you been feeling any better?” Isabel asked now, as Nora took a sip of tea.
“Better now than I’ve felt in months.”
“Well, there’s no remedy as certain as country air, so on that front, you’ve come to the right place.”
From inside the house drifted the faint sound of a crying infant, as soft as a newborn lamb. Isabel glanced at her wristwatch. “Right on schedule. I shouldn’t tempt fate, but it seems that I’ve finally given birth to a child who read the manual.”
She disappeared through the front door, and when she returned, she was carrying a small, cotton-wrapped parcel in her arms.
“Baby Thea,” said Isabel, “meet your aunt Nora.”
“Oh, Isabel...” said Nora, taking the precious bundle and resting her atop her own considerable bump. “She’s perfect.”
The baby stared at Nora’s face, her small, neat lips forming an O of concentration. Nora blew gently on the little one’s eyelids and smiled as the tiny child flinched and then blinked with wonder.
“She’s different from the others,” said Nora, pulling back the edge of the blanket to observe the baby’s fine wrist and smooth velvet skin. “Daintier.”
“They’re all individuals,” said Isabel with a shrug. “It’s quite astonishing how children born of the same mother can be so distinct from one another. You wait and see. Just as you think you’ve got this mothering thing worked out, the next baby comes along and upends everything you thought you knew.”
Nora smiled. Isabel was trying to be kind, but Nora knew by now that it was likely she was only going to have one child. Even without the stern admonishments from doctors, Richard would never consent to try again. He’d made that clear, in one of the last arguments they’d had before she left for Halcyon. Thank God this child—this precious little girl, kicking against her ribs—had defied the odds to flourish where doctors said none would.
“I’m so happy that our babies are going to have one another as they grow up,” she said. “They’re going to be as close as cousins can be.”
Isabel smiled, but for a split second Nora thought she sensedsomething forced about the gesture. Isabel’s eyes had always been more green than hazel, but when she was troubled, they seemed to lose their light, turning a sober shade of gold. Nora could have sworn it happened just now.
Then again, perhaps she had only imagined it, for when she looked again, her sister-in-law seemed her usual self.
22
Jess set down the pages. The scene had interested her in the first place because it offered a glimpse into Nora and Isabel’s relationship (how much more shocking the loss must have been for Nora, having known, loved, and even idolized Isabel since she was just a girl), but also because it hinted at how and why Isabel could have done such a thing. When she talked about motherhood, she sounded tired, jaded even, and although the sentiments were nothing Jess hadn’t heard her friends express over post-school-drop-off coffee, context is everything, and this was a woman who would be found only weeks later lying dead beside her poisoned children on the sunburnt edge of a quiet creek.
Of additional significance to Jess was the confirmation that things had not been rosy between Nora and her husband, Richard Bridges. According to Mrs. Robinson, Nora was at Halcyon because she’d suffered severe morning sickness and longed for the comfort and company of her beloved sister-in-law, recently delivered of her own baby. Fair enough. Daniel Miller’s pages seemed to back that up. But contrary to what the housekeeper had said, Miller’s scene intimated that the marriage was already in trouble before Nora reached the end of her pregnancy.
It was possible that Miller was simply making an informed guess. Nora had stayed on alone at Halcyon in the weeks following the Turner family deaths and Polly’s birth, while her husband remained in Sydney. Without knowing any of the details of their marriage, it seemed safe to assume that this wasn’t the behavior of a happy couple celebrating the arrival of their first child. But the particulars of the scene were so specific—Nora’s contempt for the man at the other end of the breakfast table, her disappointment at what she perceived as a lack of shared values, reference to the specifics of their arguments; these suggested that Nora had confided in Daniel Miller.
And although Miller didn’t say as much, Jess wondered whether there had been even more driving her grandmother’s actions than general unhappiness with her marriage.Issy, help me,Nora had said at the hospital on Monday when she woke upset.Issy, help me... he’s going to take her from me.She had sounded scared. Had Nora fled to Halcyon and remained there for as long as she did because she was frightened? Worried that if she ended her marriage, the husband she no longer loved, who had been waiting a long time for an heir, would fight to take her baby from her?
Considering the possibility almost sixty years later, it seemed feasible, except for one sticking point: Richard Bridges didn’t appear to have sought any custody or visitation rights for Polly after Nora finally returned and the pair separated. In fact, Mrs. Robinson said he had seemed to want very little to do with the baby at all.
Jess glanced out across the harbor, frowning thoughtfully against the glare. In a way, whether or not Richard Bridges intended to take Polly away from Nora was beside the point. It was enough that Nora had feared and believed it possible. She was nearing the end of a difficult pregnancy, a stressful period of life—the human mind was capable of all manner of misconceptions...
But something to do with Halcyon had worried Nora recently and sent her up to the attic. Patrick was adamant that her agitation had been sparked by the arrival of a letter from a solicitor in South Australia. Was it possible that Nora had consulted someone for legal advice while she was at Halcyon? Perhaps even found a way to prevent her husband from seeking and gaining custody rights over Polly? Did that explain his sudden about-face when she returned to Sydney?
Daniel Miller’s book had mentioned a solicitor, she remembered. A neighbor of the Turner family, a man with horses to whom Becky Baker had sometimes fed apples on her way up Willner Road. Howard, Hunter, Hughes? It was a long bow to draw (there was, for a start, the blinding question of “why now?”), but could the letter have come from him?
