Jess skirted the house. It was an uncanny experience. She was for the first time visiting a place that, courtesy of Daniel Miller, she already knew quite well. The line of plane trees leading up towardthe shed, the Hen Hilton, the plant pot man—lying in pieces now—where the vegetable garden had once been laid out in rows. As she rounded the southern corner and arrived in the overgrown back area, she recognized at once that she was standing in the spot where Isabel Turner had created her rose garden. It was here that Thea Turner’s remains had been found in 1979, by the outdoor work group of the Nirvana Commune.
Jess wished she’d remembered to grab her phone from the car seat; she could have done with a torch. She longed to stay, to see whether she could open any of the doors to the house, but it was already getting difficult to see. The browns and golds and olive greens of before had darkened, and if she didn’t start making her way back now, she would be caught in the bush when night fell.
Jess went quickly, aware of the changing mood of the landscape. Trees that had been full of birds were quiet now. She sensed animal eyes watching her from the shadows. When she was very small, one of Jess’s favorite books at the library wasThe Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek. She’d found it frightening, and yet been hopelessly drawn to its eerie illustrations and story. Jess hadn’t thought of it in decades, but now the cover came back to her, with its scaled and feathered creature, born from the mud, emerging from the place where the dark things lived, lonely and unlovely.
By the time she neared the gate, Jess was almost running, and it was a relief to slip into the car, turn on the headlights, and drive away.
Home for the night was a small but cheerful bedsit above the garage of a modest brick bungalow off the main street of Tambilla. Jess was half an hour later than she’d arranged when she made the booking, but the woman meeting her was not put out. “I don’t live far,” she said, nodding toward the place next door. “It’s no problem at all.”
As they were parting, Jess asked about local dinner options, and the woman frowned at her watch. “You’ll be pushing it at this time ofnight, especially midweek. The hotel might be your best bet, unless you fancy driving into Mount Barker.”
Jess thanked her and set off on foot along the main street, which was lined with huge oak trees, strings of yellow lightbulbs scalloped between them. Jess thought, as she walked, of the descriptions of the town in Daniel Miller’s book. She passed the intersection where the churches of St. Peter’s Lutheran and St. George’s Anglican faced off against one another, and the stone Institute building inside which Peter Duke had conducted his community meeting in the days following the Turner deaths, and she picked out the buildings where Betty Diamond’s tearoom and Summers & Sons Grocers had once been.
So vivid in her mind was the book, that Jess half expected to see the businesses from back then thriving still, and she felt her heart sink when she saw there was now an artisan cheesemaker on the corner across from the hotel, and that the only grocery in town was a modern-looking IGA. A Portuguese friend had once given her the word “saudade” when she was trying to describe the feeling of being overcome by a weighty sense of absence for something that couldn’t be had or experienced again; Jess had never forgotten it. That’s how she felt now. Shemissedthe Tambilla of Miller’s book with an intensity that was visceral.
The Tambilla Hotel, at least, looked almost identical to the historical pictures she’d seen online, as did the Centenary Garden across the street. Jess, who was warned that the kitchen was closing in five minutes, placed an order quickly. The pub was decorated with a mix of German and Australian paraphernalia and offered a lot to look at, but there was still enough warmth in the day that she preferred to find a seat outside at one of the tables on the pavement.
Tambilla was pretty; Australian country towns were often a motley collection of different architectural styles, but the uniformity and preservation of the stone cottages along this main street reminded Jess of villages in the Cotswolds. Be that as it may, the spirit of the place had certainly changed since the time when Thomas Turnerbrought his family here. Daniel Miller had described an insularity—a town for local people—but it was clear from the type of shops that now occupied the settlers’ cottages along the main street that Tambilla did a busy line in tourism. Sheepskins, handwoven baskets, alpaca clothing, cheese, wine, jams—Jess was willing to bet it was all but impossible to get a parking spot along this street on weekends.
A young waiter brought her the drink she’d ordered, and she pushed aside the straw to take a sip. Visiting Halcyon had left her melancholy; the decrepit state of the place had been objectively dispiriting, but Jess found herself overlaying the property she’d seen with images evoked by Daniel Miller’s book, of sunshine and light, children and picnics and Christmases. That was the world Nora had known; a world she had never been able—or wanted—to share with her granddaughter.
Jess suffered a sudden wave of dislocation. A week and a half ago, she’d been sitting with Rachel in a Hampstead tapas bar, oblivious to Tambilla or Halcyon or the Turner family. What must it have been like for Isabel, she wondered, who had also traveled around the globe from the place she’d called home, who had lived through the chaos and noise of the Second World War only to find herself in a quiet town like this? The sense of country was so strong out here. Isabel must have felt herself a stranger in a strange land. The newspaper reports from the time had certainly made a lot of her “otherness.” Daniel Miller had mentioned it, too, as had the coroner. It had become a central narrative: that homesickness had made her “do what she’d done.”
As Jess ate her dinner of Coorong mullet, she read articles on her phone and wondered how she was going to gain a look inside Halcyon. When the young waitress came to clear her plate, Jess asked her what she knew about the house on the hill outside of town.
The girl, eighteen or so, tilted her head, uncertain.
“It’s called Halcyon,” Jess prompted. “Or maybe you know it as the Wentworth place?”
The girl shook her head and smiled ruefully. “Never heard of it, sorry. I’ll ask someone inside if you like.”
Jess was packing up to leave when an older waitress came out to the table. “Nikki said you were asking about Halcyon?”
“Do you know it?”
“’Course I do. Big house out on Willner Road.”
“I was wondering who owns the place these days.”
“There hasn’t been anyone living there for as long as I can remember. It was a hippie commune back when I was born.” She looked at Jess inquiringly. “Do you know the history?”
“I know about the Turner deaths.”
She nodded. “After they discovered the baby’s remains, the hippies moved out. Decided it had bad energy. It was the end of the seventies anyway. They all had haircuts to get and Reeboks to buy. The place sat empty for a decade or so after that, and then it went on the market. Bought by someone who lived overseas, from memory, but no one moved in. It’s changed hands a few times, but nothing ever seems to happen. Up for sale again, I think.”
Jess glimpsed an opportunity. “Do you know the agent who’s listed it?”
“That’d be Deb Green. Hang on a minute, I’ve got one of her cards inside.”
Next morning, as Jess sat in Marcus Summers’s office near the University of Adelaide, she thumbed the edge of Deb Green’s business card. Her flight left at two that afternoon, but she was hoping to be able to get back up into the Hills to explore the house before she left. It was going to be tight. Her meeting with Marcus had been scheduled for nine, and it was already half past. It was a forty-five-minute drive back to Tambilla and another forty-five from there to the airport. She had no baggage to check, but the car would need to be returned, and that always took longer than it should.
She glanced again at the clock and then at the young man behind the desk. He was an interesting choice of assistant, around twenty years old, with shaggy hair, earnest blue eyes, and a goofy manner of whistling while he worked. She supposed he was a law student helping out. “Won’t be long,” he said with a smile, catching her looking at him. “Cup of tea?”
Jess told him again that she was fine.
Marcus Summers’s office was comprehensively and eclectically full. Two walls were lined with bookshelves and the others hosted an array of artwork, some from nations of the Pacific, most by Indigenous Australian artists. She’d googled Summers the day before and knew that he had impressive qualifications and experience. He’d started out as a young lawyer helping on Mabo and been instrumental in various Native Title cases throughout the Northern Territory and South Australia. The only recent photograph she’d found online was from his website, a beautiful shot of Kakadu, a plunging waterfall with a tiny human figure standing at its base. The bio itself described a man who found professional and personal meaning in nature. In one of the interviews she’d found on the web, he’d said, “Morality is a funny thing. It often has little to do with lawfulness.” She supposed a lawyer was in a good position to know.
Finally, the door burst open and a man with a bulging stack of manila folders bumbled busily into the office. “Jess?” he said, peering at her over his blue-framed glasses.
