As she stood by her car, fumbling in her bag for her keys, there was a voice.
‘Meg! Wait!’
She looked up to see Felix jogging down the stairs and closed her eyes, summoning the energy for another conversation. She wasn’t sure she could handle any more today.
‘I …’ He hesitated, rubbing his chin. ‘I just …’
‘Yes?’ she said, frowning.
‘I know what you must think of us. I just want you to know that we’re not all like that.’
‘I know, it’s fine, it’s just … a lot.’
Felix nodded. ‘Your mum was really nice to me. When I came back from school for the holidays, she’d let me watchFriendswith her on the little TV in her room.’ A pause. ‘I’m really sorry about what happened to her, Meg. What Spencer did. And Mum.’
Meg felt tears threaten.
‘She didn’t deserve that,’ he said.
As Meg drove up the freeway towards Sydney, she replayed the conversation with Heather, trying to work out how to feel. At long last, she had an answer. She knew the truth. She was the product of a sexual assault. An act of violence, regardless of what Heather said. Spencer Ashworth was her father. A man who had gone through the world taking whatever he wanted. An entitled, selfish, pathetic man who was currently sitting in a prison cell. But he was nothing to her. Meg had inherited his DNA and nothing else. Every single thing about her that mattered, she had inherited from her mum.
She felt a pang of deep love. All these years, Meg had been so angry with her—about the isolation, the constant moving, the drinking, the emotional detachment—so resentful for what she lacked. Meg had considered her selfish and weak, but now she knew otherwise. Jenny was fierce, determined and loyal, sacrificing everything for her unborn child. She’d fought back against a wealthy, powerful family and made an impossible choice.
And she’d done it all for Meg.
Chapter 66
Issy arrived back at her Point Piper apartment to find a note from Hugh on the kitchen bench.Issy, I’m staying with Marshall for a few days. Let’s talk when you’re back in town. I want to work things out. H x
She stared at the words. How strange life was. Just days ago, Hugh was ripping a page from a notepad, writing these words to her. Now he was gone. She hadn’t cried yet. Not about Hugh, anyway. It was Anna she’d cried for on the drive home. A young girl, sexually assaulted by her employer’s son and paid to have an abortion. She’d barely been able to look at her mother once she’d told them the truth.
Issy crumpled the note into a ball in her fist and put it down on the bench. Her apartment felt foreign and unfamiliar. As she looked around the open space, her eye was drawn to a stack of her old Beecham Ladies College yearbooks on the tall bookshelves at the far side of the room. She reached for one.
It fell open on the page with Issy’s own year twelve photo. Her pretty face beamed off the page, head tipped coyly to one side, high blonde ponytail tied with a white satin ribbon. Beneath her photo was Stella Austin, fresh-faced, eyes sparkling, just as Issy remembered her. She touched the image, as though somehow it would bridge the years between them, the chasm that had formed that summer night, the day she’d finished her last HSC exam.
For the first time in twelve years, she let her mind travel back there, but the memories were vague, fragmented, a series of vignettes that unfurled from the deep recess in her mind where they’d been lying dormant all this time.
The steep bush track that led them towards giddy voices and a bass beat, the last traces of daylight lingering in the luminous blue sky overhead. The pop of a Champagne cork, bubbles spilling onto the dirt beneath their feet. A shot of something that tasted of licorice. Dancing. Sweaty bodies. Another shot. And another. Distant lightning flashing like a strobe light. The low rumble of thunder. Slow, fat raindrops gathering pace until it was hammering rain. Squeals of laughter as the crowd dispersed, running towards the dark path. Issy and Stella hand in hand, barely able to see the ground beneath their feet.
Then a sudden jolt on Issy’s arm as Stella slipped off the side of the path. Her friend’s face wincing in pain through gritted teeth, hands clutching her fat ankle. The distant voices of the others. The struggle to hold Stella, torrential rain still hammering down.
The car park was deserted except for Issy’s silver BMW, an early eighteenth birthday present, sparkling new in the rain under a lone streetlight. A cold white glow on Stella’s face as they sat in the car, sheltering from the storm, her cheeks wet with rain and tears. The recorded message of the cab company, over and over.
Issy closed her eyes and forced herself to face what happened next. Headlights glistening on asphalt, the air impossibly clear after the storm had passed. A Pink song on the radio. Then Stella’s face distorted as the car spun into a skid. Terror on the face of a taxi driver coming the other way, swerving to miss them. The sickening crunch of metal as they hit a brick wall. An airbag hitting Issy’s face like a punch.
Then everything stopped.
Silent. Still.
‘Stella?’
Nothing.
A siren pierced the silence.
Then everything went black.
Deep shame settled over Issy now like a heavy blanket. She’d known she was too drunk to drive, but when her parents picked her up from the hospital, there was no mention of it. And now she knew that they’d managed things so that it was like it had never happened. Her parents had paid the Austins to make a lawsuit go away, just as they’d paid Anna to abort her baby.
