‘Nice.’
‘Not really. She’s pissed off with me because I keep missing deadlines. I told her I was sick of writing crap and she basically said it’s my fault because that’s what I keep pitching.’
‘Well, is it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I pitched her a story about suspected corruption in a town in the Southern Highlands. You know that Ashworth family?’
‘The hotel people?’
‘Yeah. Hotels and property development. The locals in Hartwell are unhappy about a deal done with them. Might be nothing, but Deb thinks it’s worth looking into it.’
Gav frowned. ‘Isn’t that good?’
She sat down on a barstool at the kitchen bench and took a sip of her wine. Was it good? She wasn’t sure. There had been a strange feeling niggling at her ever since her conversation with Deb. ‘I stumbled across it because Mum mentioned Hartwell the other day. She thought I was someone else, asked me if I’d travelled down from Hartwell. I didn’t even know where Hartwell was until I googled it later. It must have something to do with her past, don’t you think?’ Meg had told Gav all about her strange upbringing, alone with her secretive mother, moving every six months or so.
‘Dunno,’ he said, stacking microwave meals in the fridge. ‘Might mean nothing.’
‘Maybe.’
But Meg wasn’t so sure. She thought of the Indian neurologist with the musical lilt in her soft, accented voice. ‘Imagine that memories are organised on a tall bookshelf,’ she’d said, helping them understand the diagnosis. ‘As we make memories, we store them on the shelves, filling them up from the bottom, so the shelves at the top are filled with our most recent memories. Now imagine that someone starts to shake the bookshelf. The books on the top shelf, the newest ones, will tumble first. The memories at the bottom will barely move. Once the books at the top have fallen, the ones on the lower shelves will feel more recent.’
That night, after the appointment, Meg had scoured the internet for everything she could find on early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, searching for a glimmer of hope. Something she could hold on to, like a life raft. But the prognosis got worse with every click of her mouse. The bullet-pointed lists of early symptoms resonated with dreadful familiarity, her thoughts skidding back through all the little things which had gone mostly unnoticed over the past six months or more. She’d slammed her laptop shut halfway through the list of late-stage symptoms.
Jenny’s memory books were tumbling off the top shelves now. Meg pictured a pile of them on the floor. Soon the book of Meg would be on the pile too. It was already teetering. Some days it was as though it had already fallen, along with the ones about Jenny’s tabby cat, the apartment she’d bought six years ago and her neighbour Lynne, who had managed to befriend Jenny, despite her rebuffs. Already her mum had no memory of any of them. Maybe one day soon, Meg would need to wear a post-it note on her forehead:Daughter.
Was it possible that Hartwell meant nothing? Could it really be random? She ran her hands through her short hair.
‘Why do you think Mum won’t talk about her past?’ she asked Gav.
‘She must have run from something.’
Meg nodded and took another sip. What though? She reached for her phone and searched for Hartwell on Google Maps—104 kilometres. That was all. She could be there in one hour and twenty-two minutes. Was it possible that her mother’s past, the past she’d concealed for almost thirty years, could be so close?
She closed the app and rested her head on her hands. Her mother had been resolute in her refusal to discuss her past. There had to be a good reason for that, surely. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. That was the expression Jenny used, whenever Meg asked a question she didn’t want to answer.
She picked her phone up again and messaged Deb.
Been googling. Looks like Hartwell’s a dead end.
Chapter 6
The morning after the party, Issy woke late, her head pounding with a Veuve-induced hangover. She opened her eyes, baulking at the sunshine that assaulted her through the open curtains, then rolled over, putting her back to the window. Beside her, Hugh stirred and reached out a hand, feeling for her under the covers. He stroked her thigh and gave her a sleepy smile, then closed his eyes again.
Her mouth felt like sandpaper. She put her hands to her temples, trying to ease her thumping headache. How much did she drink? She closed her eyes again, trying to recall the night before. It was all a bit hazy. Very hazy, in fact. She remembered snatches of the night. Arriving with Hugh. The ‘surprise’ part. Spencer giving her the cold shoulder. Helen, boring as usual. Nadia telling her about doing ayahuasca in Palm Springs. Someone talking about Taormina. She had a vague memory of agreeing to go there in July with whoever she was talking to. Who was that? Then Hugh was dinging a glass—
Oh God.
He didn’t.
Did he?
The nauseous churning in her stomach intensified as she lifted her left hand. She braced herself and opened her eyes.
Golden light hit the princess-cut diamond and bile rose in her throat, bitter and burning. She scrambled to the ensuite, flung up the toilet lid and heaved over the bowl. Her skin prickled, eyes watering, as she slumped down in front of the toilet. The Prada dress lay discarded on the floor beside her. Shuddering, she pulled it towards her and wiped her mouth on the hem.
‘You okay?’ Hugh called from the bedroom.
‘Yep.’ Her voice was shaky.
