She walks stiffly to the rocking chair under the window, groaning when she sits down. “She always had a thing for pelicans.”
Chris picks up a porcelain cat with a chipped ear. “She was living with you at the time of the attack?”
“Yeah, I used to tell Hannah that as soon as her back was turned, they were all going in the bin.” She shakes her head, half smile on her lips. “She went outta her way to pick the ugliest ones,” she says more to herself. “Think she felt bad for ’em.”
I nod at the sagging couch. “Do you mind?”
Chris trips over a pair of kicked-off slippers and the dog bolts awake, staring blankly at him like it’s never seen a visitor before.
“You like dogs?” Kat asks.
I sit down, holding out the back of my hand to the dog, who blinks at me. “Love them. I have a goldie at home. Jessie.”
Chris hovers at the display cabinet while the dog whale-eyes him. “Does he bite?”
“Yeah,” she says, unconcerned. “Heard there was another attack in Kangaroo Bay. Have they identified the victim yet?”
“No.”
She stares out a grimy blind, sucking her teeth. “Their poor family.”
Has there been an update?
I pull out my phone. “Can you tell us about Hannah?”
She flicks an eyebrow up, exhaling, like she hasn’t been asked that for a very long time. The ceiling fan whirs while we wait for her response. When I’m sure she’s not looking, I jerk my head at Chris, give him asit down on the bloody couchmotion. He grimaces at the dog, sidling past it, and sits so close to me that his knee touches mine.
“She was always up for adventure,” Kat finally says. “Bit of a handful, to be honest. A rule breaker. She loved the water, swimming, kayaking, diving. Full of life, she was.” She pauses, eyes darkening. “Nobody deserves to die like that.”
I spent last night reading about Hannah’s attack. The word that kept coming up washorror.
The beaches across Kangaroo Bay will be closed this week after a swimmer died from “catastrophic injuries” in a horror shark attack.
Remains of the swimmer were later found, including half a wet suit, in what police describe as a horrifying scene…
No one witnessed the attack. Her car was found abandoned at beach 4 on July 4, 1998. My mum went missing a month later.
“What brought her to Kangaroo Bay?” Chris asks. “It’s not exactly the nicest area.”
“Why’s that?”
Chris nudges me.
“It’s a fishing town,” I explain. “Insular. Lots of grizzled old men, drunken brawls on a Friday night. The streets aren’t safe. But the beaches…the beaches are worse. In areas where there’s a lot of fishing activity, there tend to be higher rates of shark sightings and attacks. Because when the fish get caught on lines, the vibrations bring the sharks in.”
Her eyes are absent, mouth grim. She says something low under her breath; I don’t catch it.
“There’s a lot of beautiful beaches between here and Kangaroo Bay.” I lean forward and try to say the next part as tactfully as I can. “It’s a strange place to swim alone and at night.”
Chris pipes in, “Hannah was traveling by herself, wasn’t she?”
“On that trip, yes,” she says. “She’d made a bunch of new friends through her diving club. I called them her Water Mates. They were always surfing or diving up and down the coast. Lakes Entrance, the Mornington Peninsula, Phillip Island,” she lists. “Warrnambool.”
Donny left his home in Warrnambool in a white Mitsubishi Sigma in mid-July…
I bolt to my feet, and the dog lifts its head. I crouch over Kat, thrusting Donny’s picture in front of her face. “Do you recognize this man?”
She squints at the photo, leaning closer and closer until her nose actually bumps the screen.
