Part One
Chapter One
Danika
“Cami, we have to leave in ten minutes,” Danika calls down the hall to where her daughter is no doubt engrossed in something in her room. A blanket fort maybe, or something involving those glitter tubes Danika’s mother bought for her.
A thump of feet on the floor, and Camille appears wearing her soccer kit. She’s barefoot, and while her hair is tied back in a careless ponytail, her lips are suspiciously red with what looks like Danika’s best lipstick.
“Gotta find my boots.” Cami disappears to the back of the house, one hand scrubbing at her lips.
Danika rolls her eyes. Cami is a mishmash—part soccer-loving tomboy, part princess who dances around in a tutu. The missing soccer boots will almost certainly take a while to find.
She picks up the car keys from the hall table and has one hand raised to open the door and check the porch when the doorbell rings. Danika frowns. She’s not expecting anyone, and if it’s the same religious hawkers that came last week, they’ll get a piece of her mind. She yanks the door open.
The woman on the step widens her eyes in surprise.
Danika looks her up and down. She’s not one of the washed-out women with their colourless eyelashes and loose-fitting longdresses who appear regularly to persuade her to attend their church. This woman has tanned skin and is taller than Danika. She wears her light-brown hair in a thick plait that hangs over one shoulder, and faint creases bracket her eyes. She’s dressed in baggy, rough-cotton pants that bunch around her hips and a nubby yellow sweater, which turns her upper body into a blob of sunshine.
“Can I help you?” Danika asks. She jingles the car keys. A charity collector, maybe, although she can’t see an ID badge or collection tin.
“Danika Evershed?” The woman shifts from foot to foot in her cork-soled shoes and flicks her tongue over her lower lip.
Danika gives a brief nod and cycles through the possibilities as to who this woman is. Maybe she’s moved into the house two doors up, although the sold sign is still recent enough that it hasn’t started peeling.
“I’m Kim Varga.” She glances at Danika’s face, as if searching for recognition.
The name means nothing. Danika keeps her face impassive and waits for her to continue.
Running feet thunder down the hall, and Cami—now in her socks—screeches to a halt at the door. “I still can’t find my boots. They’re not on the back deck, or in the shed.”
Kim’s eyes widen and her gaze snaps to Cami, and it’s as if she’s absorbing the sight of her, memorising every feature of Cami’s light-brown hair and narrow elfin face, her skinny body and gangly limbs, and her fingernails—glittery blue polish chipped and ragged. Kim sways, and her hand clutches the doorframe, but her eyes—alert, focussed, hungry—never leave Cami’s face.
Unease prickles its way down Danika’s spine. There’s something about this woman, about her laser-sharp gaze, and her abrupt, intense interest in her daughter that has her on highalert. Without taking her eyes from Kim’s face, she hands Cami the car keys. “Go look in the boot. Maybe you left them there last week.”
Cami takes the keys and gallops down the hall toward the garage.
Kim looks down at her feet and draws a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry; you must think me quite strange.”
The prickles are now a battalion of bull ants marching in formation down Danika’s spine. “Why are you here?”
“This is going to sound quite unbelievable,” Kim says. “I don’t suppose I can come in?”
Danika rests her hand on the other side of the door frame as if barring Kim’s entry. And she is, although there’s nothing to suggest Kim will barge past her and down the hall. “We’re off to soccer in five minutes. As soon as my daughter finds her boots.”
Kim bites her lip. “Then it’s best if I come back.”
“No.” The word spills out, surprising her with its force. She doesn’t know why Kim’s here, and she should tell her to leave and not return, that she doesn’t want to hear a long and involved plea for a charitable donation, or to join the Country Women’s Association, or to sign a petition against coal mining in Queensland—although she’s signed two of those already.
She should just incline her head and tell Kim she hasn’t time for whatever this is and close the door in her face. But there’s something about Kim’s agitation, the way she looked at Cami, as if she were seeing a ghost. Something about the way her fingers twist together, her silver thumb ring catching the light.
Danika will listen, then she’ll shake her head to whatever the request is, collect her daughter and her soccer boots, and they’ll go down to One Mile Oval where she’ll stand on the sidelines and wrap her hands around a lukewarm coffee from the stand, cheering on Cami as she races around the field. “No. Say whatever it is you’ve come to say.”
And she waits, an edge of irritation in her mind, wondering if Cami has found her boots yet, and whether they’ll be horribly late or just sneak in on time.
Kim nods, a sharp gesture, and flicks her plait over her shoulder, as if she wants nothing to come between her face and Danika’s. “You were married to Chris, weren’t you.” It’s not a question. “Chris Henshall.”
Danika almost nods but catches herself. There’s something surreal about this conversation, something too knowing about this woman—this Kim.
