Danika listens with half an ear as her mother talks. Then, with an exclamation, she stands. “I have to go. Next inspection is in ten minutes.”
Danika stands too, and for a moment she relaxes into her mum’s embrace. It’s warm and full of love, and she sighs and rests her head on her mum’s shoulder.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Dani? You seem distracted.”
She steps back from the hug and forces a smile. “I’m fine. Will you and Dad be around for dinner on Thursday? Cami’s dying to show off her cartwheel.”
“We’ll be there.” She rests her hands on Danika’s shoulders and studies her again. “You’re a bit grey and crispy around the edges.”
“I’m fine. Honestly.”
Her mum nods. “Okay then. We’ll see you Thursday.” With a wave of her fingers, she hurries away, her high-heeled shoes tapping on the concrete.
Danika sits again. She’ll try to put Kim and her disturbing allegations out of her mind. Because they can’t be true, there is no way they can, and the sooner she forgets about them the better.
Cami bounces alongside Danika as they head for the car. “Yes, I saw your goal,” Danika says for the third time. “You werewonderful. Nearly as good as Kyra Cooney-Cross.”
Cami sighs, momentarily distracted by the mention of her hero. “I wish. But one day I’ll play soccer for Australia like she does.”
“I’m sure you will,” Danika says automatically.
“Sylvie says you can get Kyra Cooney-Cross soccer boots now. They’re just like hers, and she’s signed them an’ everything. Can I get them, please? Please, pretty please?”
The last thing Danika wants right now is to go home. What if Kim is still there? Lurking, stalking, hiding behind the grey trunks of the gum trees. Kim doesn’t look like the sort of person to do that…but you never know. And Cami’s just given her a great reason to avoid going home just yet.
“Sure, we can do that,” she says. “How about now? We can have lunch out to celebrate your fantastic goal. Kyra Cooney-Cross had better watch out.”
“Yay!” Cami does a hop, skip, and a double bounce. “Can we go for noodles?”
“Sure.” Danika doesn’t care where they go as long as it’s not home. But Happy Face Thai is one of her favourites too.She must have the only just-about-to-turn eight-year-old in Melbourne who eats incendiary levels of spice and loves it. She pushes aside her worry about Kim and unlocks the car.
The Kyra Cooney-Cross soccer boots are almost twice the price of the ordinary ones, but Cami looks so thrilled, Danika hasn’t the heart to refuse her. And, she reasons, Chris’s life insurance policy gave a payout. It’s no consolation, but it’s given her some financial security. No mortgage on the house, money for holidays, and small treats like expensive soccer boots and lunch at Happy Face Thai. It’s not buying her daughter’s happiness—nothing can do that, especially not after the hell of losing her father so young—but if it’s in her power to make things a little easier for Cami, she will buy every pair of Kyra Cooney-Cross soccer boots on the planet.
Cami looks up from stuffing noodles into her mouth and gives a wide grin full of pad Thai.
“Yuck,” Danika says. “No ice cream for kids who can’t keep their mouths closed when eating.”
Cami swallows and grins again, this time thankfully food-free. “Can I have black-cherry ice cream?”
Danika’s heart swells. How lucky she is to have Cami. Even after the horror and hell of the last eight months, Danika thinks she’s a lucky person.
Danika wakes in the night with something tickling her mind. Something not quite right, something out of place, something she should think about. She looks at her phone. Two in themorning, a time she’s all too familiar with. For a moment, she lies there, breathing slow and even, listening to the occasional vehicle on Belgrave-Hallam Road.
Her single-storey house is on a side street, set back from the road, with a line of long-limbed eucalyptus trees between the house and the street. In the dark hours she’s been awake, she’s learned every night sound: the wind in the gum trees, the yappy dog two doors up, the shrieks and grunts of a brushtail possum. But her unease isn’t because of her surroundings. The house is quiet; there’s no sound from Cami’s room, and even the yappy dog is silent.
She gets out of bed and walks over to the window. Even here, on the outer edge of Melbourne, there’s too much light to see many stars, but a few shine in pinpoints of light in the inky-dark weave of the sky. She stands for a moment watching a possum walk along the power line, its brushy tail held high.
She turns from the window and goes to the kitchen for a glass of water. As she drinks, the tickle in her mind drifts into focus. She gasps, and her hand trembles, so she sets the glass down on the counter with a thump.
Something about her conversation with Kim comes back into her mind, not in a hazy drift of memory, but sharp, snapped into her head, a sound bite from the morning.
“I live in St Kilda,” Kim had said.
St Kilda…St Kilda. The name of the bayside suburb thumps in her head, and she sits abruptly on a stool at the counter.
That was where Chris was killed.
She knows she won’t sleep much tonight.
