JILL WAS AWAKE before the alarm sounded at five, but her eyelashes were glued shut. She prised them open carefully, groaned and rolled over. A sea of used tissues littered the ground; one was still crushed in her fist.
She pointed her face into the hot stream of water in the shower and thought again about what she'd ask Joss and Isobel. She figured these were good people caught up in some sort of bad situation, but this was no time for them to be stuffing around. It had been six days since the murder at Capitol Hill, and the taskforce had yet to bring in a person of interest. The media were slamming them on every news update. She knew that Last would want Henry Nguyen brought in today or tomorrow at the latest. They'd had constant covert surveillance on his last known address, and the superintendent had given orders to bring the other suspect, Dang Huynh, in on sight. Joss and his wife might have information that could close the net on these guys.
She pulled on knee-high socks and zipped skinny black jeans into calf-length boots. She tucked a long-sleeved black tee-shirt into her jeans and added a belt and a black jacket. The detectives dressed more casually out in Liverpool than they did at Maroubra and, sunshine or not, there was no way she was going to freeze her arse off out there today. She blow-dried her hair carefully and left it long, warm around her neck, dropped Visine into her red eyes and smeared Vaseline over her lips. She thought she was beginning to feel better.
She stuffed an apple, some industrial-strength cough lollies and a few more tissues into her bag and left.
Gabriel's car was there already, and he crossed the road when Jill parked, smiling at her. He's always so bloody cheerful, she thought, wiping her nose and checking her face in the rearview mirror before getting out of the car.
Joss opened the door before they knocked, his face a mask.
'Morning, Joss,' said Jill. 'Isobel here? We've got to have a talk.'
He stepped aside wordlessly and led them into the terrace house. Isobel stood by the glass doors next to the kitchen. She wore a terry dressing gown and her hair was still wet. She had an arm across her stomach and worry creased her brow. She glanced at Charlie, seated at the kitchen table, her little hand holding a spoon above a bowl of cornflakes.
'Hello,' said the little girl, scraping her chair away from the table. She walked over to Jill and held out her hand. 'I'm Charlie Rymill. What's your name?'
Oh how gorgeous! Jill's eyes said to Isobel, who smiled back tremulously.
'Hi, Charlie, I'm Jillian. This is Gabriel. We're friends of your mum and dad.'
'Do you want some cornflakes?'
'Finish your breakfast, honey,' said Isobel, walking over and guiding Charlie back to the table, at the same time that Gabriel said: 'Do you have any Coco Pops?'
'No, we're not allowed,' said the little girl sadly, shaking her head. 'Too much sugar.' Her big blue eyes were multifaceted marbles.
'Can I put some toast in for you?' asked Isobel tightly, walking into the kitchen. 'I'm making some for us anyway.'
'That would be great, Isobel, thanks,' said Jill, and Gabriel nodded. Jill followed her into the kitchen, and spoke quietly, away from the little ears at the table. 'We know you're on your way to work, but we really need you and Joss to call in late this morning. We have to have your help with this case, and it can't wait.'
Isobel nodded and slotted four thick slices of bread into the toaster.
'Could you put some more in for me when they're done?' she said to Jill. 'I'll just go and make some calls.'
Jill toasted more than half the seeded loaf and took it with a few jars of spreads over to the table. Joss stood staring out into his backyard, immobile, apparently uninterested in the near stranger poking around in his kitchen. He seemed preoccupied but somewhat less tense than the last time she'd been here.
Gabriel had already finished one piece of toast and was speaking to Charlie with his mouth full when Isobel reentered the room.
'Done,' Isobel said. 'Joss, I left a message for Eric that you might not be in at all today. I did the same with my boss,' she said to Jill.
'Thanks, Isobel.' Jill felt awkward sitting at their table with her piece of toast, interrupting these people's lives. She knew from experience, though, that refusing hospitality on a home visit added to the tension.
Isobel had dried her hair and with that seemed to have collected herself. She brought milk, sugar and mugs to the table. A few minutes later, a big pot of brewed coffee followed and she played gracious host for the next fifteen minutes, but took only a few bites of toast herself. Joss sat with them, but didn't eat a thing.
When Charlie had finished her breakfast, Isobel took her into the loungeroom and switched on the television.
'The Wiggles,' she said when she came back to the kitchen. 'Her favourite DVD. We'll be right for a while.'
'Great,' said Jill, eager now to get to the point. Gabriel sat back in his chair, relaxed, but she knew he was observing everything. 'There's no polite way to say this, Isobel. So I'm just going to say it straight because we really need your help right now. We know you two are holding something back about the night at Andy Wu's.'
Isobel's mouth opened; she looked hunted and guilty. Joss stared straight ahead, his palms flat on the table.
'Thing is,' Jill continued, 'we know the identities of at least two of the people committing these home invasions and we don't have to tell you how terribly dangerous they are. We want one of these men, especially, locked up right now, before he kills someone else. He's not in custody yet, though, and we urgently need to speak with anyone who knows anything about him.'
Jill paused. Music tinkled from the loungeroom, and she could hear what sounded like Charlie dancing. The kitchen was otherwise silent.
'Isobel, you and Joss know a lot about him,' she continued, 'and it's time you told us everything you know about Cutter – Henry Nguyen.'
Isobel jerked a hand to her mouth, her eyes darting to her husband. For a second his posture stiffened, as though he was preparing for sudden movement. Jill did the same. Suddenly, Joss's shoulders dropped and his eyes met her own.
'What do you know?' he asked.
'Well, we know that Isobel called the hotline and told us to investigate Nguyen,' she said. 'It's okay,' Jill glanced at Isobel, who looked as though she was about to cry. 'That tells us you do want to help. We have hard evidence – DNA – connecting Nguyen to one of the crime scenes, and we believe that he has participated in at least six home invasions. We also know, Joss,' she said, turning to him, 'that you knew him well when you were a kid, and we're pretty sure that you recognised him at Andy Wu's home.'
He was watching her closely.
'What we don't know,' said Jill, 'is why you haven't told us that. We don't want to believe that you're trying to protect this guy. Did you know that your wife called the hotline?'
'Of course I knew,' Joss said.
'Then why didn't you tell us everything the other day, Joss? We get it that you're worried for your safety. But why wouldn't you tell us everything you know to help us lock him up faster?'
Joss sighed deeply and raised his eyes to the ceiling. He then lowered his forehead to his hands. Isobel stood and walked to her husband; she touched his neck, tears running now. Jill wondered whether to speak, but Gabriel shook his head silently at her.
When he raised his face, Joss's eyes stared directly into Jill's.
'Look around you, Jill,' he said. 'Everything in this house is my world. I don't want this world to change.' He rubbed at his chin. 'I know that not coming forward was not very honourable, but I fooled myself into thinking that if I just tried to ignore the past, it would stay there. Stupid, really. I've always known that was never going to happen.'
Isobel, still standing at his side, rubbed his shoulder. He placed his own hand over hers and stood. He talked as he paced.
'It seems you know a bit about my life as a kid,' said Joss. 'What you probably don't know is that for the past twenty years I've considered that kid dead. It's like he was never a part of me. I can't relate to anything I did or believed back then. When I got the chance to change my life, I took it and fucking ran.'
Isobel flinched a little and watched her husband closely.
'You're right,' he continued. 'I did know Cutter. I suppose I would have called the group I hung out with at that time my best friends. My mother was out of it and my dad wasn't around. My friends were my family. There was nothing else worth caring about. I just didn't know any different. I know what a real friend is now, and the only one I have in this world is my wife.' He looked at her, his face serious. She smiled encouragingly at him.
'Back then, until I was twelve or thirteen, I didn't really care about my life or whether I was alive or dead. There's not much I can admit to being proud of. Everything was opportunistic. We'd steal anything we could get our hands on. Sometimes so we could eat, sometimes just for the fuck of it. Back then – when you've got nothing else to live for – it was fun. Stealing cars, smash and grabs, police chases…'
Joss stood now by the sliding doors, staring into the yard. Jill noticed Gabriel also rising from the table quietly, moving closer to him, wanting to catch every word, but unwilling to break the flow.
'Then something really bad happened,' said Joss, 'just before I went to live with my grandparents.' He looked up and seemed surprised to see Gabriel standing closer to him. 'Me, Cutter, Simon Esterhase and Carl Waterman decided we'd do over Carl's dad's bike shop. We used to call Carl "Fuzzy". He said his dad would get everything back on insurance, and we were dying to get our hands on these new trick bikes in the shop. Mr Waterman wouldn't even let us touch them. I don't know how it happened…' Joss paused and started to cough. The cough caught and his face turned red as he struggled to catch his breath. He stared wildly around the kitchen. Isobel was by his side in a moment with a glass of water. He downed it in two swallows, and handed the glass back. Jill felt slightly envious of the silent synchronicity between the pair.
Joss took a couple of deep breaths. 'Sorry,' he said, his voice devoid of emotion. 'Anyway, Fuzzy let us into the shop while his dad was asleep and we took the bikes. We came back after hiding them and knew we had to smash the window so it would look like someone broke in.' He cleared his throat again. 'One of the panels must've speared inwards. Somehow it stabbed Fuzzy in the neck.' Joss was unconsciously holding his own throat, his voice threadlike.
'You didn't actually see the wound being inflicted, then?' Gabriel asked.
Joss shook his head. 'I tried to hold his throat together.' Isobel was at his side, almost touching. 'But, he just, kind of like, drowned.' Tears stood in his eyes. 'He was looking at me, his eyes just…' He trailed off.
After a pause, he continued. Emotionless. 'Anyway, he died there while I watched, and then I pissed off. I got taken to my grandmother's after that because my mum got hit by a car. I heard a few months later that Cutter got arrested, but he didn't report me and Esterhase. I thought it was a miracle that I got away with it, a sign that I had to change my life.' He looked up at them, defensive, as though challenging them to doubt him, or to laugh.
He took a seat and began to tear a piece of toast into a pile of crumbs.
Finally, Joss continued. 'You see, where I am today, I don't want people like that anywhere near me. I don't even want to know they exist. When the shit happened at Andy's, I just wanted all of us to get out of there alive. I would've done something to stop them if I could, but there was just no way.'
Isobel nodded.
'And then, just before they left, he looked at me, and I knew it was Cutter. I don't know how, but I knew it was him. I know now that he recognised me too. He followed us a couple of days ago to the movies,' he glanced at his wife. Isobel's hand was at her throat. 'He said some smartarse things. I knew then that we weren't safe and that it was definitely him that night. I told Is I wanted her to move away with Charlie for a while, but she wouldn't go. I knew we had to tell the cops, so she rang you guys.'
'Joss thought that if we did it anonymously,' said Isobel in a quiet, pleading voice, 'that the stuff about Fuzzy would never have to come up. I mainly agreed to do it though because I thought that Joss was mistaken and you guys would look into Nguyen and figure out he wasn't involved.' She looked at her husband apologetically. He laid a hand on her arm and sighed.
'Anyway, I might as well tell you everything now,' he said. His wife looked at him, surprised. 'I've been back to where we used to hang out,' he continued, as Isobel drew in a sharp breath, 'and tried to find out more about him, like where he lives now, so I could pass that on to you.'
'Joss!' Isobel looked angry.
'Anyway, I can tell you he's still hanging out with Simon Esterhase.'
'We're going to want to know everything you discovered out there, Joss,' Gabriel spoke to him for the first time. 'But I'd like you to come out to Liverpool today so that we can record your statement. I don't want to miss a thing you've got to say next. It might be exactly what we need to get the lot of them.'
Jill and Gabriel left Joss and Isobel, arranging for the couple to meet them out at Liverpool at two p.m.
Joss lingered at the doorway as they were leaving.
'Just so we're clear,' he said to them, eyeballing each in turn, voice low, 'you guys had better get this fucker fast. I told you I'd do whatever I had to do to protect them,' he angled his head back towards the interior of his house. 'And you need to understand that I will.'
Lawrence Last was not in his office when they got back to Liverpool; an urgent meeting with the police commissioner, his assistant told them. Jill shared a sympathetic expression with the uniformed man behind the desk. The taskforce meeting was delayed until Last's return.
Jill and Gabriel spent the next half-hour working on a report to summarise their movements since the last meeting.
They were just wrapping it up when Jill sensed someone behind her, heading their way. She kept her eyes on the computer screen and tried to detect the identity of the visitor from his movements. Derek Reid, she guessed, just before he spoke.
'Don't you two make a cute couple?'
Jill kept typing. Gabriel grunted.
'Come on! Just shit-stirring,' Reid said. 'Got anything new?'
'Not really,' said Gabriel.
'Not that you'd share leads anyway, hey, Delahunt?' said Reid.
'We're just finishing up a report, but we won't have anything hard until later this arvo,' said Gabriel. 'We'll fill you in on everything in the next meeting. We've got a couple of vics coming in later today.'
Reid seemed annoyed by Gabriel's neutral tone. He took a step closer to Jill, and because she was still seated, his crotch was now in her face. She stood and glared at him. He laughed at her.
'You wanna get some lunch, Jill?' said Gabriel.
She grabbed her bag from under the desk.
'Aw, how sweet,' grinned Reid. 'Can I come too? Since you've broken your rules about dating cops, Jackson, maybe you should give me a go. I'll make you forget all about Super Spy here.'
'I don't really know what you're talking about, Derek,' said Jill, smiling sweetly, 'but you're going to have to get over anything happening between you and me.' She swung her handbag over her shoulder. 'I don't date body builders. It's a little problem I have,' she stared pointedly at his groin, 'with the steroids.'
'Whoa!' Gabriel laughed, and turned to follow Jill as she walked towards the door.
'What's funny, Delahunt?' said Reid, smiling menacingly. 'Why don't you stay here and we can talk about it?'
Gabriel kept walking. 'Forget it, Derek. I don't do cock fights,' he said.
Jill and Gabriel left the room with Reid's parting words: 'Fucking freaks.'
Facing one another across the moulded plastic table, Jill felt an awkward silence between her and Gabriel for the first time since the initial taskforce meeting. The other patrons of the food hall also seemed low on conversation. Overweight kids in school uniform scoffed burgers or pizza for lunch. A young mum seated close to Jill fed her toddler hot chips, the child cawing for them like a hungry seagull. Pairs of people – a mother and daughter, perhaps, on the left, sisters or friends straight ahead – munched listlessly, exchanging grunts now and then.
Jill felt the muteness stealing over her. When that mode kicked in, she sometimes wondered whether she'd ever speak again. Why did she feel this way now? It couldn't have been Reid's comments – God knows she was used to crap like that. She looked down at the table and noticed that she'd used her milkshake as a barrier between them. This was ridiculous. She forced herself to speak.
'So how did you get posted to this case?' she asked. They'd discussed his past briefly before, but never in any detail.
'Lawrence Last asked for my help,' he said. 'I worked with him a year or so ago on an organised crime thing. I've been attached to police units on a few major cases now.'
'So, why this one?'
'My specialty's interrogation. Because they were coming up with so little trace evidence at the crime scenes, they figured they had to get more out of the witnesses and suspects. Anything to get these fuckers.'
'Makes sense,' she said. 'We're an odd group, this taskforce, don't you think? I mean David Tran – what's going on between him and Reid? And I wonder how he got injured – has he said anything to you?'
'Yeah. I'm surprised you haven't been told by someone yet. Everyone out here seems to have an opinion.'
Jill leaned back in her chair while Gabriel continued.
'He's the community liaison officer in the area,' he said. 'First contact for the Vietnamese community. Some of them trust him. Most of them don't. Culturally, it's taboo to speak outside the family about problems. He's seen as a traitor by many of his people because he's operating outside of their rules of silence.'
'Wow. That would be hard.'
'Yep, but it's a double dilemma for David, because he's never been fully accepted by some of the cops either. What did I hear Reid say the other day?' Gabriel took a sip of his drink while he thought. 'Oh yeah, that's it – Tran was called to the desk to speak to someone about some information that could've helped with the case. Reid went with him, so I took a walk over there too. David spoke Vietnamese to this bloke. Reid was like – You wouldn't think we were in Australia, would you mate? – some shit like that. Then he had a laugh with the girl behind the desk, um, what was it – Why don't they save their bloody Chinese for China or wherever they're from?'
'MENSA candidate, Reid. He's wasted in the cops,' said Jill. 'So what happened to David's leg?'
'Oh yeah, that. Heroin dealers from Cabra. Smashed his thighbone with a hammer.'
'Oh my God!' Jill raised a hand to her mouth.
'Yep. He was off duty. They got him in the toilets in Westfield. He'd sent up a few of their best re-sellers.'
'Wow. But David said he was off work HOD.'
'Yeah, Last made sure it was written up as Hurt on Duty. And Last got the fuckers too. Tran I.D.'d the cousin of one of the perps he locked up. So, now they want to kill him.'
'Shit.'
'Yup. For real. That's another reason Last wanted me over here. The organised gang shit is his next big target, once they get on top of the home invasions.'
'So what about you then, Gabe? Are there any deep dark secrets I should know?' Where the hell did that come from? Jill felt her cheeks grow hot. She never asked questions like that.
Gabriel sat there, head on an angle, watching her from under the brim of his cap.
'Sorry,' she said. 'I was just stuffing around. You don't have to answer that.'
'No, it's okay,' he said. 'It's just that I'm not usually great at speaking about my past. Specially at this time of year.'
'This is a rough time?'
Gabriel looked at her again, closed his eyes briefly. Finally, he sighed and pushed his food away.
'I joined the Feds with my wife,' he said.
Jill hoped the shock didn't show on her face.
'We met in a psych lecture at uni. We got married and joined the AFP together four years later. Started work on the Monday after the wedding, actually.' He smiled. 'I started the job in organised crime and Abi was assigned to major fraud. Between jobs, we worked our way together through the MOSC program.'
Phew. Jill had heard of the Management of Serious Crime program: it was the most intense major-crime training program in Australian law enforcement.
'Then after September 11, we both got routed to counterterrorism,' Gabriel continued. 'Three-quarters of us did, to tell you the truth.'
Jill listened. He'd cleared up some of the questions she'd had about him. But where was Gabriel's wife? He seemed to have read her mind as he continued.
'Abi and I were together for ten years. She was my world.' A small smile did not reach his eyes; they watched a scene from another time. 'We were still based in Canberra, running surveillance. Just a routine tip-off – a member of the public worried about their neighbour's allegiances. The target was a mufti from Queanbeyan; he'd just visited the subject of another intelligence report. Abi was the eye, following him a few cars back. I was with the rest of the team shadowing her.'
'The eye?' said Jill, and then regretted her utterance. She didn't want Gabriel to stop speaking, and she was afraid of breaking his train of thought.
'Yeah. The eye follows the rabbit – the target. The rest of the team follows the eye and ignores the rabbit. You don't want a fleet of cars trailing some poor prick. We just tail the one vehicle – the eye – and the eye can be rotated; that way we can maintain contact and chop and change positions when we need to.' He paused.
'Go on, Gabe. Sorry I interrupted.' She held her breath.
'Nothing great left to tell you, Jill. Some drunk motherfucker ran a light and killed my wife. Head on. He made it out alive. Serial offender. Lived to drink and drive another day, I'm afraid.' He reached unconsciously for his napkin and began to shred it, working around the edges in an organised pattern. 'I was first on the scene, thank God.'
Jill leaned forward, as Gabriel's voice had dropped with his eyes to the table.
'We had a few moments,' he said. 'We had a bit of time… And then the ambos got there.' He cleared his throat. 'Nothing they could do, though. I'd already tried. Abi and I, we tried, but, the injuries…' He looked up. Tears stood in his eyes, and he smiled sadly. 'Five years ago,' he said, 'last Saturday.'
Jill reached a hand towards his, but stopped just before their fingers touched. She could feel the warmth of his skin.
'Saturday,' she said. They'd eaten pasta in his unit. She'd fallen asleep with his cat.
'Yep. First anniversary I didn't spend alone. Thanks.'
Jill knew all about anniversaries. She swallowed at the lump in her throat. They were silent a moment, each thinking about that time of the year when the ghosts crowded closer, clamouring for more attention. This time she let her fingers find his. She covered his hand with her own. What would it feel like, she thought, to find and then lose your soul mate – to feel her dying, leaving you, wanting desperately to stay, but knowing there was nothing you could do? The helplessness, the loss of control; is love worth risking such desolation?
Gabriel gazed at the table. Jill stared at a wet smear on the soft skin next to his eye. She longed to wipe it away. She had her finger poised, ready, but left her hand where it was.
'I bet she was amazing.' Jill wasn't sure whether she spoke aloud. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. 'Hey,' she said. 'Your cat. You named her "Ten".'
He looked up and smiled. 'Best years of my life.'
An itchy impatience prevented Jill enjoying twilight on her balcony. She sat rocking on a chair, bare feet up on the small table.
It was just over a week since she'd become involved in the case. They'd come a long way – identified the main offender – but he was still out there, and they couldn't go in hard until they sighted him. Interviewing his friends and associates would drive him to ground.
But this guy was unhinged. He could attack again at any time, with or without his crew. She felt guilty being home so early, but there'd been nothing immediate for the taskforce to do, and Last had sent them home. She'd considered driving around trying to locate him herself, but they had crews from Penrith to Redfern out looking; there was nothing she could do tonight.
The sound of gulls calling blew back on the salty seaweed breeze; the sound left her feeling inexplicably sad. She pictured them, endlessly wheeling over the ocean, crying. She'd never understood people's aversion to seagulls. Beady-eyed greedy devils, scavengers, some called them, pelting them with rocks, tossing cigarette butts at them, pretending to offer chips or bread. Jill could feed them by the hour, ignoring the baleful stares of others who didn't want to share the beach with the birds. She'd grown skilled at aiming the bread so that the crippled gulls got there first – those hopping on one leg, the fishing line that had strangled their other limb still trailing; those with one eye, or a hook gleaming through their cheek or their beak. The fatter birds stared at her, indignant: these rejects were the walking dead. Feeding them is pointless; life is for living. But she saw gratitude in the shiny black eyes of the wounded birds, or she imagined she did.
She scratched compulsively at her ankles with her toes, then stood, walked back into her apartment. Her thoughts turned to the story Gabriel had told her at lunchtime, but she deflected them. They'd spent every day together for the past week. She could spend a night without thinking about him. As usually happened when she thought about Gabriel, Scotty popped into her mind; she imagined him now, laughing eyes smiling down at her. She picked up the phone.
Maybe he feels like a run or something, she thought, dialling.
Idiot. Idiot. The word was now a mantra. Jill mentally repeated it over and over as she smiled self-consciously from her corner of the backyard.
You've gotta come, Scotty had told her. You're not doing anything else. You know my parents. It's just them and my sister. It's nothing, just a barbecue in the backyard.
She clutched a wine glass to her chest, trying to use it as a shield to cover herself in her flimsy new dress. Idiot. What the hell had she put this on for? At least she'd removed the butterfly pendant at the last minute before getting out of the car.
'This is new.' Scotty now stood at her side, barefoot in boardshorts and a white windcheater that highlighted his almost permanent suntan. Her bare arms left her feeling naked.
'Don't start,' she warned.
'Oh. I didn't mean the dress,' he said, 'although now you mention it…' He grinned and lightly fingered one of the flimsy straps. She shrugged away, half-smiling, tempted to spin and snap-kick as she usually did when he teased in this manner. That probably would not go down so well at this backyard barbie, nor in this dress.
'I mean the wine,' he said.
'Yeah, well,' she said. 'So?' She took another sip.
'Nothing. I'm glad you're here. So you've almost caught this crazy fucker, huh?'
'Well, we know who a couple of them are. The one we want is Henry Nguyen.'
'Yeah, I heard. Maroubra got updated this morning. The whole city's looking for him.'
Scotty's stepfather, Rob, stood at the barbecue turning the steaks over and over, beer in hand. Scotty's sister's fiance stood with him, talking and laughing. She could see Scotty's mother and sister, Rhiannon, illuminated behind a flyscreen, spotlit by the kitchen lights. Earlier, standing with them there, trying to help with the salads, she'd felt compelled to pull the blinds, knowing she could be seen but could not see out. Rhiannon, perhaps sensing her discomfort, had pressed a white wine into her hands and shooed her out the door. The wine was ice-cold, and she'd not noticed the first glass going down. She tried to sip more slowly at this second one.
'So, do you like it out there?' Scotty wanted to know.
'I don't know.' Suddenly tired of standing so stiffly, she dropped into the suspended swing seat next to her. Scotty sat down beside her. 'It's not so bad,' she continued. 'Better than I thought it would be.'
'I heard your new partner's a Fed.'
'Been checking up on me, Hutchinson?'
'What was his name again – Gloria? Gabrielle? I heard he's a bit, ah, eccentric.'
'Funny. That's the New South Wales Police Force for you, isn't it? Someone doesn't act exactly the same as everyone else and they've got to be a weirdo.' She pushed her feet against the pavers, stopping the movement of the chair. The slight swing of the seat was making her dizzy.
'You're pretty protective of him already,' he said.
'Yeah, well you're being pretty predictable.'
'What does that mean?'
'The whole testosterone thing – mine's bigger than his.' She drained her glass and put it down on the cushion next to her. Scotty picked it up again.
She stood, needing firm ground beneath her. 'I don't want to argue tonight, Scotty. Do you want to go down to the beach before dinner?'
'I'll just get my thongs.'
Scotty unlocked the gate at the rear of the garden and led Jill down the steep, sandy stairway behind the property. Jutting roots from wind-blasted shrubs twisted up through the sand, and she hooked a hand into the waistband of his boardies for balance as they negotiated the shadowy steps.
When they reached the bottom, the bushes gave way onto a sheltered cove. Jill hadn't been down here at night before. The glow from a pale, fat moon washed with every wavelet onto the quiet beach. A couple of anglers, highlighted by moonlight, sat on the rocks to their right. A fragment of their discussion reached Jill as she stepped into the cool sand, carrying her sandals; the distance between them scattered their words in the wind.
The sea air was deliciously cool on her hot cheeks and Jill breathed deeply, padding down to the shoreline. Whipped around by the breeze, she had to keep pushing tendrils of hair from her eyes and mouth. She walked, head down, watching her footprints melt back into the liquid sand at the edge of the ocean. She didn't realise she was smiling.
A shout from the fishermen caused Jill to look up, and she saw Scotty standing there, staring at her. He held her shoes. Huh. She must've dropped them.
'What're you looking at?' She smiled up at him.
With one long stride, he stood immediately before her.
'You're beautiful.'
So quietly. Did he really say that?
He dropped her sandals by his feet. Jill stood immobile in the sand, acutely aware of every sound and movement. Scotty reached out and caught a wayward strand of hair from her face, wrapped it around a finger.
Jill stopped breathing. Suddenly she knew exactly what she wanted. Scott Hutchinson. Now.
'Scotty.' She reached up and wrapped her hands around his neck, pulled his face down to hers. She closed her eyes, her lips parted.
Nothing happened.
Her eyes snapped open. Scotty's mouth was a whisper from hers, his lips curved in a small smile.
'What are you doing?' he said.
'I would've thought that was obvious,' she answered, trying to pull him still closer.
'You know, Jackson,' his mouth almost touched her own, 'we could've been doing this every night for the past year.'
'So, we're doing it now. Shh. Too much talking.'
'Except tonight you've been drinking.'
She dropped her hands, stepped backwards. Suddenly freezing, she wrapped her arms around her body.
'You think I'm drunk?' she said.
'Look, Jill, not drunk, but… wait!'
She snatched up her sandals and strode through the sand.
'I don't want it to be an excuse,' he called after her, 'a mistake. I don't want you to regret this tomorrow and freeze me out. Would you frigging wait a second – you're going the wrong way!'
What was the right way? Humiliated tears rolled down her cheeks. She felt ridiculous and so exposed in this dress. She would never get stuff like this right.