The Shadow House(11)

When I’d seen all the houses, I circled back and went looking for the forest trails Kit had mentioned. At the edge of the tree line just past our house, I found the first signpost and followed it along a path that led uphill again, this time all the way to the ridge then back down to the valley floor. Hanging from my chest, Kara stared with wide-eyed wonder at the tall eucalypts, dangling creepers and huge muddy arboreal termite nests. I stared too, fully expecting poisonous snakes to slither out from the bushes or spiders to drop from the canopy. A city girl at heart, I was suspicious of most noises and flinched constantly; the ticks, mosquitos and leeches of Australia were a world away from the benign ants, slugs and earthworms I’d grown up with in England, and I still wasn’t used to them.

Kara stuck out her arms and gripped my fingers as we walked, and I calmed us both by pointing out all the different trees in a singsong voice. There were brown ones, their slick branches like muscular arms, red ones with gaping knotholes, and silver ones streaked with yellow and copper as if someone had dabbed at their trunks with a paintbrush. Look, there’s a bird’s nest! Look, there’s a cobweb! And then, as I reached out to show her the zigzag tracks on a scribbly gum, tracing the moth grub’s journey through the layers with my finger, I noticed a different kind of marking. Crude lines cut deliberately into the bark.

I went closer to take a look, expecting a name or a love heart. Ruby luvs Lachlan 4eva or some such cuteness. But instead I saw three sides of a square topped with an arrow, like a house with a roof. Inside the shape were three smaller symbols arranged in a triangle, but the carver hadn’t been precise enough and I couldn’t make out what they were.

A little further along the path I saw the mark scratched into the trunk of another tree. Then I saw it again, and again, always that same house shape with the three pictures inside. I didn’t know what it meant but it gave me the chills.

And then I heard a noise behind me. I jumped about a foot in the air and, in one instinctive and ungainly move, wrapped my arms around Kara and scampered up the path, anticipating a slithered pursuit. But when I turned around, there were no scales, no fangs, just Kit Vestey standing on the path in a black singlet and running shorts.

‘Alex,’ he said, his mouth round with surprise. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you there … are you alright?’

‘I’m fine.’ I paused to catch my breath. ‘Just startled, I guess.’

‘Sorry.’ A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘I was miles away and going too fast. Not as fast as you, though. Wow, what did you think was coming, a mountain lion?’

I tried to laugh it off. ‘Obviously. They’re pretty common round here, right?’

‘Positively rampant. Good to know your reflexes are in fine working order, though.’ He waved at Kara. ‘Hey there, little one.’ She kicked out her legs and smacked her lips in response.

‘It’s lovely in here,’ I said, nodding vaguely at the trees. ‘Much bigger than I expected, and so peaceful.’

‘I know, I love it,’ Kit said, wiping sweat from his brow. ‘I try and do a loop of the trails every day. There are more over on the other side, behind the dam. You should check them out. Do you run?’

‘Absolutely not.’ I shook my head, all too aware of how the baby carrier squeezed my tummy fat down until it oozed like toothpaste over the waistband of my shorts. I patted Kara on her velvety head. She reached up and grabbed a handful of my hair. ‘Not with this one hanging off me, anyway.’

‘Ah, no, of course.’

‘She weighs a ton these days.’ Wincing, I prised the strands from her chubby fists. ‘Actually, speaking of, it’s probably time for us to head home.’

Kit nodded. ‘Good call. Mind if I walk with you?’

‘Sure, of course.’

The forest didn’t seem so sinister with someone else around. We set off back down the trail, settling into an easy conversation, leaving the snakes, spiders and tree carvings to their own creepy business. I chattered almost nonstop to hide the fact that Kit’s presence made me nervous; my head knew much better but, faced with a decent-looking guy with a kind smile, my heart was an idiot every time. The beads of sweat on his skin, the freckles on his shoulders, the heat that seemed to roll off him in waves … just the nearness of him gave me tingles.

I pushed the feeling away. No good could come of it. My fool heart could sit back down; I had to be on Team Head this time.

Kit asked polite questions about the kids, how Ollie was settling in and whether or not I’d thought about schools for the following year. I’d answered with the truth, that Ollie had struggled socially at his last school, so I would let him skip the final few weeks of term and think about enrolling him somewhere new in January. I might even homeschool; how hard could it be? Pretty fucking hard, I secretly suspected. Kara would want to be on me twenty-four seven, I would be distracted and Ollie would be bored. His frustration would escalate as my patience ran dry. He would ignore my repeated efforts to police his screen time, spending his days gaming, scrolling listlessly through YouTube and eating his way through the contents of the fridge – and I would let him, to ease my guilt.

Fortunately, I now had the food part of that scenario covered. We’d had a constant stream of visitors the previous afternoon, Pine Ridge residents welcoming us with locally produced milk and eggs, honey and jam, apples and onions. Some had even brought home-cooked dishes: veggie lasagne, mushroom stroganoff and a steaming ratatouille. I’d opened the door to a salt-speckled family of five, the kind of people you’d find travelling around Australia in a campervan; two artsy-looking women and their daughter; an elderly man with cotton-wool hair; and a softly spoken couple called Paul and Simon who owned a fat blonde Pug called Al (the only names that stuck in my head, for obvious reasons). I was especially happy to meet a sweet dark-haired woman around my age, a fellow single mum who thrust a homemade carrot cake into my hands and introduced herself as Layla. ‘Welcome to Pine Ridge,’ she said in a folksy voice. ‘We’re so happy to have you here.’