The Shadow House(5)

I parked. Took a look around. And promptly fell in love. The rolling hills, the forest, the colour and the light … I’m home, I remembered thinking, before telling myself to snap out of it and mainline some caffeine in case I started hallucinating.

I didn’t stay long that day, and I didn’t see Kit. I spoke briefly to a woman who assumed I was lost (when I didn’t correct her, she gave me directions back to the freeway), and then I drove home. I told myself I’d put Pine Ridge in my back pocket, save it for a rainy day. And when the rain finally – and inevitably – fell, I made a call. Fortunately, Kit seemed happy for me to pay the three months’ rent upfront and in cash when I arrived.

At the time, it’d felt like the best idea in the world. But now, standing in my new kitchen, the whole thing felt very rushed and I questioned myself all over again.

‘Well,’ said Jenny, ‘if you two already know each other, I’ll get out of your way. Alex, it was lovely to meet you. Have fun unpacking, and if you need anything, just ask.’ Giving me a quick pat on the arm, she disappeared out the door, leaving me alone with Kit.

‘Fast work,’ he said, stepping inside the unit and nodding at all our boxes and bags. ‘Looks like you’ve got your roots down already.’

‘Not our first rodeo,’ I said. ‘And Jenny helped. She’s very nice.’

‘I’m sorry, I should’ve been here, too. I honestly don’t know where the day has gone. Can I bribe you into forgiving me?’ He handed me the wine: a buttery-gold white with a handwritten label. ‘A little welcome gift, homemade by one of our residents. And this is bread and cheese.’ He put the paper bag on the kitchen bench. ‘I thought you might be hungry after your journey.’

‘Thank you.’ An embarrassing blush crept up my neck. Looks-wise, Kit wasn’t especially remarkable: average height and build, brown eyes, thick eyebrows and sharp lines that ran down each side of his mouth when he smiled. But he had some major charisma going on, and something about him made it hard to look away, like when a painting draws your attention but you can’t articulate why.

There was an awkward pause I didn’t know how to fill. I became painfully aware that I was a mess: dirty hair, no make-up, denim shorts and an unflattering T-shirt I’d thrown on in the dark that morning. I hadn’t even showered yet. Kit, by contrast, looked fresh, clean and confident. His T-shirt, I noticed, bore a swirling eye-like symbol below the words What’s your truth? I almost laughed. My truth? Oh, honey, you don’t want to know.

I cleared my throat. ‘Sorry, I should introduce you to the kids. This is Kara.’ I bent down to lift my daughter from the floor where she’d been rolling around on her mat, safely hemmed in by boxes, holding her toes and babbling to herself. She clung to me and shoved her whole hand in her mouth.

Kit gave her a wave. ‘Ah, she’s beautiful.’

I smiled at her proudly. ‘She knows it, too.’

Kara removed her hand from her mouth and blew a spit bubble. ‘Bah bah,’ she said, and banged her hands together like she’d just performed a magic trick.

‘My son Ollie’s around here somewhere, too. I’ll go find him.’

‘No, it’s alright, let him settle in,’ Kit said. ‘Can I help you bring anything else up from the car?’

‘No, I think we’re all done.’

‘In that case,’ said Kit, ‘why don’t I show you around the village? I’ve just about got enough time to give you the grand tour.’


Stuffing Kara in her pram and forcibly dragging Ollie with me, I followed Kit around Pine Ridge, oohing and aahing at all the special features. We walked back to the main gate and started with the site office, a cleverly renovated shipping container set in its own little garden. Through the glass wall at one end, I could see a long tidy desk, and two chairs set up in front of large computer screens. ‘That’s where I spend most of my time,’ said Kit. ‘If you have any problems or questions, you can usually find me in there.’

Next to the office was a long shed with a mechanical code-lock on the door and a sign that said Food Store. Behind that was a stretch of lush garden, bursting with colour, and even further beyond, a long row of curved greenhouses covered with plastic sheeting. ‘There were fourteen originally,’ Kit said, ‘but only one or two were still in use when we bought the land. The plastic had all blown off and the beds were overgrown, but they had heaps of potential. We’ve got nine of them back up and working now.’

In the centre of the village overlooking the dam was a community hall, a gym and a small cafe run by a volunteer. ‘We’ve got plans to build a bigger one over by the greenhouses,’ Kit explained, ‘along with a pool and a wellness centre.’

There was a tool library, from which any resident could borrow any DIY instrument imaginable, and an actual library, well stocked with new titles. Kit also showed us two different playgrounds. ‘We try to give the kids as much to do as possible to get them off their screens and outside. Although they really don’t need much encouragement. They seem to want to be outdoors all the time, even when the weather’s crap.’ A brand-new climbing wall and a skate ramp, he said, were on their way.

We carried on past more houses, more gardens and a third playground. The village was anything but busy, but now I could see what I’d missed from the position of our unit: a quiet but constant buzz of low-level activity. Parents with small children playing on the shores of the dam; work-from-homers taking coffee breaks on their balconies; retirees in hats and gardening gloves, kneeling in dirt, ripping weeds from the soil. Everyone smiled and waved as we strolled past.