Exiles (Aaron Falk #3)(21)

Raco turned back to the water. It was a silky pool of ink now, under the night sky.

“That’s one of Zara’s issues, though. She reckons one of them up there last year—her, specifically—would have noticed Kim down here.”

“What do you think?”

“Silently stepping off this edge?” Raco’s eyes were almost black in the evening light. “I think you could be here and gone in ten seconds.”

They both stood with their palms on the barrier, considering that.

“I keep thinking about the day Charlie first met Kim,” Raco said suddenly. He straightened, removing his hands from the rail. “She was on her bike. She was fifteen then, I think, because Charlie had turned seventeen. We were still living in our old house, over near the police station, and we had this big front yard. Me and Charlie and Ben were out there one afternoon, messing around, kicking a footy and stuff, and this girl rode by. Kim’s hair was really long back then, and it was tied up in a ponytail, kind of swinging behind as she was cruising along, doing these big lazy loops on her bike along the road. She’d moved here that week with her family, so none of us had met her yet, and I remember as she rode by Charlie was like, whoosh—”

Raco had a faint smile as he whipped his head from left to right, following the imaginary path of the long-ago girl and her bicycle across the silent water in front of them.

“And Charlie just dropped the footy, ran to the driveway, grabbed his bike, and was—” Raco opened his hand like a puff of air. “Gone. Straight after her. And that was it.” His smile faded. “For as long as it lasted, anyway.”

Falk thought back to Charlie and Kim on the phone last year. As far as separated couples went, they seemed to have avoided the bitterness that usually followed. “What happened with them?”

“They just burned out eventually,” Raco said. “Maybe they liked the idea of each other more than they actually liked the reality, because they kept gravitating back. It was all intense for those first few years, and they managed to keep it going on and off through uni. I mean, Rita loves that story of how they met, but really it was a teenage thing that probably lasted way longer than it was meant to. Then when Charlie was—what, twenty-five?—Zara came along, and he and Kim tried to do things seriously. But realistically, I’m not sure they would have stayed together without her.”

Falk nodded. “Charlie wasn’t upset when Kim ended up marrying another local bloke?”

Raco raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, well. There wasn’t much he could do about it. He and Kim weren’t together anymore.” He paused as though he were remembering something. “The breakups when they were younger used to hit him pretty hard. The arguments would get worse and it took them longer to get back together each time. But Charlie’s mellowed with age, like we all have, I suppose. So that’s helped. And Rohan hasn’t lived here for a while, so he wasn’t exactly local in that sense. I mean, he and Charlie and the others were all friends at school and Rohan’s folks are still here, but after he left for uni, he never really came back. He and Kim were both working in Adelaide when they got together over there.”

“Still. Small world.”

“God, yeah, can feel that way. Especially around here. I don’t think it was a huge surprise, though. They used to be friends, both had this place in common, so there was that shared family background, but Rohan’s more—” Raco paused, considering. “I dunno. He’s an engineer, so he’s different from Charlie. Charlie—” He stopped again, and Falk caught a flicker of guilt. “Charlie had a bit of a habit of letting Kim down. Like with that stupid birthday visit last year. I mean, why couldn’t he plan ahead for once and organize something, so everyone knew what we were doing and it wasn’t a last-minute scramble?”

Falk thought back to the phone call last year. Disappointment, punctuated by awkward, tense silences.

“I know it’s not really Charlie’s fault, but it’s shit to know that was the last time we spoke to her.” Raco looked down at the water. “Kim was always one of those people you were happy to run into, you know? After talking to her, you’d walk away feeling better than you did before. That’s what I remember most about her, all the way back to that first day on her bike. Maybe that wasn’t so true lately, though. I don’t know. I hadn’t seen her for a few years.”

“Was that confirmed, what Zara said about her having postnatal depression?”

Raco nodded.

“She had it after Zara was born as well, apparently, but it sounds like this time was worse. We found out later she’d been on antidepressants for a while before she was even pregnant with Zoe. So it wasn’t just postnatal.”

“She didn’t tell anyone?”

“Rohan knew, but says he didn’t realize the full extent of it.”

“What do you think?”

“Well, she didn’t tell anyone else at all, as far as I know, so it’s believable that she was hiding things.”

Falk nodded. It was a warm night and the moon was rising. The way the water pooled out in front of them, shining and placid, it looked almost inviting. “Had anything like this thing with Kim happened before around here?”

“Anyone jumped?” Raco shook his head. “There are old stories, but not in my time. Everyone knows this is a dangerous spot, though. We all warn the kids not to muck around.” Raco leaned against the barrier and sighed. Near his hand, Falk could see a small plaque screwed into the wood. He tilted his head, but it was too dark to read the inscription at that angle. Raco saw him looking and glanced down.