The Light Between Oceans(100)

She turned her head a fraction, as if to understand him better.

‘I’m just asking, is it really what you want? A trial? Prison? You’ve got your daughter back. There might be some other way …’

‘Some other way?’

‘Spragg’ll lose interest now that he’s had to drop his murder malarkey. As long as this is still a Partageuse matter, I’ve got some leeway. And maybe Captain Hasluck could be persuaded to put in a word for him with the Lights. If you were minded to speak up for him too. Ask for clemency …’

Hannah’s face reddened again, and without warning she jumped to her feet. Words that had been building up for weeks, for years, words Hannah didn’t know were there, burst from her. ‘I’m sick of this! I’m sick of being pushed around, of having my life ruined by the whims of other people. You have no idea what it’s like to be in my position, Sergeant Knuckey! How dare you come into my house and make such a suggestion? How bloody dare you!’

‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Let me finish! I’ve had enough, do you understand me?’ Hannah was shouting now. ‘No one is ever going to tell me how to live my life again! First it’s my father telling me who I can marry, then it’s the whole bloody town turning on Frank like a mob of savages. Then Gwen tries to convince me to give Grace back to Isabel Graysmark, and I agree – I actually agree! Don’t look so shocked: you don’t know everything that goes on around here!

‘And it turns out the woman lied to my face! How dare you? How dare you presume to tell me, to even suggest to me, that I should, yet again, put someone else first!’ She pulled herself up straight. ‘Get out of my house! Now! Just go! Before I – ’ she picked up the thing nearest to hand, a cut glass vase, ‘throw this at you!’

Knuckey was too slow in getting to his feet and the vase caught him on the shoulder, ricocheting against the skirting board, where it smashed in a dazzle of shards.

Hannah stopped, not sure whether she was imagining what she had done. She stared at him, waiting for a clue.

He stood perfectly still. The curtain flapped with the breeze. A fat blowfly buzzed against the fly wire. A last fragment of glass gave a dull tinkle as it finally succumbed to gravity.

After a long silence, Knuckey said, ‘Make you feel better?’

Still Hannah’s mouth was open. She had never in her life hit anyone. She had rarely sworn. And she had definitely never done either to a police officer.

‘I’ve had a lot worse thrown at me.’

Hannah looked at the floor. ‘I apologise.’

The policeman bent to pick up some of the bigger pieces of glass, and put them on the table. ‘Don’t want the little one cutting her feet.’

‘She’s at the river with her grandfather,’ muttered Hannah. Gesturing vaguely towards the glass, she added, ‘I don’t usually …’ but the sentence trailed off.

‘You’ve had enough. I know. Just as well it was me you threw it at and not Sergeant Spragg.’ He allowed a trace of a smile at the thought.

‘I shouldn’t have spoken like that.’

‘People do, sometimes. People who’ve had less to contend with than you. We’re not always in full control of our actions. I’d be out of a job if we were.’ He picked up his hat. ‘I’ll leave you in peace. Let you think about things. But there isn’t a lot of time left. Once the magistrate gets here and sends them off to Albany, there’s nothing I can do about it.’

He walked through the door into the dazzle of daylight, where the sun was burning the last of the clouds away from the east.



Hannah fetched the dustpan and brush, her body moving without any apparent instruction. She swept up the shards of glass, checking carefully for any overlooked splinters. She took the dustpan into the kitchen and emptied it onto old newspaper, wrapping the glass safely and taking it outside to the rubbish bin. She thought of the story of Abraham and Isaac, how God tested Abraham right to the limit, to see whether he would surrender the thing dearest to him in the world. Only as the knife was poised above the child’s neck did God direct him to a lesser sacrifice. She still had her daughter.

She was about to go back inside when she caught sight of the Cape gooseberry bush, and remembered that terrible day after Grace’s return when her daughter had wedged herself behind it. As she sank to her knees on the grass and sobbed, the memory of a conversation with Frank floated into her awareness. ‘But how? How can you just get over these things, darling?’ she had asked him. ‘You’ve had so much strife but you’re always happy. How do you do it?’

‘I choose to,’ he said. ‘I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.’

‘But it’s not that easy.’

He smiled that Frank smile. ‘Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.’ He laughed, pretending to wipe sweat from his brow. ‘I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount. That I did a very proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No,’ his voice became sober, ‘we always have a choice. All of us.’