The Light Between Oceans(90)

‘Have you ever heard such nonsense in all your life!’ the cook had declared. ‘The last thing you do to a burn is burn it. You don’t need to be Florence flipping Nightingale to know that much!’

But Hannah had not been angry, she remembers. The governess had truly believed she was doing the right thing. She only wanted what was best for her. She was inflicting pain only to help her.

Suddenly furious at the weakling moon, she hurls the pillow across the room and slams her fist into the mattress, over and over. ‘I want my Grace back,’ she mouths silently, through her tears. ‘This isn’t my Grace!’ Her baby had died, after all.



Tom heard the rattle of the keys.

‘Afternoon,’ said Gerald Fitzgerald, guided in by Harry Garstone. ‘Sorry I’m late. Train hit a herd of sheep just outside Bunbury. Slowed us up a bit.’

‘I wasn’t going anywhere.’ Tom shrugged.

The lawyer arranged his papers on the table. ‘Committal hearing’s in four days.’

Tom nodded.

‘Changed your mind yet?’

‘No.’

Fitzgerald sighed. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Tom looked at him, and the man repeated. ‘What are you damn well waiting for? The bloody cavalry’s not coming over the hill, mate. No one’s coming to save you, except me. And I’m only here because Captain Addicott’s paid my fee.’

‘I asked him not to waste his money.’

‘It doesn’t have to be a waste of money! You could let me earn it, you know.’

‘How?’

‘Let me tell the truth – give you the chance to walk away a free man.’

‘You think destroying my wife could make me a free man?’

‘All I’m saying is – half of these charges we can put up a decent defence to, whatever you’ve done: at least put them to proof. If you plead not guilty, the Crown’s got to prove every element of every offence. That bloody Spragg and his kitchen-sink charges: let me have a go at him, if only for the sake of my professional pride!’

‘If I plead guilty to everything, they’ll leave my wife alone, you’ve said. You know the law. And I know what I want to do.’

‘Thinking about it and doing it are two different things, you’ll find. Hell of a place, Fremantle gaol. Bastard of a way to spend twenty years.’

Tom looked him in the eye. ‘You want to know a bastard of a place to spend time? You go to Pozieres, Bullecourt, Passchendaele. You go there, then tell me how awful a place is where they give you a bed and food and a roof over your head.’

Fitzgerald looked down at his papers and made a note. ‘If you tell me to enter a guilty plea, that’s what I’ll do. And you’ll go down for the whole kit and caboodle. But you need your bloody head read, as far as I’m concerned … And you’d better pray to the Good Lord bloody Jesus that Spragg doesn’t up the charges once you get to Albany.’





CHAPTER 32



‘WHAT THE DEVIL’S the matter?’ demanded Vernon Knuckey, as Harry Garstone closed the door behind him and stood dumbly in the sergeant’s office.

Garstone shuffled his feet and cleared his throat, jerking his head back towards the front of the police station.

‘Get to the point, Constable.’

‘There’s a visitor.’

‘For me?’

‘Not for you, sir.’

Knuckey shot him a warning look.

‘It’s for Sherbourne, sir.’

‘Well? You know what to do, for Pete’s sake. Write ’em down and send ’em in.’

‘It’s – Hannah Roennfeldt, sir.’

The sergeant sat up. ‘Oh.’ He closed a file on his desk and rubbed his chin. ‘I suppose I’d better have a word.’

Knuckey stood near the counter in the front of the station. ‘It’s not usual procedure to let the victim’s family members see the accused, Mrs Roennfeldt.’

Hannah held the sergeant with a silent, steady gaze, forcing him into speech again.

‘It really would be out of the ordinary, I’m afraid. All due respect …’

‘But not against the rules? Against the law?’

‘Look, ma’am. It’s going to be hard enough for you when it all comes to Court. Take it from me: it’s a distressing thing, a trial like this. You really don’t want to be stirring things up for yourself before it even starts.’

‘I want to see him. I want to look him in the eye, the man who killed my child.’

‘Killed your child? Steady on now.’

‘The baby I lost is never coming back, Sergeant, never. Grace will never be the same.’

‘Look, I’m not sure what you mean, Mrs Roennfeldt, but in any case I—’

‘I’m entitled to that much, don’t you think?’

Knuckey sighed. The woman was a pitiful sight. She’d been haunting the town for years now. Maybe this would let her lay her ghosts to rest. ‘If you wait here …’

Tom had risen to his feet, still puzzled by the news. ‘Hannah Roennfeldt wants to talk to me? What for?’

‘You’re not obliged, of course. I can send her away.’