The Survivors(47)

‘Well, I’m not sure I can help you, mate, because I already told Chris Renn that I couldn’t remember much about the car,’ Kieran said. ‘Which is the truth.’

‘You can tell him you’ve remembered now. Or get your girlfriend to tell him.’

‘I’m not asking Mia to do anything.’

‘Then you’ll have to do it,’ Liam said. ‘Please.’

There was a change in his voice now. The bravado had worn thin, and a layer of fear shone through, raw and exposed.

‘Listen, mate,’ Liam tried again, when Kieran didn’t reply. ‘I didn’t do anything to Bronte. Seriously. I dropped her off and I left. That’s it. That neighbour heard her talking on the beach later, didn’t she? So that proves it. I didn’t do what they’re all saying. I –’ Liam was watching him intently. ‘I wouldn’t, all right? I liked her.’

They looked at each other, then Kieran shook his head. ‘I’ve got to go.’

He could feel Liam’s eyes still on him as he moved to leave.

‘Wait,’ Liam said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘Do you still miss your brother?’

Kieran stopped. The question had a ring of sincerity and before he could help himself, he had turned back. ‘Yeah. I do.’

‘I really miss my dad.’ Liam was quiet now. ‘Sean does too. You should know that.’

‘I do know that.’

‘My mum and Julian say what happened was an accident. They reckon my dad still would have gone to help, even knowing what happened. And I know Finn died too, so no-one’s supposed to give you a hard time.’ Liam’s face twisted with something both hard and soft. ‘But you kind of ruined my life, you know?’

‘Yeah.’ They stood facing each other with what felt to Kieran like a rare sense of connection. ‘It kind of ruined my life too. If it helps.’

It was one of the most honest conversations he had had in years.

Liam looked at him for a long time. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘It doesn’t.’

He turned and walked away, leaving Kieran staring after him.

Kieran was still standing where Liam had left him when his phone beeped in his pocket with a text. He pulled it out. Mia.

Where are you?

He texted her back and a moment later her reply came through.

I’m coming to meet you. I need to get out for a while.

Everything okay? he wrote, but there was no reply this time.

He ran a hand over Audrey’s soft head. ‘Let’s go and find Mummy, hey?’

Kieran started walking towards town in the direction from which he knew Mia would come. The cliff trail had given way to the tarmac and residential plots of what was now the historic part of town, but back in the 1800s had been its centre. The sandstone houses were set well apart and had sprawling gardens to compensate for the lack of sea views.

Kieran slowed in front of one in particular. He had passed it on the way up, but now stopped to look properly. The Wetherby place. Ash’s gran’s former house, and now home to Evelyn Bay’s current writer-in-residence, G.R. Barlin.

It was one of the larger houses, set back from the road. A small excavating digger was parked idle in the driveway, the company’s logo obscured by mud. But its handiwork was clear. Last time Kieran had seen the house it had been surrounded by a lush sea of native trees, plants and flowers. Now it was marked by trenches of exposed soil.

Kieran leaned on the fence and felt a stir of annoyance on Ash’s behalf. George Barlin might tell himself this was a renovation, but the place looked like a bombsite. It appeared the garden was being systematically destroyed in sections. The north side had already been ripped up, and judging by the various markers attached to mature plants and bushes, they were soon to follow. No wonder Ash was pissed off.

There was sudden movement inside the house and Kieran saw the writer pace past the kitchen window. He looked to be wearing a different chunky cardigan today, and was holding his phone to his ear. In his other hand, he had a sheaf of papers and was gesturing as he spoke.

While Kieran watched, George turned towards the window and stopped when he saw Kieran standing by his fence. Their eyes met over the ruined yard. They both stared, and Kieran raised his hand. George responded with a kind of reluctant salute then, with an invisible twist of the wrist, the shutters snapped closed and he disappeared from sight.

Kieran moved away from the fence and reached for his phone. Seeing the writer had reminded him, and he pulled up a search page and typed, Evelyn Bay Online Community Hub.

Christ. It was worse than he’d expected. A clunky forum staggered to life across the screen, the measures and spacing blowing out on the mobile. Along the top, hard-to-read blue-on-grey lettering declared: Welcome to EBOCH! Drop in for a virtual cuppa and a chat! Pixelated steam rose from an illustration of a coffee cup.

People certainly had been dropping in, George Barlin was right about that. Over the entire previous month, the forum had attracted about a dozen comments, mainly, from what Kieran could see, about the perennial problem of tourists dumping rubbish in residential wheelie bins. In the thirty-six hours since Bronte’s death, there had been more than three hundred entries.

Kieran scrolled through. The vast majority of those weighing in appeared to be brand new members of the site. A few had uploaded a tiny thumbnail profile photo, but most hadn’t bothered, lurking instead behind the default anonymous grey silhouette. Most had adopted a pseudonym but Kieran recognised some of the names. Juliet Raymond, for example, who used to babysit Kieran some days after school, was one of many expressing dismay that ‘you can’t even walk the streets anymore’. Theresa Hartley, the former music teacher at the high school and Mia’s old piano tutor, wrote that her granddaughter went to the same uni in Canberra as Bronte Laidler.