Avril, pretty disturbing stuff in this one—can’t help hoping you’ll leave it for another time. Let me tell you up-front so you’re not compelled to read just to find out what happened on the ‘Lily Maud’: the last pages have been ripped out. Seems Grunnie’s taken that story to the grave.

Lx

25

Laura

Laura’s nervous when she picks up the phone and dials. It rings and rings, and then disconnects. Reprieve.

She crunches another Gold Seal peppermint but can’t get rid of what must be the idea of burning, not the smell of it, because nothing is burning, is it? To convince herself, she goes outside. The moon is high over the dark silhouette of salmon gums—beautiful—and she takes a deep breath of cold, clear night. There’s a drift of woodsmoke; most of her neighbours have a slow-combustion stove. But that’s not it, not the sweet, fetid trace she can smell.

A thump on the table, then a bump at her elbow. A hello. An enquiry.

She runs her hand along Allee-Cat’s warm back. I could get used to having you around.

He slips through the door with her when she returns to the house, and she doesn’t bother protesting.

She dials again. This time, the phone is answered after a couple of rings.

Hello, Wendy, she says, tentatively. It’s Laura.

~

A soft knock on the door. Laura puts down her book and looks at the clock over the mantelpiece. Nearly midnight.

Gideon’s huddled in an anorak and stamping his boots, and the air that comes in with him carries the promise of frost by morning.

Sorry, late, I know, but you haven’t seen …? He looks over to the mat, where the heater is doing its best to warm the room. Ah, you have.

Allee-Cat gazes back at him through lazy eyes, smug and purring like a freight train.

Oh, Gideon. What’s the matter with me? I forgot he was there!

~

Laura’s feeling heavy-limbed, warm from the port. She tops up their glasses, slopping Lamont’s Tawny on the coffee table. She’d wanted to ask Gideon about genetics, about Dawkins and Darwin and Haldane, but her brain is too woolly now, too fuzzy and full of different questions.

Can’t stop thinking, she says. Grunnie wrote a list of things she wanted to tell me on the inside cover of the last book. Everything ticked. But the last one, ‘Brukie’s Sandy’, has been torn out. Something from way back, her childhood. She said she couldn’t bring herself to write it down at first.

Gideon frowns, trying to remember something. ‘You have often begun to tell me what I am, but stopp’d.’ The Tempest?

Oh yes, Miranda says it. To Prospero. Exactly! Another sip of port. And then, when Grunnie finally does write it down—well, I’m presuming that’s what it is—someone tears it out.