They must have outnumbered all the living population of Inglewell. Stories that had belonged to the people who lived there before the Spicers established Runagate Station (not, as Trish Aberdeen took pains to point out, her people, because her dad wasn’t from this part of the country at all, and who knew where her mother was from, maybe Spain or India, maybe she was a princess, and she had hit my brother Chris for laughing at her—she was always hitting Chris). Battles, massacres, murder; bushrangers and lonely revenge; tales of whose last stand was on this knob of land, of what will catch the toes of children swimming unattended, of witches in the scrub waiting for the unwary, of loping beasts and whispering megarrities. Then there were stories of those who had simply … gone. Walked into the trees or vanished from a tent in the night, been swallowed up in long-fingered leaves, waded into waterholes or fallen through cracks in the earth. Or those who had got into the car one night and driven off without saying goodbye. What do we care, Bettina? It only proved what we knew of them. Heartless.

Those histories, those memories, looped around Inglewell, a fence as rusted and relentless as any other. How could you think of leaving your lost and dead? And if you left, could you ever truly be gone?

Chapter 3: Shining Through the Trees

CHAPTER THREE

SHINING THROUGH THE TREES

This wasn’t defiance, I told myself half an hour after calling the Aberdeens. I was nineteen, after all. It was hardly unbecoming to care a little about what happened to my own brothers. The cooking brandy in the cupboard had tasted like nothing so much as dead air, and hardly strengthened my resolve. I slipped from the yard, trailing guilt, and rounded the corner. There, a third appearance of Gary Damson would be less likely to be noticed by my mother or the neighbours.

I had asked Trish Aberdeen to pass a message to Gary, and I expected him to arrive alone, but Trish was in the passenger seat of the truck, hanging on to the handle above the door. The sinews and tendons of her naked arm stood out. She was wearing a singlet and—I saw when she pushed the door open and slid closer to Gary—very short shorts, and boots.

“Hello, Patricia,” I said.

Birds laughed in the gardens along the street. After a long moment, Trish said, “Get in, Tina.”

“I don’t think I will, thank you.”

“Well, it’s not the fanciest transport,” said Trish, “but— Is that a picnic basket?”

Trish would be unprepared, I thought. Dressed like that. Her black hair curled wildly and a wolf was tattooed on her brown shoulder. Déclassé.

I held the container of sandwiches hard against my stomach and wished I had not started this train of events.