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ABOUT THE BOOK

About The Book

Robyn Ayres works as the camp caretaker on Finch Island, a former leper colony off the coast of Queensland. Her current clients are a group of ex-military men who run a tough-love program for troubled teens.

The latest crop looks like the usual mix of bad boys and sad boys. Then Robyn takes a second look at a kid called Darren. Last time she saw him his name was Aaron, and Robyn was his primary school teacher. And she was somehow at the centre of a vicious small-town custody battle involving his terrifying grandmother.

Bruising classroom dynamics, manipulative parents and carers and horrendous small-town politics form the backdrop to a nail-biting thriller in which the tensions of ten years ago start to play themselves out, building to a violent climax in the present day.

Robyn escaped the past once. Now it’s back–and this time there’s no way out.

DEDICATION

To Brian Jinks

2019

2019

I RECOGNISED HIM at once. He was ten years older and three times bigger, but his eyes were the same—wideset and ice-green, with thick, dark lashes. He was still skinny. Still scabby. Still at odds with the world.

I took one look at him and it all came flooding back. Otford. Joyce. The lies. The police.

I’d fled to a deserted island, but I couldn’t seem to escape Aaron Rooney.

He arrived on a Sunday with twelve other boys. Their ferry was late. I’d been waiting on the jetty for a good twenty minutes when MV Kooringal chugged to a halt in front of me, nudging the piles and churning up water. From the bow I was thrown a mooring line, which I looped around the nearest bollard. The throb of the engine was almost drowned by a buzz of excited voices.

Something was wrong. The ferry master wore a flinty expression. I could sense the deckhand’s disquiet. Scanning the gaggle of teenage boys near the stern, I realised one of them was wrapped in a towel. His hair looked wet—or was it just greasy? Beside him, Shaun Steiger was grim-faced.

‘Get back!’ Shaun barked. ‘Give the deckhand some room!’

He was dressed for combat. The boys were in hoodies and ripped jeans. They shouldered their lumpy backpacks, staggering as the deck bobbed beneath them. I spotted Joe Malouf helping one of the boys with his straps and buckles. Like Shaun, Joe was wearing fatigues. All four veterans were crisply turned out in spotless uniforms, neat buzzcuts and polished boots. They looked weirdly immaculate next to the teenagers.

‘All right, fall in!’ Shaun was using his parade-ground voice. Behind him, a dark kid with a big grin pretended to throw one leg over the bulwark. ‘Fall in means line up, Mr Kollios,’ Shaun continued, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. ‘We don’t want another accident.’

Another accident?