And then Hessel’s hands were around her throat.

17 January 1996

That day

The summer days were long here. The wide flat land gave the sun plenty of sky to work with, and just when you were already more withered than you thought possible, you withered some more. So when Becky told her that her dad had seen Danny and Leonie out on the pontoon, Cathy leapt too quickly to her feet and she felt dizzy. And then the stinking mud squelched between her toes, all warm and sickly, as she dove into the cloudy water, leaving Becky on the claypan behind her.

She began a stroke. She was such a weak swimmer. She felt herself flailing, looking ridiculous, so she dove further under the water and hit the freezing layer that began half a metre beneath the surface, and she suddenly felt the fakeness of everything here – the beach, her posing, playing at being something she wasn’t, somewhere that this place wasn’t, some way that her home life wasn’t. She rose again and began a breaststroke that still left her gasping for breath by the time she reached the pontoon.

Yeah, she probably shouldn’t smoke.

She put her elbows on the pontoon and rested her chin on her folded wrists and left her body dangling in the water while she caught her breath.

‘Hello, sis,’ said Danny, smirking. ‘What brings you out here?’ He pretended to nudge her elbows off the pontoon.

‘Danny, don’t.’ He laughed, his arm still slung around Leonie, pleased as punch, showing off.

‘And you’ve ruined your new bathers,’ he said, and nudged some more.

‘For fuck’s sake, Danny, stop. Dad saw you.’

Danny stopped. He straightened. ‘What? When?’

‘Just now. He was on the road.’

Danny looked stricken for a moment. He tightened his arm around Leonie. Leonie looked uncertain. She looked a bit scared.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Cathy. ‘It’ll be alright. I’ll make sure of it, okay?’

Leonie fixed her eyes on Cathy and nodded.

Cathy went on quickly. ‘Dad’s bark is way worse than his bite, okay? Like I said. It will be alright.’

As the afternoon wore on, in the way that the afternoons did here – long and seemingly unmoving – she said it again and again, silently, inside, like a mantra, a soft underpinning of her thoughts, a way to keep them afloat: it will be alright, it will be alright. She repeated it as she watched Leonie and Danny part ways and walk away separately, in opposite directions, along the road. She watched Leonie stand still a bit longer than Danny had, to watch him for a while as he walked away.

And she said it out loud when Becky dropped her home, looking worried, and told her, ‘You should come home with me instead.’

Cathy had said no. She had said, ‘No, it will all be alright.’ And she had walked quickly away up the drive.

It would all be alright because Cathy was going to make it all alright. She was home before Danny, and she was going to say something to Hessel, something about Danny and Leonie, about what he might or might not have seen, something that would make Hessel see things differently, something that would make the truth okay – she didn’t know what exactly. Or perhaps she would tell him something that would hide the truth. Maybe she would lie.