She didn’t know what it was yet, but there had to be a way. There had to be a way to head this off.

But when she entered the kitchen it was obvious that the house was empty. She sat down at the table and waited for Hessel. The ticking clock counted the day away. The light was fading. And then she heard the ute out on the main road. She got up from the table and went outside.

Hessel was driving up the road, not yet approaching the driveway. She waited for the right thing to say to come into her mind, but it was still a blank. It would come to her when she spoke to him, she reasoned. She just had to start talking.

But then Cathy saw the ute slow down, long before the driveway turnoff.

And then she saw why.

Danny was walking along the road in front of the ute, headed for home the same way, but on foot. Cathy saw Danny falter in his step as the ute slowed next to him, slowed right down and tracked him close, keeping pace, and then suddenly sped up again and passed him. Danny stopped walking and watched Hessel pull the ute into the driveway and stop there.

And both Danny and Cathy watched as Hessel got out of the car, and stood leaning against the bonnet. Waiting.

32

Hessel’s fist was tight around Mum’s throat. I stepped back and screamed, and with a great thrust of his old body Hessel scooped Mum hard against the wall. He brought his other arm up, pushing his forearm forward against his own hand, applying pressure to Mum’s throat, the strength of his rage rippling in every aged muscle. Bette gasped behind me and I screamed again as Mum’s eyes bulged, and she made an awful gurgling sound.

‘You are a traitorous little bitch,’ Hessel said to her.

Mum’s eyes were wide, wild. I saw pure terror in them, a whole history of terror from which, I understood in an instant, I had always been protected.

Bette, silent, hid her head beneath her clutching arms. Hessel’s hands grasped like claws on Mum’s face and her throat and a sickness rushed into me – I had never known violence like this, I had never known it.

I lunged across the room and grabbed Hessel’s arms. I dragged and dragged at him, but I’d been wrong about his strength. With one arm he knocked me down and pain seared through my head and stars bloomed around my vision. But I was up and on him again. This time he pushed me back against the opposite wall, knocking the breath out of me. Blood filled my eye from a cut on my head. I lay winded. Hessel pushed Mum back against the wall again and grabbed her by the hair and dragged her head backwards away from him and he banged her head once, lightly, against the wall. The force contained in his fingers, the exercise of his control in the impact, in how hard he chose to knock her skull against the plaster, was terrifying to see. And then his other hand was around her throat again.