She could see the numbers on the nurse’s screen, heartbeat, oxygen, blood pressure, the numbers that kept a log of his physical processes. But Leonie wanted access to his mind. Was he in there?

Cathy was sitting outside the door. Leonie stood above her, looking down.

‘What happened?’ she demanded.

‘He fell.’ Cathy sounded dull, stupid. ‘He went backwards. Off the cairn. Hit his head.’

Leonie sat next to her. ‘No, Cathy.’

Cathy stood up as soon as Leonie sat down. She stood stiff and wooden. ‘He hit the back of his head. And then some rocks came down on him.’ And she made as if to walk away into the room, but Leonie caught her hand.

‘Cathy,’ Leonie said, and Cathy stopped. And then Leonie spoke to her gently. ‘That’s bullshit, isn’t it, Cathy? It’s bullshit. They told you to say that, didn’t they? It was Hessel.’

And Cathy began to shake. Her whole body quivering, a shudder running right through her.

And then, arresting them both, Hessel’s voice came from the end of the corridor. ‘Cathy?’ And Cathy jumped and Leonie dropped her hand. Hessel walked towards them. He looked terrible. His eyes were red raw and his skin was grey. He was a devastated man. But the anger there was palpable.

‘What is she doing here? Did you call her?’

Leonie stood and levelled a stare at Hessel while Cathy failed to answer.

‘What am I doing here?’ said Leonie. ‘I’m visiting Danny.’

‘Get out!’ Hessel shouted at her, drawing nurses from their station.

‘No,’ said Leonie with steely calm, and the nurses paused. ‘No, Hessel. I will stay a bit longer, and then I’ll go and see my parents. And then I will come back. And I will keep coming, do you hear me?’ She fronted up to Hessel, her finger held perfectly still in the air before him. ‘I will keep coming, and keep coming, and keep coming, and you will never see the end of me.’

And Cathy watched Leonie in a daze as Leonie walked back into the room and sat down on the chair beside Danny and wove her fingers through his in a weave of light and shade.

33

Time went strange. In that little room, as Mum and I lay huddled together in that odd bunker I had made in her old bedroom, I understood reality only by what I could hear:

Leonie sending Basil out to the car to call for help.

The man, Danny, weeping. His husky voice, rattly with tears, as he answered Leonie’s questions about Bette, about me, about Mum.

The sound of Leonie counting, her breaths coming short, the sounds of her body working – performing CPR, I realised, pressing Hessel’s chest and then stopping to breathe into him – a repetitive body-on-body sound, trying to undo the damage the man’s own thud-thud-thudding had done, trying to restore life as she was trained to do; a heartbeat sound to kill, a heartbeat sound to revive.