John going to start a search? Does he need help?’ Richard demanded. Karyn said John would call as soon as he had a plan or any more news.
They sat waiting on the porch. A little gnawing wind rustled off the sea. In the lulls of it they could hear the voices of Lucas and the younger children out on the tennis court.
When the telephone rang again Karyn ran to it. She came back and said to Tom, ‘It’s Leonie.’
He closed the door behind him so no one could overhear. ‘Hello?’ he said into the mouthpiece.
‘Hello,’ she answered, a statement not a greeting.
‘Where are you? When are you coming back?’
‘It doesn’t matter where I am. Tom, I’m not coming back.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t you understand the words?’
‘Yes. I don’t follow the reasoning.’
Leaning against the sheltered store wall in Haselboro and listening to the passing traffic, Leonie thought herself back to the bluff. There were the gulls’ cries and the scrape of water, and the layers of voices and questions and family commandments from which she had removed herself into silence. By rights she supposed she should feel like a solitary separated wife, a dry husk winnowed out of the corn. She spread the fingers of one hand over her belly in a gesture of consolation. She felt a leap and twist within it, as if her womb had suddenly sprung to life. ‘I’ve left you. I don’t want to come back. I want to talk about a separation.’
‘Why now? Why so sudden?’
It wasn’t sudden, it had been gradual but inexorable. ‘We don’t love each other any more.’
He didn’t try to deny it. There was another breath-taking spasm within her as she wondered if she should try to take back the words, if after all it might not be too late. ‘Tom?’
‘Yes. What do you want to do? You’re not at home, I called there.’ His voice was flat, weighty with resignation.
He wouldn’t make himself the villain, she remembered. Nor would he put himself out to rescue the two of them, after their eleven years of marriage. The wringing in her stomach transmuted itself into a flutter of excitement, of liberation. ‘No. I rented a place, I just want to stay here for a while to think things out. I called because I didn’t want you to worry about where I am.’
‘Thank you.’ There was sarcasm now, a familiar weapon. He added, remembering, ‘There is a worry here. The younger Duhane girl has gone missing. Her father called, she’s been out all night.’
She said stupidly, ‘What?’ although she had heard too clearly. And she remembered the harbour wall and Doone’s waterlogged body brought ashore. The bustling street had gone so still and she had watched in the middle of it with the condensed chill of the Ice Parlour bag squeezed to her chest.
Not again. Another adolescent, neither child nor woman. ‘Leonie? Is this anything to do with you?’
Tom had made a connection. It was one of those sudden, blinding flashes of insight, which illuminate a landscape better left in merciful darkness. She knew it and she didn’t care. ‘No. I don’t see how it could be.’
He didn’t reply at once. There was some noise in the background, confused Beam voices.
Leonie drew herself inwards, even at this distance. ‘I’ll call John right now. There may be something I can do.’
‘Yes. Let me know what you do decide, Leonie, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she promised.
She lifted the receiver again as soon as the connection was broken and jabbed out the number of the Captain’s House. The engaged tone sounded at her and with a twitch of impatience she hung up and walked the steps to the kerb. She gazed unseeingly at the litter of butts and candy wrappers washed up against the kerb stones, not letting her thoughts focus yet on what could have happened to May.
She dialled the number three more times, but it was always engaged. She fought against the impulse to race down to Pittsharbor at once. There was nothing to be done before she had spoken to John. Perhaps May was already safely back at home.
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