his hands covering his face. There’s blood running down his forearm.
‘Please go back to the car.’ Laura’s face is tight. ‘He’s not used to strangers.’
I go back into the cold night and open the back door on one side of the car. Then I turn on the headlights and the interior light. If this man is afraid, he might not want to climb into a darkened car. It might be less intimidating if he can see where Laura wants him to go.
Five minutes pass and exhaustion threatens to swamp me. I couldn’t sleep in my own bed, but here in the cramped discomfort of the car, sleep rises unbidden and tries to claim me. Finally, I see the shadows of Laura and Mouse outside the house. I can hear Laura coaxing him. She tells him he’ll be all right if he gets in the car. That he’ll be safe. She’s taking him to get his arm fixed. To stop the blood.
Then they’re both sitting in the back seat. Laura pulls the door shut and locks it. I drive as smoothly as possible along the road and around the bends and twists of the cove towards the highway. In the rear-view mirror, I can see Laura’s brother crouched beside the door moaning while she strokes his head, humming to soothe him. Streetlights intermittently flash on her face, but her features are blank and featureless. I see no fear in her. No self-pity.
By the time we reach Hobart, she has her brother’s head hugged to her chest and her eyes are closed. Small whimpers come from his lips. There’s blood on both their faces. She keeps his eyes covered as we stop at traffic lights. When we pull up outside the emergency department, Laura speaks quietly from the back. ‘Could you please go in and get some help? I don’t think I can do this bit alone.’
Lights illuminate the hospital entrance into a blinding white. The duty nurse at reception listens to me unmoving and then lifts a telephone. Within minutes four large men have come out to talk to me, their faces serious and attentive. They follow me to the car. There are cries and a scuffle in the back seat. Laura yells out, her voice edged with pain, and there’s an awful growling and howling. I stand back while the men wrestle Laura’s brother out of the car and restrain him. They bundle him quickly through the no-public-access doors, Laura close behind. Then I’m alone outside, blinking in the bright lights.
I linger on the pavement, waves of shock pulsing through me. Jess crawls from the car like a liquid shadow and shivers at my feet. I had forgotten she was there, huddling on the floor. She must have been terrified—first Mouse and his animal-like cries, then the four men leaping into the car, the shouting, the struggle. I bend and stroke her quivering head, guilt now mingling with my horror. I should have left her at home. But how could I have known?
The hollow siren of an approaching ambulance startles me. I scoop Jess up and deposit her on the front seat, then start the car. We’ll go home now, slowly, and sit quietly in the dark.
25
I always go for a walk early in the morning; it’s fresh and cool and quiet. This morning I particularly want to do normal things for Jess after the horror of that trip to the hospital last night. Like me, Jess is a creature of routine, and she takes comfort from these rituals.
We never usually meet anyone on our dawn jaunts, so it’s a surprise to both of us when we see Laura wandering along the bush track ahead. She floats through the scrub, her gaze focused somewhere out over the channel. I slow down, hoping to avoid her, but she hears Jess rustling in the grass and she turns.
‘Oh, hello.’ She doesn’t smile and her face is drawn. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone.’ She waits for me to join her. ‘You walk often?’ she asks.
‘Most days.’
She nods and I follow her onto the beach.
‘Is Mouse okay?’ I ask.
‘He’ll be all right. It was pretty horrible, though.’ She stops walking and sighs. ‘I didn’t sleep much.’
I hesitate, unsure whether to push on with my walk or whether I should wait for her. Jess trots along the beach and up into the grass along the shore, sniffing animal trails.
‘I didn’t stay at the hospital,’ she says, staring across the water. ‘There wasn’t much