The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,101

never does. Maybe I shouldn’t be driving. I barely notice Jess whimpering on the floor.

The car turns itself onto the Mount Wellington road and rides up damp curves past driveways that plunge down to houses tucked deep in wet forest. We climb through Jacksons Bend, then Fern Tree, and on through the tight turns that lead to the summit. The roadside rocks are patched with white lichens. I notice rocks etched with the names of vandals. In breaks between trees, I see the hazy light of autumn hanging over the valleys and the city below. The silver skeletons of dead trees reach up from the green blanket of forest.

As I drive, my hands are tight on the wheel. I think of Nick touching Emma. I think of him running his hands over her body. It makes me shake with disbelief.

The road rises from wet forest into moody grey skies strewn with fast clouds. We’re in the zone of small stunted trees and rumbled boulder fields. The low alpine heath is razed by cold winds. I pull up at the summit beneath the white spire of the telecommunications tower. There’s no-one else around.

For a long time, I sit. I notice my hands trembling on the steering wheel. From the back of the car, I scrounge a coat. Up here, it’s several degrees colder and the air has the feel of snow. I let Jess out, even though dogs aren’t allowed. She clings to my calves, tail between her legs, the cold flattening her ears.

The summit is an explosion of rock and I’m as disordered and chaotic as the scenery around me. It’s fitting for me to be here. I feel the wind flushing straight through my head. The air’s so cold, it is without scent. It’s possible to imagine that Antarctica exists.

I follow the boardwalk around to the lookout and stand at the edge, watching the clouds scudding across the sky. Far below, the metal arch of the Tasman Bridge reaches across the Derwent River as it meanders its way north. The blanket of suburbs is studded with the green dots of trees. Wind buffets up the cliff face. It’s hard to believe that yesterday I walked to Wineglass Bay with Emma. Hard to believe that we watched a wedge-tailed eagle in the sky. Hard to believe that yesterday I felt as high and triumphant as that eagle.

I stand in the updraft until the wind freezes me to numbness. Back inside the car, I fondle Jess’s ears with cold stiff hands. Her yellow eyes gaze into me. She understands better than any human could.

I turn the key and start driving. I have to do something. I have to go somewhere so that I stop thinking about Nick, so that I stop imagining him with Emma.

We drive down the mountain, swinging into the curves, and then over the Tasman Bridge and out of town, to Cambridge, and then north to Richmond.

24

Richmond is a tourist town famous for a stone bridge built by convicts. It has quaint historic sandstone buildings and a main street lined with antique shops, cafés, galleries and a pub smothered with cast-iron lace. Gary and his wife, Judy, have a bed and breakfast on the edge of town. It’s a life that suits Judy: greeting guests with her superficially friendly smile, and preparing breakfast trays. Fancy bed coverings. Payments and insincere goodbyes. Gary just goes along for the ride.

He looks surprised when he opens the front door and sees me with Jess at my heels. ‘What are you doing here? Mum isn’t dead, is she?’

‘No. Just thought I’d drop in.’

‘Nobody drops in to Richmond.’

I shrug.

He looks back over his shoulder into the house. ‘We can’t go inside. Judy’s vacuuming.’

‘Let’s sit over there.’ I point to Gary’s ridiculous rotunda.

‘Okay.’

We wander over the lawn past the rose garden, still blooming even in May. The seats in the rotunda are wet with dew.

‘I’ll get a towel,’ Gary says, and ambles back to the house.

Jess is trotting around the lawn sniffing at things. She hunches to relieve herself and I go to the car to get a plastic bag. There’ll be no making friends with Judy if Jess leaves a deposit on the lawn.

Gary returns and wipes the seats with an old towel. ‘I should have asked if you wanted a cuppa,’ he says.

Gary and I have never really been comfortable in each other’s company. Gary went to boarding school just after I was born and only came home for holidays. He and