‘That’s the last time I’m going to tell you,’ a stern voice shouted in the front bar. ‘If I see you lot in here again, I’ll be calling the cops.’

  Lenore widened her eyes in mock exaggeration. ‘Someone’s not happy.’

  Every head in the bistro turned towards the argument. A few muffled shouts sounded from out on the street—probably whoever had been sent on their way.

  An alarm chirruped on Nancy’s watch, as it did every evening at nine. Whether the early-to-bed reminder was for her or Lenore wasn’t really clear, but the pair certainly had a well-honed routine. ‘Shall we call it a night?’

  ‘We shall.’ The two women stood, Lenore holding the table for balance, her flowing kaftan hanging on her thin frame like an oversized coat on a wire hanger.

  Hannah followed them out the door into a perfect summer’s night, warm air brushing against her skin, a bright full moon illuminating the streetscape. ‘I think I’ll walk. Meet you at home.’

  ‘Righto, see you at home.’

  The heady scent of jasmine filled the air, a spill of white and pink blooms framing an arbour that marked the entrance to the Village Green at the back of the shops. It was too lovely a night to head straight home, so she took the turn and emerged into a garden filled with lavender, iceberg roses and a border of waist-high butterfly bush swaying softly in the breeze. Magical. Like an enchanted secret garden. Too beautiful to leave.

  She took a seat and looked up at the stars. So many of them, sprinkled across the night sky like fairy dust. Was he up there? Watching over her? Despite the almost certain knowledge that he wasn’t, a tiny shard of her heart desperately wanted it to be true.

  Even after all these years, she’d give anything to be able to see him again. To hear his voice. Feel his arms around her, keeping her safe. Tipping her head back against the post behind her, she closed her eyes and willed him to appear. But the vision she saw was not the one she’d conjured.

  Teeth chattering, she stood on the kerb, arms crossed against her bare midriff as rain splattered into the gutter.

  Fellow revellers spilling onto the nature strip like fish from an overturned bucket when Annemarie’s parents declared the party over. Sophia long gone after too much cask wine too fast.

  A delirium of Christmas lights blinking manically from every house on the street while her teenage self waited in the quiet darkness.

  But he never came.

  She waited and waited and waited. But he never came.

  The house behind her swathed in darkness, the hosts gone to bed so no hope of using their phone. Besides, she couldn’t call home, not after the argument she’d had with her mother about going to the party in the first place.

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve, Hannah. Time to be spent with family.’ Mum had been cracking eggs for the pavlova into a basin, a smudge of corn flour coating her cheek.

  Okay, she was right, it was a tradition, but weren’t they made to be broken? Or at least tweaked? ‘You said I could go.’

  ‘I don’t remember saying any such thing.’

  ‘I’m already dressed.’ Denim skirt. Pale pink boob-tube. Roman sandals snaking up her bottle-tanned legs. ‘We have the whole day tomorrow to celebrate.’

  ‘You might be seventeen, Hannah, but you’re not an adult yet.’ Mum shouting to make herself heard over the whirring of the Mixmaster. ‘Besides, you have no way of getting there and back.’

  ‘Sophia’s mum is driving us and Dad said he’d pick us up.’ See if she was so smug now.

  ‘He what?’ Serious business, the Mixmaster dial turned off. ‘Graeme.’ Her voice shrill. Face all hard lines.

  Dad, eyes darting like pinballs, wiping grease from his hands on a rag as he joined the conversation.

  ‘Did you tell Hannah you’d pick her up from a party tonight?’

  Him, looking at her, her lips quirked, arms folded, feet sweating in her sandals. ‘Yes, I did say I’d pick her up.’

  ‘So you gave her permission to go?’ Mum had been riled up, hands on hips, mouth a snarl.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose I did. But eleven pm is the curfew. Don’t want to risk catching Santa out.’

  Fighting a grin. Turning it into a scowl when her eyes flicked back to Mum. Knowing how much her mother hated an argument. How she protected her fury like a feral cat protected its territory, teeth bared, hackles raised.

  Dad’s unconcerned shrug. The silent mouthing of words: Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out. His quiet warning to her to only have a couple of drinks and to make sure she was ready to leave at eleven when he’d be there to collect her.

  Only he wasn’t.

  A totally different car cruising into the kerb, tyres whispering on the wet asphalt.

  A policewoman bundling her into the back seat, kneeling beside her in the rain as she shivered against the vinyl. ‘There’s been an accident.’

  Four razor-sharp words, slicing her heart in two.

  Chapter 13

  A screech of wheels shocked Hannah back to the garden, teeth clenched, hands balled by her sides. She shook the sound from her ears. Wiped an errant tear from her cheek. Had the noise been the tyres of his car as it spun in circles, heading for the telegraph pole? A second ear-piercing shriek of rubber. Shouting and cheering.

  A cacophony of male voices coming from the far side of the Green. Not in her head. Definitely here and now.

  Rising to her feet, she hurried along the cobblestone path and ducked through the gate leading into the car park, voices growing louder as she approached.

  ‘Way to go, Morgo.’

  ‘Whoa! You nearly lost it.’

  ‘Don’t lose ya shit.’

  ‘Put ya foot down, Hanson.’

  What the hell was going on?

  Hannah turned the corner and stopped in her tracks. A chill leached through her body as if every drop of blood had drained into the balls of her feet. Four youths stood in the centre of the bare asphalt space, beer cans in hand, calling out, instructing, jeering. Donutting around them was a beat-up orange Torana pouring smoke from its exhaust. A thin teenager in a black T-shirt kneeled on the roof, clinging to a rail above the windscreen. As the car circled towards her, picking up speed, the would-be stuntman lifted one knee and then the other, balancing in a squat before pushing himself to full height. Stance wide, he raised his arms in the air, fist pumping along with his audience. ‘Yes! Yes. I am the champion!’

  His war cry vibrated through her skull but it was the casual mop of hair and the familiar hunch of his shoulders that set her teeth on edge.

  As if the ground beneath her had sent a fork of lightning up through the soles of her feet and straight into her limbs, she was on the move. Focusing on the group of idiots, she marched towards them, jaw set, every muscle in her body wound tight. A wild cat ready to pounce.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here?’

  In her peripheral vision, the car slowed.

  The boys on the ground, a couple of them no more than fifteen or sixteen, fell silent.

  The older one, probably by a few years, stepped forward and lifted his chin. ‘Piss off, lady.’

  But whatever he had to say held no interest. Striding past the mob, Hannah concentrated her attention on the thrill-seeker, now seated on the roof of the stationary car on the far side of the parking area.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  Owen Morgan at least had the sense to look slightly chagrined. His eyes skittered from one of his mates to another as if hoping one of them might provide the answer.

  ‘I’m not talking to them, Owen, I’m talking to you.’

  ‘Tell her to get fucked.’

  ‘Who the hell is she anyway?’

  The insults washed over her like white noise. ‘You have two choices.’ She held her hands at her sides, resisting the temptation to point her finger. ‘You get down off that car and come with me right now or I call the police.’

  ‘Fuck, she’s calling the cops.’ The driver stuck a hand out the window and banged on the roof. ‘Get off, bro, we need to get out of here.’

  In a scramble of arms and legs, the group raced for the car, flinging open doors, closing them with a series of bangs, as Owen jumped from the roof and landed on all fours. The wheels spun and the car fishtailed away, leaving no sign it had ever been there other than the stench of burning rubber and a spiral of tyre marks on gravel.

  Dragging himself upright, Owen wiped a layer of dirt from his hands onto his jeans. Licked his lips and swallowed. Stared at his feet. At least he wasn’t attempting to run.

  ‘Are you absolutely hell-bent on going to juvenile detention?’

  A small shrug of one shoulder.

  ‘I’m guessing that was you and your mates getting kicked out of the pub earlier?’

  A slight sidewards angle of his head, lips sandwiched together in a thin line.

  ‘Okay, so since you’re not going to answer any of my questions, you can listen instead. Do you know what happens to kids like you in juvie? They hang out with a bunch of others just like them, only worse. They learn new tricks. Take more drugs.’ Her blood pumped faster with every sentence, heating her skin and fuelling her fire. ‘They learn how to be criminals. They might go in there slightly off the rails but a lot of them come out taking even more risks than when they went in. They get into trouble again. They go back to detention and once they’re eighteen, it’s not juvie anymore. It’s prison. With hardcore criminals. Where the only way to survive is to become one of them. Is that what you want, Owen? Is that who you are?’

  A huff. A sneer. ‘They’re not going to put me away for car surfing.’

  His cynicism was all that was needed for the long-held rage fermenting inside of her to bubble up and explode. ‘Do you know how I know all this, Owen?’ Taking out her phone, she typed a name into google, held up a photo. ‘It’s not because of my job. It’s because this twenty-year-old, who had been in and out of juvenile detention since he was your age, killed my father.’

  Owen flinched as if he’d been slapped.

  ‘In and out of there for three years, and then it was prison. He started out exactly like you, a little harmless fun on a Friday night, drag racing with his mates, stealing a car here and there, drug taking, and all he learned in the system was how to keep doing what he’d been doing and not get caught. Until one night, one wet Christmas Eve, driving a stolen vehicle and smashed off his face, he ran a red light.’

  A small part of her, the logical professional who never crossed the line, wanted to stop. Wanted to take back the personal details and switch into counselling mode. But the beast inside her that had fed on grief and guilt and anger for all these years needed to roar.

  She stepped even closer, shoved the phone into Owen’s face. ‘This man killed my father.’ Her voice shook, and not just with fury. ‘He ran the red light, careened into my father’s car and sent it spinning like a top before it hit a telegraph pole. My father died a horrible death. Alone. In a car. In the middle of the night. At Christmas.’

  A mumbled sorry, a look of … possibly contrition?

  ‘Do you know what happened to this man?’ She stabbed a finger against the phone screen. ‘He went to prison. And when he was in there, he killed himself.’ She glared at Owen, letting the horrible truth sink in. ‘Somehow he managed to find a way to hang himself. Do you know why?’

  Another pause. Owen visibly shaking now but making no attempt to move.

  ‘The guilt. He left a note saying he was sorry, that he wished he hadn’t done what he did. Wished he hadn’t taken a man’s life. But it was too late, so he took his own.’

  She took a breath, her chest heaving, her head pounding harder with every point she’d hammered home.

  ‘This man had been in and out of foster care all his life. Had no one to keep him on the straight and narrow. But you do, Owen. You have a family who loves you and want the best for you. Who are bending over backwards to try and get you to sort your shit out.’ She waved the phone in the air. ‘Is this what you want? To end up killing someone or harming yourself? To have your mother and father and brother grieving for the rest of their lives because you couldn’t pull your head out of your arse long enough to realise how lucky you are that so many people care about you?’

  A small but definite shake of his head.

  ‘Where does Cole think you are tonight?’

  ‘Playing Minecraft with my friend Tom.’

  ‘Was Tom here?’

  ‘No. He’s … he doesn’t do this sort of shit. He’s at home with his parents.’

  A story that went part way to explaining why Cole had allowed his brother out of his sight. ‘And how are you getting home?’

  ‘I told Cole I was staying the night. He said it was okay. I could do it as a reward for working so hard this week.’

  ‘And you thought it was fine to lie to the brother who has put his trust in you so you could come and put your life in danger instead.’

  A heavy silence surrounded them, as if her words had sucked every background noise from the space, leaving them in a vacuum.

  ‘Are you going to tell him?’ He met her gaze for the first time since she’d confronted him.

  ‘No.’ Pushing her phone back into her pocket, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her head so they were eyeball to eyeball. ‘You are.’

  Chapter 14

  Driving the backroads on a moonless night with so much adrenaline pumping through her veins took all her concentration. Owen sat in the passenger seat, rigid, stunned into silence by her lecture and the frog march to her house to collect her car. Whether or not her download was responsible for his apparent remorse or whether it was the anticipated reaction of his brother to news of his antics wasn’t clear. As long as one of them did the trick, it didn’t matter.

  Cole lived on a small property on the outskirts of town. Nowhere near the Christmas tree farm he was currently responsible for, as well as his wayward brother. All of that plus holding down his farrier job. No wonder he was happy to offload Owen for a night.

  ‘Turn right in two hundred metres.’

  Following Siri’s directions, Hannah navigated the bumps of the entry road and turned into a rocky driveway leading to a small, neat weatherboard cottage. The house was in darkness but a spotlight lit up the yard as soon as they approached.

  Hunched over and sullen as a shutdown horse, Owen lumbered up the steps and hovered before the door, clearly not jumping for joy about making his confession. But owning up to his behaviour was the first step in making good.

  Hannah rapped her knuckles against the timber frame and before long, a shirtless, trackpanted Cole appeared, squinting into the light.

  ‘Hannah?’ He blinked the sleep from his eyes as he zeroed in on his brother. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Owen has something to tell you.’

  ‘Can’t you tell him?’ In the shadow of the porch light, Owen’s eyes were hard to read but the tremor in his voice said it all.

  ‘If you’re old enough to be out doing what you were doing, you’re old enough to own up to your mistakes.’ She pinned a well-practised death stare on him. ‘Or did nothing I said have any impression on you?’

  Cole scratched his head, the muscles in his six-pack rippling as he raised his arm. ‘Can one of you please tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Hannah caught me car surfing.’ Head lowered, words mumbled.

  ‘She caught you what?’ Cole’s pitch immediately spiked, his eyes flicking wildly from one of them to the other. ‘For fuck’s sake.’ He winced in Hannah’s direction. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, believe me, I said worse than that when I caught them in the car park.’

  ‘Right.’ Cole rubbed a palm across his mouth. ‘You’d better come in.’

  Sitting at Cole’s kitchen table while his miscreant brother admitted to a litany of misdemeanours was not how she’d imagined spending time with the hunky farrier. Well, fantasised rather than imagined. Generally after reading too many chapters of one of the sizzling novels in her reading pile. Always with the lights off and her hands under the covers. The thought set her cheeks burning but thankfully neither the man nor the boy noticed. Owen was busy spilling his guts about the lies he’d told and the transgressions he’d acted out with his mates; to his credit, he included every small, painful detail. Cole was taking it all in, a heavy frown creasing his brow, a vein above his left eye pulsing wildly. Finally, Owen reached the part in the story where Hannah had appeared on the scene.

  ‘And where did your loser mates get to?’ Cole didn’t bother hiding his disgust.

  ‘They drove off.’

  ‘Of course they did. Bloody heroes.’ He shook his head as if trying to dislodge a wayward blowfly. Jumped to his feet and paced to one end of the kitchen and back. Banged an open hand on the table. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Do you want to end up in jail? Or hospital? Or worse?’

  Owen shook his head. ‘No.’

  Cole angled forward, trying to force his brother to meet his eye. ‘Do you want to hurt someone else? Possibly kill someone?’

  Owen’s gaze shifted from the table to Hannah. ‘No.’

  Cole threw a hand in the air and let it fall to his side with a thwack. He’d diverted to his bedroom to pull on a T-shirt before the discussion so was now fully dressed, his eyes as black as his clothing.

  Owen cleared his throat and shuffled forward a little in his chair. ‘Hannah told me what happened to her father.’

  ‘Her father?’ Cole’s expression was blank. He settled himself back into his seat. ‘What about—’

  ‘He died. In a car accident. The other driver was high and he’d stolen a car. He killed himself later in prison,’ Owen said, summing up the story, but the trembling of his hands and the quiver in his voice belied his apparent indifference.

  Cole turned, the question there in the watery depths of his eyes.