Bright Air - Barry Maitland [58]
‘Just trying to come to terms with it, I guess.’
‘Is that a copy of my report to the coroner in your bag, by any chance?’
I coloured. ‘Yes, it is actually.’
‘Sounds like you’re taking this pretty seriously. Let me guess, you’re even wondering if she isn’t dead at all, that maybe the yachties took her off the island somehow and spirited her away.’
I gaped at him. ‘How did you know that?’ It was barely more than a fantasy that I’d allowed to take shape somewhere at the back of my mind, creeping out in the bleakest hours of the dark night to tantalise and comfort me.
‘You said just now “Luce’s disappearance”, not her death.’
‘Did I?’ Just like Anna.
‘Missing persons are like that. No body, no way to be absolutely certain what happened. People hang on to hope long after I know there is none. And you’re feeling guilty, right? You weren’t there. You never said goodbye.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Just like Mum, I thought. One day I left her sleeping in the hospital bed, and the next she wasn’t there any more. She’d vanished. And I couldn’t even cry properly because all I felt was bitter guilt. I should have done more. I could have been a better son for her.
‘Believe me, I’ve seen every kind of pain and grief. I’ve experienced a good many of them myself, too. And I know that there’s only one person who can help you.’
‘Really? Who’s that?’ I thought he was going to recommend a psychiatrist or a private detective or something.
He held me with that steady gaze and said, ‘The Lord Jesus Christ.’
‘Oh …’ I was stunned into silence for a moment, then muttered, ‘Um, I don’t think I’m quite ready for that.’
‘Well, when you are, you contact me.’ He took a card from his pocket and passed it to me. There was a man’s name and phone number beside a cross. ‘I’ll introduce you to this man, or you can get in touch with him direct. He will lead you to the Lord, and you won’t look back. Trust me, I know.’
I had been about to tell him about Owen’s confession to Anna, but now I stared dumbly at the card and said nothing.
‘And I’ll give you something else to put in that bag of yours, son. Something that’ll help you a lot more than my report to the coroner.’ He reached into his jacket, to the bulge that I’d noticed, and drew out not his service Glock but a copy of the New Testament, which he handed to me.
‘Thank you,’ I muttered, not quite sure what to do, but his phone rang and he listened for a moment, then got to his feet.
‘I have to go now, but you remember—get in touch with me any time.’
I shook his hand, and then on impulse added, ‘I’m thinking of going to Lord Howe for a visit.’
He stared at me, still gripping my hand, then said, ‘Pay your last respects, yes, maybe not a bad idea. Say hello from me to the young copper over there if you see him, Grant Campbell.’
He turned and walked away.
13
I didn’t do much more climbing with Luce and her friends after Frenchmans Cap. Instead she and I found safer ways to fulfil ourselves, moving into a flat together when we returned to Sydney. We were very happy that summer, she spending the days working in the Conservation Biology Centre, me earning money washing dishes in the restaurant next door while trying to get on with my MBA thesis on risk management.
She liked to tease me about risk management, as if my choice of subject betrayed some aspect of my personality. I don’t mean that she was being critical of me—that summer we each believed the other perfect—so much as hinting that I was in need of some realignment, a process largely achieved on Frenchmans Cap. It was something to do with accepting the intractable nature of things, of experiencing the exhilaration of dangerous reality, of letting go and falling yet still climbing out.
I saw things a little differently. It seemed to me that climbing perfectly illustrated the centrality of risk management in life. It was an extreme metaphor of everyday experience, in which risk was always present to some degree, but capable of being managed—superbly in her case, clumsily in mine.
Risk management