Shadow Over Edmund Street by Suzanne Frankham (best e reader for android .txt) 📗

accident. Remember? A child ran out onto the road, he swerved, missed the child but crashed into a pole. Injured his hand. Nah, my guess is he’s as clean as a whistle.’

Alex was stony faced. ‘What about drugs. It’s always drugs. Anything?’

‘Not a thing, but don’t worry, I’ve got the word out with everyone. But hey, don’t go all racist on me because he’s got a Vietnamese connection. Gordon Nguyen was born here, Alex. His father was a Vietnamese refugee, sure, but he was a doctor in Vietnam not a gang member. His mother is a New Zealander. The guy topped his class in Med school and then went on to become a brilliant surgeon.’

‘Yes, but then he lost his career didn’t he? Had the accident. Must be a bitter pill to swallow.’

‘Well, sure, he’s not a surgeon anymore but he works as a researcher. After all, his hands are fine, just not dexterous enough for surgery. Besides, neuroscience is one of the new hot fields. Yeah, his life changed but I think the guy still has a lot to offer. He’s held in very high regard. The research he’s doing is pretty exciting.’

‘Since when did you use words like dexterous and become an expert on neuroscience?’

‘Since I’ve been talking to about one hundred people in the field,’ Jerry shot back. ‘At least one hundred fucking people. Each of them said the same thing. Gordon Nguyen is a saint. I know that might fly some red flags for you, but in this case, I don’t think so. In this case, I think it means what it says. The guy’s a bloody saint!’

DAY 10

On Tuesday morning, Alex and Jerry attacked the whiteboards with renewed vigour, trying to fill in every moment of Edwina’s life. They reduced it to a few words scrawled with a black felt tip pen.

Monday. 5.30 am vegetable shop

8.00 am home, shower, breakfast

9.30 am gym/coffee

12.00 lunch and a nap

5.00 pm dinner at Mrs O’Brien’s

7.30 pm Bingo at the St Joseph’s hall.

And so on, and so on.

A second board had a list of all the changes in Edwina’s life over the last three years, starting from the moment she won the raffle at the fair.

Alex was desperate. ‘Tell me about the car salesman. They’re often pretty dodgy.’

Jerry shook his head. ‘Nah. Twenty and slick. Worlds apart.’

‘What about the computer class then?’

‘Oh yeah, the computer class. The guy running it was at least seventy if he was a day, used a stick and limped. There were six other women in the group, I’ve got their phone numbers. I’ll make the calls. But the teacher said the others had come in pairs, you know. Friends together. Edwina was the odd one out. Didn’t think they had much to do with each other but I’ll follow it up.’

‘Sure. Yeah, follow it up.’

Alex stood staring at the whiteboard. ‘Typical Edwina,’ he said. ‘Didn’t do one damn thing to make it easy for us. Not one damn thing.’

—

PART 2 Winter of the Soul

— Rose adored her cottage. Except in winter when the wind blew from the southwest, whipping up the sea and dumping a cold blast of air on the city. The hundred-year-old cottage, renovated and remodelled countless times in its life, couldn’t keep out the cold. It seeped in through warped weatherboards and minute cracks caused by shifting foundations.

She snuggled under the doona. Soon the heating would kick in and take the edge off the cold. It was a lazy Saturday morning, no need to rush. Katie and Sam wouldn’t be up for ages. A calico-coloured cat sitting in the doorway, meowed, its eyes fixed on her face. It had taken them a while to realise they had acquired a pet. First, they had left a saucer of milk in the garden for the cute cat Katie had glimpsed sleeping behind the camellia bush. Then the odd plate of scraps. Next a box on the back doorstep, for those extra-cold nights. Now the cat spent its days dozing in a basket in the sun, loved and pampered, watching the family. It had returned the favour by turning their fragile house into a home. Given a grieving family something to smile about. A yellow bundle of love.

Her children had chosen the house. She’d been in no frame of mind to do anything much. It had been hard enough to decide which country to call home. She’d done that, at least, organised the move from Scotland. True, Auckland was her hometown, not theirs, but she was the adult, wasn’t she? They hadn’t quibbled. Knew they had to go somewhere. The three of them had made the long trip to a country on the other side of the world.

Picked up a life with scattered family, all older, all changed. Rose had been the afterthought in her family. A pretty name for an unexpected addition. Her father had died when she was fifteen.

He’d gone to work one morning and suffered a heart attack. ‘Lucky,’ people said, ‘to go suddenly.’ But it hadn’t felt lucky, not to Rose, left behind.

Her mother had given up. Sixty years old with a fifteen-year-old child. Not right. She’d started playing golf, day after day walking the golf course and drinking at the nineteenth hole. Now she played bowls and enjoyed ‘happy hour’ in a retirement village. She was serene and content but it was a moot point whether she was the person Rose had known. The body Rose recognised—the face, the hair, the skin, the touch—but the mind? Not the same.

‘On holiday, dear’, her mother said with a laugh, whenever she forgot something. Rose imagined in five years or so her mother’s brain would be permanently living in Mali or somewhere equally remote.

* It had been a wet day and Rose and the children had been driving around the city, looking at her past. Her childhood home, once a boring old green weatherboard, always demanding attention, now a smart snappy place that matched the smart snappy young couple who parked their shiny