Dead Again

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Georgie rubbed her arms, trying to get warm.

Coming back’s a b***h.

She lowered her gaze. It’d started drizzling a short while ago. Soft, persistent droplets blurred the inscription. She knelt and trailed her fingertips over the grooves of the epitaph engraved into marble. Her heart twisted with each word. She teared up.

She lost track of time. She might’ve been there ten minutes or thirty. When she rose, tangled wet hair draped her collarbone, and her joints were stiff.

Her whispered ‘I gave my evidence at the committal hearing’ was muffled by the breeze. Louder, she said, ‘Why couldn’t that have been enough?’

A cockatoo screeched as if jeering her.

‘Did I really have to come back?’

Abergeldie, Daylesford, and these graves…she’d revisited them all, but it left her feeling caught in no-man’s land, not quite belonging anywhere, not sure how to move forward.

She ran her eyes over the modern headstones at her feet, the old part of the Daylesford Cemetery, then the adjoining farms.

Why the hell am I back here? Because my counsellor suggested these tasks, allegedly as sum parts of ‘closure’. Empty and over-exercised, that word.

And, it’s not working so far.

Georgie turned slowly towards cypress pines that swayed as the wind sighed through their waterlogged branches. She faced the direction of the Wombat Arms Hotel, but couldn’t see it from here. In the backdrop, Wombat Hill looked bleak in the misty rain.

At first, it had struck her as unchanged, except that properties were lush and green, following the glut of rain through winter to now, summer.

Aside from that, what’s different?

Me. Maybe eight months is too soon to revisit a war zone.

She shuffled to her car. The black duco of the 1984 Alfa Spider blended into the shadows of the pine hedge. She felt heavy in her boots, weighed down by the past.

She slipped into the car telling herself, One last visit with my old friend Pam, and then I’m done with Daylesford. But pulling the door closed brought it back. That less than two hours ago, she’d drawn aside coloured plastic door strips, ready to step into a café, and brushed someone’s hand as they came from inside.

‘Georgie? What are you doing here?’

Same bass voice. Possibly the same well-worn Levis and plain black T-shirt she’d first seen him wearing at the Wombat Arms earlier this year.

Her heart had done a weird beat, and pinned by the intensity of his gaze, she’d frozen. A blush had crept over his skin, and she’d wondered how he felt about seeing her.

She and John Franklin had a lot of history from back in autumn, when she was last in Daylesford to check on the welfare of her neighbour’s friend. Much of that history was unhappy, and she’d worked hard over recent months to forget him, but her body had betrayed her the instant he said her name. They’d been close enough that she could smell his sweet yet masculine aftershave. Her pulse thudding in her ears, palms clammy, she’d thought, b****y hell, he looks good.

Georgie’s gut had then cramped with conflicted emotions. Guilt was topmost, as she’d blocked the image of her boyfriend AJ’s face.

Franklin had been at the hearing in Melbourne, too, but she’d avoided him. That hadn’t stopped his stare boring into her whenever they passed in the Magistrates’ Court lobby or hallways, or her covert glances. But at the café, she couldn’t dodge him. Truthfully, she hadn’t wanted to.

‘Can I get you a coffee?’ Franklin had jiggled his takeaway beaker.

‘Have a catch up?’ After a glance at the moody sky, he’d pointed to an outside table. ‘The rain should hold off.’

She’d struggled to reply but taken a seat. They’d talked, drank coffees, and she’d smoked, before killing the conversation.

His eyes had stayed in the forefront of her mind as she’d walked away. They hadn’t masked either what he wanted or his hurt. Her apology had burned in her ears.

‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t make it better, for him or me.