rose as she saw him. She must know what he’d been doing—identifying for himself that the body lying in the funeral home’s back room was indeed his brother’s.
‘I...I’m sorry,’ she faltered, but she didn’t approach him. Maybe his face stopped her. It was impossible to conceal his anger. The white-hot rage.
The waste...
He’d just seen Jessie. His beloved big brother. Jess, who’d laughed with him, teased him, protected him from the worst of their father’s bullying.
Jessie, who was now dead, aged all of twenty-four. Jessie, who for some crazy, unfathomable reason had married this girl two weeks before he’d died.
‘How can you be married to him?’ he snapped. It was a dumb thing to ask, maybe even cruel, but it was all he could think of. He knew so little of what Jessie had been doing for the last few years. No one did. ‘You’re only seventeen.’
‘He wanted to marry me,’ she said, almost as a ghost might talk. As if her voice was coming from a long way away. ‘He insisted. He even found my father and made him give permission. I guess...my father’s still my guardian, even if—’ She broke off and sat down again, hard, as if all the strength had gone out of her.
But Matt had no room left in his head for pity. Not now. He’d loved his big brother. Jess had been wild, free, bordering on manic, but he’d lit their lives. Or he’d lit Matt’s. In the big old mansion overlooking Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach, with its air of repressed elegance and propriety, and its walls echoing with his father’s displeasure, it had always been Jess who’d brought in life.
But that life had been more and more out of control. The last time Matt had seen him he’d been in a rehabilitation ward in West Sydney. Jess had been twenty-two. Matt had been eighteen, confused and desperately frightened at the state of his big brother.
‘I can’t go back home, Matt,’ Jess had told him. ‘I know what Dad thinks of me and it always makes it worse. The black dog...depression...well, when you’re older maybe you’ll understand what it is. When I get out of here I’m heading overseas. Following the surf. The surf gets me out of my head like nothing else can. If I’m to stay off the drugs, that’s what I need.’
What had followed then had been two years of intermittent postcards, the occasional press clipping of minor success in surf competitions, and demands that his parents didn’t try and contact him until he’d ‘found’ himself.
Had he found himself now, on a slab in a Hawaiian mortuary? Jess... He thought back to the last time he’d seen his brother, as a recovering addict. Recovery had been for nothing, and now he was facing this girl who was calling herself Jessie’s wife.
His anger was almost uncontrollable. He wanted to haul up her sleeves to expose the tracks of the inevitable drug use, and then hurl her as far as he could throw her.
Somehow he held himself still. He daren’t unleash his fury.
‘He wanted to be cremated,’ the girl whispered. ‘He wants his ashes scattered off Diamond Head, when the surf’s at its best. At sunset. He has friends...’
Matt bet he did. More like this girl. This...
No. He wasn’t going to say it. He wasn’t going to think it.
Married! His father was right—he needed to pay the money and get rid of her, fast. If his mother knew of her existence, she might even want to bring her home, and then the whole sad round would start again. ‘Please go to rehab... Please get help. Please...’
He was too young to face this. He was twenty years old but he felt barely more than a child. His father should be here, to vent his anger, to do what he’d ordered Matt to do. Matt felt sick and weary and helpless.
‘Can you afford cremation?’ he demanded. The girl—Kelly—shook her head. Her grey eyes were direct and honest, surprising him with their candour.
‘No,’ she replied, her voice as bleak as the death that surrounded them. ‘I hoped... I hope you might help me.’
In what universe could he help a woman who’d watched his brother self-destruct? Even if she looked...
No, he told himself. Don’t think about how she looks. Just get this over and get out of here.
‘I’m taking my brother home,’ he told her. ‘My parents will bury him in Sydney.’
‘Please—’
‘No.’ The sight of his brother’s body was so recent and so raw he could barely speak. Dear God, Jess... He needed to be alone. He felt like the world was closing in on him, suffocating. How could his father demand this of him? This was killing him.
Maybe his father was punishing him, too. Punishing him for loving his big brother?
Enough. He had to leave. He hauled a chequebook from his jacket and started writing.
The girl sank back down into her chair, tucking her feet back under her, assuming once again that position of defence. Her eyes became blank.
The cheque written, he handed it to her. Or tried to. She didn’t put out her hand and he was forced to drop it onto her grubby knee.
‘My father had an insurance policy in my brother’s name,’ he said, struggling to hold back his distress. ‘Even though we doubt the validity of your marriage, my father acknowledges that you may have a claim on it. This pre-empts that claim. This is the total value of the insurance policy, given to you on the condition that you make no contact with my parents, that you never attempt to tell my mother that Jess was married, that you keep yourself out of our lives, now and for ever. Is that clear?’
She didn’t pick up the cheque. ‘I would like to write to your mother,’ she whispered.
‘I can think of a hundred reasons why you shouldn’t contact my mother,’ he said grimly. ‘The top one being she has had heartbreak enough and doesn’t need to be lumbered with the mess you’ve made of your life as well. My father has decided not to tell her about the marriage and I understand why.’
She closed her eyes as if he’d struck her, and he found his fury fading.
This was unfair, he conceded. This girl was a mess, but, then, Jessie’s life had been a mess, too. He didn’t need to vent his grief solely on her—but he had to get out of there.
‘Use the cheque,’ he said. ‘Get a life.’
‘I don’t want your cheque.’
‘It’s your cheque,’ he said, anger surging again. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. All I want is for you—his widow—’ and he gave the word his father’s inflection, the inflection it deserved ‘—to sign the release for his body. Let me take him home.’
‘He wouldn’t have wanted—’
‘He’s dead,’ he said flatly. ‘We need to bury him. Surely my mother has rights, too.’
Her fingers had been clenched on her knees. Slowly they unclenched, but then, suddenly, she bent forward, holding her stomach, and her face lost any trace of remaining colour.
Shocked, he stooped, ready to catch her if she slumped, concerned despite himself, but in seconds she had herself under control again. And when she unbent and stared straight at him, she was controlled. Her eyes, barely twelve inches from his, were suddenly icy.
‘Take him home, then. Give him to his mother.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I don’t want your thanks. I want you to go away.’
Which fitted exactly with how he was feeling.
‘Then we never need to see each other again. I wish you luck, Miss Myers,’ he said stiffly. Dear God, he sounded like his father. He no longer felt like a child. He felt a hundred.
‘I’m Kelly Eveldene.’