Ember Island Read Free

dad. Had his wife died or was he just divorced? How old was his child? How young must he have been married? As I was somebody who had married, disastrously, at nineteen, I was always interested to meet a kindred traveler on that path. Luckily for me, there hadn’t been children involved. Not for want of trying; but I had a medical condition that meant I wasn’t destined to be a mother. Something I thought I’d made my peace with long ago.
    I waved Joe off and then stood on the verandah for a while, gazing out over the island. In the south, the big flat grassy areas played host to Ayrshire cattle. To the east, facing the mainland, were miles of mangrove forest: an impenetrable swamp. Behind, where I couldn’t see, was the raging Pacific Ocean, crashingagainst rocks, occasionally withdrawing long enough at low tide to reveal a narrow sandy beach. The afternoon breeze was fresh and tangy, cooling off the moist heat of the day. All across the island, as far as my eyes could see, white and purple crocuses bloomed wild. Over a hundred years ago there had been exactingly maintained English-style gardens around Starwater. Female prisoners had been pressed into service as gardeners to the superintendent. The gardens were long gone, but the crocus seeds had spread everywhere on the gusty sea winds and, year after year, bloomed again, remembering their history.
    No traffic noise, no phones ringing to remind me how far behind I was on my work. No running into Cameron and his pregnant girlfriend. Just the sound of the wind in the trees and the ocean.
    I went back inside. The lounge furniture was dated, but comfortable. The fridge hummed and the microwave blinked the correct time. I could turn a mattress and put fresh sheets on a bed. George and Kay had even left half-empty bottles of shampoo and body wash in the bathroom.
    I decided to stay a few nights.
    •
     
    Night came softly and slowly, the blush of pink behind the palms slowly fading to blue-gray. I sat on the front steps of Starwater in the balmy evening warmth, watching the stars come out, reflecting on how little time I spent outside when I was home in Sydney. My apartment, which had cost a small fortune, had views all the way to the honey-colored spires of St. Mary’s Cathedral; but they were city views and the stars were dim or invisible against the bright lights of Sydney. In happier times Cameron and I would sip an evening gin and tonic on our penthouse deck. Since thesplit I’d spent most of my time inside the apartment, locked in my office writing, or trying to.
    The first mosquito bite sent me back into the house. I closed the screen and turned on the lamp in the lounge room. I approached the fireplace and ran my finger up the crack as far as I could reach. No more secret stashes of paper with Eleanor’s handwriting on them.
    I turned, surveyed the room. The original brickwork was hidden beneath plasterboard and wallpaper. Then I remembered the office had one exposed brick wall, so I switched on the lights in there and began a slow walk from one end of the room to the other, carefully scanning the bricks for any unmortared gaps. My fingers traced the patterns on the wall, which was cool and rough. I found nothing. Even if I found something, it would probably be more of Eleanor’s childhood diary. But hope had been renewed. I might yet find the papers that I dreamed of finding, the ones that could change everything for me.
    Eleanor’s writings had come to our family when my grandfather died ten years ago. A great big moldy smelling trunk filled with letters and lists and ramblings and stories and poems. No diaries, which made it odd that she kept one as a child. At the time, my sisters were both too busy to go through the papers and my mother didn’t have the patience with the tiny inky scrawl on them. I was twenty-five, recently separated, and between jobs at fruit shops and day-care centers— again , as my mother had pointed out—so going through the papers