The Undertow Read Free

freelancing. Her house was in Greenwich and one of Sydney’s wild storms brought a huge tree down on top of it. The house lost its roof and several exterior and interior walls. Driving rain and wind just about demolished it. Lily moved in with me while her place was being rebuilt. She was fully insured, but the company dragged out the process the way they do, and the rebuilding was slowed down by council obstructions and the usual problems with tradesmen, so that Lily’s stay was stretching out.
    It was working well, though. Lily was interstate often, chasing stories, and I never knew quite where I’d be from one day to the next. No expectations on either side. We were both fond of a drink, keen on exercise, undiscriminating about food. Like me, Lily preferred Dylan to Dvorak and le Carré to Henry James, Spielberg to Bergman. We talked about our jobs when we were together; I learned a bit about insider trading and unions in the Pilbara, and she picked up stuff on surveillance and tracing missing persons.
    Lily was coming down the stairs when I arrived home from the meeting with Frank. She has shoulder-length dark-blonde hair with a bit of grey and her face is smoother than it ought to be given some of the things she’s been through. She was wearing a long white T-shirt and black pants and looked good, the way a woman who stands 180 centimetres and weighs about 70 kilos does.
    â€˜I need broadband,’ she said. ‘That fucking dial-up’s too slow.’
    â€˜It’s fast enough for me.’
    Lily leased a state-of-the-art laptop after she lost everything in her house, but my basic dial-up arrangement for the Web didn’t suit her. She worked in the spare room where my clunking old Mac now sat shamefacedly apart from her gleaming model.
    â€˜Yeah, your computer skills are definitely twentieth century—at best. When my place is up and running, I’m going to have wall-to-wall 2010 everything. Is that a bottle you’ve got there?’
    She came down the stairs and gave me a hug and we opened the bottle of red and sat out the back where the autumn sun had just about retreated. The bricks I’d laid— very inexpertly, after chopping up ancient concrete back when Cyn and I bought the place—were still warm. Leaves were falling from the shrubs and drifting in from outside and I made a mental note to sweep them up. Sometime.
    â€˜What’s on your plate, Lil?’
    â€˜The multifunction polis. Remember that?’
    â€˜Vaguely.’
    â€˜Right, you and everyone else. I’m off to Adelaide tomorrow to look into how it’s going. You?’
    Lily had met Frank and Hilde a few times, liked them, and knew how close we were. I told her about Frank’s problem as we worked through the Merlot.
    â€˜Tricky,’ she said.
    I sneezed; the drifting leaves activated a mild allergy of some kind. I pulled a tissue from my pocket and Frank’s money came out with it.
    â€˜Nice,’ she said.
    I blew my nose. ‘Yeah—hidden from Hilde. Frank’s cut up about it.’
    â€˜D’you think he’s . . . in love with this Catherine?’
    â€˜No, but you know what men’re like.’
    â€˜Don’t I just? Would you go off me, Cliff? If I went into mood swings and hot flushes?’
    â€˜Mood swings you’ve already got. I don’t know if hot flushes’d bother me.’
    â€˜We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?’
    I said, ‘I read somewhere about DNA tests. Apparently one in four shows that your poppa ain’t your poppa. Remember the song?’
    â€˜No, you’re older than me, remember.’
    â€˜That’s right. Any tips on handling this, Lil? I read the other day that males are better at asking how things work and females are better at human relationships.’
    â€˜Yeah—watch yourself with Catherine thingo. If she’s got to old Frankie, she could get to you.’
    I phoned