Broken

Title Page

Copyright Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Acknowledgements

Ilsa Evans lives in a partially renovated house in the Dandenongs, east of Melbourne. She shares her home with her three children, two dogs, several fish, a multitude of sea-monkeys and a psychotic cat.

She has completed a PhD at Monash University on the long-term effects of domestic violence and writes fiction on the weekends.
Broken
is her sixth novel.

www.ilsaevans.com

Praise for
Broken

‘Evans paints a vivid portrait of a wife-beater who is vicious, manipulative and charming . . . Jake's abuse is not revealed until after it has been established why Mattie is still attached to him . . . the delay is effective in achieving one of the novel's aims: to illuminate why some women remain in abusive relationships. The story demonstrates that leaving sometimes provokes worse behaviour and places the woman and her children in greater danger.'

WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

‘BROKEN is one of the few novels in Australian fiction to deal with this subject in such a harrowing and suspenseful way. This is an entirely different view of the leafy suburbs – one where women live tormented lives inside their lovely homes and too many people, too often, ignore their unhappy plight.'

THE AGE

‘This book is confronting and will help answer the question “Why doesn't she just leave?”'

CANBERRA TIMES

‘terrifying, moving, compelling, important, enlightening, and deeply, deeply upsetting.'

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘a searing tale'

HERALD SUN

‘Evans's narrative structure is brilliant . . . BROKEN is not only a book that shows victims of domestic abuse a way through the pain, but it helps outsiders think about the right questions to ask – not the victim-blaming “Why doesn't she just leave?” but rather “How can I help?”'

SUNDAY MAIL BRISBANE

‘The rawness and the quality of the writing together with its subject makes a compelling story, laced with truth and purpose.'

BALLARAT COURIER

‘it had me in tears from chapter one'

SUNDAY TERRITORIAN

‘Evans's story is engrossing'

ADELAIDE REVIEW

‘In this extraordinary novel, Ilsa Evans expertly draws the reader into a searing realistic portrayal of the complexities of relationships'

MARYBOROUGH HERALD

‘A most worthwhile book . . . Familiar to some, shocking to others, it should be read.'

CAIRNS POST

‘compulsive reading . . . Mattie is wholly fictional and yet wholly real . . . Some things can't be fixed but they can be exposed'

NEWCASTLE HERALD

‘An engrossing and unputdownable read.'

TOWNSVILLE BULLETIN

‘This is a compelling and disturbing book, one that delves into the private life of someone who suffers at the hand of the person they love. It's not a world we often read about, but Ilsa Evans delivers a beautifully composed novel that will haunt you for days after you put it down.'

GOOD READING MAGAZINE

‘An extraordinarily powerful book that builds into a suspenseful drama, with a cat-and-mouse game between husband and wife as gripping as the finest thriller'

AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY
Book of the Month

 

 

Also by Ilsa Evans
Spin Cycle
Drip Dry
Odd Socks
Each Way Bet
Flying the Coop

 

 

 

First published 2007 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
This Pan edition published 2008 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney

Copyright © Ilsa Evans 2007

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

Evans, Ilsa.

Broken / Ilsa Evans.

ISBN: 978 0 330 42394 6 (pbk.)

A823.4

Typeset in Birka by Post Pre-press Group
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

The characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests.
The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

 

 

 

These electronic editions published in 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

Broken

Ilsa Evans

 

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www.macmillandigital.com.au

Visit
www.panmacmillan.com.au
to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

 

 

To Michael, Jaime and Caitlin.
For making everything worthwhile
.

 

 

 

Courage is fear that has said its prayers
.
Dorothy Bernard

S
he'd worn white to her wedding. Huge clouds of frosted white that billowed around her in the wind like fairytale snow. Against her waist she held a bouquet of milky roses that dripped with clusters of tiny white gypsophilia. And the limousine was white too, inside as well as out, so that when the door opened and she looked out at the guests milling around the church steps, she merged perfectly into the background but for her redlipped smile. An elaborate concoction of alabaster and lace
.

Just before she entered the church, the photographer darted forward and took a shot when a gust of wind wrapped the white satin around her body like a sheath, picking up the veil and spreading it across the cloudy sky behind
.

In the photograph, now living in an embossed gold frame, she has one hand up trying to harness the fly-away veil, and the other holding her bouquet down by her side so that the blooms brush against the cobblestoned portal. And she is still smiling, a broad, open-mouthed smile that shows all her teeth and beams a message of delight so uninhibited that, even trapped in time, it remains infectious
.

Because everything lay before them. Not only the rest of that day, with its intoxicating focus and whirlwind celebration, but an entwined future that could be clearly seen ahead. And they would be joined now not just by the strength of their emotions, but by priests and promises, and a piece of parchment that could be framed in matching gold
.

M
ost of that first day Mattie spent cutting out motivational sayings from a desk calendar with an old pair of nail scissors. Inspiring couplets and illuminating quotes that she trimmed with fierce concentration and then stuck with sticky-tape onto the refrigerator door.
The future depends on what you do in the present. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Happiness resides not in possessions but in the soul
. She used her teeth to tear the tape because the nail scissors were too blunt, so that it stretched and curled with ragged edges that vaguely irritated her.

The desk calendar was the only item left behind from the unit's previous tenants. Everything else had been taken – curtains, toilet paper, even the light-bulbs. Jake had laughed hugely when he saw this and, on his next trip from home with a carload of her belongings, brought a spare sixty-watt light-globe that he deftly fitted into the lounge-room socket. Shedding light on the proceedings. But as soon as he left to collect the children from school and take them home, Mattie flicked the switch off. Then she tore a page from the desk calendar to write a shopping list but was distracted by the italicised blurbs that accompanied each date.

It was dusk by the time the calendar was stripped of relevance, and the pile of boxes in the lounge-room cast a jagged shadow that licked across the floor towards her feet. But it wasn't a threatening darkness, not the type that made her nerve-ends dance anxiously, but instead
had an inevitability that was quite soothing. So Mattie poured herself another glass of wine and settled on the burgundy microsuede beanbag in the corner to watch the gloom graduate from shades of dove-grey to a pervasive gunmetal colour that she could almost breathe.

This was the first time that Mattie had ever spent a night away from her children.
They
had left home for occasional sleepovers with friends, and the odd night with a relative, but Mattie herself had always been there. She took a sip of wine and wondered what they were doing right now. Jake said that he was taking them out for dinner, to lessen the impact, so she supposed they were excited, and happy, and enjoying themselves. But she wished that they were here, with her instead.

And if they were, she would
have
to start unpacking. She would
have
to arrange furniture, and fill cupboards, and hang clothing, and switch on the light. And she would have to find a brave face and rally them around. They'd turn this whole debacle into a glorious adventure, and build a giant's castle out of the empty cardboard boxes. A castle that reached almost to the ceiling, with tunnels and caves and secret hidey-holes.

But they weren't here. They wouldn't be here until Sunday, two whole days and nights away. And it was the humming silence that was the strangest thing of all. Not the unfamiliar rooms, the boxes, the encroaching darkness – but the silence. Because Mattie wasn't very used to silence. Two noisy children and one noisy husband made for a household where continual sound was just part of the tapestry that made it a home. Even during the worst of times, there was always music in the background or the sounds of the television set broadcasting a parallel world. A parallel world that was probably just like hers anyway, one where nothing was quite as it seemed and noise drowned out the whispers of dissent.

There was a portable television set sitting on the floor by the boxes, but for now Mattie preferred the silence. She didn't want to watch other people going about their daily lives as if nothing momentous had happened; instead she just wanted to bury herself in the beanbag and fade into the darkness. Because it fed her misery in a way that noise and laughter wouldn't have, so that she could dwell within a despair that was almost self-indulgent.