Where the Light Falls

First published in 2016

Copyright © Gretchen Shirm 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian
Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone:
(61 2) 8425 0100

Email:
[email protected]

Web:
www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 9781760113650

eISBN 9781952534331

Set by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design: Christa Moffitt, Christabella Designs

Logo designs: Gabrielle Assaf

Table of Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

Acknowledgements

1

In winter, the dark was terrible. He walked into his apartment at six and already it was pulled down over the city like a hood. The night had a texture, a thick woven fabric, fine as knitted wool. He could never have imagined it: a darkness more bitter than the cold. When he came home at night, he pressed the door of his apartment closed, aware each time that he was performing an act of resistance against it.

Inside their apartment, the light slanted upwards from lamps and bare bulbs. The wiring in the walls was old and the lights in the ceilings did not work. Still, it felt welcoming. It gave the room a staged effect. Moving through their apartment was like walking through a theatre production; the light threw his shadow in
different directions and as he passed a lamp, his shadow jumped on a wall, crooked and threatening.

It was always a relief, this moment of returning home, of settling back into himself after a day at work in his studio. An hour later, Dominique walked in wearing a woollen cloche hat. It was a crimson hat that she often wore in winter, its colour a cry of protest in the grey Berlin streets. She pushed her hair up beneath it and it kept her warm that way she said, because no cold air could sneak up inside it. She moved with the appearance of gliding.

That night she cooked a Spanish omelette, large and yellow in the pan like the face of a sun, and he prepared the salad, removing the outer leaves from the lettuce, dismantling the heart and chopping the vegetables into strips. Dom poured the wine into two glasses big enough for soup.

The next day was Dom's last in Berlin before she left for Cologne for two weeks. She was teaching contemporary dance to a promising group of teenagers. When he saw her with her students, he admired the way she spoke to them, as though they were no less than her, that their love of dance made them equal.

Dom no longer danced professionally. He'd heard it said that a dancer dies two deaths, and her first death had occurred before they'd even met. When she spoke about it, he saw the wound it had caused inside her, the sadness she felt at never having quite got the break she wanted. He admired her ability to speak so openly about failure.

He'd seen footage of her, a film made of her last solo performance for a small company in Hamburg. She moved on stage as though possessed of another force and, at that moment, she was preoccupied only with her movements, her eyes open and her face clouded not with concentration, but with strain of the physical effort. He had seen the same look on her face when they were in bed together; as if she were searching for something inside herself that was just beyond her grasp. He had watched that film more times than he could count.

He couldn't help but think that the dancer he saw was different to the woman he loved—now her features bore the trace of a wound, the knowledge of defeat. He loved her because of rather than in spite of that. She had found the limit of her own ability, which most people never had the courage to reach.

That night, before he went to bed, he checked his email. He had an exhibition coming up in London and he was still in the process of making new work. Models had to be found, photographic assistants hired for his shoots and props and equipment located. The exhibition was only six weeks away and no matter how early he began his preparations, the lead-up to a new show was always hectic. But there was nothing about the exhibition in his inbox.

Instead, there was a message from his old friend Stewart Carey. He saw the name and an old life beckoned him. Stewart and he had been at high school together
and Stewart was the only person from that former life whom Andrew kept in touch with. The subject line read:
Kirsten
. This name, too, belonged to a past life, a version of himself he had tried to leave behind when he'd moved to Berlin three years ago.

Andrew read the message through twice. His eyes skipped over the words as if by reading them quickly he could reduce their impact. But it was too late.
Missing
, he thought. Perhaps that meant she simply didn't want to be found. With Kirsten, something like that had always seemed possible. Maybe she had decided she needed some time away from the world. And yet there was a finality to Stewart's tone; was he hinting at something more definite? He had the feeling as he read the words again of
their immensity; he knew they meant much more to him than he was currently able to grasp.

He stood from his chair and his heart was beating fast, throbbing in a strange rhythm.

‘Are you okay?' Dom asked.

‘I—I just received some bad news.'

‘What happened?' Dom said, concerned. She looked up from the book she was reading.

He looked at her and he did not want to tell her.

‘I just—I got an email from Stewart.' She took his hand as he spoke and he saw it was shaking. ‘About a friend. An old friend of mine who I knew when I was at university. She's missing.'

‘Oh no. What happened?' Dom was looking at him with clear eyes, willing to absorb some of the hurt he felt.

He had no words to explain it. His reaction to the news wasn't even one of sadness, but shock. He walked to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water, which he drank in a few, quick gulps.

‘I don't know exactly. Stewart didn't say much.' He moved from their kitchen to the living room and sat down at their table. In front of him was a pile of opened mail. ‘Just that she's been missing now for almost three weeks.'

On the wall of their apartment, he'd pinned an unframed photo he'd taken a few weeks before: the face of a young boy, looking up and smiling with his eyes closed. It was for his upcoming exhibition. It was an important exhibition for him—his first solo show in London—and
he was running out of time to make new work. He hadn't been able to think of a title for that image, but now the words
Smiling Alone
occurred to him. He'd asked the boy to smile that way, with his teeth visible, but sitting there with this new information yet to settle inside him, the image suddenly looked terrifying. The boy's second teeth had just come through and they were still jagged and yet to be worn down to a smooth edge.

‘Were you close to this woman?' Dom asked. She ran a finger along his cheek in an upwards stroke. Her face was close to his and open to whatever his answer might be.

‘We were, I suppose, while I was at art college. But I haven't spoken to her since I moved to Berlin.' He didn't want to disclose to Dom that he had once loved this woman or that he had let it continue between them for longer than he should have. He didn't want Dom to know that the reason he had fled Sydney, in the end, was to escape her.

2

The next morning was a Sunday and they woke slowly, waking and sleeping and waking again. They had bought the bedsheets together the week before; they were still stiff and folded around their bodies in pleats. Dom slipped out of bed first and made them coffee on the stove with the small espresso jug that fizzled as the water percolated. He watched her against the background of their kitchen, the white glow of the cupboards on her face.

As she walked back to bed the floorboards gave under her feet with small clicks, the friction of wood against wood. She walked with her feet turned out and he loved the fact that dancing had permanently shaped her. Her body was sinuous and firm, still refusing to relinquish the strength that dancing had given it. Her breasts were
the only part of her that was soft, her nipples large and mauve on her brown skin. Along her arms and shoulders, a dusting of freckles dispersed across her skin, speckled like a bird's egg.