Where the Light Falls (13 page)

He spent the years he'd lived there in his late twenties and early thirties eating tuna, instant noodles and
cans of beans. Subsisting in preference to living in order to pursue a career in photography. Kirsten had been his only regular visitor. In those years he'd become a ghost of a person, giving himself to what he loved to do instead of to other people.

•

He invited Stewart over the day after the photo shoot ended. He sometimes wondered whether Stewart ever got tired of being so consistent, of always doing what was expected of him; if he had ever had the urge to do something radical, to quit his job or walk away from his marriage. To act quickly and impulsively, to risk doing something he might live to regret. But the urge that Andrew had, the need for progress, was absent in Stewart. Stewart was a man who knew how to remain steady and unchanged. It was something Andrew had once regarded with disdain, but as Stewart walked through the door of his old apartment that night, leaving behind his working day to flash him a genuine smile, the feeling that came over him was one of admiration.

Andrew tried to smile in return, but the awareness that he wanted something from Stewart sat in his chest. He'd invited him here not for his company, but to ask about Kirsten. He felt his motives were selfish and ulterior.

‘How are you?' he asked as he clicked the lid from two bottles of beer. They drank together; that was how
they shared their time. He couldn't remember an occasion when they were together and not drinking something. He wasn't sure why two men always needed something to hold on to whenever they were alone together.

‘Good, mate. We're busy at work right now. There's a big building going up in the city and we're behind schedule on it. I keep finding myself in boardrooms accounting for the delays.' He took a sip of his beer. ‘We could build it faster, but not if they want it to still be standing ten years from now.' He shrugged. ‘How about you?
I thought you would have been back in Berlin by now.' Stewart was standing near the window. If you stood at the very corner of the room, you could catch a glimpse of Rushcutters Bay, a small triangle bordered by trees, a cluster of anchored white yachts that bobbed on their moorings like toys.

‘No, I need to do a few more things before I go back,' he said. ‘I've been taking some photos for an exhibition, actually.' As if that explained his visit. ‘How's Louise?' He took another swig of his beer.

‘We're good.' All his friends did that now, spoke about themselves in the plural, and it hurt him to hear it, with Dom so far away.

‘We're having a baby.'

‘Wow, that's great news! When is it due?'

‘April—quite soon. I'm starting to get a bit nervous. Sorry I didn't tell you any earlier, mate. It was a bit awkward last time I saw you, with what happened to
Kirsten.' He thought about this, that as Stewart and Louise would be having a baby, he would be in London showing his new work. This was the choice he had made with his life.

He asked Stewart the proper things, all the things he knew that he was supposed to ask, about sex and whether they had chosen names. He said that Stewart's parents must be excited about it. Since about the age of thirty, he had learnt to ask these questions. He had learnt to feign happiness for others, knowing he may never have this for himself. He felt as he spoke that he was pushing the words out between his teeth.

He opened his cupboard doors one at a time to try to find something he could serve for them to eat, something that would make it look as though he had planned this, that Stewart was welcome there. But the only shopping he had done was for the things he needed; he hadn't stocked his cupboards, because he wanted to be able to leave for Berlin as soon as he could.

He found some cashews and they slipped from the packet in a cloud of salt and looked meagre and broken in the bowl. He sat down on the opposite side of the table to Stewart and they were both quiet. He tried to think of something to say, something that would seal off the awkwardness that had awoken between them, but the more he searched for something the further away it seemed to be; striking a topic of conversation between them was now a matter of luck.

‘Did you get an invite to Stephen's wedding?' Stewart asked.

Andrew shook his head. ‘No. Stephen's getting married, is he?'

‘Yes, I think it's in May.' He'd been to university with Stephen and the three of them had been good friends, but he hadn't seen Stephen since he left for Berlin.

‘Do you see him much these days? We always used to catch up, the three of us. I miss that.'

‘Yeah, less since you went to Berlin. You know, life keeps getting in the way.' Stewart looked down and picked at the label of his beer. ‘Oh yeah, did you hear about the coronial inquiry?'

For a moment, Andrew thought he'd misheard. He felt a pain in his stomach, as though he'd swallowed a nail.

‘Sorry?'

‘About Kirsten. They're holding a coronial inquiry into her disappearance. It starts next Monday. Louise heard about it from Kirsten's mother—she spoke to her at the funeral. I thought you might have heard about it too.'

‘A coronial inquiry? I didn't realise it was . . . God,' he said.

‘Yeah—I mean, I think there was a lot about what happened that has been left unexplained.'

When Stewart left, he realised that if he wanted to go to the coronial inquiry, he would have to postpone his flight again. He'd only postponed it by a week and now he was due to fly out again in a few days. He needed to
get back to Dom, but he also needed to know what had happened to Kirsten.

Out over the trees through the windows, bats rose in black shapes that tumbled in the air like black rags caught in the wind and he longed to feel Dom's body against his.

18

On Monday, the morning the coronial inquiry began, he woke early. All he had in his apartment to sleep under was the duvet he'd taken from his mother's house and he woke the next morning too warm and wet with sweat. He rubbed one foot over the other in a nervous gesture and pressed his face into the pillow, willing himself back to sleep, but consciousness had already slipped open inside him.

The things he would hear that day about Kirsten would be difficult; in his life he had always shied away from the details of death. He felt already too accustomed to it, that his life had been defined by it and he had now earned his right to live without hearing any more about it.

He ate his breakfast quickly, chewing his toast and swallowing his coffee without feeling the food was making him full. In the taxi on the way to the coroner's court, he beat his fist to his chest, feeling the food congested there, fighting its way down. That morning he had written the address of the court on a slip of paper, but he had left it on the kitchen bench, forgetting to take it with him when he left the apartment. The taxi driver drove down Glebe Point Road and Bridge Road, but couldn't find the court, and he felt impatience rise in him, thinking he might be missing something essential about Kirsten as he sat there in the back of the car, with motion sickness passing through him.

Eventually they found the building on Parramatta Road, but it was a strange place for a court, with the buzz of traffic outside, passing this solemn place indifferently. He shuffled across the back seat of the cab, paid the driver and stood on his wobbly legs.

Inside the foyer was busy but silent, like a place of worship; people hurried, gathered and waited without speaking. He moved towards a seat outside the courtroom. It had a very straight back, like a church pew.

In his jeans and the blue Adidas sneakers he'd bought in Berlin he felt underdressed. He only had one mode of dressing now: casually, in clothes designed for comfort and ease of movement. He'd long since given up wearing suits. But sitting where he was, he wished he'd dressed more formally and he tucked his
feet under his chair, hoping no-one would notice his colourful shoes.

Shortly before ten, the other people in the foyer stood and moved into the courtroom, moving as though responding to a silent bell. He followed them in and found a seat, squeezing along a full row, knees shifting sideways to allow him to pass. The room stood when the magistrate entered, but he found himself still seated, looking at the people around him, mystified by these orchestrated movements. Later he learnt the etiquette, to stand each time the magistrate entered and left the room, and he enjoyed the performance of it; it seemed comical to him, all this standing and sitting and standing again, though no-one else seemed to see the humour in it. In between rows the carpet was worn, in some places down as far as the weaving that held it together and, behind him, the creak of a loose floorboard registered each time a person left the room.

The first person to give evidence that Monday morning was the doctor who had prepared a medical report based on the medication Kirsten had been prescribed. He was talking about benzodiazepines, referring to the empty bottle of pills found in Kirsten's car.

‘Assuming the deceased took the whole bottle of tablets, would it have been a lethal dose?' counsel assisting asked. He was a tall man who favoured one leg, with a hand held to his lower back, as though seeking out the source of a pain. During the course of the hearing,
the man's back became a familiar sight, the gowns hung from his body in vertical pleats. He shifted his weight from one side to the other, like a horse.

‘In my opinion, it's unlikely to have been lethal for someone who took drugs regularly and there's evidence the deceased did so.'

‘Could the drug have contributed to her death?'

‘It may have done, yes. It's difficult to say without an autopsy.'

Andrew looked down for a moment, feeling the floor move beneath him, and he thought about standing up and leaving. To most people this sort of information was fascinating, but to him it was disturbing and grotesque, that everybody in the room was speaking so plainly about death. He looked around the room for someone to make eye contact with, to share his disbelief, but nobody met his gaze.

Everything that happened in the courtroom seemed to follow a script. There was a strange, rehearsed quality to people's words and expressions, as though what he was watching here was a re-enactment of something that had happened before. He felt angry that they were speaking in such blunt terms about this woman he had known and loved. He forced himself to stay and listen, though there were moments when the witness spoke of possibilities that were macabre and he sat through these details with his eyes closed, the fluorescent lights leaving white streaks on the inside of his lids.

That afternoon, a tall man with arms that moved beside him like oars took a seat in the witness stand and gave his occupation as a cattle farmer. He had been eating lunch that day with his family at the picnic area beside Lake George.

‘The lake had been empty for years, but with all the rain recently it was full for the first time since the kids were born. We'd seen it on the news; they weren't sure how long it would stay that way and we, my wife and I—' he glanced towards someone in the courtroom and the people sitting around him turned to look that way ‘—thought we'd take the kids to see it on the way to Canberra. You never know, with that lake, when it will be full again.' Something stirred in Andrew; he was moved by the effort this man was going to in order to make himself understood. ‘We packed a picnic, though it wasn't really the right weather for it. The car was parked there, right by the water. It was the only one parked that close to the lake's edge. I didn't even know whether there was anyone in it. I looked at it, I remember, and wondered if it had been abandoned. I even wondered whether it had been stolen. I mean, it looked brand new.' He was speaking towards his hands. ‘We were sitting at one of the picnic tables they have there. It was a cold day.' He looked up. ‘My daughter was wearing fingerless gloves.' He smiled and there were gaps between his teeth.

‘Did you see the deceased step out of the car?'

The man shook his head. His head was large and the movement of it looked sorrowful.

‘No, I didn't. I saw a person duck beneath the fence, but I didn't—I mean, I thought she must be going down there to the water's edge, but when I looked up again, I couldn't see her. I assumed she'd come back to the car without me seeing.'

‘So you didn't see her again?'

‘No. As we left I checked the car and she wasn't there. I looked out over the lake and I couldn't see anyone. I mean, part of me thought she must've walked too far out by that stage, so that I couldn't see her. The air was misty.'

‘And what happened next?'

‘I said to my wife I thought I should take a look, you know, just in case. So I went down to the water's edge and stepped through the fence.'

As the man sat in the witness box, Andrew tried to imagine what he would look like hurrying. He was so large that he probably wouldn't be capable of moving very quickly; he had the body of a broad-chested football player whose strength was not in his speed, but in his weight and momentum. ‘It was very muddy ground there and I wasn't wearing the right shoes, but when I got to the water's edge, I still couldn't see her. That's when I knew something wasn't right. I mean, she'd just disappeared.'

At the back of the courtroom and to his left, a fluorescent light flickered as he tried to concentrate on what the man was saying. The words he spoke seemed somehow crucial.

•

By the morning of the second day, he understood that the big-boned woman sitting in the front row was Kirsten's mother. She assumed the same position as the previous day. Her shape from behind was solemn, a broad back, her head hanging down. There was a grace to her stillness and the way she sat with her shoulders pulled back, her head tucked into her chest, reminded him of a water bird. She hadn't flinched at all when the doctor spoke of how Kirsten might have died. She hadn't acted the way he assumed a grieving parent would; she didn't leave the room or avert her gaze. She didn't hide her face in her hands; there were no tears shed.