A Shadow's Breath Read online

  About the Book

  Then, things were looking up for Tessa. Her mum was finally getting her life back on track. Tessa had started seeing Nick. She was making new friends. She’d even begun to paint again.

  Now, Tessa and Nick are trapped in the car after a corner taken too fast. Injured, stranded in the wilderness, at the mercy of the elements, the question becomes one of survival. But Tessa isn’t sure she wants to be found. Not after what she saw. Not after what she remembered.

  A compelling story of heartbreak, courage and forgiveness from the award-winning author of The Whole of My World and One True Thing.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

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  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  Copyright Notice

  To The Outer Sanctum: Alicia, Kate, Emma, Lucy and Felicity

  Oddly, it’s not the pain that seizes her first – the dull crack of splintering bone, or the sear of muscle ripped from cuff, ligament from joint, skin splitting raggedly where once it was whole. It’s not even the bitter taste of fear in her mouth, sharp and foul. It’s not the idea of what she’s lost either. Or what might have been. No. Not even that. What undoes Tessa in those moments before the darkness closes in – the unconscious mind obliterating body, spirit, will – is the gaping hole left where the people who matter should be. That this might be her last moment on Earth and she is living it in this car, without a mother to hold her, a father to kiss her, a best friend to make her laugh.

  That’s the thing that hurts most. In the end.

  The fact that this is her doing does nothing to soften the edges. If anything, it makes the awfulness that much sharper. As sharp as a shattered windscreen. As inexorable as a car hurtling down a cliff. As merciless as the Australian summer sun. Miles from everyone and everything she knows …

  This is the last thought she has before darkness claims her.

  ‘Lunch?’

  Tessa stopped in her tracks. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, and walked back to the kitchen. ‘I, um, forgot.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ A faint tint of pink touched Ellen’s cheeks. Her hair was pulled back in a rough ponytail, and she was wearing her favourite worn-out trackpants and T-shirt. She looked shockingly young – younger than her thirty-eight years, anyway. She’d showered and dressed, and it was barely eight-fifteen. Tessa couldn’t have imagined any of these things happening only a few weeks ago.

  ‘You know, you don’t have to do this,’ Tessa said, unable to meet her mum’s eyes. She knew what she’d see there.

  ‘I like doing it.’

  Little late, don’t you think? Tessa thought. But she held back. She wanted to believe her mum – that this was it. That things would be different. The temptation to let Ellen care for her again, like when she was small, almost hurt, it was so powerful. The sweet, malty smell of Weet-Bix with warm milk, the feel of her mum’s hand on her forehead when she was sick, her laughter at Tessa’s terrible knock-knock jokes. Who’s there? A cow. A cow who? A cow who poos!

  But that was then. Tessa had to fight off this feeling like she did all the other things she knew would lead to disappointment. How else would she hold it together?

  Still. It had been two months, and her mum was really trying. Three weeks straight of making lunches and asking about Tessa’s day. Curling up in front of the TV at night, both of them, together.

  Two months of no arsehole and no booze. Half of it spent out of bed too.

  ‘Thanks,’ Tessa said. She didn’t trust herself to say more but heard the accusation all the same.

  Ellen heard it as well. She nodded, her mouth pressed into a thin line. Her unrelenting guilt like a presence between them, a dark shadow that took up residence in the tiny, ugly fibro house every time she gave sobriety another shot or dumped the arsehole. Or both. This time, both. It was finding him outside Tessa’s bedroom door, trying to pry open the lock, that did it this time. Tessa on the other side, so frightened she couldn’t move. Couldn’t summon the breath to call out. Her mum screaming, pleading for him to leave her alone. To leave them alone.

  And he had that night, though her mum changed the locks to be sure.

  Tessa took the lunch and was about to leave when she stopped, shrugged. ‘See you after school,’ she said, offering a tight smile. It was the best she could do for now, but maybe, if she worked on it, this afternoon she’d be kinder.

  ‘Fresh bread roll from the bakery. Turkey and salad,’ her mum said with quiet pride. ‘I grated some carrot on there too – I know you like it.’

  Tessa’s heart lurched. She looked away again, out the kitchen window. Nothing but a blur of blue sky and scrubby trees and play equipment. Years of neglect had rusted the swings unworkable. She’d lived on that thing when she was little. Even before they’d moved in, when they’d visit Tessa’s gran during summers and long weekends. She’d lean back and kick out her legs, the rush of wind in her hair, the feeling of flying when her dad pushed her high, her mum smiling. The air between them somehow lighter than it ever was after Gran died, when they’d moved to Carrima for good. When this small, friendly house with its eggshell walls and mismatched furniture had become a prison her dad would never escape. Nor Tessa.

  Not yet, anyway.

  A small knot of anger hardened in her chest. She cleared her throat, focused on the floor between them. ‘Better go,’ she said without looking up, and closed the front door behind her.

  Vast sky. Blue and wide and impossibly bright.

  Tessa blinks. Blinks again. A shadow falls, then passes. Heat like a wall presses against her. The rustle of wind in leaves. Or something moving outside? She listens, strains towards the sound. Now barely a whisper of noise that might not be real. And then it’s gone.

  She squeezes her eyes shut. Opens them. A rushing sound fills her head like a conch shell held to her ear. Her skin stretched taut against her cheekbones, her lips crusty and dry as a scab.

  Still. That sky. She can
’t look at it for long before the black dots appear. The feeling of life – hot and bright and wondrous.

  Overpowering.

  She’ll be okay, it seems to tell her. She’ll be okay. And she fixes on that single thing – the notion that life still beats on inside her – before the weight of consciousness grows too heavy and she allows herself to fall into that blessed dark, the silence a welcome relief, knowing she’ll come out the other side.

  Wherever that is.

  Tessa heard her friend’s entrance seconds before she saw her. A loud soprano voice singing some unrecognisable, possibly invented, operatic tune that pierced the classroom din with its ear-aching pitch. You have to give it to her, Tessa thought. When Yuki Fraser commits to something, she doesn’t let it go. And right now she was all about being ‘a triple threat’ – to act, dance and sing. Unfortunately for Yuki, and for pretty much everyone else within hearing distance, her enthusiasm in no way matched her talent. Tessa couldn’t help smiling to herself.

  ‘Morning, sunshine!’ Yuki sang, strangling the last note of the aria as she took a seat beside Tessa. Her sleek, black hair caught the light as it fell over her face, and she tucked it behind her ear with nail-bitten fingers, exposing a bright purple streak, a nod to her ongoing pursuit to be different. It’d started when they’d begun high school. On that first day, after they’d survived the chaos of Year 7 Orientation, finding lockers and moving classes, learning names of teachers and then forgetting them, Yuki had turned to Tessa on their long walk home and announced that she was going to dye her hair. When Tessa had frowned her confusion, Yuki had shrugged and said, ‘I have literally the only Asian face in this entire school and I’m the only person whose second language isn’t Bogan. Fitting in is not an option.’ She’d grinned then, wide and victorious. ‘So I’m not even going to try.’

  That night they’d bought bleach and scarlet hair dye, and Tessa and Yuki’s mum had helped transform Yuki’s hair into the first of a rainbow of colours. Not to hide her difference, but to play it up. Show it off. Although, in Tessa’s mind, Yuki’s ‘difference’ was less about her culture than it was her larger-than-life personality. Her hair and skin and the multiple ear piercings were the least ‘different’ things about Yuki Fraser. Which was half her appeal. Life was never boring when Yuki was near.

  ‘Where the hell is my media book?’ Yuki said, looking around the room as though it might appear in front of her. ‘Oh, wait – I lost it.’

  Tessa rolled her eyes. ‘You can share mine. Again.’

  Yuki blew her a kiss. ‘You’re a scholar and a gentleman.’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t know what that means, but you say it a lot.’

  The same quick grin. ‘Then I should know.’

  Tessa laughed. Around her, students took their seats. A scuffle across the classroom ended in a loud curse word and a chorus of laughter.

  Yuki glared at the boys still messing around. ‘Imbeciles.’ She flicked the pages of the textbook, found the chapter they were up to. ‘Finish the essay?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Of course you have.’

  ‘Do you need some help?’

  ‘Is a bear Catholic?’

  Tessa shook her head. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

  ‘I seriously don’t know why I bother.’

  ‘Because your dad would freak if you failed? Because you’d probably get straight A’s if you actually – I don’t know – studied?’

  ‘You’re full of it, Tess. I love you, but you’re full of it.’

  ‘Because otherwise we’d never get out of bloody Carrima?’ Tessa’s voice rose at the end, sharper than she’d intended. ‘Because we promised each other we would.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘The sooner, the better.’

  ‘I know.’ Yuki shifted in her seat, her eyes fixed on the boys across the aisle. ‘It’s not that bad, you know.’

  Tessa frowned. ‘Carrima?’

  ‘Yes. Carrima.’

  ‘Since when?’

  Yuki waved a hand vaguely. ‘Since the merge.’

  ‘Private-school snobs,’ Tessa said, unconvincingly.

  The truth was, she’d hoped the merger with St Katherine’s at the beginning of the year would change her situation at school. After their school was shut down by auditors because of some church-fraud claim, the St Kath’s kids – who didn’t know her past, or at least not all of it – were forced to continue their studies at Carrima or travel an extra fifty kays to Beringal High. It had worked for a bit too. The new kids had tried to fit in, and Tessa had got to know a good number of them in some of her classes. A few were actually okay. But then the old stories spread, made worse by her wig-out at the school fete a month later. The new kids had given her a wide berth ever since. Most of them, anyway.

  Like she said, private-school snobs.

  ‘Not all of them,’ Yuki said.

  There were a couple of exceptions. One important one, Tessa conceded. ‘Makes it bearable. Just.’

  ‘So loverboy is bearable, is he?’ Yuki snorted. She turned to face Tessa, daring her to object. ‘So how is the big lug?’ Yuki asked, returning her focus to the noisy group in the back. Jack Miller had separated himself from his friends, his legs sprawled across the aisle in what looked to be a forced show of nonchalance. His eyes swept the room, seeming to pause – a little too long – on Yuki before continuing their survey.

  Tessa watched this exchange and shook her head.

  ‘Still hot and heavy, I assume?’ Yuki grinned.

  ‘He has a name, you know.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Yuki said, rolling her eyes. ‘You sure say it enough.’

  ‘So use it.’ Tessa smiled sweetly. ‘It won’t hurt, I promise.’

  ‘Am I allowed to throw up in my mouth first?’

  ‘Knock yourself out.’

  Yuki pretended to gag, then lifted her hand to her lips as though to catch her vomit.

  Tessa shook her head.

  Yuki threw out her arms and wailed, ‘Nicholas! Nicholas! Make love to me, Nicholas!’

  Tessa leapt up and clamped her hand over Yuki’s mouth, her cheeks burning. ‘Jesus, Yuke!’ Laughter bubbled in her chest.

  ‘You right, Fraser?’ a voice called out from the back, but otherwise the class barely paused, used to Yuki’s outbursts.

  Yuki blinked, wide-eyed and innocent. ‘What?’

  ‘For a start, I don’t call him Nicholas,’ Tessa smirked.

  Her phone buzzed on the desk in front of her, his name flashing bright and urgent. All the promise contained within those four letters as warm and radiant as the boy whose name they spelled …

  Nick.

  The memory strikes her almost physically. A rush of nausea. Blood pounds in her skull. It’s dark again, or maybe for the first time? Are her eyes closed? Her whole body feels weighed down in the oppressive black and then she becomes aware of the hard surface against her. The car door? She doesn’t know, but it allows her to steady, and she forces herself to push through the fog that threatens to engulf her again. Her mind swims as she tries to gather her thoughts …

  She’s not alone.

  Gingerly, she turns to look at the driver’s seat. Nick is there, passed out, blood caked across his forehead.

  ‘Nick!’ Her voice little more than a rasp. She reaches a shaky hand towards him, touches those high, broad cheekbones. ‘Nick,’ she says again.

  For several excruciating seconds there’s no movement. Terror clutches at her heart, and then his cheek twitches, like a muscle spasm. His eyes crease and flutter. Open, closed, open, closed …

  Open.

  A small groan escapes his lips, then the slow lift of his head, his gaze meeting hers, bleary at first, then finding focus. They stare at each other, neither able to form words. And then the barest flicker.

  ‘Ouch,’ he whispers through chapped lips.

  ‘Ouch,’ she echoes, testing her own smile with passable success.

  ‘I need …’
/>
  How to finish that sentence when the list is so long, so impossible too? A list to match her own.

  She closes her eyes, nods ever so gently – yes, me too, she thinks this conveys, but the darkness returns and she has no way of knowing if he understood.

  ‘So talk me through it, Claire,’ Mrs Russo said in that no-nonsense voice she seemed to have saved for these last weeks of term.

  ‘Well, it’s antisocial, isn’t it?’ Claire Bradford’s voice lifted at the end.

  ‘And what do we mean by antisocial?’

  Tessa could see the ski-jump tip of Mrs Russo’s nose in profile. She had a tiny red dot on her left nostril that suggested she might have had a nose ring in a former life but which now looked like a faded zit.

  ‘Behaviour that isn’t social?’ Paddy Hanson piped up from the back row. He sat between the other gamers, his scrawny, pasty body a testament to his epic-level Dungeons and Dragons ranking.