The Other Side of Beautiful Read online

  Photo: Fiona Melder

  KIM LOCK is an internationally published author of four novels. Her writing has also appeared in Kill Your Darlings, The Guardian, Daily Life and The Sydney Morning Herald online, among others. She lives in regional South Australia with her family.

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  To those who are longing for home

  CONTENTS

  3024 km to go

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  2880 km to go

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  1791 km to go

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  422 km to go

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Here, now

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  One Week Later

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Discussion Questions

  3024 km to go

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mercy Blain’s house was on fire, but that wasn’t her biggest problem.

  Flames licked orange tongues up the walls; great billows of greasy smoke poured into the night sky. Emergency service vehicles were gathered about the burning house, lights strobing across fences, gardens and the shocked faces of neighbours standing about in slippers, nightgowns clutched at their necks.

  An ambulance sat in the middle of the street, back doors flung open. Inside the pool of light spreading from the ambulance doors, Mercy stood with the dog in her arms, ignoring the paramedics. Her body was shaking and tears were coursing down her cheeks. She could hear nothing—not the jets of water shooting into the flames, not the hoses slapping onto the pavement, not the shouted directions of the fire-fighters. Mercy could hear nothing but the high-pitched ringing of her own pure, absolute terror.

  It was almost midnight. It was the eve of Mercy’s thirty-sixth birthday. None of these things—not the orange flames nor the agog neighbours, not the birthday nor the deafly ringing ears—were Mercy’s biggest problem, either.

  The dog gave a sudden wriggle and licked Mercy’s jaw. Unfamiliar voices swam around her, ebbing vaguely at the edges of her awareness, filtering in through the squeal of horror in her ears.

  ‘Ma’am?

  ‘Can you hear me? Ma’am?’

  ‘Are you her neighbours? What’s her name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘We’ve never met.’

  ‘She keeps to herself,’ said a man’s voice.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  The paramedic was squeezing Mercy’s shoulder. The dog began to lick furiously at Mercy’s hands. Mercy closed her eyes and the flames were still there, blazing beneath her eyelids. There came a sound like iron cleaving apart, the rush of water battling against flames. Something cracked, groaned, and fell with a crash. Cries rose from the crowd.

  ‘Can she even hear? Maybe that’s one of them, you know, hearing dogs?’

  ‘It’s a sausage dog.’

  It wasn’t that Mercy was unconcerned about her house transforming rapidly into the first circle of hell. It wasn’t, either, that Mercy was as worried as the paramedic hovering in front of her, calmly desperate for signs of smoke inhalation, or burns, or maybe even concussion from falling debris. No, those things weren’t the source of Mercy’s current despair.

  ‘Mercy?’

  Mercy’s eyes flew open. With surprising agility for a Dachshund, Wasabi wriggled free of her arms and thudded to the ground, then took off on his stubby legs towards the figure hurrying up the street.

  ‘Eugene,’ Mercy croaked.

  Heads swivelled. Onlookers parted. Even the paramedic finally paused in her scrutiny of Mercy as the man strode towards them. He lifted his arms and approached Mercy as if to gather her up in an embrace but, at the last moment, he faltered. His arms lowered awkwardly back to his sides.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Eugene said.

  Mercy glanced down and saw his feet thrust into sandals. For a long moment she stared, uncomprehending. Since when did Eugene wear sandals? The exposed skin on the top of his feet looked pale and obscene. She thought she might be sick.

  ‘Your voicemail didn’t make any sense,’ Eugene was saying. ‘You said you had a small kitchen fire. But oh my god, Merce …’ His voice faded as he took in the flames, roaring and crackling into the sky. Glass shattered and the crowd gave a collective gasp.

  ‘We need to take a look at her,’ one of the paramedics said, pushing Eugene aside. When Eugene retreated, bending to scoop up the dog, Mercy felt the bones in her legs turn to jelly.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said.

  They took her into the back of the ambulance. Penlights flashed into her eyes. A blood pressure cuff tightened around her arm and the cool disc of a stethoscope slid below her clavicles, across her ribs, beneath her shoulder blades. She inhaled; she exhaled. Any headaches? they wanted to know. Abdominal pain?

  Mercy knew she needed to answer. Dimly conscious as she was, it was enough to know she needed to say no to those things, because then they would leave her alone. But her throat was knotted tight and her voice would not come, and without the dog to hold onto her fingers trembled and clutched the pyjama pants at her hips, as if to hold herself together.

  Did paramedics carry diazepam? Or maybe, if she asked, they could give her the green Penthrox whistle? Something. Anything.

  Eugene and two neighbours stood at the ambulance doors. Eugene was watching her with alarm and something else—anger?—shifting across his features. She noticed he’d cut his hair shorter, and even in the dark she could see the silver that had once feathered his temples had crept upwards and spread, and now covered most of his head. In the flashing lights the silver hair gleamed.

  ‘Lucky I found you, huh?’ the male neighbour piped up. It was only now that Mercy noticed the man was shirtless, grey tracksuit pants slung beneath a protruding white belly.

  Mercy blinked. Still no words came out.

  ‘Very lucky,’ the paramedic said.

  ‘I was just outside, having a bit of a ciggie, when this little dog here—’ the shirtless man gestured to Wasabi, who was licking Eugene’s face ‘—appeared out of nowhere, barking its head off. So I look over and at first I thought all the lights were still on, which is a bit weird, because usually it’s pretty quiet in that house—’

  ‘Mike,’ a woman standing next to him hissed.

  ‘But then I saw smoke and realised it was flames.’ The shirtless neighbour shook his head. ‘So I ran over. Gave the poor girl a hel
l of a fright, didn’t I, love?’ He turned to Mercy. ‘Sorry about that. We’ve never met officially but I just went barrelling into the poor lady’s bedroom, found her standing there, smoke everywhere. I grabbed her and took her outside.’ He swung his belly towards Eugene and stuck out a hand. ‘I’m Mike. And this here’s Jenny, the missus,’ he finished, stabbing his thumb over his shoulder.

  Jenny extended a polite hand towards Eugene, then uttered a shriek as something in the burning house fell with a crash.

  The paramedic was taking Mercy’s pulse for the third time, frowning. ‘Pulse is still fast. You’re not coughing though, so that’s a good sign. Any nausea? Dizziness?’

  Mercy was feeling both of those things, and more, but not for the reasons the paramedic was asking, so she gave a tight shake of her head. The medic’s fingertips were cool against Mercy’s skin, her thumb pressing gently into the back of Mercy’s wrist. The contact was merely professional, and necessary, but to Mercy, the press of the paramedic’s fingers was almost unbearably tender. A sob choked out.

  The medic smiled at her. ‘Bit anxious?’

  Mercy’s tears flowed faster. She nodded.

  ‘Just keep breathing nice and slow, okay? That’s it. In to the count of four, out to the count of … hey, you’ve got it. Done this deep breathing thing before, huh? Now, here’s what I’d like to do.’ The paramedic went on to say that Mercy needed to come with them to the Adelaide Northern Hospital, an instruction Mercy vehemently declined. When the medic pressed again, concern and authority sneaking into her voice, Eugene spoke up.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on her.’

  The paramedic was unconvinced. She began to say something about smoke inhalation, until Eugene leaned towards her and murmured. The paramedic listened, nodded, looked sidelong at Mercy and smiled.

  ‘Well,’ she said, picking up a clipboard, ‘if Dr Phelps here is going to take care of you, I feel much better.’

  There was more chatter among onlookers and medicos, peppered thick with the sentiments lucky and close call and at least it’s only things. Mercy was shepherded out of the ambulance and the doors slammed shut behind her. Once again out in the open, the black night yawning above her and yet more neighbours clustered and gawping, any brief whisper of security Mercy had experienced in the ambulance dropped away. Her heart began to beat so fast and hard that the fat smacking sound of it only amplified her terror. It was like a horse bolting, only to scare itself with the sound of its own hoof-beats and gallop even harder.

  Her house. Her house. She had lived there for two years.

  ‘Anyway, love,’ Mike was saying, ‘I didn’t catch your name?’

  Mercy looked at him. The shirtless man was right. Never, before this night, had they met. For the past two years, all Mercy had known of the people living directly across the street was what she could see from her living-room window. A straggly gum tree was growing beside the footpath, and through its twiggy limbs she could see their carport, where a perpetually half-demolished old car languished beneath an oil-stained sheet. Their front fence was made of green-coloured mesh; their house was of dark red brick. Unlike the people living in the new house on Mercy’s left, sometimes the people across the street forgot to put out their bins on a Monday morning and the garbage truck would sail past their house without stopping.

  The air was clogged with the stench of smoke and white hot brick, incinerated fabrics and plastics and timber. Voices yelled, water whooshed, truck engines rumbled and dogs all up and down the street were a frenzy of yips and howls. Emergency services personnel in hi-vis scuttled about; Mercy was questioned, her details taken and business cards pressed into her hands. Police sauntered about following directives from the firies. People with FORENSICS written on their backs showed up. Mercy’s voice squeaked and shook; she felt as if she were in an alternative reality. As if she were watching all the commotion from a distance, from the surface of another planet. So many people, so much noise. So much attention, all because of her. At one point a police officer bent his head to lock into her line of vision and said, ‘Can we call anyone for you? Family or friends? Do you have somewhere to go?’

  This is not what’s wrong, she wanted to tell them all. This is not my biggest problem.

  Eugene’s eyes met Mercy’s, then shot away.

  Mercy looked towards her house in time to see a huge section of the roof collapse into the flames. Embers shot like fireworks into the dark sky.

  And that was when the doom struck. Black and oily as that smoke-filled night, Mercy felt death tap on her shoulder as time ground to a complete halt, the present moment of exquisite pain stretched for an impossible eternity and her lungs filled with a scream of sheer panic.

  In desperation, she wheeled to Eugene. ‘I don’t have—anymore—’

  Eugene’s face creased. ‘She’ll stay with me.’

  The shirtless neighbour turned to Mercy, surprised. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m glad you’ve got a friend, love.’

  Eugene said, ‘I’m her ex-husband.’

  ‘Technically,’ Mercy managed to put in, ‘we’re still married.’

  It was the first time Mercy had been outside her house in almost two years.

  And that was Mercy’s biggest problem.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Compounding Mercy’s problem was the fact that she had only set foot in Eugene’s new house once.

  Eugene bought the house a week after it all happened, and a few days later invited Mercy over for a pizza that, at the time, Mercy could only assume was some perverse attempt at conciliation. They had eaten standing up at the kitchen bench, surrounded by partially unpacked boxes, and she had stayed long enough to eat one slice, then she’d fled. On the drive home, waiting at a red light, she had opened the car door and vomited the pizza right there onto the middle lane. Suffice to say that although he did extend another invitation or two, she never went back.

  It was after three am by the time Eugene pulled into his driveway, twenty minutes away from Mercy’s house. Every minute of that drive had felt to Mercy like a heavy rope unspooling from her chest, pulling tighter and tighter as the distance from home lengthened. She clung to Wasabi as if the dog was a piece of floating wreckage and she was flailing in a churning sea.

  When the car stopped, Eugene turned to her.

  ‘Before we go inside, there’s something you should know.’ He exhaled, rubbing the back of his head. ‘Jose’s here.’

  Mercy’s eyes darted from Eugene’s unreadable face to the dark, quiet-looking house. All the windows were black. Above the roof, the sky was murky with Adelaide’s ambient light. They were only a few suburbs from the city.

  ‘Jose?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought … I thought you broke up.’

  ‘We did. But now, well, we’re not broken up.’

  ‘So … he’s here? Inside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Eugene. I can’t be here!’

  ‘Look,’ he hastened to say, ‘don’t worry about it right now. You’ve been through a tremendous shock and you just need a shower and some rest. We’ll work it all out tomorrow.’

  It was then Mercy realised that Eugene was wearing a collared shirt. Despite the urgent midnight awakening, despite the burning-down of his ex-wife’s house, Eugene had still managed to put on a collared shirt. Of course he had. And there alongside him was Mercy, wretched with fear, stinking of smoke and melted plastic and blackened brick, in sagging pyjama bottoms and a sweat-stained old T-shirt.

  And inside Eugene’s dark, quiet house was his off-again, on-again, twenty-three-year-old boyfriend.

  The high-pitched whine started up again in Mercy’s ears. Everything began to spin, sickening waves pitching her back and forth.

  ‘Eugene?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m going to need some Valium.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some in the kitchen.’

  Also in Eugene’s kitchen was whisky. He offered Mercy a shower b
ut all she could think about was slowing the violent race of her heart. It was basic triage: stop the bleeding before you set the bones. So it was five milligrams of diazepam washed down with three glasses of Glenlivet before a shower, then Mercy climbed into a borrowed pair of jeans and T-shirt, and Eugene steered her into his spare room where she sat on the bed, in the dark, waiting for the sun to come up. Not once did she hear stirring from the master bedroom. Not once did she hear murmured male voices, the reassurances or sweet-nothings her ex-husband might give the young man who had supplanted—several times, it seemed—the woman he had once loved.

  Mercy sat on her ex-husband’s spare bed, waited for daylight, and tried to breathe.

  The next day—Mercy’s birthday—the investigator called. Mercy was prostrate on the floor by the window in Eugene’s spare room when the phone call came. Being by the window provided the psychological sense that she was closer to her own house, but the curtains were made of a filmy white gauze, useless against the sunny mid-October glare, so she had thrown a blanket over the curtain rail and had just slumped to the carpet when her phone began to buzz.

  Wasabi, curled up on the bed, opened one eye. It occurred to Mercy that all she owned in the world now was the dog and her phone. The pyjamas she had been wearing the night before—when her neighbour had dragged her from her smoke-filled bedroom—were now in Eugene’s bin. She stared at the phone vibrating in her hand. When her neighbour found her she must have grabbed it from the bedside table, but she couldn’t remember.

  ‘It was the toaster,’ the investigator told her.

  Mercy held the phone tighter to her ear. ‘The toaster?’

  Eugene’s spare room smelled of unfamiliar laundry powder and new carpet. The blanket started to slide from the rail and she squinted at the crack of sunlight blasting around its edge.

  ‘We’ve established the cause of the fire was the electrical toaster on the kitchen benchtop, on the east wall,’ the investigator went on. ‘The flames caught what appears to have been a hanging towel, then the overhead cabinets, and then it got into the roof cavity. Once the rafters were alight, it moved very swiftly.’