For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

In the pitch-darkness of this cell she will sit, alone. She will never know how long; days, of this she is sure. The blackness will pull her into an eternity of night wherein time and space twist and flatten into a never-ending expanse of madness. She will lose the ability to tell whether her eyes are open or closed, whether she’s asleep or awake, dead or alive. Smells of which she’d never have imagined her body capable will rise from the places her muscles surrender their dignity, the darkness presenting to her a world in which all bodily functions occur as they do for the cows she’s seen in the fields. Yes, blackness and the stench, hunger and the thirst. These will be the new laws of her existence during her time in the larder.

After a day or two, or week, or year in this perpetual black, the memory of screaming at her father will inject some unexpected strength into her. She’ll remember the sensation of freedom and liberation at roaring threats in the face of this ultimate force of violence and suffering. At this, the endless dark will offer up the realisation that she has a way out.

The stories.

For some months, she’d found solace in the pages of the diary her mother had given her, the open ears of her only friend. She’d ignored the dates heading each page, preferring instead to continue the previous entry’s scribbled thoughts – the words running on and on and on. The fear of her father reading the diary was too great to allow the detailing of what actually went on in the house, so she’d search her mind instead for anything else in her life, or in her head, worth committing to the page. She felt like a cave diver exploring a pitch-black underwater lagoon, arms outstretched, hunting for anything of interest.

A pitch-black underwater lagoon. Maybe that’s where she is now. The girl closes her eyes and sinks into the lagoon.

Come on, there’s got to be something down here.

She imagines the ropes around her wrists falling away, allowing her outstretched hands to search in the darkness. The cave diver gropes in amongst the soil and stones that make up the bed of the lagoon, knowing there’s something there for her, something to carry her through this hell.

Someone reaches back.

It’s a woman. She has brown hair – no, blonde hair. Her cheeks are sprinkled with freckles. She’s wearing a flowing pink dress – no, buttoned blue blouse. Her lips part. She’s about to tell the girl her name. (What was the name of that city in Australia where she’d sent those letters for that pen pal project at school?)

The larder door opens.

The light is unbearable. Silhouetted against the glare a figure approaches her, kneels down, and unties the rope fastenings. Gradually, her father’s expressionless face falls into focus. He steps towards the open door then stops, looking back at her.

She understands.

The girl struggles to her feet, bracing herself against a shelf as her legs try to remember how to support her weight. A towel is thrown in her direction, falling to the floor by her feet. With it she wipes the worst of her mess from under her skirt, runs it over the soiled seat of the chair, sets it sheepishly on the ground, then slowly follows her father out of the larder and up the stairs into the bathroom.

Not a word is exchanged as the girl undresses. Thomas takes her clothes and returns downstairs as she slips into the pre-run bath. He reappears with a plate of dry bread, then tips the toothbrushes from their cup into the sink and fills the glass with water, setting it by the bread on the lowered toilet seat.

‘Thank you, Father,’ the girl croaks as he’s leaving the bathroom.

He stops and, without turning back, says, ‘You stayed at a friend’s.’ Then, just before he closes the door behind him, he looks back into the shivering girl’s eyes. ‘You have a brother.’

Soon, once he’s returned the larder to its previous state, she’ll hear her father’s car struggle to life as he leaves for the hospital to collect her mother and her new baby brother. She’ll see the way he looks at the boy, while a new mutual affection opens up between her parents. She’ll see her mother, her father, and this newcomer huddle together, a tighter unit than the family has ever been. She’ll see friends and visitors come especially to meet the baby – an adorable baby, you simply have to meet him; oh, his little face and hands, and that beautiful red hair – and she’ll see the future, the way it’s going to be. Mercifully, Samson will die within weeks, Thomas replacing him with yet another new Samson.

A new Samson for a new beginning.

Tonight, the girl, just turned ten, will give birth to a woman with blonde hair and a blue blouse named Adelaide Addington. She’ll deliver through the pencil her first creation: a person, an actual human, a character. And she’ll be real, more real than that drooling thing in the other room – the baby you have to meet him he’s got a face and hands and a nose and even an ear or two and you simply have to meet him.

Oh, Adelaide will be real. But first she has to meet her newly born baby brother.

‘Rennie,’ her mother will whisper, the smile on her face finally real, ‘meet Noah.’

8

The broken springs of the mattress prodded into Renata’s back as she listened to her father’s snores. Occasionally they would mangle into fitful chokes, at one point leading to a silence she thought may have marked an end to her enduring of this place, these people, these responsibilities. She thought the choking may have signalled the dying