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

from the asphalt. She’s tossed, her contorted body flying up and over the vehicle through billowing flames. The fire catches upon her dress. The flaming truck speeds into the distance while the woman lands on the road and lies crumpled, paralysed as the burning green fabric melts into her flesh.

Eyes stung by tears, the girl throws the book across the stone-walled room and backs away. It lands amongst a pile of dirt and rubble. The demon rests. It has done its work.

There it shall lie for thirty years.

There it shall await Renata Wakefield.

12

Renata picked up the ringing telephone and carried it into the hall on its long cable. She closed the living room door, sat on a step at the bottom of the staircase, and answered.

‘Hey, Renata? It’s Sandie!’

‘Sandie…uh, hello,’ she said nervously, searching for the words. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Nothing, just calling for a chat.’

‘From…America?’ Renata paused. ‘I’ve not thought any more about the Adelaide Addington movie, you know.’

‘Oh, no sweat. I really just wanted to apologise profusely for how Daddy carried on at the film set, shouting at me like that. He doesn’t usually do that. That happening in front of you was so embarrassing. Guess he’s under a lot of pressure at the moment with this new film.’ The sound of a knife on a chopping board came through the line. ‘I’m on the hands-free. You hear me satisfactorily?’

‘Fine, yes.’

‘I really enjoyed talking to you when we met. Won’t be, like, a regular thing or anything, I promise. I won’t start stalking you – I’ve had my fair share of that.’

‘I don’t mind, Sandie,’ said Renata, ‘but I’m a little concerned your father doesn’t want us speaking. I wouldn’t want to cause an upset.’

The girl giggled. ‘There’s a lot Daddy doesn’t know about me, Renata. One more thing won’t hurt.’

‘Sandie, have you any idea why your father wouldn’t want us talking? He seems rather adamant about it.’

‘It’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, he’s always been real protective over me, but this is just dumb. Sometimes I think he loves me too much for his own good, the goofball that he is.’ The chopping stopped. ‘He does seem pissed at me, though. I dunno if I’ve done something wrong, besides talking to you, of course. But why he wouldn’t want us chatting, I got no idea. Guess I need to think of a way to make it up to him. Maybe I could get rid of some of the…miscellany he wants to sell to raise money for his charities.’

The flicking television channels of Sandie’s mind cycled through various other disparate topics, wedging in those oh-so-impressive words wherever she could. Finally, the conversation drew to a close amongst further promises of Sandie being first in line for the Adelaide Addington part, should it ever materialise. Renata hung up the receiver even more perplexed about Quentin’s behaviour. So Sandie also found his keeping them apart strange. What kind of harming influence could Renata possibly have on the young girl?

She carried the telephone back into the living room, replaced it on the sideboard, and stepped to the bookcase. She had work to do.

‘He’s a rat,’ spat Thomas. ‘His type are vermin, ungodly. Keep working for him and pray the Lord’s forgiveness finds you.’

Her advance from Quentin was extravagant, too extravagant, but he’d had it no other way. She pulled a folder from the dusty shelf and reached to the back to run a finger over the envelope of cash stashed behind the books. Yes, it was still real. A few more of these and she could secure her father’s care, maybe even clear her debts. She moved a few thick religious texts in front of the envelope, along with Thomas’s mammoth bible, and returned to the couch.

The fire lit up the peeling wallpaper and patches of mould around the room. Furniture draped in musty sheets, framed pictures of loved ones now gone, ornaments of which only the ghosts in the pictures knew the significance: these were the kinds of artefacts dotting the mausoleum.

Above the raging fire loomed the flood. She’d considered taking the painting down but it held a weight carried over from her childhood. It was a living thing, an organism, and never had she so much as dared to touch it. Best leave it where it was.

The folder held the remaining script to be reworked. Renata had saved the hardest part for last; this bundle, they’d agreed, needed to be completely rewritten. Since her night with Quentin, from which her skin still rose at the thought, there seemed to be a hint of inspiration returning. She had to put down a lot of ink before tiny globules of true creative juice found their way through the nib of her pen to the paper, but they were there. She just had to persist. For Quentin, she had to persist.

Thomas swiped a moth from his face. ‘A rat and a Jew,’ he snarled, interrupting her train of thought. ‘All those Hollywood types are Jews. They’ve wrecked their country with their death movies.’ His blank eyes rolled in their sockets. The dishevelled mongrel by his side let out a gargled moan. ‘Death movies, that’s what they are. That’s where your blood money’s coming from, girl.’

Her pen remained poised as he raved on. Lately, her father’s hateful spiels were provoking in her something more akin to anger than fear. Anger at his ignorance, or at the terror under which she’d lived as a little girl? Could it be anger at his treatment of her mother? Rage can become to a writer the catalyst of their craft, but not this writer.

Not yet.

The anger paralysed her, as if her very thoughts had been injected with the blind old man’s medication. Tonight his rambling was infuriating her. There was a cork jammed in the bottle of her