The Killing Hour

‘I was getting to that. You look good, Jo. I like the new haircut.’


‘I haven’t had a new haircut, Charlie. Now, if that’s all …’



‘I need your help.’

‘I don’t know whether to be flattered or concerned. Does needing my help involve that bump on your head?’

‘In a way.’

‘Somebody finally decided to beat the crap out of you. Wish I could have been there.’

‘No, you don’t.’ I shouldn’t be here. ‘I’m in serious trouble. I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘You never know what you’re doing.’

‘But you always seem able to help.’

‘I’m not your shrink.’

‘Please, Jo, just hear me out.’

‘If it’s serious go to the police.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘I’m clever.’

‘I know.’

‘You don’t think I can understand?’

‘That’s why I’m here. I need somebody to understand.’

‘So you argue that you want my help, then argue against telling me?’

‘I’m only arguing against going to the police. You’ll understand soon enough.’

‘Understand what?’

How do I carry on? With a drink, that’s how. While she pours me some of the coffee she’s just made I stare at the magnetic poetry on the fridge door. I make a square and a triangle with random words but I can’t line them up to make sense of the last twenty-four hours. The lounge is warm from the afternoon sun. I sit on the sofa and lean forward. I’m frightened that if I sink back and relax the sofa will swallow me. I look around the room to see if anything has changed but it’s mostly the same. The only difference is what isn’t here – no photographs of us together, nothing to show I ever existed. All those memories have been packed away.

‘Well?’ she asks.

‘This is difficult for me.’

‘Difficult for me too, Charlie. You think I want to spend my Monday night with you?’

‘You have other plans?’ I turn to face her and immediately I’m annoyed at the pang of jealousy we both heard.

‘That isn’t the point.’

‘Okay, okay, just give me a few seconds.’

I stare down at the coffee table, at the small nicks and scratches that have built up over time. Some of them I remember happening, others had happened well before Jo inherited the table from her grandmother.

‘I was on my way home,’ I say, and I wish that was the whole story just there – that I was on my way home and nothing bad happened.

I was steering my Honda around the sweeping bends of the empty motorway. The road was dark with half-circles of light spilling across from the streetlights. I had my window down to enjoy the summer breeze. The air was warm and dry. The mercury was hovering around the shorts and T-shirt end of the thermometer. The motorway was bordered by paddocks. Thin wire fences stopped the large willow and oak trees, the poplars, the patches of knee-length grass and the thinning creeks from escaping. Cows and sheep and horses were standing vigil, all unaware that day by day technology was slowly making their homes smaller. I felt like I was the only person in the world.



‘It happened when I turned off the motorway towards home. It was so …’ I shrug. ‘I don’t know. If it wasn’t for the news and the blood. I don’t know. I guess I would think it was all a dream.’

Jo leans forward and for the first time she looks concerned. I pick my coffee up but can’t bring myself to take a sip.

‘What blood, Charlie?’

‘I went around the corner and that was when she stepped out in front of me.’

‘Who?’

‘Luciana. Luciana Young.’

Jo’s mouth falls open and she falls back. The effect is almost comical. ‘This had better not be some sort of sick joke.’

‘I wish to God it was.’

As I turned the corner, my headlights washed into the paddock opposite, lighting up the same bank of trees they always light up. The trees looked like large deformed fingers pushing through a farming landscape. Twisted and broken, they were the sort of thing Salvador Dali would paint, along with some melting clocks and a naked woman.

‘What happened? Did you run her over? Charlie?’

‘No, nothing like that,’ I snap, though that would have been easier. Sure, I hit her with the car, and boy, you should have seen her fly. ‘She just jumped out from nowhere.’

‘And you hit her? You killed her?’ Jo sounds scared, scared because I’m crazy and making this up, or I’m crazy because I’m not.

The moment I saw Luciana I tugged on the wheel and jumped on the brake, swerving my car around her. In my rear-vision mirror I saw a woman drowning in the glow of my brakelights. All that red skin, red clothes … I didn’t know at the time it was a premonition of things to come.

‘No, I didn’t hit her, but it was close. She climbed into the car. She was panicked. I wanted to go to the police. You would have too if you’d seen her. If you’d heard her.’