An Isolated Incident Read Online Free Page B

without telling anyone. As if she would.’
    â€˜World’s youngest grandma,’ he said, smiling.
    We used to call her that, me and Nate, back when we’d get pissed and make messes and she would bustle in, clean up and lecture us about responsibility.
    Nate touched my hand. ‘And then what?’
    â€˜Then yesterday morning there was a cop at my door . . . They said she’d probably been out there since Friday night. It rained so much over the weekend. Nobody stopping by the roadside for a piss or a picnic.’
    Nate sucked in his breath. I knew he was imagining her, lying out in the rain, knew he was worrying about how cold and scared she must’ve been and then remembering she wasn’t feeling anything by then. The quick double-punch of horror and gratitude.
    â€˜Do you know how . . . On the news they said she was . . .’ He held out his hands, helpless.
    I told him what the police had told me. I didn’t spare him any details, because they had not spared me and I suppose I wanted to share the pain of it. But now, well, I am reluctant to repeat it, to tell you the truth. Bad enough to have heard it all from my own mouth that morning. Bad enough that I saw what they left behind, and heard what the coroner made of that mess. Bad enough to glimpse the newspaper headlines as I rush through the shopping centre on my way to the supermarket. Bad enough to guess at what the blokes in the pub are whispering in between saying, so loudly, ‘How you doing, love?’ Bad enough that when I try to sleep the images come so hard and fast they feel like memories. Bad enough I can’t go a night without dreaming some of it, all of it, the things being done to her and the men doing it almost almost almost showing their faces so that I hope for these horror shows to come again because this time I might catch a glimpse, see whose fists and cocks and knees and forearms they are. Worse, worse, worse than bad, the goddamn vivid guesswork of my mind, which has spent too many hours watching crime shows, too many nights reading true-crime stories. Bad enough I must see inside my own mind flashes of suffering that look like fucking NCIS , sound like Underbelly , feel like a boot coming down on my chest. And if that sounds good to you then go ahead and read the goddamn coroner’s report and look up those obscene photos for yourself. I’m not your pornographer.
    Nate was still and silent through the worst of it, but when I told him the police had no suspects, he cracked his knuckles, clicked his neck back and forward. ‘Hope I find those fuckers first,’ he said. ‘Gunna do worse to them than they did to her.’
    â€˜Please don’t.’
    He cracked his knuckles again. ‘You think they deserve to live?’
    â€˜I think I deserve not to have a husband in jail for murder.’
    He looked at me then, properly. ‘Babe,’ he said, ‘I’m not your husband.’
    â€˜You know what I mean,’ I said. ‘You know I need you to be . . . okay.’
    He looked at me for a long time. I don’t know if he was thinking of the past, or of Bella, or of his woman up in Sydney. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m okay.’
    There were a lot of visitors that first day. First full day I knew she was dead. Each sat at the kitchen table with me, looking out the window to the driveway, saying goodbye and take care and call if you need as the next car pulled up. I don’t think they’d coordinated it or anything; it just happened that way. It shocked me a bit, how many people came. Nowadays I have to think of it more darkly. I have to think that half of them were rubbernecking or trying to get in on the tragedy. Weird how many people do that. Makes me sick that I know about it, that looking back I have to assume that’s what was going on. But at the time what I kept thinking was, Miss Popularity, aren’t you, Bella! Look at all