Hindsight Read Online Free Page A

And he often seemed so poisonously jealous of her, or spiteful, depending on which of his seven personalities had surfaced that day.
    ‘From the beginning then,’ she whispered. ‘But just for you.’
    Mira took off her shades to wipe them clean using the cotton hem of her sundress, clenching her eyes shut against the morning glare, which she could still detect to some extent through the thin, sensitive skin of her eyelids. Then as she opened her eyes without the filtering benefits of the glasses, the sky aged from vivid violet to pale blue, as did everything else around her.
    Everything blue.
    The bridge vanished, along with the dead body and the irreverent seagull. She could still feel the concrete path beneath her feet, although her shoes and the rest of her body remained invisible just as if she was dreaming. More like sleep walking through a blue fog. However, the trail seemed much narrower now and reduced to dirt; little more than a wallaby trail that disappeared into a thicket of darker blue reeds at the water’s edge. To her right, the trail looked to be rutted at cross-angles by a wider road, also dirt, but trampled into shape by the passing of much busier oxen and horse-drawn carriages. The derelict tram bridge came alive too with ghostly blue boxcars. Blue-skinned loadmasters shouted silent orders to chain gangs of blue convicts, who unloaded blue hemp and sugar cane under the watchful glares of their ghostly blue guards from Likiba Isle. In the distance, across on the isle itself, the overgrowth of wetland forests shrank away and drained to reveal the earlier clearings for crops, cells and guard barracks. On the hill, atop the longest roof, she could also make out the movements of workmen replacing shingles that failed to weather an even earlier renovation from quarantine station to gaol.
    Turning around, she took one step too far and bumped into Ben; felt the shape of the sling that supported his arm. Like her, he seemed invisible against the ghostly blue haze of yester-century, as with everything else in the picnic area and car park — part of which now served as a holding yard for blue bullocks, while everywhere else around her the small dead port bustled with the blue ghosts of sailing ships, steamers and row-boat loads of sailors ashore, all going about their business.
    To her left, a grotty, shaggy-haired boy picked the pocket of a burly man who wore the hat and coat of a sea captain. Then the boy bolted off through Mira and disappeared along the scrubby dune towards the inlet that was choked — back then — with stunted mangroves. The victim bolted towards her then too, cursing hotly enough after the boy to make Mira stand aside to let him pass. She couldn’t hear him — couldn’t hear any of the ghostly spectres — but she could read their lips.
    A blind girl who could read lips. Mira shook her head.
    ‘Earth to Mira,’ Ben said. ‘A little louder please?’
    ‘Sorry, I just needed a minute.’ Distancing herself in time first seemed to help settle her nerves a little. She returned her attention to the beach which appeared wider and less threatening, since the only dead body in sight then belonged to a pelican — sprawled in much the same spot as the woman, despite the shifting of so much sand and time.
    Sliding her sunshades back up her nose made the blue fog of yester-century disappear, replaced in the same instant by the violet haze of yester-fortnight. Still, she couldn’t see Ben, but with her glasses repositioned the purple bridge reappeared, the beach eroded to a slimmer crescent, mangroves thinned out and the inlet shifted a little further south away from the dead woman with the seagull. It hurt more to see them now. Faster light always hurt more for Mira to process, and changing shades without closing her eyes first often exacerbated the pain until she refocused.
    ‘Does it hurt too much?’ Ben asked.
    ‘My own fault.’ She rubbed circles against her temples until the pain