Red Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

her smell; it had changed every room in the cabin, as though she’d pulled off invisible storage sheets covering the furniture and renounced all bad memories. Her sneakered feet on the boards reverberated in such a way that I doubted even Rohan couldn’t miss the soothing effect of them. I knew how she breathed, and how it became deeper and more spaced when Rohan was near, and how she sometimes put one foot directly in front of the other and slipped her heel out of the front shoe. I knew her smile came easy, but rarely reached her eyes.
    She slept a lot and tired quickly, and Rohan hated it.
    He was stir-crazy, pacing sometimes, as she curled in a chair on the veranda and nodded off. He would take me aside and point out the extra food we’d gone through and the socks and work boots we’d probably have to give to her. He’d look off to the bush, and I’d know he was impatient to get back out there, to fish along the creek.
    I’d told him to go, and he was coming round. In the evenings in particular you could feel his acceptance of her.
    Standing together like this, on the veranda, with the breeze moving through the bracken, and the eagles hanging like kites in the cool updrafts, was nice. I was thinking I might close my eyes and open myself to a decent dose of life force, to forget the state of the world and try for that second of bliss, when only life mattered. Then Denny spoke.
    ‘I can sing,’ she said.
    And it was something in the way that both Rohan and I turned to look at her that set her off. For a while she moved her gaze between us. I don’t know what my expression was – I was full of food, the sunset was captivating, her sentence was too short and too sudden, and delivered almost impishly. All that combined, and I’d gotten bogged. Rohan must have been bogged too, because as she looked from one face to the other her mouth pulled into a half-smile and then tightened as she began to laugh.
    She tipped her head back and really laughed. I was bewitched, and Rohan too – because I looked across at him and he was unrecognisable. She might have stopped laughing then, but the trouble seemed to be our combined bewildered response. She buckled and got a little hysterical. We looked at her bent position with no chance of pulling out of our zombie state. She sat down in the wicker chair.
    ‘Sorry,’ she gasped. She couldn’t look at us and waved her hand above her head as an indication of this. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just … I can sing.’
    This set her off again.
    I had never seen her laugh, and I had never seen her cry – until now. She brought one hand to cover her mouth and nose, her face suddenly crumpling into tight grief. ‘I can sing,’ she sobbed behind her hand.
    Rohan took a long breath and turned away. I looked blindly at the hardwood boards at my feet and thought about touching her – we lived together, breathed the same air, ate from the same table, washed at the same sink – she was not contagious and neither was I. So why couldn’t I place a hand on her knee or an arm around her shoulder?
    Rohan interrupted my thoughts and the pattern of her sobs with his voice. He had his back to us. ‘We can all sing, Denny. It’s how well you can sing that counts.’
    She sniffed and wiped her nose with the heel of her palm. ‘I sing very well,’ she said.
    ‘Very well?’ he replied. ‘And how well do you play cards?’
    She paused before speaking. ‘You’ll have to teach me.’
    He looked over his shoulder. I noticed he’d trimmed his beard. His face stayed impassive as he stared at her. He turned back to the paddock.
    ‘Oh, I think you already play just fine.’

    She lost – we both lost – every game to Rohan. He didn’t necessarily enjoy winning (although he despised losing), and wasn’t the sort to rub your nose in it. If anything he gave the impression of being disappointed that he was rarely challenged. Denny must have felt this about him too, because after the final hand she