The Peppercorn Project Read Online Free PDF Page B

Anyway, you need to go to bed. It’s been a long day. Mietta will be awake early, which means both of us will be awake too. And we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.’ Isabelle yawned, as if to prove a point.
    ‘What am I supposed to do while you’re at the interview thing?’
    Isabelle clenched her jaw. She’d had this discussion with him more than once, and had made him promise to be on his best behaviour. He could be charming and polite when it suited him. Isabelle only hoped he would choose tomorrow’s interview to make every effort to impress and behave like the delightful young man he was. Or used to be.
    ‘I assume they will want to interview us together as a family,’ she said.
    ‘We’re not a family anymore,’ Fletcher said under his breath.
    Isabelle ignored his comment, but the mumbled words cut deep.
    ‘Can’t I wander around and explore?’ Fletcher pleaded. ‘It’ll be so boring hanging around with you and Mietta all day.’
    Not even a teenager and I’m already cramping his style. ‘Let’s see what happens in the morning, okay?’
    ‘What time is the interview?’
    ‘Ours is one of the early ones. Ten o’clock. I think we’re third on the list. They said each interview should go for an hour at most, tomorrow and Sunday. Then on Sunday night they’ll let us know if we’re successful. After the interview tomorrow, you can explore the town to your heart’s content. ’
    ‘Like that’ll take longer than five minutes.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Sounds boring.’
    ‘Only boring people get bored,’ she murmured. It was one of Dan’s favourite quotes, but the words felt wrong coming from her lips. She sighed softly. Sometimes she simply had no idea how to handle his bad attitude.
    ‘Whatever,’ Fletcher said as he climbed into the lower bunk. He rolled over so that his back was to Isabelle and curled himself into a cocoon deep inside the sleeping bag.
    His steady breathing soon told that, like Mietta, he had already fallen asleep.
    *
    Isabelle woke first the next morning, covered in a fine layer of sweat. Her sleeping bag had twisted and tangled around her body, trapping her in the narrow bed. It took a few long moments and a few deep breaths to steady her racing heart. It was months since she’d last had the dream. Only it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare. Her living nightmare.
    She wished she could wake up and turn back the clock.
    Isabelle remembered screaming. So much screaming. Later they said it was her own voice, mingled with Fletcher’s. Eventually they’d prised her off Dan’s body where she had fallen the moment she realised he was gone. She had stretched out on top of him, covered in sand and salt and seaweed, trying to warm him up. They had pulled her away, but not before she kissed him for the last time, her lips pressing against his cold mouth. She had tasted salt again. And she had tasted Dan. Her lover. Her best friend. Together since high school, the flames of romance had burned bright their entire marriage, but in an instant he was gone, the fire snuffed out forever.
    ‘A heart attack,’ the paramedics told her.
    How? Dan was fit, active, healthy. He had never smoked, never done recreational drugs, never even taken Panadol for a headache! He ate all the right foods and rarely touched alcohol except for the occasional glass of red wine. ‘ Which they say is good for you,’ Isabelle had cried to anyone who would listen.
    Weeks later, the coroner confirmed Dan had Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, the most common cause of heart-related sudden death in people under the age of thirty. His heart muscle was abnormally thick, making it difficult for blood to be pumped around his body. It was exacerbated by exercise.
    Well-meaning people sent cards, quoting everything from Buddha to the Beatles to the Bible.
    ‘ To everything there is a season. A time to be born and a time to die.’
    ‘At least he died doing something he loved,’ others said.
    It was true – Dan had