LEAH SWANN Sheerwater: extract

Tags: Australian fiction/ Australian women writers/ Leah Swann/ Sheerwater

This week’s extract is from Leah Swann’s novel Sheerwater, a gripping story of missing children.

When it opens, Ava is on the Great Ocean Road, driving to a new life in the little town of Sheerwater with her two young sons, Max and Teddy, her car jammed with their belongings and the family dog. They are only 20 minutes from their destination when a light plane crash-lands in a paddock just ahead of them.

Ava’s training as a rescue person kicks in and, after giving Max firm instructions to look after his little brother and telling both boys to stay in the car, she heads to the plane.

Once she and another passerby have the surviving occupants clear of the plane and the emergency services have arrived, Ava runs back through the smoke and confusion to her car, only to discover both boys are gone.

Where are they? Could Lawrence, the boys’ father, be responsible? Or has he been terribly wronged by Ava? Why was her departure that morning so furtive?

In this extract, it is Ava’s first night in Sheerwater. She has been taken in by Reverend Caleb and his family – his wife, Grace, and children, Clover and Benjamin. Also staying in the house is Caleb’s brother, Simon, who had also been on the Great Ocean Road that morning and was the passerby who had stopped to help Ava at the crash site.

Extract courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers

From Ava: 4

‘Mummy, can we turn up the television?’ said Clover. ‘There’s Uncle Simon on the news!’

Ava’s eyes snapped to the screen in the living room and saw fuzzy footage that must have been taken on someone’s phone: the crushed nose of the plane, the bright burst of flame. She leaned forward, riveted, and saw herself belting madly through the smoke. The lens panned around to take in the vehicles that had pulled over: Simon’s car, a truck, an ambulance, a few motorbikes, three police cars and a fire engine. There was no vision of Ava’s car, no sign of Max and Teddy. She strained to see anything or anyone she recognised.

‘Turn it up!’ she cried and jumped to her feet, knocking over her chair.

Benjamin ran into the living room and picked up the remote and they caught a fragment of voiceover: ‘… Bird strike has been blamed for a fatal light plane crash near the Peterborough Airport in Victoria’s southwest that killed a woman. The pilot had a narrow escape when he lost control of his Cessna plane and was rescued by passers-by. Two child passengers survived and have been reunited with thankful parents. The crash …’

‘You’re a hero, Uncle Simon, they’re calling you a hero!’ said Benjamin, turning towards his parents for confirmation.

Ava again remembered the dead woman. She loomed over the blur of the accident like the sun over the sea, only she was not gold but grey, a great, grey ghost head, with the fishiness of her eyes, her damp skin, her dark blue lips. Ava caught Simon staring at her with a blunt, searching, urgent look. When their eyes met he looked away.

Onto the screen flashed the photographs of Ava, Max and Teddy that she’d texted police from her phone.

‘That’s you!’ said Clover.

There was a number people could call to give information. Ava could barely make out the newsreader’s words. The segment was over.

Ava heard herself say: ‘I think – I’ll go to the shelter now and lie down.’

‘It’s best you sleep here, in the manse,’ said Caleb.

‘Take my room,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll show you where it is.’

‘Let me show her,’ said Grace, getting up.

Ava managed to ask Grace where the bathroom was. She needed a shower. Running water would wash off the dust and blood. She felt consumed by the urgent need to stand under streaming hot water with her forehead pressed against a tiled wall.

Grace moved ahead of her along the hallway, opening and shutting cupboards and collecting various items. She gave Ava a clean towel, as well as bandaids and antiseptic cream.

Ava looked at the box of bandaids and the cream without understanding, and then noticed for the first time small cuts on her hands.

5

When she finally slept, Ava dreamed she was swinging from a helicopter over a flooded quarry. The woman she was trying to rescue was screaming. She clipped the woman onto her harness and as they rose further into the air she looked down and saw her boys’ arms waving from the thick brown glug. She unclipped herself and dropped into the water and found she was swimming with Lawrence and he was telling her that the boys were safe from harm.

Leah Swann
Photo by Julia Nance

She woke. Had she heard a sound – a knock? She lay stiffly in the strange bed, listening, and another knock came clear and distinct above the endless sea breeze that shrieked through the manse’s eaves. Perhaps it was the detective who was coming from Melbourne. Yes, that was it! The detective was waiting at the door – maybe with Teddy and Max!

Ava got up and ran through the manse and opened the front door to find moonlight shining on an empty step where the marguerites had closed into pale, drooping flutes. Cold air gusted in from the street so strongly she had to push the door to shut it.

She dragged herself back through the dark house to the bedroom, convinced she would not fall back to sleep. Perhaps she should drive back to the scene of the accident? She thought of the wind driving through the sea grasses. She thought of the cliff. She closed her eyes. Her body was dog-tired and she did sleep and she dreamed this time of the sea of her childhood at Brighton Beach. With her was Wes Norris, one of her mother’s boyfriends, the one who’d taught her how to swim, how to read the tides, how to spot a rip, who’d taken her to local swimming competitions and cheered her on, first for entering the competition, then for gaining fifth place, then third, then finally a first. Wes had been a father figure in her life for less than two years but he was the one she dreamed of still.

‘You’ve got a ripper style, Ava – we’ll make a champion of you!’

His warm interest had been something for her little starved self to pour itself into, like flour into a cupped hand. One person’s kindness can be enough to sustain a whole childhood. That was the story of every Dickens novel she’d ever read and it was true of her own life too, and that was why those novels made her cry.

In the dream, he had his arms outstretched over the bay, and he said: ‘See here? The sea constantly creates. Every wave is new.’

It was not at all a Wes-like statement. In life he’d been blokey and down to earth and proud, like her mother Vanessa, not believing in anything beyond what the eye could see, the ear could hear, and the hand could touch.

When he’d first seen the little altar in Ava’s bedroom – a box draped with a scrap of velvet cloth and a gold plastic angel with red wings bought for a dollar at her school’s trash-and-treasure stall – he’d been curious. ‘What’s that?’

‘That’s where I pray,’ she’d told him. ‘Miss Kelly says everyone has a guardian angel. I pray to mine.’

‘Your angel?’ He’d gently ruffled her hair as if to shake out such nonsense. ‘I don’t think so. And anyway, angels don’t have red wings.’

‘They do,’ she’d said, surprising herself. ‘The strong ones, the ones that know about nightmares and bad things.’

She’d never told Wes what it was that she always asked her angel for: a father. Nor did she say that she’d thought he might be the answer. As things turned out, she was wrong: like all Vanessa’s boyfriends, Wes Norris had soon sunk into the bubbling cauldron of her mother’s past.

She felt something warm on her palm – Wes’s giant, weather-roughened  mitt,  holding   hers.   She   tightened her grip and grew aware that the touch was softer, more cautious, and she stirred, waking for the second time. Had she heard something, another knock? She saw the bedroom door gently closing and smelled aniseed. Had Caleb come in to check on her? Had he touched her hand? She remembered Teddy and Max were not there and fear passed through her like hot wire.

The smell of aniseed was fading. She turned off the lamp. A small light flashed coldly in the darkness. The phone. She picked it up and saw there were missed calls and three new messages, one from her mother, one from Lawrence, and one from an unknown number.

Hi Ava, I’m Detective Fiona Ballard, and I’ll be in charge of finding your sons. Resuming search at first light. Call me any time.

There were several missed calls and a hysterical text from her mother.

Oh my god, I’ve seen you on the news! I can’t believe this is happening!

The message from Lawrence made her gasp. But what had she expected? She’d left and not told him where she was going. He was reacting to what she’d done. But still, somehow, it was quintessential Lawrence. She pummelled her temples with her knuckles. He could send her straight to despair.

She slid off the bed and knelt, driving her face into the bedclothes. She pictured the boys napping together on the beanbags at home as they sometimes did, Teddy’s head lodged under Max’s chin and Max’s arm thrown protectively around his brother’s shoulders, as though by imagining this she could make it real, bring them back to her. A prayer unspooled from her, a long and incoherent plea. Our father, who art in heaven, guard them till they wake, keep them safe, keep them safe, bring them home, God, if you exist, can you hear me, God? Help me. God, help me. She felt stunned that despite all her forethought, her professional training, her planning, she was back, flailing, in the wash of helplessness she’d felt as a child when circumstances were beyond her control.

From Leah Swann Sheerwater Fourth Estate 2020 PB 320pp $32.99

Like to keep reading? You can buy Sheerwater from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.

To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.