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One of Us

Pantera Presserschienen am01.07.2022
Behind the tall hedges of the affluent, gated community of Apple Tree Creek, not all is as it seems ... Out of the blue, Gertie's husband decides they need a break and he's leaving her with their three children. Two streets east and three gardens down, successful businesswoman Rachael discovers her husband has cheated on her - again - even though she's pregnant with his third child. Thrown together by a chance encounter, the two women bond over the shared disaster that is their marriages. But did one husband push his wife too far? When the ambulance sirens cut through the serenity of Apple Tree Creek, the small community is shocked at the violence that's played out in their midst. CCTV reveals no outsiders visited the estate that night, confirming that the assailant must have been one of their own. Is the culprit still living among them? And why didn't any of the cameras, designed to keep them all safe, catch anything? As the web of neighbourly relationships unravels and the workings of their inner lives are exposed, questions will be asked, but not everyone wants to learn the answers. You can only push people so far.

Kylie Kaden has an honours degree in psychology, was a columnist at My Child Magazine, and now works in the disability sector. She knew writing was in her blood from a young age when she snuck onto her brother's Commodore 64 to invent stories as a child. Raised in Queensland, she spent holidays camping with her family on the Sunshine Coast. With a surfer-lawyer for a husband and three spirited sons, Kylie can typically be found venting the day's thoughts on her laptop, sometimes in the laundry so she can't be found. Kylie is the author of Losing Kate (2014), Missing You (2015) and The Day the Lies Began (2019). One of Us is her fourth novel.mehr

Produkt

KlappentextBehind the tall hedges of the affluent, gated community of Apple Tree Creek, not all is as it seems ... Out of the blue, Gertie's husband decides they need a break and he's leaving her with their three children. Two streets east and three gardens down, successful businesswoman Rachael discovers her husband has cheated on her - again - even though she's pregnant with his third child. Thrown together by a chance encounter, the two women bond over the shared disaster that is their marriages. But did one husband push his wife too far? When the ambulance sirens cut through the serenity of Apple Tree Creek, the small community is shocked at the violence that's played out in their midst. CCTV reveals no outsiders visited the estate that night, confirming that the assailant must have been one of their own. Is the culprit still living among them? And why didn't any of the cameras, designed to keep them all safe, catch anything? As the web of neighbourly relationships unravels and the workings of their inner lives are exposed, questions will be asked, but not everyone wants to learn the answers. You can only push people so far.

Kylie Kaden has an honours degree in psychology, was a columnist at My Child Magazine, and now works in the disability sector. She knew writing was in her blood from a young age when she snuck onto her brother's Commodore 64 to invent stories as a child. Raised in Queensland, she spent holidays camping with her family on the Sunshine Coast. With a surfer-lawyer for a husband and three spirited sons, Kylie can typically be found venting the day's thoughts on her laptop, sometimes in the laundry so she can't be found. Kylie is the author of Losing Kate (2014), Missing You (2015) and The Day the Lies Began (2019). One of Us is her fourth novel.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9780648748861
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Erscheinungsjahr2022
Erscheinungsdatum01.07.2022
Seiten352 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse5260
Artikel-Nr.11934211
Rubriken
Genre9200

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe

Chapter 1
Gertie

But ⦠we love each other. You adore the kids. You re devoted to them ⦠The dent lines on the doona spread out from where her husband sat and made the pattern become out of sync. Just like his words. I mean, I see your face when they blabber on with their long, boring stories and you don t look bored at all. You re never token. You actually love them.

He nodded an impossibly slow nod. I do.

Gertie shook her head. You re Super-Dad. Super-Dad doesn t leave.

Ed s jaw twisted. He was feeling rubbish about it, she could tell. But this simply made no sense.

My anniversary card said I was the love of your life. That I was the best mother in the world, that you d marry me again â¦

I would.

Her chin tucked in, disbelieving. And yet you re moving to Singapore. The sentence had bumps in it, like the shaky breath filtering through her lungs. Gertie glanced at the framed family selfie she d bribed the kids to smile for (after the forced removal of their screens on a Sunday afternoon to tackle the clifftop trail at Bondi). With all three inheriting Gertie s jet-black hair, dark chocolate eyes and wide grins, Ed s mousey colouring seemed tame in comparison.

If it s just the job, we could come too ⦠I know it s supposed to be a cauldron of humidity, but they have air-conditioning, surely? And schools, and specialists for Abe - he d need some transitioning time, but we could manage if- Even as the words left her lips, Gertie predicted their eldest, Kat, would collapse in a histrionic meltdown if Gertie even suggested their family emigrate to Singapore. But the formal!

Ed gently placed his hand across Gertie s lips, and she sat, stunned, mute, beneath his touch. It s not just the job, Gert. The job is just a vehicle â¦

An excuse I can give to people to camouflage the fact that my rock-solid husband of twenty years is leaving me.

But she would not be told. She was married to a man impressed with logic, persuaded only by facts. He d do anything for his family. He always had, before this strange mindlessness. He was the sausage-sizzle volunteer at the school fundraiser, the dad who knew which kids had crusts cut off.

Ed s eyes met hers for a millisecond. They were pained and watery, like the day after his company s end of year; tired, but a little relieved that the hard yards were over. Had they too been quantified, like a commodity? Did that broken look on his handsome face say that all the pros and cons of us had been accounted for?

Ed gave his sympathetic head tilt, the one that used to melt her. The one that showed how kind he was. Gertie wondered if she had been naive all this time.

Is this because of that show with the experiment where the guy takes a marriage vacation - is that what this is? Gertie wagged her finger at him. Being part of the trend? Ed had never been a follower before. He still wore chambray, for God s sake.

Gert ⦠He took her hand and gave that tone, the one usually reserved for disgruntled, blustering staff who were being transitioned outside the company . It had a firm yet empathetic ring, and she had always been a little turned on by it - how it demonstrated the skill he had in finessing people at their worst. Now that he was using it on her, it sounded patronising. You haven t been yourself since Christmas. You re not happy. You haven t been happy for a while.

I am happy! Gertie raised her eyebrows and stretched her lips in a manic grin to prove the point, but the tears streaming down on either side of it contradicted her efforts.

Hon, you re not. You re always tired, stressed about the kids, unwilling to take time out to do anything for yourself or as a couple â¦

Gertie felt the frown arrive with her frustration. That s every woman with kids I know. The mental load s a killer. It can be a shit gig! Half the time she felt as if her role was reversing the kids mess just so they could make it again.

He hesitated. You re on anti-depressants.

Just a little one ⦠and they re for my back pain, I told you. He was forgetting she d broken her tailbone birthing Harry and never quite got over it.

When we have sex, you are somewhere else.

No! I m here! I m right here! She paused. Is that what this is about? Sex? Because I am open to ramping that up - just the other day Lou was telling me about this weekender-

This is not about sex, hon.

Gertie was a little curvier than when they first married, and she didn t do actual exercise anymore, but her hair was still lush and shiny, her eyes dark and mysterious, and she scrubbed up okay for a nearly-forty-year-old mother of three. Gertie liked sex, she just found there were so many hurdles before getting to it - tiredness, washing piles, kids interrupting - that it always felt like a distant land that was no longer accessible by any means available to her. And when all the planets aligned and they did find themselves there, perhaps she had been mentally elsewhere.

One thing she did know for sure was that the tone of their relationship had definitely sullied since moving to Apple Tree, to this haven for Sydney s elite.

Gertie and Eddie Rainworth began married life with two bean bags and her mother s fridge. And yet when slurping two-minute noodles through disposable forks as they recounted the highlights of their day, she d felt she was the luckiest woman she knew. They d saved half of what they d earned from their starter jobs straight from uni until they d had enough for a deposit on a renovator, two suburbs away from where they wanted to live. It had rising damp and a leaky roof, but it was theirs. Dinners were cold or from a box (Ed had acquired the crusty old microwave from his dorm), but back in her days as a young nurse on her never-ending nightshifts, she d count the minutes until she could return home and slip into bed beside Ed. In those early days, together in their house that smelled like wet dog, in their bedroom with vomit-yellow carpet, in a twist of cheap sheets, they had been enviably happy.

The set change for the second act of their married life had been unexpected - they d won a charity prize home from a ticket stuck to a box of Cadbury Roses left for Gertie at the hospital s maternity wing by a patient who came in with suspected appendicitis and left with a newborn. The ward nurses had raided the chocolates but left the ticket among a nest of coloured wrappers. Gertie and Ed joked about those prize homes being pretend fronts for money launderers, that no actual families won nor managed to insert themselves (and their associated clutter) inside those picture-perfect lives.

But they had. And they did.

Apple Tree Creek Estate was minimalist in style with sharp contemporary lines and monochrome colours. The common area was landscaped to Botanic-Garden standard with contemporary plants like yuccas that had leaves as spiky and glossy as their residents. To Gertie, all that grey, all that formality felt like a prison block. It was carbon neutral, perfectly planned and designed for sustainability, but all that science made Gertie feel like an insect in a bug catcher. Each dwelling reminded her of the Lego villages her boys built, with lawns as artificially green as the baseplates the bricks clung to.

Locals complained when the village got the green light and carved its chromatic palate into the kaleidoscope of cultures that was greater Sydney. Tucked behind an estuary that fed Sydney Harbour, the estate s community boasted ex-PMs, Olympians, Instagram influencers and rock stars. But Gertie hadn t been worried. Before she d trained as a midwife, she d changed enough colostomy bags of famous people to know they were every bit as human as everyone else.

Was that the point where things had slowly gone downhill? When they d moved to 12 Lily Court? How could she have thought - with their clearance-bin clothes and second-hand Tarago - that they d ever fit in with the hat-wearing Range Rover club? Gertie was so petrified of being judged by the hoitytoity residents that she d spent a large chunk of the gold bullion that came with the house on posh, impractical, provincial furniture to fill the damn thing. Then there was the stylist who convinced Gertie she looked ravishing in gold shoes and resort wear, all of which had hung gaudily in her closet for years with the tags still on before she had donated it all to the Salvos.

Kat had been an all-knowing twelve, Abe an absconding three and Harry a red-faced bundle in nappies when Ed and Gertie first visited the prize home in a cloud of disbelief, in awe that it was real.

Was that really five years ago?

The designers hadn t offered a better home. They d promised a better life. What was wrong with our old one? Ed had questioned. He would have preferred to sell the prize house and put the proceeds in a trust for the kids. Statistically, lotto winners are...
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