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After The Smoke Clears

Pantera Presserschienen am01.07.2023
Would you tell your partner the worst thing you've ever done? Her family offered a life of power and privilege, until Lotti turned away from her father's grand plans - and towards a life that felt more like her own. With a new start as a teacher, Lotti may have even found the right man, a rough-around-the-edges single dad who'd never fit in with her high-brow upbringing, but who has started to feel like home. But Lotti isn't the only one running. August's strong silent demeanour may be part of his appeal, but as they get closer, his inability to talk about his past begins to jeopardise their future. After August receives a cryptic message prompting him to leave in the dead of night, Lotti takes Augie's six-year old son Otto on a road trip to his father's dusty hometown where decades of lies begin to unravel. When details of a shocking crime emerge, Lotti is forced to decide if she trusts the man August has become more than she fears the man he once was.

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), The Day the Lies Began (2019) and One of Us (2022). After the Smoke Clears is her fifth novel.mehr

Produkt

KlappentextWould you tell your partner the worst thing you've ever done? Her family offered a life of power and privilege, until Lotti turned away from her father's grand plans - and towards a life that felt more like her own. With a new start as a teacher, Lotti may have even found the right man, a rough-around-the-edges single dad who'd never fit in with her high-brow upbringing, but who has started to feel like home. But Lotti isn't the only one running. August's strong silent demeanour may be part of his appeal, but as they get closer, his inability to talk about his past begins to jeopardise their future. After August receives a cryptic message prompting him to leave in the dead of night, Lotti takes Augie's six-year old son Otto on a road trip to his father's dusty hometown where decades of lies begin to unravel. When details of a shocking crime emerge, Lotti is forced to decide if she trusts the man August has become more than she fears the man he once was.

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), The Day the Lies Began (2019) and One of Us (2022). After the Smoke Clears is her fifth novel.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9780645498486
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Erscheinungsjahr2023
Erscheinungsdatum01.07.2023
Seiten320 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse1560
Artikel-Nr.11934278
Rubriken
Genre9200

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe



Chapter 2

AUGIE, 2009

Two beams guided the Ford along the dark desert highway, with nothing but a few long-haul lorries and suicidal roos for company. The landscape changed from drought-stricken farms and scattered struggling towns, to stretches of fuck all. Nothing but road trains, bloated wallabies, potholes and time to think. I wasn t a big fan of that, as a rule. And if I had to, I shoulda been thinking about the pinhead forcing me down memory lane and the shitstorm waiting at the end of this road, not what coulda been with a highly strung daddy s girl. All I wanted was for her to be there, without question, but all she had were questions. Who, what, how, why? And, yet, she reckons I m the one pussyfooting around this idea of having a proper grown-up thing.

Lotti buffed all the chips from my paintwork, made everything in my life run smoother, especially my kid. But she was what Billy Joel would call an Uptown Girl. I shoulda known better than to even try with a woman like Charlotte Hill. I knew that the first time I saw those big beautiful eyes of hers - she reminded me of that kooky, gorgeous chick out of That 70s Show. Telling Lotti about Brookes would have been like pouring four-stroke oil in a two-stroke engine - mixing worlds that didn t go together. Besides, spilling the mess , as she called it, about Brookes would mean nothing without the context, and giving that would have meant coming clean about Becca, about Freya, about the woman who raised me. About what we all did.

But now that she had a whiff of who I really was, there was relief in it, knowing I was right about her being too good for me. Where would I even start trying to put it into words without the whole story erupting like an engine towed in gear?

Both sides of my AC/DC tape spooled through, and I was 600 k s west of the big smoke in under six hours. Even with the windows down, I kept having to sweep the side of my hand across my brow to stop the sweat dripping down my face, and it wasn t from the stifling heat.

SOS.

Three dots, three dashes, three more dots. That s all the message was, and all the message I needed to suck me down a wormhole to 1988. It ripped me back into reality, where I couldn t go on pretending Eldham was just the set of some old telemovie. That Brookes, his sister and Margo were actors, not real people I d abandoned. Now, the distance between me and the living, breathing versions of that lot was shrinking with every minute. My guts felt as broken and wrong as after an all-night bender, with just the idea of what I d find waiting at the end of this highway.

The check engine light on the situation with Brookes back home had flickered a year or so back. I knew in my gut that it was a mistake, leaving him to his own devices now his sister had gotten her own life. I still remember the stabbing feeling when Brookes said his sister was up the duff . Becca. She was something, a real-life version of Tamara from The Henderson Kids - even down to the Stackhat and roller skates. She got all the smarts and the looks, while Brookes got the guts. They d both got the auburn hair - the colour of fire, she used to say - but even that looked better on her. Becca having a rug rat (with that short-arsed bald bastard she was too good for) somehow felt more permanent than getting hitched to the putz. I was happy for her, knew she d be good at it despite having a toxic old lady to learn from.

Brookes had SOS d before. First time was as a scrawny twelve-year-old, sent from his van park on his walkie talkie when his mum was so plastered, she d passed out (he couldn t lift her on his own, but together we kept her safe til the next bottle). But since we d grown up, it was only twice. Once, at twenty-three, when his god-bothering wife left him. And once more, in the aftermath of his divorce, when he couldn t see any point in sticking it out any longer. This was the third strike.

The difference between then and now was those reasons weren t about me.

About an hour from where I had to meet Brookes, the denial I d tried on faded. Even as I d skulked outside after his text to call him properly, to get the details, I d told myself it was just his ex-missus having another crack at getting full custody, not about what I feared. Hearing the panic in his voice made my legs go to jelly. Before I had a chance to even process what he d said, I was chundering on the grass.

Lotti had distracted me for a while, but now the gravity of what I might face was on top of me. My breath felt like shattered glass in my lungs, and told me the not-too-shabby life was no longer guaranteed. Jesus, I had to get a grip. Stay calm, stay clever. That s what Lotti whispered to Otto when he started to melt down. I told myself I couldn t solve this shitstorm with my brain doing cartwheels. Cranking the window low, I stretched my forearm into the cool night air, extending my fingers in the breeze and relaxing at the distraction until the steel-blue B tattooed on my forearm from long ago, caught my eye. Stupid teenaged fool - I d now lived enough to know you didn t need to inject ink beneath your skin for someone to be part of you. They just were.

I d left them all eighteen years ago. Becca hadn t escaped like me. Now I had no choice but to be pulled back too, but I couldn t take my boy, and Becca was one of the few that knew why. I missed that about her when I asked Lotti to take Otto. I saw the look on Lotti s face - it said disappointment , confirming I was a shit dad as well as a shit boyfriend. Then I dug myself in further like a fool, spitting out the L word. That got the gears in that pretty head of hers going, the doubts about the loser she d shacked up with festering, and I could see things between us were about to stall.

And she didn t know the half of it. Not yet. She said I made her feel temporary. That was the part that got me in the guts, that I made her feel like she was just a quick fix to survive through to the next service, not a quality repair to last a lifetime. Maybe her instincts were right. Girls like her don t end up with guys like me.

Didn t change the fact that I fucking loved her.

Growing up barefoot in the dusty six-street town of Eldham, when people called Brookes my special friend , I thought they were being nice. Even when the two of us lined up outside that wobbly demountable on the first day of grade one, me in those shiny shoes I tried my best to scuff, him in that too-big, faded uniform, I knew he was different. In a town full of fuckwits and arseholes, his straightforward honesty and glass-half-full attitude was easy to be around. So was his fire-haired sister, keeping him out of child services down the track, despite being younger.

He couldn t read much, took everything at face value, and had a head like it d been screwed on the wrong body, but Brookes was one of the few completely honest people I d ever known - loyal, brave and, yeah, a little slow on the uptake. I don t know how many times I tried to teach the stupid bastard to wait for his change at the shop, make sure it was enough, but Brookes would offer up all his cash, and skip away with a goofy grin, without a care. There was a kind of beauty, being that innocent and carefree, that I was envious of.

My best mate s heart of gold wasn t enough to make me be a good person and stick around. But here I was, back in town, for my sins. The red-ringed signs slowed the speed limits, and there it was, the wonky electricity poles, the old smelters and abandoned mines, the outskirts of my hometown. Welcome to Eldham, population 3145. I knew the stories of all the lives that played out in those chamferboard shacks through the snippets I d see through the front windows riding past. The Delaquas with the grandpa that wandered, the whore house with the twin sisters with hair so bleached it went green, the Schmitz with the angry arsehole who beat his wife every Friday night but was Mr Charm all the other days. Where were they all now?

My heart clawed its way into my throat as I approached the main drag. I braked for the corner that still had Stephen Mahoney s faded runners hanging from the powerlines. I could repaint the scene blindfolded: the IGA with the terracotta tiles specked with bird shit, the heritage-listed pub with its grand old verandah, Timmo s Bakery with my graffiti still on display - the messy apostrophe handpainted in the crowded letters above cartoon pies on the shop front. Every faded zebra crossing, every rusted streetlamp unlocked another story, most of which involved Brookes. We d built ourselves around each other, us two.

One heat-hazed night, the local lads (including Brookes and Becca s fuckwit cousins) had convinced the gullible fool that they were gonna all be mates now, took him under their wing, doubled him on their ten-speeds down the lake, shared their Sunny Boys and Redskins, even bought him potato scallops from the good shop, all the while plotting his humiliation.

After finding Brookes an hour later tied to a stop sign, starkers, those bullish Harris brothers pissing on...

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Autor

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), The Day the Lies Began (2019) and One of Us (2022). After the Smoke Clears is her fifth novel.