Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven

she was sure had never been there before. She was fascinated by his difference.
    ‘Married?’ he asked her.
    ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Gary’s a chef.’
    ‘Gary or Gravy?’ he answered, but dully, without a smile, as if the effort to joke was too predictable and no longer fun.
    They reached the cash register.
    ‘After you,’ he said, with an elaborate gesture.
    She paid for her groceries. He put the bananas and peanut paste down, and reached for his wallet. She had to speak.
    ‘Can we—’
    ‘Go for coffee sometime?’ He winked. ‘Sure.’
    Coffee would lead to something, she knew. Open up the precious space between them once more. Now, as she drove, she thought repeatedly – please let it not be the last time I see him, the last thing I say to him.
    He had driven up the mountain, maybe drunk – irresponsible, even for Charlie. With that, you couldn’t help but start to think about things. Was he suicidal? Janet wondered. What could cause him to be suicidal? Seeing her yesterday? That he loved her but couldn’t be with her?
    When Janet turned the bend she saw the white car ahead. They were both speeding. Janet wanted to overtake, but the other car gave her no room, not that there was much on this stretch of road. Then she recognised the driver. They both recognised each other, Janet by the other woman’s long luscious hair in plaits, Lena via the rear-view mirror, the nose. With a groan, Janet put her foot on the pedal and sped up; she went off the road and up the terrain, following a dirt trail used as maintenance.
    Lena shook her head at the sight of the other vehicle climbing, disappearing up the bare incline. She kept a steady speed, going carefully around the corners. What use would she be to Charlie not alive? She needed to reach him in one piece.
    Charlie had taught Lena to drive when their daughter was four. She was a natural, he said. A much better driver than he was. There is something about women who learn to drive after they’ve become mothers. If she had learnt before, she would be as wild and passionate as she was with anything else. But she was subdued on the road; she took care of herself and others.
    She would never tell Charlie to give up the motorcycle. It was him as much as his surfboard and his shark-tooth necklace and earring. Not a fake, he had caught the bastard himself, he said. Different from his brother and sister, and despite being a freshwater man by blood, Charlie felt the lure of the ocean. He used to tear down the coast on his bike at any opportunity, ride back and forth from the city – he had cultural political obligations there – looked up to as a young leader of his mob. But during his expulsion, he decided to live by the beach permanently in a sharehouse in Byron Bay. He loved Byron and the southern beaches. It became a second home to him. He fit in with the surfing and the hippie and artistic scene, the raw food movement. Back then he had dreads that went halfway down his back.
    At that time Lena lived in the same sharehouse, mostly rented by uni dropouts who weren’t there long enough to leave an imprint. After finding each other, Charlie and Lena stayed there well past the usual time. There were nine of them living in the cramped house; he slept on the balcony in a hammock, she in the second room off the hallway. They’d been living under the same roof for a few weeks, but he was rarely home, and they hadn’t had a proper conversation.
    It had been two months since she’d left her home in Crete. She’d been backpacking around Australia and was staying in Byron for a while. She danced at the night markets by the beach to make some money. One afternoon he was buttering a slice of toast and she was making coffee at the same time and they both offered each other some. He took an interest, asked what she did. She asked him to come along that night, and that’s when he first really saw her.
    When he arrived, his eyes were embraced by a wall of colour – orange,