Free What the Light Hides by Mette Jakobsen Page A

David. It’s nothing but grief.’
    I reached out and took her hand.
    ‘But promise me,’ she said, her voice catching, ‘promise me you’ll stop this. Ben is dead. He will never come back to us, David. This is it—you and me. This is all there is now.’
    I put the notebook back on the bedside table and I lie down. I pull the covers over me and with the wind rattling the windowpane I doze off. I sleep for what feels like hours, deep and undisturbed. But just before I wake I dream of Ben. He is falling through the air. And in the dream I feel the rush of wind and the weight of his fall. I hear him call out for me and wake myself up by shouting, ‘I will find you, Ben. I will find you.’
    I sit up in bed, my heart beating unbearably fast. It’s almost dark outside and it has started to rain. Then I remember dinner with Neil and stumble into the shower.
    It’s completely dark by the time I walk up to King Street. Sheets of rain lash onto the footpath and the rush-hour traffic is slow. I buy three bottles of red wine from a bottle shop and wish I had brought an umbrella with me.
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    The bus is packed. Next to me a woman is checking her phone; no one is talking. The rain hammers against the windows and I am almost lulled back to sleep.
    When I get off in Leichhardt the rain has stopped. Norton Street is busy. People are doing their last bit of shopping and I can’t help it. Before I turn into Neil’s street I quickly scan the crowd for Ben, but he is not there.
    The bottles clink in the plastic bag as I walk to Neil and Maria’s single-storey house at the end of the road. Neil bought the house, two streets away from our mother, when he was in his mid-twenties. I thought then that he was destined to stay a bachelor forever. He liked women, and as far as I could tell they liked him too. But he never seemed interested in something more permanent. In retrospect I should have picked up on the signs. He spent two years renovating the house inside and out. He painted the walls and restored the floorboards; he even built a brand-new kitchen despite the fact that he doesn’t like to cook. I think he was preparing for a family and that he somehow knew Maria and Jared would come along one day.
    Vera and I first met Maria eight years ago. We came to visit Neil, but it was Maria who greeted us. She opened the door wearing an apron with small red hearts on it, the strings wrapped twice around her tiny waist. An Italian beauty with a lavish smile and jet-black hair. Neil hadn’t told us anything about her and for a moment we thought it was the wrong house. Later we learned that she had already moved in.
    Neil beamed at us all night, as if he wanted to shout, ‘Isn’t she just wonderful, isn’t she just perfect,’ and we nodded in silent agreement.
    That evening Maria insisted on seeing a photo of Ben. I showed her the one in my wallet: Ben as a four-year-old sitting on the floor in a ray of sunlight with a book in his lap.
    ‘What is he reading?’ asked Maria.
    ‘A picture book called Once I Had a Plane ,’ said Vera. ‘It was his favourite.’
    Putting the photo back in my wallet I joked that Ben had grown just a bit since then and that he, as a matter of fact, was in the middle of hosting a party in our absence. Before leaving for the city Vera and I had made sure to stow away three paintings, some of Vera’s favourite glasses and our Alvar Aalto vase.
    Maria turned to Neil and said, ‘Promise me that we are going to have a child like this?’
    I watched Neil reach for her hand and in that moment I saw his life unfold in a way I could never have predicted.
    Tonight Maria greets me at the door once more. I can smell lamb and rosemary as I give her a hug.
    ‘I don’t think I have ever seen you in black,’ I say and notice how pale she is.
    Neil appears from the living room. ‘Little brother,’ he booms and puts an arm around my shoulder.
    ‘Will I be able to get out of here?’ I joke, seeing Maria slot two