One Read online

  About the Book

  ‘You told me how people are always trying to find the meaning in their life, why they exist, but you already knew yours. It was in that moment, that time when you’ve met that one, that person who makes everything complete. And the rest of the world just falls away.’

  He had his heart broken by his one true love, and cannot see a way forward in life. Having alienated himself from his family and friends, he works nights and shuns normal society. But not even disrupted sleep and depression can explain the strange behaviours that will suddenly take over him. It all escalates on an unassuming night, when he returns home to find a woman asleep in his driveway. Waiting.

  One probes the extremes we go to for love, and the scars we leave on each other. The novel asks, who do you become when you’re driven to obsession?

  A love story, a ghost story, a road trip and a memory puzzle, One is the highly original second novel from a young Australian writer establishing himself as a major talent.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  I

  II

  III

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright Notice

  After I’d finished work I came out into the night, worn down by the machine hum, the second-hand air being pushed around by the industrial fans, down between the machinery, which rolled and rattled and shook along the walls, the thin metal of them flickering and buzzing all through the darkness. The smell of oil and ink and rubber from the belts had seeped in, right up into the back of my throat. It was my third day back, my body still adjusting, still recovering from the accident. The strain of effort weighed me down like soaked clothes.

  I checked my phone, nearly dropped the thing taking it out of my pocket, juggled it with both hands. The screen beamed bright in the darkness. No messages, no missed calls. And as the screen faded, I turned my attention to my left hand. I held my hand out flat. My fingers kept moving, kept fidgeting, no matter how hard I tried to hold them still. I touched each of my fingers to my thumb, one by one. The scar traced the outside of my hand and down my wrist, a smooth pink line, dots along the edges, where the stitches had been.

  The grey threads of my veins stood out under the bright streetlight.

  The roads and footpaths outside the factory were empty, abandoned in the sleeping hours.

  On the other side of the perimeter fence you could see.

  The dark outlines of houses, the shine of the windows catching the stars’ glance. The rows of orange streetlights arched over, watching the vacant concrete. Smears of brightness blurred through the fog that lingered on the distance.

  Specks of rain skimmed through the light up by the bulbs.

  The sounds of my footsteps crackled across the bitumen as I walked out the main gate, towards my car. There were parking limits around the factory, but there were all-day spots further out, in the side streets.

  And because no one was around, because no one was there, I wandered down the middle of the road, tapping along the scarred blacktop, the puffed white lines. I balanced on the painted divider, my arms out wide, leaning side to side, and then I got to the end of the line and I stopped.

  I stood as still as I could and I listened.

  To the night.

  Sometimes you could miss it, sometimes you couldn’t pick it out because the wind was too strong or there was nothing around. But sometimes you just had to wait, tune in.

  I listened closer and there it was. A car drifting through the sleeping suburbs, whispering along the empty streets. Another hushed by after that, the sound rising and fading, like waves rolling across the ocean. I listened as another car washed by, and I closed my eyes and imagined it, imagined the sea stretching out before me, the coastline off into the distance. The white water sliding up the sand.

  Sometimes you’ll get a hint of engine noise when you tune in – a boat skimming across the surface. Sometimes the car sounds are so faint that you can barely see the waves crashing way off.

  The push of the night breeze cooling past, the car sounds flowing by. The blue water stretching out in my mind.

  You can only do it at night, when there’s not so much traffic. That’s the only time you can hear it like this.

  And across the way, way up on the top floor of an apartment building, someone had left their window open, a single white curtain flailing out, whipping and collapsing across the moonlit clouds.

  I drove home along the shining streets, past the bright lights of the twenty-four-hour supermarket beaming across the empty car park, the darkened shopfronts watching out along the strip. The mannequins at the fashion stores waved from the shadows as I passed.

  Because it’s the first hours when I drive home, sometimes the traffic lights don’t work because you miss the sensor on the road and there are no other cars around to trip it. So you pull up at the lights and you’re just waiting. The red beaming down, changing the colour of your skin. The only way to make them work is to back up and drive forward again, let it know that you’re there. Your white lights reversing along the main street.

  Sometimes you catch green lights all the way. Trails of them strung along the path like Christmas.

  A taxi flashed by, hissing along the bitumen, then gone.

  I could feel myself fading as I came into the city, the mumbled voices from the radio whispering into my dreams, and I wound the window down and leaned my face out into the night, the cold air rattling into my eyes, my skull. I squinted up to watch the city buildings as I passed beneath, their sharp edges scraping along the clouds.

  I stomped onto the brakes just in time for a red light, jolting forward, the seatbelt grabbing at my chest.

  A police car slid by. The officer in the passenger seat glared out as he passed.

  I drove by the park with the black-banded trees, past the museum that was the colour of a sandcastle under the spotlights, and I turned in by the petrol station that stays open all night, bright white beneath the canopy watching over the petrol pumps, and when I came round the corner the trees were weeping.

  Leaves drifted down in slow motion, streams of them, wandering through the amber reaches. It was like snowfall, their delicate shapes twirling in descent.

  I slowed down as I came through, held my hand out the window. The tiny tails of them scratched across my palm as they went.

  The branches above were bare. Crisp wooden capillaries rising towards the moonlight. I watched their twisted shapes turn as I came through, my angle changing.

  I watched them, and I thought of veins, thought of arteries. I thought of haemorrhage, like the doctor had said, and I lifted my hand from the wheel and looked at the scar in the shifting light.

  I thought about.

  The bright white of hospital, the touch of the sheets over my feet.

  The warmth spreading through me.

  And the lines blurred and spread.

  And the car drifted across the lanes.

  I

  I woke up. The rippled underside of the steering wheel squeezed hard into my fingers and the numbers across the dashboard beaming back and I sat up, blinked back into consciousness. And I was home. The headlights poking into the concrete driveway.

  And there was a woman there.

  She was sitting out in front of the car, the woman, her full body in the reach of the low beams, brightest on her chest, her neck, then fading up. She was wearing a blue dress that shone in the light, and a black jacket that had slipped off one shoulder. Her head was leaning to the side, eyes closed, long hair falling away.

  She wasn’t moving.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  I thought, I must have hit her.

  I was sure I’d hit her, and I rushed to open the door
and get out but the seatbelt tightened, held me back, and I unclipped it and pulled it away and shoved the door open, stepped into the chill of the early morning.

  The woman was sitting upright, head lulled, and I got over to her quick.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  My fingers were over my mouth now, my heart racing, and I scanned over her, looking for damage, an arm twisted round the wrong way, a shiver of bone poking through. A dark stain of blood.

  But there was nothing.

  I slid my fingers up into my hair, sucked in a breath through my teeth.

  The woman looked as if she was sleeping, unaware of the car staring her down.

  Ghosts of breath leaked out of her open mouth, curled up into the darkness.

  I went to talk but my voice got caught in my throat and I swallowed it down, started again.

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  No response.

  ‘Hello.’

  The woman remained still.

  Another sliver of her breath drifted away.

  I looked around, looked out to the street, as if there might be some explanation, someone else nearby. Concrete paths bordering the parkland across the way. Empty roads waiting in the gusts. The leaves twirling down from the trees up along the main street.

  I stepped closer to the woman, just outside the reach of the lights, and I kneeled down. I leaned forward through the darkness to get a better look at her face.

  Her red lipstick was smeared, though only slightly, as if someone had coloured in a picture of her and gone outside the lines. The make-up round her eyes was rubbed in.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I whispered.

  No response.

  I reached forward, slowly, the way characters reach through a magic mirror in a film. Any moment, I thought, and this woman could wake up and grab me, pull me in. I had no idea what she was doing, why she was here. What she might be capable of.

  I flinched, leaning away from my outstretched fingers as I went.

  The woman gasped into life suddenly and I hit myself in the chest pulling my hand away and I fell back off my feet, then I scratched across the concrete, got around behind the open car door, fingers gripped over the cold metal of the window frame. I held on, my heart rushing in my chest.

  The woman’s eyes were wide now, blinking in exaggerated gestures, and one of her hands shot to her chest. Her eyebrows were raised, and her mouth was open, as if she was surprised, amazed to feel air inside her lungs, and she squinted, recoiled from the headlights. She turned her face away, covered her eyes with both hands, then she looked up, hands cupped over her face like a visor. She looked in my direction.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said. She closed her hands over her face again. ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ The woman pushed her fingertips up along her forehead, then dragged them back down. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She spread her fingers, the way you play peekaboo with kids, and squinted into the light again, then closed them back over.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘I am …’ And she stopped. Her body pulsed as she took in a breath. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ she whimpered.

  The woman raked her fingers down her face, winced at the brightness when the light hit her eyes again, and she put a hand forward to block the beams and I reached into the car and twisted the lights off, dropped us into darkness. The deep blue glow around the edges of the world. The woman let her hand fall away, her knuckles tapping onto the concrete. She stuttered in another breath, then let it out.

  The edge of the first sunlight caught in a tear as it slid down her skin, her features hidden in the shadows.

  ‘I’m really sorry about this,’ she said.

  The woman leaned forward, pushed off the concrete to get up and she stumbled, fell back. You could hear her bones connect with the surface.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

  She pushed off the concrete again, stood up shakily. She stomped across it as she went, getting her balance. She grabbed a fistful of fabric to pull her dress straight, smoothed her hands down her legs, then she stopped. She scanned all around herself quickly.

  ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘My bag.’

  She turned around, held her long hair back as she looked, and I checked either side of me but there was nothing, glimpses of grass and concrete peeking between shadows. The woman turned again and then she stopped. She let her arms drop to her sides. She took in a deep breath, stood up straight as she could. Her body hung over her bones in the morning breeze.

  She looked to me. Dark holes of eyes staring.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I used to live here.’ And she pointed over her shoulder, towards my house. ‘I used to live here and I had a lot to drink last night and …’ Her voice quivered. ‘For some reason I’ve come back.’ She crossed her hands in front of herself. Her fingers slid up her arm. ‘I’m very sorry. I just made a mistake.’

  I watched her a moment, unsure what to say.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I told her.

  ‘It’s not okay,’ the woman said, and she tilted her head back, her face up to the sky.

  I watched from behind the car door, my fingers still gripped onto the metal.

  The woman buried her face into her hands again. She puffed through the gaps in her fingers.

  She wavered slightly in the morning breeze, as if the wind might be enough to break her, send her falling back to earth.

  I watched her in the shadows, her frail figure. Broken. Worn out. I watched her, and I wondered how long she’d been here, how long she’d been crashed, unconscious in the cold. Alone in the night.

  ‘Do you need help?’ I asked.

  The woman’s glinting eyes curled up onto me.

  The woman flipped down the sun visor in the passenger seat and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She angled her face round, pulled her hair along her cheeks, pushed at her skin, then she sighed. She flipped the visor back into place.

  ‘God,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much for doing this.’ She stretched her seatbelt across, clipped it in as we backed out of the driveway. Me watching the road, empty in the white reverse lights. ‘I’ve just had … Well, you don’t need to …’ She stopped herself, patted her hands against the air like a mime caught in a box. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I told her.

  We drove out of the street and drifted into the early-morning traffic, the first flows of the morning rush filtering along the bitumen. Headlights flashed by, the sun up enough now to see the shapes of people in their cars. People in shirts and ties behind their steering wheels, surging forward, staring straight ahead.

  ‘Were you just getting home?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘I work nights, so …’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Oh, it … it’s nothing interesting.’ I shook my head.

  ‘Okay.’ The woman turned to look out her window.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t mean it like that,’ I said. ‘It’s just …’

  ‘Hey, no, there’s no reason for you to be apologising to me,’ she said. ‘You are doing me a huge favour here.’

  ‘What I do just isn’t very interesting, you know?’

  ‘No problem,’ the woman said. ‘I definitely don’t want to bother you.’

  ‘No, no bother, it’s …’ I thought about what I was saying. ‘You don’t bother me.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said.

  As we got closer to the city, there were more people, crowds of them storming along the footpaths in black pants and grey skirts and long jackets. Banking up at intersections, shuffling along tram stops. They all looked the same, the same people duplicated over and over, the same-coloured cars. The same faces.

  We moved in time with the traffic, surging and halting in pattern, and the woman was looking at her hands, her elbows, then she leaned forward to look down at her dress. She pulled it round to look at the back. A dark patch of mud smeared across the fabric. She dropped it back into place, put a hand to her head.
<
br />   ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I might’ve got mud …’

  ‘It’s okay.’ I nodded.

  We sat among a crowd of cars at the lights, waiting.

  ‘So, you went out last night?’ I asked, and the woman didn’t respond, and when I looked over she was pursing her lips, her chin wilting towards her chest. Black-tinted tears spilled down her cheeks.

  ‘Sorry,’ her voice squeaked out, then she stuttered her breath.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I’m fine.’

  She straightened up, looked out the side window, tried to hold it together.

  The mumbled whispers of the radio announcer at low volume combining with the traffic sounds rushing by.

  The woman’s breaths skipping and releasing at my side.

  The surroundings changed as we got further out into the suburbs. People in skin-tight running singlets and shorts, bouncing along the concrete. Plastic bins lined up in pairs like soldiers.

  There was a woman and her son waiting at a bus stop, the son wearing a decorated box on his head. Space helmet. He waved as we passed.

  I scanned the homes and the square-shaped trees along the gardens, the clean cars glinting in the early-morning light. A man in a business suit walked out of his front door carrying a briefcase, a piece of toast hanging from his mouth. It all felt familiar yet distant, like a TV show, a dream.

  ‘It’s right at the next set of lights.’ The woman pointed ahead. ‘Then you go left at the roundabout, yep, and just here.’

  We pulled up outside a small wooden building with large strips of paint flaking away, exposing the grey boards underneath. There was a tiny garden out the front and a red letterbox, crowded by towering weeds. The seed pods and the yellow dandelion flowers wavered in the wind. The house looked older, more rundown, out of step with the other buildings in the street.