July 30, 2018 AD
The Stitches Held
Left alone in the Derwent Entertainment Centre car park after Karl Jenkins withdrew from what had just happened between them, Sarah Lahey walked home through the dark to her cottage on Anfield Street in Glenorchy. Unwrapping the filthy, bloodied bandage on her left hand, she found every stitch intact, though she had been certain the day before that at least one had torn. Too exhausted to question it, she redressed the wound, showered and cried herself to sleep.
Detective Constable Sarah Lahey walked home alone from the car park of the Derwent Entertainment Centre. Karl Jenkins had left her there minutes after they had sex in the dark at the far end of the car park. She had believed it meant something to both of them. He had retreated into professional distance almost before it was over, and then gone back to the investigation without her.
The walk to her house usually took about fifteen minutes. It was fully dark and cold, and she cried for most of it, keeping her head down whenever headlights passed. Her hips were bruised where Karl's hands had gripped her, and his stubble had left her neck raw. She passed the corner shop where she bought milk most mornings, the park where she ran at weekends and the bus stop she used most days. She looked at none of them.
Her house at 23 Anfield Street in Glenorchy was a 1960s weatherboard cottage with faded cream paint, bought two years earlier after her promotion to detective. She let herself in, locked the door behind her and went through the house in the dark to the bathroom. She did not turn on a light until she was there, and when she caught her reflection she looked away from it.
The bandage on her left hand was in a bad state. It had been soaked through in the afternoon's downpour, caked with mud from Myrtle Forest, and fresh blood had seeped through its layers. She unwrapped it expecting to find the wound reopened. The day before, at the dam, she had been certain she felt at least one stitch tear. Every stitch was intact. The edges of the wound were closed and clean, with no sign of infection, after a day of rain and mud and gripping dashboards and door handles.
She was too exhausted to make anything of it. She cleaned around the wound with saline from the first aid kit under the sink and put on a fresh dressing. Then she wrapped the hand in cling film, pulled a rubber cleaning glove over the top, and showered with her left arm held awkwardly clear of the spray until the hot water ran out. The dressing underneath stayed dry.
She put on her oldest pyjamas and went to bed. For a long time she lay awake in the dark, going over the evening again and again, trying to understand how she had misread it so completely. She cried until she fell asleep.
