A Curious Woman Read online

  Table Of Contents

  Other Books by Jess Lea

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About Jess Lea

  Other Books from Ylva Publishing

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  www.ylva-publishing.com

  Other Books by Jess Lea

  The Taste of Her

  The Taste of Her - Vol 1 (e-book)

  The Taste of Her - Vol 2 (e-book)

  The Taste of Her – A Collection of Ten Erotic Short Stories (paperback)

  This book is for Sam.

  Chapter 1

  Margaret looked around the darkened museum, and weighed the harpoon between her hands. She shut her eyes for a moment, the blackness deepening and settling around her like a cloak. The chill air, the silence, the weapon in her grasp… For a moment, things were as they should be, and she was almost at peace.

  Opening her eyes again, she shook her head. No, that was an illusion. Nothing was settled here, and she had work to do. She stepped out into the main display area, her shoes striking the stone floor with a hollow clunking sound.

  A key jangled in the front door, and a young woman’s voice sounded, nervous and tentative. “Hello?”

  Her assistant.

  Margaret didn’t reply.

  From outside came a creaking noise as the wind bent the trees. The windows rattled in their tiny frames. This old stone building wasn’t designed for letting in light or fresh air. It squatted close to the earth, huddling down against the icy gusts that came screeching in off the bay, straight from Antarctica.

  It had been built as a watch house in the nineteenth century. The small, dim rooms now used for storage and office space had once housed bushrangers, pickpockets, drunks, and poisoners on their way to the chain gang or the gallows. Rumour had it, some nights in those rooms you could hear things: a hammering on the doors, a scrabbling of fingernails against the stone.

  Margaret had never heard them herself, but perhaps the ghosts were afraid to disturb her.

  The main display room, once the old courthouse, lay in silent gloom. Another power cut, thanks to the storm, and the sun was late to rise at this time of year. The main switch was all the way over by the front door, but it didn’t matter. She knew every inch of this place, and the darkness never troubled her.

  Her eyes adjusted, and she could make out the crouching forms of long-dead animals: a team of stuffed huskies, their eighty-year-old fur dull and patchy, pulling a sleigh. On it sat a dummy dressed in explorer gear from the Scott era, his body shapeless in canvas trousers and a hooded smock, his eyes hidden behind slitted leather goggles.

  Margaret returned his blank gaze for a moment then glanced to the right to meet the reproachful glass eyes of a fur seal, its relatives long since hunted to extinction in these parts.

  “Moth-eaten old monsters,” she’d heard Kelly, her assistant, describing them to a friend with a shudder, when she thought Margaret wasn’t observing her. A mistake; Margaret was always observing. “Why can’t we be a proper, modern museum?”

  Margaret assumed that meant a place full of touch screens, flashing lights, and cheerful recordings explaining how gravity worked. A glorified childcare centre: a place that never showed people anything they didn’t wish to see. Well, Margaret had not come back to this little map smudge of a town to make people happy.

  She caught a flash of movement and swung around. But it was only her reflection in a glass cabinet. The cabinet’s contents—miniature replicas of the Erebus and Terror—would have looked harmless by daylight. But here in the shadows there was something eerie about the ships, as if they had been shrunk by witchcraft along with their human crew, to be frozen behind glass for eternity.

  “Hello there?” Kelly’s voice had grown plaintive; she must have forgotten the location of the main switch.

  Margaret’s mouth tightened in distaste. Incompetence irritated her, and so did obvious fear. She did not answer or pick up her pace as she made for the entrance, her heels beating a slow rhythm against the stone. In the shadows, an alien figure loomed beside her, its arms and legs swollen, its domed head enormous, faceless, made of gleaming metal: an antique diving suit. Margaret acknowledged it with a glance. Then she stepped out into the vestibule and flicked the main light switch to the building.

  Kelly screamed.

  The lights flickered and blinked bluish-white. Their flash illuminated Margaret’s reflection in the front window, gleaming against the semi-darkness of the outside world. Tall, lean and angular, clad entirely in black. Her short dark hair was slicked close to her skull; her ivory face seemed disembodied, surrounded by darkness. The shadows and flashes of harsh light exaggerated her high cheekbones, firm jaw, Roman nose, and shadowed eyes. Her feet ended in towering heels; her fingers were clad in black gloves. They flexed like spiders. She held the harpoon in a practiced grip.

  Kelly’s shriek—choking, bubbling, spanning several octaves—would have made a Hammer Horror heroine proud. Then the lights came on properly.

  Things steadied, and Margaret saw her usual reflection this time, standing calmly before the reception desk. She wore her black work suit, plain but elegantly cut, with a high Mandarin collar and silver cufflinks, along with the black cotton gloves she always used when handling exhibits. Like this harpoon from an old whaling ship, now under restoration here.

  “Calm yourself, Ms Petrovich.” Margaret kept her voice deadpan, her expression composed. She had not put down the harpoon.

  “Oh, Ms Gale! I didn’t know you were here. I forgot where the light switch was, and I… I got a scare.”

  “Please, Ms Petrovich, show some self-control.” Margaret sniffed in disdain. “This is a small coastal maritime museum. What is there to alarm you here? We only deal with shipwrecks, scurvy, snow-blindness, mutiny, rum, sodomy, and the lash.” She drew the last word out with a long, sibilant hiss.

  “Sorry, Ms Gale.” Kelly swallowed and made a desperate attempt to look professional. “I was just about to get things set up for the school tour this morning.” She shifted from foot to foot. “I thought… I thought I could lead the tour, if that’s okay, Ms Gale? I could use the practice and, well, after last time…” Kelly flapped a helpless hand.

  Perhaps she did not like to refer in detail to what had happened the previous time Margaret had hosted a school group here. In Margaret’s opinion, her management of the situation had been perfectly appropriate, but that meek little rabbit of a teacher had looked rather shaken.

  “Certainly.” Margaret laid the harpoon back in its cabinet in the front display. Then she pulled off her black gloves, finger by finger, and tucked them reverently away. She could sense Kelly watching, wide-eyed.

  Margaret locked the cabinet, clipped her key chain back in place, and straightened up slowly. She turned her head with a predator’s lazy grace.

  “Have you nothing to do, Ms Petrovich? I do hope we are not boring yo
u here?”

  “Oh! No, I’ll get on with…” Kelly scuttled away, her expression equal parts resentment and fear. A reaction Margaret was used to. A reaction she welcomed. She could almost hear Kelly berating herself for studying museology in the first place, when she would have been much happier with a nice job in a bank.

  When she was alone again, Margaret Gale permitted herself to smile.

  Chapter 2

  Bess woke with a jolt. Through the window the dawn sky was pale grey, but the room was still dim and huddled with shadows. Someone was watching her.

  Adrenaline pounded through her. Her heart hammered, her limbs jerked. Her right hand shot out to grab the full, metal water bottle she kept on the windowsill. She gripped it tight. She would not be helpless this time.

  Flinging off the blankets, Bess sat up—and gasped as the crown of her head thudded into the sloped wooden ceiling. Eyes watering, she swung around to face the intruder.

  There was a scratching sound of claws against wood, then a triumphant, warbling shriek.

  Her vision cleared, and she found herself looking down into the bright amber and black eyes of a rooster.

  Russet and scarlet coloured, with a great plume of white tail feathers, Bess’s housemate stood on the top step of the ladder that led up to the loft bed. He chortled to himself, his wattles quivering. He was waiting for breakfast.

  “Oh, you little…” Bess dropped the bottle and flopped back onto the mattress. She rubbed her aching skull, then let out her tension in a hoot of laughter. “Oh, Genghis.” She scooped him up into the crook of her arm. “Where would I be without my brave defender?”

  Bess clambered down the ladder and into the main room of her tiny house. The pot-bellied wood heater had burned itself out and the chilly air nipped at her ankles. Still, as she looked around her, she felt a surge of warmth. The room smelled deliciously of wood-smoke and last night’s homemade apple crumble.

  There was the kitchen ledge and barstools she’d sanded and varnished herself. A fold-down couch with bright cushions she’d embroidered, the rainbow rug she’d knotted together from scraps of old clothing, and a fruit-bat mobile she’d made dangling above her head. It had been a year, and Bess wasn’t missing television at all.

  There was the little gas-bottle stove, the kitchen chopping-block, and the bookshelves that covered the eastern wall, holding everything from Virginia Woolf to Pippi Longstocking. Not to mention the tiny camping fridge, containing nothing but milk, yoghurt, and a few beers. Everything else kept fine in the outdoor pantry at this time of year. Why had she ever thought she needed to pay huge energy bills to keep a big fridge full of crusty old pickle jars and withered vegetables? She’d been such a sheep back then.

  Bess nodded to her belongings as if greeting old friends. She reminded herself to pay attention. Every moment is unique. This was home, all twenty square metres of it, and it was all hers.

  She glanced over at the chickens’ corner. On the cold winter nights, Genghis, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne would settle down there in an open drawer, wearing the paisley chook-nappies that Bess had made for them. She recalled where her pets had been living before being rescued: the garbage-filled yard of a squat behind Bess’s flat in the city. Some hippie housemate had brought them there as chicks and forgotten about them. After weeks of looking out the window and seeing their distress—left without water for days on end, their hutch filthy, Genghis bleeding from a dog attack—Bess had finally had enough. The night before she left Melbourne for Port Bannir, she’d jumped the fence under cover of darkness, like a plump, angry ninja, and stolen them all.

  She reached down to scratch her companion behind his comb.

  “All in the past, mate,” Bess murmured, remembering her counsellor’s advice. “Acknowledge the memory, then place it gently onto a pretty little raft full of flowers, and let it float out to sea.” She swept back her tangle of red hair and remembered to smile. You are in charge of your emotions. So choose joy. “Breakfast?”

  Her feet crammed into gumboots and with a coat over her pyjamas, Bess stepped outside. Out here, the air was so cold it made her cheeks ache, but the sunshine was dazzling. She smelled damp foliage, possum droppings, and crisp, clean air. Dew glinted on the grass and on the small granite water feature Bess had installed (recycled water, of course). It was designed to promote tranquillity. The gum leaves above her seemed to have been brushed with silver; the paddocks stretched as far as she could see. Magpies were warbling, and the chooks hopped down the steps behind her to peck around in the dirt. Bess hugged herself and breathed deep.

  “I am fully present,” she repeated, as she did every morning. She wriggled her fingers and toes, anchoring herself inside her solid, freckled body. “I am grateful. I am valid. And I deserve to be happy.”

  She sat down on the steps, reached for her ukulele, and picked out a few verses of Botany Bay. Soon she would go back inside and eat the fruit muesli she’d made for herself—with a handful of Coco Pops thrown in because Coco Pops were okay as long as you ate them mindfully. Then she would get on her pushbike and head into Port Bannir for another day at the best job she’d ever had.

  What did a few nightmares matter when she was living the dream?

  She hummed along to the cheerful ukulele melody of a song about exile. How could she not be happy? Everything she loved was right here.

  Bess was still humming to herself as she cycled into Port Bannir. She passed the bakery, the Country Fire Authority shed, the town hall, and the charity shop, waving to a few locals on the way. Some waved back; some didn’t. Not everyone in town was a fan of Bess’s workplace, but she assured herself that they would come around in time.

  Turning off the main road, she puffed her way up a sloping gravel track. The thick scrub and banksias hid the coastline from view, but she could smell the cold, salty sea-spray and hear the whoosh of the waves. Then she rounded the corner. The vegetation thinned away, the wind whipped her hair around her face, and there it was: the bright azure of the harbour, the white beach, and at the end of a rocky promontory, her destination.

  The Cabinet of Curiosities.

  On the outside, the building was stark: great, dark concrete slabs that made it look like a Soviet missile silo. Bess didn’t like that, but her boss Leon insisted it was perfect. He said it gave visitors no inkling of what they would discover inside. They come in expecting to be disappointed, he said. And then we blow their minds.

  “Morning, Christos.” She nodded to the security guard as she chained up her bike and changed her shoes.

  “Bess. Nice day for it.”

  She checked her appearance in the glass sliding doors. The polka-dot rockabilly dress was her own creation, cut to flatter her heavy breasts and hips and her plump, shapely arms, their skin creamy beneath the freckles. Teamed with cat’s eye spectacles and glossy red sling-backs, the effect was eye-catching.

  Back in the city, Bess had spent years hiding in the frumpy, overpriced clothes that were sold begrudgingly to fat girls, and enough was enough. Nowadays, she was determined to make an impression.

  “Is his royal highness around, Christos? I’ve got something for him.”

  “Try the vampire room.” Christos yawned. Then he sauntered down the path to deal with the first busload of tourists, who were already craning their necks and pressing their noses to the coach windows, desperate to have their minds blown.

  “Bess!” Leon waved with his free hand. With his other hand, he snapped a picture of himself inside the coffin. “One for the social media feed?”

  “Why not?” Bess glanced around. Inside the Cabinet of Curiosities, the lighting was kept low. Leon wanted to create place of mystery, he said, not some sterile museum or gallery.

  The vampire room featured half a dozen upright coffins, which members of the public were encouraged to try for size and comfort.

  Satisfied with the shot, Leon hopp
ed nimbly out of the coffin. He brushed down his mustard three-piece suit and twiddled his waxed ringmaster-moustache.

  “So, Bess! My right-hand woman, my consigliere, my fairy godmother—what have you got for me today?”

  “Well…” Bess returned his smile. Leon might be a bit pretentious and pleased with himself, but this place was special. “I know where we can get our hands on a moa egg.”

  “Not the great prehistoric monster-birds of New Zealand?” Leon’s eyes widened.

  “The very ones.” She showed him the photo. “Nine hundred years old, ninety percent intact, beautifully preserved. I thought we could exhibit it inside one of those Victorian gilded birdcages, hung from the ceiling.”

  “Brilliant!” The newspapers said Leon was Australia’s most successful cynic, but the promise of a new exhibit made him bounce and beam like a child at Christmas. “Put a cuttlefish in the cage, yeah? And one of those little mirrors with bells.”

  Bess nodded and made a note.

  “Any news on the Andean mummy?”

  “They’re still holding out for the original price. But I’ll beat them down.”

  “I know you will.” Her boss grinned and rubbed his hands together. He set off on one last check of the building before the tourists were admitted. Bess hurried along at his side. “Anything else I need to know?”

  “Well, I’ve been going through the visitor feedback.” Bess consulted her notes. “The forty-foot tapeworm is a winner, and the schoolkids love posing for photos with their heads in that set of diprotodon jaws. But I should tell you, the wall of Edwardian cock rings has had quite a few complaints.”

  “I see.” Leon fondled his moustache. “Did you get them in writing?”

  “Yep.”

  “Excellent. Pick the most outraged ones, and post them on the website.”

  “Already done.” Bess flipped through her to-do list, as they walked past a cabinet labelled “Rubber Chickens Down the Ages.” It was right next door to the Bearded Ladies’ Hall of Fame.