Extract: Something He Did, by SK Lynch

In the gridlocked heart of Melbourne, a split-second of road rage changes everything. For one driver, the crash is a bizarre stroke of luck that sets their life on an upward trajectory they never thought possible. For the other, it is the first domino to fall in a terrifying downward spiral.

Detective Sergeant Claudia Russo, meanwhile, doesn't care about car accidents – she’s focussed on the search for a missing eighteen-year-old girl. But the girl’s father, a man defined by entitlement and influence, is playing a dangerous game. He’s more afraid of his own double life being exposed than he is of his daughter never coming home.

Something He Did is the first crime novel from bestselling New Zealand author and journalist Sarah-Kate Lynch, writing as SK Lynch. Known for her foodie rom-coms, a switch to writing gritty television shows unleashed a thirst for dark twists that Sarah-Kate didn't know she had.

Extracted with permission from Something He Did by SK Lynch, $37.99 RRP, Ultimo Press. Out now.

Amber drives carefully through the rush-hour traffic in the dinged-up Nissan. The office commuters are now merging with the running-late yummy mummy school drop-offs to ensure the flow of cars remains at a near-glacial pace. She’s trying to concentrate on the road but she’s also concentrating on what she has to say to the judge.

Amber has been before the regular court several times previously, so on paper she knows she doesn’t look good.

There was the shoplifting incident(s) when she was sixteen. So stupid. ‘Easily led’ should be her middle name. Two years later she got nicked driving her then best friend’s father’s car without a licence and over the legal limit. There’s a minor drug conviction from when she was twenty. A bigger one from when she was twenty-three. Then nothing for a year or two after she got pregnant. But then it got worse. She feels sick just thinking about it. Soliciting. Dealing. Loitering. Theft. Her mother has always said she’s lucky not to be locked up, even though being locked up would be the best thing for her, and Amber knows that both these things are probably true. But she doesn’t feel lucky. She feels like she’s been a loser for so much of her life.

She steels herself. But she isn’t a loser now, is she? The good and bad thing about being sober is facing up to what she’s done, who she’s been. And they’re not the same thing, she knows that. You are not your mistakes. Even if it feels like you are, which she struggles with because, really, knowing something isn’t the same as being something: the realisation is not automatically connected to the consciousness. She says it to herself in the mirror all the time – ‘You are not your mistakes’ – and sometimes she believes herself but sometimes she can see in her own eyes, as she smiles with the teeth her mum paid for her to get fixed, that the words are floating around her, not getting in.

The whole recovery thing feels like one big vicious circle, but the key is to be on the right side of the circle. Because the best way to forget about what a disgusting failure you are is to dull the memory with alcohol and drugs. Oblivion wins again! And again! And for a while it feels so good. Isn’t that what she was chasing all those years? But it’s the wrong side of the circle. Now she knows oblivion is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and it’s not even an ambulance that will take you to a place where you can get help. Now she knows that it’s okay to sit in your own failure. In fact, it’s part of the deal. That is the right side of the circle.

But what she wouldn’t give for a magic wand that could wave away the memories of some of her worst failings; the tortured recollection of being scooped up from the street, off her face and covered in she doesn’t know whose piss and blood, the sort of street scum that regular people cross the road to avoid, or regular people with empathy wonder worriedly what their story is, how did they end up like this, where are their friends, their family. Then cross the road to avoid.

On the other hand, it’s the sitting in it that motivates her to never end up back there again. That’s what she’ll tell the judge. She’s not running from anything, not hiding. She’s made mistakes, and big ones, but having Lily was not one of them and she’s at least owning the others and making amends, moving forward.

‘If Daz’s mother is there, she’ll tell them about the time I tried to put Lily in the car but I couldn’t figure out the car seat,’ she says, palms sweaty on the steering wheel.

She had been high at the time, it’s true, but she has also struggled with car seats while stone-cold sober.

Her mother waves a feeble hand – it’ll be okay.

The closer they get to the William Street courthouse, which isn’t very close because of the school drop-off traffic, the less Amber thinks it’ll be okay.

She looks at the cracked iPhone.

It’s 9.07. She’d thought they’d be there by now.

‘My boss at the laundromat says Lily can come to work after school. And if you can do evenings, even some of them, I can keep the cleaning job, maybe save enough to move to a bigger place?’

Her mother nods.

‘Or if I can get her for weekends, I’ll change my shifts so I can spend the whole time with her. We can get one of those little wagons that you pack up to take all your stuff to the beach. It’ll be so cool.’

She can feel a warmth starting in the pit of her stomach, some good, honest excitement infiltrating all the worry and doubt. Imagine getting her daughter back. Is it too much to hope for?

No. She’s worked hard. It’s nothing she doesn’t deserve. I’m worth it, she thinks to herself. I’m worth it. I’m worth it, her inner voice mimics. Who do you think you are – a L’Oréal commercial?

The traffic light she’s been waiting to get through turns red and everyone else flies through it but Amber brakes and comes to a gentle standstill. She’s so close. And she’s not yet officially late.

***

The screech of metal on metal when she’s hit by the two-tonne ute is almost more frightening than the violent jolt that twists and thrusts the Nissan onto the centre strip of the road, where it lurches to a drunken standstill.

The rear window on the driver’s side cracks because the door has been staved in by the corner of the ute. There’s a hideous noise that Amber realises is the Nissan’s alarm, which hasn’t worked the whole time she’s had the car, but just as she realises what it is it whines to a stop.

She’s winded, and shocked, so it takes a few seconds for her to understand she’s not hurt. She looks at her mother, bent over, eyes scrunched closed.

‘Mum! Are you okay?’

Her mother nods but doesn’t open her eyes. At this moment Amber realises her mother did not have her seatbelt on when the ute hit them. She sees then that the bucket stopped her mother from hitting the windscreen, thank God, but the rim of the bucket has broken the thin skin on her chest where she was thrust towards the dashboard.

‘Mum, you’re bleeding!’

The court hearing! The car!

Her mother puts a hand to her chest then looks at the blood on her fingers as though she can’t believe it’s hers. Then she opens the car door and vomits again straight onto the ground.

Amber, trying to keep her panic at bay, looks over at the other driver, sitting unharmed and furious behind the steering wheel of his urban tank.

And as she watches, as her mind reels through the possibilities of what this delay is going to cost her, has already cost her mother, she sees the contempt on the man’s ugly handsome face as he slowly lifts one hand, gives her the finger and mouths: ‘You stupid fucking bitch.’

Something happens to Amber then.

Maybe it’s that, while she has so often felt like a stupid fucking bitch, today of all days she has done everything within her power, limited as it is, to not be one.

Maybe it’s the vulnerability of her wreck of a mother, ravaged by cancer and now hurling onto the centre strip on Dudley Street.

Maybe it’s the thought of getting her daughter back and being the mother she wants to be, the mother Lily deserves.

Maybe it’s the thought of losing Lily because of someone else’s reckless decision.

Maybe it’s that she realises this wanker can’t go anywhere because the Nissan is blocking his way and he can’t open his door.

Slowly, she gets out of the car.

Something He Did by SK Lynch is in all good bookstores now.