Lloyd nodded slowly, not looking up at her.

"Thank God," she sighed, hoping that this might mean an end to the nightmare that they had been living.

Lloyd laughed mockingly. "God didn't have a bloody thing to do with it. I did it. It was me and me alone. Scott was next to fucking useless. If it hadn't been for me running all over the place and doing what I could, this whole thing would have gone under months ago and you and him," he yelled, stabbing at the air in front of Grace and Jackson with one, long finger, "would be out sleeping in Brotherhood bins ...which is about where the two of you belong, " he added after a second thought.

The period after which the mine had finally produced the dividends it had always promised was, in many ways, a peaceful one for Grace and Jackson, for Lloyd was rarely in Helton. He always seemed to have some legitimate excuse that kept him away from his family, as he gradually came to spend more time at the mine and attending to company business in Melbourne and Sydney.

At first Grace accepted this as a part of Lloyd's job, but she realised there was more to it when she spoke to Scott over the telephone on Christmas Eve. Lloyd was at the mine site and had said he couldn't make it home for Christmas and probably wouldn't get back until the New Year.

Scott had come right out and asked Grace if she and Lloyd were having marital problems. A part of her warned her that she shouldn't get other people mixed up in what, essentially, was her own problem. But she trusted Scott and cared for him a great deal, and so admitted to him that things had been difficult for them for quite sometime, but she did not go into specifics.

"I knew something was going on," Scott had said with a sad and heavy heart. "You see, most the time, he's got no real reason to be up here. I tell him to get his backside back home to you and Jack, but he just goes and finds something else to keep him here ...or some reason to go to Melbourne or Sydney. I'm sorry, Grace, real sorry. Hope things work out for you. That man's got to be crazy to risk losing a beautiful woman like you. You just don't let someone like you get away. I should know, it's taken me 'til now to find the woman for me," he said.

Grace thanked him for his lovely words. The sincerity and pain in his voice had touched her deeply. But he would have pained more if he'd realised what his best friend and business partner, was up to. For it was at about this time that Lloyd Crane began an affair with Vanessa Reed, and Vanessa was Scott's fiancée.

Vanessa was a twenty-three year old young woman with striking features. She had peroxide blonde hair, and her skin was browned by the Territorian sun. Her breasts were large and her shapely hips and buttocks rolled and rubbed provocatively together when she strutted down the dusty streets.. She’d been of the barmaids at the small pub in Coody, the little town nearest to the Crane-Hadley mining site.

She had gone there with the hopes of landing herself one of the miners as a husband, as they brought in good wages for their work. But she had gone several steps better: she had met Scott Hadley, a part owner of the company, and now she was set to marry him.

The couple married in Melbourne and Vanessa had insisted on a big wedding with no expenses to be spared. Scott was only too pleased to comply, only ever wanting to please her.

Grace had attended the wedding, while Jackson had stayed back in Helton, in the care of his grandfather. She had found it an unpleasant experience. Try as she might, she could not warm to Vanessa, especially when she saw how Vanessa looked longingly at Scott's best man during the ceremony, namely Grace's own husband! What shocked her further was the flicker of recognition in Lloyd's eyes, telling her more than Grace really wanted to know.

By the end of the day, Grace had developed a deep sympathy for Scott, for it seemed to her that he had unwittingly entered into a union not unlike the one she had entered into with Lloyd.

The following two years were a boom period for Crane-Hadley. Lloyd even bought Grace and Jackson their own home in Helton. Grace had believed for a long time that he'd done it out of guilt and shame, and maybe a little love. But she later found that his motives had been much more calculated.

Lloyd spent most of his time in Melbourne where he had his own apartment. He also traveled to Sydney and sometimes overseas. He thrived on the Crane-Hadley Corporation, with its endless carousel of clinching deals, the power and decision making and the controlling the fates and lives of others. He excelled in the business world, and soon had the reputation of a ruthless shark.

As far as Grace knew, his affair with Vanessa Hadley was still going on and rumors of their indiscretions had found there way to the sleepy little town of Helton through the usual source of a 'friend-of-a-friend'.

But it seemed that Scott was totally unaware of what was going on, for he was busy sticking to the roots of the company, and subsequently spent a lot of time in the Northern Territory at the mine site.

Then one day, quite unexpectedly, Lloyd had turned up in Helton without any warning. Grace, though mildly surprised, greeted him politely, as one would someone who was not quite a complete stranger.

Lloyd had said at the time that he wanted to get away from the grind of the office and spend some time in Helton with his family. Grace had been perplexed. This did not sound like the man that she knew so well, who was more often capable only of cruelty, not love.

So it was that one day, Jackson arrived home from school, to find that his father was sitting in the living room. He said a quick hello to his mother and a soft hello to his father, then ran off to his room where he stayed until it was time for dinner.

What disturbed Grace more was Lloyd's reaction to his son's obvious snub namely, no reaction.

‘So much for his family visit’, Grace realised, and began to try to figure out why he was really there, for it certainly wasn't to spend time with them.

The following day, Grace left Lloyd to look after Jackson, as she had to go to her father's house and see how he was. Pat Carey's frail condition had worsened.

The old man was now dying and bed ridden much of the time. Grace went to visit him daily to have a chat, cook him his lunch and do any other chores for him that might need to be done for him.

While his mother was gone, Jackson was quite content to stay in his bedroom and play with his toys, preferring not to go beyond the security of those four walls and face his father, who was in the living room reading the Saturday morning paper.

The door of Jackson's bedroom was slightly ajar, and it was because of this that he became an innocent witness to one of his father's most heinous crimes.

There was a timid but urgent knock at the front door of the house, which Jackson heard. He also heard the familiar, heavy and determined steps of his father as he went to answer the door.

Curious, Jackson had crept up to his bedroom door and peered out into the hallway that gave him a good view of his father and their caller. When the door was opened, Jackson saw a beautiful woman with long blonde hair.

Lloyd immediately dragged her into the house, as if afraid that someone might see her. It was, as Jackson realised much later in life, Vanessa Hadley.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Lloyd hissed angrily.

“I had to see you," she cried, her voice fined with anxiety, her pretty face contorted with fear. "Is Grace here?" She whispered.

"No, thank Christ. Now what in God's name are you doing here? You realise what could happen to us if anyone knew you were here? This shitty little town is infested with old women that live to gossip, and that's not something either of us can afford, especially not now!" Lloyd cried.

"I'm sorry, Lloyd, but I had to see you," Vanessa insisted. "What about Jackson?" She suddenly asked.

"Don't worry about him. He's in his room. Now tell me what you're doing here?" He demanded.

"I've been thinking," she said almost breathlessly, "and I'm not sure if we should go through with this.”

"What do you mean?"

"This whole thing… it's beginning to scare me. Like ...like, what if we get caught?" She asked.

“We’ll only get caught if we do something stupid. You coming here was stupid. But as long as no-one sees you, we should be O.K." Lloyd must have seen some flicker of doubt cross her face for then he went onto to try to reassure her.

"You want him out of the way as much as I do, right? So that we can have it all and be together. You know you're not happy with him. God knows you bitch about him often enough."

"But if we get caught?" Vanessa whined. "I couldn't take it, Lloyd, I just couldn't!" She moaned childishly.

“We won't be caught. No-one's going to think anything more about it than what it will look like – a terrible accident,” he told her. “By tomorrow it's going to be over. When Scott goes down that mine with those surveyors, that's going to be the last anyone sees of them. The explosives I set up go off at exactly 2.15pm. They'll be buried under so much rock and earth there’s no way anyone of them will reach the surface. Not alive, at least. It’ll take weeks for machines to dig down to get to them, and by that time they’ll be rotting corpses."

Vanessa hugged herself, and then shrugged uncomfortably. "Must others die too?" She asked him.

“What do you care? Come on, don't give me that sanctimonious crap! I'm getting more than enough at the moment, thanks, from Gracie!” Lloyd said contemptuously. “You just play your part of the grief-struck widow, alright?"

“Sure,” she nodded. “So what about your wife? What about the divorce?”

“I'm telling her tonight,” he replied.

“She's not going to give it to you, you know. Not with her being a strict Catholic and all.”

"Don't you worry yourself about that. I've taken care of everything. We'll be married yet, you just wait and see," he promised her.

Vanessa smiled at him and then embraced him. They exchanged a kiss.

“You're so clever, aren't you?” She said with a smile. “I knew there was something that I liked about you.”

Lloyd didn't reply to that remark. He became impatient with her and told Vanessa that she had better leave before Grace came back from her father's place and discovered them together.

Jackson had remained in his room for the rest of the day. He’d understood little of what he’d heard; sure only that it was something very bad.

At the dinner table that night, Grace sat quietly, hardly eating at all, her mind stuck on the image of her father as she wondered how much time he had left on the earth.

Lloyd interrupted her lonely thoughts “How is ol’ Pat, anyway?” He asked her casually.

"He's not too good. He's dying, Lloyd," she replied softly.

“Ah. I’m sorry to hear that,” he said in the kind of voice that one might use to ask someone to pass the salt and pepper.

Grace didn't respond to him, staring vacantly at her plate.

"Gracie, there's something that we need to discuss," he announced.

She looked up at her husband and thought to herself: 'At last, here it comes. Whatever it is that he wants ...whatever it was that brought him back here - this is it.'

“Oh? And what's that?”

“A divorce,” he replied simply, but directly.

Her eyes widened a little with surprise, although she supposed that she shouldn’t have been shocked. It had been an inevitable request, even though it was something that she had not thought much about herself.

“Lloyd, I can't give you a divorce. The Catholic church doesn't recognise them. I can’t go against the church."

Lloyd scoffed at her. ”I never thought I'd see the day when Grace Crane would become spiteful!" He exclaimed with a voice seething with scorn. “The only reason you won't give me a divorce is because you think it's a way to get back at me. That's it, isn't it? You reckon that this is your chance to get in the way of me having any happiness in my life! Well, Gracie, I got some news for you," he told her in a cold and threatening manner.

Jackson sat silently at his place at the dinner table his head bowed mournfully, his little body faintly trembling with fear as the air around them thickened with tension..

"Spitefulness has nothing to do with it, Lloyd! You know how I feel about my faith!" She reminded him. "No, I won't give you a divorce, but not because I want to hurt you, because I don't, but because I have to hang onto the one thing that I've always had beside me," she stressed, trying to make him understand.

"So what if I want to marry again?"

The question stabbed her in some part of her heart that she'd thought she had secured and bandaged long ago.

Grace shrugged uncomfortably. "I guess you won't be able to," she told him.

He sighed, shaking his head at her like a stem and disapproving parent. She suddenly felt as thought she’d walked into a trap.

"I'd hoped that you wouldn't force me to do this, but you have, so..."he began.

"What are you talking about?"

You say your father's dying. How long has he got? A month? Two? Six? A year, maybe?" He queried.

Grace nodded. "A year at the most. But I don't see what Dad has got to do with anything...”

"Oh but Gracie, Pat's got everything to do with this. If it hadn't been for him, the Crane-Hadley Corporation wouldn't exist today.”

He explained to his mortified wife how he had forced her father into signing over the deed of the Carey home to Lloyd so that he could use it as collateral for a bank loan.

"Without it, Scott and I would never have made it But the point is, Grace, I never signed the deed back over to him. It’s still in my name...”

Grace still didn't fully comprehend what he was saying, but sensed that he was driving home to a cruel truth.

"And I also hold the deed to this place," he continued, gesturing to their immediate surrounds, "and there's nothing to stop me from putting both this place and your father's, up for sale, or having them torn down - today, if I wanted to, and then have you, the kid and your poor, old dying Dad cast out onto the street!" He informed her with a chilling smile.

Grace stared at her husband with dumbfounded horror and revulsion. He was more monstrous than she had ever realised, and oh how she had once loved that man! Now he was threatening to throw into upheaval the lives of the two people she loved most in the world. She failed to understand how he could do it, especially to his own son!

"What kind of joke is that?" She cried, half hopeful.

"It's no joke, Grace," he warned her. "I'll do it if you don't consent to the divorce."

"Lloyd, you know how much my father loves that house! He's got so many memories there - of his mother, and my Mum ...and he's old and sick ...He hasn't got that much time left and he wants to die there...”

"And he can die with his pitiful memories. If you do as I tell you." Lloyd said.

She stared at him incredulously, her mind clouded as she tried to accept what he was saying. "And what about your own son? I don't expect you to care about what happens to me, but what about Jackson?"

Lloyd explained that if she granted him the divorce, she would receive all the money from the sale of Grace's father's house after his death and that would be enough to ensure her and Jackson's well being. But if she failed to consent to the divorce, Jackson would suffer along with her and her father.

"You disgust me," she told him frankly. "And I thank God that Jackson's nothing like you," she cried, now near to weeping. "You're evil ...Sick! I've never hated anyone in my whole life, but I think I could hate you! Oh, I think I do hate you! God forgive me." The tears streamed down her cheeks in crystal rivers.

"You've got your divorce, Lloyd! You've got it! You've got it!" She wailed. "I hope it's worth all the pain you've cause, and I hope that one day you realise what you've done, and ask God to forgive you. And ask your son's forgiveness, I truly do," she told him.

"Spare me the sermon, Gracie. I'll hold true to my word, if you do."

"Just like on our wedding day, huh?" Grace said biting down on her pain and tears.

He ignored the last comment and rose from the dinner table and informed her that he would be leaving to return to Melbourne immediately, and that she would be hearing from his lawyers soon.

Lloyd and Grace stood in the hallway of the house, young Jackson standing at his mother's side, his arms wrapped around one leg, looking up at his parents in confusion.

Lloyd had a suitcase sitting on the floor beside him. The front door was open behind him. The black sky of the night framed his bulk.

"And in case you think you might like to go for a slice of my assets, don't bother. I've had them tied up legally so that they're quite secure, and you can't lay claim to any of them," he informed her smugly.

"I wouldn't want anything of yours. It would make me sick to have it in my possession," she told him.

Lloyd gave a crooked grin. "Yeah, right, Gracie. The point is, you'll never get the chance now." He picked up his suitcase and then he was gone.

Grace burst into tears, then knelt to hug her son. She’d thought that she'd cried herself out long ago. Grace had thought her heart safely barricaded from further hurt, but somehow Lloyd had found away in and had done it to her again.

Late that night, Grace was very surprised when the telephone rang and she answered it and heard Lloyd's voice. Her heart became paralysed in her chest: was this to be an apology, a shot at reconciliation?

It turned out to be neither; rather it was more bad news, as Lloyd informed her of an accident at one of the mine sites. A cave-in had occurred, burying several workers under tons of rock and totally collapsing the shaft. Scott had been amongst them. There was no chance of any of them having survived.

Grace's heart ached, and she immediately thought of Scott's poor young wife. "How is Vanessa taking the news?" She asked him.

"She's shattered, understandably, and I'm doing what I can to support her" he replied.

"Of course, yes. Give her my condolences, and tell her I'll send her my prayers."

"Sure, Gracie, sure" he said in an appropriately solemn tone. "I just thought that you should be told."

Grace thanked him for his thoughtfulness.

"By the way, my lawyers will call you tomorrow about the divorce. They'll look after all the details. Well, I guess that's all. 'Bye." He hung up.

Grace's skin had crawled, feeling cold and oily, as if brushed by a hand from a moist and deep, deep grave.

'

Lloyd's reference to the divorce at a time when he should have been grieving for his best friend, left a sour taste in her mouth. She didn't want to think badly of Lloyd, but considering some of the things he'd done already, there seemed little that he wasn't capable of.

In the succeeding weeks, Lloyd made a big deal in the press about using Crane-Hadley money and machinery in excavating the mine site to recover the bodies so that they could all have a decent Christian burial - especially his boyhood friend, whom he constantly likened to a brother.

Grace noticed that in the television and newspaper reports that Scott's widow, Vanessa, was always somewhere near Lloyd, looking suitably distressed, and this would make Grace think back to the day Scott had married her and those strange looks that had passed between Lloyd and Vanessa.

Weeks after the deaths at the mine site, the bodies were finally retrieved and buried, along with Lloyd Crane's crime.

About a year later, Grace's father died in his sleep and as Lloyd promised, he transferred all money from the sale of the Carey home to Grace's account. Two months after this was done, their divorce was finalised. She was no longer Mrs. Grace Crane, a fact that both relieved and stung her, too. She wept once again, but this time she hadn't known why.

It was about eight months later when, while in the local newsagents' and looking through some magazines, that Grace was approached by Mrs. Sneddon, a middle aged woman who attended the same church and who knew absolutely everything that transpired in Helton, delighting in sharing it with others.

Mrs. Sneddon had a copy of the Melbourne newspaper ‘The Age' and showed Grace the personal announcements page where there was a large and elegant notice declaring Vanessa Reed Hadley's engagement to Lloyd William Crane.

This had startled Grace, and she had all but bolted from Mrs. Sneddon and the newspaper shop, running all the way home.

Two months went by and Lloyd's marriage to Vanessa made front-page news. He was described as 'the local boy who'd done Helton proud', who had married his best friend's widow.

The article had also explained that upon his death, Scott had left his interest of Crane-Hadley to his wife. Between them, Lloyd and Vanessa now controlled the Crane-Hadley Corporation

A short time after their marriage hit the headlines, Grace discovered a lump in her breast. She'd been in the shower at the time and had found it while examining herself.

For the next couple of months she'd debated with herself whether or not to go to the doctor, and thus lost precious time that may have saved her from losing the breast, if not her very life, for it came to pass that she did, in fact, have breast cancer.

When her worst fears were confirmed, it came as one of a number of blows to her. The next was that she needed a mastectomy. Later in that same year, the doctor told her that the cancer her spread to her other breast and that it, too, had to be removed. A couple of years later, the cancer reappeared in her uterus and so she had to undergo a full hysterectomy.

Over the ensuing eleven years or more, Grace had an average three to five operations a year, as well as receiving radiation therapy.

The cancer had ravaged and burnt her like a hideous, internal fire, scorching her twenty-four hours a day, burning her bones. The very strongest painkillers offered little respite from the agony that she endured. But what had hurt her the most had been trying to tell her eight year old son, her only child, that she was dying, and she hurt because she was afraid that she would die before she saw Jackson grow up into a man.

That was her largest fear. So she prayed, but not for an end to her pain or a cure, but that God would allow her time to see Jackson grow to manhood. That was all she asked for. Still, it grieved her to know that she'd never see him marry, nor meet his wife, or hold her grandchildren.

Sometimes, thinking about all of that had put such pain in her heart that it out did the agony living in her body, and she was left completely drawn out and exhausted. But Grace thanked God for every day of life.

On the night that his mother died, Jackson woke from a deep sleep. Lying in his bed he'd listened to the house; it was silent. But he had felt his mother calling for him, so he leapt from his bed and ran to her room.

He’d found her propped up with pillows in her bed, her body a truly shrunken, repulsive thing; her once graceful countenance raped and plundered by a cruel seed.

He sat beside her, on the edge of the bed and sought to hold her hand. It felt cool and limp. Was she dead already? No! Her eyes moved within their sunken sockets to look on him. Her thin, cracked lips parted and a hoarse, deep, throaty voice escaped them.

“Jackson..." She slurred his name, the bulbous tumors in her throat and on her tongue, making it almost impossible to breathe, muchless speak. She tried to squeeze his hand with the one that he held, but didn't have the strength to do so.

"Mum, I'm going to call the doctor," he told her. "You're going to have to go into the hospital. I know you want to stay home, but you need to have doctors around who can look after you better. You're in a lot of pain. They can help you in the hospital..." He told her gently, but he was trembling, sensing that this was the end, yet not wanting to accept it.

"Please ...don't, Jackson." Tears flooded into her dry eyes. "Just hug your old Mum, hmm?" She asked. "I love you," she told him.

Jackson broke into tears. She was leaving him! He embraced her wretched body, holding it to his, feeling how unnaturally thin it was, like brittle sticks ready to snap, wrapped in old, decaying paper.

They held each other for awhile, but Grace didn't have the strength to continue the embrace and her hands slid limply to her sides. Jackson didn't let her go.

"I love you, too, Mum," he told her, and pulled back to look into her face. He was overcome by cutting anguish when he saw that she was staring with empty, lightless eyes, up at the ceiling - beyond the plaster, the tiled roofing and out across the Heavens.

She was dead and he hadn't had time to tell her that he loved her! He'd left it too late! He broke down into a shivering, weeping wreck, holding his mother, his body shaking with grief, until the whole bed rattled, as if in sympathy.

Jackson chose to pause in telling his tale to Raquel. They still sat, huddled side by side on the top bunk in their cell.

Raquel looked at the youth, seeing that there was more to be said and waiting patiently for him to tell it.

'Then there was the funeral." Jackson's tone was level as he explained to his friend about the reef of roses that his father had sent. 'That's when I decided to get back at him, to try and hurt him somehow, like he'd hurt me and Mum.," Jackson said and paused for a bit.

"It was a total disaster. Nothing went as I thought it would. I made a complete idiot out of myself. I was yelling and carrying on, and he didn't give a shit, and I let him get to me. I grabbed this letter opener, or something, and I tried to stab him with it. We ended up in this fight. Then the security guys got to me… and the rest you know," he said in conclusion, brushing a stray strand of his long, dark hair from his eyes in an absent minded gesture.

Raquel shook his head, speaking for the first time in over an hour. 'That's the most incredible story I've ever heard, and if it had come from anyone else, I would've shouted 'Bullshit Alert' ages ago. Your father sounds like a complete and utter bastard."

Jackson didn’t respond. Then, after a moment of reflection on it all, Raquel told Jackson that he had gone about it all in the wrong manner.

"Went about what wrong?" he asked his friend.

"Getting your revenge," Raquel replied.

"How should've I done it then?" He asked.

"I'm not really sure;' Raquel shrugged, looking thoughtful. "No, I'm not really sure at all. But it would be so much easier if you were a woman. Revenge is always easier if you're a woman," he explained to his young friend. "People don't expect it from women, especially not people like Lloyd Crane. A woman could've crippled him with not a problem in the world."

Jackson just shrugged his shoulders helplessly while Raquel leaned heavily against the cell wall and said nothing, becoming lost in thought.