Dark, sexy, haunting this important and timely novel is a

masterful dissection of a dazzling, dangerous relationship and

Heyman at her most provocative and unputdownable.

she is screaming, the way he wanted,

the way he promised she would

Brilliant, mesmerising, incendiary and haunting,

Storm and Grace explores the dazzling thrill of the deep,
and the terrors that lie in its shadows.
Heyman has crafted a remarkable novel that compresses and
concentrates its power before exploding with a terrible, urgent
truth: love and death, the closer they get to the bottom of the
ocean, are inseparable. Read it and you will not forget it.

took my breath away: the poetry of its sentences; the sensory

richness of its moments; the depths and turns of its story
beguiling and brutal.
Ashley Hay, author of The Railwaymans Wife

and

KATHRYN
HEYMAN

Malcolm Knox, author of The Wonder Lover

Jill Dawson, author of The Crime Writer

GRACE

As he pushes Grace further and further beyond her limits both

in and out of the water her resistance grows, but so does Storms
need to control her. With a secret of her own to protect, Grace
starts to realise that she is in deeper and more dangerous water
than she has ever imagined possible.

STORM

World-famous freediver Storm Hisray hits Grace Cain like a bolt

from the blue. Instantly smitten, she abandons her life in the city
to follow him to his idyllic Pacific island. There he teaches Grace
the ways of the deep, and she learns to sink to unimaginable depths
on one single breath. As their world narrows to the two of them,
she learns, too, the exquisite pleasures of her body but
also that Storm hides as many secrets as the sea.

KATHRYN HEYMAN
Cover design: Lisa White
Cover photography: Alessio Albi / Trevillion Images

FICTION

like being submerged in the deep blue: enthralled, dazed, dazzled.

Emily Maguire, author of An Isolated Incident

StormAndGrace_text.indd 1

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of
the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First published in 2017

Copyright Kathryn Heyman 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever
is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational
purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has
given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available
from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 74331 363 3
Set in 12/16.5 pt ITC Berkeley by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press
10987654321

C009448

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The paper in this book is FSC certified.

FSC promotes environmentally responsible,
socially beneficial and economically viable
management of the worlds forests.

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For my mermaid daughter, Seren,

who made me dive and led me to the story

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SURFACE

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n one story, he is a giant bird, and she waits in a nest for him.
But that is not the way we remember it. In another, told by
grandmothers to their sleeping grandchildren, whispered in their
ears, we are a warning: dont do as she did, the grandmothers
whisper, dont disobey. In that story, she runs from him and it is
her father who tries to rescue her. Only when the storm blows up
does he try to throw her overboard. But she will not go. That is
the true moment. She will not go; we will not let go.
He is not a giant bird, although he swooped on her, although
he gathered her up. And he is not a fisherman, although he
caught her. The grandmothers are right to use our stories to
tellthe little ones to do differently. But they are wrong about
the lesson from our stories, wrong about who the lesson is
for. We will not let go. And it is not fated, not inevitable, not
glorious. This is what you need to know. We will wait until
wecatch you, and you will be unsettled, unfooted, undone.
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K AT HR YN HEY M A N

Wepromise you this: that until you turn, head cocked to the
side, and hear us, we will not stop. Listen, children, this is
thetrue story, the story for your sons and for your daughters.
No, we will not be quiet.

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n the morning of the day Grace dived, the sign went up at

the front of the Hibiscus: closed for renovations. see you
next season! The wet season brought with it a flurry of activity
in the main wing of the hotel. On the eighth of May, a Monday,
a small team of labourers arrived at the front entrance, where
they unloaded ladders, temporary fencing, scaffolding, and a bill
for first payment of services. The bill was settled that afternoon.
Work began. Three men whose names we have forgotten fenced
off the back of the hotel and began the dusty and loud work
of knocking through the hotel corridor. Light surged through,
thrilling the new space. By mid-afternoon on the Tuesday, rubble
mounted in the corridor and the access path to the beach was
covered with fencing and scaffolding. The renovations did not go
to plan. Nothing went to plan.
On the day Grace dived, the sea was full of discomfort, unsettled, colicky. It needed to be walked, and talked, and calmed, but
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there was no-one to talk it down. Settling alongside the dive boat,
the resort catamaran thudded out dance music; a young blogger
took his shirt off and began dancing on the boom, teetering
joyously until the horn sounded, echoing across the water.
There was silence, then, though Grace had already disappeared into her own quiet, sunk down into her own breath, the
push and pull on her diaphragm, widening the muscle, expanding her chest. She pulled the wetsuit up and Storm was there
beside her, his hands firm on her back, his whisper in her ear,
Where are you going, Grace?
She swallowed, said, To the deep.
At ten minutes, the technical divers were in, tanks strapped
to their backs, dropping down to one hundred and forty metres
below the surface. At five minutes, Storm slipped into the water
beside her, barely rippling the surface while she packed air into
her chest, her throat, her mouth. There was no tank for Grace,
just the hold of her own breath, to the bottom of the ocean and
back. Grace turned, face up to the sky, the water holding her.
Oxygen slipped through her, through her blood, through
herbones. Storm swam close to her, his chest warm against her,
his blood keeping time with hers. Above her, a flotilla of boats
sat like sisters, watching.
And then the final intake of breath, the sharp release of the
weighted sled, and she was swallowed by the sea, the water
closing over with the force of lips holding in a secret.
Beneath the surface, her heartbeat slowed, her lungs
compressed, her blood danced. A skyscraper of water pushing
down on her while she tingled. To the deep and back on a single
breath.
On the catamaran, they waited, counting down the numbers
of her descent. Fifty metres. Eighty. The line danced, a slight
shudder shaking the deep. We heard it, even here, far below the
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STOR M AND G R AC E

crowd chanting on the catamaran deck. One hundred metres.

One fifty. They called the numbers together, champagne bottles
at the ready. One sixty.
And then the clouding, the shift, the wait. Two minutes. Three.
Three forty. All of them there holding their breath, waiting,
watching the troubled surface of the water.

Now, on the day of Storms dive, the sea is milky and inviting.
His boat, the Grace, barely dips; her decks glisten, she is
resplendent with expectation.
They are all there. The actress, the ghostwriter, the hero, the
ghost. We are here, as we always are, unspoken and unspeaking. All the beautiful trophies. Youll have seen the photographs:
the one of Grace on the end of the boat, wetsuit pulled down to
her waist, dark eyes gazing off to the horizon. There are other
photos you havent seen. We all have them: Lisa had one she
kept hidden underneath her mattress. A clich, she says now, to
hide it there, but it was the only safe place, the one place. We
saw the other photos of Grace, the ones you didnt see, back
then when you wouldnt look. Were here now: shes here now.
Look. Were asking you to look. We know you will, we hope
youre ready.
Here on the boat, a thin thread of sand runs from the galley
out to the dive deck; white speckle shifting on the painted blue.
Sand is from shore, from yesterday, from the ocean floor, but
the Grace docks at a wharf and has not been to the ocean floor.
Sand, this fine thread now beginning to fracture and blur to pale
mud in the damp of the deck, is out of place here. Perhaps the
actress has brought it with her shoes, these fine white pumps.
She bought them in a darling market in Soho, thinking them
perfect for this moment, the boat, the dive. Now, though, in the
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midst of it, she sees that they are badly made, imperfect, not
suitable at all for the wet. She is barefoot now, like the others, her
white smock billowing lightly. Its not what she expected, this
sandy deck, this luminous man.
Storm is what Grace called him, what she knew him as. His
barrel chest, his carved face. His body made for being beneath
the sea. On the edge of the boat there is a thumbprint carved
into the gunwale, pressed so deep it has made a slight dip in
the wood edging around the boat. If you look closely, you can
see thewhorls, the delicate circles. They look like claw marks,
as though someone has gouged nails into wood, clinging to the
edge, holding tight.
Anchored alongside the Grace theres another boat, of the
sort we like to refer to as mid-life boats. We have our jokes,
we have a laugh, we are not without humour. This is the film
boat. Large, white and glassy. The cabins on this boat have
deep beds, panelled walls, ironed white sheets. The captains
cabin which is not for the skipper but for the film director,
who is, after all, the captain of his own ship has a bath in the
ensuite. When the director Vince met Storm, he was taken
with Storms eyes, the cornflower blue of them, his habit of
pausing mid-sentence to make eye contact, checking that you
are withhim.
When Storm speaks of the sea, his chest expands, his voice
deepens, you can almost see him growing fins. That was what
Vince said later to his assistant, a young Australian girl who
had pitched up in LA hoping to become an actress but rapidly
realised there was more cash to be made from her ability to work
a spreadsheet. Vinces backbone has been sorely tested in these
last few months. Storm has changed the date four times, he has
requested more media, has overridden the actresss request for
privacy and sent out his own, badly worded, media release. But
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Vince knows a great love story when he sees one, the story of a
deeper love. Sing along now.

Even trophies get bored, darling. Its the dark-haired actress

speaking, standing there on the deck of the Grace. Her brown
eyes reflect the water back at him. Laughter tinkles around her,
but its scratchy, uncertain, and Storm doesnt laugh.
She was not a trophy, he says. Grace is my life, my destiny,
my desire. And you know nothing about it, with your silly life
and your Hollywood... He pauses and the high contour of his
cheekbone catches the light, reflects back against the brownygold of his skin. The actress watches him, the light marking
his cheekbone, the ripple across his face. He says, Im sorry. Its
harder than you can imagine.
The actress steps towards him, hand outstretched.
Storm says, I dont know. I dont know if I can do this.
You can almost see his heart tearing beneath his ribs, if you
peer hard enough.
He says, I cant
The dive? This is the filmmaker. Hes a soft one, that one, face
falling down into folds. You cant do the dive? His face flapping
slightly as he looks about the deck, looking to the actress,
looking to Storm, looking to us, for confirmation. The dive, or
the film? The script is written, Storm, were ready to go. Weve
signed the contracts.
Theyre all confused suddenly, the twenty or so people on
deck. Everything has changed. Yes, we know it, we know how
this happens, this sudden quicksilver change. Storm is staring
right into the filmmakers folded eyes, and we wait, suspended,
while the filmmaker holds his gaze. Even the sea has stopped
moving.
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We float here, waiting. If we had breath, we would hold it. If

we had hands, we would hold them together, like paper dolls, all
in a row, a chain of paper dolls waiting.
Storm? Vinces hand reaches out to the thundering Storm. Do
you need a moment? What do you need? Were here for you.
Storm lightens a little, basking under the directors stroking.
A slight shake of his head, a shrug. And then he calms, sunny
again, says, No, I can do it. I can do the dive. For Grace. To the
actress, quietly, he says, Grace is not a trophy.
How wounded he is, she thinks. How in need of love.
We are the trophies, all of us, hanging here, suspended,
waiting. See how polished we are? How pretty?
Perhaps when we speak of the Grace you are imagining a
yacht, but she is more glorious and more ordinary than that.
A flat dive boat, a broad and wide deck, a compact low cabin,
a high wheelhouse with pictures of Grace all around the walls,
Grace the namesake, Grace the original, the one, the true.
There were photographs, and then there were none. We were
there and then we were not. And so we are gone, our voices
drifting down like the flakes of skin shed from a whale, one
layer, another layer, each drifting loosely into the deep, the deep.
There is some ringing and you can hear us, softly hear the ghost
of us. When you wait, on the station, when you sit and hear
the bird whisper, the grass sing, when you hear the cloud call
there we are, here we are. We are not gone, we are only waiting,
onlyhoping.
Though you cant hear us, it is not quiet here. We babble, all of
us. It is so noisy we wonder how you can fail to hear, we wonder
what it is that you are listening to. Our stories have drifted
together, blended together, so much the same, so much apart.
Each one is different but always the same. Each kiss precise, each
bruise alone.
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We see them, the shadows on the deck, the slip of sand, of

water, of sun. Striped shadows against the wall. We see them
each but their words have blurred, run into one, like song.
We hear: canyoucatchaline? We hear: didyoufillatank? We hear:
istheponyfull? We hear this: his loss, his ache, the sound beneath
his ribcage. Yes.
We are here. We will not leave. We have not gone, we will
not go. Dont wait for us to leave. Listen: we are speaking, we
are singing, we are shouting. We ask you, who watch in silence,
could there be any ending other than this?

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