by Debra Oswald
Now, Paula shook off that remembered scene, gulped a breath, and walked out of the bathroom. But she couldn’t stop the memories coming. Next she saw Cameron, the day the family moved in with her. This beautiful, earnest boy, his face pinched with anxiety. Paula saw him prowling the whole house, checking the window latches, making a mental inventory of external doors, escape routes, potential dangers. According to Stacey, Cam felt it was his job to ensure the safety of his mother and sister.
Paula squeezed her eyes shut to rid her mind of that memory, then opened them to find herself in the spot Matt had been standing when he shot himself. And in that moment, she was hit by an image that forced its way into her brain like something whooshing up under pressure from deep under water: she saw herself with a scalpel in her hand, slicing into Matt’s neck until she severed his carotid artery. In this urgent fantasy, she saw him fall to the floor, bleeding out rapidly, as still and harmless as a cadaver in an anatomy class.
When Anita went back to Paula’s place after the funeral, she guzzled two big goblets of shiraz very quickly. She figured she should get well pissed to reduce the risk that her first time being in this house again would freak her out. Paula had moved home more than a week ago and seemed to be handling it.
Mind you, Anita noticed Paula was also knocking back the wine, as the two of them picked at a platter of food left over from the post-funeral afternoon tea. The congealed fattiness of the cold mini quiches needed to be washed down with even more gulps of shiraz.
Paula yanked the clip out of her hair and shook her head to loosen the spongy curls. She had kept her hair exactly the same ever since Anita had known her—long brown hair, naturally wavy, worn tied back when she was working or attending formal events like funerals, left loose around her face when she was off-duty. When Paula was nine, her mother had taken her daughter to a salon and requested the child’s hair be cut short and square—a style known thereafter as ‘the Doctor Spock Hairdo’. Anita had seen a photo and it really was as alarming as described. Typically, Paula herself made a compassionate diagnosis: her mother had been overwhelmed at the time and wanted to reduce maintenance of her daughter’s long knotty hair. But in her quiet way, Paula asserted herself—never again allowing her hair to be cut, not ever, apart from minor trimming.
Over the same period of years, Anita had lurched between different hairstyles in desperate attempts to find herself or solve whatever personal mess she was in at the time by means of personal grooming. She’d worn her hair long, short with shaved sides, feathered, bobbed, layered, even permed during one especially misguided phase. She’d dyed it blonde, goth black, cartoonish blue, russet, peroxide-tipped and so on. Presently, she had reddish foils through her dark brown hair, but she was contemplating cutting it pixie short again. She envied Paula’s certitude about matters like hair.
As Paula kicked off her shoes, Anita followed her lead, both women undoing zips and buttons on the formal outfits they’d worn to the crematorium.
Once the police released the bodies, it had fallen to Anita and Paula to organise the funeral. By the time Stacey was four, her father had disappeared to New Zealand to construct a new life for himself with a second family. And by the time Stacey finished her teacher training, her mother had died. There was no other surviving family to speak of. The father did manage to fly in to Sydney to attend the funeral, but Matt’s parents chose to stay away, instead sending flowers with a loving message for their dead grandchildren.
Anita had delivered the eulogy, at Paula’s insistence. (‘You’re much better than me at words and speaking and all that.’) Paula organised the slideshow of photos and there was a video of kids from the school singing a song in honour of Cameron and Poppy. A celebrant conducted the whole thing with what felt like the right pitch of warmth and solemnity. (But what about this thing could ever be considered ‘right’?) They ensured there was no religious blah blah in the service because Stacey wouldn’t have been able to stomach any talk about God.
The crematorium chapel was full and many mourners had stayed for the afternoon tea in the function area—old friends as well as Stacey’s recent work colleagues and parents from the school.
After hours of well-meaning talk and the emotional workload of dealing with people at the funeral, Anita thought it would be a relief to retreat here, just the two of them. But in fact, without all those distractions, the more painful stuff, the impossible stuff, seeped into the room where the two of them were sitting.
Anita gave up on the claggy mini quiche she was trying to digest and filled her wineglass again.
‘Should we have known it might happen? Should we have done more to protect her?’ she asked.
Paula shrugged limply. ‘Everyone did all the right things. And there was no reason to think she wasn’t safe here.’
When Stacey moved into Paula’s house, Matt was securely in jail in Queensland (refused bail, charged with assaulting Stacey, driving a car through a shopfront window and assaulting a police officer). But four months later, he was released and no one informed Stacey. That piece of information had accidentally fallen into the crack along the Queensland–New South Wales border.
‘Of course,’ Paula added, ‘if we’d known he was out of jail, we could’ve helped her find somewhere to hide for as long as she needed to.’
Anita felt a flush of rage burn up her neck. ‘Why should Stacey have to live like a fugitive because of him? Why should she have to drag her kids around and hide out like—fuck … it’s just …’
Paula responded in her measured doctorly tone. ‘Because you have to be realistic and do what works in practice. Whatever can keep people safe.’
Anita pulled herself more upright on the sofa and suddenly realised how woozy drunk she was. ‘I understand that. I’m just saying—’
‘And the thing is,’ said Paula, ‘Matt must’ve been mentally ill.’
‘Was he? Was he?’ Anita could hear her own voice coming out sharp and hectoring. ‘I guess he was. But what the fuck does that mean? He planned this. It wasn’t some temporary brain snap. He planned this for fucking weeks.’
Anita had, properly, avoided covering the case for the newspaper because of her personal connection, but she’d been talking unofficially to the cops and the other journos, gathering every detail about the days leading up to the killing.
‘Matt kept watch on this house, knew everybody’s schedule, knew you were usually late on Tuesdays so he’d have time alone with them. He rented three different cars to avoid making Stacey suspicious. Before he headed to Sydney, he drove back to the Maryvale property to pick up the gun he’d hidden. This wasn’t impulsive. It wasn’t some kind of blind uncontrolled explosion.’
‘No, clearly not. But for someone to do what he did—’
‘No. Fuck him. I don’t want to understand Matt. Or wonder about Matt. I don’t want to psychologise this. I don’t want anyone to explain this away or analyse it in a way that drains the blood out of the primal bare fact of it: a man murdered his own children and their mother. All I want to do is shoot that monster dead.’
Paula exhaled heavily. ‘Come on, revenge doesn’t do anyone any good—well, it might give you a burst of immediate satisfaction. But it doesn’t fix anything.’
‘Okay. Yes. True. Revenge isn’t the answer. Okay. I want to go back in time and shoot him before he had a chance to do it. That would’ve done some fucking good, wouldn’t it? We just need to kill all the dangerous men.’
Anita realised that she’d been barking at Paula, aggressively stabbing her head at her friend as if she were the enemy. And Paula looked so profoundly tired that Anita felt terrible for adding to the pain of the day.
‘Sorry, Paula,’ Anita muttered and hoisted herself unsteadily to a standing position. ‘I’m pissed and I’m—look, I should go home. I’ll call an Uber.’
In the back of the Uber, Anita made brief eye contact with the driver in the rear-view mirror.
‘Sorry if I’m not chatty,’ she said. ‘Had
a friend’s funeral today.’
The guy made a sympathetic noise and left her alone. Maybe it was a cheap move, playing the dead friend card to be excused from the obligation to chat. But there was a strong risk she would dissolve into a weeping jag or a shouty rant, so really she was doing the driver a favour by shutting up entirely.
She felt queasy with booze and the familiar niggle of regret in her belly. Anita often came away from encounters with Paula feeling like a fool, replaying certain things she’d said, ashamed that she’d spilled her guts so messily—blurting out every wild thought, every gust of emotion—while Paula was always so controlled and mature and patient with her. Even now, in the shadow of this catastrophe, the old insecurities still buzzed between them.
Anita was disgusted with herself for indulging in this sulky self-absorbed shit. And the thing, the overriding thing, was that they’d always backed each other, relied on each other, whatever annoyances simmered and spiked.
Anita pulled out her phone to type a text, poking clumsily at the screen because she was drunk and because the car was bumping through the suburban streets. She eventually managed to hit send.
Dear P, Sorry for hectoring you. A xx
She saw the three little dots moving to indicate Paula was typing a response straight back. Which was a relief.
You didn’t. I get it. I’m angry too. P xx
And then, thirty seconds later, there was another text from Paula: Maybe you’re right and we should kill all the fuckhead men.
Let’s do it. Goodnight, my lovely. A xx
Later, Anita came to wonder if the things she’d said that night had set Paula’s mind spinning along a certain path. Once an idea had been said aloud, even in a flippant way, it could establish its own blood supply in a person’s imagination.
FOUR
WALKING INTO THE DOWNING STREET COURT BUILDING, Anita was generally sure-footed. She knew how to do her job and she mostly did it well, unlike her performance in the messier areas of life. She’d started covering court stories when she was working for a newspaper in London. Then she came home, four years ago, just as the Sydney paper’s long-time court reporter was transferring to the Washington bureau, leaving a gap Anita could slide into. At a time when any print media job was rare and precious, it had been a piece of luck.
On her way through the foyer, she said hello to the security screening staff, waved to a cop she knew, nodded to a barrister she’d observed shredding a witness on the stand yesterday. She liked that this was her patch. She was familiar with the players and used to the rhythms of the place. This building was really her workplace, much more than the newspaper office.
Lately, she’d been covering a defamation case as well as assembling whatever background stuff she could on the upcoming Santino trial. Today, she was determined to wrap her head around a labyrinthine fraud case that was testing her grasp of fiduciary terminology.
She sat through the fraud hearing into the afternoon session, the lists of financial statistics unspooling for hours. After a while, the voices in the courtroom blurred into a meaningless drone in Anita’s ears.
Lapses of concentration had been happening in the weeks since Stacey was killed. Arguably, Anita should’ve taken leave from her job until her head was clearer, but time away from the noise and activity and deadlines, time alone with her thoughts—no, that held little appeal. Mind you, even at work she would still find herself revisiting moments with Stacey, replaying them again and again.
Twelve years ago. Dinner for Paula’s twenty-fifth birthday. Stacey had introduced them to her new boyfriend Matt. He was good-looking in a boyish way, hair flopping over his face, labrador puppy eyes. Stacey was fizzy, so infatuated was she with this guy, and that seemed to make her even more vivacious as she greeted the dozen people around the restaurant table.
Stacey was smitten with Matt, but it was obvious he was even more besotted with her. Anita recalled the way he’d gazed at her with those sooky eyes. As if he couldn’t believe he’d nabbed himself a woman this vibrant and clever. As if, by winning Stacey’s love, he’d won a prize he didn’t deserve. Which he fucking well didn’t.
Ten years ago. The day after Cameron was born. Anita went to the hospital to find Stacey propped up in the bed, puffy in the face and wincing with pain from the caesarean, but so beautiful. When Stacey looked at her newborn in the transparent plastic crib, anyone could see there was light shining out of her.
That day in the hospital, Stacey cradled tiny Cameron and said to Anita, ‘If a huge monster lumbered in here right now and tried to hurt this baby, I reckon—even with my belly freshly cut open and stitched up—I reckon I could tear that monster apart with my bare hands.’ Then she laughed, surprised to hear herself express such a ferocious thought out loud.
A bit over two years ago. Between Christmas and New Year. Shortly before Remy’s sarcoma was diagnosed. Anita twisted around in the passenger seat of Paula’s car, watching Stacey through the back windscreen. As they drove away, Stace was standing in long grass, waving goodbye. Cameron, an eight-year-old by then, had planted himself beside his mother and six-year-old Poppy clung on to the seam of Stacey’s shorts.
Paula and Anita had driven up to Queensland together to stay a couple of nights on the remote property outside Maryvale where Matt was trying to make a go of cattle farming, despite having no agricultural experience. On the eleven-hour drive back to Sydney, the two women spent much of the time talking about Stacey, the troubling details they’d noticed, the way Matt’s black mood could suddenly change the air pressure in the room. They knew Stacey had put on a show of cheerfulness for her friends, and they still worried about how tired she looked, how weighed down. Then again, neither Anita nor Paula had kids. What did they know about the strains of motherhood, and life on a farm without mains power or town water? Maybe it was natural and understandable to look as exhausted as Stacey.
Still, after that visit, Paula and Anita were both on alert, trying to speak to Stacey once a week at least. But it was difficult, given she had no landline, internet or mobile reception on the property, and the stretches of time with no communication grew longer.
Anita often thought about one particular phone call: Stacey had used the landline at the preschool in Warwick. She’d started teaching there two days a week to bring in some off-farm income. It was a quick call—Stacey chatted about the kids, but she sounded preoccupied and then ended the call abruptly.
Two minutes later, Anita’s mobile rang again. It was Matt. He’d followed Stacey into town and appeared at the preschool to check on her. Now he wanted to know who Stacey had just been speaking to.
‘Oh—hi, Matt. This is Anita. Me and Stacey were just catching up—’
He cut in. ‘I love her more than she loves me. There’s an imbalance. She says that’s not true. But you know and I know it’s true.’
Before she could respond, he had slammed down the phone.
Anita was sunk so deep in those memories that she only realised the court had adjourned for the day when people around her were standing up and shuffling out. Shit. How long had she been lost in her head? She’d have to beg favours from colleagues to fill in whatever chunks she’d missed.
There was a move on by a few journos and lawyers to hang around for Friday afternoon drinks. Anita had been avoiding social gatherings. She didn’t want to keep talking about Stacey but she couldn’t bear to talk about anything other than Stacey. Any kind of regular chat felt scratchy or awkward or phoney, so she’d kept to herself. The only exception was time spent with Paula. The two of them could rave on about the killings without polite limits or apology. And when it was the two of them, they also felt free to say nothing or talk trivia or laugh about silly stuff, whatever—but all the while, the fact of what had happened would be suspended in the air they breathed together, in a way that felt essential, compulsory.
Of course, it was self-indulgent and unhealthy to continue avoiding social events. Anita ought to ease back into human interaction
. So that Friday, she let herself be swept along in the chattering group heading to the pub.
By the time Anita arrived in the back bar, the courthouse mob had colonised one of the long tables and people scooched over on the bench seat to make a spot for her in the middle of a noisy group of lawyers. That suited her—being immersed in loud opinionated voices and raucous laughter, she was free to listen and smile and not really engage with people. It still felt a bit phoney, but it was a start.
A few minutes later, three cops joined the group, and Anita realised Rohan Mehta was one of them. He must have been around the Downing Street courts today because he was a detective on the Santino case, which was coming to trial soon.
As they dragged extra chairs up to the far end of the table, Mehta nodded hello to her. Two days after the killings, Anita had gone in to his office to give a statement. He’d called her a few times since then to check details about Stacey—part of the job of preparing material for the coroner. It could be eighteen months or two years before a coronial inquest would be scheduled, but the bulk of the police work on it needed to be done now.
Over the next half-hour, there was a flurry of comings and goings from the pub. Anita declined an invitation to make it ‘a big night’ at some bar down at the Quay with the bunch of noisy lawyers. She wriggled out of having dinner at a Thai place with one of the journos (a lovely woman) who was making sympathetic ‘I know you’re struggling’ faces at her.
As people left, others swapped seats and slid along benches, so that when Rohan Mehta came back from a run to the bar, there was an obvious empty spot next to Anita.
‘Okay if I sit here?’
Mehta stood, waiting for her to respond, and Anita realised she was gawping at him without answering.
