Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  She’d wasted her allocated years. She’d wasted her voice, would have wasted her writing if not for Georgie. ‘If you don’t sign this,’ the contract for Sent in Chains, ‘I swear to God I’ll write on your tombstone, Herein lies Jennifer Morrison Hooper, who could have been.’

  Most of her life had been behind her the day she’d sold her first novel. It lit a fire in her belly but wiped Jim out for more than a year. She’d hidden from his dark mood, hidden in her library, the doors closed, her fingers busy. He’d lost a lot of his years in that dark place. Maybe he’d known it was coming for him again the day he rode out to Monk’s – maybe he’d known a nursing home was coming to get him.

  That’s what I should do, Jenny thought, buy myself into one of those places behind the hospital. Some of those units have space for a car.

  But not for a dog. Didn’t know what she was going to do.

  The timing of this tour had been so bad, but in so many ways had been perfect. She was exhausted but felt better in her head for it and could think ahead again.

  MISSING

  Tessa had a brain haemorrhage and has no brain function. The doctors and the girls want to turn off the machines and let her go but Nick has power of attorney.

  He won’t agree to it? Jenny replied fast.

  He wasn’t around to agree or disagree.

  There was no more baby. There’d be no more work, not for six or eight weeks. Trudy had a metal plate in her ankle, a cracked rib, one eye was closed and her face was bruised and swollen from brow to ear.

  She’d been concussed when she’d told a policewoman that it was her fault. ‘I took his passport,’ she’d said. She wasn’t concussed now, and Angie had already got the true story out of the twins – and got more out of a cousin. Nick had never intended to take his mother to Greece. He’d booked the second flight for a Danielle Simpson, who along with Nick was missing.

  A third of all marriages end in the divorce court. Danielle’s would. She had four children – two at school, a boy the same age as the twins and a girl of nineteen months.

  They hadn’t flown to Greece. Trudy had put a stop to that. She’d burnt Nick’s passport on the barbeque, poured methylated spirits over it, struck a match and lit it, then stood watching it burn.

  Three days later she’d been in hospital, in the same hospital as Tessa. All four of Nick’s sisters had popped in to see her. Angie had taken a week of her holidays to care for the twins. Tonia owned the largest house and had only one adult son. She’d told Trudy where she’d be staying when the hospital released her. She’d told her that she wasn’t returning to Tessa’s house. Tonia had picked her up from the hospital this morning and on the trip to Glen Waverly, told her about Nick and Danielle.

  ‘He was out of his brain the last time I spoke to him. Is he on anything?’ Tonia had asked.

  He’d been out of his brain when he couldn’t find his passport, as had Trudy since she’d called that number on his mobile. The female voice that replied would have been Danielle. She wasn’t the first of Nick’s women. She wouldn’t be the last.

  She’d driven home that night and told Nick that she knew where he’d been spending his days, told him to cancel his flight or she and the boys would go.

  ‘Where to?’ He’d laughed.

  He’d taken the car – so she’d burnt his passport. Then she’d chosen the wrong time, the wrong place to tell him that he may as well stop looking for it. The boys had been beside her. They’d seen everything. She could remember what had happened. She could remember thinking, baby, remember Ricky’s eyes. To her dying day she’d remember his eyes.

  She must have hit her head on a step or against the stair rail. She remembered no more until she woke in a hospital bed.

  If not for her boys she might have bled to death. If Nick had thought to close the garage door they couldn’t have got out. They had, had run screaming to the next-door neighbour that, ‘Daddy made Mummy dead.’

  She’d been concussed, had lost the baby, lost a lot of blood, but wasn’t dead. The boys had seen the blood, and the neighbour and her husband had. They’d called an ambulance. Another neighbour knew Tonia. She’d called her.

  If not for that blood staining the carpet at the foot of the stairs, Nick might have got away with mortgaging his mother’s house. Tonia and her husband had been there trying to clean the carpet when a bank manager phoned and asked to speak to Mrs Tessa Papadimopolous. He’d required a few more details before he could process her loan.

  They’d forgotten about the stain and phoned the police. Trudy’s poor old navy-blue Commodore, its driver’s side door warped by its collision with a brick wall, its windscreen-wiper scratching, was now on the police list of stolen vehicles.

  Sister Hooper had seen abused women brought into casualty. She’d known how to deal with them. She knew now how those victims felt. Sore, every muscle hurting, every movement painful but still wanting to hide their husband’s abuse from the world.

  Had to face it. Had to face the police and Nick’s sisters. Didn’t have to face Georgie. Couldn’t face Georgie.

  ‘Don’t contact my sister or mother,’ she’d said.

  ‘You’re a fool if you can’t see what he is,’ Jenny had said the day Trudy packed her car and buckled the boys into their seats. ‘Your father and I knew what he was the day we met him. At least leave the boys with us.’

  She’d been Nick’s fool for years. She’d had two hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollars in the bank when she’d flown with him and Sophie to Greece. He’d snorted a lot of that money up his nose, had encouraged her to try it once. Only once.

  ‘Is he on drugs?’ Jenny had asked.

  ‘Is he on something? Tonia had asked.

  He could have been. She’d been too busy to notice, or too tired, or too pregnant.

  No more baby – and she wasn’t mourning its loss. That pregnancy had caused this mess and now it was gone and she hadn’t killed it. He’d killed it.

  Thank God for Tonia – and Angie too. She’d brought the boys around to visit Mummy, so they could see for themselves that she hadn’t got dead like Papa.

  ‘Daddy’s a bad man,’ Jamey said. He didn’t attempt to kiss her face better.

  THE UNVEILING

  Business-class passengers were loaded before those flying economy. The tour had travelled by bus to Switzerland and as Jenny boarded the plane that would fly them out, she looked at the cloud-shrouded mountains and wondered how the plane was going to miss hitting one of them.

  Bertha hadn’t paid for Jenny’s company but was seated beside her, and the only time she closed her mouth during the hours to London was when she swallowed. She had time to rip most on the tour to shreds and attempted three times to draw Jenny into a bitching session about that abrasive German woman – who Jenny had grown fond of.

  They’d gone supermarket shopping in Lucerne, had bought elastic, cotton, a packet of needles and a picnic lunch fit for a king. They’d eaten on a street bench and discussed Melbourne’s trams and kangaroos and a train that travelled from coast to coast across thousands of miles of desert. Johanna liked trains, if they provided single rooms. They’d exchanged mobile numbers, email addresses. Today Jenny’s beige slacks stayed up and, before they’d vacated their room, Johanna offered to smuggle one needle into London.

  The wheels hit hard as the plane landed, but it pulled up and everyone stood up to retrieve their luggage. Jenny hauled down Bertha’s vanity case, which was almost as big if not as heavy as her own aqua case. Then, on Bertha’s heels, she queued to get off that plane. She queued behind her to get through Customs, which should have been easy. She spoke the language, had an Australian passport. Bertha, who had a Dutch passport, was waved through. Jenny’s held up that queue, or an officious fifty-year-old female held up Jenny.

  ‘Your business?’ she asked.

  Flight attendants handed out declarations to be filled in and signed before planes landed. Since leaving Australia, at the question asking Reason for tra
velling? Jenny had been writing 50/50 business/holiday, for taxation purposes. Apparently, elderly women weren’t supposed to travel for business.

  ‘Researching Europe,’ Jenny replied.

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘Writer,’ Jenny said quietly.

  ‘Published?’ The woman wasn’t quiet and in that queue at Heathrow, Bertha’s ears flapping, Jenny let the cat out of the bag.

  ‘Six adult books and I co-authored seven children’s books,’ she said, looking the woman in the eye, her hand reaching to claim her passport. She, Jim and the McPhersons had created those seven beautiful children’s books, and Jim proud of every one.

  ‘What’s your business in the UK?’

  Finding Jimmy. Facing Cara – if she could raise the nerve to catch a train alone to Thames Ditton.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment with an English writer – Langhall.’

  Her interrogator may have recognised that name. She returned the passport, and the prisoner at the dock snatched it and made a break for freedom, her bloated aqua case running on one wheel behind her, Bertha on her heels.

  ‘That is why you travel with the computer,’ she said, and the aqua case tilted then tipped over.

  Jenny righted it, knowing she’d smashed her unicorn. Right then, it didn’t matter. She got her case back onto its wheels and continued on to the exit. Bertha’s large case travelled separately. She remained indoors.

  Cold air and passive smoke greeted Jenny, and that scent of smoke in the cold air raised an old need. If she’d had any English money in her wallet she would have bought a smoke and a light. She’d meant to find an ATM while she was inside, but she wasn’t going back inside to find one. Bertha would be spreading her news around the carousel.

  Not that it mattered. Not any more.

  It had mattered to Jim. She’d turned his Molly Squire into popular fiction. It had mattered so much to Jim, he’d crawled into his black hole and pulled down the lid for fourteen months, during which time, Georgie had posted off a second novel by Juliana Conti.

  Jenny was standing alone, sucking in passive smoke when Johanna came with her big camera bag and small case.

  ‘The Langhall is in my city,’ she said.

  ‘Hamburg? When?’

  ‘My daughter is pay to eat dinner with her.’ Johanna shrugged. ‘In her email, she said. You are . . . your books are translate, Jenny?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you writing?’

  ‘Australian fiction.’

  Others were coming, a few were staring. The Dutch came, Bertha unencumbered, Eva pushing a loaded trolley, and Jenny backed in closer to the smokers. Bertha was allergic to passive smoke. Johanna wasn’t. She moved with her. Three smokers now congregated there, a fourth ripping her way into a duty-free carton and about to join them.

  ‘How long you have . . . quit?’ Johanna asked.

  ‘Almost four years.’

  ‘I am fifteen. It calls me still.’

  They stood sucking their fill until the guide came to gather his shrunken herd. Then, like obedient old cows at milking time, Jenny and Johanna joined the outer perimeter. He’d lost six – and Daren, who’d remain at the airport to catch his flight home. The rest of them might last another three days – easy days, according to the itinerary.

  Thursday today, and Cara in Hamburg. At the Melbourne interview she’d said she’d be visiting four states in ten days, attending dinners and book signings from Brisbane to Perth. She’d do the same in Germany and Jimmy would be with her.

  Worn ragged by Bertha, deflated by Johanna’s news, Jenny sat alone behind the bus driver. Johanna sat alone. Gus sat alone. Not Eva. She was a captive of her patron’s mouth.

  Jenny turned her mobile on, praying it would find an English signal. It did, but not immediately, and it needed charging. She hoped that one of her adaptors would fit into English plugs. There was a text from Trudy. Nick wasn’t in Greece. Tessa was still being kept alive by machines.

  She’d looked like an accident waiting to happen the day Jenny had seen her at Croydon.

  I’m staying with Tonia, Trudy had written. Georgie would have given her a bed. We’ve booked the boys into a nearby crèche. They love it.

  Something more than Tessa’s brain haemorrhage had gone on over there.

  Trudy wasn’t working. That crèche would cost big money for two. She hadn’t mentioned the fees.

  They’d allowed her to grow to adulthood believing that money grew on trees, that a shake of the home branch would cause enough leaves to fall at her feet – Jim had. He’d had no respect for money. Since his death, Jenny had shown as little respect. She’d need to pull in her horns when she got home or she’d end up a bag lady – or a busker, singing on some street corner for coins, Lila at her feet.

  How much longer will I have her? She was an old lady in dog years, but her mother had made seventeen.

  How many more years do I have?

  Ms Juliana Conti, author of six . . . Seven, maybe eight novels, if that final plane got her home, if she lived long enough to complete Parasite . . . Ms Juliana Conti, author of eight novels, died last night in a Willama nursing home.

  The traffic heavy, the bus trip into London was slow, but at last they arrived at their final hotel, where they queued one final time while two desk clerks processed them, where one final time, the guide handed out key-cards, Jenny’s promising admittance to Room 312. She tailed Johanna’s sandalled heels into a lift, tailed them up a series of corridors to 312 and into another anonymous room, much like the Gold Rush Motel’s rooms, but without the welcoming teabags and electric jug. It had a small bar fridge, full of temptations, a price list, a room-service folder and a television that spoke English. Jenny wanted tea but settled for a small bottle of wine. Johanna removed its lid, then helped herself to a can of beer, which she took with her to the bathroom.

  Tired tonight, Jenny took her bottle to a lone easy chair where she sat, sipping bubbly wine and staring at a quiz show. Someone knocked. The hotel staff delivered the cases. They’d leave them outside the door if she didn’t open it. Didn’t care much if she lost that case or not, but cared about her laptop and unicorn, so got to her feet, dragged both cases into the room, then sat down again with her bottle.

  The game show ended and the English newsreader told her nothing of interest. She eyed England’s Prime Minister and royal Charlie and was damn near nodding off, the half-full bottle in her hand, when she heard beeps from her handbag.

  Trudy again. Where are you now?

  London, and they didn’t want to let me in. Any word on Tessa?

  Tonia got a court order to turn off her life support.

  Where’s Nick?

  Missing.

  What do you mean missing?

  It would be Friday morning in Australia, very early Friday morning. Are you back at work? Jenny texted.

  No. Enjoy London. Just touching bases. Xx. The end. That’s what Trudy’s kisses meant.

  Johanna’s cap was off. She was ready to go. The herd would be gathering in the foyer for a pleasant evening stroll to an English pub where they could test the local beer and pub fare. It wasn’t one of the prepaid dinners and Jenny had no English money to pay for local beer and pub fare.

  ‘You’ve got rechargeable batteries,’ Jenny said. ‘I need some – and an ATM.’ She emptied the bottle, warm wine now.

  ‘I have their money and we are late,’ Johanna said.

  The stroll wasn’t pleasant. The night was cold and the pub dark and small. Johanna fronted up to the bar. Jenny found a chair where she could rest her back against the wall and continue her texting, though not to Trudy.

  What’s going on in Croydon?

  They’re selling Tessa’s house. Trudy’s in Glen Waverly with her sister-in-law, Georgie replied.

  Something has gone on over there. Nick’s gone missing.

  She was waiting for a reply when Australian Freda and Brian came to the table with pots of beer.

  ‘Do y
ou mind?’ Freda asked.

  Jenny had barely received a nod out of either of them in three weeks. She put her phone away and looked for Johanna, who may not appreciate their company, but what do you do? There were four chairs at the table and the pub was crowded.

  ‘Go for your life,’ she said.

  It became clear then what had brought them to that table. ‘Brian and I have read everything you’ve written,’ Freda said as she removed a bunch of pages from her handbag. It wasn’t her itinerary. The pages were too crisp. She unfolded computer printouts and one had a photograph of bewigged Juliana Conti on it.

  ‘Bugger,’ Jenny said. You can’t alter a fake smile. Since that first day in Greece, Jenny had done a lot of fake smiling.

  ‘When we were introduced on the boat, I said to Brian that I knew you from somewhere,’ Freda said. ‘It wasn’t until I heard you were meeting that English author that I twigged as to why you looked so familiar. We saw you with C.J. Langhall on a morning show a few years ago. Your hair was dark and longer then.’

  What do you say other than ‘bugger’? She’d already said that, but bugger gossiping Bertha and bugger officious Customs officers.

  Johanna came with two pots of beer, one she placed down in front of Jenny, who never drank beer, didn’t like the taste of it. She picked it up, clicked beer mugs then downed an inch of it.

  ‘Bertha told us that you were researching a new book,’ Freda said. Jenny sank a second inch. You weren’t supposed to mix beer with wine. She was mixing them – which saved a reply, as did her mobile. It was beeping. Jenny replied to it while Johanna studied the computer printouts.

  Brian paid for four more pots of English beer and that’s when the night became bizarre to Jenny. She heard herself discussing her writing with strangers. It had been her devious little secret. She heard herself admitting to ripping Woody Creek and half of its population apart in The Town, as she’d ripped Lila Jones/Roberts/Freeman/Macdonald/Flanagan/Simpson apart in The Winter Boomerang – and she was still alive and money hungry. She’d probably sue Juliana Conti.