After the Ferry

by C. A. Larmer

  As she made her way to the old convent, knowing to take the faster route along the dusty road, Millie pulled out her mobile and finally made the call she’d been putting off all week. There was crying and screaming and plenty of recriminations but mostly there was relief. And she knew she owed them all so much, wondered if, yet again, they could ever forgive her, but she couldn’t think about that now, her journey was not yet complete.

  The hostel was empty when she got there, even Kostas was missing from his front perch, but that wasn’t where she was headed. She walked through the reception area and across to the side, then unlatched the arched wooden doorway and stepped out to the small cemetery on the western side of the castle.

  Effie was squatting on a windswept patch of grass in front of a tiny wooden cross.

  “Your baby?” Millie asked softly, and Effie nodded, not looking around as she approached.

  “Stillborn,” Effie said. “Never even took a breath.”

  Millie reached towards her, but her back stiffened, so she just knelt on the grass beside her and waited. She glanced around and couldn’t help smiling. They had spent many hours side by side like this, here in the cemetery swapping ghost stories or up in the dormitory or out on that Juliet balcony. And it wasn’t all bleak. There was some laughter, too, sometimes even dreaming. Despite the horror and indignity of it all, they had enjoyed their nine months together.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you lost your child?” Millie said at last and Effie sighed.

  “I didn’t tell anyone. Only the sisters knew. Oh and Zoe. Somehow the silly old witch had worked it out.”

  “Zoe’s scary like that.”

  Effie smiled. “You have no idea.”

  “What about Nico? You never told him? He never twigged?”

  She shook her head. “Although if Kostas hasn’t worked it out by now he’s thicker than he looks. I come here every month. Always leave something.”

  Millie glanced down, only now noticing the smattering of tiny, whitewashed shells and several faded plastic flowers, what looked like a silver charm bracelet.

  “It’s not that we meant to keep it secret. Is just the way it worked out.” Effie hugged her knees to her chest, placing her head on them, looking across at Millie now. From that angle she looked sixteen again.

  “He was like a gift from God, your boy. This is why I call him Theo. It was like fate or some of that crazy stuff you used to go on about.” She smiled. “I no believe it until then. Until you left and my precious girl was taken, and your boy… he was just lying there in his crib, crying for his mother.”

  Now Millie stiffened and Effie reached a hand across and placed it on her knee.

  She said, “I was crying so much too, Millie. I was so distraught. I didn’t think I could ever get over that terrible loss.” She sniffed. “But then Aggie placed your baby in my arms and suddenly it all makes sense. Everything okay again. At least it was okay for me.”

  Then she reached her other hand over to grasp Millie’s. “Please,” she said, “you cannot take him away. I cannot lose another child. Maybe if you don’t see him. Maybe is good you don’t know him—”

  “Effie…”

  “You have no right!” She whipped her hands back and hid her head in her knees.

  Millie watched her sadly. She knew Effie wasn’t talking legally—legally Millie probably could mount a pretty good case. She was young; nothing was signed; nothing was agreed. But she really meant ethically, morally, spiritually. And she was right. Millie told her so.

  “But I’d like to get to know him a little, if that’s okay.”

  The relief in Effie’s eyes when she turned to look at Millie again was heartbreaking and she realised then that Effie, too, had been living in a kind of suspended universe, as terrified of Theo’s face as Millie had been. Every time Effie looked at him did she see his biological mother? Every time the ferry arrived with a new batch of tourists, did she search for Millie’s face among the crowd, fearful she’d return, demanding to see her child? Demanding to take him away.

  No wonder she panicked when I finally showed up, Millie thought now. No wonder she fled on the first ferry out. No doubt she thanked God her boy was hidden away in Athens. She wasn’t to know that I would befriend Nico and end up in his apartment, staring at a photo that looked spookily like me.

  But she didn’t think Effie minded her knowing, not really.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you just say?”

  “I love him so much.”

  “Good! I’m glad.” She reached for Effie’s hand this time. “I wanted my boy to find a good home. I said that to Aggie! I’m so happy he found you, Effie, that you cared for him. But now…”

  “Now?’ Effie’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “Now I can’t believe I ever thought the way I did. When I looked at that photo of Theo, yes, I saw a little of myself, but I also saw a little bit of him and it doesn’t scare me anymore. He doesn’t scare me now.”

  “Who?” Effie said and Millie took a deep breath.

  She needed to say the name she had submerged for so many years, the name that had pulled her away from her child and thrown her asunder.

  “My rapist,” she said. “Theo’s dad. He was a man on a ferry who pretended to be my friend. A man called Thomas Wilson.”

  For all their months together, alone in that convent, she had never told Effie the full story of what had happened and how it had unfolded, but it fell from her lips now. And finally she could not stay quiet.

  It all started with a question, Millie told her. “A very foolish set of questions, in retrospect. What is love? What is it really? And can it be trusted?”

  That morning, as the boat slapped against the Sarisi wharf, Millie watched that stranger give her the eye, invite her to follow, and like a fool, she accepted his invitation without thinking. Without considering anything or anyone.

  “Hey, Millie, just chill,” Monty had said. “We’re not getting off yet.”

  She shook her head. “I am.”

  “What?” That was Angus, stunned and confused but not feeling the deep sense of betrayal that would rapidly grow inside his friend. A sense that would soon turn sinister.

  “Sorry, but I need to go.”

  “I’ll come—” said Angus, but she shook him off.

  She wasn’t being fair, she knew that, she had led him on, but how could she turn away now, how could she avoid her fate? And so she had shoved her foolish book into her pack and flung it across her shoulder, then whipped her ponytail from underneath and told Monty, “I’ll catch up with you back in London.”

  “And if you don’t?” Monty called after her.

  “Then consider me happy and get on with your life!”

  Monty had never remembered that part of the conversation, and Millie wished she had because it would have absolved her of all her guilt, guilt that was never hers to begin with.

  Then she had laughed, full of exhilaration and promise, and done the unexpected. The thing her parents had always warned her against. She followed her heart instead of her head. She stepped off the boat and into its blinding consequences.

  He was waiting for her on the wharf, her handsome Greek man, and told her his name was Akakios—“It’s Greek for innocent, but everyone calls me Aki”—then he held out his hand and she took it without hesitation. She didn’t think then, as she did so many times since: What if I had just stayed on the ferry?

  Artemis found Millie three days later, half naked and bleeding, beneath an abandoned pontoon at the quiet end of Sarisi, just down from his pension. She had been brutalised, left for dead. At first he thought she was dead and reeled back when her eyes fluttered, rushing her to the nearest nurse, the only nurse, Sister Agnetha at the Sisters of Mercy Convent.

  There, in a cold hard bed she slipped in and out of consciousness for weeks.

  “What is your name?” she heard someone ask before the darkness swallowed her again.

  And, “Where are
you from?”

  And, “Who are you?”

  When she finally awoke, it was not the bruises or the bones that ached. It was her soul. Her heart. Her faith.

  And when they asked again, “Who are you? Where are you from?” she did not answer because she did not want to know and so she turned towards the stone wall and refused to speak.

  It was only when the bleeding stopped and the vomiting began that one question was finally answered.

  Who was she?

  She was a twenty-year-old woman with a baby growing inside her.

  Millie first met Effie in that convent dormitory. She was from the neighbouring island of Paros, and pregnant, too, hiding like Millie, pretending it wasn’t happening, although much more vocal about it. She had screamed and cried and lashed out the first few weeks and then eventually she had accepted her destiny, even embraced it.

  The father was an older man, a friend of her parents, she told Millie one warm dark night, and they would kill her if they knew. That is if her brothers hadn’t killed her first. That made Millie laugh out loud and finally, in the third month, she spoke.

  “You’re lucky you have brothers who love you,” she croaked, and Effie’s eyes had widened.

  “You’re Australian!” she cried. “I have cousins in Melbourne.” She scrunched her thick eyebrows together and said, “Or Kiwi? You not Kiwi, are you?”

  “Australian,” she said, but that was all she would offer.

  She was never going back.

  But of course she did go back. By the eighth month she knew she must. And she knew she had to go alone. She didn’t want this child. His child. The child of such brutality. And so she gave birth early one morning, in the same stiff bed, with Sister Agnetha at one end and Effie wide-eyed and still fat-bellied at the other.

  And when that tiny child came into the world deathly quiet, Millie thought, Thank God. But then he cried and was thrust into her arms and she held him long enough to soothe him. Long enough to fall in love.

  Two weeks later she was home, in the belly of her family and in a body she no longer wanted. There were no answers for her relieved family, no words for Monty who soon tracked her down at her parents’ place, wanting to swap happy snaps, blissfully unaware that she had none, just a lingering memory of a man who took her hand and with it her faith in love.

  “But that wasn’t love,” someone said, breaking through the monologue.

  The two women looked around to find Nicholas standing behind them, his face deathly pale. He had heard everything.

  “Don’t you see,” he persisted, stepping closer. “That was lust. That was chemistry. That was nothing.”

  “Nico,” Effie growled, warning him off.

  Millie held up a shaky hand. “I know that now,” she said and waved him over. “Don’t you see that’s why I’m here? That’s why I’ve come back? Because the question still remains: What is love, really? And can it be trusted?”

  For thirteen years she told herself no. She told herself never again. And yet the image of that tiny suckling child remained. Her love for him did not wither and die as she had hoped. It had only grown and intensified and left her angry and bitter and mean towards the people she should have been kind to—her parents, her Eve colleagues, Monty.

  She was here now, and she knew the answer to that question was very simple: Yes!

  “I know that the love I had for that little boy, that was real, that could be trusted,” she told them, “and I know nothing can change that love, Nico. Not the way he was conceived, not the way I left him, not the way his face would develop or the man he would become. And certainly not me hiding myself in my career, pretending it didn’t happen or it didn’t matter or some other bullshit. That was real! He was real, and that I know I can trust.”

  She turned to face Effie. “So please don’t tell me I can’t see him. Don’t tell me he doesn’t matter, that I shouldn’t get to know him. I gave up everything for him. My body, my dignity, my trust. And now I just need to see him. To know it was all worth it. To know he’s okay.”

  Effie nodded and grabbed Millie, holding her hard against her heart. “Of course you can see him,” she whispered, “but I’m not the only one you must ask. I’m not the only one who loves him.”

  Then both women turned to look at Nicholas, and he smiled and said, “I think Theo is one very lucky child.”

  EVE

  Monty picked up the cardboard box and began placing her most precious items inside—her favourite issues, the awards they had won, the framed photos of herself, her team, some with company executives, some with A-list celebrities. She lingered over the picture of her and Amelia, dressed to the nines at a swanky film premiere and smiled. Despite their history, all the late nights and anguished moments, it had been an amazing ride, and she would have no regrets. She was looking forward to moving up two flights to the tenth floor, however, to House & Feather, to starting a new chapter.

  To starting afresh.

  She smiled, remembering the conversation she’d had with Millie late that night, while still at Ron and Beryl’s house. How Ron had been speechless when at last his “baby girl” had called him back. For all his bluff, for all his bluster, he was so overcome he could barely speak and had fumbled the phone across, first to Beryl who assured Amelia everything was okay, then to Monty who burst into tears at the sound of her best friend’s voice.

  Amelia did sound amazing, a little weary but otherwise well, and it was such a blessed relief to hear she was safe. Monty didn’t tell her about Tom’s attack, not yet, but she did mention the book and how she knew what had happened all those years ago. Yet Amelia did not seem to care about that.

  “It’s not why I’m here,” she told Monty over the scratchy line. “I can’t give that monster any more of my time. I’m here for my son.”

  Monty knew the story—the truth about Millie’s pregnancy and childbirth had come out eventually—and she understood that. “When will you be back?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met him yet.” Amelia sobbed a little then. “But I will, Monty. I will! I’m so, so close!”

  Then she’d apologised again and hung up, leaving Monty and the Malones laughing and crying with relief, and Ron making firm promises that, once back, his daughter would never be let out of the house again.

  “Monty?”

  She turned around to find Hank leaning against the photo cabinet, staring at her with a worried expression.

  She touched the bruises on her face and said, “You should see the other bloke.”

  He half smiled. The story had already circled the office, and she had made it clear she expected no sympathy, was determined to “get on,” so he tried to ignore her battered body and said, “You heading up?”

  She nodded. “Eve’s all yours now, baby. I heard Gerry’s already tapped you on the shoulder.”

  “It’s not like he had much choice.”

  “Oh I think he had plenty of choices. You’re a good designer, Hank. You’ll be a fantastic art director.”

  He smiled. “I did have a fantastic mentor.” Then he sighed wistfully and began walking away.

  “Hank,” she called after him, and he stopped and looked back. “Yesterday, you asked me out for a drink.”

  He took a step towards her. “Yes?”

  “I’m just wondering, was that as a colleague or…”

  She couldn’t find the courage to finish the sentence and he smiled again and said:

  “Or.”

  Then she smiled even wider.

  TOM

  Scarlett hugged Phil close to her chest and pushed the hair back from his big wet eyes. “You’ll be okay,” she whispered, even though she wasn’t sure he would be. And she felt her heart break for poor Amy as they watched her be buried for the second time.

  But this time they were at the leafy Shepperdin cemetery and there was love all around her, and family and friends, and even a little laughter as they gathered afterwards at the Boot & Tucker to remember “ador
able Amy” and swap stories of better times. When there was still happiness and hope.

  Amy’s parents hadn’t stayed long, they were buckled over with grief, their expressions wretched, their bodies trembling, but they made it clear before they left that Phil was exactly where he needed to be—in the heart of Scarlett and Harry’s large, happy clan. His relationship with his cousins was the only good thing to come out of all this.

  Scarlett had only recently learned who Phil’s biological father was, and she spied Angus Tower now at one end of the bar, flirting with a fashionably dressed woman who was rolling her eyes like she’d seen it all before and wasn’t buying any of it, and she wondered if Angus would fight for custody but suspected he didn’t have it in him.

  Phil did though. He was a fighter, strong and resilient, and he would be okay. She believed it now as she watched him kicking a ball on the grass outside the pub, his cousins and friends gathered around him, his green eyes sparkling despite everything.

  Phil had never belonged to Tom. He was always Amy’s boy, and her death did not change that.

  EPILOGUE

  A few weeks later

  The breeze is warming at last. The early tourists look a little less stunned and are leaving more layers in their backpacks, lingering longer on the beaches, smiling wider at the sharpening sun. I might linger a little longer too.

  I feel welcome here. Apart from that one bleak night, I guess I always have.

  I did get off that ferry, in case you haven’t worked it out. I did follow my heart and get badly hurt and pull myself back from a very dark place.

  A place that still occupies my dreams some nights.

  I think about the years afterwards, after Thomas’s brutal rape. How I swallowed down the truth and fled from it. I don’t regret returning to Sydney and immersing myself at Eve. The way I did it was harsh, unnecessary, at least for others. I know it was the only thing I could do; my floatation device. I behaved like a drowning man, grasping at my lifesavers, almost drowning them in the process.