‘And close to the girls’ school. So, that’s convenient,’ I said.
I grabbed my Qantas bag and followed Anthea up the wooden steps onto the front balcony and then into the house. We stepped into a spacious open-plan area with a huge kitchen and dining space opening onto a lounge room with floor-to-ceiling windows that slid open to a back yard with a pool and another mango tree, its branches hanging low. But more than the view, I was taken aback by the wall of butterflies, all mounted in wooden cabinets and covering an entire wall.
‘Wow.’
She laughed. ‘Robbie says I shouldn’t bring work home. I’ll show you your room. It’s downstairs.’
I followed her to another large area below, with four bedrooms and a games room for the girls with an on-the-wall flat-screen TV and couches and beanbags.
‘Here,’ she said as she opened the door to a room with a queen-size bed and turquoise-painted walls with a sliding door that led out to a Japanese-inspired garden. There was an ensuite, which was huge. Everything was huge. White carpet, soft pastels, silent.
I tried not to cry.
‘Thanks Anthea,’ I said.
‘Hey sis, here’s my suggestion: go have a shower or a bath and then maybe a sleep and there are some jammies hanging in the cupboard and when you’re done and dusted, just come on up; Robbie will be home around five and the girls will be home about three-thirty. They’re so looking forward to meeting you, the Hollywood diva, they’ll be thrilled to know you’re here. They’ll absolutely want to cook you dinner.’
I cried.
She held me.
‘It’s okay. I love you.’
‘Thanks. I love you too.’
She closed the door; softly. I ran a bath, I poured L’Occitane bath salts into the water and I immersed myself under the surface and closed my eyes and thought: When was the last time you did this? Like, driving with Anthea from Wacol, to here: When was the last time you were in the front seat of a car?
Nineteen years ago.
Thank God for my sister.
—
AS I LAY in the bath, I let the killer slide out of me. He had inhabited me as if I had a demon inside, as if I were possessed. I had welcomed him in; I had to. He walked with me and dreamed with me. He whispered to me. He made me proud of the killings. He gave me a sense of purpose but all the while, as I was consumed by his dark evil, we knew it would be only for a certain period of time. Like all great lovers, my dance with the devil would come to an end and in the bath as I wallowed in the smell of French lavender, I purged him.
I climbed out of the bath and stood naked, letting the water run off me. I was innocent again. I was me again. He had served his purpose. He had allowed me to embrace those vile deaths, he had made a killer out of me, he allowed me to dream at night, of cutting men, he allowed me to become angry and vengeful, even though I was confused because it was always his anger and vengeance, not mine; I had to decipher him. But now he’s gone.
Just a puddle of warm water on the floor. Soon to turn cold, soon to dry away and be no more.
I was Jen White again. Nineteen years later and I had returned to me.
I didn’t even think about him. The actual killer. I had left him on the floor, a puddle of water.
I didn’t even think, not then, that he might be somewhere, unfurling, like a monster awakening from a long and precious dark sleep.
—
‘HELLO JENNIFER.’
He was home early. He was standing behind the kitchen bench with a glass of wine as I came upstairs. He was wearing a sleek dark suit with a red tie, unloosened around his neck, and his hair was slicked back with a lot of gel. He had squirrel eyes and a longish nose. Mum would have thought he was handsome, and I guess he was. He reminded me of a young Alain Delon, the French actor I fell in love with when I was thirteen after watching one of dad’s VHS tapes, Le Samouraï, about a hit man who lived underground with a caged bird. But Alain Delon was charismatic and sexy. My sister’s husband was not.
‘Hi. Robbie?’
‘That’s me,’ he replied. I hadn’t noticed them before but the lounge area had many photos, not just on the fridge, but framed and on the walls, of Robbie and Anthea and the girls and my parents. They were holding the girls and laughing for the camera. Grandparents do that, making up for the lack of love and attention to their children, atoning with adoration to the next generation. Kids have no idea, just thinking that granny and grandpa do all the stuff that mum and dad won’t.
Robbie wouldn’t look me in the eye. He looked at my neck, my mouth, the top of my head. Never my eyes.
‘Anthea has just gone out to pick up the girls.’
And then: ‘It might rain.’
‘We need rain,’ I replied, like a moron.
‘We do,’ he replied, also like a moron.
I nodded and smiled and there was an awkward silence for about five seconds, until I said:
‘Gorgeous house.’
‘Yeah. We’re happy with it.’
‘So, you work in the city?’
‘Yep.’
Another five seconds.
‘You grew up around here, Anthea said,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
I think this was called being passive–aggressive. I’ve read about it, seen some people on TV who are like this. This was my first real-life experience with it, and I wasn’t sure how to navigate it. In prison we just said what we meant and used fists or crowbars when language got too hard.
‘Uh-huh. Okay. I just got out of prison. This morning.’
No answer but a lengthy gulp of his wine. He has not offered me any, although I could not take it anyway because drinking alcohol would break my parole.
‘Yeah, I was there for nineteen years. It’s kind of weird, you know, coming out after nineteen years and everything has changed. I’m so happy for my sister, for getting married, having this beautiful house, two adorable girls. I’ll be leaving in the morning; it was very, very kind of you to let me stay here tonight – I’m a little disorientated, as you can imagine – a bit like walking on land for the first time in twenty years after being at sea, so yeah, I really appreciate it and by the time you get up in the morning I’ll be gone.’
He nods. ‘Good,’ he says.
Good.
He says.
And we just stood there, him behind the kitchen bench with his wine and me at the top of the stairs in the pyjamas Anthea had left in the cupboard for me. To assuage any further awkwardness, he brought out his phone and began to play with it and I wandered over to the massive display of mounted butterflies and marvelled at the Costa Rica exhibit.
—
I HEARD THE sound of a car pulling up outside and doors slamming and the hammer-hammer of feet in school shoes as the two girls raced up the wooden steps and smashed open the front door and ran down the corridor into the lounge room with excitement and then stopped, staring at me, goggle-eyed, ignoring dad as mum breathlessly hurried up behind them, carrying school bags, which she dropped to the floor and went to Robbie and kissed his cheek (he didn’t look her in the eye either despite the imploring look I saw in her eyes). The girls have not moved but kept staring at me and me back to them. Searching ourselves.
Freeze frame, broken by:
‘Girls, this is your Aunty Jen.’
To which they shouted, ‘Yay!’ in unison and ran towards me like two rackets of energy and almost knocked me over as they encircled me and hugged me and kissed me and said:
‘Tell us everything!’
Thank God for the girls.
Liar
I AM THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD AND THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME I’d had a kid sit on my lap. It felt good. One perched on each knee and arms clinging to my neck, hanging on. I felt like a Mother Octopus.
‘I was scared,’ I said to Maxi and little Jen, who stared up at me in rapture while mum and dad did some silent angry things behind the breakfast bar. ‘I arrived in Los Angeles wanting to be a movie star but with nowhere to
go and no-one to see.’
‘But you were pretty?’ asked Maxi, who is eight.
‘Yeah. Maybe. Everyone in Hollywood is pretty or ruggedly handsome, and I caught the bus and I went to Santa Monica Boulevard and found an apartment and began to see if I could get a screen test; but that’s enough about me for the minute … tell me about you.’
‘Yay!’
‘Maxi, you’re the oldest, you go first, and little Jen, take my hand, darling, and hold it tight as we listen to what she has to say. Okay?’
‘Yep, okay Aunty Jen,’ as she gripped my hand and looked up, once more, into my eyes. Little Jen is six.
‘I’m going to be like mum and open a zoo,’ said Maxi. ‘But not like an old-school zoo. Totally no bars or cages. Yuk. A wild park where animals of the savannah can roam freely. I know there are parks like this in Victoria and Kenya and San Diego but mine will be the best. I have already started a crowdfunding site to buy the land and then the animals,’ she said with the essence of a green venture capitalist.
‘There’s an animal park in China where the lady got eaten by a lion,’ said little Jen.
‘No cars in my park,’ said Maxi. ‘I’m building a monorail.’
‘Like in Jurassic World!’ exclaimed little Jen.
‘You are such a moron,’ replied Maxi.
‘I am not!’
‘Jen. Tell me about you,’ I said, trying to defuse them.
‘I’m going to Hollywood like you,’ she said with a puff of her chest. Maxi was about to ruin that dream, I could see, so I swiftly gave her a warning smile and she resisted the temptation.
Kids.
‘Tell us more about you, Aunty Jen,’ said Maxi.
‘Well, it was very scary arriving in a new city and, you know, how many others want to be a movie star? But I persisted.’
‘And?’ asked little Jen.
‘Did you meet Vin Diesel?’ asks Maxi.
‘I did.’
‘You did?!’
‘Yeah, we went out together one night; I had bumped into him one night. I had bumped, like really bumped into him,’ as I bumped my fist gently into their legs – they hadn’t moved, all legs and feet and kid-insect-itchy and I loved them, I wanted to take them home with me as they looked up into my eyes with focussed adoration and I’m sorry kids, I’m lying but it’s a good story: ‘We were at the Chateau Marmont – you heard of the Chateau?’
Shaking heads, a frown and sadness: ‘No, sorry, Aunty Jen, never heard of the Chateau,’ until, a beat later, little Jen says with excitement:
‘Is that the place in Versailles?’
I laughed and hugged her and told her how clever she was to know about that; but, no, that was the Sun King’s palace, Louis the fourteenth, who was the precursor to the French Revolution where –
‘They chopped off Marie Antoinette’s head!’ shouted Maxi.
‘With the …’ Pause here, little Jen concentrating hard. ‘Gill-thing.’
‘Guillotine,’ I say. ‘Clever girl!’
‘What did they do with her head?’ she asked, brows furrowed.
‘I don’t know, darling.’
‘I reckon they fed it to dogs,’ said Maxi.
I hugged them tighter. Off into the far distance of my vision, I could see Robbie drinking more and shaking his head and Anthea reaching out to him, both of them behind the breakfast bar, an almost-silent tableau of marital anger played out on the edge of the stage. I’ll be gone early in the morning, okay. Please, just chill and let me, if you may, let me hold your girls and rollick with them.
‘You crazy critters!’ I said with an even tighter hug.
‘We are not critters!’ And they mock-punched me. ‘Critters are alligators.’
‘There are no alligators in Australia, you dummy,’ said Maxi.
‘There are.’
‘There are not. You are so stupid!’
‘I am not,’ said little Jen.
Tears welled in her eyes. I had been there. Quite recently, when emotion swelled everything else. Like: That morning. Like: That evening. Like: Now. When the emotional assault was just a bit too much to bear.
That was little Jen. She was the one who said there were alligators in Australia and she was wrong but, you know, who gives a fuck and now that Maxi had begun an assault on her to verify the truth, I had to step in (off in the corner of my eye I could see that Anthea was getting furious with Robbie but stay focussed, Jen, stay and hang with the kids). ‘Well, you know what, it doesn’t matter if there are alligators or crocodiles or any sort of critter because there might be. Okay?’
Okay, Aunty Jen.
‘The Chateau Marmont was, is, a very exclusive and expensive hotel and still exists, in Hollywood, and that’s where very, very famous people go, like Marilyn Monroe or Clarke Gable or (get with the twenty-first century, Jen!) Justin Bieber or Kanye or Frank Ocean or Rhianna. It’s known to be the most famous, and I was there one night. It’s on Sunset; do you know about Sunset?’
They shake their heads solemnly. No. Sorry, Aunty Jen.
Don’t even ask about Clarke Gable.
‘Sunset is the biggest and most fantastic street in Hollywood, and I was there in the bar at the Chateau and this man comes up to me –’
‘Kanye!’
‘Jay Z!’
‘And guess what?’
‘What?!’
‘Brad Pitt came in …’
‘No!’
‘Yes.’
‘I was sitting by the bar and he looked at me and I looked at him and –’
‘No!’
‘Yes. Ha ha,’ And …
(… and I miss Rosie; where is she?)
Anthea came across and joined us. ‘Hello, big sister, telling tall tales about movie stars with your nieces – who seem to like you; maybe more than grumpy mum?’ as she perched on the edge of a couch.
‘Brad Pitt came across to me and said, Hey you wanna go out for dinner? I know this great Afghan place around the corner and my friend George might join us and I’d like to hear your life story.’
‘Brad. Pitt. Ohmygod.’
I started to feel guilty; they are my nieces, after all. ‘I’m making this up,’ I said. ‘I never got to meet Brad Pitt but I wish I did; he is so cool and a great actor. I just spent most of my time there going for auditions and working as a waitress.’
Their faces fell; maybe I should have stuck with the fantasy.
And then, to interrupt us all, the sounds of angry walking across the wooden floorboards and a door slamming. Robbie had gone. Stormed off. I hugged them a little tighter and noticed that their reaction suggested this might be a regular occurrence. Anthea gave us a forced smile as if nothing had happened.
‘Hey! Let’s cook up some fried chicken and chips. Yeah?’
—
AFTER THE GIRLS went to bed I did too, but I didn’t sleep. I didn’t want to pry into Anthea’s life and I knew, anyway, that it was all about me. Who needs a convicted murderer as a sister-in-law? I heard his car come into the driveway at about two and a dishevelled fumbling of keys by the front door and soon after, I heard their bedroom door open then close and some angry whispers and then silence.
At dawn I left. Walked down the hill and caught a bus to Southport on the Gold Coast, down the M1, where I eventually found the parole office and sat on a concrete block out the front of the building, staring at the closed Korean restaurants and watched the traffic roll by in both directions, waiting for it to open.
The Price is Right
I MADE GNOCCHI. THE GIRLS LIKE GNOCCHI. I ALWAYS MAKE it from scratch, with potato, adding some parmesan. Just as we were sitting down to eat, the phone rang, the land line and my instant reaction was correct:
Ray.
‘Hello? Karin speaking.’
‘You didn’t do what I asked.’
‘Minister, I’m just about to sit down to eat dinner with my family; can I call you back later tonight or in the morning?’
‘Certainly, but b
efore you go, let me tell you this: You released, against my direct orders, a criminal back into the community. A criminal who will most likely re-offend, and if you think the parole board is above the rule of law, you are wrong. This prisoner, this woman, needs to go back into prison now. And, as your minister, I am instructing you to get her back into prison. Tonight.’
‘Minister, I cannot do that. She is out on parole and the only legal way for her to be returned is if she breaches the terms of parole. I cannot put her back into prison for no reason.’
‘I want you to do it.’
‘Minister, I cannot. We work and live by the rule of law and I can only be beholden to that.’
‘I need your loyalty.’
‘Minister, I am loyal to the Office of the Attorney-General and to the rule of law in Queensland.’
‘But not to me? Me.’
‘Minister, I must abide by the separation of powers. I am loyal to the Office of the Attorney-General, the laws of Queensland, not to a person.’
‘I don’t give a fuck about any of that. Get the bitch back behind bars within twenty-four hours or I will sack you, replace you and get a parole board that does what I say. On air you go.’
Girlie
‘HEY, WASN’T THIS ONE OF YOUR EARLY CASES?’ ASKED MY assistant, Simon, a young semi-bearded guy in his mid-twenties. Millennial. When I started, when the Force was still the Force rather than the Service, facial hair was not allowed. (But dyed-blonde hair was.)
He was showing me an internal memo that listed the people who had recently been released from prison. We get an update on this, no-one else, not the press, not the victims’ families. Which can (and does) cause anger and distress. But the job of the parole board is narrow – and that’s to protect the prisoner and ensure that they are afforded a smooth return into society.
Jen White had been released. Not before time. Nineteen years was a long stretch for Life. Life is not life; it’s usually fifteen to seventeen years, especially when the prisoner was as young as her. Nineteen years is when memories and outrage have faded, as long as the prisoner can demonstrate remorse and won’t be considered a danger to the community. Jen was a teenager when she went in. Now she is middle-aged. Society has had its justice.
Blood River Page 24
