by Brandy Scott
Why was she surprised? Sharna was local, three generations. Exactly the sort of Hensley traditionalist Lou had battled with all her life.
‘Forget it,’ Lou said, stepping backwards into a display of greeting cards. ‘I don’t know why I even bothered. None of you have ever helped me before.’
‘Now that’s not true at all. I can think of one or two people who’ve done quite a lot for you over the years.’
She probably meant Rex, giving her a lousy boring job that barely paid a living wage. And what were the chances Sharna already knew she’d lost it? Most likely agreed with the decision to fire her.
‘All you lot have ever done is judge me,’ said Lou. ‘And talk about me. Ever since I got pregnant. None of you have ever liked me.’
‘We don’t really,’ agreed Sharna. ‘But that’s got nothing to do with you getting pregnant.’
‘Don’t lie,’ said Lou. ‘You all sided with my parents when they kicked me out. And none of you have had time for me since.’
‘Again,’ said Sharna, ‘that’s got nothing to do with you having Tansy. What, you think you’re the only pregnant teenager this town has ever seen?’ She bit off a piece of thread with her teeth. ‘We don’t like you because you don’t like us. You think we’re beneath you.’
‘Oh please.’ Lou nearly laughed.
‘Yes, you do,’ said Sharna, suddenly aggressive. ‘All you talk about is how much you hate this place. I hear you down the pub every weekend, we all do, slagging Hensley off. Talking about how backward and small-minded we are, how you can’t wait to leave. While expecting the very people you’re insulting to serve you wine and chips.’
‘I —’
Sharna flipped up her counter. ‘You want to know why people sided with your parents?’ she asked, walking towards Lou. ‘Because Ken and Bev were good people who did a lot for this town. And yes, maybe they didn’t react to your news as well as they could have, but how well did you ever treat them?’
Lou shrank into the Valentines card display. There was nowhere she could go.
‘You act like they turned their back on a loving daughter, but the contempt you had for them? You judged them the way you judge the rest of us, as though they didn’t quite meet your high standards.’ Sharna looked Lou up and down, taking in her too- small jeans, the T-shirt she’d thrown on even though it had a stain on it. ‘I’m not surprised they’d had enough. I’m not surprised Rex has either. I’d have sacked you long ago.’
Lou tried to cover the stain by crossing her arms. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’
But Sharna wasn’t finished. ‘Yes, people were curious about your baby, and yes, they gossiped, but the real reason Hensley doesn’t have much time for you is because you act as though we’re losers.’ Sharna gave a little shake of her head, like a disgruntled horse. ‘You live here, you’re one of us, but the way you talk about this town? You ending up at Hensley Council is just proof that God has a sense of humour.’ She stepped closer; Lou could smell the tea on her breath. ‘You know why you even got that job in the first place, don’t you? Your dad got it for you. Couldn’t bear to see you struggling.’
‘Couldn’t bear to see his daughter collecting the dole,’ Lou muttered, but without her usual fire.
‘Maybe there was a bit of that,’ Sharna conceded. ‘I’m not saying they’re blameless. Beverly Henderson was one of the most stubborn women you ever met. “Just apologise,” I used to say. “Tell her you’re sorry and she’ll come home and bring your granddaughter with her”. But no. That woman wouldn’t piss on a kitten on fire if she thought it had wronged her.’
‘Thank you,’ said Lou, uncertainly.
‘But that doesn’t excuse you. Walking around here like you’re too good for us, turning up to every community event just so you can sneer at it. Writing snide little things on Facebook.’ Sharna turned suddenly, as though she was sick of the very sight of Lou. ‘And then you come in here, demanding answers, like I owe you something.’ Sharna picked up her cross-stitch again. ‘You know what’s funny? Your friend Melinda, who genuinely is too good for this place, is at all our fundraisers, trying to prove she’s still one of us. While you, who’ve never done anything, keep desperately trying to prove you’re not.’
Byron wasn’t answering his phone.
‘Calm down,’ said Nick. He leaned against the kitchen doorway, strong forearm keeping him steady as he shook himself free of one workboot, then the other. ‘They won’t be far away.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Aimee made her hands into fists in the safety of her pockets. ‘He’s bad news. Even Pete says so.’
‘So we’ll tell Byron not to hang out with him any more.’ Nick rubbed his hands under the tap, briefly turning the water a dull brown. ‘He shouldn’t have taken off like that, without telling one of us. But it’s nothing to freak out about. He’s a fifteen-year-old boy. He can look after himself.’
‘Exactly! A fifteen-year-old boy, out all night with a nineteen-year-old man he has a crush on. A man whose own stepfather says is messed up. And who hates me for some reason, who looks at me like he wants to punish me.’
Nick paused, one hand on the fridge. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I think he might . . .’ Aimee closed her eyes, saw the way Byron had gazed up at Cameron over dinner. Laughing too loudly at his jokes, rushing to get him another glass of water. ‘I’m scared he’s . . .’ Shelley and Byron had both been fighting for his attention. But Cameron had been much more interested in Byron, hadn’t he?
‘Do you think he’d interfere with Byron? Try something? Is that it?’ Nick’s face had gone white.
Aimee squeezed her eyes tighter, trying not to picture two boys in a sleeping bag. Her innocent, insecure son. Cameron, so goodlooking, so blatantly untrustworthy. She nodded miserably. ‘He lied to Shelley. Told her he’d called me, asked permission.’
‘And Pete reckons he’s a bit fucked up. Got issues.’
Aimee nodded.
‘I don’t get it. Why would he want to punish you? He doesn’t even know you.’
Aimee stopped trying to keep her voice level. ‘Because he knows I had something to do with the plane crash! He thinks I killed his brother, and now he’s disappeared with my son!’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’ Nick paced around the kitchen, hands pushed against his head as though he was literally trying to keep his hair on. ‘Not this again.’
‘I don’t care if you believe me or not. But there’s something going on with him. Pete’s scared of him, almost.’
‘Really?’
‘Honest to God. And Byron just idolised him.’
Nick gripped the bench. ‘Why the fuck did you leave them alone with him then?’
‘Because I didn’t know.’ Aimee was shouting now. ‘And you weren’t here either, so you can’t bloody talk.’ She strode into the hallway. ‘I’m going to call the police.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Aimee. Let’s try and figure out where they’ve gone.’
‘You could locate his iPhone.’ Shelley stood in the living room doorway, staring at them both like they were crazy. ‘You made us give you our passwords, remember? If we were going to have phones? You can track him with that.’
Aimee nearly dragged her daughter into the room. ‘Do it,’ she instructed.
‘It’ll only work if his location settings are on,’ Shelley warned as she opened the menu on Aimee’s phone. They all watched as a small blue dot appeared, pulsing, on the outskirts of Hensley.
‘He’s next to the river,’ said Nick.
‘Near the old swimming hole,’ said Aimee, zooming in. A deserted spot, largely used by teenagers getting high or getting it on. She and Nick had driven out there a few times when they were dating and his parents wouldn’t go conveniently to bed.
‘Well then,’ said Aimee, scooping up her keys. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Are you sure this is what you think it is?’ Nick gave her a meaningful look over Shelley’s head.
/> Shelley glared at her mother. ‘I don’t know why you’re so pissed off. You’re the one who was worried he’d never get a boyfriend.’
Nick plucked the keys out of Aimee’s hand. ‘I’ll drive.’
Aimee grabbed her phone off Shelley. ‘One minute. I need to call Pete.’ And the police. She was going to call the police. If only so there would be someone there to hold her back.
Lou got as far as the second post office step before she sagged into an exhausted heap. Her brain was woolly with sleep deprivation; she couldn’t tell if Sharna’s words were true or not. Had she really started the cold war with her parents? Had Lou rejected Hensley before it rejected her?
Ridiculous, she told herself. Lou didn’t have to try hard to remember walking down the main street, ripe with Tansy, and seeing her parents’ friends avert their eyes. Sure, some had spoken, but Lou always assumed people were being nosy when they asked how she was doing. Spying for her parents. Offering to babysit or lend her their old cot so she’d owe them something. She wasn’t falling for that. The same way she wasn’t falling for her mother’s worried tone when she rang up to check on her. To gloat, she’d tell herself as she slammed the phone down. They just want to be able to say ‘I Told You So’. Lou put her head in her hands.
But look at the secret they’d kept from her. Lou pulled out the photo again. She didn’t even know if her sibling was a boy or a girl. Isn’t it funny, Tansy had said, when she’d found Lou at the breakfast table staring at the picture, as she had been pretty much all night, how babies always look like little old men? The baby in the photo was essentially genderless, with its white knitted hat and standard-issue hospital blanket. Lou leaned back against a veranda post. The photo was annoyingly devoid of clues. There was no useful calendar in the back of the shot, no tiny name tag around the baby’s wrist that Lou could blow up with computer wizardry she didn’t possess. Lou stared harder, willing it to tell her what Sharna wouldn’t. The hospital didn’t even look like St Margaret’s, although it was possible they’d redecorated in the last thirty-something years. The only thing she knew for sure was that this was her mother, and this photo was taken by her father, and therefore her parents had had a baby before Lou.
But other pieces were beginning to fall into place. Her childhood made a lot more sense, seen through the lens of this photo. If there’d been a child who’d died, that went a long way to explaining why her parents had been so strict. All the rules about not being out after dark, always leaving a note. And maybe why they’d been so paranoid about her future, so devastated when she ‘threw it away’. Their words, not hers. Although here she was, thirty-five and unemployed, chain-smoking on the post office steps at 11 am on a Friday, so maybe they’d had a point.
What happened to you? Lou silently asked the child in the photo. The baby couldn’t have been born more than two or three years before Lou. Her mother had had Lou at twenty-three; she’d been a young mum then too. All yellow-and-brown paisley miniskirts, matching pigtails with her daughter. Which meant this child couldn’t have lived long. Did it die in the hospital? Did her mother already know something was wrong; was that why she looked so sad? Or was there an accident? Lou had never been allowed near the water without an adult, not even a paddling pool. She’d been spanked severely once for running her own bath. Had her sister or brother drowned? Been hit by a car? And why never, ever tell her?
Although theirs was a family that hadn’t discussed much. Lou’s mother never told her the facts of life, just gave her a book and said stiltedly to ask questions after she’d read it. (Lou hadn’t.) There was another book when her grandad died, about rabbits going to heaven. When her dog had been run over, her parents swore he’d gone to live on a farm. Honesty and openness weren’t really their way. It wasn’t inconceivable that they could lose a child and never speak of it. Put it behind them and move on. Hadn’t they essentially done that with her as well?
But how devastating it must have been for them. Lou felt a genuine ache, deep in her chest. Her heart was already breaking for Tansy, and they didn’t even know what they were facing yet. For her parents to silently bear such a loss, to lock the grief away like some kind of shameful secret, was such a tragedy she wanted to cry.
When the policeman had arrived at Lou’s house to tell her about the car accident, she’d felt nothing. It was like listening to an actor say his lines in a TV show. They’d been killed less than twenty kilometres outside Hensley: an overtaking truck, a blind corner. Ten months ago now. The policeman had thought Lou was in shock because she’d smiled and thanked him and tried to shut the door. But they’d been dead to her for years.
Lou stared up at the post office noticeboard, the fliers advertising snake-catchers and help-yourself horse poo, all the things she hated about country-town life. Taking over the house had felt like an act of revenge, knowing she wouldn’t have been welcome. But what if Lou had been wanted more desperately than she realised? What if her teenage rebellion had felt like losing a second child? Lou ran her thumb over her mother’s exhausted face. She’d always thought her parents were cold. But it could have been grief. Grief shoved so far down it had frozen.
And hadn’t Lou done the same thing, in a way? She loved Aimee, but she’d shut her out, because she didn’t have the energy for her any more. She loved Melinda, yet she’d turned on her, because she didn’t know what else to do. Lou pictured her parents in the window of their ugly living room, watching her run around in the rain trying to save her possessions, flicking her middle finger up at them as she yelled and swore. Maybe turning their hearts off was the only way they could cope. It didn’t make it right. But it did make it the tiniest bit more understandable.
‘You still here?’ Sharna stood on the porch above Lou, a dark shadow. The postmistress sighed. ‘One thing I’ll say for you, you always were stubborn.’ She reached down and caught Lou’s arm, pulled her onto her feet. ‘Come on back in then, let’s set this right. You keep sitting here, people will talk.’
Sure enough, there was a small blue tent down by the swimming hole. Aimee made Nick cut the engine as soon as it came into view. Even though it was killing her to let Cameron Kasprowicz have an extra minute alone with her son, she had to make sure she was right.
The area was scrubby, just as she’d remembered. Few people came down to this part of the river unless they had a reason. It was the point where the eucalyptus gave way to proper bush, a small clearing littered with abandoned beer bottles and dirty supermarket bags. Even the river looked scummy.
As Aimee and Nick watched, a man poked his head round the side of the tent. Aimee recognised the arrogant profile instantly. He walked bare-chested and stretching into the middle of the clearing, glanced around as if trying to identify a noise. Aimee tried not to breathe. Cameron wore a pair of faded shorts, nothing else. He looked like he’d just got out of bed.
He climbed back into the tent, unidentifiable bumps appearing in its sides. Laughter floated out the door, but it was easy, intimate laughter, not rowdy boy yahooing. And that was more than Aimee could take. She ran careering down towards the river, arms and legs pumping, chest heaving, but with still enough air in her lungs to yell.
‘Byron,’ she shouted. ‘Byron, I’m here. Cameron, you leave my son alone. Don’t you touch him.’
Nick was a few steps behind her, walking but at pace.
‘I’ve rung the police,’ Aimee yelled, as she got closer. ‘Get your hands off him, the police are coming.’ She overshot and had to pull up so she didn’t slide into the river. Pivoting, she grabbed hold of the tent for balance, and braced herself for whatever faced her inside.
Beneath the awning, Cameron was desperately trying to shove a bong under a sleeping bag. Byron sat opposite, eyes large, chest bare, a plastic bag of weed at his feet.
‘Mum,’ he said, horrified. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ He ducked and twisted. ‘Get the fuck off me!’
‘You shouldn’t be out here,’ said Aimee, tugging. ‘You shouldn’t
be alone with him.’
‘Mum. Oh my God. STOP!’
Someone had her other arm, was trying to keep her away from her son. ‘Sorry, Byron,’ said Nick. ‘Your mum was worried. She didn’t know where you’d gone.’
Byron looked as though he wanted the earth to open up and swallow him. He stared open-mouthed at his parents. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this. We’re camping.’
The smell of weed hung heavy on the summer air. Aimee turned to Nick, waiting for him to say something, to do something, but he just kept holding her arm. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said to Byron. ‘Our bad.’
‘But . . .’ Drugs! He was giving her son drugs! Which surely was intent of some sort!
Cameron smirked at her, and Aimee yanked herself free. ‘I know what you’re up to,’ she said, staggering towards him. ‘I know what you’re doing.’ She turned towards Byron. ‘He’s just playing with you, love. He’s not really interested, you can see that, can’t you?’
Byron sat mute with horror, one hand over his face.
‘Don’t worry, mate, we’re leaving.’ Nick grabbed Aimee’s shoulder. ‘You hang out here as long as you want. Just give it a bit of time before either of you drives anywhere, eh?’ He gave Aimee a little push, back towards the dirt track. ‘Come on. We’re leaving.’
But there was a siren in the road behind them, then a squeal of tyres.
‘Please tell me you didn’t,’ muttered Nick.
‘I was scared,’ said Aimee. She reached a hand towards her son’s acne-scarred shoulder, but he turned away from her.
‘Aimee? Is he there?’ There was crashing and puffing as Arthur lumbered down the track. ‘Cameron, your father’s in the car. He wants to talk to you.’
Cameron looked up at Aimee, shaking his head. ‘Nice one,’ he said.
‘You’re still going to be in trouble,’ she hissed. ‘Giving drugs to minors.’
‘It was mine,’ said Byron furiously. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘You don’t need to cover for him.’
