The Golden Book

by Kate Ryan

  Tam looked at Bettany, who nodded, and Tam said ‘Okaay,’ as if testing the weight of the idea. ‘Not our park, the one with the flying fox.’

  Ali hesitated. That particular park was a drive away, and Tam knew Ali would rather walk to the local one. They had both conceded. But Ali was relieved that at least Tam had agreed to something.

  ‘Okay. You girls get your shoes on, and we’ll go.’

  She thought of making sandwiches, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She threw a few apples in a bag, filled a water bottle, and got her keys.

  At the park the jangling friction between Ali and Tam was loosened. The girls ran around, climbing on the wooden tower and chasing each other, and Ali sat on a bench in the sun, watching them. The park was at the base of a big block of public housing. The playground sat above the river. It was one of those clever new landscape architect–designed ones, though even these had begun to resemble each other.

  Ali remembered the seesaws she and Jessie had raised and let fly, narrowly avoiding whacking into each other’s skulls. Jessie’s laughing eyes in the twilight; another near miss. ‘Oops, sorry!’ Boiling metal under their hands on monkey bars; looping their legs over to hang upside down over concrete. Both of them in some circling game of hide-and-seek with a couple of boys from school. Squashed in the scrubby bush littered with cigarette butts and beer cans with one of them, Sean, aware of his hot, sweaty smell, Ali wanting to kiss him but not. Jessie whistling with two fingers, then calling loudly, laughing again. She remembered it now. So much laughing. ‘Coming, ready or not!’

  Here there was soft, indeterminate stuff on the ground, ropes stretched over a pyramid-style climbing frame, wooden boardwalks everywhere, coloured footholds up a tame wall. Everything designed to avoid accidents and the possibility of risk. Still, of all the playgrounds, this one did have the slightest edgy feel. Perhaps it was the flying fox, perhaps it was the public-housing towers casting their shadows on the grass. Perhaps it was the position, high up, the cloudy river below with its hints of rubbish and factory, the sound of cars on the overpass, the straggly gum trees along the riverbanks, the bike paths leading away, the sense of being on the edge of somewhere.

  Ali realised Tam had grown when she no longer needed to be held up to reach the flying fox, and the girls spent an hour on it. They climbed on and swung down the hill, together and separately, and near the end there was a huge dip. Their weights, even together, were so minimal that they swooped and bumped up, screaming with laughter.

  ‘Again, again!’ Tam shouted. Ali thought momentarily of broken arms, but mostly she was glad that they were enjoying themselves and leaving her alone. The sun was warming up. She wished she had a book or the crossword. There was nothing to do but watch them.

  She thought of texting Ed or ringing her friend Annie, who worked freelance and was therefore often available, but she was too warm and lethargic to bother. She closed her eyes in the sun and thought of Eli. There was a flicker in her stomach. With her eyes closed, it all disappeared — the playground, the girls, her dormant career, her ridiculous plan to write, the escape route of the maternity-leave job. She opened her eyes reluctantly as Tam raced over.

  ‘Mum, have you got water?’ She flapped her arms and squawked. ‘I’m dying! I’m dying!’ Bettany looked on, giggling.

  Ali opened the bag at her feet, but there were only apples in it. The bottle must have fallen out in the car. ‘Must be a tap around here somewhere.’

  ‘There,’ Tam pointed, ‘but we can’t get it to turn on.’

  Ali got up, stretching her warm limbs, and walked to the tap. She tried to force it to move, first once and then again, but it wouldn’t budge. She felt lazy and languid, couldn’t think how to solve this trifling problem. She glanced at her phone, thought it must be nearly time to go home and let them watch their movie. ‘The water bottle must be in the car. Here are the keys if you want to go and grab it, or we could head off home for lunch?’

  ‘Can’t we stay, Mum? We could get lunch from that shop behind the flats?’

  Ali hesitated. She had a sudden urge to search for things she hadn’t looked for in years in the old suitcase under her bed that she threw such things in — a letter of Eli’s, a drawing, something of Jessie’s, she didn’t know what. She looked around. Maybe they should stay a while. Then they would get home, Megan would come for Bettany, and she could put a movie on for Tam and pack. She thought of a black silk dress she rarely wore, the slide of the fabric against her skin.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Good idea. I’ll go and get something. Pie or pastie, Bettany?’

  Bettany nodded while continuing to stare blankly.

  ‘Which one would you like, a pie or a pastie?’

  ‘I’ll have a pastie, Mum.’

  ‘I know what you like, darling. What about you, Bettany?’

  ‘A pie.’

  ‘All right. I’ll just be a minute.’

  ‘Mum?’ Tam piped up as she walked away.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘A treat?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  The sun was warm on Ali’s back as she walked towards the shop. It was more of a kiosk, tucked away around a corner at the base of the flats. She opened the mesh door, and it smelled of cardamom, turmeric perhaps, and an acrid air freshener.

  An ancient lady in a hijab was sitting behind the counter watching the tiny TV above her head. The Biggest Loser.

  ‘Hi,’ Ali said. ‘Do you have pies and pasties?’

  ‘Only on Saturdays.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ Ali picked up a magazine and glanced around. There were some rolls in a basket, and an array of tired-looking meat and salad ingredients, and she contemplated getting something made up. And then she thought of Tam’s disappointment. Instead, she picked up a large packet of chips. She opened the ice cream freezer and chose two frozen yoghurt bars, put them back, and took out a couple of Magnums. That’s more like it, she thought of Ed saying. Then she walked to the counter to pay.

  Close up, the lady was even older than she’d thought. Her dark-brown skin was a mass of tiny wrinkles like old, cracked pottery. She barely looked at Ali as she handed over her change. On the screen a fat, very pretty girl bent over and clutched her thighs, then put her hands over her face and began to cry. ‘I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘It’s just too hard.’

  Ali left the shop and walked towards the playground with her plastic bag of rubbishy lunch, looking forward to the girls’ reactions. Clouds were just beginning to form, and a truck roared along the overpass. A mynah bird hopped across the ground in front of her. She felt glad that they had come to the park, but glad too that she was going tomorrow.

  She couldn’t see the girls. They must be on the flying fox again, not visible until you were over a small grassy rise. As she got closer, she saw they weren’t there. She scanned the playground, monkey bars, climbing wall, rope pyramid, wooden platforms and ramps. No one. In the distance, a woman approached with a child in a stroller. Ali turned her head and looked across the oval next to the playground.

  She walked towards the car, thinking they must have gone in search of the water bottle, not remembering that the car was locked. As she walked, she turned to take in the carpark and then looked back towards the playground. The woman with the stroller had disappeared on the path circling the base of the flats. There was no one else. Ali looked into the car. She knew they couldn’t have got in, but still she peered inside — front seats, back, boot. Nothing. Horror was beginning in her, but also a feeling of impossibility. They couldn’t be gone. Any second she would see Tam’s face.

  She walked back quickly towards the shop. Maybe they had gone to find her. She pushed open the door and the woman looked up.

  ‘Have you seen two girls, nine years old?’

  The old woman had the darkest eyes. She shook her head. ‘No, darling,’ she said, turning back to the TV.
>
  Ali wanted to get her attention again, but she couldn’t think what to say. Her throat was dry. She left the shop and the screen door banged behind her. Please, please, make them be there. She half-walked, half-jogged back to the playground. It was still empty. She felt fear in her, deep down, all the things she had always feared, and she began to call. ‘Tam, Tammy, Bettany!’

  She called again and again, walked, stopped, scanned what she could see of the paths on the other side of the oval. She walked into the toilet block, calling again. If she stopped calling, stopped saying Tam’s name, something worse might happen. She looked into each stall, but there was nothing: just cold concrete and puddles of water. The stalls banged behind her and then she was outside again.

  Her voice was becoming shrill. ‘Tam, Bettany, Tam, Bettany!’ The names jarred in the empty space. She walked towards the river and shouted, ‘Tam, Tammy!’ A man walking across the oval turned to look at her. She pulled her phone from her back pocket and rang Ed. His voicemail clicked on and she started speaking, ‘Hi, it’s me …’ but then she couldn’t bring herself to leave a message. She hung up and looked around again. They were still nowhere to be seen but she couldn’t call out again.

  She held the phone to dial triple-0, but to do this seemed too much, tipping her into a place she couldn’t go. Please god, please god, make her be okay, please god, make them be okay, please god. As she walked towards the path along the river, she heard herself saying the words urgently under her breath. The grass on the path was long and ragged; bits of rubbish were tucked in the undergrowth, the remains of someone’s camp under trees across on the other bank. Fear came down again, harder now, strong and powerful like a palpable thing. She kept walking. Then she did the only thing she could think of to do — she began to call again. She made herself call both of them, but it was Tam she yearned for.

  She walked quickly towards the bridge. A jogger approached on the path and she looked at him, but he made no eye contact, and she couldn’t open her mouth to speak. After he passed, close enough that she could see the sweat on his forehead, the sinews in his calves, the red patches on his thighs from heat, she turned her head left and right and called again.

  At the bridge she looked down at the muddy water. A family of ducks drifted across on the current. White plastic bags were caught in the trees at the edge of the river and lapping at the bank; scum or sediment, the brown variegated with multicoloured plastic pieces, shifted a little with the tide. A sick kind of calm was in her now. There was only her, and she must act. She was pressing buttons on her phone when in her peripheral vision she saw a flash of something red. She looked up and it was gone. Everything slowed. She had a strange sense that she could hear everything in that place: the breathing of the trees, the flow of the water, the echo of each creature hidden there somewhere, small, secret, alone.

  She turned her head again and then she heard something else. She walked fast towards the sound. Then she saw them. Sidling out from a cluster of spindly gums. Tam’s red T-shirt and Bettany’s stripes, little girl legs, bony and knock-kneed. Something in Ali loosened and before she could stop herself, she was screaming. ‘Tam!’

  She marched towards them, her face tight with fury. They were still smiling, small conspiratorial smiles, though Tam’s was beginning to falter.

  ‘Where were you? ’

  Bettany stared, and Tam was beginning to look scared of something, something she didn’t understand. ‘We just went along the path a bit. To have a look.’

  ‘Did you hear me calling?’

  ‘Yes,’ a smile twitched around Tam’s mouth, but it was uncertain, already fading. She looked sideways at Bettany as if for support, as if to return to the bravado that they had been riding only minutes earlier. ‘We were hiding.’

  Ali grabbed Tam’s arm and held it hard. She would have liked to twist it, would have liked to hurt her. ‘Don’t you ever, ever do that again. And wipe those smiles off your faces. We’re going now.’

  Tam began to sob, and she let her go. There were red-white marks on her arm. Bettany reached for her hand. As she walked in front of them Ali’s chest ached as if she had been punched. When she opened the car, she saw that the plastic bag containing the chips and ice creams was still entangled around her wrist. She unwound it and dropped it to the floor.

  They drove home in silence.

  When Megan came, Ali stood at the open door but didn’t ask her in. Megan nudged Bettany, uncharacteristically attentive. ‘What d’you say?’

  Bettany hugged Tam but wouldn’t look at Ali. Her face was pale and tight. Ali saw she was a small girl, but she hated her anyway.

  ‘Thanks,’ Bettany mumbled.

  They had scarcely turned when Ali shut the door.

  Tam tried to disappear, but Ali would have none of it. She leant into her face, cold and hard and mean. ‘Don’t get any ideas about going on the iPad or seeing your friends again for a long time. Now, go to your room and don’t come out.’

  Ali lay on her bed and listened to Tam crying.

  This was where Ed found her. It was beginning to get dark, and she hadn’t moved. Perhaps she had slept. She couldn’t hear Tam now, and she supposed she was asleep too, curled up against her rage. ‘I got your message late. I’m sorry. What happened?’

  ‘We were at the park, near the river. They were hiding. I didn’t know where they were.’

  ‘You’re shivering.’

  It was only a reaction in her body. She couldn’t cry. Ed knew it all already. She loved him, but it didn’t change anything. Only in Ali’s fantasy was Jessie grown-up, having survived it and become measured and thoughtful. Ali could almost hear her saying it, the Jessie that never was. What were we thinking?

  22

  Aggie came to their place one Sunday afternoon without warning. Ali was lazily reading inside, her legs slung over the back of an armchair under the open verandah window. She had already been to see Jessie that day, but she was going fishing with Cal, hadn’t invited Ali along, and she had skidded back home through the streets feeling angry. Aggie’s appearance at their front door was bizarre. In the way of parents then, David and Aggie had barely met, even though their daughters spent most of their waking hours together, and Diane, who did know Aggie a little, was still in Sydney. ‘Hi, I’m Agnès.’ She pronounced the name the French way, and Ali hadn’t even understood what she was saying. Only later did she realise that the name was transformed, beautiful rather than ugly, as she had always thought it.

  David opened the door, invited her in, and in a few minutes brought out tea to the table on the verandah. Even before they started talking, something, she wasn’t sure what, made Ali stay where she was and not poke her head up and say hello.

  ‘They want her to stay down,’ Aggie was saying. She went on, talking unusually quickly. ‘She’s not stupid, but she’s got behind somehow. She just needs more individual attention. I’m sure she can catch up. I didn’t realise how behind she was. I’m not one for too much intervention. The boys were all good readers. Especially Cal … Well, he still is. Hasn’t dropped it, you know, the way most boys do.’ She rushed on. ‘So anyway, I thought of Diane. Jessie knows her, and I thought she might be receptive. She can be quite … resistant to the whole thing … getting help, I mean, but she might agree if it was her. She likes Diane.’

  David was reassuring. ‘It’s so easy to miss these things as a parent, you’re too close. But I’m sure Diane can help. I’ll get her to come around as soon as she gets back. Should be midweek, I think.’

  Aggie sounded relieved. ‘Thanks, I’d really appreciate that.’

  They chatted about this and that, what the high school was like, Ali’s grandmother, who had got through the chemo. ‘It’s touch and go, though, still. We’re waiting for the results. Diane’s not optimistic.’

  Aggie made sympathetic murmurs, and Ali was still, her copy of Jeeves at Blandings open o
n her chest. Jessie stay down. It was impossible.

  23

  It was the day she was leaving for Bega, and Ali let herself back into the house at seven. The house was dim and close from night. She had swum at six, hoping to wash away the shame hovering around the edges of her. She didn’t want to talk to Ed, about Tam or anyone.

  After the Sword in the Stone she had begun to change the narrative of the Golden Book. Ali led the way, she’d written: Jessie was frightened of the sword but Ali knew instinctively its power. She reassured Jessie that the sword, properly in place again, would restore peace and prosperity to the land.

  She looked into the bedroom. Ed was still a mound under the bedclothes, but she heard a sound from the kitchen. Surely not Tam at this hour, after everything. Patti? Again, the noise. This time it was scrabbling, staccato.

  Ali walked down the hall. A dark shape moved across her vision. She stepped back and something darted again, struck the back doors, fell. A bird. It must have come in through an open window and now it was bashing itself again and again against the glass.

  The bird landed again, and Ali saw its eye, black and very still, watching her. She tried to approach it slowly, then its wings flapped wide and it bashed against the ceiling. Floor, ceiling, floor. Again, the bird rushed forward, hit glass, fell. Greenish bird shit splattered the floor.

  As quietly and slowly as she could, Ali moved towards the doors. She braced herself against the bird’s bat-like wings, its feet, its hard little beak. She could feel its rigidity, every sense electric with fear. Slowly, slowly, she approached the doors, pushed them open, stood back.

  The bird waited. Ali knew she could try to pick it up, but she didn’t want to feel the touch of its claws, its small beating heart. She was afraid of its fear. The bird hopped up and hit glass again. Thud, thud. She moved towards it.

  It shifted again. Perhaps it felt the air on its feathers. It hopped again and instead of glass like wood, like stone, there was space. It took a little leap onto the paving outside and then, suddenly, sky.