by Susan Allott
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t do this. Just give it a bit more time.”
“You’re too late,” he said, groping for the latch.
“Let me take him.” Mandy held her arms out to William. The boy looked back at her: watchful, alert, beautiful. She had half a mind to grab him and run. “Here, let me hold him while you do that.”
Steve turned to face her. “Are you crying?”
She nodded and wiped her face with the backs of her hands.
“Here.” He crouched down and let the box drop to the floor. “Hold him.”
William wrapped his arms and legs around her. She held him close and cried into his hair, tried to remember the heat and shape of his body against hers. She did not know how to live if he took the baby from her. She had been half alive before. “I’m sorry about what happened with Joe. I’ve been trying to make it up to you. I swear if you give me another chance I’ll do better. I’ll never let you down again.”
Steve looked down at the box at his feet, which was full of formula milk and nappies. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his eyes. “I know you’re taking the Pill. I found the pack in the bathroom.”
The hope leached out of her. “I swear nothing’s happened with Joe since—”
“Don’t.” He kept his eyes on the box. “Don’t. Please.”
“I’ll stop taking it,” she said, desperation making her voice rasp. “If you’ll stay, I’ll stop taking it. We can move away and we’ll be a family. We can bring William up together.”
“You let me believe we were trying for a baby. All those months. You were on the Pill the whole time.”
She held William tighter. “I wasn’t ready,” she said.
He opened the door and picked up the box. “I need to get on the road. Got a long drive ahead.”
“I’m sorry.” She followed him outside. The truck was full of boxes and bags. He must have been packing from the moment she left that morning. Her nose was running and she wiped it on her sleeve. “I’m so sorry, Steve.”
He threw the box onto the back seat and slammed the door shut. “I’ll give you a divorce. Best thing for both of us. No point prolonging it.”
She walked around the truck to where Steve was standing. “You want a divorce?”
“It’s the best thing.” He thumped the roof of the truck with the palm of his hand. The veins were pronounced at his temples. “I need to build my life back up, Mandy. I need to get out of this.”
Steve moved to take William from her and she took a step backward. Her throat was tight, her words painful. “Will you at least tell me where you’re headed? I need to know where you both are. Please.”
He considered her awhile. “Marlo,” he said, eventually. He held his hands out for William. “I thought we’d head for Marlo.”
“The cabin?”
“That’s right. Not sure how long we’ll stop there, mind. Depends how long it takes to sell up.”
“Sell up?”
“The house.”
“What?” Steve reached out again and she turned away. Her blouse was soaked through with her own sweat and the boy’s body heat. “You’re selling the house?”
“That’s right. I’ll give you half of whatever I get for it. I’ve left some cash on the kitchen table to last you till then.”
“Steve, I don’t want this. Please don’t go.”
Steve put his hands under William’s arms and peeled his body away from hers. She let out a moan as he did it, a noise she didn’t recognize. The baby’s warmth stayed in her fingers and she held them to her face. Her moan became deeper and louder until she was sobbing from the base of her throat and she couldn’t speak and there were no words anyway; she had nothing left to say. She reached out to Steve, gripped his arm, but he shook her off. The coldness in him was impenetrable. She was making a scene in full view of the whole street and he seemed barely to notice.
He put the baby in a blanket box at the foot of the passenger seat and handed him a teether. She knelt down at the side of the truck, her knees burning on the asphalt, and kissed the crown of the boy’s head. She let him grab her hair, her clothes. She wailed into the soft pit of his neck.
“Will you calm down, Amanda?”
She stood and made an effort to catch her breath. She wiped her face. “Are you trying to punish me?”
He slammed the passenger door and walked around to the driver’s side. “The bills are all paid up in advance,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’ll be in touch when I’ve got the house on the market.”
She stood hopelessly by as he climbed into the truck. He was a stranger to her. This was the way he was when he took children away; she could see it now, the man he became. Focused and powerful, ruthless. Was this the man William’s mum had met? Was this how she felt?
“Don’t do this!” She screamed at him, gulping for air. “Please don’t go!”
Bay Street was bright and calm, indifferent. A few yards away, Douglas Blunt snipped rhythmically at his hedge.
Steve shut the door of the truck behind him. The pane squeaked as he lowered it, and then she heard him calling her name. He held his arm outstretched through the window as she approached, his palm turned upward. She took his hand and he gripped it.
“I tried to write this down for you, but it wouldn’t come out right.” He didn’t look at her. “I love you, Amanda. You’re all I ever wanted in a woman.”
She crouched down beside the truck and pressed his hand against her face. “Stay, then.”
“I can’t forgive you.” He still wouldn’t look at her.
“Take me with you. We’ll start again together.”
“The sight of you kills me.” He took his hand away and turned the ignition. She caught a burst of William’s throaty babble through the open window, his legs kicking rapidly against the box.
“Take me with you!”
He didn’t look back. Her body buckled as the truck reached the corner of Bay Street. She couldn’t watch it turn out of sight. She sat in the street with her arms wrapped around her knees, her shoes sinking into the hot asphalt, the sun burning the back of her neck.
37
Sydney, 1997
“This house is a mess,” Joe says.
Isla keeps her back to him, busying herself at the sink until she hears him leave the room. She sweeps crumbs from the counter into the palm of her hand and she thinks of her grandmother, the way she would saw through a loaf of bread and lie the slices beside one another under the grill. She thinks of buttered toast and milk that has frozen in the bottle. In the bedroom her dad opens drawers and cupboards and slams them shut again, cursing. She scrapes plates into the bin and thinks of the cold English house where they were hiding from him, huddled together on the other side of the planet in a place where he couldn’t reach them.
“How am I supposed to find anything?” he says from the bedroom.
She stares out at the yard and sees the long grass, the fallen leaves. From the bedroom down the hall her dad starts to cough, swearing louder than before as the fit passes. She wraps her arms around herself and waits.
Joe reappears, half dressed, at the kitchen door. “I’m missing something,” he says.
“What is it?”
“Something important.”
She feels him watching her as she pours water into the percolator. “What did you lose?” She looks up at him. He is an old man, thin as a bean in his work pants and singlet.
“A watch,” he says. “I kept it in a drawer.”
“I didn’t know you kept a spare one.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No.” She stares back at him. Beside her, coffee drips into the jug.
“Now who’s lying?” he says.
The telephone rings in the hallway. He lets it ring twice before he turns to answer it.
“This is Joe Green,” he says. “Can I help you?”
A long silence follows. Isla wipes the table, straightens the chairs.
“Are you sure it’s Mandy?” he says. “I mean. You’re sure it’s her body?”
Isla drops the cloth into the sink. She stares at it, the crumbs clinging to it, the grit around the drain. She wonders if she should rinse it out. She feels weak; she can’t reach for it.
“Where was she found?” Joe says.
She turns and leans back against the sink. She can’t clear her head. Can’t stand.
“I will,” he says, and then, “No. I’ll come to the station.”
She hears him replace the handset. She crosses the room, lightheaded. The coffee is ready. She needs sugar and teaspoons.
“Was that the police?” She sounds scared. She clears her throat, stares into the cutlery drawer.
“It was that Inspector Perry bloke.” Joe searches the room for cigarettes, finds them on the windowsill and lights one with desperate impatience, dropping the spent match on the floor. He shoves his trembling hand into his pocket. “They think they found Mandy’s remains on file. Whatever that means.”
He paces the room as she pours coffee into two mugs. He sits down and stands up again.
“They want me to go down the station,” he says.
She puts the coffee on the table and sits down heavily. She remembers to breathe. “Are they sure it’s her?”
He nods. “I think so.”
“You think so?”
“He sounded sure.”
“When are you going to the station?”
“Soon. Later.” He reaches into the cupboard beneath the sink and pulls out the vodka he keeps there, behind the bottles of detergent. “He wants me to go today.”
She looks at her coffee as he drinks. She doesn’t want to see him lift the bottle to his mouth, the urgency as he swallows. He’s breaking a rule. For as long as she can remember her dad has drunk silently behind closed doors, hiding these bottles with red and gold labels, burying the empties in the bin. At family parties he would nurse a single bottle of beer all night; at the dinner table he sipped cola. His privacy protected him from shame. And she had followed his example when the time came, finding hiding places of her own.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, and she thinks, is this it, then? Is this where we stop pretending?
“She died thirty years ago,” he says.
Isla stares at him. “Did she?”
He nods at the phone in the hallway, his eyes glassy. “They found her in ’67 but they couldn’t identify her at the time.”
“Dad, I think—”
“The cop said her body was found on the beach, here in Sydney. Near Maroubra.”
“Maybe she drowned,” Isla says. “She might have—”
“Strangled,” he says. “She wasn’t in the water when she died.”
She swallows coffee, burning the roof of her mouth. She spills it as she puts it down. “I think you should get a lawyer.”
He covers his eyes. “There are things I can’t tell you, Isla.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“What are you saying?”
“You’re all I have.”
She runs her fingers over the chips in the Formica table, the flecked yellow pattern that covers its surface. He drinks again from the bottle, and she feels his fear.
“Will you get a lawyer?”
He nods.
“Don’t say anything, Dad.” She feels sick. She wants to be numb. To keep pretending. “Don’t let them push you into saying anything. They want you to think they’ve got you.”
He pulls out a chair and sits down, facing away from her. He holds the bottle between his legs.
“Dad, are you listening to me? Don’t say anything, will you?”
He lifts the bottle back to his mouth. His cigarette has burnt down in the ashtray and the filter drops forward, still glowing. He pushes the bottle toward her and she catches it as it slides across the table. She picks it up, feels its familiar heft.
“I won’t say anything,” he says.
38
Sydney, 1967
Mandy noticed the red dust caked over the fenders of his car before she noticed Ray at the wheel. She weighed up whether she could turn back into the house without him knowing she’d seen him. Whether she cared if he knew or not. She was too slow; he caught her eye and waved, rolled the window down.
“Steve home?” He parked at the front of the house, leaned toward her through the window.
“No,” she said. She took off her gardening gloves and walked up to the gate. “He’s gone.”
“When d’you think he’ll be back? I could do with a word.”
“Steve shot through.” It was a shock, saying it aloud. She checked the tremble in her voice. “He took off a few days back. Just went.”
He opened his car door and stood on the footpath in front of the gate. Mandy had forgotten the size of him. He was the tallest man she’d met in her life. Bad posture, but. He’d wind up with aches and pains, she thought, later in life.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mandy.”
“It’s been quite a shock. You can imagine. I’m surprised he hasn’t spoken to you about it all.”
He took his hat off and his eyes dropped to the footpath. “He left a few messages for me. I kept meaning to call him back.”
“It’s a bit late now.”
“I didn’t think. I’d have called right back if I’d known.”
“He thought you were mad at him for leaving the job.”
He fanned himself with his hat. “He did leave me in a bind, if I’m honest.”
“He worked like a dog for you. Nine years, Ray.”
“He was a good man.” He nodded. “A good worker.”
“The job got to him. He let it pull him under.”
“It’s not easy, that’s for sure.”
“It’s not right.” She stepped closer to the gate. “That job you had him doing. Going out there and taking kids away. That’s not right, Ray. Steve was doing something he knew was wrong and it near finished him.”
Andrea Walker flew past on her bicycle, ringing her bell, and Ray lifted his hat to wave at her.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” he said.
“It took me awhile to see it,” she said. “I wish I’d seen it sooner.”
He hung his head. A fly settled in a thinning patch of his hair and he brushed it away. “The job needs doing, Mandy. Nothing I can do about it.”
“He considered you a good man,” she said. “Didn’t want to let you down.”
“I know that. I wish to God I’d called him back.”
She could take a dislike to this man, she decided, standing there in the midday sun with that shifty, weasel look to him. Small, hard eyes. She could see him squirming with guilt and she was glad about it.
“You don’t know where he might have headed?” he said.
She hesitated. “Why d’you ask?”
“Just there was a bit of business needed clearing up. I could do with speaking to him about it. If you have an address?”
She felt sweat running down her spine. “What was it regarding? I could ask him if he gets in touch.”
“He was meant to drop a child off at the Home down in Nowra. They tell me he didn’t show up. It’s causing me a headache, that’s all. Need to keep the paperwork straight.”
Andrea Walker flew past in the other direction, skimming Ray’s wing mirror. She was getting too tall for that bike, Mandy thought. Her bare legs were bent almost double.
“He was always very reliable, Ray. Never shirked on a duty. You know that.”
“I do.” He lowered his voice. “He’s not in any trouble? Nothing I should know?”
Mandy shook her head. “I reckon he’ll be in touch if he needs you,” she said. “Make sure you take his call if he does.”
“Righto.” He double-tapped the word out on the gate. “Tell him to call me, if you hear from him.”
“He took the truck,” she said. “Don’t suppose you’ll get
that back.”
“No.” He got back in his car, bent right over to get his legs in. “That truck had seen better days.”
She waved him off and he waved back through the window, swerving to miss Andrea. She was getting to be a menace on that bike. Mandy faced the house and caught a glimpse of Joe Green as his curtain dropped back against his window. She crouched down and turned the soil over with the trowel, kept her eyes down till she felt him move away.
39
Leeds, 1967
The phone was ringing. Isla picked up the receiver and held it to her ear. She heard a rustling noise, like the radio when Grandma was turning the buttons. She sat down on the bottom step and leaned against the bannister with the receiver on her shoulder, head tilted sideways, the way her mum did it. She pushed her fingers through the twists in the flex. Behind the noise there was a tiny voice, she thought. Sometimes it came clear and then it went away.
She moved up onto the second step, away from the kitchen sounds down the hall. Mummy and Grandma were cooking and talking, putting plates on the table. She gripped the receiver in both hands and moved her mouth close to the small, circular holes.
“Hello,” she said. It made the radio noise spin and whistle when she spoke. “Hello hello.”
“Hello?” The small voice came closer. “Who’s there?”
Isla moved to the far corner of the step with her back to the wall, her knees up tight to her chest. The noise in her ear crackled and then stopped. The quiet was listening to her. She sat very still.
“Hello?”
She knew that voice. She sat up straight. “Daddy?”
“Isla? Is that you?”
She smiled and nodded. In her ear she could hear his breaths. “I answered the phone,” she said.
“I’m glad you did. I nearly put it down. I thought there was nobody there.”
“It was me.”
“I’m glad it’s you. Very glad.”
Isla wound the flex around her arm and tried to think of something to say. “I’m at Grandma’s.”
“I know.” The phone started to hiss again and his words were quiet. “I miss you, Isla.”
