Bernard snorted. ‘A national bloody treasure … You may be right. Whoever we choose might love the blasted book.’
‘Of course you’ll have to buy their silence. A few grand would probably cover it.’
Bernard spared a thought for the money. Cheaper than a lawsuit, he supposed. ‘How did you convince Bob and Bill ?’
‘I riffed on their whole Where’s Bernard? campaign.’
‘There’s a campaign?’
‘Don’t ask. I pitched the idea of seeking a Bernard stand-in. They thought it was hilarious.’
‘What does the winner receive?’
‘Free movie tickets.’
‘Not much of an incentive.’
‘People will fart on air for a T-shirt.’
‘When are we planning on doing this?’
‘Tomorrow, maybe the next day, we have to strike while the iron’s hot.’
Bernard thought of the CELEBRITIES BEHAVING BADLY double-page spread that had run in the Herald Sun that morning, with him as the headlining act. The iron was scorching.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Izzy had a plan. When asked by her guardians what she would most like to do after lunch, she mentioned a hedge maze she’d been to. She knew it was a bit of a drive as Mrs Bronson had taken her before she kicked her out, and they’d had to listen to children singing about how wonderful life was all the way there and back.
On the outskirts of town, Ruby stopped to refuel. She’d driven the Winnebago at Izzy’s request, in spite of the parking issues it gave rise to. Her passengers took the opportunity to climb down from their seats.
Inside the servo, Angela peered into a freezer cabinet, appraising its contents as if admiring an aquarium of tropical fish. She craned her neck, looking for an accomplice.
‘Ice cream, Izzy?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You don’t have to be hungry—it’s ice cream.’
Beyond the window, Ruby mustered a smile for a station wagon full of squirming, freckle-faced siblings—and was rewarded with a raised finger from a bucktoothed twelve-year-old that sent the rest of the car’s occupants into hysterics.
Izzy stepped up to the counter.
‘Do you have a toilet?’
The young attendant handed her a plastic tag with a single key attached, directing her to go around back.
Above a rack of chocolates, Angela held her chin enquiringly aloft.
Izzy brandished the key. ‘I need the loo.’
Angela gave a nod of permission. Her eyes were drawn to the spectacle of a pink velour tracksuit stalking to the counter—worn by a woman old enough to have known better.
Ruby rolled the Winnebago forward, parking in front of the shop. She waited for Angela to pay and climb into the front seat beside her.
They lapped at their Cornettos.
‘One of us should have accompanied her.’
‘The toilet has a key,’ Angela said between licks. ‘She’s just dilly-dallying.’
Ruby dumped the remainder of her ice cream in a nearby bin, much to Angela’s chagrin. She strode to the side of the building to appraise the toilet door. It appeared innocuous enough, fitted neatly into place. She returned to the Winnebago but stopped halfway and trotted back to the toilet. She rapped on the door.
‘Izzy? Are you all right in there?’
She knocked again and the door swayed beneath her knuckles. She pushed against it and it swung open. The cement-block bathroom was empty. A flash of red caught her eye—the plastic key tag sitting innocently on the edge of the basin.
Ruby emerged around the corner of the building and scurried through the shop’s automatic doors. She questioned the store attendant. He remembered the little girl but hadn’t noticed her come back in.
Angela was waiting for her beside the motor home. Together they completed the short journey to and from the toilet, calling out to Izzy as they went. Angela skirted the perimeter of the petrol station complex while Ruby checked behind the bowsers, as though the cheeky girl might be squatting there in an impromptu game of hide and seek. She clambered up into the Winnebago and poked her head into all the cupboards, regardless of whether Izzy would fit inside or not.
The attendant stepped outside just as Ruby was climbing down from the van. ‘Shall I call the cops?’ His voice was both laconic and concerned.
‘I think it’s a little soon for that.’ Ruby walked away, trying to remain calm despite the jelly-cold feeling of dread that gripped her stomach. Panicked imagination was hampering her logic: a ghastly kidnapping scenario seemed the only explanation. She tried to recall the handful of vehicles that had passed through the service station. What had the drivers looked like? In her mind’s eye, ominous visions of grainy surveillance footage depicted a shadowy man bundling a smaller figure into his car.
If the police were called, how would they explain themselves? They were travelling without her mother’s permission. Why hadn’t she phoned Carol? Because she was scared—hoping to defer the angry tirade, the bitter recriminations and petulant blame game a little longer. She no longer had the energy (or the will) to deal with her daughter’s moods. Never in her wildest dreams had she envisaged something as awful as this would occur. She pulled herself together. Every minute spent panicking was a minute wasted.
Ruby told Angela, ‘Most likely she’s run off. One of us will have to go look for her, while the other waits here in case she comes back.’
Her friend twisted her rings into her fingers as her gaze swept like a searchlight across the car park. She needed to be guided through this unanticipated calamity, having also interpreted absence to mean abduction. She was steeling herself for the repercussions.
Izzy made a beeline for the road and began running as fast as she could through the scratchy dandelions thrusting through the gravel. When she was too tired to run, and the stitch in her side wrenched with every raggedy breath, she slowed to a purposeful walk. Unbeknown to Izzy, she was heading toward Ballarat, having simply aimed for the highway without considering which direction to take.
The black strip of bitumen stretched into the chalky skyline. Izzy was reminded of The Wizard of Oz. She began to skip, closing her eyes in the hope of sustaining the image of the Emerald City glistening on the horizon. She was losing her nerve. A creeping sense of loneliness sidled up to her, whispering scary thoughts into her ear: she was too young to take care of herself. Horrible things happened to little girls who were alone. You could be raped and assaulted. Izzy wasn’t altogether sure what rape entailed. She sensed it was unspeakably bad based on the fact that no one was willing to explain it to her. She knew being assaulted meant being punched, usually in the face, like when her mum’s friend Simon (or was it Mick?) was beaten up and had his bike stolen coming home from the pub.
Hearing a distant rumble, Izzy glanced over her shoulder and watched an approaching vehicle transform from insignificant black silhouette into an earth-shuddering presence. The colossal road train resembled the boxy Winnebago from afar. It wasn’t until it was pressing down on her, then hurtling past like a tidal wave, that Izzy realised her mistake.
A series of trucks and four-wheel drives swooshed by, blowing her hair back from her face. The drivers all flashed curious looks. Izzy knew there was something wrong about an eight-year-old alone on a highway. It was only a matter of time before someone stopped to ask why she was there.
Ruby made her calculations as she steered the Winnebago east toward Melbourne: assuming the child was running at a pace of six or seven kilometres an hour—assuming she was running at all—she couldn’t have made it more than five kilometres. She kept her eyes peeled for her granddaughter’s wispy form moving along the road, scanning either side of the remote highway. Craning her neck to see around scraggy gumtrees behind which Izzy might be hiding. After driving for fifteen kilometres, Ruby completed what she was certain must be a highly illegal U-turn across the grassy embankment, bumping and jostling in the front seat. It was the first time she’d t
aken the motor home off-road. Returning to the petrol station, Ruby convinced herself that Izzy must have doubled back. She’d pull in to find her and Angela eating sweets and laughing with one another. Izzy would be sorry for having given them such a scare.
Angela was reclining against the wire wall of the Stop’n’Go gas cage, arms folded, trying to keep warm against the fierce cross-draught blowing in under the petrol station’s canopy. She looked strung out and suspicious, as though she might be loitering to pick up truckies. She raised her head at the sight of the Winnebago, searching for Izzy’s figure in the front seat.
Ruby cut the engine. She and Angela stared at one another through the windscreen—united in anguish. Angela buried her face in her hands. Ruby disembarked and laid a consoling arm around her friend’s shoulder. There was nothing for it now but to call the authorities. It was out of their hands. They would soon become supporting actors in this unfolding drama.
The automatic doors obligingly opened, but Angela reached out to delay Ruby.
‘What about the other way?’
Ruby didn’t understand.
‘The other way.’ Angela flapped her hands in agitation, gold jewellery jangling. ‘Izzy might have gone in the opposite direction.’ The doors vacillated, opening and closing, unsure of what the impediment was. Ruby stepped back, allowing the glass panels to reunite with an admonishing clunk.
‘Izzy wouldn’t have gone west, that’s precisely where she doesn’t want to go.’
‘East, west,’ Angela retorted dismissively, ‘who knows which is which? I wouldn’t have a clue where we were headed—how could an eight-year-old?’
‘You must at least have known which entrance we came in at.’
Angela spared a desultory glance for the twin driveways. Her bottom lip protruding, she pointed. ‘That one?’
‘Of course that one,’ Ruby snapped. ‘The one that says entry.’ She wondered what her passenger was seeing when she gaped out the windscreen all day. Still, Angela’s disorientation suggested Izzy might have made a similar mistake.
Izzy wondered how long she’d been walking. It wasn’t that she was tired—she felt she could keep moving for days if need be—but that she was bored. She had no idea how long it might be before she came to another petrol station, let alone another town. Plus, there was still the matter of eating and sleeping to figure out. If she walked for a whole day, she’d have to end up somewhere, wouldn’t she? The desolate stubbly paddocks and vast expanse of downy sky suggested otherwise.
A blue car approached, heading in the opposite direction. Izzy put her head down and pretended to look purposeful. It wasn’t until the car was alongside her, slowing enough for the driver to signal he was pulling over, that she became frightened. The blue car came to an abrasive halt on the gravel a few metres up ahead. A whisper of grey dust drifted up from beneath its tyres. It was a battered old sedan with a dint in its bumper and bloodied rust around the lip of the boot. The car gave Izzy the willies—a nicer, cleaner car would have been much less sinister.
The passenger door was hanging open by the time she reached the vehicle, having baby-stepped the final three metres in the hope it might drive off again. The driver leant over the empty seat, summoning Izzy with a flip of his hand. Without knowing what else to do, and not wanting to be rude, Izzy stepped up to the car. The driver was an old dark-skinned man with a mop of snowy curls that stood out like the whites of his eyes. Unable at first to understand what he was saying, she leant in a little further through the open door. The passenger seat was missing its headrest and the two silver rods projecting from the seat looked scary and out of place. The man tapped a finger on one of these stakes as he repeated his question in a voice as thick as Vegemite.
‘What you doing out here on yer own, girl?’
When Izzy told him she was going home, he knotted his eyebrows. ‘Home, is it? Not many houses around, girl.’
Izzy assured him she was quite all right. She knew exactly where she was going. The old man chortled. He said anyone could see she was able to take care of herself.
‘Maybe you could use a lift—help you get where you’re going quicker.’
Another kilometre clicked over, did that make it eight or nine now? Ruby wished she’d reset the odometer before leaving the petrol station. She wasn’t sure how far she’d travelled or how much further she should go before turning around. Even with the mistakes and hold-ups, Izzy surely couldn’t have managed more than ten kilometres. She’d drive one more then that was it.
In the distance a car was stopped at the side of the road. Ruby considered asking if they’d seen a young girl. It sounded so extreme, an enquiry laced with devastation. Drawing closer, she spied the figure by the open door. A small, spindly figure. Ruby pressed down on the accelerator. Dear god, don’t let her get in the car. Her eyes watered with the intensity of staring at Izzy’s outline, trying to pin it to the ground.
The man was in the process of explaining that she was heading in the wrong direction if she wanted to get to Melbourne, when Izzy spotted the Winnebago bearing down on them, Ruby crouched over the wheel, seemingly intent on scooping her up with the motor home’s bumper.
Izzy watched her grandmother scrabble to get down from the cab, after which she was smothered in a press of bosom. They engaged in a sort of awkward barn dance, Ruby grasping her outstretched hands and jogging them up and down as she skipped on the spot.
As Ruby hurried to usher Izzy back inside the Winnebago, the girl glanced over her shoulder to steal a look at the old man. The driver rose out of his seat, calling across the roof of his car, ‘Keep her on a tight leash there, missus. She knows her own mind.’ His shoulders crept up defensively. ‘Reckons she’s heading east, wouldn’t have it otherwise.’
Izzy let a hand rise and fall in farewell.
Ruby, perceiving her blunder—she’d shoved the child away as though he intended harm—trilled, ‘Thanks for stopping.’ Feeling the words insufficient, she crunched across the gravel to thrust her hand into his leathery palm. ‘I’ll buy her a compass, shall I?’
‘Don’t waste yer coin. Teach her to use the big bloody compass in the sky.’
Angela offered to buy the attendant a coffee as she waited for the machine to fill her paper cup—it might prove wise to befriend him should he happen to be called as a witness.
When he refused, she grimaced at her inanity. ‘Big deal, huh? I suppose you can help yourself whenever you want.’ She slapped her dollar on the counter. ‘Where are you from?’ She’d never heard of the place he named, but nodded sagely. ‘Is that in the north or south of India?’
He told her it was a suburb in outer Melbourne.
Angela tittered and slapped her wrist. ‘Shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.’
The boy smiled and began shuffling receipts around in an endeavour to look busy.
Angela sipped her coffee. ‘You must see plenty of the criminal element in here, being so isolated. Ever been held at gunpoint?’
The attendant looked baffled.
‘Don’t worry, I’m unarmed.’
A double toot sounded. Angela looked up and released a shriek of joy. There was the little potato head grinning at her over the headlights. She abandoned her coffee and scuttled out of the store.
‘Little ragamuffin!’ she shouted as she threw open her door and hauled herself into the Winnebago. She pulled Izzy into her, and then just as quickly thrust her away. ‘Gave us such a fright, you naughty bugger.’
Ruby rolled their home on wheels out from under the canopy and toward the exit. She waited cautiously for any oncoming cars to reveal themselves before turning into the right-hand lane. Perplexed, Angela peered behind her and then back to the road again.
After another bewildered glance to the rear she said, ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we heading in the wrong direction?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
At Tenterfield Estate the staff were busy hanging Christmas decorations. Each windowpane bor
e an arc of red or green tinsel with a trumpeting angel to despoil the view. A plastic tree in the corner did its best imitation of the real thing with a pile of wrapped boxes stacked at its base—Bernard presumed they were empty, though knowing the Mallory generosity, they could be filled with expensive gifts to lavish upon favoured customers.
Lil stood on tiptoe to bestow two swift cheek touches to either side of Bernard’s face. ‘We’re having afternoon tea if you don’t mind.’ She wore a T-shirt featuring a bear on a tricycle juggling tiny monuments and ‘Berlin ’94’ written above.
Belinda, in yet another blowsy blouse, stood up from a table and raised a palm. ‘Hello again.’
Damien remained seated and nodded like an Italian gigolo signalling to a waiter.
‘Bernie,’ John hollered, emerging from the kitchen through a pair of swinging doors. ‘We’re having afternoon tea.’
‘So I heard. I’m appalled.’
John dropped his bottom into a seat. ‘You must be wondering why you’ve been summoned?’
‘I presumed it was the pleasure of my company.’ Bernard leant back to allow the waiter to place a wedge of cake in front of him.
‘Coffee?’
‘Macchiato.’
‘We heard about your accident,’ John went on, flapping a linen napkin across his lap. ‘We figured it happened on the way home from here.’
‘We feel just awful about the whole thing, especially with all the nasty things they’ve been writing in the press.’ Lil’s eyes were glassy.
‘It really wasn’t as bad as the media made out. I took a bit of bouncing that’s all.’
‘Never should have let you drive,’ John said, stabbing his cheesecake with his fork.
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