No One Can Hear You

by Nikki Crutchley

  ‘Excuse me?

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘You can’t just quit. What do you expect me to tell the Board? What about your classes? Your students?’

  ‘Not my problem,’ Zoe said. ‘Let them file a complaint.’ She picked up her bag and stood. She knew it was hugely unfair on her students, but she couldn’t continue at a school run by someone so corrupt, so driven by money, so — the irony of it, she thought — unprincipled. ‘I’ll take my classes today. And then you won’t see me again. I’m sure you’ll work something out.’

  ‘No. This is not acceptable.’ Paynter had risen and his face had turned a deep red.

  Zoe thought for a second. She did not want to return to this school ever again. She took a deep breath. ‘You’ve chosen to give a student a holiday instead of a fitting punishment for what many would say was a serious offence, and all because his father flashed some cash. I could take that information to the media. Then where will your precious school be?’

  Paynter glared at her. ‘Maybe it’s best if you do go,’ he said. ‘I don’t need trouble from some silly woman intent on destroying me and my school.’

  Zoe relished the sound of the window panes shaking as she slammed the door behind her.

  *

  The rest of the day dragged. She didn’t tell her students it was her last day. She felt bad enough leaving them in the lurch, but St Clement’s had a stellar line-up of relief teachers who would come in at a moment’s notice. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself to assuage her guilt.

  At close to four-thirty she pulled into the vacant car park outside her flat. There was a police car in her rear-vision mirror. Had old Mrs Dwight finally succumbed to one of her many ailments? But she realised an ambulance would take the old girl away, not a policeman. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen Mrs Dwight and admonished herself. At least a week. The woman would have to be in her late eighties, maybe nineties. The least she could do was check up on her every now and then. Saying hello in their communal lobby wasn’t enough.

  Zoe unlocked the front door and stepped into the converted villa she shared with Mrs Dwight, her eyes taking a few seconds to adjust to the dim lighting. The villa was over a hundred years old, and ten years ago a developer had ripped out the interior and fashioned two separate one-bedroom apartments, getting extra bang for his buck.

  ‘Ah, here she is.’ Mrs Dwight’s voice, crackling with phlegm, came from the corner and made Zoe jump.

  ‘Mrs Dwight?’

  ‘Yes, dear, I’ve just been entertaining this nice young policeman. He needs to speak with you.’

  The ‘young’ policeman who appeared at Mrs Dwight’s front door had at least a decade on Zoe. ‘Constable Michael Smithers,’ he said extending his hand. ‘Do you have a minute?’

  ‘Come on in,’ she said, crossing over the tiled lobby to her door. She unlocked it and led him down the hallway, wondering what he could want to speak to her about. Images of Harold Paynter making a complaint came to mind. Surely not. She offered him a seat in the lounge overlooking the shared garden that was made up of an overgrown lawn, weeds and outdoor furniture that was never used. Neither she nor Mrs Dwight had the time or inclination for gardening.

  Smithers perched himself on the couch and Zoe pulled a dining chair over from the small table in the corner. ‘I’m here on behalf of Crawton police station and Sergeant Max Vincent.’

  Crawton. Max Vincent. The words banged around Zoe’s head, stretching out after being confined to the very deep recesses of her brain for so many years. She avoided thinking about her home town, and only vaguely remembered the local policeman’s name.

  ‘It’s about your mother,’ Smithers said.

  ‘My who?’ Zoe realised how strange this sounded when Smithers looked up, confused.

  ‘Your mother. Lillian Haywood.’

  ‘Right.’ Lillian was the reason she hadn’t thought of her home town in so long.

  Smithers took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry to inform you but your mother has passed away.’

  Lillian? Dead?

  She felt confused. A woman who rarely entered her thoughts these days was dead. She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel. There was no sadness there. It was as if she’d received the same news about an acquaintance she hadn’t seen in some time.

  Smithers filled the silence. ‘I’m sorry, but at this stage it looks like she has taken her own life.’

  ‘OK. Right.’ Zoe stood up. ‘OK. Right,’ she said again. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’ She moved the chair back to its rightful place and started sorting the mail on the bench. She knew this was the wrong way to act. The wrong response. Some would say there is no right way to respond to the death of your mother but Zoe was pretty sure this would slip into the ‘wrong’ category.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you? Anyone I can ring to come and be with you?’

  Zoe had a feeling that Constable Smithers would have handled the situation better if she had broken down in front him. He would have pressed some tissues into her hand and been ready with a sympathetic pat on the back.

  ‘No, there’s no one.’ Saying it out loud sounded pitiful, pathetic, especially so when she saw the look on the policeman’s face. ‘I have no one,’ she repeated, to show that she didn’t care. When, of course, she did.

  Chapter 4

  Megan stirred. Before she opened her eyes, she knew what she’d see. Nothing. There would be the same blackness there had been for the last however many days she’d been kept here. She opened them and, even though she wasn’t surprised, her stomach dropped. She squeezed them shut tight and opened them again, staring into black nothing. The blackness was so complete it felt heavy, as if she could reach out and grasp it. There was no familiar glow of the streetlight through her curtain or thin strip of light under the bathroom door in her dingy studio flat. The room felt enclosed, small, even in the darkness.

  Where am I? she thought, for what felt like the hundredth time.

  She sat up. Her head ached and felt twice its normal size. Her hands sank into a mattress that was not hers, making contact with the cold metal of an exposed spring. Her eyes began to burn from staring unblinkingly into the dark. She shut them tight again. Her hands wandered further, cautiously, off the edge of the mattress. A concrete floor, chilled and unforgiving. She stretched her hands out either side. One side touched hard wood. Shelves maybe? The last time she remembered any contact with people was sitting in Garth’s office at the Crawton Tavern, having a few drinks after work on Sunday, with … who? She stood on shaking legs, the dark playing with her balance. She hardly knew which way was up, and a whimper escaped her lips. The sound, desperate in the stillness, chilled her. She edged forward, hands in front of her, hesitant, not knowing what to expect. After she’d counted six steps from the mattress her hands found a door. She had performed the same actions days or hours ago. She knew what the result would be but grasped the handle anyway, daring to hope, and turned it. Locked. She stumbled to the side and her foot kicked something. A bucket? It skidded across the room. She knocked her elbow on what she guessed was more shelving. Rubbing at it the tears came, wretched, choking sobs that echoed around her prison. Her head thumped as she tried desperately to piece together what had got her here. They’d taken her like she knew they would. She’d told herself what she’d overheard was nothing, even when Tania disappeared. Deep down she’d known she was in danger. But there hadn’t been anywhere else to go.

  Chapter 5

  Mrs Dwight stood in the doorway between Zoe’s tiny kitchen and lounge. ‘Is everything all right, dear?’

  ‘Yes. No. I need to go away for a week or so. Would you be able to collect my mail?’

  The old woman glanced around the flat. Zoe chose to ignore the confusion on her face. The flat had been home for almost a year. She still had boxes piled high in the corner and paintings
leaning against the wall waiting to be hung. The couch facing the TV, and the coffee table, the only other piece of furniture in the room, spoke of a speedy trip to Harvey Norman to make the place homier — which, of course, hadn’t worked.

  ‘No problem, my dear,’ Mrs Dwight said, burying her arthritic hands into her cardigan pockets. ‘And where are you off to?’

  ‘I’m going home. To Crawton.’

  ‘Oh, how nice. Special occasion?’

  ‘Not really,’ Zoe said. She couldn’t be bothered with all the questions and sympathy such news came with, so chose not tell Mrs Dwight what was going on. Plus didn’t want to bother with the charade of being sad. She hadn’t seen Lillian in over ten years. She knew some would say she was in shock, that the sadness and grief would come, but she knew better.

  After promising to collect her mail and keep an eye on her flat, Mrs Dwight shuffled her way back to her own flat.

  Easily pushing thoughts of Lillian aside — she’d been doing it for so long it was second nature — Zoe turned her attention to the fact she was now unemployed. She had quit her job. An excellent job, at a reputable school. She hadn’t even lasted a full year. Her CV was starting to read like an extended OE. Before Auckland she had been in London, then Manchester and before that Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and her first school, after graduating, had been in Wellington. A total of nine schools in ten years, all teaching jobs where she covered sickness and maternity leave. In and out. No time to make any lifelong friendships, just the odd Facebook acquaintance. She told herself periodically she should put down roots, but only because that was what was expected of a thirty-something. But how did someone put down roots when they were never shown how? How did you make yourself a proper home when the one you lived in as a child was a place you had always wanted to leave?

  She turned to the fridge and threw out a carton of milk which was going to expire in a few days. She took a quick look in the freezer: microwave meals were piled high along with a couple of tubs of Ben and Jerry’s. She sat down on the couch with her laptop, typing out a letter of resignation to Harold Paynter that he could forward on to the Board. She apologised for the short notice but also mentioned the death of Lillian, saying she would’ve needed bereavement leave anyway. She was giving Paynter an out, which annoyed her. She could imagine him telling staff that she was so broken up about her mother’s death that she couldn’t return to work. At least she made a clean cut from the school.

  An hour later she put her bag in the boot of her new Mazda, a gift to herself for getting the job at St Clement’s, and drove out of the city heading south. She turned the radio on, but the music couldn’t drown out the thoughts that pushed their way to the front.

  She had last seen Lillian at her university graduation. Lillian had congratulated her in the way one of her lecturers might have congratulated her: with a hollow smile, eager to move on to the next person. Lillian had handed her an envelope containing a cheque for five thousand dollars, ‘To get you started,’ she had said, and then left. Zoe was clueless as to what type of person Lillian had become, but the strong, intelligent and distant woman she remembered did not seem like the type to commit suicide.

  Is there a type?

  She arrived on the outskirts of Crawton just over an hour later. As she approached the brow of the hill she could see the town directly in front of her. The road to the right led the way to the west coast an hour away. She glimpsed Lake Waitapu to the left, winking in the sun, eliciting long-forgotten memories of summers sunbathing and swimming, arriving home long after dark to Lillian in front of her computer or already in bed. The lake disappeared as she drove down the hill into town. The entry into Crawton was made up of an oak-lined road with pockets of flat green fields and grazing cows that eventually gave way to houses. By ignoring the place for so long, she had forgotten how beautiful it was. Peaceful. A hidden gem surrounded by hills. She passed St Joseph’s Catholic church. It was made of stone with a steep pitched roof and looked more like a fairy-tale castle than a church: when she was younger she thought it always looked so magical. Even Lillian’s bid to bring six-year-old Zoe back to reality, ‘It’s just a church, no princesses in there, and no Prince Charmings to save the day,’ didn’t make it lose any of its beauty or magic. She drove down the wide main street and saw that the takeaway giants that had infiltrated every town in New Zealand with a population over five thousand had also come to Crawton. The Crawton of her youth had had two fish and chip shops, a pizzeria and a Chinese. It was much busier now. Half the shops that made up the main street were new to her.

  This is what happens when you stay away for so long.

  She made her way through the rabbit warren of streets, getting further away from town, climbing higher. Turning into the cul-de-sac her stomach churned. She never thought about her childhood home. All those years ago when she’d left for university she honestly thought she would never be back. But now she was home again, and Lillian was not there to greet her.

  Chapter 6

  Zoe pulled up outside Lillian’s house, her home for the first eighteen years of her life. The pale grey weatherboard looked slightly worn, in need of a paint, but the box hedging out the front was as uniform as she remembered, the white roses beneath the lounge window pruned to perfection. The house was in darkness and she felt no need to go inside. She parked on the strip of concrete and slowly got out.

  Next door, past a neatly trimmed camellia bush, sat Alex Buchanan with his arms wrapped around his legs and his chin resting on his knees. Zoe saw the ten-year-old who used to wait for her every morning on those same steps before school and every Tuesday while she finished her piano lesson with Mrs Davidson down the road. He grinned and unfolded lanky limbs, an action Zoe had always found amusing, one that had earned him the nickname ‘Stick Insect’ in high school. It wasn’t just that he was tall, well over six feet, but that he could’ve done with an extra ten kilos on his frame. As he walked over to her, Zoe thought, Thirty-three years living inside his body and he still looks like he doesn’t have a handle on its workings. She met him at the halfway mark between their two sections and laughed as he wrapped her into his arms.

  ‘How you doing, Zo-zo?’ He flicked his blonde hair out of his eyes with a quick jerk of his head.

  ‘Nobody’s called me that in years. It’s been a while.’

  ‘It has. I seem to remember vodka and Red Bulls down some seedy side street in Auckland before you up and left me for sunny England.’

  ‘Has it been that long?’ Zoe realised that by cutting Lillian and Crawton out of her life, she’d lost Alex, her best friend.

  ‘Yep. Do you want to come over? Mum’s been cooking all day, anticipating your arrival.’

  Zoe looked back at Lillian’s house enveloped in the darkness that was falling and the massive liquid amber that shaded half the house. At Pam Buchanan’s place the lights were on and she could see a figure moving around the kitchen. ‘Let’s go.’ She put an arm around his waist. ‘God, you don’t still live with your mum, do you?’

  ‘Jeez, give me some credit. I may have been a bit of a mummy’s boy back then but I own my very own house now. It’s at least a five-minute drive from here.’ He put his arm around her shoulder, his wide grin infectious. ‘Mum rang me this morning. She’s the one who, you know …’ He inclined his head back towards Lillian’s house.

  ‘Oh god, your mum found Lillian?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’

  Alex’s childhood home looked the same, from the worn beige carpet to the sideboard jam-packed with photos of Alex as a baby, a toddler, a grinning pre-teen and a long-fringed, morose young man. The house had always smelled of food — baking or dinner or breakfast being cooked. In her teens Zoe was often a last-minute addition to the dinner table. As she walked into the kitchen Pam turned and brought her hands to her flushed cheeks. ‘Zoe, my darling, look at you. Skinny as a rake but gorgeous as ever!�
� She brushed a long strand of greying hair behind her ear.

  ‘Hi, Mrs B,’ Zoe said, reverting back to her grinning teenage self.

  ‘I think you can call me Pam now.’ She wrapped Zoe in a bear hug to rival her son’s before turning back to the stove to stir a tomato, garlic and beef concoction, one hand resting on her ample hip.

  ‘Zoe Haywood!’

  Zoe turned towards the lounge and saw Jeff Worthington approach her. He had swooped into Crawton thirty years ago and set up a property development company. Crawton didn’t know what had hit it. He brought his wife, but she didn’t last the year and high-tailed it back to Auckland as fast as her Jimmy Choos allowed. He bought up massive amounts of land on the outskirts of town as well as blocks of land around Lake Waitapu and steadily started to build and subdivide. Jeff and Pam’s affair was the worst-kept secret in Crawton and had been for the last twenty-five years. It was never made an issue of, as Jeff was far too powerful a man to get on the wrong side of. He was like a father to Alex, and Zoe remembered him well from her teenage years. He had paid for Alex to attend university. He often stopped in for a drink or dinner with Pam on weekends. It wasn’t often they went out together, preferring the domestic solace of Pam’s house to barely concealed whispers and stares.

  Jeff leaned down and kissed Zoe’s cheek. In his early sixties he was still good-looking. His short hair was dark brown with shots of grey. He wore dress pants and a shirt, and there were no tell-tale signs of a beer gut or middle-aged spread most men of that age sported. As much as Zoe loved Pam, she had wondered how they had found each other — one a high-flying businessman, the other a stay-at-home single mother.

  ‘I’m truly sorry to hear about your mother.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Worthington’

  ‘It’s Jeff.’ She wondered how much the gleaming white smile had cost him.