The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone

by Felicity McLean

  I gave a grimace and drank, and I imagined I could feel the milk clumps slide down the back of my throat.

  ‘Really, Tik,’ Laura said as I swallowed. ‘It was so much bigger than us. It was beyond our control. Whole teams of police investigation units couldn’t figure out where those girls went, and it’s not like we could have solved that.’

  Laura caught a drip running down the side of her mug.

  ‘Anyway, what did they expect us to do?’ she asked. ‘We were only kids. And they were our friends.

  ‘Mum said she and Dad lent you the money to fly back here,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘You broke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Need a loan?’

  ‘No.’ I shifted uncomfortably on my chair.

  ‘Oh, Tikka,’ she groaned. ‘Have you quit your job?’

  I hadn’t quit, I told her. I hadn’t done anything. I explained about the offer for promotion I’d deleted from my inbox before I flew out. About the conference opportunities, the research symposiums. About how I’d erased all those things when I trashed the email. As easy as hitting ‘delete’.

  ‘That new job would have got me nowhere,’ I lied.

  ‘So what are you going to do? Do you like working in the lab?’

  ‘There are worse things,’ I said defensively.

  ‘You were the smart one, Tik,’ she said. ‘You could have done anything.’

  ‘You sound like Mum and Dad.’

  ‘Mum and Dad said you were the smart one?’ she bristled.

  ‘What? No. God, you’re so competitive.’

  She drank a mouthful of tea. ‘You can still do anything, you know. You’ve got plenty of time.’

  Unlike her was what she didn’t say.

  A breeze came through the kitchen window and in the lounge room I heard the Venetian blinds clatter. The southerly always came at this time of day. It was funny the things I remembered now that I was back. All the things you keep stored away.

  ‘Do you ever wonder if they made it?’ I asked her cautiously. ‘You know, if somehow they survived?’

  Laura gave me a look that said she was done, and I should save it for my therapist. ‘Tikka, you’re exhausting.’

  ‘Do you, though?’ I persisted. ‘Do you ever think of looking for Hannah?’

  I thought about the way I saw Cordie all the time. Like the other week, in the taxi going down North Avenue. I’d been so sure it was her. Right up until the instant I stood in front of the stranger on the platform at Penn-North station.

  My sister surprised me then by telling me she’d tried searching for Hannah. ‘I ran some ads in the personals, and in the classifieds in the Herald. But it was years afterwards and I never got a response.’

  ‘Did you?’ I was stunned.

  She nodded. ‘Cryptic ones. Silly stuff Hannah would understand.’

  ‘Like what?’ I wanted to know.

  Laura thought for a moment. ‘Like: “Seeking ginger-haired, female dance partner. Must be able to vogue better than the Virgin Mother. Please send photo.”

  ‘Madonna!’ I said laughing. ‘That’s Madonna.’ I hadn’t thought about the Van Apfels’ cat in years.

  ‘Did you get a reply?’

  ‘Not from Hannah, I didn’t. Plenty of weirdos got in touch, but.’

  ‘What else?’

  Laura smirked. ‘“Tix for sale (x2). Boxing match. Crow versus the Mouse, 8 rounds, super middleweights. See who would win pants down. Forward address for delivery.”’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ I said sulkily.

  ‘Remember when you thought it was “pants down”?’

  ‘Like you’d ever let me forget,’ I said.

  ‘What about the way Jade Heddingly always said “arks”?’

  ‘And the way Ruth used to call herself “Roof”.’

  But the memory of Ruth sent me back into my guilt spiral and we sat in silence for a while.

  ‘Do you remember when Ruth tried to drown me in the pool?’

  Laura looked blankly at me.

  ‘You do,’ I said. ‘You do remember.’

  But she gave no sign that she did.

  ‘That day, remember, when we stayed for Bible study? When Mr Van Apfel – you know, that day he hit Ruth?’

  We’d swum in the pool beforehand, the five of us girls. Dreaming up synchronised swimming routines, trying to outlast one another at holding our breath. All except Cordie, who was in the water but who’d stayed firmly anchored to dry land, her cast arm resting on the edge of the pool while her legs kicked lazily in the water. Cordie was supposed to be judging our underwater handstand competition, but she wasn’t even facing the right way.

  ‘Tikka cheated,’ Ruth complained when I surfaced from my turn. I blinked and pool water beaded on my lashes.

  ‘Tikka cheated!’ Ruth insisted, but no one paid any attention. ‘She cheated! I saw her do it!’

  I was still squinting into the milky light, still catching my breath, when Ruth reached out and pulled my head under the water. She dragged me down by my hair, one hand gripping my ponytail, the other palm smothering my face.

  It never left me, the sight of the blue sky that day. Blazing between the gaps in Ruth’s fingers. Blue sky in my eyes, in my ears. In my lungs. Blue sky and blue water. Iridescent as a fly.

  ‘She did too,’ my sister said now, as I reminded her of it all these years later. ‘She held you under the water, that’s right.’ Laura swallowed the last mouthful of her tea with effort, and then went to the sink and rinsed out her mug. ‘She was furious with you about something.’

  ‘She thought I cheated. Remember?’ I said. ‘You had to pull her off me and drag me to the surface.’

  Because Laura was the one who had wrenched me to the surface. Held my chin up while she kicked Ruth away.

  ‘Did I?’ Laura was surprised. She nudged the tap off with her elbow and shook the drips from her mug into the sink. ‘I don’t remember that part.’

  ‘What, you don’t remember saving me?’

  She let the corners of her mouth droop while she thought about it. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well, you did,’ I said.

  Laura had yelled at Ruth, telling her she could have drowned me. ‘You don’t hold someone’s head under the water!’ she’d said. ‘Where’d you get a dumb idea like that?’

  Ruth had been outraged. She’d swum a safe distance away, and then she’d spun and shouted back at Laura. ‘But she cheated! And cheating’s a sin!’

  In the kitchen Laura put her mug upside down on the drying rack and faced me. Behind her, through the window, the day was impossibly bright.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Tik,’ Laura said. ‘What happened to Hannah and Cordie. It wasn’t your fault. Not your fault about Ruth either. Despite what you think, none of it was because of you.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, and in that moment I believed her.

  ‘Sure, I’m right. So don’t go blaming yourself. You’re not that important,’ she deadpanned.

  But the tenderness in her voice had caught me off guard and I smiled at her with wet eyes. Twenty years had passed and I was still coming home so my sister could hold my chin up.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  My skit was turning out to be an unmitigated disaster. (Extension spelling list, week six. Topic? Prefix ‘un’.) For a tragedy it sure was looking grim, just not in any of the ways that I’d planned. For a start there were all the normal problems that came with writing and directing a play (uncooperative cast, unlearned lines, unavailable star). There were so many ‘un’s during those two weeks of rehearsals, I could have written that spelling list myself.

  I thought it would be easy writing a play about a true story – one that already existed. And so as I sat down to watch the news each night at home, as Dad rustled his newspaper and Mum told Laura to get her feet off the couch, as angry courtroom scenes flashed across the TV screen, I sat with my 2B pencil and a blank piece of paper and simply transcribed each thing as it appeared.


  It was four years since Lindy Chamberlain had been found innocent of killing her baby, Azaria, and had had her murder conviction quashed. Now the family was wading through a minefield of compensation.

  ‘What’s a coroner?’ I asked Dad while we watched. I hadn’t cast one of those in my play.

  ‘It’s a person who investigates the circumstances of someone’s death. They weigh up all the evidence and then they work out how the person died. In this case, the coroner is trying to come up with an answer for how Azaria Chamberlain died.’

  ‘What, they still don’t know?’

  I reckoned finding the baby’s clothes near a dingo den was all the evidence anyone could ever need.

  ‘Two inquests have been heard, Tik, but that was back before they discovered the baby’s matinee jacket. That was new evidence. A lot’s changed since then.’

  ‘Like, Lindy Chamberlain’s been released from prison?’

  ‘That’s right. She’s been released and pardoned, but the Crown hasn’t yet made a finding on who or what was responsible for the baby’s death. As far as they’re concerned, it’s still a mystery.’

  I was glad I didn’t have to include all those inquests in my skit. My skit would mostly be about the night Azaria disappeared, about the dingo that stole her away.

  I knew the Chamberlain story would have the right effect. Everyone in our house was glued to the TV whenever it came on the news. And if I wanted to give Hannah and Cordie the best chance at running away then, what better story to stage? I knew it was controversial but that was the point. I wanted to create a proper diversion.

  I’d had to change it a bit so that Azaria Chamberlain was nine years old, instead of nine weeks old (I didn’t know anyone who had a baby that small and, even if I did, you could bet they wouldn’t lend her to me). I’d cast Melanie Firth in the role, even though Cordie was meant to be the lead. Cordie had the right star power for it. And she could have snuck off the stage during the disappearance in the play and no one would have suspected a thing. (It’s not like the audience would have expected to see her again.)

  Only that was the problem: we never saw Cordie. She was off sick from school so often lately. She’d been away so many days that I couldn’t very well give her the lead role when she’d never been to a single rehearsal. She never even knew we were holding rehearsals, and the rest of my cast had turned up for three hopeless run-throughs at recess already.

  At rehearsals we’d decided Carly Sawtell would be the dingo – we were relying on good costuming there. Sharrin Helpman and Jodi McNally would be police officers, while I read out the lines for the mum. In fact, I read out the lines for everybody’s part because no one had bothered to learn them. Not even Melanie, who must have known about learning lines from her drama classes. You’d have thought she’d be more professional.

  I didn’t like cutting Cordie out of my play. Not even considering she hadn’t known she was in it. It hurt to shove her copy of the script under my bed, with all those pink highlighted lines she never learned. But I’d hardly seen her since the night of Hayley’s sleepover party, and whenever I did see her now, she was busy plotting with Hannah and Laura. Busy leaving Ruth and me out.

  They were so busy not telling us about their runaway plan, we never got the chance to tell them we already knew.

  Until the day before the Showstopper, that is. Then we got to say it all right. Only trouble was, we weren’t expecting Mr Van Apfel to appear out of nowhere like that.

  At first it was just Ruth and me, like always. We walked home from school together, bags heavy, hats pulled low. It was strangely silent for that time of the afternoon. The cicadas sat and quietly slow-roasted in the trees.

  ‘I saw Mr Avery today at the bubblers,’ Ruth said, and a small droplet of sweat slid out from under her legionnaire hat and worked its way down her face. I could imagine Mr Avery, there at the bubblers. Water beading on his thick beard.

  ‘What, drinking?’ I asked.

  I took off my own hat and soaked it with the last of the water from my drink bottle and a deeper shade of blue bled across the cotton as it got wet. I wrung it once, then put it back on my head, and fingers of cool water pressed into my scalp.

  ‘No, just standing,’ Ruth said.

  Fat beads of water clung to the brim of my hat, threatening to fall if I moved my head.

  ‘He wanted to know why Cordie was away today,’ Ruth went on, and I drew a sharp breath and the jewels of water tumbled off my hat.

  ‘How did he know she was away?’ I was aghast.

  ‘Because she’s in his class, that’s why. It’s his job to know who’s at school and who’s away.’

  My cheeks burned at the indignity of being chastised by Ruth. Of course, if I’d thought about it for even a second I’d have known Mr Avery was Cordie’s classroom teacher and so he would have marked a small cross next to her name on the roll. It was just he always acted so suspiciously, that’s all.

  ‘Anyway, why was Cordie away today?’ I asked. ‘She sick again?’

  ‘She’s a faker,’ Ruth said.

  We walked along in silence and two lorikeets went belting past. A flash of jungle green.

  ‘I saw Mr Avery the other day at school too, you know,’ Ruth said as we rounded the corner to Macedon Close. She spoke cautiously, warily, as if she wasn’t sure she should be telling me but that we were so close to home now it might be safe to say. But I was wary now too, and I wasn’t about to be outsmarted by a Year Two kid again.

  ‘So what?’ I replied. ‘He works there, you know.’

  But Ruth was trying to tell me something.

  ‘No, I saw him with Cordie. The two of them were down beside your classroom. I saw them when we were in the playground, doing map-reading worksheets.’

  My classroom stood away from the all the other classroom buildings, like a kid in the corner. In disgrace.

  ‘What were they doing?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Dunno. Just talking. Cordie didn’t seem to be saying that much but she was laughing at him a lot.’

  I thought about the two of them, down there, alone, by the rear brick pier of our classroom. Cordie, with her back leaning up against the pier, one leg raised, one sole pressed flat against the bricks. Cordie and Mr Avery. Out of sight from almost all of our school.

  ‘Well, did you ask Cordie about it?’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘She’d never tell me anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s not like they’ve told us about their runaway plan, and that’s heaps more important than this.’

  I had to admit, Ruth had a point. But that didn’t mean it didn’t sting.

  ‘They’ll tell us when they’re ready,’ I said defensively. ‘They can’t keep it a secret forever. They’re just waiting for the right chance to say.’

  Ruth looked unconvinced, but she said nothing as we crossed the top of Macedon Close together. I walked her to her drive and then turned to go home, when we heard voices drifting out of the backyard.

  They were familiar voices. Plotting voices. Leaving-us-out-again voices. Ruth squared her shoulders and gripped the straps of her schoolbag.

  ‘C’mon,’ she said as she led me into battle.

  I followed Ruth along the shady side passage of the house, across the roots of the peppercorn tree. When we emerged, all was sunshine and bare legs and that shimmering pool. A backyard arcadia spread before us.

  There were Hannah and Laura lying side by side in the grass, discarded ice-cream wrappers beside them, their schoolbags propping up their heads like pillows, their eyes closed to the blistering sky. Cordie sat beside them. She wore a babydoll dress made of faded check cheesecloth, her brown legs stretching out long below the skirt. She wore a frangipani nicked from Mrs McCausley’s yard behind one soft, tiny ear. Between her splayed legs, her pet mice played in the grass.

  ‘What are youse doing?’ Ruth announced our arrival. Her voice was accusatory and loud. Fury simmered not far below the surface. ‘We didn’t know you were here to
gether. And you got ice creams.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Cordie said carelessly. She raised her palms to show she was empty-handed.

  But Ruth wasn’t interested in Cordie’s virtue now. It was too little, and it came far too late.

  Ruth had been ignored and excluded. She’d been babied long enough. Missing ice cream was tantamount to sin.

  She charged at the older girls, her school backpack swinging, her plait lashing like a scorpion’s tail. She was headed for Cordie but then she swerved at the last instant and ran instead towards Hannah and Laura, yanking the schoolbag out from underneath Hannah’s head so her skull crashed onto the grass. Hannah yelled and sat up, but Ruth ignored her. She held Hannah’s bag high above her head. She swung it from side to side and then she upturned it savagely so its contents rained down on the lawn.

  ‘Rope!’ Ruth said triumphantly. ‘A torch! Warm clothes! I told you they were running away.’

  ‘Give it here . . .’ yelled Hannah and she stood up and moved angrily towards Ruth.

  ‘Give it here,’ said another voice evenly. We swung around in surprise.

  And Mr Van Apfel stood up from where he’d been crouched, in his red PVC gloves, scrubbing mould off his pavers.

  We never heard him there, by the pool gate. Never heard the back-and-forth swish of his brush. The older girls must have known he was in the backyard, but then they’d been there before us.

  Blood pulsed in my ears as he walked across the lawn, though the rest of the world fell silent. He swung an open bottle of Handy Andy original ammonia from his fingers and the smell was sickening.

  ‘This,’ he said, his face twisted in disgust as if he couldn’t bear to look at us. ‘This is how you treat me? This is your idea of “honour and obey”!’

  His sleeves were rolled up for scrubbing and, emerging from his red rubber gloves, his forearms were an angry striated pink. He waved his free arm over the upturned backpack. Over its spilled guts on the lawn. Over the rope, the torch, the pile of fleecy clothes. Over the five of us. Petrified in the sunshine. Laura was still lying on her back on the grass, her head raised awkwardly in the air. Hannah was still reaching out to grab Ruth, who was busy cowering from her. Cordie sat cupping her mice in her hands, her legs still splayed in the sunshine.