An Isolated Incident

by Emily Maguire

  ‘Right. So I’m meant to shut myself off from the world, sit here waiting for you to call?’

  ‘We’re doing everything we can, Chris. Now, I gotta go, but you make sure you call us with your new number, yeah?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay. Take care now.’

  I went straight across to Lisa’s and asked if I could use her computer. I’d done this plenty of times in the past, but now she said, ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s a great idea, hon.’

  I played the victim card, I don’t mind admitting, told her I needed to email some long-distance relations whose phone numbers I didn’t have and that I needed to do some online banking because I couldn’t cope with going into town. Both of these things were true, I realised as I said them. I also realised I could just buy a computer of my own with some of the money I’d put away for me and Bella. But that would come later. Now, I needed to know why Brandis was so keen for me to stay away from the news.

  Lisa left me alone with the computer while she made the apparently legally-required-for-grieving-relatives cup of tea. I started typing Bella’s name into the search bar and before I could finish the auto-fill function suggested:

  Bella Michaels murder

  Bella Michaels photos

  Bella Michaels raped

  I clicked on the first search result, a newspaper opinion piece. Bella was a reminder, the first paragraph declared, that none of us were safe. I returned to the search results, opened a Facebook page called RIP BELLA MICHAELS. There I saw my own grinning mug, pressed against Bella’s flushed, giggling one. Bella’s eighteenth. Her boyfriend at the time, a shy, goofy plumber’s apprentice whose name I’ve forgotten, was on the other side of her, whispering something into her ear. On my left was Mum, smiling in that closed-mouth way that made everybody think she was annoyed or anxious when really she was just embarrassed of her crooked front teeth, and beside her, my cousin Kim, who I hadn’t seen since the night the pic was taken.

  Bella Michaels my darling cousin and one of my closest friends was taken from this world by the actions of an unknown monster. This page is a tribute to this beautiful soul who is now an angel in heaven. Please ‘like’ to show you care and share to help get the word out about this senseless tragedy.

  This message, written by Kim, had been ‘liked’ three thousand and ninety-seven times. The page itself was being followed by seven thousand and forty-five people. I scanned down:

  I never met Bella but feel as though I’ve lost a sister. RIP angel

  Bella you were too beautiful for this world.

  RIP Bella your death won’t be in vain it will always be a lesson to young girls out alone

  YOUR KILLER WILL PAY FOR WHAT WAS DONE TO YOU. HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES WE WILL NEVER FORGET

  Underneath that last one was a long comments thread:

  Violence begets violence

  If I get my hands on the fucking animal who did this then he will know what violence is

  Ive been reading all the reports and does anyone else think its a bit sus that there were no signs of struggle near her car??? Like maybe she willingly went? I won’t say who told me but someone who knows says that she had a reputation for being ‘easy’ so maybe the police should consider that she wasn’t abducted from the car park??? Of course what happened to her later is still a terrible crime and whoever did it should be punished but worth asking if this was a ‘crime of passion’ rather than random abduction.

  Fuck you and your fucking victim-blaming

  Not victim-blaming, just putting it out there as its important to get facts right in such cases. Lots of females are scared of being grabbed but maybe scared for no reason as long as they don’t go climbing into cars???

  You are talking shit mate and anyway Bella was not easy ask anyone who actually knew her she was a VERY MORAL PERSON

  ‘Oh, honey,’ Lisa clattered a mug down on a side table and hugged my shoulders. ‘This is what I was worried about. You can’t be reading this stuff. It’s ridiculous, clueless nonsense. These people are –’

  ‘Family,’ I said. ‘One of them, anyway. Goddamn cousin who hardly even ever saw her.’

  Lisa reached past me and clicked the window closed. ‘Family or not, they’re idiots and what they have to say is irrelevant. Meaningless.’

  I felt I should open the window back up and type some furious replies but all the air, all the fight had gone out of me. I took the tea Lisa slid into my hand and sipped. It tasted like parsley steeped in dishwater.

  ‘It’s a special blend I made for you. Soothing. I was going to bring a tin of it over this arvo.’

  I couldn’t even say thanks, I just kept sipping the foul stuff so she’d know I appreciated her.

  After a few minutes she said, ‘Listen, there was a reporter here yesterday. Apparently she’d tried her luck at your place and Nate told her where to go in no uncertain terms. Little miss came straight across here, as if I’d have any sympathy! I sent her packing, too, but you should know that she went on door-knocking right along the street. I watched best I could from my window but I had a big cook going and so kept losing sight of her. I think she got inside at Carrie’s, maybe at Frank’s place, too. I’m sure they didn’t say anything you need to worry about, but just thought you should be aware, you know, aware that these people are out here, desperate for any little bit of info.’

  ‘What . . .’ I cleared herbal moss from my throat and Lisa rubbed the top of my back. ‘What could anyone tell her anyway? Bella hasn’t even lived here for years.’

  ‘I suspect that’s all it’d be, honey. Reminiscing about what a sweetie she was. How she used to sing so loud when she was gardening out the front that you could hear her from the top of the street if you had your car window down and the radio off. How she’d offer to walk everyone’s dogs and leave out little treats for all the cats because you, you mean old cow, wouldn’t let her have a pet.’ She hugged my shoulders again. ‘There’s only nice stuff to remember about Bella. How many people can you say that about, eh?’

  ‘Some woman rang,’ I told her. ‘Said she’s planning a parade or something. For Bella. I didn’t know what to say. It seems so . . . mental.’

  ‘People feel very bad. They don’t know what to do.’

  ‘That must be hard for them.’

  ‘Oh, honey. Listen, is Nate at home – at your place, I mean?’

  ‘No. He’s staying at Mel’s. He said he’d come over late morning. What is it now?’

  ‘Just after ten. How’s about I give him a call, hey? Tell him to get his lovely bum in gear?’

  ‘No,’ I told her, getting up to leave. ‘Can’t have him thinking I can’t go a couple of hours without him.’

  ‘You’re too independent for your own good, Chris. It’s okay to lean on people during hard times.’

  ‘I’ve leant all over you just now, haven’t I?’

  ‘Any time, honey. I mean it.’

  I knew she did. I felt her eyes on me as I crossed the street and unlocked my front door. God bless sweet neighbours, hey? Though the know-better bitch went ahead and called Nate as soon as I left. He came roaring up twenty minutes later, full of concern and guilt. Fuller than usual. Overfull.

  ‘Lisa said you were distraught. Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘Lisa’s a drama queen. I wasn’t distraught. I was annoyed.’ I told him about the phone call and the Facebook page. He nodded along like he knew it all already. Said he’d been keeping an eye on all that, that I didn’t have to worry.

  ‘Now, tell me honestly, how are you? How did you sleep last night?’

  ‘Fine,’ I told him, thinking of Tyler and the black hate of the wall bruise. ‘I had company, actually, so I was good.’

  I’ve never enjoyed hurting him, yet it was one of the few things I was great at and so I was rarely able to stop myself when the opportunity arose.<
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  After he left there were these weird convulsions in my throat. Made me want to choke myself. I wandered around the house coughing and swallowing for a while then picked up a book one of the neighbours had dropped off the day after Bella was found. An Unnatural Loss. It was for parents who’d lost a child. I didn’t try to read it, just hugged it to me, tried to feel the warmth I’d got from this woman, Edie, when she dropped it by, held my hands, told me she knew Bella wasn’t my daughter but that she thought of her that way. Every time she saw Bella coming and going she thought, There’s Chris’s girl. Anyway, she said, she knew I’d grieve hard, as hard as any mother who’d lost her child. I liked it that she said that, this woman, mother and grandmother herself, thinking of me – of us – that way. But I don’t know if she’s right. I’m not a mum, can’t know what that feels like. They say it feels like nothing else, don’t they? That you can’t understand love until you’ve held your own baby in your arms. I don’t know, I don’t know, I can’t. And anyway, Bella was more parent to me than I ever was to her. Practically speaking. But I loved her fiercely, you know? It sounds dumb to say. We loved each other fiercely. If there’s a love greater than what I had for her then I’m happy I never had a baby of my own because I couldn’t take it. Oh, the love I could take, who couldn’t? The love is easy. But this is the flipside, isn’t it? Bigger than this I couldn’t take. Don’t even know if I can take this, to be honest. The loss of her is already too much and then there’s the other thing – the end of being loved in the way only my sister could love me. What I feel for her survives and that hurts like battery acid every minute, but worse is that what she felt for me died with her. I will never be loved like that again.

  Anyway, I was standing in the living room sort of hugging the book, thinking all this, when everything went black. I dropped the book, froze, trying to figure out what had happened. Even with the lights off and the curtains closed that room gets a good bit of light on a sunny afternoon like this one. I held my hand in front of my face and couldn’t see it.

  Something moved behind me. The rasp of a shoe against carpet. I spun to face it, felt hot breath on my face, sprung backwards, slamming into the wall. I lashed out with both arms, but there was nothing there. I looked and looked, straining my eyes as though darkness could be overcome by effort.

  I blinked and it was light again and everything just as it had been, except my pulse was going like the clappers and the back of my head hurt where I’d hit the wall. I wanted so badly to call Nate to come sit with me awhile. Instead I called Melvin and asked him if he could come and have a look at my wiring sometime soon. I could hear Nate in the background asking if I was alright and so I waited until the very last moment to leave for work, more than half expecting that Nate’d come round or at least call to check on me but he never did.

  The good thing about a town like Strathdee was that the phone directory was slim, very few people were unlisted, and in the rare case you couldn’t find the person you were after you could bet you’d only need to ask two or three not-quite-random people – a taxi driver, a supermarket manager and a retired school teacher, in this case – and you had the address plus a fairly detailed life history of the person you were looking for.

  Melvin and Julie Atkins, the friends Nate Cartwright sometimes stayed with in town, lived in a neat brick three-bedroom behind the hospital. May knew from her informants that Melvin would likely be at work – he was one of only two electricians left in town and so was always busy – but that Julie, who worked nights at the TAB, would probably be home.

  Julie answered the door before the bell had finished its electronic jingle. She was a solid block of a woman, a foot taller and at least twice the weight of May, with a smooth, wide face and close-cropped, bleached hair.

  ‘Good morning. My name is May Norman. I’m –’

  ‘A newspaper writer from Sydney, I know. I’ve just had Cheryl Sands on the phone blabbering apologies about having given out my address.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, I –’

  ‘Nah, it’s fine. Come in, come in. I’ve just made a cuppa, d’ya want one?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Julie’s living room reminded May of her grandmother’s place in Blacktown. Spotless peach carpet, grey fake-leather lounge, glass coffee table bearing a weekly gossip magazine and a romance novel, mantelpiece holding a series of photos in matching gold-coloured frames and a cross-stitch of the serenity prayer. Julie drank her tea from a mug saying SAVE A FUSE, BLOW AN ELECTRICIAN.

  ‘I should tell you that I didn’t know Bella very well. We’d say hi if we saw each other at the shops but other than that . . .’ She shrugged, smiled apologetically.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me about Nate Cartwright, actually.’

  Julie’s smile slackened a little, but her tone remained light. ‘Not much to know about Nate. What you see is what you get.’

  ‘Was he close to Bella?’

  She sighed, put her mug down on the table. ‘He was once. She lived with him and Chris for a while. But since he moved up to Sydney, he hasn’t been great at keeping in touch. I mean, we see him when he passes through but don’t hear much in between.’

  ‘Why did he leave town? Was it a bad breakup?’

  ‘Look, I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but I don’t think that’s really anyone’s business.’ She turned her mug around in her hand.

  ‘I get that, it’s just . . . The news has been full of stories about Bella’s death, and that’s fair enough, I mean, it was terrible and people want to know the details, want to understand, but I feel that what’s been lost in all this is the story of her life. Who she was before she was turned into news.’ May noticed Julie’s eyes tearing up; she leant forward, spoke softly. ‘And who she was, I think, was a woman who cared about her family and friends very much. And from what I can tell she counted Nate in that group, but I also understand it was complicated because of his relationship with Chris. So, I’m trying to get a picture – a true, full picture – of who she loved, who loved her and –’

  ‘Okay, yeah, yeah, look, I can tell you some stuff, but I’m not going to, you know, invade his privacy or anything.’

  ‘Julie, it’s no secret that he and Chris have a continuing relationship. I mean, he’s hardly left her side since they found Bella, but he refuses to speak to the media – which I respect, I understand – but rightly or wrongly, it does give the impression that he’s got something to hide, you know?’

  Julie shook her head, smiling with a kind of desperation that made May want to tell her to stop being so fucking accommodating. People-pleasers made May’s job so easy and her spirit so tired.

  ‘It’s not a matter of hiding anything. It’s a very, very hard time. None of us can take it in, what happened. Me, as soon as I even start to really think about it, my mind kind of shoots off in another direction, because it’s just too much. And if I feel like that, then imagine what Chris is going through. And you know, if Chris is suffering then Nate will be . . .’ Her smile dropped, then came back smaller, less pleading. ‘You’re right about him and Chris, you know, it’s so complicated. I mean, the way those two were together, geez, nearly ruined my marriage. Like, you know all that stuff you believe about love when you’re eighteen and then by the time you’re twenty-five you realise it’s total crap? Like, you accept that real love – long term and that – well, it’s not going to be a thrill a minute, it’s not going to be constant bliss. Not that I don’t love Melvin, but he’s not exactly Christian Grey, if you get what I mean. I accepted that, thought, well, this is what real love is. Not a thrill a minute but nice all the same.’ She shrugged. ‘But then those two hooked up and suddenly it seemed I was wrong about what was possible. I felt ripped off. Like I’d settled. I mean, seriously, you never saw a couple so perfect together. Hands all over the place like teenagers, but in between that you’d see them talking or listening to the other one talk to someo
ne else and you could just see how much they liked each other. I was happy for ’em – I mean, I love Nate like a brother – but geez I was jealous, I tell you what.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  Julie shook her head. ‘Private stuff. Stuff that’s none of my business let alone yours. I can say, though, it made me appreciate what me and Mel have. Calm, no drama.’ She looked up at the mantelpiece, seemed to remember something, turned back to May. ‘Bloody hell, I can go on with some rubbish! Look, none of what I’ve said has anything to do with anything. What’s important – I mean, if you’re going to write about any of this – what’s important is that Nate and Chris are very good friends, always have been from day one. Things didn’t work out with the marriage and that’s their business, but there’s no way that Nate wouldn’t support Chris through this. Not being able to stay married doesn’t mean the bond between them is gone. I can’t imagine him not being there for her right now. And, yeah, he loved Bella. He really did.’

  The interview with Julie had given May some useful colour and phone numbers for several of Nate’s local mates. It had also poked at her pain so acutely that she had to waste an hour buying, cooking and eating five packets of two-minute noodles smothered in processed cheese slices and then emptying her guts into the hotel toilet. It was, like smoking, a disgusting habit that she thought she’d ditched when she finished uni but which had reasserted itself in the past week. So there was another thing to hate Craig for: her regression into a pathetic nineteen-year-old stinking of vomit and fags.

  She brushed her teeth then sat on the bed and listened back to the interview. That stuff you believe about love when you’re eighteen and then by the time you’re twenty-five you realise it’s total crap? Such grief and shame at those words. Such fury. Thirty years old and she’d imagined herself cynical and street smart yet had believed entirely in the idea that Craig was her everything and she was his and that nothing could part them.

  They’d met at a funeral, of all places. She’d just completed a profile piece about the old poet who’d passed; Craig was a mate of the poet’s grandson. Like in a cheesy romance novel their eyes met across the room and it was all May could do to stay in her seat for the rest of the service. She searched for him in the milling crowd outside the chapel, had a second to take all of him in – young, lean, snake-hipped, expensive grey pants worn too low – before he saw her looking, closed the space between them. Within an hour of old Charlie’s body being lowered into the ground they were fucking in May’s entry hall.