‘And next up we have that magnificent crooner of yesteryear, Buddy Holly with “Raining in My Heart”. Then stay tuned for the weather and the answer to yesterday’s trivia question: which artist had number-one singles in the fifties, sixties and seventies? I’ll give you a clue – it’s someone who is Always on the Mind of many ladies out there!’ The announcer’s voice segued into the opening bars of a song and Tommy went over to the fridge. It was full of lemonade, and nothing else. He went back to the workbench. A suitcase stood in the shadowy space underneath it, in front of what appeared to be some other dusty box-shaped items. He would come back to them. He opened all the drawers, sifting through their contents. Screwdrivers, paintbrushes with congealed paint gluing the bristles into quill-like points, instruction sheets for the models, bubble wrap, tweezers, pencils, putty. Nothing of interest. But when he opened the last drawer, closest to the floor, he hit the jackpot. The first thing he pulled out was a photocopy of a Read-a-thon certificate Sarah had got in year four. She had read the most books out of anyone in their year. Tommy pulled out the next piece of paper. Another certificate, from Sports Day. Participation. In year five. Tommy smiled. That was probably the last time Sarah had participated in sports of any variety. Beneath that was a stack of drawings, wobbly stick figures and finger paintings. There were spelling tests, reading exercises, pages and pages of Sarah learning to write in cursive. Then her Pen Licence. A feather and a rock. A skipping rope. And photos. Possibly hundreds of photos.
He took out a handful, all bordered in white with the telltale yellowish haze of seventies exposures on them, and spread them out on the workbench. They were pictures of a toddler, a little girl. She had rosy cheeks and was wearing a striped yellow sundress with a voluminous skirt over a nappy. She had on navy blue sandals and held a fistful of grass out to the photographer, smiling. She was very fair-haired but her white eyebrows were recognisably thick above her eyes, which were a startling greenish-blue. He turned the photo over. ‘Sarah, 22 months,’ it said. Tommy felt like he might be sick.
He rifled through the rest of the photos, his dread increasing as he flipped them over one by one. Every picture was of Sarah. In one of them, she was lifting her chubby fist to her mouth and an adult’s hand was reaching into the frame to grab her wrist, and she was frowning mightily, a blade of grass pasted to her cheek. In another bundle with a rubber band around them, Sarah was older, maybe six or seven. She wore a school uniform and her hair, dark now, hung loose around her shoulders. The photo was taken from some distance, and Sarah did not look directly into the camera, but you could still see the shadowy darkness around her eyes and the thinness of the spindly arms poking out from the sleeves of the uniform. The next photo showed her standing on a chair at the kitchen sink. In the next she was curled up on the couch in the lounge room of the Vale house, asleep in the blue glow of the television. In the backyard; in the park; coming out of a shop with Susannah, looking older now, the photo taken maybe only a year ago. Susannah was smoking and looking away and Sarah held her by the arm. At the bottom of the pack was a stiff piece of board, like a page from an album, with plastic slips for photos. Four of the five slots were filled with photos of Susannah, heavily pregnant. Tommy dropped the page like it was burning his fingers. He shoved it back into the drawer with all the other photos, and pushed the drawer hard with the heel of his hand to close it, but it wouldn’t shut. He jammed his hand into it and pushed down the photos, finally slamming it shut with a loud bang as the drawer met its frame. A dog started barking somewhere in the house, an angry, nervous bark, the sound of an animal responding from a primal instinct – intruder on my territory.
Shit.
Tommy had never seen a dog with the Knights before; he didn’t even know they had one. Where had it been when he had checked the house for exit points? He had no idea what type of dog this was, but it sounded big. He didn’t like dogs. There were a lot of wild ones in the bush around these parts, savage animals, all at least partly dingo. They had got to his chickens more times than he could count and he had seen too many other animals in the bush laid to waste at their jaws to ever really like them. He understood them, and respected them from a distance, but was careful never to get too close. Even these domesticated breeds, you never knew. An animal was an animal, and when provoked would respond like one. He would not have used the word scared to describe how he felt about them, but when he heard the click of the dog’s claws on the floorboards above him, prowling in search of the source of the sound, he felt like he was going to lose control of his bowels. He calculated that he had about ten seconds to get out of there before the creature found him. He looked around the room one last time. There was more he hadn’t seen – but he had seen enough.
He climbed the stairs in four big bounds and was out the laundry door and back onto the street in seconds, running and not looking back. Once he was a few hundred metres away, he stopped, and for the second time that morning bent over, panting, with his hands on his knees. He scanned the street behind him, but the dog hadn’t followed. He thought of the photos, and wished he’d taken one with him. Or, better still, taken all of them, got them out of that drawer in Graham Knight’s basement. Out of his filthy reach and out from under his perverse gaze. Tommy couldn’t quite believe what he had seen down there. It was exactly the kind of proof he’d been looking for, but it made him feel sick. That drawer, it was like a shrine or something. A secret shrine. Where and how did he get all of that stuff? He must have stolen it from Susannah. Now that Tommy knew what Graham was capable of (per favore, Maria), it chilled him down to his very centre. He should have listened when Sarah said Graham was always around, always watching her. He should have done something, he should have stopped him. At the very least, he should have seen it himself and started watching Graham a long time ago. The photos in that drawer spanned her lifetime. Probably Graham had been planning this for years. He had been nice to Sarah to suck up to Susannah, but also to make Sarah trust him. So that when the time came, she would do as he said. But Sarah didn’t trust anyone very easily, and she didn’t often do what anyone said either. Tommy knew she would have put up a good fight, at least.
There was coincidence, and there was fact. There was interest, and there was obsession. Sometimes one could be mistaken for the other; the boundaries between them could be unclear. But sometimes the differences between them were huge, great canyons of difference. This was one of those times. Those photos sent Graham right to the obsession end of the spectrum, and it made Tommy feel ill. But it also reignited a glimmer of hope inside him. This was the confirmation he’d been looking for. This man seemed to have hardly let Sarah out of his sight her whole life. Wherever she went, whatever she did, he had been there, watching, documenting it. So it followed that, on the day she went missing, he would have witnessed whatever it was that unfolded by the creek before she vanished, or even – Tommy felt goosebumps rise on his arms – been the one who made her disappear.
chapter thirty-nine
I’ve been thinking a lot about time. About instants, moments as long as the head of a pin is wide, and how they can change everything. In the blink of an eye, what was possible is possible no longer. Breathe in and something huge can happen, a word uttered, a step taken back, a hand slipping on a wheel, a fraction of an inch to the left, a few millimetres higher, a strand of hair falling in front of your eye. When you breathe out, the world is a different place. I’ve been trying to compile a list of pivotal moments. Knowing where to start is hard, because every moment has a series of moments that led to it. And most important moments don’t feel important at the time. They feel no different to the moments that are meaningless.
The summer holidays when I turned fourteen was when I realised just how long his dad was going away for. It had been a night or two at most for a few years, but now it was turning into weeks. He was away a lot more than he was there. They had moved off their farm by then, and both of them felt the loss. ‘Like living in a chicken coop,’ Tommy’
s father complained about their new quarter-acre block. ‘A man can’t move in here lest he hit a bloody wall or a fence. Hardly enough space to swing a cat.’ And so he left. The first time his dad was away for more than a week, Tommy told Sergeant Aramore, who shipped him off to the Corpus Christi home in Welonga, a facility for wards of the state and juvenile delinquents. Eventually his dad got home and bailed him out, but it was a long and lonely stretch for me, and I’m sure an even longer one for Tommy. He never told me exactly what happened during his time at the home; all he said was that it was a bad place and I should try to stay clear of it. I didn’t doubt him. Tommy never said things he didn’t mean. And he never spoke to Sergeant Aramore again.
Those holidays were hot and dry. Banville made the Sydney news as the ‘epicentre of the drought crisis’ and tourists were scarce. Nobody wanted to visit the epicentre of any crisis on their holidays. The dole queue at the Welonga Family Assistance Office snaked outside and around the corner. You could have fried an egg on the corrugated-iron roof of the railway station, but the chickens were probably too hot to lay. Tills and plates were nearing empty, and tempers were stretched to breaking point. The Cunninghams weren’t speaking to the Belveridges after the Belveridges refused to extend their account at the feed and grain store and the Van Heutsens weren’t speaking to anyone after someone left their gate open and all the cows wandered out. Or were escorted out, if you asked them. I couldn’t remember when it had last rained.
The farmers sat in the pub, their faces pinched and haggard. Their wives congregated in the CWA meeting rooms or the Lions Opportunity Shop kitchen, or sat on each other’s verandahs, reusing teabags and making dresses out of curtains while the younger kids played under the sprinkler. The older kids hung around outside the Li family’s fish and chip shop, where they had recently installed two arcade games, Space Invaders and Galaxia. They cost twenty cents a play, but Simon Wolfe had soldered a bunch of fake coins by melting down metal bolts at the mechanic’s to use instead, and the Lis hadn’t twigged yet that nobody was actually paying.
There were heaps of kids hanging around at the fish and chip shop on the Friday after Christmas, the lucky (richer) ones tooling around on new bikes or playing with remote-controlled cars, wearing fluorescent Piping Hot shirts still creased from their factory folds. Tommy and I had passed the morning at the creek and now were walking in circuits past the shop, pretending to be greatly preoccupied with our own business. In a way, we were. I wanted to catch a glimpse of Antonio Palvera, Sal D’Angelo’s cousin who had recently moved to Banville. He wore tight jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up on his first day of school because he didn’t have a uniform yet, and it caused such a stir among the girls that all of the boys started wearing tight jeans and white shirts too, even on the hottest days, and gelling back their fringes like Antonio did. Tommy had no interest in Antonio Palvera but there was something else that held his interest. Cameron Wolfe had got an air rifle for Christmas from an uncle in Sydney, and was showing off with it, jumping around like an idiot, ducking behind the plastic table outside the shop and pretending to fire at invisible enemies. The air rifle was designed to look just like a regular rifle and shot metal slugs the size of a little toenail, albeit with barely enough force to knock the head off a flower. If it was pointed at your chest you would lose your lunch, though. Tommy thought it was magnificent.
Antonio was sitting on one of the plastic chairs outside the shop, reading a surfing magazine, but I could hardly see him through the throng of girls surrounding him like bodyguards. Marjorie Wilkinson was the worst, shrieking and diving into Antonio’s lap whenever Cameron came near her with his air rifle. She had her hair gathered into a side ponytail and was wearing denim cut-offs and an off-the-shoulder blouse that looked suspiciously like one of my mother’s. Clothesline shopping was all the rage those holidays, too.
‘I want that air rifle,’ Tommy said as we passed the shop on our fifth lap that morning. ‘I need that air rifle.’
‘Hmmm?’ I wasn’t really listening. Antonio lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring and Marjorie swooned. So did I.
‘Sarah! Earth to Sarah!’ Tommy waved his hands in front of my face.
‘What?’ God, it was so hot. Antonio looked so comfortable, like he couldn’t even feel it. The smell of the fryers in the fish and chip shop was making me hungry, but I didn’t have any money. Looking at Marjorie’s tight cut-offs and springy ponytail, I felt silly and juvenile in my shorty overalls and messy plait. I sat down on the edge of the gutter outside the hardware store and picked at the dead grass around my sandals. I was never going to be cool. It was probably time I accepted it.
Tommy crossed his arms. ‘You haven’t heard anything I’ve said this morning. All holidays, even! All you want to do is hang around here and mope about not being pop-u-laarrrr.’
I crossed my arms too. ‘I have so been listening. You said you want the air rifle.’
‘I do. I need it. And I’d be good at shooting, too. I bet Cameron couldn’t even hit a frog in a barrel,’ Tommy said, scornful. He kicked at an empty Coke bottle on the road.
‘Well, too bad. He wouldn’t even let you lay a finger on it.’
‘Yeah, well, Mr Fancy-Pants Italiano wouldn’t even let you lay a finger on him.’
‘Shut up.’ I stuck my lower lip out and blew my hair off my forehead, feeling my cheeks burn red.
‘You shut up!’ Tommy pushed me and I fell sideways onto the footpath, grazing my elbow. It stung so much it brought tears to my eyes. I spat on my hand and wiped the dirt off it. Across the road, Marjorie pointed at me and laughed like a kookaburra. Antonio didn’t look up from his magazine. Bloody Tommy. He wasn’t helping my cause. When your mum was the town prostitute and your best friend was a boy who collected animal scat to identify it for fun, popular wasn’t even on the radar. But Tommy was about the only friend I had, and he was about to do something stupid, I just knew it. He always did this: just got an idea and ran with it, not thinking it through. He made up his mind about things and, once he’d decided, he couldn’t be told otherwise. Stubborn as a mule, his dad said. I sighed. Tommy was right, though, I hadn’t been listening to him. I could be a pretty shit friend. I stood up, brushed off the seat of my overalls and trudged across the road.
Tommy was in the centre of a circle of Cameron and his mates, and they were laughing at him.
‘No, really,’ he was saying.
Cameron shook his head at him and then noticed me hovering in the background. ‘Sarah Vale.’
I nodded briefly. ‘Cameron.’
‘What do you want? Wait, I know already. You’re here to give me my freebie. You want my body.’
He ran his hands over his chest and smiled suggestively like a man in an aftershave ad.
‘About as much as I want the plague.’
His mates snickered and Cameron’s smile faded. ‘Did you know your little friend here is a gambling man?’ He nodded at Tommy.
‘A gambling man?’
‘Yep. Been playing with rubbish again. Reckons he can tell us when that thing will wash up at the bridge down near the steel plant.’ Cameron pointed at the empty Coke bottle that Tommy had been kicking along the road. ‘Wants to bet my air rifle that he can name the day it’ll be there by, the stupid dickhead. Acting like he’s got a crystal ball.’
I stepped a little closer to Cameron, feeling brave in the middle of the street like that with everyone around. ‘Well at least he’s got a ball.’ It worked if you didn’t think about it.
Cameron’s mates drew in their breaths. ‘Ooohhhhhh!’ They looked at me and covered their mouths with their hands. I edged away a bit. Cameron’s face darkened. ‘I got balls, Vale. Want to feel ’em?’
‘No need. Just agree to his bet, Cameron, then we’ll know for sure. What are you scared of?’
I glanced at Tommy and saw that he was grinning. I hoped fervently that he knew what he was talking about. Antonio Palvera wandered over to where we stood, and my h
ands shook a little. But then, to my surprise, Cameron agreed. Antonio’s presence had sealed the deal, I realised later. Cameron couldn’t be made to look like a coward in front of him. The bet was organised with the help of an executor, Graham Knight, the nearest adult, who had been looking through the postcards in the stand outside the newsagents. He would make sure all ends of the bargain were fulfilled. Cameron began to look decidedly less smug as the arrangements were made and Tommy decidedly more so. We all trooped down to the creek and Tommy launched the bottle from the bank. Graham marked the spot on the bank with a leaf buttressed to a twig and poked into a cairn of rocks.
‘I’ll see you on Tuesday,’ Tommy called out to Cameron as he walked back out through the bush. ‘For collection of my winnings.’
‘I’ll see you on Tuesday to watch you cry like baby when you lose,’ Salvatore D’Angelo called back, and pulled down the back of his waistband to display one arse cheek to us as he walked. The rest of the boys all laughed and jeered, but Cameron, his head down and shoulders hunched, said nothing.
Later, we went back to Tommy’s house. I hadn’t been there for a couple of weeks, and the place was a mess. Books and papers were piled up all over the kitchen table, dirty dishes crowded the sink and lines of ants marched in black scrawls all over the benches. Mesh wings of cobwebs stretched across the corners of the ceiling. A possum huddled under a chair on the verandah, eating a loaf of bread.
‘Hey, that was mine,’ Tommy said.
I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘Tommy, how long’s your dad been gone for?’
He shrugged, and looked around as if he’d only just noticed the mess. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Got some work somewhere, I s’pose. He’ll be back soon.’
‘But –’
He was already walking away down the dark hallway. ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ he called. ‘Wait there.’
The Vale Girl Page 21
