‘You will be in shock for a while, it’s not the easiest…’ she continued speaking when she didn’t get a response from the other end of the line, but before long, her voice trailed away into more silence. She was suddenly desperate to get off the phone. She wanted to say it wasn’t their fault but the pain of it all, was too much to bear. All the old pain resurfaced, and felt as raw as though it was yesterday when they came to her with Annabelle’s pink backpack, and confessed she’d been with them before she disappeared. She knew it wasn’t their fault but she still wanted to lash out and blame someone, for no other reason than to shift the pain from herself and onto someone else.
Eventually John spoke, his voice thick with emotion. ‘We will call you back,’ he said. ‘Thanks for letting us know, hey? We’re really sorry. Sorrier than we could ever say.’
John and Lins sat stunned on the couch after Lee hung up, the distant beep beep beep of the phone they’d dropped in their laps the only sound in the room. Their first instinct was to get in the car and drive to Queensland to see Lee, casserole in hand. But they backed off that idea, thinking she might need her own space right now.
It didn’t feel anything like when someone died suddenly, or after a long battle with illness. With those everyday deaths you cooked a casserole, cake or slice, dropped it round, washed up, tidied up and did your best to provide comforting words and mop up the tears. What do you do when the death was so long ago? When everyone had already accepted she was dead and the news about how and when it happened was just confirmation of the grieving they’d already been through?
Before long their lounge room filled with people, as it tended to do. John and Lins soaked up the noise and chaos around them. There would be plenty of conversation later in bed as they snuggled in the dark, up close, trying to process this news. In the dark they would hold each other for comfort, as they grieved for Annabelle. Wishing they hadn’t missed the signs before she disappeared. They didn’t realise at the time that she was so vulnerable. She was good at telling them what they wanted to hear. Because of that, they didn’t see what was bubbling beneath the surface and missed all the signs. Every single one of them.
Now, confronted with this reality, they weren’t sure whether it was better to know, or not to know. In your imagination, your mind goes to the darkest of places to what could have happened, what may have happened, or what probably happened. Was it better to imagine the worst or know the worst?
Later, when pressed, John and Lins were able to answer that question. Having those thoughts confirmed was far worse than thinking them in the first place.
CHAPTER 53
Delayed farewell
It was taking a lot of organising, and it certainly wasn’t easy. Sara felt it was the right thing to do, and she wanted to be involved. Annabelle was her best friend in the whole world but she hadn’t been there when Annabelle needed her most. She couldn’t worry about that now, she couldn’t change the past, but she still struggled to completely erase the would’ves, could’ves and should’ves.
But now, there was a way to honour Annabelle’s memory, to get everybody in her life together and celebrate her in the way they hadn’t been able to for all this time. Sara didn’t want to call it a funeral, or make it like a funeral, even though they now had bones to bury in the earth. In her conversations with Lee, she knew Lee didn’t want that either.
This was foreign territory for all of them. What was the right thing to do when your missing person had been missing for so long, and you’d been living in limbo land for all these years and never said a proper goodbye? What sort of ceremony should it be? Sitting around Lee’s kitchen table, they went around in circles.
‘I don’t have the energy for it. And what would we do? It feels so wrong to have a funeral, in a church,’ Lee said.
Sara tried to be patient. ‘It can be anything you want it to be, Lee.’
‘I don’t understand. What do you mean? Anything I want it to be?’
‘Well, we could have something in the garden. Or we could go to Kings Cross, and have a picnic under the El Alamein fountain.’
Lee shuddered. ‘I bloody well won’t go to Kings Cross and stand under the El Alamein fountain and have a picnic. Why would I do that? I don’t want to be reminded of what she did, and where she went. The people she associated with, and the life she lived!’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Lee.’ Sara was frustrated and couldn’t bite her tongue. ‘How long ago is it now? Haven’t you dealt with that yet?’ She couldn’t help the words that spewed from her mouth.
Steph glared at Sara, feeling she had crossed the line. Sara glared back. ‘What, Mum? Aren’t I just speaking the truth? No point dancing around it. We all know exactly what Annabelle did after she left here. It doesn’t matter! All that matters is that we know the truth. We’ve found Annabelle and now we can lay our memories of her to rest. We don’t have to get bogged down in all that… all that stuff of the past.’
Sara was struggling to find the right words, and paused to think about how she could make her point more clearly. ‘She’s still our Annabelle. You can’t tell me you didn’t do stupid things when you were a teenager you wish you hadn’t done!’
‘Yeah but I never bloody did anything like that,’ Lee said.
‘Oh, so now it’s time to get angry again? What’s the point of getting angry? We can’t get angry with Annabelle. She’s not here to defend herself! She made some mistakes and got herself into some terrible situations. Anger is not going to change a… Single. Fucking. Thing.’
Stony silence surrounded them.
That’s when Gordon walked in. ‘Ladies! How’s it goin’?’
Nobody answered. He turned on his heel and walked out again, realising his presence wasn’t welcome, or helpful.
Sara was frustrated that everybody was putting Annabelle’s final resting place in the too hard basket. Everybody wanted something different and nobody could agree. It was her dream to bring everyone together at the one place at the one time. Forget about history, regrets, anger and frustration and just remember Annabelle. Unfortunately life was nothing like an American sitcom where everyone argues and disagrees, and it looks like there’s no chance of them smoothing things over, let alone speak to each other again. But by the end of the half hour, everyone has said what they want to say, and relationships are resolved, everything is back on track and the drama of the past thirty minutes is forgotten.
Sara’s mind was in turmoil. She was backed into a corner and didn’t know how to move forward. Then she felt selfish. Selfish for making everyone feel so uncomfortable. But God dammit, it wasn’t about people’s level of comfort, this was about Annabelle.
She took a deep breath.
‘I’m sorry, Lee, I don’t mean to make this awful. I want to make this special. I want to make this about Annabelle. But she’s your daughter. So it’s your decision. I’ve gotta go.’
Sara pushed her chair out and left before she could say anything else. Maybe she’d just do her own thing. Forget about the big production. She was at her wits end in regards to the logistics – there was no road map for this. No rules for what you should and shouldn’t do. It wasn’t something that happened every single day. Every circumstance was so different for missing people. The rituals you took for granted were not a neat fit. This didn’t have the clear steps of when someone dies and the family organises a funeral, in consultation with a funeral director, and a minister or a civil celebrant.
Maybe Sara needed to accept she wouldn’t get everyone in the same room at the same time to honour Annabelle. She had no control over the way people acted and reacted, so maybe she just needed to stop trying to control things so much.
‘Fuck it,’ she said, slamming her hands on the steering wheel. She turned the stereo up full blast. It was a Roxette kind of day. A bit of nineties is what she needed to lift her out of this mood of frustration and despair.
Once this got dragged through the coroner’s court, it would be reported and sen
sationalised in the headlines of the day’s news. Journalists would describe Annabelle as a teenage runaway turned prostitute. They wouldn’t give her the air time or attention to detail this story needed. They would gloss over it. Pick out the most shocking details, and that would be it. But that couldn’t be it. There needed to be something more special for Annabelle. For the life she had lived before she ran away. The full, beautiful, fun-loving life.
Unbeknown to her Mum and Lee, Sara had visited Bessie and Christine in Melbourne. They were good people. Bessie gave Annabelle a roof over her head, and food in her belly, and Christine gave her friendship. They took care of her, loved her and laughed with her. She wanted them to be part of Annabelle’s farewell, but knew that Lee would not agree.
Sara pulled over, turned her music down and picked up the phone. The number she was calling was in her Favourites. She called it often.
‘Families and Friends of Missing Persons,’ a friendly voice answered on the fifth ring.
‘Hi, it’s Sara.’
‘Sara! Hello! How are you going?’
‘Terrible. Fucking terrible. I don’t know what to do or who to turn to.’
‘Tell me what’s happening.’
‘We are going around and around in circles. I’m trying to organise a memorial for Annabelle but nobody wants to work with me. Nobody wants to come together for this. Everyone is making it so frikkin’ hard. It should be simple. Straightforward. But it’s not.’
There was a soft, kind laugh.
‘You realise there are no rules for this. There is no rule book to follow. Every situation is different.’
‘I know that!’ Sara was exasperated. ‘But I want someone to tell me what is right. What is the right thing to do here? Tell me, what do I do?’
The lovely, kind laugh tinkled through the phone again.
‘You know you are the only one who can make that decision, don’t you? Nobody can tell you what is right and what is not right. One thing I will say though – you don’t need to be thinking about everyone else all the time. You need to think about what is right for you, and Annabelle. Nobody can tell you what to do in these situations, and there is no rule book. Every case is different and everyone reacts in completely different ways. Same story, different page.’
Sara breathed heavily through her nostrils. Then again. She’d turned the car off by now and had her head on the steering wheel, the phone pressed tightly against her ear.
‘I know, I know all that. I really do. But why is it still so hard?’
‘It will work out, okay, and Annabelle will appreciate that you have been so loving and caring, and so determined to do what’s right in remembering her. Just don’t have any regrets.’
‘I have so many regrets’
‘You can’t get yourself bogged down in those, you really can’t. You can’t change, or undo, what’s already been done.’
‘That’s no help to me.’ Sara raised her voice.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
Sara sighed. ‘Don’t apologise, I know what you’re saying.’
A long, comfortable silence followed.
‘You know I’m here, anytime you need to call.’
‘Yes I do, thank you. Phew, okay. I need to start afresh and look at it all over again,’ Sara said, trying to add brightness to her voice.
‘That’s a good idea. Maybe you could let go, let go of the little things. And remember, be kind to yourself.’
Sara smiled. Every conversation during the past several years, since she’d discovered the Families and Friends support network, ended the same way.
‘Thank you, you too. Thanks again for being on the other end of the phone, and for always, always understanding.’
Sara felt a whole lot better. She still didn’t really know what to do. Or how things would be all wrapped up. Maybe they never would wrap up neatly, and she would just have to accept it. Sometimes you just have to leave things swinging in the breeze. Like washing on a warm, windy day. Just swinging until it is dry, so someone can bring it inside and start fresh all over again.
CHAPTER 54
Guilt
It was exciting for a while. Hitting the open road. Starting afresh. He’d swapped his bike with a mate from way back. No questions asked. It was so easy to disappear without a trace, even in this modern age. He just did it.
He had plenty of cash stashed away from his days in The Cross. Cash he’d saved for a rainy day; the day he’d need to avoid bank accounts and traceable transactions. He had no phone, no fixed address, nothing to tie him down. The only thing he kept was his original licence, hidden in the hard-to-get-to hiding place in his wallet, ready to produce if absolutely necessary.
It was just him, his bike, and the open road. Firstly he travelled across Central Australia then moved up and down the West Coast, working on fishing trawlers. He concentrated on keeping his mind moving forwards, not back.
Nobody over here cared who he was, or where he’d come from. In fact, he’d invented a whole new story about himself, and it was so convincing that even he believed it some days. It was a whole different world in the west, where the ocean, land, sunrise and sunset were all back to front, and a vast, lonely desert separated him from the life he once knew.
Sometimes, early in the morning, he’d jolt awake. It was around the time the alcohol, which he’d drowned in to erase his thoughts and send him into a deep sleep, started to wear off. He’d wake up thirsty, so thirsty. Nothing could quench his thirst at this pre-dawn hour. It wasn’t only his thirst that kept him awake and tossing about, begging some unknown higher sense to give him the peace he didn’t deserve. It was impossible, in the darkness, to gloss over the guilt he felt for not telling the whole truth about Annabelle. For not giving answers he knew people wanted – and desperately needed.
He wondered what conclusions Louise had come to after she opened the diary, then got the map. He knew it wouldn’t take much for her to figure out he’d sent them. But what good were they without the rest of the missing pieces of the puzzle? Without Carl. The mysterious, murderous Carl.
At four am every morning Ant wrestled furiously with his conscience. He tried not to think about Annabelle’s family, who Christine had talked about while they were in Sydney. She told him how sad Annabelle’s mum, her family and her friends were. How they’d accepted she’d died, but how they couldn’t move on with their lives until they knew what, who, where, when, why and how.
Ant lay awake agonising over what he should do; he was the only one able to confirm the who and how. It was during one of these four a.m. sessions with his conscience he decided he couldn’t keep running. He decided that when the sun came up, he would cross the desert, the vast landscape of nothing, and do the right thing.
He figured he would probably end up doing time. He went over every angle and possible scenarios. This way, that way, up, down and around. By the time he crossed the desert he knew he’d have the story straight in his head.
He’d already sacrificed his relationship with Christine. She would have gone back to her life with Danny by now, picked up the broken pieces, and started again. The pain of losing her was necessary punishment for what he had done all those years ago, and the ensuing years where he didn’t come forward with the truth. He could have saved so much grief and heartache if only he’d done the right thing. But when you are so entrenched in the dark, back-alley deals of Kings Cross, everything is distorted. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to do the wrong thing than the right thing.
He watched the morning sun start to peek over the desert-like bush before packing his things and getting ready to leave. He rode with the sun in his eyes: squinting, blinking and trying to stay alert. He didn’t see the truck. Then it was there, looming large, right in front of him, as it blocked the sun. He felt sluggish, tired, and his reactions were slow. He watched, as if in a dream, as the dark shape got closer and bigger.
A loud HHHOOOONNNKKKK took ages to reach his ears. He saw the truck driver
try his best to move his four-trailer road train out of the path of his bike. In slow motion he let it all go, knowing he had no time to change the course his life was about to take. There would be no righting of wrongs. No birthday or Christmas celebrations. No long rides in the mountains. No cold, thirst-quenching beers at the end of a hot work day. No hellos. No goodbyes. In an instant Ant’s life, and all that it promised, was over.
…
People get killed on Australian roads every single day. Nearly every news bulletin starts with a car accident, where a single occupant, group of young people, or a whole family are killed instantly. You desensitise, and some days you might hardly notice.
Male, early forties, riding a black Harley, dies in a head-on collision with a truck on a notorious stretch of highway between Australia’s west and east.
CHAPTER 55
Dead end
At Bessie’s, it dawned a wet, wild and windy coastal day, and she had no intention of stepping outside her front door. Her day would involve a good book, followed by a Netflix binge and numerous cups of tea.
The weather in Melbourne was also dreary. As Christine walked from the train station to work, she had to concentrate hard so she didn’t poke someone’s eye out with her bright red tartan umbrella. This was not easy while she was also trying to stop the wind from turning it inside out.
She’d had this umbrella since just after leaving Bessie’s. She’d bought it one rainy Sydney day with the first honest pay check from her jewellery job. The button which opened it still worked, and she knew they didn’t make them like this anymore. So she held on extra tightly on these blustery days, so it didn’t end up in the bin at the foot of the railway station stairs.
It was a completely different day in Sydney. Sparkly, sunny and warm. Dazzling. Louise was in a great mood as she walked into the office. A whistling mood. It had been a cruisy ride to work on her pale blue Vespa; the traffic had been light and stress free. Everyone teased her for being so happy all the time. She didn’t care, she loved her job. She loved this place.
Found Page 21
