by Anna George
He shifted his focus, helped himself to a cracker. ‘This goat’s cheese is first class,’ he said. ‘It’s from a mate in Red Hill.’
She hadn’t touched it. ‘I . . . ah . . . prefer the semi-dried tomatoes,’ she said. ‘Ever since I backpacked around India, I can smell the goats in the cheese.’
‘India, eh? Fair enough.’
As they collapsed into silence, her will to share faded.
A faint cough travelled from the guest wing. Clearly not that of a newborn. But Sal did not react. Perhaps he already suspected something? Had he seen Jessie? The girl coughed again and Sal took a sip of his water. She could segue now. Tell him about the girl. Then she would have to act. Her hand would be forced . . . But she couldn’t bring herself to raise the topic. Perhaps the problem didn’t lie with his potential counsel, after all.
It was much easier to do something illicit out of sight, she realised. Unseen, one could avoid looking at oneself.
‘Excuse me for a moment,’ she said.
Centred in the bed, Jessie was asleep, clad in her new pyjamas. She looked like a different creature to the one who’d appeared two days ago at the foreshore. Her hair was in two slim pigtails. The purple smudges under her eyes were receding, and the marks on her arms were fading. She was filling out, getting pinker, taller. Overnight. As if children truly did grow in spurts, in their sleep. Whatever Neve was doing with this girl, it wasn’t harming her. More of the same and she would thrive . . . and not merely, Neve realised, because Jessie was warm and safe, clean and fed.
Neve felt a burst of love. She leant down and kissed the small forehead. The girl’s skin was like parchment and surprisingly cool. Neve raised the doona. Children were so precious and so easy to love. It was mind-boggling that anyone would risk losing them. And she couldn’t.
At the contact, Jessie wriggled closer, like a dog creeping nearer the fire. Close but not touching. Jessie’s feet, shoe-clad, were protruding from beneath the doona. One day, thought Neve, Cliff will be Jessie’s age. Able to speak. Fun. And far, far less needy. That insight was, she realised, Jessie’s gift to her. One of many.
‘My hands are happy,’ Jessie whispered.
‘Oh, that’s good.’ Neve sniffed, swatting at her cheeks.
Jessie peered into Neve’s face, as if into a well.
‘Jessie . . .’ said Neve. ‘I want to help you. Any way I can, okay?’
Jessie’s brow was corrugated with sleep and worry. ‘Can I stay here, with you, for keeps?’
Neve had a powerful realisation. The complete silence around Jessie’s disappearance meant the girl had no one else in the world to care for her. Effectively, she’d been abandoned.
This was one of those moments in a life that changes everything. If Neve took the right course now – yes, as distinct from a legal one – she and Jessie need never be separated. With some careful navigation, she could take Jessie to school and teach her to ride horses, meet her first boyfriend and escort her to university. Jessie could be the daughter she’d never otherwise have. Once she’d wrangled the necessary paperwork, she could fly her to meet her father in Brazil. They could settle in Rio, if they wished! One day, she could be the grandmother of Jessie’s girls.
‘I don’t see why not.’
Jessie’s face broke into a smile. ‘Good.’
Her smile took in her new shoes, which were on the wrong feet.
When she returned from Jessie’s room, Neve felt almost light-headed with clarity. Finally, a decision! She smiled at Sal, who was readying the meal. Though, ultimately, she’d not sought his advice, his presence had done it: pushed her.
‘Do you have a dog?’ he asked.
‘No, why?’
‘I heard a whistle.’
Oh no. Surely not. With the remote, she raised the sequence of blinds and walked to the glass, while Sal turned down the music. Below, a faint light bobbed, around 20 metres away, too close to her fenceline to be on the beach.
‘I’m a cat person, myself,’ said Sal, watching her carefully. ‘“God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger”.’
‘Oh . . .’ she said. ‘Who said it?’
‘My mum.’ He smiled. ‘Well, before her some French vet.’
‘Ah.’
Below, the torchlight wavered and leapt like a firefly.
He considered the garden below, and then her face. ‘Are you okay?’
That was the second time he’d asked. She wondered whether to excuse herself again, to calm down, and investigate. But surely the mother wasn’t out there, rummaging about in the dark? After all this time . . . And not with the house illuminated like a light-house; and, up by the road, a run of spotlights delineating the path to the front door! She hesitated over a panel of switches. With one gesture, she could transform her garden into a spectacle of light, reveal its every nook. Her finger lingered on the smooth button.
‘Probably a couple of teenagers or dog walkers.’ Sipping his water, he watched her over the rim of his glass.
Her pulse was fizzing in her temple. ‘Yes. Probably.’
For the sheerest second, in a finger of yellow light, Neve saw a figure, slight, pale and female. Then the light went out.
Neve’s hands shook, as she closed the blind and restored the music.
Unprompted, graciously, Sal served dinner. Sitting side by side felt like they were travelling in a car and the imperative to speak, or make eye contact, didn’t apply. And Neve was glad. No further noise came from outside or from Jessie. Neve sat, eating too fast, and waiting – for a rap at her door or a stone at her window. She sat, daring the woman to act.
‘I almost forgot,’ said Sal, bashfully. ‘You had a visitor today.’ He produced the card from his pocket and put it on the bench. ‘He said he’d come back.’
She squinted at his offering.
‘Ah . . . He did.’
As Sal busied himself with the salad, she heard another whistle. Her teeth bit into her fork.
When he looked up at her again, his face was so open, she guessed he hadn’t heard the noise. He was waiting for more information.
‘That was Cliff’s dad – and his wife.’
She tried to shrug.
‘I figured.’
They ate. She tried to let the pause linger but was afraid of what the silence might yield. ‘When I met him, they were separated. He’d recently moved to Melbourne. But he spent a lot of time in Sydney. He told me they were friends and always would be; perhaps they were, until they weren’t.’
She gave a quick laugh. Why was she telling him so much?
‘Right.’
Quickly, she was finished. A moment later, he rose and stacked their bowls. ‘According to Ghandi, happiness occurs when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.’
Startled, she swung her gaze to his. She ran his words through her mind.
She called what he described ‘living with integrity’. It sounded so simple but so few people managed it.
‘I used to have integrity.’ She laughed, became giggly. Sal frowned, as he paused over her dishwasher. Clearly he didn’t get the joke. But she didn’t intend to elaborate.
‘Let me help,’ she said, sobering.
She rose, conscious her focus had shifted from outside her house to inside it again, and to him. He did look surprisingly good in her kitchen.
He put the parmesan in the fridge and turned to pass her something. ‘Here – tomatoes shouldn’t be in the cold; pop them in a bowl on the bench.’
She took the smooth, cold fruit from his warm hands. They stood, facing each other. Her eye flickered to the oven clock. It was almost eleven and Cliff hadn’t woken. Newly alert, she felt enlivened. Bold. She could see his pulse in his neck. She thought to raise her cool fingertip to its steady beat. She hadn’t been so close to a man in months. Hadn’t had sex since midway through her pregnancy. Thanks to Jessie, she wasn’t lonely any more. But she was hungry – for adult intimacy. The
touch of fully grown warm hands. She reached for his face and kissed him on the lips. When he didn’t respond, she kissed him again. After a long moment’s hesitation, he let himself yield.
Twenty minutes later, she was barely conscious of her clashing underwear – the utilitarian maternity bra and the green lacy knickers – or her spongy flesh. She was tempted to laugh. Look at me! She felt like a child, riding her bike with no hands, showing off to her mother. Look at me! As she flung off her top, she could smell breast milk. But, on the couch, Sal seemed unconcerned if more conservative, still in his jeans and t-shirt. Twists of her clothing and his jumper surrounded them. Their lovemaking was progressing but not quite at her flat gallop. Then, abruptly, Sal came to a halt like a horse refusing a jump.
Their foreheads bumped.
‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered.
He was balanced on top of her, his body making a temporary structure above hers.
Was it her post-baby body? Had pregnancy and the birth done more damage to her pelvic floor than she’d gleaned? And how could he tell? They hadn’t made it that far. He cocked his head.
‘Is there something in the water?’ she said. ‘This is the second time this week for me.’
Startled, he looked at her and she grinned. ‘A joke.’
Despite himself, he laughed.
Limb by limb, he extracted himself from around her. He flopped onto his back and averted his eyes. A minute or so passed before he spoke. ‘There’s no rush, is there?’ he asked.
‘Well, no.’
He nodded, more to himself than her, then sighed.
‘My mum died eight weeks ago,’ he whispered, ‘I can’t stop thinking about her . . .’ Behind his ruddy features she could map pain. She stroked his forearm, tracing its veins.
‘Oh.’ She’d intuited he’d been about to say something else. Something about her? She sobered. He rolled onto his side, his body a low wall by hers. After a moment, he said, ‘My brothers are getting on with their lives, their children . . . But . . .’
‘You can’t let her go?’
‘I guess not.’
‘It’s early days,’ she said. ‘But, well, you might never, not completely.’
The drawstring of tension eased in his face. They considered each other anew.
‘Can I tell you something?’ he said.
She held her breath. Perhaps he had seen Jessie, after all. ‘Of course.’
‘Some days I swear I can feel her around me.’
‘Oh.’ Her exposed skin cooled but, somewhat inappropriately, she wanted to laugh again. Perhaps she was drunk.
‘We’re lapsed Catholics but Mum believed in an afterlife. I don’t, mind. But . . . It’s like she’s trying to make a point . . . or tell me something . . . I’d rather she fronted up and said what she had to.’
‘Oh . . . okay.’
‘’Course then my doctor would say I was imagining things. Seeing a loved one, after they’ve passed, is apparently fairly common. Likewise talking to them, in your head.’
He held her gaze and smiled. But she didn’t; suddenly, she felt very sober. Grief was complex, and she was no expert but she understood how mystifying it could be. After her mother had died, she’d had such vivid dreams of her – laughing and dancing – Neve was certain they’d been together. Perhaps misinterpreting her silence, he sat up.
‘When I was little, after Mum died,’ she said, ‘I dreamt of her day and night.’ She rested her palm on his shoulder. ‘I’d wake up convinced she’d been playing with me, certain of it, actually, but . . .’
She shrugged. Only her father knew about these dreams. But they upset him. After a while, she stopped telling him and they faded.
When Sal turned to her his eyes were moist. To her dismay, she was ambushed then by a tear. She felt like she’d become a swinging pendulum. Giddy.
He wiped her cheek with his battered thumb.
‘I don’t believe in an afterlife either,’ she whispered, ‘but I’m open to persuasion.’
‘You and me both. I’ll keep you posted.’
He kissed her on the ear as they sat together quietly.
After a while, he cleared his throat then tugged on his jumper. His muscled body, though short, was beautifully proportioned. And very, very different to Kris’s.
‘Do you reckon the disciples seeing Jesus was really a delusion, from grief?’ he said.
‘That’s a curly question for an agnostic,’ she said.
He waited, genuinely interested in an answer, so she tried to distil her thoughts.
‘But . . . if I saw my mother again, I wouldn’t dwell on the how or the why.’ She paused; after Charm’s disappearance, she’d learnt the futility of needing to know the unknowable. She smiled. ‘I’d simply take it with both hands, as a gift.’
33
As much as it gutted Leah to admit, Tayla wasn’t on the woman’s property or any of her neighbours’. It felt like she’d searched under every bush and behind every rock. She’d rummaged in more sheds and climbed a bunch of walls. But there was no sign of her girl; no sign of a new hole or a cubby of branches. After hours of silent hunting, Leah stumbled through a beachside gate onto the sand and kept going. She ran without looking back, without looking forward. In the freezing air, she couldn’t feel her fingertips or her toes or her nose. But she’d made a decision. No matter what, she couldn’t go another day of lying to the other kids, of telling them that Tayla was with Suzy (and her bastard of a husband) in Rosebud. Of not calling the cops – no matter how much it might cost her. It wasn’t right what she was doing, and it wasn’t working.
The waves were loud, drowning her thoughts, echoing in her head. Further down the beach, Kelly was hunting in the weed. The mounds were built up even higher than on Thursday and dead fish and birds were scattered in the stinking stuff. Kelly was kicking a clump of it. She was angry too, Leah supposed, at herself. Phil. But, as Leah climbed closer, Kelly collapsed onto her knees and began to dig. Leah pointed her torch at the matted mound. A scrap of fabric caught the light. Pink, faded, familiar.
Leah sank into the weed and pulled at the ballet flat. The shoe came out like a splinter and Leah moaned as if it had come from her. Then in a frenzy, she began to dig. Weed flew in the air around her. Leah and Kelly dug until their fingers tore. They dug until they couldn’t smell the dead fish and the brine any more. They dug until that mound of weed was flat.
Empty handed, exasperated, Leah stopped. She listened to the waves, for a long time, until she heard a whisper.
‘Mummy?’
Leah rose, staggering towards the voice. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’
Leah crawled, hunting like a wild thing in the weed.
‘What?’ said Kelly. ‘What did you hear? Talk to me!’
‘She called me,’ said Leah.
‘Mummy, my head is hurting.’
‘Did you hear that!’
‘What? No . . .’
Kelly stood, frowning, listening, as Leah scrambled and dug. Tears swamped her eyes and she swiped at them with the back of her hand. ‘Tayla?’
Leah’s digging grew wilder. She dug, knowing in her heart, that digging towards the voice made no sense. But she kept at it. She dug until, eventually, her fingers found fabric again. Heavy with seawater and thick with sand. Scraping off the grime, she recognized the clothing as a child’s. A windcheater! With a patch under the arm. She checked the name printed on the tag, but by then she already knew. In the trembling torchlight, she read it aloud: ‘Tayla Chalmers.’
Leah sat back on her haunches and howled.
34
Sal was moments away from disappearing into the night. But Neve wasn’t ready to be alone again with sleeping children and her feeding regime, such as it was. She and her house felt so altered by his presence. Besides, the people in her garden might not have left and, sooner not later, she wanted to tell him about Jessie. Goosy in her t-shirt, she retrieved his jacket from the couch. The nigh
t felt distinctly unfinished.
‘Hey . . .’
He was pulling on a boot, as she cast his jacket across his shoulder. She felt as though she was about to roll a boulder down a hill.
‘On Friday morning, a child appeared in my garden. And then in the house,’ she said. ‘And . . . I’ve kept her, ever since.’
He paused and his mouth hung open, as though its hinge were broken. It sounded worse, spoken aloud. Ludicrous. And selfish.
Neve added, ‘She’s four or five.’
With one shoe on, Sal cast about the foyer as if a child was about to materialise and wreak havoc.
‘Where is she?’
‘Now? In bed, or the wardrobe.’
A flash of anger coloured the confusion on his face.
‘I was going to tell you, earlier . . . I thought you might know her —’
Incredulous, he shook his head. ‘What do you mean, “appeared”? Where are her parents? They must be beside themselves.’
She told a white lie. ‘The last time I saw the mother she was reversing into my wall.’
He stared at her as he tugged on his second boot. His jacket fell from across his shoulder to the floor.
‘She left her daughter in the cold, on her own, barely dressed!’
He stood to his full height. ‘But the mother . . . Is she okay?’
‘I don’t know,’ she lied again. ‘This is about the child, not the mother!’ Her tone was haughty. She regretted it as soon as the steely shadow crossed his face.
She knotted her arms in front of her. Why wasn’t he getting it? The mother could fend for herself, or not. It was up to her. People didn’t care about adults the way they did children. Children were unformed. Blameless. Vulnerable. You couldn’t deny that they needed to be protected. And that had been her intention. She cared about the child, who was happy now, getting the love she deserved. Safe.
‘We’ve been making pancakes. Reading books. Shopping.’ She laughed. ‘I bought her some new clothes, new shoes; she loves them.’ She felt as if she was describing a glorious fairy she’d found in the garden.
‘Haven’t you called, I don’t know, the authorities . . . the police?’ Inexplicably he was whispering.
