Six Minutes

by Petronella McGovern

  Choking on the chilli in the beef salad, I took a big gulp of champagne and shook my head quickly. Marty and I hadn’t talked about it again, but I knew he thought that once we’d settled in Merrigang it would be time for more. That was why he’d bought the huge house; he pictured it filled with children. In the early days, he’d said he wanted four gorgeous kids who looked just like me. I wanted two with the best parts of both of us—his easy charm and quick mind, my enthusiasm and interest in the world. And Bella did have the best of both of us, along with our stubborn determination. If a child could arrive fully formed at age ten, perhaps I’d have another, but I couldn’t go through the terror of pregnancy and birth again.

  ‘Did you hear about the baby left in the hot shed in America?’ Tara asked, heaping a spoonful of pad thai into her bowl. Before she could finish off the noodles completely, I reached for the plate, letting the conversation drift around me.

  Julia patted her bump protectively and brushed at her eyes.

  ‘The baby died,’ Tara continued. ‘What a dumb fuck. The father said he put the baby in the shade but it was inside a metal shed. Seriously, how could he not know about dehydration?’

  The plate of pad thai slipped out my hand and crashed against my wineglass. I managed to catch it before it fell, but the edge of the plate knocked a bowl of rice into my lap.

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’

  I concentrated on mopping up the rice with my napkin. Tara passed me hers, and as I took it my hand brushed against the wineglass; this time it tipped over. Thankfully, the wine spilt towards me and onto my tunic, rather than in the direction of Tara or Julia.

  Breathe. Keep it together.

  ‘I’ll just … I’ll just go to the bathroom,’ I stammered. ‘Which way is it?’

  I couldn’t look at them.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Tara said, standing up and moving around the table.

  No, not Tara. I turned quickly so they wouldn’t see the tears. ‘It’s this way.’ She weaved between the tables as I focused on the carpet.

  ‘I’ll be fine. I can see it now.’

  ‘That’s okay. I need to go to the loo anyway.’

  In the toilet cubicle, I brushed off the rice, blew my nose and dabbed at my eyes. I can’t even leave early because Tara is dropping me home. Taking my time, I hoped that Tara would finish and go back to the table without me, but I could hear her waiting by the sink. She was so quick to judge without bothering to learn the details. If Tara found out, would she behave the same way to me as those mothers had in Manchester?

  ‘Hey, isn’t it Bella’s birthday soon?’ she shouted over the toilet partition. ‘Are you going to have a party at your house? Zoe would love to celebrate with her.’

  When Tara finally dropped me home, I raced upstairs to check on Bella. She was stretched out in bed, her hair dark against the pink pillow. I knelt down next to her and listened to each sweet breath.

  That night, I thought that finally I could become like the other mums. Despite my tears in the restaurant toilet, I’d managed to leave Bella with her father and go out to dinner.

  But I was wrong. I was a bad mother; I always was, and always would be. I couldn’t protect my child.

  The news reporters were outside the playgroup fence, swarming like vultures. After filming Superintendent Milson, they swept their cameras back and forth across the cubbyhouse and the windows, searchlights aiming to freeze their prey in the glare. Marty and I stood against the wall, as far back as we could. Clenching my hands together, I tried to stop my arms shaking. It worked if I squeezed them tight but then my legs would shake. Sergeant Caruso had chosen three photos for the media—a close-up of Bella’s face; one with her wearing fairy wings, pretending to be Tinker Bell; and one flying down a blue slippery slide. In the last photo, her cheeks were flushed, her hair in pigtails and her face creased in pure joy. It had been taken only twenty metres from our house in a small community playground built since the fires. Had anyone checked that playground? I mentioned it to the detective and he was on his radio straight away.

  Marty’s mobile rang: Victoria. He’d spoken to his ex-wife earlier but Victoria had been at netball training. She sobbed down the phone about her little sister and asked if she could catch a bus to Canberra tonight.

  God, no.

  After he’d hung up, Marty moved me away from the others and whispered: ‘Did you tell the police about Victoria on the Father’s Day weekend?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  The two incidents were so different that I hadn’t connected them.

  ‘They know,’ he hissed.

  ‘I wouldn’t have told them.’

  ‘Well, how do they know?’

  Why was Marty worrying about Victoria? My mind whirled with Bella—the blankness of before had gone. Where could she be? Why did I go to the shops? Why hadn’t anyone seen her? Why would she leave playgroup? Was she safe somewhere? Was her arm hurting? I massaged my forehead and stared at Marty. With the worry etched into his face, he looked older than his forty-six years. He could be mistaken for Bella’s grandfather.

  I tried to reassemble my thoughts. ‘I told the mums about Victoria’s escapade at that playgroup dinner a few weeks ago. Maybe one of them told the detective.’

  ‘Why the fuck would you tell them?’ Marty loomed above me, his face ugly and red.

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘It makes us look like bad parents.’

  The guilt twisted inside me.

  ‘We are.’

  FOUR YEARS AGO

  MARTINANDLEXIEROSS.COM

  We HATE Martin and Lexie Ross

  More evidence is needed. If you know anything, post below.

  Ding Dong: They deserve to die!!!!!!!

  Bobbie: You can’t call them human. Pure evil.

  Mercy: They should fry, mothafuckas!!!! That’s what we do in Texas.

  Butterfly: What a sad excuse for a mother.

  Crimewatcher: Why aren’t they both in jail?!

  12

  TARA MURPHY

  AFTER THE DETECTIVES HAD LEFT, TARA HUGGED JOSH HARD. An unexpected twenty grand. His grandfather had sold off shares and wanted to give some of the profits to the family.

  Twenty grand. She could pay off one of the credit cards and re-enrol Zoe in swimming lessons. At a different school. The other place had been rude when she’d asked about a payment plan. Did she need to set some cash aside for the ENT specialist or would that go through Medicare? A new work suit. And new shoes. Maybe a new handbag—she’d been eyeing off Lexie’s brown leather Coach. What would that cost? Four hundred? Tara wouldn’t buy the same one exactly; she’d seen it in a nude colour where the logo stood out more. And a night at the Hyatt before she started work. A deluxe room with a balcony. Dinner at one of those fancy restaurants in the city, a taxi there and back so they could both have champagne. Pam could cope with the kids for one night. Or could they push for two nights and have a weekend escape up to the Gold Coast? Stay at the Sheraton. A school friend had gone there for a dirty weekend away last month and it had looked divine.

  Then her big birthday in July. Fuck, if she had to turn the ripe old age of thirty, she’d do it in style. And her friends would be expecting that from an events manager. She’d call on some of her contacts and see who could do the better deal—the swanky restaurant by the lake or the hip one in the cool New Acton precinct. Swanky or hip? Which one should she be feeling for thirty? Anyway, by then, she’d be earning again so they didn’t have to save for that.

  Josh interrupted her vision of hotels and parties.

  ‘Have we paid the electricity bill for last month, or did I see another reminder?’

  Shit, she’d meant to pay it but she’d been balancing out payments across the four credit cards and the electricity bill had dropped to the bottom priority.

  ‘I’ll pay it now.’

  ‘Are we using Visa or Mastercard at the moment?’

  ‘Visa,’ she answered quickly and took her wall
et with her to the computer in their bedroom.

  Josh stood in the doorframe watching her.

  ‘It’s okay, I’m doing it now. Can you heat up one of those sausages for Zoe? And Daisy can have a jar of that pumpkin and beef puree.’

  Tara waited until she heard the fridge open before she flipped through the four credit cards and took out the Virgin one. Josh had insisted they keep it to two credit cards, but he had no idea how hard it was to manage; he wasn’t the one paying the bills every month.

  With the computer on, she avoided looking at their bank account with its mortgage repayments and instead logged into her blog. She hadn’t had time to post lately—too busy with feeding Daisy and trying to get her to settle.

  She read through the post she’d written three weeks ago. About the dumb fuck who’d left his baby in the shed, where it had died from heatstroke. She’d ended with a question: Do you think we should make wannabe parents sit a test before they’re allowed to get pregnant? Six comments. That was all. Pathetic. And they were divided down the middle. Three felt sorry for the dumb fuck and three thought he deserved to be locked up forever.

  That blog post felt like it had happened in another lifetime. To another person. Someone who could stand on the sidelines and be filled with rage and sadness by the stories in the paper. Someone with the luxury of distance. Now Tara was part of the story. These people online, the commenters, the other bloggers, they didn’t have a clue—this shit actually happened to people like her, real people, not just the trailer trash mothers who brought it upon themselves with their drugs and their multitude of loser boyfriends.

  Despite the distraction of the twenty grand and the George Clooney detective, Tara hadn’t stopped shaking since Bella had disappeared. Where the fuck could she be? A tiny vulnerable girl. Zoe’s best friend.

  And how could this happen to Lexie, of all people? Little Miss Perfect, skinny and beautiful with her dark movie star looks and classic outfits. Lexie didn’t make the mistake of following the latest trends; she was never seen in clothes that could have come from the local chain stores. While Tara replaced last year’s long boots and coloured jeans with this year’s ankle boots and ripped jeans, Lexie merely seemed to rotate clothes from her wardrobe.

  Lexie was always so calm and perfect with Bella. Arriving on time to playgroup every week, with her bloody biscuits. Playing with Bella, laughing with her, reacting to her daughter’s every need. Sitting down to draw pictures with her, dividing up the playdough by colours. Feeding her cut-up strawberries and water. Always water. Never fruit juice or chips or muesli bars.

  Lexie didn’t mention money.

  She didn’t bitch about her husband.

  And she never fucking swore.

  It was because Lexie had one child, not two. She should pop out another baby and then she’d see that life wasn’t so easy. Then she’d stop looking down her nose at Tara.

  Tara’s fingers hovered over her blog. No, she wouldn’t type something yet. She’d do another post on Facebook and ask her eight hundred and fifty-two friends to share it.

  None of the other mums knew about her blog. It wasn’t their sort of thing; they were too straight. Apart from Mel—she was cooler than the rest but she wasn’t into Facebook and the blogosphere. Anyway, that was a good thing. It meant Tara could write about them and steal their ideas: gossip from the playgroup dinner; Julia’s advice for pregnant bodies; Mel’s healthy recipes (they seemed to be popular with other mums on the web, even though Tara would never cook them herself); Lexie’s tips for taking kids around a museum; and Imogen’s timeout strategies. (Although those strategies didn’t always seem to work with Imogen’s twin terrors.)

  Last month, Tara had done a blog post on the time Thomas, Matthew, Morgan and Zoe had locked Bella in the playgroup shed. Thomas was the mastermind and master bully as usual. He’d forced Zoe and Morgan to play along. Of course, Tara had changed all the names. Little Miss Perfect was in the loo, and by the time she returned Mel had sorted the situation. Fuck, kids could be really mean to each other, even at this young age. That post got some good feedback, with thirty-nine comments. Thirty-nine comments was a start but Tara needed more. She had clicked over to MummaLand’s blog, with its thousands of followers and sixty thousand fans on Twitter. What MummaLand had said about wearing tracksuit pants to school pick-up had practically gone viral. That’s what I need. Something to go viral. Another blogger Tara followed had a book coming out in two months—fifty-seven days to be precise; the woman had a countdown clock on her page. The blogger wasn’t even funny but that seemed irrelevant. Followers, fans, fame. Yup, gimme some of that, baby. And hopefully some cash. Or free products at the very least. Tara had typed a quick comment on MummaLand’s blog: Tracksuit pants? I never change out of my pole-dancing leotard before picking up the kids. Then she clicked across to three more blogs and zipped out comments on different topics. Her blog’s name, Crazy Hazy Dayz, could be seen in the comments of all the top sites.

  Tara uploaded another photo of Bella onto her Facebook post, repeated her plea to help find the little girl and pressed Share. For a moment, she wondered if she shouldn’t have told the detective about the missing stepdaughter. If it was all so innocent then Lexie should have told the police herself. Or was Lexie protecting Marty? Oh God, Tara hadn’t meant to incriminate the hottie hubby—surely the girl was just a wilful teenager, pushing against the boundaries. They’d all been that teenager, arguing with their parents, desperate for some independence and self-control. Shit, perhaps Tara should have kept her mouth shut for once. She went to search for Victoria’s profile on Facebook but then realised that she didn’t know the girl’s surname. Would she be called Parker too or did she have her mother’s name? The search for Victoria Parker brought up a range of women from twenty to eighty but none of them bore any resemblance to the hottie hubby. Anyway, she’d heard that teenagers didn’t use FB these days—they were all on Snapchat and Insta.

  ‘Tara, are you finished paying that bill? Can you come and help with Daisy?’

  She did it all day long, every day, and Josh couldn’t look after two kids for fifteen fucking minutes.

  ‘Coming,’ she called down the corridor.

  Maybe they’d found Bella by now? Maybe no news was good news? Tara had left playgroup two hours ago—anything could have happened in two hours. A thought niggled at her blind optimism: Julia would have rung straight away. She’d better get back down there. Feed Daisy again, put her to bed, then take some pizzas to playgroup. People would need food. She could put it on the Virgin Visa card—that still had a few hundred spare.

  As the cursor hovered over the close button on Facebook, her feed was refreshed. Bella’s face stared out at her. Not from her own post but a police one. An AMBER Alert that would be appearing in front of thousands.

  FACEBOOK

  Imogen Lawrence Facebook page

  Update: We still haven’t found Bella. The police search is continuing through the night. Lucas and his army mates are helping out. If you can help too, please come down to the playgroup behind Merrigang shops. Bring torches and wear warm clothes and sensible shoes. Please share this with your friends. God bless. xx

  63 people liked this. 50 shares.

  13

  LEXIE

  ANY MOMENT NOW. ANY MOMENT NOW. BEFORE THE DARKNESS SETS in. Any moment now, someone would shout: ‘We’ve found her!’ My belief was so strong that I couldn’t comprehend why the SES commander was marking out new grids on the map.

  I had to get out of this claustrophobic room, back on the footpaths, searching for my Bella. Pushing open the screen door, I stepped into the cold night air and gasped for breath. Too cold, too cold for my little Tinker Bell. Instead of rushing onto the streets, I stumbled to the sandpit and collapsed against its wooden edge. Eight hours ago, this is exactly where she had been. Scooping sand into Sammy’s yellow bucket.

  Someone sat down next to me in the dark and a soft arm was draped around my shoulders. Imogen. Dear s
weet Imogen. By my side since this nightmare began.

  ‘Where can she be?’

  ‘I don’t know, but we’ll find her,’ Imogen promised me. ‘We’re going to search through the night. More people are coming to help. Lucas has organised some volunteers. Mates from Duntroon. Friends of friends. Playgroup dads. They’re all arriving now.’

  The unexpected kindness from friends and strangers brought tears to my eyes yet again. I rested my head against my knees and sobbed. The police, SES, Imogen—everyone was assuring me they’d find her. But where was she?

  Imogen rubbed my back and kept talking, her palm warming me wherever it touched. The coldness was coming from deep inside me, not from the chilly air.

  ‘The local church has brought sandwiches and hot quiches for everyone. Do you want something to eat?’

  No food. Not when my daughter was hungry and cold and lost.

  ‘I want to search too,’ I told Imogen. ‘I need to be out there.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll get a torch and I’ll ask Tara to pop home and grab a coat for you. Is Mel still at your house?’

  These playgroup mums, whom I’d worked so hard to befriend in a new city, were here now for me and for Bella.

  I phoned Mel. She was in my kitchen, with Sammy laughing in the background. The laughter cut through me and I doubled over. Imogen took the phone and worked out the details. Mel had to leave but Tara would go there next to make sure someone was in the house all night. Should Tara collect pizza for us on the way? All these people rearranging their lives to help. Please, God, please help one of them find her.

  Imogen encouraged me to eat an egg sandwich. I could only manage a small triangle.

  ‘We’ll find her soon,’ Imogen repeated. ‘It’s all over the news and Facebook. Everyone is sharing Bella’s photo. All my friends, the church congregation, their friends, Lucas’s army mates.’

  Far and wide, people would be looking for Bella.