Six Minutes

by Petronella McGovern

‘Bella came to playgroup with a broken wrist. Lexie said she’d fallen out of a tree but it didn’t sound true.’

  ‘How did Lexie behave about Bella’s broken wrist?’

  ‘Well, she just left her at playgroup with us and went up to the shops to buy biscuits, so she can’t have been too worried.’

  Please don’t ask why Lexie went to get biscuits.

  ‘Did Lexie often leave Bella unattended at playgroup?’

  ‘All the time.’ Tara shook her head in disapproval. ‘She was always going up to the shops to buy stuff. On this blog, Crazy Hazy Dayz—that’s dayz with a “z”—there’s been some discussion about when’s the right time to leave a child in the care of others. It’s a great blog and we’ve been trying to understand how Bella went missing.’

  Phew, she’d got in a plug.

  ‘And how do you think Bella went missing? There were four mothers in the playgroup and lots of kids. How could Bella just disappear?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t my fault, I was busy with my own child at the time. And I was always careful with the gate, I made sure it was locked.’

  ‘Could Bella have climbed over the gate or the fence?’

  ‘No, they were both too high.’

  ‘What about from the cubbyhouse?’

  ‘It’s too far from the fence. Lexie must have left the gate unlocked herself. Either that or …’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or Lexie set the whole thing up herself.’

  31

  LEXIE

  ANY MOMENT NOW. SITTING INSIDE WODEN POLICE STATION, I REPEATED my mantra. The building was shiny glass and steel. Everything looked new and efficient. With all this manpower and technology, the police would find Bella, I was sure of that. Any moment now.

  ‘Mr Parrish is filing for a protection order against your husband,’ Detective Sergeant Caruso continued. ‘Dr Parker must not approach the victim or contact him in any way.’

  If only it were the female detective releasing Marty to me and not Sergeant Caruso. We needed to keep him on side. His disappointment in Marty was evident in his tired eyes.

  ‘Please let us do our job,’ he said.

  I pictured Brendan Parrish lying on the ground, blond fringe soaked with blood. Fiddling with my wedding ring, I considered tossing it in the wastepaper basket near the front counter. Who did Marty think he was? Wasting police time and energy when they needed to be looking for Bella.

  Still in his tracksuit, Marty limped towards me. His face greyish, the lines etched deeply around his mouth, his hair flat with dried sweat.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I really thought she was there.’

  Suddenly too tired to be angry, I put my hand on his back and began steering him towards the exit.

  ‘Can you walk to the car?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong with your leg?’

  ‘I think I pulled a muscle.’ He shrugged and leant on me. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  Some superhero.

  ‘Why do you think it’s him?’ I asked.

  The teacher seemed like a nice guy; I couldn’t believe he’d be involved in Bella’s disappearance.

  ‘Parrish lied. He was at the shops when Bella disappeared.’

  The image came back to me perfectly clearly this time. The back of Brendan’s head as he stood at the counter of the bakery that morning. How could I have forgotten? What other memories had evaporated in my panic?

  With our focus on Marty’s leg, neither of us noticed the lone cameraman standing by the wall. He must have been filming for a full minute before we saw him. How had he known we’d be there? Had the schoolteacher held a press conference for himself? I kept my head down, letting my hair fall across my eyes. Marty tucked his face into the top of my head. I could imagine the headline: MAD DAD BEATS UP INNOCENT TEACHER. Would the community stop helping in the search after reading yet another negative story about us?

  At home, I ran a hot bath for Marty and took one of Mel’s dinners from the fridge. It looked like a meat stew with vegetables and lentils. I couldn’t eat it but Marty would want something. When Mum had been dying, I’d cooked endless amounts of food and stayed to eat dinner with them. I thought it helped Dad to have people in the house, but now I wondered if it had annoyed him, interfering with his time with Mum. Right now, food was the last thing on my mind.

  Darkness would fall again soon. After the brilliant sunshine today, clouds now blanketed the sky. Good, the temperature wouldn’t drop so much. Was Bella really out there somewhere? I had a crazy idea that a kind old lady had found Bella, taken our daughter into her house and cooked up tomato soup. Canned tomato soup. With hot buttery toast for Bella to dip into it. The old lady had dementia and that was why she hadn’t called the police. She thought Bella was her granddaughter. But soon, her son would visit, find Bella in the house and contact the police. Then my Tinker Bell would be home with us, safe and sound.

  Other thoughts crowded in but I ignored them. This was the story I chose.

  Through the back sliding door, small speckles of rain glittered in the floodlit garden. I’d turned on all the lights around the house, and the lights downstairs too. In case Bella was trying to find her way home. I knew it was impossible—there was no way Bella would walk through the front door by herself. But the terrifying thoughts crept in with the dark.

  The house was too quiet, my thoughts too loud.

  The night-time searchers would be lining up at playgroup soon. I couldn’t go out there again. It wasn’t the suspicious faces—I could force myself to deal with those if it meant finding Bella—but the ability to carry on. Every time a searcher had found something on the ground and the line halted, my heart pounded and my breathing stopped.

  What if Bella is dying of exposure and dehydration right now, metres away from playgroup, and we’ve all walked straight past her?

  After soaking in the hot bath, Marty was walking more normally. He gobbled down the stew, took a sleeping tablet then collapsed into bed upstairs.

  I’d wanted to be alone but suddenly I couldn’t bear it. When will the police call off the search? It was a thought that I tried to push away again and again. We can keep searching ourselves, Imogen’s husband would organise it. But the police had trained search and rescue teams, they had helicopters and infrared technology, sniffer dogs, communications and bushwalking equipment. If they couldn’t find her, what hope did we have?

  No, she couldn’t be in a ditch nearby. So many people had covered every piece of ground much further than a three-year-old could walk.

  But what then?

  Abduction.

  The possibility pressed its way into my brain, I gagged and spat into the kitchen sink.

  I rinsed Marty’s plate, watching the remnants of Mel’s stew swirl down the drain. She’d been so kind to cook for us. Imogen had set up the Facebook page, organised posters and encouraged people to join the search. Even Tara had been helpful. But this morning not one of the mums had come into playgroup. By lunchtime, I was wondering if they’d seen the newspaper article and disowned me. That was what had happened in Manchester.

  But then Imogen had called.

  ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she’d said and, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I’d thought she meant Bella.

  ‘It must have been such a horrendous time for you,’ she continued. ‘I know it’s not the same, but I was devastated after my miscarriage. I can’t imagine the pain you felt.’

  It had been so long since I’d discussed it that I didn’t know what to say. My family and friends barely talked about him. I knew they were trying to protect me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, grateful for her kindness.

  ‘We’re still asking for help on the Facebook site,’ she said. ‘We’ve had lots of people sharing Bella’s photo and details.’

  What else were they sharing since the story had broken this morning—insults and vitriol? The last time our photo had been in the newspaper we’d had death threats. That hate site and all those web
pages were still up there. I didn’t want that connected with Bella.

  Later, Mel had called and been equally caring, but then she’d asked an intensely personal question.

  ‘Did you have him buried or cremated?’

  Was it the earth mother in her—wanting to know about our spirituality, perhaps? I was too exhausted to fob her off.

  ‘We buried him with my mother,’ I told her. ‘Mum died of breast cancer a few years before.’

  This year, now that we were back in Australia, my hope had been that we’d visit his grave as a family, for his fifth birthday. But no, Marty had shut down that idea. Why didn’t he understand that it would have helped? That we needed to acknowledge it. Even though the grief would have come rushing back in waves, the guilt threatening to flatten me. If he could, Marty would fast-forward through September to our daughter’s birthday at the end.

  But I had my own way of remembering Archie, my beautiful little boy.

  Outside was pitch-black now, the moon hidden by the clouds. Taking a deep breath, I clicked open the news stream on my mobile. No new information on Bella. Then I googled her name on the web. The search results popped up: Psychic ‘sees’ Bella in England; Ex-neighbour tells all; Allegations of child abuse by hospital staff; Bella Parker theories on disappearance; Bring Bella home for her birthday.

  Slamming the phone down on the benchtop, I headed straight to the wine rack. My hands were on the bottle, fingers curled around the seductive cool glass, twisting the screw top, pouring the red liquid into a glass, smelling its richness, ready for the first drop on my tongue.

  No.

  I tipped the glass into the sink, turned on the hot water to dilute the aroma. Upended the whole bottle, watched the liquid glug, glug, glug down into the plug hole.

  I’ll call Phoebe, she’ll calm me down.

  The phone rang out. Was she having a shower or strengthening her muscles in physio?

  The other two mums hadn’t called me today: Julia and Tara. My daughter had gone missing on their watch. How dare they blank me now? It was 10 pm—were they asleep or watching TV while listening to the soft snores of their children safely tucked up in bed? I pressed some numbers quickly. My first choice—Julia—didn’t answer. Perhaps she switched her phone off at night. How nice for her not to be desperately waiting for a phone call. To dream without a care in the world, without taking responsibility for her negligence. I stabbed at my mobile again, a ringing tone, then a sleepy voice on the end.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Tara, it’s Lexie.’ I was almost shouting at her.

  ‘Do you have some news?’ She was suddenly alert.

  ‘No,’ I snarled. ‘We’re still searching. Is your husband out there?’

  ‘No, not tonight.’

  ‘Why not?’ I couldn’t help myself. ‘Is he out drinking on a boys’ night?’

  ‘Of course not. He had to go to Adelaide for a meeting down there. But he did come in for the search this morning.’

  ‘But now he’s left and flown off to Adelaide.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lexie, it was booked months ago. It’s an annual talkfest.’

  At least Tara sounded apologetic. But then she kept going …

  ‘Josh is on the India trade panel. In fact, he’s leading it. They’re looking to increase trade links.’

  Fan-fucking-tastic for Josh. Let me get out the streamers, in between trying to find my lost child. How could life just go on? This afternoon, Josh went to the airport, walked through the scanners, boarded an aeroplane and flew to Adelaide. How could that happen?

  ‘Lexie, are you okay?’ Tara asked in the silence. ‘Where are you?’

  Was I okay? What a stupid question.

  ‘Are you going to say anything about my son?’ I demanded.

  I heard a sharp intake of breath and then the muffled sounds of Tara moving around. Getting out of bed, maybe. Moving further away from her girls so they could sleep in peace? Rest in peace. Ha, what did that mean anyway? My son wasn’t being left to rest in peace. He was being dragged through the mud yet again.

  ‘I’m sorry about your son.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  Tara was quiet for a moment. I guess she’d never heard me like this before. Belligerent, bitchy. As straight talking as her.

  ‘Well, I don’t understand why you didn’t tell us,’ Tara said slowly. ‘I’ve shared so much personal stuff. You could have said something. Julia told us about her father’s death.’

  Julia’s father had died the month that I’d joined the playgroup. At sixty-two years old, he’d been fit and still playing Masters hockey. Her mum had come home with the shopping and found him on the lounge room floor. A massive stroke. She’d dropped the shopping bags, rushed to his side and called an ambulance.

  But in the time it took for the ambulance to arrive, her mother had put all the groceries away in the fridge. That detail had stuck with me. Only now that I knew Julia better did I realise—like mother, like daughter.

  While I’d waited for the ambulance, I’d crouched next to Marty on the floor, watching my husband trying to resuscitate our son. Begging Marty to feel a breath, find a pulse. I’d been stroking my baby’s fine hair, holding his cold fingers. And when the ambulance had tried to take him away, I screamed and wouldn’t let him go.

  ‘I’m sorry that I can’t come over right now, Lexie, with the kids asleep and Josh away.’ Tara interrupted my memories. ‘Do you want to come here?’

  I didn’t want to leave my home but her kindness was so uncharacteristic that I burst into tears.

  32

  BRENDAN

  TEN STITCHES. RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS FOREHEAD. A HARRY POTTER scar. He’d have to tell everyone that he got it snowboarding. Practising a misty flip. Yeah, that’d work.

  ‘How’re you feeling now, Bren?’ His girlfriend sat down next to him on the hospital bed, a can of lemonade in her hand.

  ‘Head still hurts. The nurse came when you were at the cafeteria and they want to keep me in overnight.’

  ‘What about your hip and your back?’

  ‘I think those painkillers were good ’uns.’ He winked at Claire. ‘We should get some of them!’

  She laughed, popped open the lemonade can, stuck a straw it in and held it out for him to drink. Claire really was something. She didn’t believe that deranged dad for one second. And if she had any concerns about Brendan being involved in the little girl’s disappearance, she wasn’t showing it. No, Claire had sympathy for the girl’s parents (They must be going mad with worry) but was furious that the father had focused his attention on Brendan (Especially when you did those photos as a favour). She thought it was all about the photos—Brendan hadn’t told her he’d been spotted at the bakery at the same time as the disappearance. Detective Sergeant Caruso had grilled him when he was trying to make a complaint about the father breaking into his house.

  ‘Yes, I got a coffee that day,’ Brendan admitted. ‘It wasn’t a lie—I just forgot. All the days at school run into each other. I thought it was Tuesday that I went to the bakery.’

  ‘Did you go anywhere other than the bakery?’

  Brendan should have been prepared for the question. Since that deranged dad had shouted it at him, he knew the police would ask. But fear had fogged his mind and he couldn’t think straight. Were there any cameras at the bottom of playgroup and around his townhouse? Did his neighbours have security cameras? If he said yes, he’d gone home, what then? Would they take his house apart? Track down his friends? Talk to the rugby lads? Plaster his photo across the news as the main suspect? Destroy his career?

  ‘I can’t remember,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Even to his own ears, his answer had sounded lame.

  Claire told him that she’d cleaned up everything inside the house. Put the clothes back in the wardrobes, remade the beds and picked up all the stuff off the floor. She wouldn’t have snooped around the study, would she?

  ‘Jeff rang while I was
at the cafeteria,’ Claire said. ‘He finished fixing up your shed and locked it all.’

  ‘Great. I owe him one. And you too.’

  Even though his house had been tidied up, Brendan decided he wouldn’t stay there. The mad doctor only lived a few blocks away. An hour at home to pack a bag and then he was out of there—down to Albury to hang with his folks for a week. The school would have to suck it up and get a relief teacher for his class. Postpone his parent–teacher interviews. Shit, he still hadn’t reported Fox’s absence all week. Now he’d have to ring Kathleen at the front office on Monday and it would become a big deal. Why hadn’t he said something last Tuesday or Wednesday?

  Originally, the nurses had wanted to discharge him tonight but Brendan argued that his head hurt too much. He didn’t want to be in the same area as that man. And he didn’t want to see the police out searching for that little girl.

  ‘What time can I pick you up in the morning?’ Claire asked.

  ‘Dunno.’ Brendan yawned; the drugs were kicking in. ‘Maybe around ten? I’ll text you.’

  After Claire had kissed him and left, Brendan checked out the other patients in the ward. Two old guys in their fifties and two in their thirties or forties. Nurses and dinner ladies were coming and going. Would he be safe here? He’d finally read the paper while waiting to be stitched up. That nutso doctor worked in this very hospital. He wasn’t supposed to come near Brendan because of the temporary protection order, but that guy was crazy. The look in the man’s eyes when he’d asked for the shed key … Brendan had thought he’d be beaten to a pulp if he didn’t hand it over.

  The snowboarding gang would all be impressed with the scar. Most of them had broken arms, collarbones and ankles from snowboarding or their other extreme sports. Brendan was more careful. He’d never broken a bone. Not even his little finger.

  As his eyes closed and he started to drift off, Brendan could hear the roar of the crowd at a footy match. One of the other patients had his TV turned up too loud. Was it the same old fart who’d ogled Claire as she had perched on the bed next to him?