Six Minutes

by Petronella McGovern

  On the telly, Bella’s father looked as arrogant four years ago as he had yesterday when he’d broken into Brendan’s house. The type of guy who thought he owned the world. Doctors, lawyers, accountants—they were all the same. Fucking wankers. They looked down on public education and thought that teaching was ‘women’s work’. Even though it wasn’t cool to admit it, Brendan loved his job. Despite the bureaucracy and the low pay, he loved kids. He loved expanding their minds. Introducing them to new experiences. And Merrigang was great—so small that he knew all of the kids.

  The reporter mentioned that Dr Parker was a paediatrician—hmm, Brendan hadn’t pegged him as someone who worked with kids. Perhaps he was one of those self-important specialists who didn’t actually listen to his patients. A nurse who had worked with Dr Parker came on screen and confirmed Brendan’s suspicions.

  ‘I felt Dr Ross had a god complex,’ the woman said. ‘He would decide which patients should live and which patients should die.’

  ‘Is this fella’s name Ross or Parker?’ Dad asked from the other sofa.

  ‘Apparently, they changed their name,’ Lynette explained. ‘I read about it in the paper. When they moved to Canberra, they became Parker.’

  Trevor shook his head and swigged another mouthful of VB. ‘A leopard can’t change its spots.’

  His dad had a saying for everything. His most common saying for Brendan was: It’s not whether you fall down but whether you get back up. Brendan had to get back up. And the best way of doing that was by destroying the phone and getting rid of the library bag. Could he smash the phone into pieces in the shed after dinner? He should have run over it with the lawn mower.

  REDDIT

  Unresolved mysteries: Martin and Lexie Ross

  Warrior 1 YEARS AGO

  The Weekend Wrap program shows those two are guilty again.

  Hope the police are watching!

  AngelFairyGoddess 40 MINUTES AGO

  Why don’t they just put their kids up for adoption instead of killing them?

  Against_Euthanasia 30 MINUTES AGO

  Does anyone know if there’s a court order against the dad?

  35 MORE REPLIES

  40

  MARTY

  ELISSA?! WHAT WAS SHE DOING IN HIS HOUSE?

  The wavy chocolate hair, the full pouting lips, the curves. It was definitely Elissa. As though he’d conjured her up with his wish to talk to her. Marty wanted to take her in his arms and clutch her tight against him, a drowning man saved by a lifebuoy. At last. His friend was here to help.

  But why was she calling herself Mel?

  And she was pretending not to know him. Why, for fuck’s sake? He’d fantasised about her, sure, but nothing had ever happened. Marty managed to keep the question inside his head while he stared at Elissa. Glancing back at his wife, he tried to understand what was going on. Lexie had a scrunched-up tissue in her hand and her cheeks were blotchy from crying, but that was normal since Bella had gone missing. Her mouth was moving but Marty couldn’t hear the words.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Have you met Mel before? She’s from playgroup.’

  ‘Mel?’ Marty stuttered over the name, unfamiliar on his own lips. ‘From playgroup?’

  ‘Mel, short for Melissa,’ the other woman explained, cocking her head. ‘I seem to collect nicknames—Mel, Lis, Elissa.’

  She was communicating something to him. Marty rubbed his forehead to rearrange the confusion on his face.

  ‘And you’re a mum at playgroup?’ Marty asked.

  ‘Yes, my little boy Sammy is great friends with Bella.’

  ‘Sammy … oh … yes, Bella has talked about him.’

  ‘How’s the night search going? Lexie said you were at playgroup just now.’

  He’d driven around the streets of Merrigang, thinking about Bella’s water bottle and the ‘shrine’ to Archie. Ended up outside the playgroup, sitting in the dark, remembering how excited Victoria had been during Lexie’s first pregnancy. She’d made a list of all the things she would do with her baby brother or sister: go to the zoo, the cinema, the beach, the lolly shop. He’d warned her that the baby couldn’t eat lollies or build a sandcastle straight away.

  Around Victoria’s mother, Marty had felt awkward. When they’d been young and in love, Angela wanted four children, a large hurly-burly family. But his ex-wife hadn’t remarried—did she feel he’d taken the possibility of a big family away from her?

  Victoria had been desperate to name the baby: Rihanna, Miley or Taylor for a girl, Ronaldo, Fernando or Lionel for a boy. Marty explained that Ronaldo was actually the soccer player’s surname but she preferred it to Cristiano—easier to spell. If they chose Lionel, she was keen for his nickname to be ‘Lion’, as they’d just read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in her class.

  At that point, with a smiling pregnant wife and a happy daughter, Marty could never have imagined the years ahead—and this moment right now. His son dead and his daughter missing.

  Marty briefly closed his eyes. He didn’t need this as well: Elissa playing games, pretending to be a stranger in his lounge room. Forcing himself to look at her, Marty provided a vague answer to her question.

  ‘They’re still searching.’

  He couldn’t think straight here with the two of them. For the past five months, he’d sat with Elissa over lunch, telling her about his daughter, his wife—confiding in her. And every Thursday morning, she’d been having coffee and chatting with Lexie while their children played together.

  ‘I have to go and …’ Marty muttered, and walked out of the room.

  In the hallway, Marty leant his back against the cool wall. Through the open door, the female voices drifted out to him. ‘Haven’t you met Marty before?’ Lexie was asking. ‘Not even in the last few days?’

  ‘We must have been on different schedules,’ Mel said. ‘I was here cooking while you two were out searching.’

  Cooking? So she was the one who’d made all the meals.

  What had he told her about Lexie and Bella? He hadn’t discussed his wife’s paranoia and her drinking. But there were other things that Lexie wouldn’t have wanted shared with a playgroup mum—her fears about fitting in, about being a good mother. He’d described her postnatal depression with Bella, although really it had been grief. Victoria’s antics. Stories of his ex-wife. Life in Manchester.

  I shouldn’t feel so bad; it’s not like I had an affair, for Christ’s sake.

  Marty could hear the women moving towards the front door. He slipped into the first room on his left, the shrine, and slid into a sitting position, propped up by the bookcase. He listened to them say goodbye at the front door and heard Lexie’s footsteps coming back down the hallway.

  The light flicked on and Lexie stood above him, hands on her hips.

  ‘How do you know her?’ she demanded.

  So, his shock had given him away. He stayed silent, still trying to comprehend how Elissa from the hospital could be Mel from playgroup.

  ‘I can tell that you’ve met her before, Marty. I’ve just watched another playgroup mum trashing me on national TV and telling the world that I made Bella disappear. So please … just answer me.’

  ‘She came in to see me with Sammy.’ Marty went with the first lie that popped into his head. ‘He’s got some problems. She didn’t want anyone to find out about it. She wants him to go to a mainstream school.’

  ‘So you were both lying when you said you’d never met.’

  Marty nodded, hoping it would be enough for her. He needed to work out what was going on with Elissa—Mel—before he told his wife. In her fragile state, she’d freak out. Pulling himself up off the floor, he kissed her forehead. Why had Mel ingratiated herself in both his world and Lexie’s?

  Another phone call from Victoria. He answered it, walking to the kitchen as he talked. This time, Victoria didn’t ask if she could come down and help with the search.

  ‘Dad, are you alone? I’ve got to tell you so
mething.’

  Was this about Kimmy and the drugs again? Why were teenagers so fucking selfish? Didn’t she realise what was going on here?

  ‘Yes. Lexie is in the other room.’

  ‘You have to promise me that we won’t get in trouble. You can’t tell Mum.’

  Marty could hear the quiver in her voice.

  He sighed. ‘Okay.’ What now?

  ‘That schoolteacher …’ she took a shaky breath. ‘The one whose house you went to …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think … I think he gave us a lift from Merrigang to the house in Ainslie.’

  Marty couldn’t speak.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it was him,’ Victoria went on. ‘He said his name was Brenno and that he was a snowboarding instructor. He … he was the one we thought was sexy. The one Kimmy has been texting.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I only just saw the story online with his photo—it says that you bashed him up. Is that true, Dad?’

  ‘No, he fell over and hit his head. What else do you remember about that night? Did you talk about Bella? Did he know you were her sister?’

  ‘I said—’ she paused to blow her nose ‘—how boring your house was and that I had a little sister down there. I didn’t tell him any names. We told him we were in year twelve. You don’t think … ?’

  Marty could imagine the conversation. Victoria and Kimmy out to impress the older guy, perfecting their lines about how hip they were in Sydney compared to the tediousness of life in Canberra. That fucker, preying on young, vulnerable girls.

  ‘I didn’t tell them Bella’s name or your address,’ she snivelled.

  ‘Who were the other men there?’

  ‘They all had nicknames: Robbo, Shorty, Dazza and Macca. I think they had played rugby together at uni.’

  Marty held his other hand to his head, as though trying to keep the fear contained. A group of five men ‘partying’ in a room with his teenager, and now possibly with his little girl.

  ‘What was the street number of the house?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad. But you can’t tell the police about this. Kimmy and I will get into such trouble.’

  ‘Who gave you the ecstasy? Which one of them?’

  Victoria started wailing. Marty shut his eyes and held onto the kitchen bench for support. His daughter’s cries sounded exactly like a toddler’s.

  ‘It was him. Brenno.’

  41

  LEXIE

  AS I HUGGED A BLUE TEDDY BEAR IN ARCHIE’S ‘SHRINE’, MY THOUGHTS focused on Mel. Was Marty telling the truth about how he knew her? In one way, the story made sense—Mel liked to appear very relaxed about parenting; she wouldn’t want us to know she’d been seeing a specialist. But Marty had said something about mainstream school. Sammy knew his numbers and letters; he was far more advanced than any of the other playgroup kids.

  While I’d been keeping Archie a secret from the playgroup, it hadn’t occurred to me that the others might have their own secrets as well.

  My mobile pinged. A text from Imogen:

  R u ok? Can’t believe a playgroup mum wld do that. Hang in there. We’ll find Bella. Sending all my love and prayers xxxxxx

  No messages from the others. Had it been Julia on TV? Or Tara? Tara needed attention in the same way that I needed alcohol. But she’d been here in our house the night Bella had disappeared. Surely she’d seen how much we loved Bella. Meanwhile, Julia hadn’t even texted me today; she’d hidden herself and her unborn baby away from me. Did she think our tragedy was contagious?

  I walked into the kitchen where Marty was on his phone. He waved me away, saying: ‘I’m leaving a message for Sergeant Caruso.’

  What would he say to that bloody detective? Go and search properly. Find out who left Bella’s shoe and water bottle at the church. Find Bella!

  Taking Marty’s old laptop from off the bench, I tucked it under my arm and went upstairs to Bella’s bedroom. I propped her fairy pillows against the wall and settled myself there, breathing in her scent. Lulu wasn’t on top of the pillows; she must be lost in the sheets at the bottom of the bed. Three days and twelve hours. Tinker Bell, where are you? Please come back to me.

  Opening the old laptop, I skyped Phoebe. When she smiled on the screen, I wanted to reach through the distance and hug her tight. The background showed that she was home in her terrace in Fulham, out of the hospital at last. In ten minutes, I’d told her everything, hoping that she could make more sense of it than me. Instead, she brought up the websites.

  ‘Have you told the police about them?’ she asked. ‘They’re all talking about Bella now—especially that main one.’

  That website was a train for all the trolls to climb aboard, spraying their filth from the windows. Ranting about murder and child abuse and frying us in an electric chair. If Bella’s disappearance were connected to the site, what would they do to Bella? Take out their hatred of us on her? Maybe they’d transport her to another country, give her a new set of parents and tell her we were dead.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘They’ve got their technical team on it again.’ The website had turned me into a blubbering mess, pushed me over the edge into depression. Forced Marty to change his name so he could keep working. Whoever had set it up had covered their tracks well. I clicked through the possibilities like an old-fashioned slide show. Yvette Tobin, the mad physio. The four sets of parents whose children had died under Marty’s care. Nurse Natalie. One of the reporters who had crucified us. Any of the medical staff who blamed Marty. Or, as the police had suggested years ago, someone who was obsessed with the case and had taken a special interest but had no actual link to us. A web sleuth with a confused sense of justice. It could be anyone.

  As Phoebe spoke about the websites, the coldness enveloped me yet again. The same cold that Bella was feeling. Maybe it was time to give up the search and focus on abductors.

  An hour later, Phoebe blew me a kiss through the screen and said goodbye. She was so much like Bella that it hurt. I wondered if there were any photos of Bella as a baby on the old laptop. I’d had a new obstetrician and extra midwives at her birth, along with Marty, who kept yelling at them to check the foetal monitor. Archie’s birth had been gentle and calm until his head emerged blue. Bella’s birth was a military operation. No-one relaxed until she had screamed her first lungful, kicked her little legs and sucked on my nipple. Even then, Marty had insisted that every inch of her body be tested.

  Scrolling through the files, I couldn’t see any photos but lots of Word documents with titles related to Archie’s conditions: ‘Neonatal Asphyxia’, ‘Cognitive Development’, ‘Anti-seizure Drugs’, ‘Neurological, Respiratory and Gastrointestinal Complications’. Amid these medical issues was one folder simply titled ‘Lorraine’. Was she a patient that Marty had seen every week? I opened the file, selected a document at random and started reading.

  Dear Lorraine,

  Thanks for the info on the Carbamazepine—glad it worked for your son. The seizures have slowed down a bit. Your last few days sounded horrendous. Can your parents help out, or are they too old? I don’t know how you do it, day after day. Do you ever think about other options? Good luck for a better week.

  Cheers,

  M x

  Dear M,

  So good to get your email every week. Cheers me up that someone cares, even though you’re on the other side of the world! I was bloody knackered but things got better yesterday. Do I ever think about other options? Ha. All the time. On the really rubbish days, I count out sleeping tablets for him and for me. Actually put them into two little bowls. But what if I cocked it up and we didn’t die? What if I ended up just like him and there was no-one to look after us? No, whatever I do has to be foolproof. I haven’t been able to get any respite care this month. Sorry, I’ll stop. You’ll think I’m a whingeing Pommie bastard!

  Love,

  Lorraine xx

  Swallowing hard, I scanned the list of Word documents. T
here were at least sixty emails back and forth to this woman. Why had he saved them as Word documents—had he deleted them from his email account to hide them from the hospital inquiry? In all those months, Marty had never mentioned Lorraine to me. Where did she live and how old was her son? How many times had they discussed ‘other options’?

  Shoving the laptop away, I grabbed one of Bella’s fairy pillows, buried my face in it and screamed. Had Marty actually done it? My mind wouldn’t let me form the words. Were Nurse Natalie and the media and the websites right all along? Dr Death. I had stood by him, defended him, grieved with him. The coldness engulfed my whole body; my arms and legs began to shake.

  The night Archie died was the first time I’d been out since his birth. Phoebe was in Sydney and had insisted that I needed a break. She’d tried to take me out before but I’d been too tired from the constant morning sickness and looking after Archie. Most evenings, I was asleep by eight o’clock.

  That Tuesday, Phoebe whisked us off to an early session at Roseville cinema. I had no memory of what we watched, but for that hour and a half I lost myself in the story on the screen, forgetting Archie’s difficult physiotherapy session with Yvette that day, my worries about the new baby and how on earth I would cope with Archie and a newborn. Setting aside the fear and guilt. What if the new baby is like Archie? For a few hours, I managed to relax.

  Afterwards, at home, I’d felt almost buoyant from having achieved a moment of normality. Maybe I could cope after all.

  Marty had hugged me and brought me a cup of ginger tea in bed.

  ‘Everything will be better from now on,’ he told me.

  I’d kissed him, grateful, then—exhausted from the evening out—I fell asleep without checking on Archie or brushing my teeth. At 2 am, I woke suddenly, desperate for a wee. I climbed out of bed, went to the loo, then looked in on my beautiful boy. Archie wasn’t propped up the right way, I saw. And then, when I touched him, he was cold—so cold. I fussed around with his BabyGro sleeping bag. It should have been keeping him warm. I put my hand on his little chest. And then I’d started to scream.