by J. P. Pomare
Where did he go? Why was it Willow’s dad and not Thom who picked me up and took me home? Did he run? Did he fight?
‘I don’t know. He was walking away from me when it started.’
‘Really? He left you?’
‘Thom would have been there but he was jealous. We had a fight.’
‘A fight?’ he said. ‘You’re too young to be fighting.’
I felt heavy with fatigue, and the room spun in a slow, sickly twirl, but I knew I wanted to stay awake, I wanted to talk to him. ‘He doesn’t like it when I talk to other guys. He got mad and said the other guys there could have me.’
‘Sounds like a prick – if you don’t mind me saying. You’re not his property to give away.’
‘He was just drunk,’ I said.
‘Kate,’ he said in a soft voice.
I pulled his hand away from my head down over my shoulders and shifted to nestle into his side. He dropped the icepack and rested his palm on my hip. My dress slid up my legs, slowly revealing more of the shining swirls of my scars. Thom had left me. Jealous Thom.
‘Take care. It’s easy to break a man’s heart.’
‘Mmm.’
His hand crept from my hip onto my thigh. I smelt cotton and oak; it smelt like home.
PART FOUR
THINKING ABOUT ENDING THINGS
In the past month, how often have you been fixated on the possible recurrence of your traumatic experience?
0 – never; 1 – rarely; 2 – sometimes; 3 – often; 4 – all the time
THIRTY-ONE
TRANSCRIPT FROM 3RA talkback morning show:
Host: You’re listening to 3RA talkback, I’m Des Holder and today we are talking crime. We’ve got Joe from Melton on the line.
Caller: Morning, Des.
Host: Now, you believe you’ve got some information regarding the Hawkesburn Park case. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, you might have missed the story. But the girl involved, Kate Bennet, vanished under what some have described as dubious circumstances days after an attack in the inner east which she may very well be linked to.
Caller: That’s right.
Host: A lot of it is speculation, of course, but what have you got for us, Joe?
Caller: Well, I’m at the pub last night with a couple of others, and one of the boys just got back from New Zealand.
Host: Very nice. Business or pleasure?
Caller: He did a four-week tour – lots of skiing and booze by the sounds of it.
Host: Alright, so what’s this got to do with Kate Bennet?
Caller: Well, on the flight over he gets a free upgrade – and guess who’s sitting there in business class?
Host: It wasn’t Elton John, was it, Joe?
Caller: Des, it wasn’t Elton John, no. All bundled up in a hoodie and jeans facing the window was Bomber Bennet’s daughter.
Host: Your friend, is he normally one to spin a yarn, so to speak?
Caller: He swears black and blue it was her.
Host: Did your friend say who she was with?
Caller: He didn’t, no. But they’ve got the car that was involved on CCTV, did you see that?
Host: I certainly did.
Caller: It’s a black Mercedes-Benz, right. Now guess who else has a black Mercedes-Benz?
Host: Tell us who, Joe.
Caller: I read online that Bomber Bennet drives the exact model in the CCTV footage. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that when this CCTV image does get out Kate Bennet will be behind the wheel.
Host: More rumours, quite frankly, Joe.
Caller: Well, the girl is in New Zealand, and my friend saw her on the plane one or two days after it happened. So if she’s been there for a month now, she’s either having a bloody good holiday or she’s fled the country.
Host: The Sydney Morning Herald broke the story last week, releasing a set of images that appear to be shot in New Zealand. Although the source of the images won’t reveal exactly where in New Zealand. It’s also possible she was over there at first and has since moved on. She’s not currently wanted by police and is not listed as a missing person, so it’s all academic at this stage.
Caller: Well she was absolutely loopy. No one can deny that.
Host: We can’t really speculate as to her state of mind, though, can we? She’s definitely involved in this mess with the boy, you think?
Caller: Things are going to blow up, mark my words. This thing isn’t done.
Host: I agree. It’s been good to speak with you, Joe. I’m looking for more information on the case. I say this with a caveat: we do not encourage any form of vigilante justice at all. On the other hand you can be cleared of involvement in a crime and still be a person of interest, and out of respect for Bomber Bennet I sincerely hope this is all a misunderstanding and his daughter fronts up to clear up this mess. Weather and news up after the break, then we will be talking protesters: when is it okay to use force to disband a public nuisance? Have something to say? Taking your calls shortly.
> after
THIRTY-TWO
‘GET IN THE car – now.’
I hesitate.
‘I’m not playing games, Evie. You want the dog to die?’
Leaving Jim with Iso, I go out through the front door to the car. Beau is lying on his side across the back seat. He doesn’t move when I approach.
I pull the passenger-side door open and get in. Beau’s tail thumps the seat twice. He lifts his head a fraction, eyes on me. He’s alive. Thank God, he’s alive. I reach back and stroke his head and his tail thumps once more. He doesn’t get up, though; he seems weak, lethargic.
The door to the house opens again and Jim comes storming out. He drops into the driver’s seat, slams the door and starts the car. He does a U-turn, the wheels skidding on the dirt, then shoots along the driveway onto the road, not even stopping to close the gate behind us. He barely slows as we turn onto the road. Beau slides along the back seat.
‘Careful!’ I say.
‘Careful?’ he echoes, taking his eyes from the road for a second. ‘Careful? Did you just tell me to be careful?’ He slams the car into another turn; we slip again, edging across the centre line. For a split second I imagine someone standing in front of us on the road.
‘Slow down,’ I beg. ‘You’re scaring me.’
‘You’ve probably killed him, Kate. Do you realise that?’
For a second I’m confused as to who he’s talking about. I turn to look at the back seat. Beau’s eyes are half closed. ‘What did I do?’
‘How many times have I told you to close the damn cupboard? How many?’
‘What happened?’
‘I came up from the shed, looking for you, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. I thought you might have done something crazy.’ He screwed the heel of his hand into one eye. ‘I noticed the door to the cupboard beneath the sink was ajar, where Beau’s biscuits are kept. Then I found the yellow wrapper of the rat poison.’
I closed the cupboard. I’m certain I closed it. Is this another one of his tricks?
‘How did you know where I was?’
‘What?’
‘How did you know I was down there?’
‘I didn’t. I just drove around everywhere I thought you might be.’ I reach back and stroke Beau’s side. He doesn’t move.
‘It can’t have been more than an hour since he ate it. It says online if he shows symptoms within the first couple of hours – well, it doesn’t look good. You can’t even look after a bloody dog. The poor thing.’
‘Where are we going?’ I ask as we start up the hill towards our place.
‘You’re going home. I just can’t trust you enough to take you anywhere.’
‘Home? We don’t have time.’
‘You haven’t left me any choice. I found a vet not far out of town. She said to bring Beau immediately. This could be our last night together and you just have to go fuck it up.’
Another sharp turn into our driveway. I’m throw
n against the seatbelt when he yanks on the handbrake.
‘Our last night? What do you mean.’
He ignores me. ‘Come on, quick.’
I reach back and pet Beau once more, stroking his head before I get out of the car and head to the house. Jim follows.
‘Move, Kate. In your room.’ He stalks behind me down the hall.
‘Go – you don’t have time,’ I say.
He slams the door behind me and walks away. A drawer opens, bangs closed, then I hear him coming back up the hall. Beau is dying in the car – what is he doing?
I hear the drill. The lock is going back on. Over the sound he calls, ‘We’re leaving here tomorrow.’
‘What did you do? You killed him, didn’t you?’
‘What do you remember, Kate? What was I holding?’
A brick. He was holding a red brick. I’m sobbing. ‘I just wanted to see the news. I just wanted to read about what happened.’
‘I could have shown you,’ he says. ‘If you really wanted to see it. Just stay in there and think about what you’ve done to the dog.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I – I closed the cupboard, I know I did.’
It’s happening again; I’m weak with it. Grief makes us feeble. The longing to have the warm dog there in my arms. It comes on like waves in the sea, rocking me. The front door closes. The car revs and he is gone.
I do not feel Beau’s hot breath against my leg, I do not see his wet pleading eyes staring up at me. I do not hear his paws scratching on the wooden floor. The bed covers waft stale air as I collapse on them, drained of energy, the familiar anxiety foaming inside.
Why is he always in the shed? Why was he not inside? Is this another game of his? The stories were there: the Sydney Morning Herald, the Herald Sun, the Huffington Post. There is nothing for me in Melbourne but the opportunity to clear my name. What will I tell the police? Will they investigate Jim if I tell them what I remember: Jim holding the brick? He was holding the brick.
I have my flight to Melbourne booked. Maybe when I get to the airport I could choose to fly somewhere else. If Jim has convinced all of Australia that I’m a killer, and if I am going to be locked away, maybe I really could go to Europe or South America. I just need my passport. For that, I have to get into the shed.
I rise, go to the window and look down into the yard. The sun is setting, making long shadows up the back lawn. I press the window open, feeling the crisp cool on my skin.
The ladder is still there.
After glancing up to check that the branch is still obscuring the camera’s view of the yard, I climb down to the ground. I find the axe beneath the stairs near the woodpile and stride across the lawn to the shed. Without aiming, or considering what I’m doing, I swing the axe as hard as I can. The blade crashes into the steel door. The birds in a nearby tree take flight. I swing again, this time striking above the door handle. A snapping sound. One more strike and it swings open. I step through into the darkness. Something touches my face. I swat at it. It swings back. It’s a cord. I snatch it, pull down, and a single bulb lights up the shed.
A filing cabinet, an old cupboard, a desk with sheets of paper, pens. Then I see something else. Long sleek barrel and wooden stock. The door swings on the breeze, whining like something dying. The rifle stands at the rear of the cupboard. I creep towards it and reach out, touching the cool steel of the barrel. Above me the light swings, oscillating all the shadows. For one term at school we had lessons at the rifle club every Tuesday afternoon. At first we were only allowed to handle fake plastic guns, practising safety procedures and how to aim before they let us touch the real thing. This gun looks different. I lift it and pull the bolt back. It’s empty. At least he doesn’t keep it loaded. I find a box of ammo and take it outside with the gun beneath my arm; I must hide it from him, there’s only one reason he has this gun. I hold it over the neighbour’s fence. Dropping it, I hear the crack of twigs snapping. It doesn’t hit the ground; it must be caught in the bush. Next I drop the ammo.
My heart thuds as I return to the shed. I try the filing cabinet but it doesn’t open. There’s an empty key slot at the top. I pick up the axe again; I can’t stop now. The blade crashes into the lock. The corner folds about the wedge of steel, but the drawer won’t open. I hit it again, harder, the sound making me flinch. The top drawer rolls open.
Inside there’s a broken wine bottle and the tannic whiff of wine hits me. I find other bottles of alcohol. The drawer below won’t budge; I twist the axe head into it and jerk it back until it comes unstuck. Papers, lots of them. I pull them out and hold them beneath the light. Sheets and sheets of articles are bloodstained with red wine. I scan them quickly. Fractured skull . . . found on the road . . . There are photographs. I recall that night, taking the car keys, setting out. Some photos show yellow tabs like morbid post-it notes all over the road and the footpath. More photos of me . . . more stills from the video, the same as the one I found in the letterbox. It wasn’t Iso’s friend Mick who put it there; it was Jim. He had left one in the letterbox and kept these others for future use. He did it to frighten me. Or is it possible these are others left by the same person and Jim was collecting them, hiding them from me? Is it possible someone else has known all along?
Then I find the envelopes. My letters. The letters he handed to Tiriana. She was in on it too. This entire town has conspired against me.
Blood pulses in my chest and everything – my breathing, the sliding clatter of the drawer, the whine as the shed door moves in the wind – is too loud.
I open the doors of the cupboard and feel around on the top shelf. My hand touches something small and hard: a wallet. I pull it out. Not a wallet – a passport. I open the first page. My face looks out. My passport. It’s happening. It’s coming together. I jam the passport into the pocket of my jeans and keep looking.
On the next shelf down I find a pile of magazines, a dozen of the same issue. And pages, the missing pages from my magazine, are here: the pages he cut out. I see my face; I see Thom’s face. I look happier, my face rounded and my hair long. It barely looks like me at all. He must have bought every copy so I wouldn’t see it. It’s a story about the sex tape. Maybe Jim bought them all so no one else in this town would find the article.
On the bottom shelf I find all the sharp objects he’d taken from the house: the scissors, the knives, his razor blades.
The door creaks. The light in the room changes.
‘What are you doing?’
My heart stops. I don’t turn around. I can’t move at all. The axe is beside the door. I cringe, bracing for the blow. I can feel myself fading; the scene before me blurs. I close my eyes and breathe. No flee, no fight, just resignation.
before <
THIRTY-THREE
‘YOU’RE A TOUGH old boot, aren’t you?’ Thom asked me. In his sly, laughing way he had spoken of this meeting at our local café as if it were a date. He reached across the table, the one I had chosen in the far corner near the window, and clasped my hand. I resisted the urge to pull it away. He had had a week to apologise but he still hadn’t, even though my concussion and these stitches in my head were caused by his jealousy. I had been obsessively combing my hair down over the bald patch to hide it from Dad. I lived with the consequences while Thom was the one who had started the argument that led to the fight. He had abandoned me, yet here he was joking about it.
‘My head’s still very sore, Thom,’ I said. I chewed my thumbnail and watched the people passing by the window.
‘So what happened afterwards? I was really worried when you didn’t answer your phone.’
I turned my gaze to him. ‘Willow looked after me. I slept on her couch.’ Willow’s dad had sat close to me, his long lean arms around me, his breath on my collarbone. I knew he wanted me. I craved the feeling it gave me. The sense of power.
‘Willow? So you’re friends again.’ He sounded annoyed.
I pulled my hand away from his. Anger came over me quick. ‘She loo
ked after me. And it doesn’t matter if we’re friends. The fact is, she was there and you weren’t.’ My voice was rising. ‘And where were you, Thom? Where did you go when I was bleeding and concussed?’ I tried to calm myself but something had changed between us. This wasn’t the Thom I had dreamed about, the Thom I thought I knew.
His face dropped. ‘I didn’t see. It all happened so quickly.’
‘But you started it. It was your fault. Can you not see that? You got so jealous and if you had kept your head we could have just walked away.’
‘You were the one flirting with them.’
I bit down, clenching my teeth to keep from screaming. Only my lips moved when I spoke again. ‘So what if I was? Would that justify what you did? Would this inch-long cut to my head be justified then?’ The café was almost empty but the only other diners, a family at another table, had fallen completely silent now.
‘I wasn’t the one that hurt you, Kate. We can still get them. We should go to the police.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Definitely not. I can’t risk Dad finding out. I wasn’t supposed to be there.’ I glanced over my shoulder as more people entered the café. ‘So you’ve got nothing to say? You’re not going to apologise?’
‘Okay. I’m sorry that you got hurt but you’ve got to accept some responsibility too.’
What would he say if the tables were turned and I’d left him bloody and barely conscious?
‘That’s a bullshit apology, Thom. You can’t even say sorry.’
‘Those guys are the ones who should be apologising,’ he said. ‘People like that get away with too much.’
‘Just fucking say you’re sorry. Not you’re sorry I got hurt, but you’re sorry for being such an arsehole.’
I could feel tears coming.
‘Hey,’ he said, reaching for my hand again, but I pulled it back into my sleeve. The barista was watching us over the coffee machine. ‘Don’t cry, please, Kate. I fucked up, okay. I’m sorry for being an arsehole that night. Just please, we’re making a scene.’
