Where Have You Been?

by Wendy James

  Now, as a not-so-objective participant in what he can’t avoid recognising as his own impending relationship breakdown, his own test of will, Ed can see that it’s far more complicated than that. That it’s not so much to do with trying (and he is trying), that trying achieves very little. Now all his theorising seems laughable, inadequate, incredibly naive. The smug pronouncements of the complacent. This isn’t about will, he realises now, will counts for nothing here. He’s willed none of this. It’s inescapable, and he’s without volition.

  The only thing he can liken the experience to – and he knows it’s a laughably cliched analogy, tired and trite – is being picked up and swept along by a current. Ed feels he’s done his level best to swim across the flow, but that’s just not working – any attempt to escape is wearying beyond belief and, anyway, impossible. He thinks perhaps the only way to survive is to stop resisting, to let the tide pull him out. And if he can somehow survive the journey, the voyage (and he knows he might be taken miles and miles offshore, he might end up somewhere unrecognisable, another continent, a desert island; he might even be eaten by sharks en route), if he can just stay afloat, he might preserve some small bit of his strength.

  And that way he just might make the long swim back.

  Susan

  Susan wakes with difficulty, her head thick, eyes sticky. The room is full of sunshine, the space beside her – well, there is no space beside her, she’s not in her own bed. She’s in Carly’s room, Stella’s old room – is lying, fully clothed, but uncovered, on top of Carly’s single bed. She doesn’t know, can’t remember, why it is that she’s there, why she hasn’t slept in her own bed, why she’s still in bed at this hour. What hour? A glance at the bedside clock tells her that it’s late, past ten, and she panics – Stella, Mitchell, school! – goes to get up, but can’t – her stomach lurches, head spins.

  She lies back gingerly and closes her eyes again. She tries to remember what day it is, but can’t; hopes that it’s Saturday, but doubts it somehow. Her stomach’s churning, but her mind is churning even more violently. She can’t remember why she’s here, what she’s done – and isn’t at all sure that she wants to.

  By the time the phone call comes, she’s just begun to feel human. She’s showered, dressed, drunk copious cups of black coffee (and vomited them back up again), has ascertained (from a scrawled note on the kitchen table) that Ed has taken the children to school. She’s even managed to dredge up her memories of the night before – most of them anyway. Susan’s certain that she left Howard’s terrace with her marriage vows – if not her dignity – intact. Certain that she drove home without mishap, despite having drunk somewhat more than the legally prescribed quantity of liquor.

  She can distinctly recall opening a bottle of champagne on her return, less distinct are her memories of the drink itself. She has a dim recollection of rummaging through the photograph box, of weeping over this and that family snap, of reading through the articles relating to her missing sister, again, of opening an envelope, trying to focus on some dull documents, of giving up, of pouring more champagne ... After that – a blank. She’s satisfied, though, that she, at least, has done nothing that requires forgiveness, nothing she need ever apologise for, nothing that will endanger the future happiness of their little family. She’s beginning to fill with a righteous anger – feels swollen with the weight, the magnitude – leaving no room for the inevitable sorrow; the despair that she knows will follow hard and fast. She’s ready, primed for action, for confrontation, and when the telephone rings, she hopes that it’s Ed.

  But it’s Howard’s secretary calling to tell her that the settlement has gone through as planned – it was a two week settlement rather than the usual six – and that the funds have been deposited into a trust account. ‘Less agents’ fees and the solicitor’s – your share is four hundred and fourteen thousand dollars, Mrs Middleton.’

  The woman gives her the figure with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm, obviously impressed and, despite her pounding head, Susan manages to make the appropriate noises. ‘The money’s ready for disbursement, and we don’t seem to have instructions for transferring your share of the funds. Do you want a cheque, or do you want your portion of the money deposited directly into an account?’

  Susan rattles off her account details, realises she has made a mistake, then, picturing the secretary’s bored disdain, can’t remember, has to make several attempts before she gets it right.

  ‘What about my sister’s funds – what about her details?’ She tries hard to make the question seem spontaneous, the sort of question anybody might ask – idle, inconsequential – but Susan is flustered, she’s breathless, she knows she sounds nervous, even guilty. And the secretary’s reply is icy:

  ‘Miss Brown has made her arrangements with us, Mrs Middleton. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you any information. You’ll have to ask her yourself.’

  Susan phones Ed.

  ‘Susan. You’re awake. Is everything alright?’

  Susan has lost the urge to discuss their situation, to confront him with her knowledge. She’s too tired, her head’s begun to pound again – the whole thing’s too hard.

  ‘Everything’s fine, Ed.’ She tells him about the secretary’s call.

  ‘Wow.’ He sounds vague, distracted. ‘We’re rich.’

  She tells him that she has to take Stella to the orthopaedic surgeon at lunchtime and then she has some shopping to do, errands to run, they’ll be home too late home to cook, could he organise takeaway, buy champagne? ‘Good champagne,’ she adds, ‘we can afford it.’

  ‘I guess we can. Do you need me to get Mitch from school? Will you be back in time?’

  ‘Mitch is going to after-school care. I’ve booked him in for the afternoon. He wants to go. I’ll pick him up on the way home.’

  ‘Oh. Sure.’

  A long pause, then: ‘Is she back? Is Carly back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you heard from her?’

  ‘No, Ed, I haven’t.’ Then casually, without emphasis: ‘Have you?’

  Susan

  She is flicking impatiently through an old newspaper in the surgeon’s waiting room when she comes across the story. Missing Teenagers, the headline announces, Murder Victims or Runaways? The Anguish of Uncertainty.

  Every year, she reads, hundreds of Australian teenagers disappear, most of whom leave of their own free will and return or are returned to their families within days or weeks. Others never come home and police files remain open indefinitely. Unless evidence of foul play can be proven or a body is found, these young people remain in an official and personal no-man’s-land. For their families the uncertainty is agonising – and for some it will never end. Recently a taskforce investigating a number of disappearances of young women from Sydney’s inner west between March 1975 and May 1976 – a series of disappearances investigators initially feared was serially linked – has come to the conclusion that at least two of the missing girls left of their own accord and that these cases can now be officially closed.

  The families of Jane Harkness, who disappeared from Leichhardt in April 1975, soon after her 17th birthday and Carleen Potter, aged 18, who disappeared from Marrickville, in March 1976 – were recently informed that NSW police had good reason to believe that their daughters are both alive and well. For these families the knowledge of their daughters’ safety has given some relief. Mrs Enid Harkness, mother of Jane, stated today that she had always feared the worst and that just knowing that Jane was alive somewhere was enough. Gerald Potter, father of Carleen, and her only remaining parent, now terminally ill with lung cancer, expressed his great relief, but added, ‘If you’re reading this Carl, how ’bout you get in contact with your Dad. I’m not going to last long. Let me die knowing you’re safe and happy. Let’s put the past to rest, love.’

  Inspector Dal Whitehouse, who heads the taskf
orce, emphasises Mr Potter’s sentiment: ‘Let me make it clear that it’s not a crime to disappear – there are often legitimate reasons for leaving – but there’s no harm in dropping a line or making a quick phone call, just to say you’re safe. It would save a great deal of heartache and worry. Not to mention paperwork.’

  Susan looks closely at the two grainy photographs. They are similar in appearance, in type, these two girls: both fair, with Farrah Fawcett flicks, plucked eyebrows, cheeky grins. There’s little enough to distinguish between the two, but the picture of Carleen Potter is somehow familiar. There’s a certain something in this girl’s smile that Susan knows well, but can’t quite place, and in the way she has her head tilted. It shouldn’t be surprising, no doubt this woman’s life is going on somewhere – just as Carly’s did for all those years. She could be anyone – a schoolteacher, shopkeeper, bus driver, even a neighbour. And it could just be Susan’s imagination...

  It could just be her imagination, but even so she nudges Stella, who is sitting patiently beside her, and points to the photograph, raises her eyebrows. Often the kids see things she can’t – lost needles for instance, or the sunglasses that have been left in the fruit bowl – and this is no exception. Stella doesn’t hesitate.

  ‘That’s Carly, Mum,’ she says, excited. ‘She looks really different, though, doesn’t she? With long hair. Must of been in the olden days. Look,’ she puts her finger on the girl’s mouth. ‘Her broken tooth’s just the same.’ Then: ‘Why’s Aunty Carly in a newspaper? Mum? Is she famous?’

  Susan tears out the article, ignoring the receptionist’s glare, and shoves it into her handbag. ‘I’ll tell you later, sweetheart.’ She grabs Stella’s good hand, pulls her up. ‘I’ve just remembered that I’ve left the stove on, Stell. We’ll have to see the doctor another day. We have to go right now.’

  She takes the bemused Stella back to school (‘But Muuum, what about the stove?’), arranges for her to join Mitchell at after-school care – a family emergency, she explains – and rushes home. The photos and clippings she’d gone through the night before are still out, strewn untidily across the lounge room coffee table. She finds the old Sun clipping, then smoothes out the new article, lays them side by side, looks closely at the featured portraits. There’s an undeniable resemblance between these three lost girls: they’re all fair, all roughly the same age, seventeen or eighteen. Karen: missing, presumed dead – by her at least – for over twenty years; the face in that photograph is almost as familiar as her own. Jane Harkness, evidently alive somewhere, but completely unknown, quite unfamiliar.

  The third photograph – head tilted slightly, the smile: wise, knowing – is of Carleen Potter. Like Karen’s, this face is familiar, but more urgently, more recently, so. Her eyebrows are thinner, hair longer, face slightly rounder, more open. But the chipped tooth, as Stella has pointed out, is unmistakable.

  Susan sorts through the other papers strewn across the coffee table – what a mess she’d made last night – the entire contents of her photo box seems to be out, and all the family documents – the articles detailing her sister’s disappearance, her children’s birth certificates, her own, their marriage certificate, deeds to their house. Right at the bottom of the pile she finds a large manila envelope – the one Gillian sent. It had arrived a couple of weeks ago, and she’d put it in a drawer, unopened, and then forgotten all about it. She must have opened it last night, half-remembers an abandoned attempt to decipher the contents, must have shoved them back in willy-nilly. She slides the papers out now and sorts them carefully, puts them in chronological order, then reads through them, quickly, compulsively.

  She looks back at the cuttings. Even without the chipped tooth there’d be no doubt.

  No doubt at all.

  Howard’s secretary puts her straight through. She gives him a rushed and garbled account of events – of Carly’s continued absence, the pictures in the newspaper article, the reports from Gillian.

  ‘Oh, dear. Dear, dear. This is ... I think perhaps you’d better come over now. We’ll see what can be done to ... er ... sort things out.’

  Sort things out. The sorting’s been done, though, hasn’t it? They’ve all been thoroughly sorted.

  Ed

  Ed takes a long lunch break. He usually takes none, gulps down a quick sandwich in his office, so feels he is justified. He isn’t working, anyway. He can’t. He tells Moira that he will be gone for an hour or so, maybe more.

  He wanders along the busy industrial streets, tramps south, then east, heads back into the beachside suburbs, not seeing anything, or anyone; thinking of his life, what he wants, where he’s heading. It seems he’s forgotten. Lost his certainty, his focus, his direction.

  Looking back, he’s amazed by how effortlessly the framework of their family life expanded to accommodate Carly, how the structure of their existence seemed initially unchanged: as if the new addition really dovetailed effortlessly with the original. He supposes that for a while it, she, did: and even when it didn’t quite, the differences were exhilarating, striking – like rosewood marquetry in a maple door.

  But now, when the new construction has revealed itself fully, he can see that the apparent durability was deceptive – it’s like a cupboard that’s missing a screw, lacking some glue: it’s been put together well enough, can withstand the usual wear and tear, but put under additional pressure – bearing the weight of a solid granite benchtop, say – the doors won’t align, drawers won’t close, and eventually the cupboard will buckle under the strain, maybe even collapse. You’ll be left with nothing but worthless bits of board – warped and battered out of all recognition.

  And way beyond repair.

  He finds himself at the end of his own street – he’s walked for more than almost two hours, headed for home, almost unwittingly. He speeds up, thinks that he will call Moira, get a taxi back, he has things to do, an appointment at three, quotes to phone in. He’s a few houses away when he notices the little red car parked in his driveway, a woman sits waiting in the driver’s seat. The woman – blonde, slender, dressed all in black – climbs out and opens the boot, and then Carly comes into view, bulging green garbage bags slung over each shoulder. Ed goes to call out, but thinks again. He steps back a little, conceals himself behind a large jacaranda in a neighbour’s yard, watches as Carly hoists the bags carelessly into the boot, slams it shut.

  The women stay behind the car for a moment, talking; they turn to look back up the driveway, Carly points something out, and they laugh. Then Carly slings her arm around the unknown woman’s waist, pulls her towards her, pulls her close, closer. They stay like that for a moment, one woman gathered into the other, shoulder to shoulder, chest to chest, and then their separate profiles merge. The two women kiss. And even from this distance, even though he has to squint to focus properly, Ed knows that this is not a kiss between friends. It is a slow kiss, a hungry kiss.

  A kiss between lovers. Between Carly and her lover. It’s a kiss he recognises. It’s a kiss he knows.

  Carly

  Pussy Cat Pussy Cat

  Where have you been?

  Poor little mousies,

  The cat’s got the cream...

  Susan

  She passes Howard the two newspaper articles. When he puts his glasses on, little half-moon reading spectacles, he seems years older, reminds her suddenly of her father, becomes a fussy dry little man. Whatever it was between them, whatever crazy spark or magnetism flared briefly between them, has dissolved, evaporated as quickly as it appeared.

  He smoothes the papers on his desk, looks from one article to the next, then back again. Shakes his head. Sighs. He looks at Susan anxiously. ‘I see what you mean,’ he says slowly. ‘There’s a definite resemblance. It’s unmistakable. Oh dear.’

  ‘There’s more. Gillian – my stepmother – sent me these a few weeks ago. I’d put them away, forgotten about them
, hadn’t even thought to look at them until now. They’re reports from an agency that my mother hired years ago. Dad ended up with the reports because he paid the accounts. By that time Mum was barely lucid. And of course nobody ever bothered to tell me about them. She’d hired a private detective.’

  The story sounds absurd to Susan, melodramatic; the entire situation is looking increasingly like something from a bad film. Howard holds out his hand for the files, but she hesitates, finds she cannot hand them over so easily. They’re something to hold onto after all. Something solid. ‘Perhaps I could read them to you?’

  ‘It would be quicker if I go through them myself...’ He must sense her determination, her desperation. Shrugs, ‘Whatever you like, Susan.’

  She has put the reports in order, pinned them together at the top. ‘The agency was called Marlowe and Co Investigative Agents.’

  Susan winces, but Howard nods, ‘They’re quite a reputable firm – and still in business. I’ve had dealings with them myself occasionally. It’s all quite regular.’

  ‘This first letter is dated 21st June, 1984.’ She’s surprised by the clarity and strength of her voice. ‘That’s almost ten years after Karen ... left. She’d have been twenty-seven.’

  Howard gives an encouraging nod.

  ‘ Dear Mrs Carter,’ Susan reads slowly.

  ‘ Just a brief letter to inform you that as yet no information regarding your daughter Karen has come to light. Our agents have made extensive enquiries in the Kings Cross district as per your request, but have not yet had any positive identification. As discussed, the time element is against us, as is the transient nature of the neighbourhood.