by Wendy James
Please find account attached.
Yours sincerely
J.D. Nicholson, Marlowe and Co.’
She prises the letter from its clip and passes it across the desk. Hamilton reads through quickly, then looks up at Susan, raises his eyebrows. ‘Go on.’
She goes on.
‘ Dear Mrs Carter,
We have had at last some slight success. A Mr Joseph Giannopoulos, proprietor of Gianni’s Cafe, Darlinghurst, has identified your daughter as being one of two female tenants who lived in the flat above the cafe from 1980–1981. Though he claims that he knew very little about her (he cannot remember her name, isn’t certain that she did go by the name Karen), he does recall her telling him that she was moving to St. Kilda, Melbourne. She left sometime around April 1981.
Please let us know if you wish us to continue our investigation in Melbourne. Our interstate costs will comprise the daily rate, plus travel – return by air – and accommodation.
Yours sincerely,
J.D. Nicholson, Marlowe and Co.’
She hands this letter over, begins reading the next.
‘ Dear Mrs Carter,
We have had a positive identification here in Melbourne. The local constabulary are certain that a young woman who strongly resembles your daughter goes by the name Michelle or Shelly Brown and has lived in the St. Kilda area for several years. Unfortunately, according to several acquaintances, she has recently moved – allegedly to Western Australia – in company with another young woman, one Carleen Taylor. They have left no forwarding address. We have requested that we be informed if anyone receives information as to their present whereabouts.
We enclose our account.’
It’s all there, but she reads him the last letter anyway. It provides an ending, of sorts.
‘ Dear Mrs Carter,
As discussed over the phone we feel that it is very unlikely that any further information regarding your daughter will come to light. We have received no further information as to her current whereabouts from any of our numerous contacts, and as it has now been over six months, we very much doubt that we will.
We hereby tender our final account.’
They sit in silence for a long moment. Susan places the last letter carefully on the desk, smoothes it out gently, almost caressingly. She looks around the bland office, some part of her vaguely amazed that such a place could provide the backdrop to such drama, such melodrama. She’s amazed, too, by an inexplicable feeling of calm, of lightness; a creeping sense of relief. The hangover wearing off, perhaps.
Howard Hamilton has taken his glasses off, rubs his eyes tiredly. ‘What makes you so certain?’ he asks. ‘The investigators could have made a mistake. The name – Carleen, Carly – it could just be a coincidence.’
‘It’s not just that. My sister’s middle name was Michelle,’ she points out. ‘Michelle. Shelly.’
He clears his throat. ‘I think at this stage, Susan,’ he says almost apologetically, ‘we really need to call in the police.’
Ed
Ed walks on and on and on. North, east, south, west. North again. He loses track. When his feet can’t take it any longer – he’s wearing work brogues, not joggers – he stops at a garage and phones for a taxi. He has to ask the mechanic where he is exactly, he hasn’t got a clue.
And when the driver asks him where he’s going, he answers without thinking: ‘home’.
‘Yeah, man,’ he can see the driver’s expression in the rear vision mirror, the exaggerated eye roll. ‘But where’s that? Where’s home?’
He’d like to tell the man that he’s not sure, that he’s not certain that it even exists any more. That it’s possible that his home only exists somewhere in the past. And that’s a destination no taxi can ever take him – a place of no return.
‘Head to the coast,’ he says, eventually. It’s the best he can do, for now.
Susan
This time the police are brisk, businesslike. After all, this is not a disappearance, not a time for compassion, for counselling. This time it is quite straightforward. There may be warrants to issue, accounts to trace, people to interview. This time it is not a sister she has lost, but money. It is all very fast, very efficient.
When Susan arrives home with the kids in the early evening there is a message on the answerphone. Howard’s voice, cool, remote: ‘There’s news. But it’s not good I’m afraid. Call me.’
She calls him.
He’s matter-of-fact, formal, lawyerly. He doesn’t call her Mrs Middleton – he doesn’t call her anything. ‘The upshot of it is, that it’s all above board. There’s nothing the police can do. Nothing anyone can do. We deposited the money straight into the account Carly gave us – the account was in the name of Karen Michelle Brown ... The police contacted the bank about an hour ago and evidently the account had been opened several weeks ago at the ANZ George Street. Everything was done properly – a hundred point check to verify identity and so forth.’
‘And she had documents in that name?’
‘Evidently she had more than enough ID – the teller sighted a passport and a licence as well as a birth certificate. The teller was questioned, she remembered her quite well. She insists that the photo ID tallied, that they were recent shots.’
‘Recent photographs ... but how? Carly was, she is Karen, then?’
‘Well, no, not exactly.’
‘What do you mean, not exactly? I don’t understand.’
Howard gives a big breathy sigh: ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Susan, but Carly wasn’t the one who opened the account, there were two women. The teller was quite certain about this. She was able to identify Carly from the photograph the police showed her, but the woman said that she, that Carly, had only accompanied the woman who called herself Karen Brown. She was introduced to her as the woman’s ... partner.’
Susan is stunned, can’t think of what to say next, how to respond. Eventually says in a very small voice: ‘What did she call herself?’
‘Who?’
‘Carly? Did she say her surname was Potter ... or Taylor?’
There’s a long silence.
‘I don’t know, Susan. I don’t think anybody thought to ask. And quite frankly, I can’t see that it’s important in this circumstance.’
‘So what happens next? Can we trace the money, find out where she’s gone?’
‘The police can’t enquire any further – there’s absolutely no reason to suppose that the woman’s identity was anything but authentic. No evidence of fraud, whatsoever. The money belonged to Karen Michelle Brown, and as far as anyone can ascertain, Karen Michelle Brown has taken receipt of the money.’
Howard has given her, reluctantly, the name of the detective in charge of the case. The officer sounds harried, slightly bored, as if he’s got far more interesting, more urgent cases to investigate.
‘Look, I’m sorry, Ma’am,’ he says, ‘but there’s really nothing we can do.’ He speaks patiently, as if explaining to a child. ‘You see, it isn’t actually fraud. It’s not regular, of course, and quite possibly it has been done with some illegal practice in mind, but there’s no law against having that much cash,’ he sounds slightly regretful. ‘Not when it’s your own money.’
‘But you don’t understand,’ Susan says, ‘it’s not the money.’
‘Then what is it, Mrs Middleton?’
‘She can’t just go, can she? Surely she can’t just leave?’
‘Well, yes she can. She’s an adult.’
‘But she could be anywhere. With anyone. She could be in some sort of danger.’ Susan isn’t sure who she’s referring to now – who it is that might be in danger. Does she mean her sister, her real sister, or the impostor, Carly? And what sort of danger?
‘Well, Ma
’am, if you have any concerns for your sister’s wellbeing, I’d strongly advise you to contact our missing persons unit.’ Eagerly: ‘I can put you through to them now if you like.’
‘Your missing persons unit? But you don’t understand. I don’t even know if she’s actually my sister. My sister went missing over twenty years ago. Oh God, surely she just can’t disappear again?’
‘Oh, yes she can. People disappear all the time,’ the detective says. ‘There are a lot of people out there, you know, people who just don’t want to be found. For whatever reason,’ he says darkly. ‘And then sometimes for no real reason. You’d be surprised.’
Surprised? She’s way beyond surprise.
Susan collects the kids from after-school care and goes down to Freshie. She knows that’s where he’ll be; she’s found his work clothes neatly folded in the garage, his board is missing, and his wetsuit. She stands for a while, squinting into the setting sun. There are four or five black shapes out there, surfers waiting patiently for the next decent wave, and from this distance, really, they all look pretty much alike. But somehow, Susan fancies she can distinguish Ed from the rest, is certain that she recognises his particular stance, a certain straight-backed upright attitude that could only be his. The way he faces the waves with such certainty – faces that risk, that fear, those unknown depths, without any evident lessening of that uprightness. She notices that this particular figure hangs back till the last, starts paddling maybe a full second later than the others, but still manages to catch the wave, and somehow, somehow, is always the one who’s left standing the longest, way after the others have given up, are paddling back out into the depths, he’ll be determinedly trying to stay, riding some petering-out swell, or else, being ignominiously dumped...
But it might just be imagined. When she asks the children, digging tunnels nearby, they can’t tell which particular shape is their father – even closer to the shore there’s no way to be certain. Sitting herself on the sand, she loses sight of that particular surfer eventually, loses that certainty, and by the time Ed runs out of the surf she’s completely uncertain – about everything.
She watches him as he jogs up the beach, shaking the water out of his hair, rubbing his eyes. He doesn’t look at all surprised to see them there. ‘Daddy!’ Stella runs up to give him a hug, and squeals at his rubbery wetness, pulls on his arm, entreats: ‘Look at what me and Mitch have made, Dad. Come and look. We’ve digged this hugest tunnel!’ But she gives up when her father shakes her off gently.
‘Hold on, Stell. Give me a minute. You go and do some more digging, I’ll be there shortly.’ When she goes back to her trench, he squats down beside Susan. He wipes his eyes again – and it’s not just the salt water, they’re redrimmed, puffy.
‘I guess she told you?’
‘She did.’
‘I don’t suppose sorry...’
‘No.’
He looks down, makes patterns in the sand. ‘So what are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know, Ed,’ she keeps her voice gentle. ‘I really don’t know. What can we do?’
He reaches for her hand, she doesn’t resist, takes it tentatively. ‘I guess we just have to play it by ear; take it day by day...’
Susan laughs. It sounds so trite, so banal. So Ed.
He clears his throat. ‘We’ve worked too hard...’
For once, it seems, Ed is struggling to say what he means. She thinks perhaps he’s struggling to even know what he means, what he thinks.
‘We have to think of the children. We can’t...’ He turns his head to watch their busy excavations. ‘It was madness, Susan, you know that ... You know that I love you – that whatever it was with Carly, that it wasn’t real ... It was like an illness. A madness. It didn’t really exist. And in a way,’ he squeezes her hand, still looking away, ‘Carly didn’t really exist either ... did she?’
Susan doesn’t answer. What can she say? She doesn’t want to go into details about Carly’s non-existence now, here. There’ll be time for all that later. For some reason she recalls the detective’s words: People disappear all the time, he’d said. People disappear all the time for no particular reason.
But there are different ways of disappearing, she thinks, not all of them obvious. Sometimes nobody even notices. Sometimes there are no missing person reports, no police enquiries, no headlines, no grieving families. And sometimes, Susan thinks, returning Ed’s squeeze, nobody even notices that they’ve come back.
***
Susan is eight years old. She is sitting on a bed watching her big sister get ready for her high school formal. It is 1975 and her sister Karen is eighteen and has just finished her final exams. Karen has blonde hair, long and usually straight, but tonight fat curls tumble about her shoulders, wispy tendrils coil around her ears. The dress she wears is glorious, long and elegant: the fabric a swirling combination of purple colours – lilac, violet, mauve, indigo – with a delicate tracery of silver that glints and shimmers in the light. It is not the dress that Karen wanted – it’s too long, she says, hopelessly old-fashioned. She has pointed out a dress at a local boutique – short, black, halter-necked. It’s not appropriate, said their mother. You’re too young.
But Susan likes this dress far better anyway. The dress that their mother has made is a dress fit for a princess. She has been given some scraps of the fabric for her craft box, but it is too soft, too precious, and she can think of no proper way to use it.
Karen is sitting in front of her dressing table putting on make-up. Susan sits very still on the bed, and watches the reflection in the mirror. She could sit for hours, watching. Karen is more beautiful than any television star. Prettier than Jeannie, prettier even than Samantha in Bewitched. Susan thinks she would be happy to sit here forever, just watching.
Karen draws a heavy blue line around her eyes, and her mouth opens just a little, the tip of her tongue flickering occasionally at one side of her mouth. Susan follows the path of the pencil around her sister’s eyes. Feels her jaw slacken. Suddenly her big sister is grinning at her reflection in the mirror. ‘You’ll catch flies, Sukey,’ she says, ‘if you don’t watch out.’ Susan snaps shut her mouth, smiles back at Karen without showing her teeth.
Karen turns back to the mirror, but somehow she has moved a little, has tilted her head, twisted her torso. And suddenly, from her position curled up against the pillows of the bed, Susan can’t see her sister anymore.
Can see only herself.
Acknowledgements
A heartfelt thank you–
To the friends who, despite initial setbacks, made me feel it was worthwhile persevering: Winifred Belmont, Rebecca James, Sophie Masson and Felicity Plunkett.
To the amazing team at UWA Publishing: Terri-ann White, Kate McLeod, Jade Knight, Sylvia Defendi; and the incomparable Linda Martin, whose brilliant editing really made all the difference.
To Benython Oldfield of Zeitgeist Media: in advance, because I know what he can do.
To Kim Witherspoon and Alexis Hurley of Inkwell Management: for believing, and expecting that little bit more.
To Ashil Davawala and Paul McLeman: for invaluable – and idiot-proof – information on DNA testing.
To Penni Russon: for introducing me to the wonderful Mousewife.
To Darren, Sam, Abi, Nell & Will Shepherd: for obvious reasons.
Wendy James is an author of novels and short stories. Her first novel, Out of the Silence (Random House, 2005) won the Ned Kelly Award for first crime fiction and was shortlisted for the Nita May Dobbie Award for women’s writing. Her second novel, The Steele Diaries, was published by Vintage in 2008 and her collection of short stories Why She Loves Him by UWA Press in 2009.
Wendy grew up in western NSW and on the northern beaches of Sydney. She now lives with her husband and children in Armidale, NSW.
e You Been?
