by Emily Brewin
‘What brand of jacket was he wearing when he went missing?’
She gawps, open-mouthed, mind blank. Vera prods her. She doesn’t know. It was a hand-me-down from a woman with a kid in the flat below. ‘Target,’ she guesses. ‘Kmart, maybe.’
The dress rubs raw under her arms and she adjusts it.
‘Was he at the park by himself?’ The blonde journalist purses her lips.
Detective Khanna twitches.
‘Just for a tic,’ Vera pipes up.
The journalist writes it down.
‘He was waiting for me,’ Rosie jumps in, giving Vera a look.
Vera shrugs.
‘We’d been to the shops. He was outside by himself for two seconds.’
‘Was anyone else around?’
‘Tell ’em about Joel,’ Vera hisses in her ear.
She shakes her head, breath rising in her chest. Detective Khanna had told her not to, something about restricting the investigation.
But the thought of Joel makes her head spin. The picture of him with Petey is almost too much to bear. She closes her eyes and sees Petey fretting because his food’s not laid out right or his socks aren’t matching. She imagines him spinning, arms out, face turned down, to find his safe place. Or worse, Joel getting mad the way he does. Pissed off and vicious, holding a cigarette butt to the baby skin under Petey’s arms, like he used to do to her. She almost gags at the thought and the detective tells her to take her time.
‘I didn’t see anyone else.’
She can feel Detective Khanna’s eyes on her.
‘I never leave him usually. He just took off.’
A young journalist in a bright blue tie gives her a weak smile.
‘Sometimes he does that.’
The crowd begins to feel friendlier.
‘He’s a good kid. Smart.’ Pride unfurls in her chest. ‘He knows all the capital cities of Europe.’
They nod and scribble and hold their phones in the air.
‘He got an A for maths last term. The teacher said he’s above average.’ She’s babbling in a way she never does, but she can’t stop. It’s a compulsion, like coughing. She’s got their attention and it’s all she needs to let them know who he is. The dress itches. If Petey’s watching, she wants him to know how proud she is, how much she loves him, wants him home. Her chin starts to wobble and Detective Khanna takes over again.
The cup of tea Vera made her when they got back from the media centre is going cold on the coffee table in front of her. It feels as if the wind’s been knocked from her. She slumps back in the couch, suddenly too exhausted to move. Vera bustles around in the kitchen nearby, making toast or something. The smell of it is comforting.
A knock at the front door surprises then rouses her.
Vera trots towards it, singing, ‘I’ll get it.’
Rosie stands then rushes after her, half expecting to see the police again.
Instead, the blonde journalist from the press conference is standing there smiling, a short man with a TV camera beside her. Rosie pushes past Vera.
‘Yeah?’ she says, confused.
The journalist extends her hand. Rosie contemplates it before taking it limply in her own. It’s soft and smooth and she drops it when the idiot neighbour’s door opens. He steps out onto the landing. Rosie ignores him.
‘We were wondering if we could ask you a few more questions about Petey?’ The journalist smiles widely before reining it in. ‘It won’t take a moment.’
The cameraman circles before stopping near the railing to position the camera on his shoulder. It stuns Rosie for a moment as she looks down the lens. Then she glances back at Vera who’s primping her hair.
‘I’ll tell ya something.’ The idiot from next door hitches up his trackies, grinning stupidly as the journalist and cameraman turn his way. ‘The kid makes such a racket I can hardly sleep.’
Rosie freezes. Watching the back of their heads nod with this new information.
The idiot crosses his arms and rocks back on his heels, lapping up the attention. ‘Wonder what’s going on in there sometimes.’
The journalist nods gravely and Rosie realises, with a thud, that the idiot’s story of Petey is more newsworthy than her own.
‘Shut up!’ She steps onto the landing.
The camera swings back to her.
‘Take it easy, love,’ Vera calls out.
But the idiot’s having too much fun. She pictures his face on tonight’s news and it takes all her willpower not to charge towards him.
‘Ya know she belted him,’ he continues. ‘That’s why he took off.’
The journalist raises an eyebrow at Rosie. ‘You have a criminal record, Miss Larson. Can you tell us what for?’
The question stuns her, as does the camera pointed at her face. How does she know that? The journalist and her idiot neighbour merge into one. She despises them both.
‘For shoplifting,’ she stutters.
‘Is that all?’
She casts her mind back. Doubting. What was the woman getting at?
‘Do you have a history of violence?’
She holds her breath. Joel. Was she talking about Joel? He hit me, she wants to scream at the woman’s pretty face, but she just can’t get the words out fast enough.
‘Sounds like a flaming fishwife with all the yelling that goes on.’ The idiot demands attention. ‘Worse than the bloody retard.’
She hardly sees the journalist shooting him a look of disgust. Mostly she sees red. The colour of Petey’s jacket and of rage and of the spitting hate in her head. She ploughs towards him.
‘You piece of shit,’ she cries.
Her hands connect with his flesh and she scrapes a hole in his face. She says something about his wife and the screaming that comes from their place.
There’s a pain in her chest as he shoves her hard to the concrete floor.
‘Get off me, you mad bitch,’ he snarls. Then to the journalist, ‘See what I mean?’
Something inside Rosie cracks. She hears it like a bone breaking and can’t stand up for the force of her tears.
And then Vera takes her in a hold that drags her up and back into the flat, cooing in her ear to take it easy, that none of this will help. She lowers Rosie into a chair at the table before slamming the door on the journalist and her apologies. In the background, the cameraman keeps filming.
Isobel
SHE FLICKS BETWEEN television channels mindlessly, watching milliseconds of a travel show, a cooking show and something with David Attenborough and a giant squid.
The light in the lounge is low but the blinds are up and she can see into the backyard. The solar lanterns Marcus implanted around the garden bed during his recent exertions illuminate the yard. His interest hadn’t lasted long.
The lattice on the back fence is covered in wisteria. She’d read The Secret Garden as a child and wishes there was a door beneath the plant to another world.
She rubs her temples. Although Marcus said he might be home early, she hopes he isn’t. There’s more space when he isn’t around. When he’s home she has to worry about who is texting him so late at night and why there’s a restaurant receipt in the pocket of his shirt. When he’s home, the air is too thick with undeclared accusations.
She stops flicking the channels at the news. It makes her feel less alone to hear other people’s problems. There’s a close-up of a plainclothes policewoman on the screen with thick black hair.
‘Petey Larson, eleven years old, disappeared from the yard of the council flats he lives in with his mother three days ago.’ Her face and voice are stern.
Isobel sits up when she hears the boy’s name. Recalls it being yelled that night in the car outside the florist. She shoves the couch cushions aside and moves to the edge of the seat.
A photo of the boy flashes up on the screen. It’s a school shot, similar to the ones she and Lachie would bring home from primary school. His hair is white and his dark eyes are dreamy. The freckles acro
ss the bridge of his nose are impish and he’s smiling, easily, revealing two big front teeth. His face is messy and endearing at the same time. It tugs at her.
Her mind is fuggy with Valium and pent-up grief. She squints at the boy and tries to remember where she’s seen him. The room fades until all that remains is his heart-shaped face. Soon, another replaces it. The child’s mother stands awkwardly at a podium, a Victoria Police banner on a wall behind her head. She’s wearing a dress that’s clearly too small and her hands fidget at her sides. Her eyes are the opposite of her son’s, two light blue pools in her pale face.
The memory of where she’s seen them before slices through the fog. Suddenly, the boy’s faraway eyes and his mother’s sharp ones are alarming. The photograph flashes up again and the sofa cushions tumble to the floor as she approaches the screen. It’s him, the boy from the rowboat who smiled at her. The realisation strikes like a blow to the chest.
He looked so small curled beneath the upturned boat. She was surprised at his height when his mother finally coaxed him out. She knew the trick to shrinking too, the ability to become almost invisible. She mastered it at school. Found a nook between classrooms she could retreat to at lunchtime. When she outgrew it she’d go to the library to study.
‘Later there was a confrontation with a neighbour at Rosie Larson’s flat.’ The reporter’s voice soars over footage of the mother leaping at a man.
Isobel exhales slowly through her nose. The resentment she felt at the boatshed returns with a vengeance. The simmering sense of injustice that people like Rosie Larson could have children when Isobel struggled to.
Isobel could tell at first glance that the woman was slovenly. It was apparent in her clumping boots and greasy hair, and in her son’s worn-out tracksuit pants. She knows her type. She’s seen enough like her to know the story, women who have offspring to various fathers, who rely on child support to get by. They exist in a permanent state of victimhood.
She huffs at the screen and tries to ignore the fact Rosie scared her that day, in the way she held her head high and told Isobel to go to hell. It was something her mother would do.
Isobel pictures the nursery upstairs, the tiny blue and yellow paper lanterns that crisscross the window so they catch the buttery afternoon light, and the lovely Danish bassinette set up in the corner. She can still see herself in the rocker next to it, a cosy blanketed bundle in her lap.
The camera zooms in on the mother’s face, her mouth stretched and her eyes hot with tears. The image stings like a bite so that the gaudy sundress and badly done hair are more pathetic than before.
‘Useless,’ Isobel mutters, sitting back on her heels.
The news ends in a flicker, and just as quickly she realises she is useless too. Their baby is gone and she still hasn’t worked up the courage to let Marcus know.
Rosie
THE SWEET SCENT OF WEED hits her as she pushes open the unlocked door. Techno blasts up the hallway and the air that comes out is clammy. It’s not the kind of place people wait patiently on the doorstep to be let in. It never has been.
A murky wave of nostalgia washes over her as she peers inside. The flaky walls and old bikes piled up in the hallway remind her of a share house she lived in with Joel when things were okay. It didn’t last long. They got kicked out for not paying the rent. Joel said he was a better person to be around when his habit was fed.
Then she recalls why she’s here and the memory drains away.
‘Kelly!’
It didn’t take long to put two and two together: the night in the supermarket, Kelly slipping in white sauce. She had always been a sucker for Joel, or at least for what he could give her. It makes Rosie grind her teeth just thinking about it, Kelly weak as piss, telling Joel where she worked.
‘Kelly!’ she yells louder this time and shoves the bikes as she passes. One falls over. The doof doof music picks up, stuffing her ears, making her heart race in time to the beat.
She passes a bedroom. A mattress makes a filthy island in the middle of the room, covered in blankets. There’s a jar balanced on the window ledge, full of cigarette butts, while two garbage bags spew clothes all over the floor. It’s girls’ stuff.
Detective Khanna said they’d already paid Kelly a visit and that she wasn’t the lead they were looking for.
Rosie argued with herself. It’s only been four days. Only … fuck. Petey had never even spent a night without her. Four days was a bee’s dick and a lifetime.
At rare moments she convinces herself Joel is feeding him, making sure he has water to drink, but mostly she’s terrified he’s neglecting him or worse. She knows what Joel’s capable of.
‘Jesus …’ She continues down the hall, booting a helmet out of the way. The crash of it hitting the skirting board feels good and she imagines doing the same to Kelly.
The police must be stupid not to put the pieces together. She’d seen Kelly for the first time in years and then Joel turns up. Her skin itches with the prospect of wrenching out the information she’s after. The street hasn’t completely left her system.
The beat reaches fever pitch, like the rave parties they went to back in the day. Music screaming through her head while the drugs worked their magic. Acid made the world beautiful. It blotted out Vera and the round of losers she brought to the house, the hairy hands Rosie had to fight off in the middle of the night. It lifted her up, filled her with light and sent waves of sunshine through her body. It made Joel’s jealousy feel like love and the prospect of shooting up intoxicating. It was the beginning of the end.
Fuck the end, she thinks, and fuck Kelly. For sure she knows where Joel is.
There’s a squeal as she enters the lounge room. The blinds are down and the room is full of sagging couches and milk crates. She sucks in a lungful of smoke and examines Kelly, spread-eagle, the same washed-out colour as the chair. She’s in her underwear, despite the cold, and a bloke with skin like pastry leaps away from her.
‘What the hell?’ He glares at Rosie, yanking up the front of his boxer shorts.
Kelly props herself up on her elbows, eyes half-closed, dirty blonde hair spilled over her face. When she pushes it aside her skin is blotchy.
The bloke pulls on a pair of blue jeans and gives Rosie a rat-faced grin, spitting as he speaks. ‘Lucky for you I finished.’ He finds his thongs under a couch and slips them on.
‘Rosie.’ Kelly blinks. ‘What are ya doing here?’ There are scaly patches on her arm and she scratches absentmindedly at them.
‘Why do you reckon?’ Rosie puts her hands on her hips.
‘Hey, hey!’ Kelly calls past her to the bloke pulling his hoodie on. ‘Money!’
‘Next time,’ he smirks before walking out the door.
‘Dickhead!’ she says, slumping back again, singlet pushed up and showing her ribs.
Rosie stands her ground on the crusty carpet, the sight of Kelly making her gut twist. She sees herself of twelve years ago in the bony body, too thin hair and pockmarked skin. It makes her want to bolt.
‘My boy’s missing,’ she spits. ‘Where’s Joel?’
Kelly’s head flops to the side as if she’s dozed off then jerks back to life. ‘Oh yeah.’ She waves a finger in the air. ‘I saw you on the telly, attacking that guy.’ She grins and nods sloppily. ‘You found him yet?’
Before Rosie knows what she’s doing she’s on top of Kelly, gripping a fistful of stringy hair in her hand. She pulls her head back. ‘You told Joel where I work.’
Kelly clasps her hands surprisingly hard around Rosie’s. She stinks like dirty laundry and sweat.
Kelly grimaces as Rosie tugs harder. ‘Stop.’
She sounds like a child and Rosie eases the pressure despite a burning desire to rip the hair right out of her head.
‘You told him, after you saw me.’
Kelly whimpers then begins to shake. ‘Jesus, Rosie, I haven’t seen him in years.’
The fingers are like spiders on Rosie’s hand and she lets Kelly
go with a shove.
‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Kelly rubs her head and curls her legs to her chest. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you.’
Rosie cups her face in her hands. She wanted it so much, a confession and the chance to beat the living shit out of someone. But she’s back at square one and Kelly is gazing up at her like an injured animal.
‘I remember what he was like.’
Rosie’s head spins and the techno from the CD player on the floor doesn’t help. She bends down and turns it off then sits on a couch near Kelly. She knows it’s true. She should apologise but she hasn’t got it in her.
Kelly scrambles off the couch and rifles through the pocket of a pair of pants near the door. ‘Here.’ She hands Rosie a baggie.
The small weight of it in her hand is comforting. She closes her fingers around it, flattening the powder, and imagines the bliss shooting up her veins, the instant release from the pain. Her skin tingles.
Kelly smiles, revealing stained teeth. ‘Give yourself a break.’
She can’t bear to look at Kelly. But thinks, just once, just a few hours of not feeling anything. The thought eases the sorrow in her chest.
‘Want a cuppa?’ Kelly bends over to pick up a pair of light pink tracksuit pants. The socks are still stuck in the ends.
Once doesn’t make her a junkie. Rosie glances around the room again, at Kelly struggling with her pants and the filthy carpet. But staying here does. She shoves the baggie in her pocket then walks back down the hall and out the door without saying goodbye.
Isobel
THE SCENT OF FRESH BAKED BREAD is unexpected and she can’t help smiling when her father opens the front door.
‘It’s like a patisserie in here.’ She wanders into the house without waiting for an invite. Lately it’s felt like home again. The warm yeasty scent makes her mouth water and for the first time in days she’s hungry.
‘Mrs Warren just dropped a loaf over.’ He closes the door. ‘She got a breadmaker last Christmas.’
