All These Perfect Strangers

by Aoife Clifford

  In the end, I sat up and read the information that had been left on my desk. There was a brochure on the history of the college, claiming this was the home of ‘high achievers’. The only one I had heard of was a TV show host, who got axed when he had appeared on air drunk. The next piece of paper was headed UNI-SAFE – IT CONCERNS U, about a recent attack by someone wielding a screwdriver. I was used to my mother’s gun-loving boyfriends. A screwdriver didn’t even seem like the person was trying. I threw all of it into the bin, stood on my bed and gazed out of the window at the empty car park below. The sun was setting. I could see past where the bus had dropped me off and back along to the other residences. Then I turned to look at the river which ran roughly parallel to the road. The noises of the college receded as the buzz from the cicadas swelled, and the world slowed until it was neither day nor night, but something in between.

  Chapter 2

  Today, I am early for my appointment with Frank, so I sit on a bench near the bus stop where I left from six months ago. That feels like ancient history and it feels like yesterday. Second semester starts next week but I won’t be there.

  The bench is in the square with the Carillon on one side and the black bones of cherry trees on the other. There is a new tourist information board next to the trees, stating they are a town feature.

  It is a raw winter day with a weak sun and there are not many people about. Even the court house across the road is quiet. Just a couple of utes are parked out the front of it. Most of our town is a sprawl of bad 1960s architecture and cheap fibro housing, but the court house was built in good times when people and money sluiced into town and before they slipped away with all the wealth. It’s made of faded yellow sandstone with columns, a massive green octagonal dome and a large clock in the centre that probably stopped working last century. Sitting back from the road, behind a wrought-iron fence with stone pillars, it presides over our town. I like to look at it because it doesn’t belong here and neither do I.

  In primary school we went on an excursion to the police station around the corner and the court house. I was allowed to sit in the judge’s chair. Tracey was the accused, standing behind the wooden bars in the dock, telling jokes and cheeking our teacher. Mrs Kelly told me to bring my court to order. I held the gavel in my hand, my fingers still inky from the fingerprinting. It was lighter than I had expected so when I tapped it onto its wooden block, I thought no one would hear it. But it sounded as if I was thumping the bench with a hammer and the result was immediate. Complete silence. I had the power for there to be noise, or for there to be none. Everyone was listening to me.

  When I came back to court for Tracey’s committal, people were supposed to listen, but it was the lawyers who talked the most, interrupting, objecting and telling me to keep to the question. I realised important people are the ones who ask the questions, not give the answers. But still my answers were enough. During my evidence, Tracey’s mother fainted in the court room and the case was adjourned while an ambulance was called.

  By then, I was a couple of months into my sessions with Frank and it would be another year before I decided to stop. We often discussed Mrs Cuttmore fainting in the court. She was the only one who believed that the police had the wrong person, and she kept believing right up to the point she heard me, Tracey’s best friend, say that they didn’t.

  I don’t like thinking about those days but having to see Frank again brings them back.

  A dumpy track-suited woman comes past, pushing a pram with a small child trailing behind her, wailing.

  ‘C’mon Amber,’ she yells over her shoulder and I recognise the voice.

  She turns to look at Amber, who has thrown herself down on the path in silent protest. ‘If you don’t get up, I’m gonna belt ya one,’ she threatens, but her heart isn’t in it. Instead, she jerks the pram to a halt and walks towards the child.

  As she comes marching back, child wrestling under her arm, she looks my way and stops short in surprise.

  ‘Penny Sheppard,’ she says.

  I try to think of her name. She was the year above but left school to have a baby. She is fatter than I remember. Maybe she is pregnant again. Maybe that’s just how she looks now.

  ‘I can’t believe it. I saw you on telly.’ Her eyes widen, rimmed with black eyeliner, as the kid scrabbles down her side and starts playing with the pebbles. Despite the makeup, she looks washed out and faded, but seeing her face properly, I remember day-glo socks and a ‘Choose Life’ t-shirt and ‘Kim’ pops into my head.

  ‘I was makin’ the kids’ tea and the news came on and there you were . . . I never have it on that channel, but the kids lost the remote . . . and it was you. I wasn’t sure at first, but you were in the paper and that. Couldn’t believe it. Mum says trouble follows you round like a bad smell, but I said this time wasn’t your fault.’

  Not like last time are the unspoken words that curl around us.

  The little girl stares up at me, trying to work out the reason for her mother’s excitement, but soon gives up and begins singing quietly to herself while picking up pebbles.

  ‘Been back long?’ Kim asks.

  ‘A few weeks.’

  ‘Where you stayin’?’

  ‘At Mum’s. How about you?’

  ‘Lee’s working up at the abattoir, two hours’ drive away. Told him I’m not leavin’ town. So, I’m back home and all.’

  There is a shared moment of resignation. She sits down on the seat next to me and pulls a packet of cigarettes from her handbag. The name Lee brings a memory of a large, dark-haired sullen boy. He used to get into fights on the football field. Tracey once kissed him at the Blue Light Disco.

  ‘Wanna smoke?’

  I shake my head. There is a whimper from the pram, and Kim grabs the handle and rattles it back and forth.

  ‘Teethin’.’

  I nod. She is the first person my age I have spoken to since I left university.

  ‘Youse seen anyone from school?’

  That she even asks this question, that she has stopped to talk to me in the first place, makes me hope that perhaps people have forgotten about what happened three years ago and have moved on to hating someone else. And I wonder if that could really be possible.

  Kim is a font of information. Girls, whose names I remember but faces I don’t, were having babies. A boy we both knew got killed in a car accident. Another has been busted for growing cannabis. Mostly she whinges about hardly ever getting to go out. Tracey and I used to make fun of people like Kim who spend their whole lives in this town. Now, I am happy to listen all morning.

  ‘It’s footy season, so we only see Lee if we visit him. Plays for his town’s team. Might as well be a single mum. I mean the pay’s good and he wants to save up for our own house and get married, but what’s the point if you never see them? I’m gonna find someone else and the first he’ll know about it is when I leave the kids on his doorstep.’

  Amber comes over and starts tugging at her mother. ‘Need to go wee, need to go wee.’

  But it is all too late. The little girl stands there bow-legged, a wet patch at her crotch and a small puddle underneath her. She looks up at her mother fearfully but Kim sits there, ignoring her completely and Amber goes back to playing with her small pyramid of stones. When Kim finishes her cigarette, she sighs, crushes the end of it on the bench and flicks it onto the gravel, near her daughter.

  ‘Anyway, couldn’t believe it when I saw you on the news. Nasty scar you’ve got but get a fringe and you won’t even know it’s there.’

  I automatically pat my forehead and feel the long pucker under my fingers.

  Kim stands up and releases the brake of the pram, when I say to her, ‘Maybe we could meet up at the pub.’ But even before I finish the sentence, I can see that I’m wrong. She fusses around, cigarettes back in the handbag, checking if the baby is still asleep, not looking at me.

  ‘Na, not this weekend. Catching up with Julie . . . Julie Cuttmore. Getting married in a few we
eks, so it’s kinda like her hens’ night.’

  She is beginning to regret her decision to stop and talk to me.

  ‘Seeyathen.’ She speaks too quickly as she grabs Amber’s arm. ‘Muuum, that hurts.’

  ‘At the pub sometime,’ I find myself saying, and she tries to smile with her mouth, but her eyes look frightened, and she hurries away.

  I have seen that look before.

  It was in the senior locker room. The only time they got me. Almost a year after the committal. Lying on the floor, my nose bleeding after they had pushed me into the lockers. Julie Cuttmore was sitting across my chest, her knees digging into my arms.

  She leant down near my ear, so close I could feel the words on my skin. ‘It was your fault she did it. All your fault. You fucking murderer.’

  A ring of girls surrounded us, an early-warning system for teachers. I squinted up, to concentrate on something that wasn’t Julie, thinking I deserved this. It was Kim’s face that was blurred and then came into focus, biting her lip as she stared down at me, trying to be tough, but looking close to tears.

  Chapter 3

  ‘What on earth are you wearing?’ asked Toby, as I walked past his room on the way down to dinner. ‘You look like Little Bo Peep.’

  It was the Thursday night of Orientation Week and I was wearing a dress I hated. A floral print in blue and pink. It was maiden and matron all at once, a dress that good girls wore, a dress that you wore to court to put all the blame on someone else. It was the only dress I owned.

  ‘Rachel told me we had to wear something formal to dinner before we got changed for the bar crawl. She said it was college tradition.’

  I met Rachel the day after I arrived. Ballerina-scrawny, bobbed hair that couldn’t quite decide if it was red or blonde, frecklish skin, she had knocked on my door, scrounging a cigarette. By the time I explained I didn’t smoke, she was sprawled across my bed, telling me all about herself.

  A walking exclamation mark of a person, she was Australian, but had grown up in the United States, which explained her accent, a fluctuating mix of drawl and twang. Sometimes it was almost all Australian, missing consonants and drawn-out vowels, then it would revert and sound exactly like the American accents you hear on TV. This was her second year at university and most of her schooling beforehand had been private tutors. Her parents were divorced and both had remarried. Her father, a rich businessman, lived in a mansion on a harbour while her diplomat mother worked in embassies around the world. She was enrolled in Asian Studies and learning Japanese.

  She had been curious about how I had scored the bursary but I deflected the conversation back to her.

  ‘Diplomats’ kids are always fucked up,’ she told me with an odd note of pride. ‘Myself included.’

  ‘Well that explains it,’ Toby said now, eyeing the dress with distaste. ‘Rachel’s a lot of fun but don’t believe a word she says. She’s just taking advantage of innocent little first-years.’

  I felt a flicker of annoyance. Trying to fit in at college, while suffering from a continuous hangover, was hard enough without someone deliberately trying to trip me up.

  ‘Get changed before anyone sees you. Then burn it.’ Toby pushed me back but I wasn’t quick enough. Joad was coming out of his room as I walked past. He was a rich farmer’s kid from up north, biding time at university before returning to the landed gentry to continue the family fortune. I was prepared to try and not hate him on principle, but my good intentions didn’t last long.

  Smirking, he stood in the middle of the corridor. ‘I didn’t know you were Amish.’

  I tried to walk past, but he moved quickly to block me.

  ‘The Laura Ingalls look suits you. Maybe you should plait your hair or wear a bonnet,’ and he moved closer and touched one of the flower-shaped buttons near my chest.

  ‘That’s not funny,’ I said, pushing his hand away.

  He tried again, but this time it was more of a grab for the general area.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ I said, louder now.

  ‘You saving yourself for marriage to some first cousin or are you here to have some fun?’ Close up, his face was a series of razor-sharp points, an angular chin, a tapered nose, a serrated tongue.

  ‘I don’t think Pen’s finding it fun,’ said a deadpan voice. It was Michael, who had been sitting in the breakout space and was now leaning around the corner, looking at both of us.

  Joad turned towards him. ‘So what? I was.’ His attention off me, I quickly scooted towards my room, nodding my thanks to Michael as I left.

  When I eventually got downstairs, now dressed in the standard student uniform of t-shirt, ripped jeans and Doc Martens, I saw Rachel was reading the blackboard menu outside the dining hall.

  ‘Not chilli con carne already, I am definitely going vegetarian this year,’ she said loudly, and pushed her way into the queue for dinner, in front of two first-year girls, who scowled, but didn’t say anything.

  I decided to pretend I hadn’t been fooled by Rachel. She had meant it as a joke. That was all. I was just out of practice with this sort of thing. It wasn’t her fault that Joad was a jerk.

  I stopped and read the blackboard. Chilli con carne sounded all right to me. When I headed to join the back of the queue, Rachel noticed me walking past, and pulled me into the line, behind her.

  ‘Come on, they won’t mind if you cut in.’ But when I turned around, their faces told me they did.

  ‘Last year, all I ate the whole frickin’ time was salad,’ Rachel continued. ‘And I know for a fact that Maggies are having pizza tonight.’ An all-girl Catholic residence, Magdalene College was the concrete cloister next door.

  The queue shuffled forward, moving through a side entrance into the cafeteria-style serving area.

  ‘And he’s the reason why I almost got malnutrition last year. I was sure they were going to fire him.’ She pointed to a guy behind the counter, wearing a splattered apron, his stringy hair pulled back in a ponytail. Serving another student, he was within earshot of our conversation. ‘My father always told me never to trust a thin chef or a man wearing a bow tie.’

  The chef turned to Rachel, glaring as though his father had warned him about skinny girls with big mouths.

  ‘What are you having?’ Under his hairnet, he had the face of an albino ferret.

  ‘Vegetarian.’ Rachel affected a bored drawl.

  ‘I don’t remember you being vegetarian last year,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, well I converted to Buddhism in the holidays and I’m a vegetarian now.’

  ‘Buddhism,’ he repeated sarcastically.

  ‘Richard Gere, Dalai Lama, that kind of shit.’

  He narrowed his eyes and pointed his tongs at her, splattering greasy droplets over the countertop. ‘I’ll be keeping my eye on you, Sunshine. I only make a set amount of veggie meals here, orders of the Sub-Dean. So, there’ll be no going back to meat when it suits you.’

  Rachel gave him a ‘whatever’ look, grabbed the plate and put it on her tray. Wincing, I glanced at the chilli con carne, the consistency of wet cement, and decided to turn vegetarian as well. The cook committed my face to memory, before handing me two blanched white slugs of cannelloni in a sea of pink water, without comment.

  We found a couple of empty seats near Toby. The dining room was a football pitch of a room with exposed beams and wooden floor. Long rectangular tables were lined up in regimental rows. Noise bounced around it and when it was busy you had to lean in to hear what your neighbour was saying. The scraping of cutlery on plates and chairs on the floor coming from around us echoed through my skull. Toby gave a knowing smile at my clothes and then went back to assaulting his plate with double helpings of everything. With a full mouth he asked, ‘Did the budding attorney-at-law enjoy her introductory tutorial?’

  Lectures didn’t start until the following week but I had attended the getting-to-know-you session that afternoon at Law School. The place was overrun with people I despised, mostly rich private s
chool kids trying to disguise the fact that they would, one day, inherit the earth, directly from their parents.

  ‘It was all right,’ I said.

  ‘Did you smell the fear?’ he continued. ‘That you’re no longer the smartest person in the class?’

  That was an altogether too accurate description of how I had felt, but I tried to pretend otherwise, because sitting next to Toby was Rogan. Broad shoulders, high cheekbones and dark hair, he was poster-boy handsome. The type of boy every girl in the room knew the name of within minutes.

  ‘There was a policeman in my tutorial,’ I said, trying to be fascinating.

  Rachel, who had been nibbling around her dinner, was instantly horrified. ‘Really? In a uniform?’

  I shook my head and instantly regretted it. Everyone at college had been drunk since Sunday and I was hung over almost to the point of dumbness. Sudden movements hurt.

  ‘Did he have a moustache?’ asked Toby.

  ‘Neat and regimental.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Toby. ‘I prefer mine a bit more rugged lumberjack.’

  ‘What was he doing in your tutorial?’ Rachel asked suspiciously.

  ‘Taking notes, of course.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Rogan was listening.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Rachel. ‘What sort of fascist state is this university? There should be laws against it.’

  ‘Perhaps there should be police in every tutorial ensuring that the police don’t enter,’ I said innocently.

  ‘Very funny.’ Rachel gave me a shrewd look which she converted to a mulish pout for the rest of the table.

  Toby asked, ‘But what was he doing there?’

  ‘He’s a student.’

  Almost giddy with relief, I smiled down at my dinner. I was in a place where I could say the word ‘police’ without a stunned silence following and people beginning to whisper about me the moment I turned away. That realisation more than made up for the pain in my head.