The Last Time We Spoke

by Fiona Sussman

  The Last Time We Spoke

  FIONA SUSSMAN

  To those living in the shadow of a violent crime

  Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you

  – Māori proverb

  The author states that any resemblance between fictional characters in this novel and any persons dead or living is purely coincidental. The surnames of some of the characters do not have a genealogical basis.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Beginnings

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Permissions

  Endnotes

  Research Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  By Fiona Sussman

  Copyright

  Beginnings

  1989

  ‘What will become of the monster?’

  Thirty pairs of eyes grew wide. Felicity Taylor started to whimper and Garth Mullins rammed a finger up his freckled nostril, examined his haul, then sampled it.

  ‘Garth!’ Carla said, fixing him with a frown and shaking her head, strands of her ink-black hair escaping the order of a tortoiseshell clasp.

  The class of new entrants sat cross-legged on the square of cranberry carpet. It was a humid February morning, and despite all four sash windows being open, the air was still and thick, and the children restless. Even the Loch Ness monster drooped from the roof, its cardboard tail buckling, its green scaly body sagging. And Garth’s behaviour was worse than usual. The school year had barely begun, yet Carla already had a good idea of the little personalities in her charge.

  ‘He’s going to kill them all,’ the freckly boy shouted, his hands clawing at the air, his teeth gnashing.

  Felicity was now in full-blown wail.

  ‘Garth, what about our quiet voices?’ Carla said, opening her arms and beckoning to the pale, strawberry-blonde girl. ‘Come here, love. It’s just a story.’

  Felicity Taylor wriggled onto her teacher’s knee and buried her head into Carla’s neck, her nose cold against Carla’s skin. Carla turned the page, her silver bracelets jangling.

  ‘I don’t think our monster is quite that bad. Hilary and Owen, eyes this way.’

  ‘He is! He is! He’s evil, Mrs Reid.’

  ‘Let’s find out then, Nathan.’

  Carla started to read again, her eyes darting from page to audience in playful exaggeration. ‘Deeper and deeper into the murky waters he slid—’

  There was a knock at the door. The class let out a collective gasp as the principal, Miss Carr, stepped into the room. Instantly shoulders were pulled back and arms folded.

  ‘Lovely manners, James Tahu,’ Miss Carr said, her eyebrows dancing independently of each other.

  The chubby lad grinned. Carla winked at him.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Reid …’ The children scrutinised their principal’s bronze lipstick, sharp green shoes, and laddered stocking, ‘but there’s an important call come through for you in the office.’

  ‘An important call?’ Carla felt a rush of apprehension. She eased Felicity off her knee and stood up.

  ‘Don’t know what it’s about,’ her boss whispered. ‘Just said important. Something confidential.’

  Carla hesitated.

  ‘Off you go, then. I’ll mind your class.’

  Carla hurried from the room and started down the corridor. She broke into a run, her red pumps clattering on the lino. Was it Kevin? Something on the farm? Please God her father hadn’t had another fall.

  Five C was just returning from music when Carla rounded the corner, the kids spread across her path in a noisy amble.

  ‘Excuse me. Can I get past? Excuse me,’ she said, weaving through the slow slouch of bodies. ‘Thank you. Can I get through?’

  ‘This is not a Sunday picnic, class. Move along!’ came the shrill Irish tones of Esther Creighton bringing up the rear.

  Carla smiled in grateful acknowledgment, then hurried on, leaving Esther open-mouthed as the opportunity for a corridor gossip slipped by.

  She was out of breath by the time she heard the familiar tap tap tap of Daphne at the word processor. The secretary stopped and peered over her glasses as Carla burst into the office. On the desk lay the black telephone receiver dislocated from the rest of the instrument.

  ‘Catch your breath, honey,’ Daphne purred, slipping a Mint Imperial into her mouth. The room stank of cigarette smoke.

  Carla picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’ She could hear a hum of voices in the background. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Carla.’ The voice at the other end was familiar. ‘Sorry to disturb you at work, but I thought you’d want to know.’

  Carla’s gums prickled.

  ‘Your test results, they’re back. It’s not Giardia after all.’

  Carla closed her eyes. ‘More serious?’

  ‘Well, you’re …’ Her doctor’s voice was smiling. ‘Carla, you’re pregnant.’

  ‘I’m what?’ Carla began to tremble. ‘Are you … I mean, that’s impossible!’ Eight years of trying. Her mind spun through it all.

  The doctor kept talking, Daphne kept typing, and Carla wept and laughed at the same time.

  When she finally replaced the handset, Daphne was waiting with a box of apricot tissues and her tell-me-all eyes. But Carla wasn’t ready to talk. Silence would keep her baby safe. She excused herself and wandered back through the narrow corridors, past rows of hooked schoolbags spilling lunch boxes and books onto the floor, past frosted doors and serious silhouettes, past years of anguish and effort and resignation. And just before she reached her classroom, she turned and headed out into the sunshine.

  The playground beckoned. Carla climbed onto the paint-peeled jungle gym, scaling the scarred yellow bars till she was teetering on the very top. Kevin was going to be a father. She flicked off her shoes, letting them drop to the ground. Her toes curled around the cool metal. Her father was going to be a nonno. She closed her eyes and stretched out her arms sideways, letting the cool fingers of breeze caress her. Then she jumped, her skirt billowing out to trap the freedom. She tumbled onto the grass and fell back on the damp earth, a twig snagging in her hair. ‘I’m going to be mother!�
�� she shouted, gazing up into the blue. ‘I’m going to be a mother!’

  Then she saw them, her students’ faces pressed hard up against the classroom window – noses flattened, fingers pointing, hot breath misting up the glass – and behind them, squinting, a bemused Miss Carr.

  1991

  ‘Fuck, Debs, I’m pregnant,’ Miriama Kāpehu said, flicking off the top of a bottle of DB Draught and taking a long swig.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Choice, girl,’ Debs said, eyeing her friend’s flat midriff with a mix of respect and suspicion.

  ‘It’s not bloody choice. Joel will lose me soon as he finds out. And I can’t go back to the olds now. Not after running away with a man with a patch,’ she groaned, shaking her slight shoulders to imitate his staunch stance. ‘I’m stuffed.’

  ‘Teach you for letting him poke you without protection, girl,’ Debs said, snorting with laughter.

  Miriama lay back in the dry grass and looked up at the sky littered with shredded clouds. ‘Got a smoke?’

  Debs passed over her half-smoked cigarette. ‘How far gone?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Miriama inhaled deeply. ‘Three months, maybe.’

  ‘Three months! Too late for Family Planning, hon.’ Debs broke a twig in two and used the sharp end to clean one of her fingernails. ‘I knows this woman who does the business. Cost you ’bout a hundy to get rid of it.’

  The two girls lay beside an upturned supermarket trolley in the middle of the empty lot, contemplating Miriama’s predicament.

  ‘Hey, you can’t have the whole smoke,’ her friend said, grabbing back the glowing stub. ‘It’s my last one.’

  A week later, in some house in Drover Street, in a dank-smelling bedroom with peeling pink wallpaper, Miriama lay back on a grey plastic tarp. It stuck to the backs of her thighs and left a crisscross pattern on her bottom. She spread her legs, and a woman whose name Miriama never got to know stuck a knitting needle through the mouth of her young womb. But it was a hundred dollars wasted, because the koru of cells didn’t let go. It held on, refusing to be annihilated. Perhaps it was meant for greater things … Grasping at life through bleeding and infection, it continued to grow, and six months later, on April 1st, like some rude joke, it made its way into the world, tearing Miriama asunder.

  ‘Aah, he’s beautiful,’ cooed Debs. ‘Joel’s gonna be stoked!’

  To Miriama’s surprise, Joel had been pleased about the pregnancy. He’d seemed almost excited at the prospect of becoming a father, at night rolling into the deep dip of their bed to put his ear to her growing belly.

  ‘I thinks it’s a Lenny,’ he once said, his black curls tickling her taut tummy.

  ‘You can’t call him Lenny,’ she protested. ‘I had this really ugly uncle called Lenny. He had hundreds of warty bumps all over his face. Anyway, it’s gonna be a girl.’

  ‘Nah. It’s a boy. He jus’ told me,’ Joel said, tapping her popped-out pito.

  ‘No, he didn’t!’

  ‘See, you just said he!’

  Miriama knew Joel wanted a son, but she was carrying high and everyone told her that meant it would be a girl.

  They finally agreed on the name Benjamin Joel if it was a boy. Benjamin, after Bennie Edmonds, Joel’s best mate in the gang. Miriama didn’t like the idea of naming her son after one of the mob – it was a bad omen – but she gave in because she was sure she was having a girl, and then they’d call her Aroha Jude. Aroha after Miriama’s mother, even though they hadn’t seen each other in the longest time, and Jude after Jude Dobson, the pretty presenter on Sale of the Century. Miriama hoped her daughter would be pretty too.

  Now she wiped the matted hair off her forehead and sank back into the pillows. The midwife, a round, rosy woman with warm hands, placed the baby next to her. Miriama took a closer look. A shock of black hair stood to attention on its crumpled brown scalp, and little popsicle-stick fingers poked out from under the soft pink blanket. Well, she thought she was having a girl, didn’t she!

  Miriama’s breathing started to pick up. It wasn’t that she was out of puff or anything. Rather, it was a sort of panic growing inside her.

  ‘I’m gonna be a good mom, Debs.’

  ‘Course you are. The bloody best.’ Her friend laughed. ‘Now don’t be so serious. You look like you seen a ghost.’

  Miriama slipped her pinkie into the baby’s tiny creased palm and five little fingers rolled tightly around it, giving her goosebumps all over.

  She spent three nights in the National Women’s Hospital because of all the stitches down below. It was awesome. She’d never stayed in hospital before and it was how she imagined a hotel would be – food delivered on a tray three times a day, a jug of fresh water every morning, and a hot shower whenever she wanted. And Joel was so chuffed at getting the son he’d ordered, he swaggered into the ward that first night holding the biggest bunch of flowers she’d ever seen and wearing a grin as wide as the world.

  On the day of discharge, Debs ordered a taxi, and Miriama was driven home like proper royalty, sitting there in the back seat with baby Ben wedged between her and her best friend.

  But when they got home, Joel was there with his crew. They’d been on the booze all day.

  ‘Come ’n’ party,’ he said, grabbing her round the waist.

  ‘I’ve just had a bloody baby!’ she flashed, wriggling free.

  His eyes darkened. ‘So now you got your fuckin’ baby, you think you can jus’ turn your back on me?’ he roared. ‘Well that’s not how it’s gonna be. Not with tits this size.’ His hands moved up under her shirt and squeezed her swollen breasts. She winced as two damp patches bloomed over her blouse.

  A few of the guys sniggered; others shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘Get off me!’ she cried, driving an elbow into him.

  Joel’s top lip curled back over his teeth, and he swung her round, the Moses basket pirouetting with her.

  ‘I said, come party,’ he hissed, his sour breath hot against her cheek.

  Debs lunged forward and grabbed the basket with baby Ben inside, just as Joel grabbed a fistful of Miriama’s long black hair.

  ‘Jesus, man. Give her a break,’ Debs screamed.

  ‘Shut the fuck up, woman, or I’ll give you a reason to moan.’

  Later that night Miriama got up to give her baby a feed, but her milk had gone and she couldn’t fill the screaming, wrinkly kid. It cried all night until Joel told her if she didn’t do something he’d shut the baby up himself. So she took the little one onto the street and they walked up and down until dawn.

  From the first day home, it was so hard having a baby.

  Chapter One

  CARLA

  16 years later

  Napoleon snorted and snuffled and nudged at Carla, smearing a glistening ribbon of saliva across her gumboot.

  ‘That’s all for now, greedy-guts,’ she said, retrieving the upturned bucket and tilting it toward the pig. ‘Look, nothing left.’

  Napoleon stuck his snout in the pail, gave a resigned grunt, then reversed into Carla, jamming her between his bristly body and the railing.

  ‘After a cuddle, eh?’ she said, patting the kunekune’s rotund belly. Then, with the swing of a leg, she hoisted herself over the fence. ‘Got to get on, old fella. Lots to do.’

  At the backdoor she pulled off her gumboots and padded into the kitchen. The aroma of caramelised tomatoes enveloped her. She peered into the oven; the lasagne was browning beautifully. Another ten minutes and it would be done.

  As she scrubbed her hands in the sink, Carla gazed out of the open window, the breeze riffling her blue-black hair, the evening light airbrushing her weathered complexion. There was nothing exceptional about the vista, framed first by the rectangle of window and then the line of weeping willows bowing into the scene. Yet she never tired of it – the sweep of lawn, the copse, the grey-green pond. She loved how the land fell away, unfolded and breathed, the view transforming with each s
eason as the year tinkered with its canvas.

  When she looked carefully, she could just make out Kevin’s silhouette on the far knoll, shadowing the herd as it lumbered down the slope ahead of the closing day. 5:50 p.m. She smiled. Perhaps, after all these years – twenty-seven to the day – she had finally succeeded in making her husband punctual.

  Carla gave an involuntary shiver and slid the window shut. Jack would be arriving shortly too. How she looked forward to these brief pockets of time when she could play at being Mum again and fuss over him until Kevin would chide, ‘Give the poor lad some space. He’s a grown man, for Pete’s sake.’

  Untying her apron, Carla found herself for the second time that day heading down the hall to her son’s room. It was just as he’d left it almost a year ago, complete with George Benson posters and model airplanes. Even his tennis racquet still stood at ease in the corner. She and Kevin had planned to convert the room into a study of sorts – a place where she could guiltlessly leave out her sewing machine, and Kevin, his piles of paperwork – freeing up the cluttered dining room for its original purpose. But they hadn’t got around to it. To change the room was to admit that a phase of life was over. While Jack’s corkboard remained cluttered with scribbled memos, exam timetables, and sporting certificates, the promise of his return remained real.

  She tugged at the well-worn duvet, straightening a ridge of the creased brown fabric. Then she opened Jack’s wardrobe, and in a Narnia moment, the smell of her boy – cricket greens, Blue Stratos, earth, and leather – drifted out, rewinding time.

  The ringing phone trespassed on her reverie.

  ‘Carla, Deirdre here. Not interrupting dinner, am I?’

  ‘No. Not for a while yet, Dee. Kev’s still out on the farm.’

  ‘I received your message and—’

  ‘Yes. Look, thanks for returning my call. I was just wanting to ask whether there were any teaching positions coming up.’

  ‘At long last, Carla Reid! So it’s taken an empty nest to finally woo you back.’