by Joy Dettman
‘This is bigger than your private war, my girl,’ he’d said when she’d protested. He was in control now. She sat.
They filled her house. They ruled it. Her kitchen stank of their frying meat. Her sitting room stank of men.
Lost. Lost everything.
She’d lost her remote control. Captain William Daws had commandeered it for the duration, along with her recliner chair, all the better to chase news reports on every channel. He sat there like a giant gecko flicking his two-metre-long tongue at flies – until he caught the tail end of an interview with Lisa Simms’s mother.
‘They know it’s not Danni,’ he said, rising from the chair. ‘They’re replaying that thing because they know it’s that other missing girl.’
‘They’d contact us if they knew,’ Martin said.
‘Me and Steve always done our best for—’ Mrs Simms said, and the gecko’s tongue flicked her away mid-sentence, flicked to a channel showing the massed police.
Barbara hadn’t done her best for Danni. She hadn’t wanted her. Had been given no choice in the matter. She couldn’t take the pill. Every time she’d gone on it she’d put on weight, and in her business, she couldn’t afford to put on an ounce. Had been modelling lingerie at the time.
Watched that cowboy pace. Wondered what she’d ever seen in him, if she’d ever seen anything in him, other than his parents’ unit – and their money.
Should have flown home and had an abortion the first time he’d got her pregnant, but she’d been so sick and he’d told their parents they were getting married. And her mother had flown over and taken her shopping to buy a fairytale gown.
Lost her reason for marrying him on the honeymoon – and celebrated.
He hadn’t.
Hated him for what he’d done to her life – and for what her father had done – or hadn’t done. She could have made it big in Australia when she’d won that beauty contest. If she’d had his support, she could have got into modelling back then. He’d made her finish school, had wanted her to teach. She couldn’t stand kids. Dropped out of college that first year when she’d got the chance to go to America. Too old by then. Gorgeous fourteen year olds had been strutting the catwalks.
Martin had pursued her. She hadn’t pursued him – and knew he’d done it on purpose when he’d got her pregnant the second time. She’d had access to his money by then, and booked a ticket home to have an abortion. He’d found out about her flight and got himself a seat in first class, on the same flight. She hadn’t known he was on that plane until she’d gone through customs. He’d gone through faster. She’d seen him kissing her mother, shaking her father’s hand.
And telling them about the baby.
They’d given up hope of grandchildren. If she’d mentioned abortion to them, they would have had her certified.
Wouldn’t let him near her after that kid came. Told him he wasn’t touching her until she’d had her tubes tied. He’d wanted them to fly that kid home to meet his parents.
She’d told him to go, and to take his shitting kid with him. He had, that kid in his arms. A week later she’d had her tubes tied. Keyhole surgery barely left a scar. She’d had a good time for twelve months, had got a bit of catalogue work. Hadn’t missed him or his kid.
Her parents had. They would have paid for a solicitor to get her back. She’d been born in Sydney. She was an Australian citizen, and Martin had no legal right to keep her in America.
She followed them to the US, had every intention of bringing Danni home but the old Lanes had bred racehorses and they’d owned their own small plane. She’d got to fly to race meetings all over the country. Hadn’t returned home to Australia until after her father-in-law crashed that plane into a mountain on his way back from a horse sale and Martin and his brother inherited everything.
Danni was ten years old when Barbara brought her back to Sydney. She’d found a divorce solicitor. Her father wouldn’t pay for him. She’d been too old to return to her line of work so had taken the receptionist job at Crows.
For two years she’d paid that solicitor before he’d got her what she’d wanted, a pile of money and full custody of Danni.
Then her mother had to go and die.
‘Stop combing your hair, Barb,’ Martin said.
She looked at the comb, at the mat of white-blonde hair woven around and between its teeth, then threw it at his head, and when it missed, she threw the landline phone. He needed that phone. He caught it. He didn’t catch her coffee mug. He dodged it, let it spray its dregs all over her peach drapes.
His fault. Everything. And that old gecko’s. The whole mess of her life was their fault, and her ruined drapes. She stood and cursed them to hell for ruining her life, and when the cowboy tried to hold her, she raked his face with her fingernails, and when Captain William Daws came to control her, she spat in his face, and screamed.
*
The neighbours, involved in the drama by proximity, had been watching the morning news broadcasts. When they heard that scream, they knew who had been found in those garbage bags, believed they knew, and they came to their doors, a few stepped out of doors.
They saw the ambulance arrive, watched Barbara Lane carried out to it on a stretcher, watched her menfolk get into the big khaki-green four-wheel drive, parked there since Tuesday, its tow bar overhanging the paved communal driveway, a hazard for drivers reversing out of their own garages.
MONDAY 25 MARCH
Two weeks ago, Bob Webb, the car driver, had asked what Sarah planned to do with her month of holidays, and had told her he’d bring in a temp to take over her workstation.
This morning, Bob Webb, Crow’s yes-man, stood at her workstation and told her that all holidays prior to the end of June would be delayed.
‘No,’ Sarah said.
‘No one could foresee this happening,’ he said.
This terrible thing that had every mother who had a daughter living in fear. Mrs Simms’s seventeen-year-old daughter was dead and had been dead since she’d gone missing, and the police were no closer to finding Danni Lane than they’d been to finding Monica Rowan. Barbara Lane was in hospital – but whether she was or not, it would make no difference in this place.
‘School holiday in April. I will be home with Marni.’ And have driving lessons and go for her licence test on Wednesday, 24 April, and Bob knew about her lessons and her test.
It wasn’t his fault. He did what Crow told him to do, as had the last manager, and the manager before. Sarah had been afraid of them. She wasn’t afraid of Bob, but at lunchtime, when she saw him walking towards the tearoom, she went down to the street to window-shop.
When she bought a house, they’d need everything new. She’d told Marni they’d look for a house in April.
Her entire life revolved around her month of holidays in April and she wasn’t giving them up. She’d given up Christmas for the promise of April, and if Crow tried to take her holidays away, she’d leave.
Marni wanted her to retire. She had very specific plans for Sarah’s future: retirement and a cochlear implant.
A part of Sarah still wanted the senior payroll/accounts officer title – but not enough to give up April.
Back at her workstation early, she was about to turn on her computer when she felt the huntsman spider on her shoulder. Had to stop flinching when he did that. He was a gentle person with gentle hands. He only touched her to let her know he was there.
She turned to him, reading what he was about to say by his expression. ‘April, Bob, or I leaving,’ she said.
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’re a team—’
‘Team is for games, netball, football. I work here, not playing game.’
‘He’s in a crap mood and won’t give an inch,’ Bob said.
Crow hadn’t been his dimpled self since the day he’d had his face on the front page of the Herald Sun, with Barbara Lane’s face. The reporters had stolen a photograph of his wife and printed
that the next day.
‘If I can get him to agree to you taking the school holidays, will you consider it?’
‘No. He agree before to April.’
‘All holidays have been delayed, not only yours.’
And Sarah turned her back and started emptying her drawers, stuffing what she removed into her tapestry bag.
And his hand was on her again. This time she shook it off.
‘I am very sick. This place making me very sick. I will get him a certificate – for all of April, or maybe six week like he is owing me – before I leave.’
‘You can’t leave,’ Bob said.
‘Very easy.’
‘You’ll be sorry five minutes after you walk out the door.’
‘No, you will be. You have to do his payroll.’
And Jackie was back. ‘Having a lovers’ tiff, folks?’
‘Stay out of it!’ Bob said and he gripped Sarah’s arm, not so gently. ‘Sit down for a minute. Give me a minute.’
‘What’s going on?’ Jackie asked.
‘I can’t have holiday,’ Sarah said and continued stuffing her bag, which didn’t want to hold what was already in it, and maybe didn’t want to leave. It toppled from her chair and spilt its load.
Jackie helped pick up the scattered items. ‘How are you going to live?’
‘I can.’
‘If I could, you wouldn’t see my heels for dust.’
She’d miss Jackie, and Shane, and Rena. She picked up the mobile she didn’t need, that Marni had demanded she buy. Marni was in love with her own. She collected new contacts daily. Sarah had six. She checked her phone after its bounce. Its glass hadn’t cracked. It was working. She checked her contacts. Bob, Ben, Jackie, Marni, Rena, Shane. Ben was her driving instructor. He didn’t text. His wife did but Sarah didn’t know her name. His wife sent emails she signed Ben.
They’d spent almost three thousand of their winnings on mobiles and a new laptop that had six hours of battery power and a touch screen. They’d bought a non-stick electric frying pan and half a leg of lamb to roast in it, and it had roasted it perfectly, and roasted potatoes and pumpkin, carrots and onions, then made a delicious gravy. Marni had baked scones in it, inspired by the recipe book that came with the pan.
They hadn’t bought plane tickets to Dreamworld.
And Bob was back. ‘Crow wants to talk to you,’ he said.
‘So he can sack a very sick person and save him some money for long service leave?’
‘When you’re ready,’ Crow’s yes-man said.
She was ready. Twelve years ago, when she’d come in for her first interview wanting that job so badly, she’d vomited in the Ladies’ before entering Crow’s office, and her breath had smelt of vomit. She’d sat across from Crow, his wife and the manager and shown them her hearing aid, knowing that as soon as they saw it, they’d know she wasn’t good enough, that as soon as they heard the way she spoke, they’d want to get her out of their sight.
Didn’t even tidy her hair today. Didn’t tuck her shirt in, just settled her bulging bag on her shoulder and followed Bob.
‘Take a seat, Mrs Carter,’ Crow said. She took a seat, Bob’s translation not necessary. She didn’t look at him when he sat beside Crow, on his side of that flashy desk. She sat on the other side, where she’d sat that first day. Crow’s hair had been less grey then, his wife had been younger, slimmer, a mousy blonde, but no mouse.
She settled the tapestry bag on her lap, one arm wrapped around it to hold its load in, and she looked Crow in the face.
‘A large office is like a machine, Mrs Carter. Each cog is interconnected, each one driving the next. One cog falls off its mount and the interdependent cogs still …’
Sarah waited until he was done with his monologue then replied. ‘I am owe holiday from before Christmas, Mr Crow.’ Should have said owed but that mister had always been a tongue twister, as had Christmas, and she’d been thinking ahead of how to say them and said owe. Perhaps he didn’t care what she said. Probably hadn’t understood her anyway.
‘You are aware that Mrs Lane had a nervous collapse and was taken by ambulance to hospital yesterday morning?’
‘I am very sorry for her,’ Sarah said.
‘I believe you have a daughter of a similar age to Danielle.’
Sarah nodded, but his cold blue eyes were on her face, expecting more than a nod. ‘She is have … having school holiday. We will go to Sydney.’ She said Sydney because it was easier to say than Queensland, and tonight Marni might decide on Darwin. With the whole of Australia suddenly accessible, she couldn’t make up her mind which bit of it to see first.
He offered a nod before continuing. ‘Given the best possible outcome, it is unlikely that Mrs Lane will be returning to her position.’
‘I am very sorry, but … but what position?’ she said, and felt the blush rising and was pleased when Crow looked away from her to Bob.
His full face was difficult to lip-read, his partial impossible. She sat a moment, hugging her overflowing bag, but with four and three-quarter million dollars in the Commonwealth Bank she was no longer desperate for his job, for her holiday pay or her long service leave, so she stood.
That got their attention. ‘Sit down, please, Mrs Carter.’
‘You decide. You send me email.’
‘Please,’ he said.
She didn’t sit, but waited, the bag’s strap over her shoulder, an arm holding the bag’s contents in.
‘Bob assures me that you are more than capable of filling the vacancy we again find ourselves with,’ Crow said. ‘If given the responsibility, would you—’
He was offering her the job she might have sold her soul for in February, and she turned her back before he was done, and walked out. He wasn’t offering it because he knew she deserved it. He was offering it as a bribe, the title, the office with its window, the extra money in exchange for her holidays.
His offer had come too late. Her soul was no longer for sale at his bargain basement price, but because Bob believed it should have been, the floor and the walls blurred. She didn’t howl, wouldn’t, not in this place. Walked out, her chin as high as a millionaire’s.
No lift waiting with its doors open. Bob came, and he dared to put his hand on her.
‘Go!’ she said. She wasn’t being walked from this building like a thief, as Eve had been walked out like a thief. She moved to the second lift and hit its button, and when he followed her to it, she walked back to the first.
‘Go away from me, Two face,’ she said, knowing he’d suggested that bribe and hating him for it. Unable to look at him, she searched her bag for her sunglasses. Couldn’t find them amongst the clutter, and didn’t dare disturb it.
The lift doors opened. He stepped in beside her. She closed her eyes until it stopped, then stepped out fast, walked fast towards Museum Station.
‘Talk to me,’ he said at the traffic lights.
‘Go, Two face,’ she said.
‘I was proud of you—’
‘Bullshit!’ she said.
‘He offered you his prize and you turned your back and walked. I was proud of you.’
She spoke faster, louder, and not clearly when she was angry. ‘You tell him offer me bullshit prize. You think he will buy dumb Sarah’s holiday very cheap. You get stuff, Bob.’
‘He tells me what to do. I don’t tell him.’
‘You crawl for him. Yes, Mitter Crow. No, Mitter Crow.’
‘He pays me well to crawl,’ he said.
‘And talk bullshit,’ she said, this time stressing bullshit with an old sign once popular at Perth’s school for the deaf where she’d been old enough, had stayed long enough to learn many satisfying signs. This one required both hands and the left elbow, and with a little imagination was self-explanatory. Even her father had understood it.
She crossed over with the green, with the crowd, then offered that sign twice more before he caught the strap of her shoulder bag. Her hands busy, grabbed too late. H
er bag slid.
It spilled her sunglasses. She snatched them, put them on, picked up her library book and bag and ran for the station. He followed her down the stairs with her blue lunchbox.
‘You don’t want to do this.’
‘Very much I want this. Tell him he can get new dumb blonde for my job. Tell him get one for you too.’
No train. She’d wanted that train to be there, waiting.
He removed his jacket, loosened his tie, undid his collar, shedding the office with its fake atmosphere and stepping down into the cavern world of the workers who kept the wheels of this city turning. Or was this face the fake and his office face real? Sarah didn’t know any more and didn’t want to know.
He’d seen where she lived, how she lived. He didn’t know she could afford to pay cash for a McMansion, that she could fill it with million-dollar furniture, that she could buy a better car then his – and she knew that she too wore two faces, and more than two.
The train came, and as she walked away from him to board, the huntsman landed.
‘Let me drive you home.’
‘Train more honest,’ she said.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘This is killing me!’
His words slowed her boarding. For an instant she looked at his face, searching for a reply to his declaration, but unable to find a word, she turned her back on him and boarded before the doors closed.
Saw him standing there, small and alone, frowning, looking for her on that not so crowded train. Wished he’d never come to Crows, that she’d never met him so she wouldn’t have to leave him standing there alone, so she wouldn’t have another image to add to the thousand images of loss and leaving that huddled in her head. There’d been too many leavings.
MAUREEN CROW
A long wait for a bus. A long walk home that afternoon, and the weight of her bag heavier with every step. The hardcover library book made it heavy. Train travellers who could afford an ereader downloaded books to read on trains. Less weight to carry.
More cars than usual parked on Mahoneys Road. More visitors than usual at the rehabilitation hospital?
