She went back further.
Ah, there. That night they’d had dinner at her cousin Jordan and his partner Katarina’s place in Tewantin, with six-year-old Toby watching Frozen in the lounge room while they had canapés on the balcony, overlooking the river. (Jordan and Katarina counted as friends, surely. Okay, they were family, and she’d always thought of Jordan as more like a brother, being closer in age to her than she’d been to Rose, and she saw them at least once a week, but for now she would put them in the ‘friends’ column so she didn’t feel so pathetic.) That night, definitely, she remembered.
But the date was two months ago. She must have had a period since then and just forgotten. Still, maybe she should buy a pregnancy test, just to be sure. Then again, any time she’d bought a pregnancy test in the past it had always been negative, she’d got her period one or two days later, and she’d blown the cost of half a cocktail.
She’d give it two days. Two more days and then she’d buy one.
Maria had Fred Astaire in her head again as she walked along the path in her bee suit and face netting to check on the bees. She’d been thinking about her parents a lot in the last few days—her parents, and other things from the past. She knew full well that anything could be taken away in an instant. Her life here, for example.
At the hives, she knelt and lit the dried grass inside the smoking can and puffed on it a few times to get the flames and smoke going. But then she put it aside; as always, she would only use it if she absolutely had to.
Then she lifted the lid of the white hive she’d come to see, the girls buzzing amicably around her.
‘You’re doing a wonderful job, girls,’ she said, spraying water on the upturned lid to give them a drink, a far kinder and more sensible thing to do than to smoke them, which only made them panic and eat honey because they thought they were under threat from a bushfire and might have to fly away and start a new hive from scratch. Giving them a drink was a treat. They needed so much water to make honey and for cooling the hive. To lower the temperature if it got too hot, they would place lines of water and beat their wings to cause evaporation and cool the interior. Not that it would be a problem at this time of year, of course.
Some research had concluded that bees could recognise human faces, and though other scientists weren’t convinced, the idea pleased Maria greatly. She loved her bees. She’d always known they loved her. And knowing they could recognise her face made her feel that much closer to them. It simply made sense to her. The doubters argued that because a worker bee had such a short lifespan of between six and twelve weeks it wasn’t possible that they could learn their keeper’s face in that time, and even if they did they would die shortly after. But bees communicated all sorts of things to each other, including the precise location of particular flowers kilometres away. It was as if the whole hive shared a single mind. Maria believed hives were actually the most powerful supercomputers on the planet, likely storing millions of years of knowledge in their collective consciousness.
Today their melodic humming soothed her and kept her—well, ‘grounded’ was the popular term these days. She had so much on her mind. There’d been another email from Tansy, a quick afterthought after the first one, inviting Maria to her thirtieth birthday party along with all her family (imagine!). She also suggested that she might just pop along one day and surprise her. Truly, she didn’t even know where to begin with Tansy. There was the ongoing pressure of her busy schedule here, hosting the accommodation bookings and coordinating everything from food to washing to paying the insurance bill, managing the employees, her gardening and harvesting work, the weekly craft work for the markets, and then selling the products, knowing that she was the linchpin for the orphanage’s sustainability. And then there was the anonymous delivery of that letter.
Silence is a virtue.
‘Actually, I think buzzing is a virtue,’ she said now to the bees, rejoicing in their company. She knew perfectly well where that mysterious letter the other morning had come from. It had come from Archbishop Tully.
Ian Tully, formerly Bishop Tully of the diocese west of Brisbane for the latter half of her time in the convent. He’d been such a young man for the role. Certainly he’d been too young for the responsibilities he’d needed to take on and had instead let them go, perhaps from lack of experience, perhaps from lack of understanding, confidence or strength, or perhaps from lack of moral fibre. She didn’t know.
She wasn’t surprised that he’d surfaced now. Somehow, deep down, she’d known this time would come. In part, she was grateful to be able to finally let it all go. And she could even accept the fate that awaited her, because she knew—she’d always known—that the knowledge she and Ian Tully shared would bring them to account, if not in this life then certainly in death when they faced their maker.
The easy thing to do would be to pick up the phone and call Investigating Officer George Harvey, named in the official government letter that had arrived the same day as Tansy’s first letter. She could call him right now and make a time to go and tell him everything she knew. But, as Shakespeare would put it, there was the rub. Once she did that she would go to jail. And there were fifty-six children in Cambodia who were depending on her to provide the steady income that supplied all their needs. Sopheak needed surgery and a new wheelchair and money simply shouldn’t be the thing standing in the way.
It wasn’t that she was deluded enough to think that she was indispensable, but even a small delay in the flow of Australian money to that Cambodian orphanage would be devastating, because the place operated from one bank transfer to another.
Maria herself might be prepared to lose everything, but those children didn’t deserve to be placed in danger because of her past. She’d spent almost all her life trying to make up for her actions. She wasn’t going to stop now.
5
People often said that Investigating Officer George Harvey looked a lot like Dr Phil, and with the number of testimonies he’d taken from men and women reliving their childhood, he’d started to feel like a psychologist too. George was half a century old but felt at least a hundred. Maybe a hundred and fifty. Maybe three hundred.
‘Don’t be dramatic,’ his wife, Hilda, chided gently, passing him a cup of tea with soggy yellow things floating in it.
He sniffed. ‘Chamomile? I’m not a horse.’
‘No caffeine,’ she reminded him, her finger in the air, level with her turquoise-framed specs with the diamante flourishes like wings. ‘You need to get your cortisol levels down.’
She selected a soothing soundtrack of ocean waves from the laptop that sat permanently on the kitchen bench, and lit a candle that was scented with something lemony.
‘Lemongrass,’ she said, as if reading his mind, and blew out the match. Then she sat on the leather footrest at the front of his lounge chair, pulled off his shoes, closed her eyes and began to rub his feet.
Voodoo, George called it. She was crazy if she thought rubbing the centre of his foot, just below the ball, would improve the flow of energy to his kidney. And he loathed her horrible herbal teas. But he took several deep breaths as she instructed, and, if he was totally honest, he could feel himself start to relax. He leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes, enjoying Hilda’s fingers working his soles, touched by her ongoing concern to get his stress levels under control and keep him healthy. It must be hard for her, too, to have him so burdened and dispirited so much of the time. So . . . affected.
The police service’s counsellor came by last week, a young lady named Anita, who’d said she was ‘just doing the rounds’ and ‘touching base with everyone’. She spoke directly yet kindly, offering her card and assuring him that she was available at any time and it was all free of charge and completely confidential. ‘We can talk about work,’ she’d said, ‘your cases, or anything else . . . your marriage, your kids, your friends. We can talk about exercise, alcohol, or even just have a chat about the weather.’
‘Thanks,’
he’d said, and pocketed her card with no intention of ever calling her. His marriage was wonderful; all five of the kids were doing well, and there were only two of them left at home now so that took out a lot of the chaos; he only had an occasional glass of wine; he didn’t exercise enough, but that wasn’t going to be solved by talking; and the only chat he needed to hear about the weather was the daily forecast to tell him whether or not to layer a singlet under his shirt.
But he knew what she was getting at: the evidence, the testimonials and statements. The grown men and women crying in his office, some of whom self-medicated just to get through it. The images he had in his mind that no one should ever have to picture, let alone actually live through. Images he couldn’t unburden onto anyone else, because that would just be spreading the misery further. No, it stopped with him.
Hilda thought he was carrying it all himself. And he was, for the most part. But—perhaps ironically—the person he’d found the most comfort in was Father Bryce, a man who’d heard more confessions and taken on more burdens than George ever would. A man who could still smile and care and listen to George as though he was the only person in the world and Father Bryce had nothing else to do but be there for him.
‘You’re doing God’s work,’ Father Bryce had assured him, stretching out his arthritic knee in his small office at the back of the church. ‘And God’s work will always bring challenges of faith and trust.’
‘But how do you . . . aren’t you . . . ashamed to be a part of the church?’ George had asked, barely able to voice the question. George was a Catholic, an earnest, committed, believing Catholic, descended from a large herd of Catholics, and he was feeling it. The shame, the anger, the disillusionment. The breach of trust. The challenge to faith.
‘I am not ashamed of Catholicism,’ Bryce said, steepling his fingers together at his chest. ‘I am certainly ashamed of my peers who have acted immorally, indecently and illegally, and I welcome the efforts to bring those people to light and to account. But it doesn’t change the fact that the number of good people in the church,’ he reached out his hand and clasped George’s arm, ‘just like you, far outweighs the bad. Evil turns up everywhere—in families, in schools, in churches, in the street and in the police force.’
George had nodded sadly. He knew that to be true. Time and again his investigations turned up the names of officers who had willingly covered up and ignored testimony and evidence. For this, George wasn’t openly attacked or snubbed by his fellow officers, but there was tension every time he walked into a room.
‘People should be glad when the corruption is discovered,’ he’d raged to Hilda. ‘No one wants to be working with a bunch of liars, creeps and perverts. But no one’s thanking me for it. People shrink from me in the lunchroom.’
Hilda had held him until his breathing calmed. Then she’d sent him to the garden to dig and work off the anger, before nurturing him with chicken soup.
He would have loved to discuss it all with the parish leaders council, which met at the church once a month on a Tuesday night under Father Bryce’s guidance. It was a diverse group of half a dozen parishioners, including a high school teacher, a youth worker, a grandmother, a nurse practitioner and a serving nun, who came together as an advisory board to Father Bryce and also to provide guidance to members of the parish who wanted to discuss issues in any area of their life. For the most part, George found the council members to be fair and reasonable and good problem solvers, and at least one parishioner each month booked an appointment with them to discuss anything from their drug-taking teenager to marriage problems and career crises. George would have loved to unburden himself in their presence, but the laws bound him to silence. Fortunately, confiding in his priest was a different matter.
‘Have no doubt,’ Father Bryce had said, ‘God has called you to do this important and noble work. Stand strong, George. Have faith. We need you.’
And that was what kept him going through the hard days.
‘Thank you, Father.’
‘Would you like to pray with me?’
‘Yes, I would.’
And together they’d lit candles in the quiet darkness of the church.
6
‘Have you had any thoughts about whether you might want a housemate while we’re gone?’ Tansy asked as she and Leo ascended the side of the hill, the eucalyptus bush on their right and on their left the expansive blue ocean stretching all the way to the horizon.
They were walking the seven-kilometre beach-to-forest track through Noosa National Park, which began a short walk from their building. They alternated between jogging and walking, depending on their energy levels. Dougal never jogged, with a trick knee he’d had since his time as the high school rugby team’s front row forward. He did still play social tennis with some of his work friends who either lived on the coast or came up for weekends. And he swam in the ocean, while Tansy walked the sand. But today she and Leo were walking the track up the hills, Leo a bit flat and moody, which was unlike him.
They’d shivered in the cool morning air, but only for a couple of minutes. The strengthening sun and their own exertions quickly chased any chill away. Their plan was to complete the track and end at the kiosk for coffee and muffins; Leo loved the triple chocolate ones and Tansy couldn’t resist if he was having one.
See. Gosh, what a sheep she was when it came to food. Imagine what would happen when she hit the freezing temperatures of Canada. She might make new friends but they’d probably spend all their time trapped indoors, sitting by a fire and drinking hot chocolate and eating hot puddings. She’d come back a veritable blimp.
‘Not much,’ he said, answering her question.
‘Do you think you’ll be lonely on your own?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You could find someone from uni,’ she suggested, and then thought that maybe that wasn’t such a great idea. Leo was lovely, and he had a lot of nice friends, including many sensible young ladies, who were doing the same degree. But they were all still only a few years past teenagehood. She could well remember what she and Belle had been like at twenty-two. They were drunk at least fifty per cent of the time.
‘Or maybe your mum knows someone?’ She trailed off. Rebecca and Leo were close and spoke often, but he was well past the age of taking advice from his parents.
‘I don’t know if it would be a good idea to live with a friend,’ he said. Their feet made gentle squeaking noises as the paved track gave way to soft sand. ‘I’ve seen a lot of mates bust up over stupid things when sharing a house.’
‘That’s insightful,’ she said, genuinely impressed.
‘Do you ever regret not finishing uni?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Hell, no.’ She laughed. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking enrolling in something as dull as commerce. I only lasted a semester and only then because my parents just about had a coronary when I said I wanted to leave after four weeks.’
‘It all turned out okay for you, didn’t it?’ he said.
‘Definitely. I loved working as a barista for those few years. There was great camaraderie in the coffee shop, we were always flat out so I was never bored, and I met so many interesting people and learned firsthand how to run a business. And of course I met your dad, so that was a bonus. When I finally worked out what I was genuinely interested in, I had the time and money to do the TAFE course in home styling, and life’s been up and up ever since.’
One thing she loved about Dougal was that he had never once—despite his own driven work ethic and career ambitions—made her feel inferior, less educated or less worthy. Even when they’d first met, when she was a barista. Even when his two older brothers clearly dismissed her as some sort of passing fancy for Dougal, a time filler until he found a proper wife. Those brothers epitomised everything that was awful about the all-boys Catholic school they’d attended—the elitism, the sexism, the arrogance and self-interest—unlike Dougal, who seemed to have absorbed all the good things a privileged education had t
o offer: generosity, compassion, an enquiring mind and robust good nature. They hardly ever saw Dougal’s brothers and their families anymore. She loved him for that, too.
She and Leo were silent then, walking comfortably in the gentle breeze, their footsteps in a natural rhythm together. A bush turkey scratched vigorously at detritus among the scrub and they could still hear the gentle roar of the ocean down below.
‘Why do you ask?’
Leo waited a moment before saying, ‘’Cause I was thinking of dropping out.’
Tansy stopped and grabbed his arm to bring him to a halt. ‘What? Why?’
He shrugged, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. ‘I don’t think it’s for me.’
‘Why not? Haven’t you always wanted to be a writer?’
Leo had fought hard to convince his father that doing a degree in creative writing was a good thing. Such an impractical course of study had been difficult for Dougal to accept, his own motivations being to climb corporate ladders and build a secure financial future as quickly as possible.
‘But what are you going to do at the end?’ Dougal had objected. ‘Write,’ Leo said, confident, assured.
Dougal held up a newspaper in front of Leo and said, ‘I don’t see any job ads here for a writer. Not a single one.’
‘The world’s not the same place as when you were starting out,’ Leo had said calmly, and Tansy had smothered a small smile. Leo was right; the world had changed significantly in the past twenty years.
Dougal and Rebecca had both been at uni and living in share houses when they met and fell in love, and they hadn’t been together a year when Rebecca fell pregnant. Dougal’s family had ‘old money’—as old as money could be in Brisbane, anyway—and a large home in Hamilton near the river. His older brothers had both been school captain, had finished university and were excelling in the business world, and had a bevy of socially appropriate young women knocking on their doors. Now Dougal had to slink back home with his pregnant girlfriend in tow to live with his parents once more.
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