‘No, Tom. Sarah was the incident.’ Linda frowned. This wasn’t coming out at all the way she intended. She tried again. Her words were blunt but her tone was kind. ‘It seems, according to police, that she went berserk in the RTA offices this morning. They took her to Bondi Junction Police Station.’ Linda watched Tom’s face as he processed what she was saying.
He shook his head slowly. ‘She went berserk?’
‘Yes,’ said Linda. She waited for this to sink in.
Tom nodded distractedly. He was thinking of Sarah, his dear sweet lovely Sarah. The past few weeks had been hell. And now this. What was going on? He felt a heaviness as he recalled their parting kiss that morning. Sarah had been so distant. But so had he. When had it got so bad that he didn’t kiss her properly and wish her a happy day? That’s how it used to be between them. Then they would speak on the phone half-a-dozen times a day. Just to say silly things, to keep in touch, feel connected. When had that stopped? Was it only a few weeks? It seemed so long ago, the gulf between them so wide. He cringed as he recalled the hostility in the car on the drive home from the picnic. His sharp words. The cold silence of their Sunday night. He had been angry then. He didn’t feel angry now. He felt foolish and unbearably sad.
Something was really wrong here. He felt the ground underneath him shifting. His past and future with Sarah, which were the cornerstones of his life, had become unstable. Tom was at a loss to understand how it had happened. He had been so determined to pay attention, to keep his eye on the ball. But somehow he had failed.
‘Is she still at – the station?’ he asked.
‘They’ve let her go,’ replied Linda.
‘Oh God,’ said Tom. He looked again over to where Bill was standing, shuffling about awkwardly. Now he understood his discomfort.
‘Is it on the wires?’ he asked.
Linda nodded. ‘I’m afraid it is,’ she said quietly.
Tom took this in. Australian Associated Press monitored the police stations of the city. Then they fed whatever was happening to the newspapers and newsrooms of the television stations. It was over to them whether they used the information or followed the story.
Tom’s newspaper wouldn’t see it as a big deal. They were a serious broadsheet more interested in issue-based stories and the political and economic machinations of the country. But the rival daily newspaper in Sydney, a tabloid, might be more interested. Sarah was a recognisable face. She was a TV reporter, in people’s lounge rooms every other night. That made her news.
‘I’ve got to go home,’ said Tom.
‘I know,’ said Linda.
When Tom arrived home he found Sarah sitting forlornly in the bath. Her eyes were red and puffy. Tom dropped to his knees and took her in his arms. Sarah had no tears left and hugged him back weakly. It was an awkward embrace and Tom’s suit coat was quickly drenched. His mobile phone slipped out of his top pocket and landed in the water.
He retrieved it and set it aside while Sarah sat, looking up at him with sad, silent eyes.
‘Oh Sarah. Are you all right?’ Tom asked.
Sarah shook her head. ‘No,’ she squeaked in a little voice.
‘What happened?’
Sarah shook her head again. She couldn’t speak. She had no energy left in her. Tom was desperately worried. She looked crumpled and very small, sitting in the bath, her mass of corkscrew curls a frizzy sodden mess. Her eyes were wide and blank. Her face splotchy from the steam of the hot bath.
‘Can I get you something?’ asked Tom. ‘Why don’t I make some coffee while you get dressed?’
Sarah nodded weakly. She was devoid of emotion, devoid of most signs of life. Her eyes were open and her breath was short and shallow, but that was it. She didn’t seem to fill the space she occupied.
After a few moments in the kitchen putting on the kettle, Tom returned to check on her. As far as he could tell she hadn’t moved. She was in the same spot, sitting staring vacantly at the shampoo bottles at the end of the bath. Her expression was so dead, so blank, it tore at Tom’s heart.
He gently helped her out of the bath. He had to take all her weight to get her over the edge. She felt like a child in his arms. Sarah stood, swaying in the middle of the floor, while Tom patted at her body with a towel. He led her to bed and lifted her up, pulling aside the sheets and placing her tenderly underneath.
Sarah didn’t say a word. She seemed unaware of what was going on about her. Tom wondered if he should call a doctor. She lay on her side, staring vacantly out of the window at the harbour. Tom stripped off his clothes and climbed in behind her, holding her to him, trying to warm her with his own body heat. He lightly caressed her shoulders and she fell asleep.
The phone rang and Tom carefully disentangled himself from Sarah.
‘Could I speak to Sarah Cowley?’ said a young man’s voice on the end of the line.
‘I’m sorry, she’s not available right now,’ said Tom.
‘It’s Peter Hatfield from the Daily News here. Is that Mr Cowley?’
‘No, Peter, it’s Tom, Tom Wilson. How are you?’
Peter had worked for a while as a cadet at Tom’s newspaper. Tom remembered him as an enthusiastic, confident young kid with a talent for mimicry. He remembered watching in the lunchroom one day as Peter had done an impression of their editor. It had been startlingly good. Peter’s powers of observation were impressive and he was clearly not shy. Tom had liked him. He was a good reporter and Tom had told him, the day he left for a two-year stint in the London bureau, that he expected Peter would go a long way.
‘Tom Wilson, how the hell are you?’ Peter replied.
‘I’m fine, mate. I heard you took a job at the Daily News. How’s it going?’
‘Oh, pretty good. I’m working on the Sydney page.’
Tom had assumed as much. It was the most read column in the city, full of juicy titbits about people in the public eye. He knew exactly why Peter was calling.
‘I was trying to get in touch with Sarah Cowley. I didn’t expect to get you,’ said Peter.
‘Sarah is my fiancée,’ said Tom.
‘Oh,’ said Peter in a surprised voice. ‘I didn’t know that.’
There was no reason why he should, thought Tom. That was his private business. There was silence at the other end of the phone and Tom waited for Peter to come to the point.
‘I guess you know why I am calling?’ said Peter.
‘Nope,’ Tom lied pleasantly. ‘I have no idea.’
‘I have a report from Bondi Junction Police Station that Sarah Cowley was arrested this morning on a number of charges arising from an incident at the offices of the RTA.’ Peter’s voice was friendly but businesslike. He was doing his job. Tom didn’t resent it. He understood.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Tom, noncommittal.
‘I was hoping to speak to Sarah. But if she is not available is there something you would like to say?’
‘No,’ replied Tom.
‘Can you confirm that Sarah was arrested?’
Tom knew that Peter didn’t need any confirmation from him to know it had happened. The police report would cover that.
‘Mate, I’ve got nothing to say. I don’t know what’s gone on. How about I tell Sarah that you called and she can call you back if she wants to?’
Both men knew that was unlikely to happen but Peter gave his number anyway and Tom pretended to take it down. There was nothing more to say. Peter wished Tom well and rung off.
A few minutes later the phone rang again. It was McKenzie’s secretary, Fay.
‘Tom, I’ve just heard. Is she all right?’ said Fay with concern.
‘She’s asleep,’ said Tom, wishing he hadn’t answered the phone.
‘McKenzie is ropable. He’s been shouting and carrying on. It doesn’t look good.’
Tom sighed. ‘Can you tell him Sarah is not well and won’t be in tomorrow?’
‘Of course. Give her my love,’ said Fay.
As soon as Tom hung up the phone ra
ng again. Tom switched on the answering machine. It was Anne. John had heard and phoned her. Clearly the news was right around Sydney by now. Anne was passing on their concern as Tom turned down the volume on the machine.
Sarah slept deeply and dreamlessly for a couple of hours. When she wandered out of the bedroom Tom was sitting on the floor, working on his laptop. He stopped and smiled gently at her.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Better,’ answered Sarah.
She made fresh coffee and sat on the floor opposite Tom.
‘How did you hear?’ she asked.
‘Through our police reporter,’ answered Tom.
Sarah winced. ‘Will it be in the paper tomorrow?’
‘Not in ours,’ said Tom.
‘And the Daily News?’
‘I should think so. Peter Hatfield called.’
Sarah looked at him blankly. It would be in tomorrow’s paper. The whole world would know she had lost it, big time. She couldn’t worry about that now.
‘He’s a fair man. It could be worse.’
She nodded distractedly.
‘I should ring the office,’ she said, making no move to do so.
‘Fay called. I said you weren’t well and would not be in tomorrow.’
Tom watched her. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’
Sarah looked at him. She didn’t hate him any more. She didn’t feel great love for him either. She didn’t feel anything. Her heart, her mind, everything inside her felt blank.
She thought about the RTA. She thought about the woman behind the counter, the woman with the bug eyes. She thought how she had felt inside, the pressure in her head, how much she hurt, how everything had suddenly exploded, spilled out of her. She felt the faint echo of all the emotions. But she couldn’t find the words or the energy to describe any of it to Tom.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m a mess. I don’t know what’s going on inside my head any more. I’m so sorry, Tom.’
Tom didn’t understand. It made no sense. He wrapped his arms around Sarah and held her. She didn’t hug him back but she didn’t pull away either. She just sat, neutrally, in the circle of his arms. They sat that way for a long time. Tom gently rocking her backwards and forwards.
‘It’s okay,’ he soothed. ‘It will all be just fine.’ He wondered if that were true.
CHAPTER 13
She has such nice blonde hair. Why does she dye her roots black? Ha! It’s a GT stripe. Makes her go faster. Ha! These loons are mad. Stark raving bonkers. I made a new friend. Hingeman. He thinks he’s a human hinge. Crawls around the floor on all fours, gliding and sliding along the ground, through the fog. He’s cool. Needs oil, though. Or the floorboards do. Something’s creaking. Might be my brain. Clunking over. The cogs are getting rusty. No need to use it in here. You sign it in at reception and they look after it for you. They give you little pills instead. Fog pills.
*
Sarah woke early and lay in bed staring at the ceiling. She had a lot to think about. She knew today would be tough. She would have to face the repercussions of yesterday. There was no way around it. She thought of fleeing, getting a taxi to the airport and flying to the first place she could get a ticket for. That’s how they did it in the movies. It looked so wonderfully carefree and exciting. She could go to Bali. If she left now, before Tom woke, she could be sipping cocktails by the pool this evening.
The idea sidetracked her for a few minutes but then the dread that sat heavily in the pit of her stomach took over. She was back in bed, listening to Tom snore, knowing she had to face the day. That meant facing a wakened Tom, an hysterical McKenzie and whatever was in the Daily News. She knew a copy of the paper would already be lying on the cream carpet in the corridor outside their front door. It would be there now, waiting for her, and on doorsteps all across Sydney. Her shame laid bare for all the world to read about, comment on, snigger at.
Sarah steeled herself for the day ahead. It was going to be tough, but she’d had tough before. It was going to hurt. But she knew about pain. She was a survivor. She would just take it one step at a time. One day she would look back and laugh. No, that wasn’t convincing. She couldn’t imagine this ever being funny.
She took a deep breath, then another. In a strange way she felt calm and strong, better than she had felt for weeks. There was nothing she could do to change what she had done yesterday. It was done and there was no going back. All that mattered now was her maintaining her dignity and integrity in the face of whatever was going to follow as a result. She knew it was going to come at her from all directions. And some of it would hurt, really hurt. It was like the ultimate challenge. A TV game show. Test your mettle. Sarah Cowley, come on down.
‘All right then,’ she said under her breath and slipped quietly out of bed. Without looking at the headlines, she collected the newspapers from the front doorstep. She took them into the kitchen and sat down, preparing herself for the humiliation she knew was coming.
She flicked through the Daily News and on page thirteen, under the heading ‘Spotlight Sydney’, there she was. The top right corner was mostly taken up with a publicity photo of her, just head and shoulders. The photo was beside the heading ‘TV scoop turns wildcat’.
She remembered the photo. She was wearing a lavender suit, neat gold earrings and her mass of curls had been tamed into a sleek shiny ponytail. She had liked the photo when it was taken. She thought it looked professional, businesslike, how she would like to look but couldn’t without an hour or so in the make-up chair. She calmed herself, made herself breathe out very slowly, then started to read.
TV reporter Sarah Cowley was arrested yesterday after a violent altercation at the Bondi Junction offices of NSW’s Roads and Traffic Authority.
Witnesses say Cowley, 28, ‘turned into a wildcat’ and had to be physically restrained by bystanders after a disagreement with an RTA staffer turned violent.
Mr Jason Romash, RTA employee, said of Miss Cowley, ‘She went wild, screaming and yelling abuse.
‘She fought us when we tried to stop her attacking one of our staffers. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Romash said it took three men to physically hold down the angry woman until police arrived.
According to witnesses the altercation arose as the result of long queues and overcrowding in the RTA offices, something the State Opposition leader has been critical of for the past six months.
RTA supervisor Mr Hari Singh said, ‘Monday mornings are our busiest time and we deeply regret that this customer was made to wait. Unfortunately, because of financial cutbacks to our department, we are unable to hire more staff for those busy times and often people are forced to queue for some time.
‘However, on this occasion I believe the woman’s reaction was entirely inappropriate and caused much distress to our staff.’
While police have confirmed that an incident took place, they cannot say whether charges will be laid against Miss Cowley, who has worked for Channel 8 for the past four years.
Channel 8 news director Bob McKenzie spoke out in defence of his reporter yesterday, saying, ‘I believe this story has been grossly exaggerated. Sarah is one of our best journalists and an integral part of our award-winning news team. She recently won a Logie award for her coverage of the Liverpool bushfires, which confirmed her position as one of the finest TV reporters in the country.’
Miss Cowley was absent from work yesterday and a spokesman said she was unavailable for comment.
Sarah could have been reading about someone else. It was as if it was a familiar story, one that she had heard before and was re-reading some time later, but that was it. She checked how she felt. She was okay. In a strange way the story had crystallised for her what had happened. Until then Sarah had been trying to see it and understand it through the thick red veil of emotional trauma. She had been unable to recall the details of the morning in the RTA office. She remembered only the frustration building up, then the e
xplosion inside her and finally her shame. The newspaper account explained it to her. The event was parcelled up for her into a neat package. And it gave her an inkling about how other people would view it.
She had gone wild, attacked a government employee. Not normal behaviour. Blind Freddy could see that. She had to be ‘physically restrained’ by three men. She remembered the two men pinning her arms to her sides, leaning over her and breathing their bad breath into her face. She remembered the man in the smelly overcoat sitting on her feet, cruelly twisting her ankles. Being restrained by three men didn’t sound at all like the done thing. It wasn’t very ladylike. What would her mother say? Actually it didn’t sound Sarah-like at all. How bizarre, to know yourself so little, she thought. I have no doubt this will surprise everybody else but, hey, I’m surprised too. I didn’t know I was capable of this.
She was disconcerted by McKenzie’s support of her but knew better than to allow herself the luxury of thinking he meant it. It was the network’s approach to dealing with all negative publicity. Deny, deny, deny. No matter what the facts, just keep on denying them. The fact that McKenzie had spoken to the paper at all meant he must have thought it serious. And he would have hated doing it.
Sarah made herself a coffee and considered her options. The newspaper story was out of the way. She didn’t think about it in terms of good or bad, just done. Next was Tom.
*
Ginny had no idea what had gone on for Sarah the day before. She had been at work all day and in the evening when she listened in to Sarah and Tom they said very little. It seemed they had watched a movie and gone to bed so she did too. Reading the Daily News over her tea and toast the next morning, it had come as something of a shock to reach page thirteen and see Sarah’s photo.
She read every word of the article in a state of growing excitement. When she finished she re-read the story. The photo, showing Sarah looking so neat and professional, contrasted dramatically with the story of the wildcat who had to be restrained by three men. It made it all the more shocking.
Apartment 255 Page 17
