by Poppy Gee
Erica and Steve had been together for six years. Everyone knew they were going to get married one day, so it wasn’t as though this engagement was a surprise. They’d never even had a breakup, as far as Sarah knew. By the time she and Jake had been seeing each other for six months, they had already split up three times. For the last four months of their relationship, they had broken up almost every weekend. Sarah drained her glass and held it out for some more. Don poured champagne almost to the top.
“Those new sinkers will be in the store in a few days,” he said.
Sarah nodded. His offering of a conversational lifeline was welcome, but she couldn’t even think about fishing right now. She glanced at the ring again. Five perfect diamonds, scraped from the bowels of the earth in some distant ruined place. Really, who could bear to wear one?
Erica was sitting on Steve’s knee, her laughter sharp. Steve was drunk and slouching lower and lower in his chair. Fortunately Sarah was sober enough not to comment. Sarah’s face ached from smiling. Her mother stood to announce a toast. Flip tittered, and champagne splashed from her glass as she raised it.
“To Erica and Steve. To see your child happy is the greatest thing.”
Pamela made a funny noise. Makeup bled around her eyes. She was teary. It took Sarah a moment to realize that Pamela was not crying in happiness for Erica but was thinking about her only child, Max, who was in prison. Sarah thought about Max being locked up occasionally. She had been to visit him once, last year, when she attended a conference in Hobart near the prison farm. He wasn’t happy to be imprisoned, but he wasn’t doing too badly, either. He told her he was relieved to be getting some help for his problems. Pamela had always struggled to accept that Max needed help.
“Sit down, Felicity,” John said.
Pamela pressed her hand to her lips, as if to restrain her emotion. While it was easy to avoid discussing gambling and anything about prison in general, it was the unpredictable, happy moments that upset Pamela more.
Flip hugged Pamela. There was a fuss as Erica searched for the tissues. Sarah found them on top of the fridge. She handed Pamela the box, glad to have something to do. Assuaging Pamela was a relief from pretending to be happy for Erica.
Erica was the first to forget about Max. She held the ring up, laughing and repeating “I can’t believe it!” and “You are so naughty!”
Sarah watched the ring move about the shack, pressed to the neck of the champagne bottle, disappearing and reappearing in Erica’s hair, a dragonfly alive in fuzzy lantern light. In Sarah’s pocket were three bottle caps from the beer she had drunk earlier in the evening as she fished. She turned them over, pressing her fingers against their rough edges, mentally adding the three glasses of champagne she had just drunk in the shack. Who cares, she told herself, draining her glass. She was drunk now, so there was no point slowing down.
Her mother and Pamela were remembering engagement stories. Pamela was twenty-two when she married, which was young by today’s standards. Mum and Dad were twenty-four and twenty-five when they got married in the quaint St. Helens chapel. Erica was thirty-two.
Of all the men Sarah had known, there were only a few she would have considered marrying. When she was at university, Max Gunn had been interested in her. There was nothing between them, but he had more or less said he was keen on something serious. That was before his gambling got messy. Looking back, she realized he had ticked most of her boxes, but that was before she even knew she had boxes that required ticking.
Who really wanted to be married, though? Look at Mum and Dad. They barely touched each other; if they kissed, it was on the cheek, never on the mouth. It had always been that way. They functioned well together, tolerated each other’s company, but if that was all you wanted, you might as well marry your dog.
Under her father’s chair, Henry slept, oblivious to everything. It was nearly midnight when Pamela and Don finally left. Yawning, happily tipsy, Flip and John kissed their daughters and hugged Steven and went to bed. Sarah remained at the table, finishing the champagne. It was flat and warm. Erica squeezed toothpaste onto Steve’s toothbrush and handed it to him. As Sarah watched, she silently congratulated herself for not commenting. He went to bed to wait for Erica. Poor guy; gets engaged and doesn’t get a celebratory fuck. The shack was too confined, the walls too thin. Maybe Erica would give him a silent blow job. Sarah chuckled.
Sarah put the empty champagne bottle on the bench beside the other two empty Moët bottles Erica was saving to use as candlesticks. Men wanted wives like Erica, the kind who would match her tea towels to her oven mitts and slow-cook casseroles with seasonal vegetables from her own garden. Erica was an air hostess, the ultimate training ground for wifely perfection.
As though she sensed the drift of Sarah’s thoughts, Erica sat on the stool beside her and started rehashing the proposal.
“Yep, you told me that already.”
Sick of listening, Sarah stretched. She wasn’t tired but she needed to be alone. In the dark bedroom her head spun. She was thirty-five, too young to be spending evenings listening to her parents’ friends reminisce, too old to hide on the top bunk feeling jealous and mean. Mindful of her potential hangover, Sarah drank from her water bottle until her stomach felt uncomfortably swollen.
Erica finished tidying up but she didn’t come to bed. She was probably standing in front of the mirror, looking at the ring on her finger. The shack was quiet, just the wind blowing down the hill to meet the ocean’s constant hum. Henry’s sloppy drinking from his bowl sounded like a human whimper.
Sometime in the night Sarah woke up needing to urinate. She couldn’t find her flashlight. Without it she was reluctant to use the toilet at the end of the veranda. There were spiders, mainly daddy longlegs, living in there. Although they were harmless, it was creepy to think you might sit on one accidentally. Instead she went into the backyard and squatted on the grass.
She was almost finished when she heard the low howl of devils fighting. Startled, she tried to hurry. It had been a long time since she’d heard their screams; a vicious, chilling sound like that of a woman being strangled. The convicts had thought it was Satan’s laughter when they heard it two hundred years ago. Devils were misunderstood—usually their noise was their bluff to protect a carcass—but their capacity to rip one another’s head off and their high pain threshold meant that humans were sensible to maintain a respectful distance. They could fight for hours.
Sarah pulled her underwear up and looked in the direction of the noise. It had stopped. Two thoughts ran through her mind. One, devils didn’t become suddenly silent. Two, if it wasn’t devils fighting in the bushes, what on earth was it?
She sprinted back inside the shack and locked the door behind her.
The shack was quiet when Sarah woke up the next morning. There was no sound, no chairs squeaking or newspaper rustling. Everyone was gone. She didn’t care where.
In the empty kitchen she drank a glass of juice and stared blindly at the wall, not seeing her mother’s collection of fish-painted plates hanging there. Her meanness hung around her shoulders like a heavy and ill-fitting coat. She should apologize to Erica but she knew she wouldn’t. They never had. Transgressions passed without comment, forgotten and forgiven.
Erica knew there was something wrong. Even Hall had guessed. On their date he had asked her about Jake. She didn’t mention the fight in the Pineapple Hotel car park, or how she had driven drunk as far west as the car would go before running out of fuel. She had woken up on the side of the road in blasting afternoon heat. Birds were fighting over something in the cane field beside the car.
The fish were dead by then. Tanks eerily silent with three tonnes of drowned prime barra. When she worked it out later, the pumps must have broken down around midnight, closing time at the Pineapple Hotel.
Juice splashed over her hand and onto the floor. She was not aware her hands were shaking. It wasn’t just her hand but her entire body, engulfed in wretched sadness. When would th
is end?
Dusk and the ocean brimmed with sharks. So everyone said. There was also a consensus that between nine p.m. and dawn, the hours of darkness, it was unsafe to be outside. The fear was stupid. Both women had disappeared in the afternoon, so if there was going to be another murder or disappearance, chances were it would be another daytime tragedy. Sarah had scattered the burley mix she had made from bread crumbs and diced mullet heads. Judging by the lack of interest in her burley or her bait, the fish were absent. That meant there were probably no sharks in the water tonight. Sarah leaned over and dipped her hand in the lukewarm seawater.
Bored with catching nothing, Sarah left the rocks and followed a trail worn by wombats and quolls. She hoped to spot a quoll, a small native catlike creature with delicate white spots. Quolls were shy, though. There was more chance of seeing a wombat.
Spiderwebs spanning the path stuck to her face and hair as she pushed through. The track ran along the top of the rocks before winding down to the beach. She hadn’t thought about the murderer while she was fishing on the rocks; now every wind moan in the dunes made her snap her head around to reassure herself there was no one there.
From the beach nothing delineated the spot. There was a garland of flowers in the clearing near the road, but you couldn’t see that from the beach. The spot where Anja Traugott had washed in was marked by an eroded sand wall, a broken driftwood arc, and creepy shadows from the dune grass. Sarah stabbed her fishing rod into the ground and walked toward the dunes. She was sinking in the soft dry sand when she heard the noise, a faint metallic scratch, like a knife being pulled. Frozen, she listened hard. There it was again. Fuck. She had to get out of there. She spun around, sprinting to retrieve her rod. Running perfectly on the hard sand, she knew no one would catch her. It wasn’t until the adrenaline rush eased that she realized the sound was her sinker, taut and scratching against her rod.
The table was set with mismatched plates. The salad tongs had handles in the shape of fish. A baking dish of lasagna sat on a breadboard Sarah had made for grade eight woodwork. For a moment Sarah had the unsettling feeling of déjà vu; she could have been stepping into the shack fifteen years ago.
“We were worried.” Her mother was accusatory. “Dad’s driven down the road looking for you.”
“I didn’t see him.” Sarah tried to conceal her irritation. She was thirty-five, not fifteen. “That smells delicious.”
“Clean yourself before you sit down. Mum, she stinks,” Erica said.
Sarah dropped the bucket with a clatter. There was water in the sink and Sarah soaped her hands in it, rubbing hard to get the scales off.
“Please. That’s the washing-up water,” Erica said.
“It’s fish, Erica. It’s organic.”
She sat down and rubbed her bare feet on the dog, asleep under the table. Opposite, her mother and sister continued eating. The backs of their heads made twin reflections in the salt-smeared window behind them. It reminded Sarah of the doll heads Erica and she had practiced hair and makeup on when they were young. Erica had cut the hair off hers and then cried. Sarah had handed her own doll over and been complimented on her generosity. In truth, she had hated the doll, hated its bright blue eyes, too-long lashes, and pearly lips.
She filled her plate and only half-listened as her mother and sister talked. Wind collected pace, rattling the loose chimney pipe. About time it picked up; she hadn’t caught anything for days. She was planning where to fish tomorrow when the door opened. Sarah heard her father’s voice.
“I didn’t find Sarah but I found someone else foolish enough to be wandering around in the dark.”
Sarah swiveled around. Simone Shelley, wearing a white sundress and a leopard-print scarf around her head, stood uncertainly in the doorway. She clutched the shoulders of her son.
“Oh, no. I’m so embarrassed. You’re having dinner.” The American accent made her seem confident, almost sexy, like a character in a television show.
Simone had knocked on Pamela’s door, and on Jane’s, but no one had a spare bed. She was too frightened to stay in her shack. There had been a noise downstairs and she refused to let Sam go and look.
“Everyone knows we’re alone.”
Flip dropped the fish tongs into the salad bowl. “You’ve got your phone if you need it. Go home and make a cup of tea. You’ll be all right.”
“That’s what I told her,” Sam said.
Sarah tried to read his expression, but he wasn’t looking at her. He obviously didn’t want to be here. Fair enough. She had not wanted to be at the Shelleys’ place on New Year’s Eve either. She had only gone because it would have looked strange if she didn’t. She was paranoid Simone knew something about whatever had happened on Christmas Day down at the wharf.
There had been one awkward situation on New Year’s Eve. Sarah had gone to Simone’s kitchen to fetch Pamela’s wine cooler bag. Simone and Flip had paused at their task of arranging cheeses and crackers on a platter, and were discussing something serious. For a horrible moment Sarah thought they were talking about her.
“She likes being single—it suits her fine,” Flip was saying crossly.
Sarah had grabbed Pamela’s cooler bag off the bench and walked straight back to the garden. The conversation fragment she had overheard unnerved her. She felt ill for a few minutes until she realized that, based on their body language and the fact that they had not reacted when she entered the kitchen, they were most likely talking about Jane Taylor. She did not want to know what her mother was saying about Jane.
In any case, Simone had invited everyone to her party, and now she had insisted on dragging Sam up here to the Averys’ shack. These were good signs. It meant Simone wasn’t worrying about anything. Still, Sarah thought, she would feel better if they left now.
Her mother, too. Flip turned the tap on and began washing dishes. If it had have been anyone else, her mother would have welcomed them in. Years ago, Simone had alienated many of her female neighbors. She had asked them to babysit her son while she scuba-dived with their husbands, she had worn string bikinis when everyone else wore one-pieces, and she had spoken about traveling to places they had not heard of. Flip and Pamela were happy to attend Simone’s New Year’s Eve party, to include her in large activities such as the Abalone Bake, or even to sit with her occasionally on the beach. Their tolerance for Simone ended there.
Simone was not the kind of woman Sarah usually felt sorry for. Tonight she did, for the simple reason that Simone did not understand why she was being turned away.
“Mom. They don’t want us here,” Sam muttered. “Let’s go home and turn in.” He was looking at Sarah.
Erica stood up, smiling her too-perfect smile. “Have a drink with us before you go home. Everything’s less scary after a drink.”
Simone and Sam sat down on the window couch underneath the colorful toy parrot swinging upside down on his perch. Simone’s gaze moved from the gas fridge with the stickers peeling off it to the piles of curling magazines and newspapers on the coffee table and the dusty children’s books on the bookshelf. One of those books Simone had given to Sarah and Erica when they were little girls. It was about a scary toymaker called Weezy who created dolls that came to life. One of Weezy’s dolls was evil, and the book had been one of Sarah’s favorites. For ages Erica had been too frightened to listen to Flip read that book.
“Such a long time since I’ve been here.” Simone smiled. “Cozy.”
“What scared you tonight, Simone?” Flip said. “It’s not as if we just found out about the murder.”
“Sam was talking to some fishermen down at the wharf and very cleverly told them how worried I was, being all alone in the shack. I just couldn’t stay there.” Simone twisted her buttery hair into a bun behind her head, held it for a moment, then let it fall around her face. “We went to the guesthouse first. Jane was very rude.”
“What did she say?” Sarah imagined Jane, her twitchy face devoid of sympathy, taking pleasure in telling th
e glamorous American to walk.
“She was full up. She said, and I quote, ‘Go bother the Averys. John won’t mind chasing the mice out of the old bunkroom for you.’”
“I cleaned it out when we got here. I borrowed her Land Cruiser to take the mattress with the mouse nest in it to the tip,” John said.
“I feel like crying. It’s terrible to be knocking on people’s doors.”
“Don’t be silly.” Flip dropped a heavy pot into the sink. “Simone, I would offer you a bed but as John said, all our spare mattresses were ruined.”
“The Dolphin Motel is never fully booked. Give them a call,” Sarah said. “It wouldn’t be more than fifty bucks a night.”
“That’s an hour’s drive from here.” Simone shook her head. “Longer, at this time of night, with all the wildlife on the road.”
Everyone watched Erica light candles with the gas gun. It clicked and clicked, igniting a weeping column of wax wedged in an empty port bottle, stubby wicks in abalone shells, and candles welded to saucers with their own wax. In the kitchen Flip was scrubbing the sink with Jif and a wire brush. It was clear she had no intention of sitting down.
Simone sighed. “That poor woman. You know, Sam found her bikini top.”
“Shut up, Mom,” Sam said.
Simone took a sip of wine, smiling as everyone paid attention. Sam had found it caught in kelp at the gulch while he was cutting abalone off the rocks that afternoon.
“What end of the gulch?” Sarah asked.
“Southern. Near where you’re always fishing.”
“After the jetty?”
“That’s what I said.”
Sarah visualized the currents running from the rock pool and around the coast. Even with a strong westerly, it was unlikely an object would drift past the jetty. The natural movement of the currents was toward the long main beach, or even the little cove where Anja had sunbathed. It was almost impossible for something to drift from the rock pool, along the coast, around the headland, and then into the gulch. It was hard enough to steer a boat along that route.
