Promise

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘And you won’t tell them, will you, Dad?’

  ‘Well, there’s no need for me to do that. Because you are going to hand yourself in now that the mother’s ducked out.’

  Now that Charlie had been cast aside by Gabby, there was absolutely no reason for Anna to hand her back as planned. Because she’d be going to a foster family or a grandmother she didn’t know. A grandmother Anna had serious doubts about. They could stay there now.

  ‘What if I don’t hand her in for a while?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her dad’s voice turned stern. ‘Listen, Annie. You need to do the right thing here.’

  ‘But no one wants this child, Dad!’ Her tears dropped onto the table. ‘I’m the only one who wants her!’

  ‘What about the grandmother?’

  Pat was at the bench, stirring sugar into his coffee, but clearly listening.

  ‘She’s doesn’t even remember meeting her grandmother! And god knows what kind of parent the grandmother will be if she produced Gabby. Gabby said she was yelled at and I’ll bet that’s the least of it . . .’

  Charlie ran across the lawn with the peg basket, pegs bouncing out onto the ground.

  ‘Anna, this girl is not your flesh and blood. You need to get a grip.’

  Anna wiped at her tears. Despite the love Anna felt for Charlie, despite the care she took of the girl, Anna had no legitimate place in Charlie’s life. Gabby didn’t have to earn that right. She’d won it simply by falling pregnant, by dint of DNA.

  Charlie was on the verandah now, and smiled at Anna through the window.

  ‘You’ve put the girl first, but now I want you to think of yourself,’ said her dad.

  Anna lowered her voice. ‘She’s the vulnerable one, Dad, not me.’

  ‘Well, you’re looking pretty vulnerable from where I’m sitting. And you’re my girl. I want you to be safe. Not in Silverwater Prison.’

  Anna heard a thump from Charlie and Sabine, who were at the far end of the verandah. Anna couldn’t tell what they were doing, then saw a small hoop fall onto the boards. They were playing quoits.

  ‘Promise you won’t tell the cops, Dad.’

  He sighed loudly. ‘I won’t turn you in. Because you’re my daughter and I love you and I don’t want you picked up in some over-the-top raid.’

  Oh shit. What the hell did that mean? What was an over-the-top raid?

  ‘But I don’t like what you’re doing, Annie. I want you to hand yourself in. Today.’

  Neither of them said anything for a few seconds.

  ‘I’ll have to go in a moment,’ he said. ‘Lorraine will be home soon.’

  ‘You’re at Lorraine’s?’ Anna pictured him standing in her aunt’s kitchen with its yellow sunflower tiles. ‘You haven’t told her anything, have you?’ Another quoit dropped onto the verandah boards.

  ‘No. I’ve come over to help her put up some new curtain rods or something.’

  ‘How’s Red?’

  ‘Oh.’ The phone clunked at his end. ‘I had to have him put down.’

  ‘Oh, Dad! I’m so sorry.’ Tears spilled from her eyes again.

  ‘Yeah. Well. It was kinder in the end.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Lorraine is trying to persuade me to get a puppy.’

  ‘You don’t want one?’

  ‘Oh . . . so much work.’ He paused. ‘No . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry about Red, really I am.’

  ‘I know. But I’ve been more worried about you than I’ve been upset about Red, to be honest.’

  ‘I’m really okay, I’m fine. Please don’t worry.’

  ‘I do worry, Annie.’

  She could hear it in his voice, that he was scared for her.

  ‘Ah! Your aunt’s just pulled up. I’ve got to go. Listen, please hand the girl back in, Annie. And I love you.’

  ‘I love you too! I’m sorry, Dad.’ She wasn’t sure if he heard her before he hung up.

  On the verandah, Charlie jumped forward to pick up the quoits and thread them onto her arm.

  Pat stood by the kitchen bench with a mug in his hands.

  Anna said, ‘Charlie’s mother doesn’t want her back.’

  ‘I gathered that.’ He frowned.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad’s not going to tell anyone we’re here. He doesn’t want the cops to come and pick me up in a raid.’ She took a big breath. ‘I want to stay longer than the month at the cottage. There’s no reason for Charlie to go back now.’ She felt shaky. Was she really going to leave her old life behind? Her dad. Dave. Her house.

  He put his cup on the bench and crossed his arms.

  ‘There’s a small problem.’ He lowered his voice, ‘Jo told someone about you and Charlie.’

  ‘What? Who did she tell?’ Oh shit. A small problem? Was Jo going to be Anna’s undoing after all?

  ‘A friend from up the valley came over to borrow a tool yesterday and told me Jo talked to him about you. He looked you up online and wanted to know how I knew you and why you’d taken Charlie. I said you’d had good reason but that you were long gone.’

  ‘You said Jo wouldn’t talk.’

  He closed his eyes and nodded. ‘I know.’ He paused. ‘I’m not going to tell Sabine. She doesn’t need to know. I just hope Jo’s not told anyone else. The good thing is, she has no idea you are up in the cottage. She thinks you’re far away.’

  Except that Beatie knew and Beatie was a friend of Jo’s. Anna had the sense of things around her unravelling, as though in her peripheral vision things were flying apart. She laid her hand on her chest for a moment to try to steady her breath. She should tell Pat that Beatie knew.

  Charlie skipped along the verandah, the quoits over her arm like bracelets.

  Pat glanced out the window at Charlie. ‘Let’s just ride it out for now,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to send you off into the blue today.’ He poured coffee into her mug. ‘Drink this,’ he said and slid it in front of her.

  She picked up the hot mug. She’d have to talk to Beatie. To tell her the truth and beg her not to mention it to Jo. Or Pat. She took a mouthful of coffee. What a mess.

  Charlie appeared in the kitchen door, swinging the quoits around her arm. She grinned at Anna. ‘Look!’

  Behind her, Sabine carried the basket of dry washing. ‘I’ve given her the quoits to borrow.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Pat took the basket from Sabine and set it on the couch.

  Charlie pranced over to the basket, put down the quoits and lifted a tiny playsuit from the pile of folded washing.

  ‘Look!’ she said to Anna. ‘Look how little it is. The baby will wear this.’

  She handed the white cotton bodysuit to Anna.

  ‘Wow,’ said Anna. ‘It’s little, isn’t it?’

  Sabine flopped on the couch beside the washing basket. ‘It’s small baby, according to Jo.’

  Charlie took the suit back and held it against her own body. ‘Will the baby be like a brother to me?’ she asked.

  ‘Well . . . no . . .’ said Anna.

  Sabine gave Charlie a sad smile. ‘Maybe more like a cousin, eh?’ She picked up one of the nappies and refolded it into a square. ‘Is something wrong with your father, Anna?’

  ‘Oh no. He’s well.’ She wouldn’t say more in front of Charlie.

  ‘How did he know where you are?’

  ‘He guessed,’ said Anna. ‘He heard the birds when I called him from town that time.’

  Sabine sighed and ran a hand down her face. If Sabine knew Jo had told someone, she would want them to leave right away. Today.

  Pat opened the fridge. ‘I may as well give you some supplies now. Can you carry them up the hill? I can put them in a pack.’

  ‘Thanks, that would be great,’ said Anna.

  ‘Ah,’ said Sabine and pushed herself up. ‘Let me give you this thing, too.’

  She pulled a cake tin down from a shelf over the sink and slid it onto the table in front of Anna. ‘Here. Banana cake. So many bananas.’r />
  ‘Thank you, Sabine. We love your cake.’

  Anna finished her coffee in quick gulps and stood up. By not telling Pat that Beatie knew they were there, was Anna effectively throwing Sabine to the wolves? She tried to tell herself that if the cops turned up they wouldn’t be interested in Sabine’s visa status. But she had no way of knowing.

  Charlie levered the lid off the cake tin and peered in. ‘Yummy!’

  Pat packed bags of food into the backpack. ‘Do you need sugar?’

  ‘No, we’ve plenty.’

  ‘Flour?’

  ‘Yes, please. And I can bring you some more cash down. For rent.’

  Pat didn’t look up from where he tipped flour from a jar into a paper bag. ‘Let’s talk about that another time.’

  From the couch, Sabine said, ‘You keep that little suit, Charlie. It will remind you of the baby who is coming soon.’

  ‘My cousin,’ said Charlie.

  Sabine gave her a faint smile.

  Charlie rolled the baby’s suit into a ball and tucked it under her t-shirt.

  •

  It was mid-morning when they set off from Pat’s. As they climbed the hill, the pack heavy on Anna’s back, Anna alternated between a delirious, giddy hope that they could stay and a dread that it was all over and she just didn’t know it yet. Was she completely crazy to think that if Beatie – and her family – could be persuaded to stay quiet, she and Charlie would be free to stay here for the long term? Could Anna really start a whole new life here, and raise Charlie in these hills? Panic fluttered in her at the thought of not seeing her dad again. She thought of Dave. If she stayed here, she would be jettisoning their relationship. Perhaps it had already been jettisoned. Perhaps what she had done was more than it could bear.

  Pat’s friend had looked Anna up on the net and read the news stories. Anna stopped walking. Bloody hell. Even if he thought Anna had moved on, he still might tell the cops and then they’d come to talk to Pat. Pat should have told this guy the whole story, not just that Anna had good reason to take Charlie.

  Maybe they should find somewhere else to live. Another valley. And she’d have to get some work. She could clean, like Sabine. Or figure out a way to do online design work anonymously and have the money deposited in Pat’s account. She’d have to borrow money to buy a secondhand Mac.

  She stared at the tree trunks stretching into the distance, and felt the magnitude of what she was contemplating.

  ‘Why did you stop?’ Charlie called to her from up ahead.

  She forced a smile. ‘Just resting.’

  About halfway to the cottage, as they passed through a forest of tall eucalypts, the rain started. Big cool drops landed on their skin and tapped the leaves around them. Charlie turned her face to the sky and squinted at the rain falling down through the canopy.

  ‘Where do the birds go when it rains?’

  ‘They have little nests and nooks. They hunker down and tuck their heads under their wings. They’re very cosy.’ Anna wasn’t completely sure where the birds went, but she guessed that Charlie wanted to know they were safe.

  The wind picked up and thunder rumbled on and on in the distance. It really did sound as if it was rolling around the sky.

  ‘Let’s get home before this storm really hits,’ said Anna. ‘In case there’s lightning.’

  Charlie took Anna’s hand, the red quoit a big bangle on her wrist. ‘Because it’s electricity?’

  ‘That’s right. Let’s go!’

  •

  They reached the cottage breathless and laughing, their clothes soaked and hair plastered flat. Under the front-door awning, Charlie stuck her arms out at an angle and watched the water drip from her fingers. There were already puddles on the pavers and water overflowed from the gutters.

  Anna lowered the pack inside the door, peeled off her clothes and walked through the house, leaving a wet trail of footprints. She found two towels and dried Charlie in the doorway. The girl wriggled away from Anna and scampered naked into the living room.

  Anna had always felt an inordinate, almost primal pleasure being cosy and dry during a storm. And now she let herself imagine that the rain made them safe too. No one, not Macky, surely not even the police, would be out in this weather. Their little home was safe, for now.

  They lay on the mattress, and Anna read to Charlie from the stack of kids’ books she’d found in the store room. Some of them she remembered from her childhood, some were nearly new.

  She had to raise her voice over the rain drumming on the tin roof. Charlie wanted Anna to read Possum Magic over and over again.

  ‘I wish I was invisible sometimes,’ said Charlie, and twirled a finger in her damp hair.

  ‘Like the possum in the story?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I feel like we’re almost invisible up here,’ said Anna. She looked outside. The bricked area was one big puddle now, bouncing with raindrops, and she could hardly see the trees for the white rain. Could she really make a new life here?

  Charlie tapped Anna’s cheek. ‘I don’t want you to be invisible.’

  ‘Okay.’ She smiled. ‘I won’t be invisible.’

  Charlie reached for the book on top of the stack. ‘Let’s read them all again.’

  •

  The conversation with Beatie was awkward.

  Anna and Charlie found her weeding her veggie garden, still wearing her pyjamas.

  As soon as Charlie wandered over the lawn to the chook house, Anna came straight out with it. ‘I need to tell you something. I’m not Charlie’s mum.’

  ‘I know.’ Beatie’s voice was flat and hard to read. She tossed a weed onto the grass. ‘Macky told me.’

  ‘Right.’ So Charlie had told Macky. And probably Claudy and Zeb.

  ‘I took her from her mother because she was being beaten.’

  Beatie’s face dropped. ‘Macky didn’t tell me that. Who beat her?’ She turned to look at Charlie, who was picking flowers from the salvia bush and sucking out the nectar.

  Beatie asked Anna question after question about what happened to Charlie. Anna made herself go into the details, which was the best way she knew to convince Beatie not to tell anyone. She paused after describing the cigarette burn scar on Charlie’s stomach. ‘The mother doesn’t want her anymore. She told the cops she’s over being a mother.’

  Beatie widened her eyes. ‘She’s relinquished her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘My dad phoned me at Pat’s.’

  Beatie looked off to the forest. ‘Bloody hell.’

  Anna wondered if one day Gabby would wake up and realise what she’d thrown away. ‘Can you please keep it quiet that I’m not her mum?’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone. There’s no one to tell anyway.’

  Only Jo, thought Anna. ‘Is it too much to ask that you don’t mention to Pat that you know we’re at the cottage? I think it will freak him out. And he might . . . want us to leave right away.’

  ‘Really?’ said Beatie. ‘Why would he want you to leave if I know? That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Well, just . . . the cops, I guess.’ She couldn’t mention Sabine’s visa issue. ‘The more people that know, the more likely it is that word will get out.’

  Beatie gave a small smile and shook her head. ‘I can’t lie to Pat. He’s my oldest friend in the world.’ She wiped her hands on her shorts. ‘Anyway the kids might have already mentioned it to him. When I told them not to tell people, they wouldn’t imagine that to include Pat.’

  ‘Sure.’ Anna swallowed. She felt ashamed. She shouldn’t be lying to Pat either. Pat, who’d gone out on a limb to help them.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth, Beatie. I really am.’

  Beatie nodded.

  ‘It’s just that keeping her safe is . . .’

  ‘I know.’ Beatie waved her hand in the air. ‘I get it, Anna. Really. I’m a mother.’

  If Pat asked Anna and Charlie to l
eave, then they’d just have to leave. There was nothing more Anna could do.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Anna poked at the last of the red coals and contemplated boiling another billy of tea. The air was still, and smoke hung in the trees and over the big pool.

  Nearby, Charlie and Claudy gathered armfuls of leaves and made a nest in the space between two big roots of a fig tree. Serious-faced, they worked side by side, then took turns to lie in the nest. The girl in the nest curled up, eyes closed, while the other sprinkled crushed-up leaves as if they were confetti.

  While Anna and Charlie were at Beatie’s place, Will and the kids came home from town, rushing in with a new soccer ball, and Anna let herself be carried along with the kids’ plans to go down to the creek. The creek was the one place Anna could relax. She carried three lengths of timber for Macky; he planned to build a li-lo launching pad on the bridge. The two girls skipped ahead, Charlie wearing Claudy’s tutu.

  While the girls added more leaves to their nest, Anna knelt on the bridge and held a piece of timber steady for Macky as he hammered in a nail. Zeb stood to one side with the bag of nails. He was eight, Anna’s age when her mum died. His hands gripping the paper bag still had a babyish lack of definition.

  How did Anna’s mother bear it? Touching Anna’s hand for the last time. Did she know it was the last time? Anna’s father had gripped little Anna’s arm and steered her out into the hospital corridor. Anna had wanted to sleep there like he did, so she could wake in the night and hear her mother breathing. Was he really as angry as she remembered? What had she done wrong?

  So she’d slept at home, in her own bed, her aunt on the foldout bed in the sunroom, Luke in his own room, all the doors shut. And in the night, Anna got up and slipped down the dark hall to her parents’ bedroom, the big bed frighteningly flat and empty, and she brushed her face against her mother’s dresses where they hung in the wardrobe. She breathed in the smell of her mother, but it was not comforting like she’d hoped; it only made the longing erupt more painfully in her chest.

  One of the kids screamed. Over by the fig tree, Charlie had hold of Claudy’s hair and was pulling hard. Claudy’s hands flailed about and she screamed again, ‘Stop, stop, stop, stop!’