by Jo Watson
“Shit!” Cynthia looked at us as we all stared at the open gate in the staff area. “How did she even get into the staff quarters without anyone seeing her?” she asked, and looked at the other nurses.
“It’s been a busy morning, with the incident in gym class. No one would have been here,” one of the other frantic-looking nurses said.
Cynthia nodded and looked over at us. “Mrs. Louw broke her hip. There was a huge commotion. Petra must have slipped out during that.”
Mike walked out the gate and I followed him. It led straight out on to the road. “She could be anywhere. I’ll go look for her,” he said.
Moments later, we were back in his car, driving up and down the small streets and finding nothing. A sense of panic started welling up inside me. What if something did happen to her, this time? The sound of Mike’s phone ringing broke my train of thought. He reached for it, but paused before answering. I watched in fascination as something washed over his face. I’d never seen it before. What was it? He answered tentatively.
“Hello, April,” he said awkwardly into the phone, a strange tone in his voice. “Okay, I’ll be there now.” He hung up and looked over at me.
“Petra’s at her old house. The Cliftons, who live there now, found her standing inside one of the rooms.”
“Wow. Great. Great, I’m so . . . God.” I shook my head, tears choking me up again. I was an utter emotional mess, at the moment.
Mike put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it gently. “She’ll be okay,” he said.
I reached up and put my hand over his. It felt good to be touched by him again. “But will she?” I asked. “Maybe she’ll be okay physically, but emotionally?”
Mike remained silent for a while. “I doubt she’ll ever be okay that way,” he said softly.
His words cut through me like a sword. Of course she wasn’t going to be okay. She hadn’t spoken to her only child in years, and for what? It seemed so unnecessary. All this pain, because we don’t all share the same beliefs, or share the same color skin, or the same sexual preference . . . Underneath it all, we are just the same collection of flesh and blood and bones. Sinews and muscles connecting our vital bits together; lungs that take in oxygen, hearts that beat the same sticky stuff in the same direction, arms and legs and eyes and ears . . . We’re made of star stuff. Carl Sagan’s words echoed in my mind. It was just such a beautiful sentiment: billions of people, all made of the same stuff that had once exploded out of stars. Surely, the fact that we all came from the same exploding place was all the proof we needed that we were more similar than different?
We finally pulled up to the house and rushed to the front door. We didn’t even need to knock; it was already standing open, waiting for us.
“Hello, Mike.” We walked in and were greeted by a woman. There was something strange and familiar in the way that she’d said his name.
“April,” he said, not making eye contact. Mike’s eyes drifted down to her stomach—the pregnant stomach that she was cradling.
I knew who this was: April the woman, not the month.
“How are you?” he asked, finally looking up at her. She was gorgeous. She definitely had a pregnancy glow about her. Long, blond hair, blue eyes, a better figure than mine, even though it looked like a small human was about to fly out of her. This was definitely the kind of woman I could see Mike with, and suddenly I felt incredibly inadequate. I always felt inadequate around these perfect-looking women, I always wondered what they thought of me—like that woman who’d been inside the elevator, the one with the matt lips, who’d looked me up and down.
“Good.” April smiled and rubbed her stomach. “Due any day now. And you?” she asked.
“Good.” His answer was short and stoic. “Ash and Emelia just got engaged.”
“Really? Wow, that’s amazing news. Please send them our congratulations.”
Our. The word sort of echoed around us. Mike nodded. “Thanks; I will. Where’s Petra?” he asked.
“She’s upstairs, in the nursery. It’s a bit creepy, to be honest. She’s just standing there. I got quite a fright this morning, when I saw her,” April said, looking over at me for the first time since we got there. “Sorry—I didn’t introduce myself. I’m April.” She stuck out her hand and I shook it. Smooth, soft hands.
“Becca,” I said.
“Well, thanks for coming,” she said to us.
We walked upstairs and into the nursery. It was yellow. The walls, the bedding in the crib, the carpet—it was as if a sunflower had exploded in here.
“We don’t know what we’re having yet,” April said, behind me, as if she could read my mind.
I nodded. Whoever first thought that yellow was a neutral color for children was just so wrong. “It’s lovely,” I lied. It wouldn’t have been my choice, but hey.
Petra was sitting in a chair at the end of the room, staring at the cot. When she saw us, she looked up and put her finger over her lips.
“Shhh,” she said. “I’ve just put him down.”
“Oh my God,” April whispered, behind us. “This is so sad.”
She didn’t need to state the obvious, though. This was more than sad. This was devastating. Heartbreaking. This was the single most tragic thing I had ever seen.
Mike stepped towards her. “Petra,” he called.
She looked up at him with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. Empty and hollow, desperate for something to fill them.
“We’ve come to take you back home,” he said softly. “You remember me, right?”
She looked at Mike and shook her head.
“I’m a friend.” Mike took her by the hand and started lifting her out of the chair.
“Where are you taking me?” she sounded panicked.
“Home,” Mike answered.
“Isn’t this home?” she enquired.
Mike shook his head. “It used to be your home. But now it belongs to someone else.”
“WHO?” she exclaimed. “Did they swindle us out of the house?”
Mike smiled. “No. They bought it from you.”
“Good. Because I hate swindlers.”
“Me too,” Mike said. “Nothing worse than swindlers.”
“And charlatans,” she said, as Mike began leading her out the door.
“I hate charlatans,” Mike agreed. “I arrest them whenever I can.” He started edging her down the stairs, back to the front door, and she became quite wrapped up in their conversation.
“You know, someone came to my door, just the other day, and tried to sell me a Hoover, when I already have a perfectly good one. And I told him that I didn’t need one, and guess what? He came back the next day, offering me a set of encyclopedias,” she said angrily.
Mike nodded at her. “Well, thanks for letting me know about this. I will certainly keep an eye out for him.”
She nodded. “And so you should. Dreadful man, trying to sell me things I don’t need. And have you seen the tube, these days? Always selling, selling, selling. You can’t turn it on without them trying to sell you something and swindle you out of your money.”
Mike tutted. “I know. Terrible.” And we went like this all the way back to the car and back to the old-age home.
CHAPTER 69
I stopped Mike before we walked back into the police station. We hadn’t spoken since taking Petra back. This whole thing, right down to being inside April’s sunflower-soup nursery, had felt so emotionally draining, and now I was just exhausted.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, knowing that he probably didn’t.
He shook his head.
“Must have been hard, being inside that nursery,” I said, persisting a little, when I probably shouldn’t have. Perhaps I was overstepping a line here.
But when he turned in his seat and started talking, I knew that I hadn’t overstepped. In fact, before he’d even started, I got the sense that he wanted to get it off his chest.
“April and I broke up a long time ago,�
� he said to me.
“Is she the one who left you for someone else? The one we spoke about at the bar? The one whose bangs you didn’t notice?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “We were high-school sweethearts. We both grew up here.”
“Oh. Oh!” I said. I hadn’t realized that their story had so much history.
“When we finished school here, we both went off to the big city to study. She’d always dreamed of going to the city and becoming something great, you know?” he said.
I nodded. I could relate to that. Becoming something great, something other than myself—Pebecca Thorne—was what I strived for most.
“Honestly, I don’t think I actually wanted to leave, but she’d convinced me that we’d have this big, glamorous life in the city. Big dreams and ambitions and . . . whatever. We were these kids that grew up in a small town and we had no idea about the world out there. But we went.”
“Where?”
“Cape Town. We both went to study at UCT.”
“What did you study?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Well, that’s a good question.”
“What do you mean?”
“April always knew what she wanted to be—she wanted to be an architect—and she had this idea in her mind that I should become a great businessman.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know—because ‘CEO’ and ‘architect’ sound like real jobs. The kind of jobs that successful grown-ups that live in a big city have.”
“So you studied business?”
“For three years, then I dropped out. I hated it. After that, I tried politics, followed by a little bit of psychology and some law. By the time I’d done the rounds a few times, she’d graduated as an architect and wanted to start creating that life she’d dreamed about—that ‘we’d’ dreamed about.”
I listened as he spoke, the words just flying out of his mouth now.
“Only, I couldn’t really give her that life. I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. She was wanting to buy a house and take on jobs at architectural firms with those long, triple-barrel names, like Watson, Livingston, Clifton.”
“Clifton?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’m sure you can figure that one out,” he said.
“She left you for Clifton?”
“Anthony Clifton, partner at the architectural firm. The guy had what she wanted: money, prestige and a shiny sports car. Of course, by this stage, I was such a disappointment to her, because I was just going round and round in circles and not living up to that dream ‘we’d’ shared as stupid kids that knew nothing about life.”
“It was her dream,” I offered up.
“But, because it was hers, I thought it was mine too. I guess I also thought I wanted that.”
“So, she and Clifton came back here, after that?”
“No. I stupidly tried to live in the big city and ‘make it.’ ” He gestured air quotes. “I thought that, if I could be what she wanted, maybe she’d come back. I thought I was very much in love still. April and I had been together since we were fifteen—she was all I knew. And everything I’d ever thought I wanted for my life was wrapped up in her, and us. So, I landed up getting a law degree—”
“I’m sorry—you’re a lawyer?”
He nodded.
“But you hated it?”
He nodded again.
“Wait . . . The other day, when you arrested me, you told me there was only one lawyer in town and he was busy. Did you mean you?” I asked.
“Well, I was busy. I was busy arresting you.”
“So, you studied law, and now you’re a policeman?”
“Funny you should mention that . . .” His tone changed and he gave a little smile.
“What?”
“Let me carry on telling you the story,” he said.
“Okay.” I crossed my legs on the seat and turned to face him now.
“So . . . I pretended to be a lawyer for a few years, and I pretended to have this life, complete with a fancy apartment and a shiny car and shit like that, but, after all that, she didn’t really want me back, anyway. I also realized that big-city life wasn’t for me, either, so I came back here.”
“And became the town’s policeman?” I asked.
He smiled again. “You know this job is more of a volunteer thing?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’m not really a policeman. I’m more of a police reservist. The town needed someone to man the station, and they voted me in, since I had the most law knowledge, I guess.”
“Hang on . . . You’re not a real policeman and you arrested me? Can you do that?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”
I smacked him on the arm. “Are you kidding? You arrested me and you don’t even know if you can?”
“You’re the first criminal we’ve ever had in this town,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do with you.”
“So, I’m technically not under house arrest right now?” I enquired.
“I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “Probably not.”
“Why isn’t there a real policeman in town?” I asked.
Mike looked at me with a deadpan expression. “You know our current population is about 550 people, right? And you know the doctor here also doubles as the vet? And the baker here also doubles as the kingpin of a porn ring?”
I smiled at him. “So, you’re a lawyer doubling as a policeman.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m no longer a practicing lawyer. I gave that up. I’m actually a small-business owner with my sister, and I volunteer on the side as a policeman.”
“Okaaay,” I said, taking this all in. “But you wear a uniform and drive a police car?”
“Loaned to our department by the real police, over in Morgan Bay. Technically, they’re the real law in this area.”
“Right.” I crossed my arms. “Well, you take your job very seriously.”
He smiled. “I’m just serving and protecting my community.”
“So, this is what Ash meant when she said you became a policeman by accident.”
“We were having a town meeting and I was voted in. I’d just come back to town.”
“And why is April back here?” I asked.
“Oh, well, that’s not really the end of the story, with her,” he said.
“It’s not?”
He shook his head. “No. She came back here about two years after I did. Things with Anthony didn’t work out, and we got back together for a year, and then she left me again.”
“What? She left you twice?”
“Told you I wasn’t good at reading woman signals.”
“Who did she leave you for this time?” I asked.
“She went back to Anthony, or should I say that he came here for her and won her back. By that stage, I must have been a serious disappointment to her—living with my sister, running a little B and B, volunteering as a police reservist.”
“Oh my God,” I said, holding my head. “She left you twice, for the same man. And she still lives here with him?”
“I thought they would go back to Cape Town, but they didn’t, because they’re making a fortune designing houses for the eco estate.”
“Wow. Okay.” I looked at him in shock.
“It’s like a wise person once said,” Mike started. “The heart is also just a muscle, and it takes time to heal a strain.”
“You memorized it?” I smiled at him.
“I told you, your book really helped me.”
“Has your strain been healed yet?” I asked him, not able to make eye contact. Feeling coy.
“Has yours?” he asked.
“What?”
“You were heartbroken when you wrote that book,” he stated.
I nodded. “I am over the sprain—well, sort of. I still find myself doing a lot of things motivated by getting him back,” I said. “Like my car. I don’t even like Porsches; I jus
t got it because it was his favorite car and buying it meant I could rub it in his face!”
He smiled at me. “I tried that shit once before—trust me, it doesn’t work. People don’t love you or want to be with you for things. They love you and want to be with you because you’re you.”
This time I did look at him. Our eyes locked.
“So, that’s me. My story,” he whispered.
“Thanks for telling it,” I said back.
He shrugged. “It was good to talk to someone who understands. Ash just gets angry and wants to drive by and fuck April up, which puts me in a difficult position, being the official unofficial law man of this town.”
I smiled at him. “Do you like what you do now?”
“Love it,” he gushed, without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m finally living the life I always should’ve been living. I run a small business with my best friend. We live together.” He rolled his eyes a little. “We probably always will. A psychologist might say codependent; I say close.” He gave me another shrug. “I get to wake up every day in the most beautiful place in the world, where I grew up, and I get to help people, in small ways. I make enough money to be comfortable, but not enough to stress!”
“Wow.” I looked at him. “You are who I want to be,” I said.
“Really?” He looked at me and raised that sexy eyebrow. “I find that hard to believe. You’re a famous, bestselling novelist.”
“But I’m also completely alone, living in an apartment that I can’t afford, with a fucking coffee table that cost more than your car, and I’m . . . I’m . . .” A stab in my gut. A hard punch. My heart kicked in my chest and suddenly I couldn’t really breathe.
“What?” he asked, leaning forward.
“I’m . . . unhappy.” I finally said the word that I think I’d known for a very long time. The word that had hung just below the surface. That had bobbed there, just out of reach of my conscious brain. The word that had followed me around for quite some time now, like an unwelcome shadow that I didn’t even know I had.
