Missing You, Love Sara

by Jackie French

  She looked just like she always did, in this dress tied at the waist looking as if it was trying to cut her in two, and hassled around the lips like she always looks (she’s got four kids younger than Johnnie). She was piling canola margarine containers into her trolley when she saw me.

  I thought she was going to say something for a moment. I had a smile all prepared, ready to put on my face, and was desperately thinking, What can I say? What can I say?

  But then she just squeezed her lips even tighter and turned the trolley round, like I was a bad smell she couldn’t bear to go past, even though she hadn’t even got to the milk section yet, and I was left standing there with everybody looking.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  For a moment I felt like running after her and yelling, ‘It’s not my fault your son is a liar!’, but that would have made it worse and, anyway, I didn’t have the guts.

  So I stood there holding the trolley, and Mrs Peterson—she’s this big, tall woman who always wears long, flowery skirts, and she’s in the drama group with Mum—left her trolley next to the yoghurt fridge and lumbered up and hugged me in a great cloud of talcum powder, and said, ‘It’s all right, pet, she’s just upset. She doesn’t mean it.’

  Well, of course Mrs Blackstone had meant it, that’s what hurt, but other people were smiling and nodding their heads at me, and old Mr Swenlik tottered up and said, ‘You tell your dad if there’s anything me and the boys can do, he’s just got to yell.’ But at least I didn’t start crying or anything, which would have been embarrassing.

  I just pretended to be finding which pineapple had the least amount of brown on it while Mrs Blackstone went through the checkout before I wheeled my stuff out.

  It made me think though. I hadn’t realised till then that Reenie’s disappearance might hurt people other than Dad and Mum and me.

  People like Johnnie’s family, or even Elaine and Myra …

  CHAPTER 23

  Dinner with Mum

  It was lamb curry for dinner, which is one of my favourite things that Mum makes, and tonight there were side dishes of pappadums, and banana and coconut in yoghurt too, and sliced cucumber and mint, and three sorts of chutney. Mum had made a three-layer banana cake too, with cream cheese frosting, which was really crazy because she’s always on a diet and never makes dessert, and I’m not going to eat a whole banana cake by myself.

  We ate at the dining room table like we always did. Mum making sure I knew my table manners, I always thought, but who knows—maybe she and Reenie ate at the dining room table with napkins and everything every night, and maybe Mum did even when she was on her own.

  Mum looked smaller. Her skin sort of sagged and her eyes seemed to have sunk right back into her face and she held things too tightly—everyday things, such as her coffee cup and the fork and the spoon to ladle out the rice—so you could see her knuckles white under her rings and just the faintest tremor in her fingers.

  I don’t think she had been blow-waving her hair as usual, because it just plunked about her face, as if it was too tired to do anything more. She hadn’t had any lipstick on when she came home either. Mum usually puts on fresh lipstick about a hundred times a day, but she didn’t bother any more.

  ‘Would you like some ice-cream with the cake?’ asked Mum. ‘There’s some vanilla in the fridge.’

  I shook my head. I don’t like ice-cream; haven’t liked it for years. Mum never eats ice-cream either, and had never had it in the house before as far as I know, and I guess she had forgotten that I don’t eat it. She must have bought it especially for me. ‘Just the cake, thanks Mum.’

  Mum cut a big piece and used a cake slice to lift it onto the plate—Mum always uses things like that, even a special cheese knife for goodness’ sake—and a thinner one for herself.

  The rest of the cake looked awfully lonely, just sitting on the plate with no one else to eat it.

  I took a bite. It was good. Mum’s a good cook—like Reenie, she does everything well. Properly. Just the right way. (The stuff I cook tastes good, but never looks as elegant as Mum’s.)

  ‘I saw Mrs Blackstone in the supermarket today,’ I said. I had to tell someone. It was like acid eating at my throat. ‘She wouldn’t speak to me. Just, just turned away.’

  Mum nodded. Her throat worked, the way it does when she’s upset and trying not to show it. ‘Mary Blackstone asked to be transferred out of my drama class,’ she said.

  ‘Did Mrs Watson let her?’

  ‘Yes. She asked me what I thought. It seemed best …’ Mum’s voice trailed off.

  ‘It’s not our fault, is it? That the police suspect Johnnie.’

  Mum shook her head.

  ‘He shouldn’t have lied! If he hadn’t lied they wouldn’t suspect him.’ I hesitated. ‘You do think he’s lying, don’t you?’

  Mum shrugged. ‘Probably. But if he’d been honest and said she was the one who broke it off, they might have suspected him straightaway. I can see why he might have lied, even if he had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘But he must have done it! Who else could have?’

  ‘Oh, Sara, I don’t know … it still doesn’t make sense. If he did it, why didn’t anyone see him in town? Why didn’t anyone see him with Reenie?’

  The cake in my mouth felt like plastic, as though I could chew it and chew it and it would never turn into food. I wanted to spit it out but Mum had gone to so much trouble making it.

  ‘Mum … do you think he did it?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ and, for once, I knew she was being totally honest with me.

  ‘But we know Johnnie. He’s a nice bloke.’ I was trying to convince myself too.

  ‘Darling, I know.’ Mum had never called me darling before. She used to call Reenie darling—and Dad a long time ago. ‘I taught him at school, remember. He was in preschool with Reenie, all the birthday parties, his family.’

  ‘He just couldn’t kill someone.’

  ‘Anyone can kill someone,’ said Mum softly, but her throat was working again. ‘If it’s an accident. If they don’t mean to do it. And if they’ve taken drugs, or are drunk, and don’t know what they’re doing.’

  ‘Johnnie doesn’t drink does he?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Mum. ‘Just at parties and times like that. He’s not a problem drinker.’

  ‘Does he do drugs?’

  Mum shook her head. ‘Not that I’ve heard. I probably would have if he did. Someone would have told me, since he was going out with Reenie.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. It’d be so easy if they were on drugs and owed money, or something, you know, like all those shows on TV.’

  Mum nodded.

  Neither of us spoke for a while. I tried to eat my banana cake. Mum had given up all pretence of eating hers.

  ‘Mum? What do you think happened?’

  ‘Oh, God, I wish I knew.’ Mum buried her face in her hands, to stop me seeing her cry, I thought. But her eyes weren’t even red when she took her hands away, only more shadowed than before.

  ‘You know something, Sara?’ said Mum, her voice all trembly. ‘I hope he did kill her. I hope that with all my heart. Because if Johnnie killed her, it was an accident. It would have been quick and she wouldn’t have suffered. She wouldn’t have been kidnapped or raped or mutilated …’ Mum broke off, looked at me with wide eyes, as though she had just realised who she was speaking to.

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sara. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘It’s okay, Mum.’

  I got up off my chair and hugged her awkwardly. It had been years since I had done that. ‘Don’t cry,’ I said, though she wasn’t crying, not really, just shaking all over like she couldn’t stop.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ I said.

  I made coffee—Mum doesn’t like tea. We watched TV for an hour till Dad came to pick me up. I kissed Mum goodbye, which was another first for quite a while.

  I wondered what would happen to t
he rest of the banana cake.

  Maybe Mum threw it out. Or maybe she took it to the staff room at school and they all had it for morning tea.

  CHAPTER 24

  Things That Happen

  Mum took to ringing me every night after that.

  Not about Reenie. She just wanted to know how my day had been and stuff like that and I asked about hers, and sometimes I even told her about the farm, which I knew she didn’t really want to hear, but it was something to say and that was the main thing. I got so desperate for something to say sometimes, something that wasn’t about Reenie. Something to fill the empty space that never could be filled at all.

  Sometimes I wanted to pretend to be outside when she rang up, too far away to come to the phone. But I couldn’t ask Dad to lie to Mum and, anyway, Mum needed the phone calls. That’s what made them so bad.

  The shadows turned blue, then purple. The dung beetles disappeared from the paddocks. We changed into winter uniform at school and Dad sold a bull at the sale for the highest price he’d ever got. None of which had anything to do with Reenie, except the bull maybe; people were trying to be as nice as they knew how, which might have helped the bidding.

  Lots of other things happened, too, but that year they didn’t seem to matter unless they had something to do with Reenie.

  CHAPTER 25

  Letter to Reenie, July

  Dear Reenie,

  I don’t know why I’m writing you another letter. Yes I do. I’m writing because I want to say I’m angry. Yes, that’s it. Just plain mad.

  Did you KNOW what you were doing when you left like that?

  I know people keep saying it can’t have been your fault. But it must have been your fault, some of it. You got into someone’s car, perhaps. Or you made Johnnie so angry that he just went and did something, even if he didn’t mean to. It must have been something like that. So it was your fault, even though people keep saying it wasn’t.

  I want to hit you sometimes. Hurt you, just like you hurt Mum and Dad. Dad was crying in the shower the other day. He didn’t know I heard but I did. And Mum just sits there sometimes, not saying anything, which isn’t like Mum at all. She rings me up every day, too, and I HATE it.

  I want her to leave me alone, just like she always did. I want her not to bother about me, because she only bothers now because you’re gone, because she hasn’t got you to talk to any more, so she talks to me instead.

  I hate what you and Mum were like together. I HATE it. I don’t want to have to try to be you. But when Mum rings I can’t hang up.

  I hardly ever saw you before. That’s how we both wanted it, wasn’t it? I mean, just because you are sisters doesn’t mean you have to be close.

  You know something silly though? I miss you all the same.

  Sara

  CHAPTER 26

  Answers

  The answer to the mystery, the clue to the whole thing, came to me at four in the morning. It was so obvious—so incredibly obvious—I couldn’t see how I hadn’t seen it before.

  It was so obvious I’d put on my slippers and padded out to Dad’s room before I realised it.

  ‘Dad! Dad, wake up!’

  Dad blinked. ‘Sara? What is it? Is there something wrong?’

  ‘It’s about Reenie. We’ve been so stupid.’

  ‘What?’ Dad sat up in bed. ‘Give me a minute will you, Pumpkin? Go and put the kettle on or something.’

  ‘Okay. You won’t go back to sleep, will you?’

  ‘No. I won’t go back to sleep.’

  It was sort of creaky in the kitchen, the way old rooms are at night. There were shadows in places you never noticed earlier in the evening, even though once the light was turned on you’d think the way it lit the kitchen wouldn’t change no matter how late it got.

  I filled the kettle. It filled as slowly as it always did, though we’d had a bit of rain the night before. But the tank has to be almost full before the water pressure increases.

  Dad came along in his dressing gown just as I put the kettle on.

  ‘You won’t sleep if you have tea now. It’s got caffeine in it.’

  Dad stared at me, as though to say, ‘I’d be asleep now if you hadn’t woken me up,’ then just shook his head. ‘What’s up, Pumpkin?’ he said instead.

  He’d started calling me Pumpkin all the time now; that was another of the things that had changed. I switched on the kettle and sat down opposite him. ‘I was thinking, sort of in my sleep. Then I woke up and it was just so clear. I mean it all makes sense.’

  ‘What makes sense. Slow down a bit.’

  ‘Johnnie and Myra!’

  ‘What about them?’

  He was being so slow. ‘The only reason we think that Reenie didn’t go back to the flat or tell anyone about breaking up with Johnnie was because Myra says she didn’t.’

  Dad blinked, like he was still half asleep. ‘Why would she lie?’

  ‘Because she was in love with Johnnie!’ I said triumphantly. ‘Don’t you see? Maybe they were in on it together.’

  ‘I still don’t see …’ Dad looked confused.

  ‘Look … what has always been really queer is how could Reenie have vanished from the supermarket just like that. I mean, nothing can happen in the supermarket without someone seeing it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dad slowly.

  ‘But suppose she just went to take the video back. We’ve only got Myra’s word for it she was going to get bread and stuff.

  ‘Suppose she went back to the flat after all. Then Johnnie came to the flat—that would make sense, wouldn’t it, if he’d been upset the night before?’

  ‘I guess so …’

  ‘He’d have parked around the back of the hardware store, like he always did. No one would have noticed his ute back there. He might have come to the flat to convince her to come back to him and then they argued and then he …’

  I stopped. It suddenly struck me then. I was talking about real people. About Myra and Johnnie. But despite that, it all did make sense. More sense than Reenie just disappearing from the supermarket.

  Dad was looking at me and the kettle was whistling. Then he blinked and got up to turn it off. He dunked the teabag into his mug then slopped it on the table like he wasn’t really thinking about it—he usually dunks it exactly four times then puts it in the bin before he even takes a sip of the tea—then turned back to me.

  ‘But why would Myra lie? Why would she protect Johnnie?’

  ‘Because she was in love with him,’ I said simply.

  It made so much sense, I couldn’t see how Dad wasn’t jumping at the idea. ‘Maybe Myra had been jealous of Reenie for ages.’

  Dad shook his head uncertainly. ‘I just can’t think that Johnnie … or Myra …’

  ‘Maybe Reenie and Johnnie argued and there was an. an accident. Maybe it wasn’t really Johnnie’s fault.’

  ‘But why not just say it was an accident if Myra was there and saw it?’

  ‘He’d still be up for … what do they call it? … manslaughter, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dad slowly. ‘But what would they have done with her? You can’t just get rid of a body in the middle of the day like that.’

  ‘But don’t you see? They didn’t have to. They could wait for later that night. No one was going to search the flat for Reenie’s body, were they? I bet even now they haven’t even looked for bloodstains there or anything.’

  Part of me felt horrible talking like this, but part of me felt good. I was DOING something. I was actually finding a way through all the fog.

  ‘I can’t take it all in,’ said Dad, and suddenly he looked sort of sick. He pushed the mug of tea away. ‘We’ll think about it tomorrow, all right? Decide what to do. You go back to bed now.’

  ‘But Dad—’

  ‘Go back to bed. You need your sleep.’

  A year ago I would have argued with him, but it was hard to argue with Dad now. He looked like, well, I can’t tell you what he looked like.
Not at all what Dad should look like.

  ‘Try to get some sleep,’ said Dad in a voice that meant he couldn’t take much more.

  So I went to my room and got back into bed, which was all cold by now, and tried to sleep, but my mind felt like a beehive, a thousand pieces all working at once

  I did sleep, finally, but I kept half waking up, and every time I woke I could hear Dad out in the kitchen so I thought I couldn’t have been asleep for long, but when I finally did get up it was after ten o’clock and Dad hadn’t woken me for school and he didn’t look like he’d gone back to bed at all.

  It didn’t seem quite so obvious in daylight. It still seemed possible all right, but not so much ‘it has to have happened like that’ as it was during the night.

  I poured the milk over my porridge and watched it slowly eat away at the brown sugar in the middle, and Dad watched me across the table.

  ‘They’ve never been seen together,’ said Dad finally. ‘Johnnie always seemed so wrapped up in Reenie.’

  ‘That’s just it. Johnnie was in love with Reenie and Myra was in love with him.’

  Dad shrugged. ‘Even if she wasn’t … in love with him like that, they were still friends. They’ve known each other all their lives, just like Reenie.’

  I stirred my porridge around with my spoon and hoped Dad wasn’t noticing that I wasn’t eating it. ‘I’d lie for a friend,’ I said. ‘I’d lie to keep Di out of prison.’

  ‘Even if she’d killed another friend of yours?’

  ‘If she didn’t mean to do it,’ I said. ‘If I knew she didn’t mean to do it.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dad. He dragged a hand over his face. ‘I’ve been sitting here and thinking and thinking. What about Elaine? We only know Reenie wanted to break up with Johnnie because Elaine told us. What if she’s the one who is lying?’

  ‘But she wouldn’t.’

  ‘Unless there was a good reason,’ said Dad. ‘And I can’t think of a good reason.’

  I carried my uneaten porridge over to the sink. ‘Should we tell the police?’ I asked.