After the Fall

by Norman, Charity

  ‘You knew it was in the stove.’

  ‘Sit down.’ She was patting the sofa as though I was the child and she the parent. ‘Yes, I did. Someone sent me a text. Said Ed had left his stash. I was about to chuck it down the pan.’

  I so wanted to believe her. ‘Sacha, please. No more lies.’

  ‘For God’s sake! You know I’d never touch anything like that. I’ve seen what hard drugs can do to people, they showed us a video at school and I totally despise it. Shit like this is for losers. Ed’s completely fucked up.’

  I began to feel a little hope. I was trying to think, trying to fit her explanation into the jigsaw puzzle. I held up the bag. ‘So what is this?’

  ‘How would I know? It’s something that should be flushed down the U-bend.’

  ‘Let’s take it to the police. What’s this Ed’s surname?’

  ‘Very bad idea.’

  ‘Very good idea. I’ll phone Robert Andrews right now.’

  There was a flash, deep in the tawny eyes. ‘Are you nuts? They might nick me—for being in possession of . . . well, of whatever it is. And what happens if you or I or any of us is convicted of an offence?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Game over.’ She drew her finger across her throat. ‘Bang go our visas. We’re not citizens, remember? We’re here on sufferance. One false move and the McNamara family will be on the first plane home.’ I sat stunned as she pressed her advantage. ‘I’ve a feeling Kit might have a word or two to say on the subject.’

  ‘But this stuff isn’t ours.’

  ‘Ed will say it is.’ Sacha sighed. ‘Mud sticks. You want to get deported? Well, go ahead. Be my guest.’

  Her story made sense, if you were desperate enough. And besides, I knew Sacha wouldn’t let thieves into our house. She just wouldn’t. ‘So you swear you haven’t touched this?’

  She crossed herself. ‘Guide’s honour. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  ‘And you never, ever will?’

  ‘I swear on my little brothers’ lives. I’m really sorry we let that dildo crash the party.’

  Snuffing the candles, we left the hut and began to make our way up the track.

  ‘Stupid jerk,’ Sacha was saying as we stepped into the light from the kitchen windows. ‘I’d have thrown him out if I’d known he was using P.’

  ‘Using . . .’ I stopped short. ‘So you do know what it is.’

  Her eyes flickered towards the bag in my hand. ‘Well, someone told me . . .’ She put up two forefingers in a cross, to ward off evil. ‘You won’t tell Kit, will you?’

  I wasn’t listening. I was thinking. ‘Light bulbs,’ I muttered. She didn’t seem to hear, just kept walking. I caught up in three fast strides, put a hand on her arm and spun her around. ‘Just a minute. Why is there no light bulb in the smoko hut?’

  ‘Stupid things kept blowing. And I like candlelight. It’s romantic.’

  ‘Where are the bulbs, then?’

  She looked at me as though I’d gone mad. ‘How the hell would I know? In the landfill, I should think.’

  ‘Oh Sacha,’ I whispered. ‘You’re a good liar. I’ve seen them.’

  ‘You went through my bin? How sick is that?’ She whirled away and slammed into the kitchen.

  Kit was reading the paper at the table, and looked up in almost comic surprise at the hurricane that had blown in. ‘Girls, girls,’ he said, looking faintly amused. His gaze travelled from my face to Sacha’s, and then to the tiny bag I was holding up.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked quietly. It was slightly sinister, because the smile was still on his lips.

  Sacha’s eyes met mine. In the electric light I saw that her pupils were enlarged, taking up most of the iris; it had a demonic effect. For one last moment, I wondered whether I should cover up for her. She would never be so stupid as to dabble in drugs again. End of story, and nobody the wiser. Kit wouldn’t even want to know.

  ‘It’s rat poison,’ she lied, smoothly but implausibly. ‘Would you believe it, Kit? Mum’s making a fuss because the smoko hut’s got rats.’

  Kit reached for the bag, and there was another nasty silence while he held it under the light. ‘Right. Who’s going to do the talking?’

  ‘Why should I bother?’ raged Sacha, making for the door. ‘Nobody believes me.’

  I took her wrist. ‘Where’s your flute?’

  ‘At school.’

  ‘Shall I phone your dean and ask her to check?’

  My daughter looked as though she’d like to strangle me. Her face was a mask of fury, the pupils still eerily dilated. I was afraid of her. This demon wasn’t my Sacha. ‘Fuck you,’ she hissed, thrusting me into the dresser. I heard her footsteps pounding up the stairs, and the house shivered as her bedroom door smashed shut.

  I nodded at the miniature bag in Kit’s hand. ‘I think that’s this stuff they call P.’

  ‘Jesus. I do hope you’re wrong.’

  I told him about Tama’s warning and my search. Once I’d described the light bulbs, he stood up. ‘C’mon. Know your enemy.’

  The sitting room was warm and bright. Kit had lit the fire, tidied up and turned on all the lamps—poor man, I realised dimly that he’d been trying to make amends for the previous evening’s binge. He was drinking ginger beer. He’d even made a casserole. I flung myself into a chair while he bent down to the desktop, his face reflecting the blue screen.

  ‘Times like this I long for broadband,’ he said. ‘What shall we try? Pure meth . . . P.’ He typed, clicked, waited, then whistled incredulously. ‘Will you look at that? There’s a whole industry.’

  Indeed there was. I was aboard my magic hearthrug again, but this time it was flying me somewhere I didn’t want to go. Over the next hour we gave ourselves a crash course. To its many friends around the world the drug is known by fluffy nicknames—Tina, crystal, ice, glass. And, only in New Zealand, P.

  Per capita, New Zealand has the highest addiction rates to Methamphetamine in the world. The crystal form is the most pure.

  ‘One hundred per cent pure New Zealand,’ breathed Kit.

  Methamphetamine is a Class A drug. It is a very powerful psychostimulant, uniquely addictive and destructive. About ninety per cent of people who try methamphetamine just once continue to use it.

  Facts leaped off the page and clouted me between the eyes. I found myself mesmerised, in a ghastly way. This was relevant to me, to my family.

  ‘Sacha can’t be using this,’ I said, reading a list of side-effects—including stroke and death—that made my breath stick in my throat. ‘She just can’t be.’

  Kit was clicking and typing. ‘Bingo,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll have to give it a few minutes to download.’

  Highly educational, is YouTube: a grainy, sordid little home video, showing us exactly how to make a meth pipe out of a light bulb, then heat crystals over a flame and inhale the vapours. Things I’d seen in the smoko hut— apparently innocent—became horribly significant. The bulb was the star of the show, but also in the cast were the pliers, the duct tape, the empty biro tube, the lighter and the top part of a plastic drink bottle like the ones in the bin. There was even salt, to sandblast the frosting off the bulb. It was all done in a lonely, godforsaken silence. You never saw more than the addict’s mouth, but you could hear his heavy breathing. It was an intensely sleazy experience. I felt dirty just watching. It was repulsive, yet at the same time almost erotic, like a peepshow in the back streets of Amsterdam.

  ‘For crying out loud.’ Kit sounded shaken. ‘Let’s go to the police. Right now. Tonight.’

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘This is poison, Martha! They’ll give Sacha a warning and put the fear of God into her.’

  I reached for his hand, lifted it off the mouse and traced my finger down the familiar lines on his palm. ‘If Sacha’s in trouble, we’re all in trouble. We have to be of good character. Remember all those police checks before we got our visas? I don’t know, but using a Class A drug doesn’t so
und like good character to me.’

  Kit understood immediately, and banged his other hand onto the desk. ‘Hell.’

  The video started itself up again. We watched the process with fascinated revulsion. The bulb filled with white vapour, swirling and thickening. It was all obscenely matter-of-fact, as though this degradation was normal and everyday; a Blue Peter presenter showing how to make a pencil case out of a shoebox and sticky-backed plastic . . . And here’s one I’ve made already! The anonymous lips closed caressingly around the tube, and the addict inhaled deeply. Then he murmured something. His tone was that of a lover, whispering in his beloved’s ear.

  ‘I’ve seen enough,’ said Kit abruptly.

  We climbed the stairs together. Sacha’s door was locked.

  ‘Sacha.’ Kit gave the panels a hefty kick. ‘Let us in or—so help me—I’ll walk down these stairs and phone the police. You can take your chances.’

  The door swung open and she stood with her hand on the handle, mocking. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  It struck me—with sickening force—how my dazzling girl had changed. How could such horrors have slipped beneath my radar? This creature was thin, sallow, sad, with sores on her face and arms. Her hair was dirty, her eyes deadened. The signs had been there to see.

  She was in trouble, sneered Mum. But you were too busy with your work and your twins and your lovely new life.

  The room was a bombsite, with the rancid smell I’d noticed the night before. Sacha used to be organised, tidy, fussy about hygiene. She threw herself full-length on the bed. ‘Okay, okay. I tried it. I’ll never touch it again. Happy?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake.’ Kit rammed his fist into his palm.

  ‘What did you expect? You pack me up and drag me halfway around the world as though I was a piano. What did you expect?’

  ‘Not this,’ I said.

  When she saw that Kit was prowling, opening drawers and cupboards, she jumped to her feet. ‘Get out! You’re not my father. How dare you invade my privacy?’

  Kit stood looking around, brows drawn. ‘What am I going to find, Sacha Norris?’

  ‘You bastard, Kit. There’s nothing in here. I’ve just had some filthy burglar going through my stuff, and now you . . . Put that down!’

  Kit had hold of her backpack. He took one last look at his stepdaughter— who was making a wild lunge towards him—and shook the pack upside down. Clothes fell out: a t-shirt; a manky towel, wrapped around Sacha’s bikini; and finally a pair of socks rolled into a ball, which hit the floor with a hideous clunk.

  We all looked down at those socks. Kit picked them up. As he unrolled them, something fell into the palm of his hand. It was the video camera I’d been given as a leaving present. My decadent toy, stolen in the burglary.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Kit stared in sickened fascination at the thing in his hand. His voice was ominously gentle. ‘It’s true. You had us burgled.’

  Sacha crumpled onto the bed, her arms wrapped around her head. I felt as though she was a stranger.

  ‘No choice.’ Her breath was coming in fractured gasps. ‘I didn’t have any choice.’

  Kit crossed the floor in one stride, took hold of an arm and pulled her half off the bed. It was as though he’d attacked a rag doll.

  ‘No choice?’ he spat, his face distorted with rage. ‘No choice? You little bitch. You told them when to come. Told them where to look. Maybe you even drew a helpful map. Did you have a good laugh about Mary bloody Poppins? What have Finn and Charlie ever done to you?’

  I stepped closer. ‘Kit . . .’

  ‘They love you.’ Kit’s whole body seemed electrified with fury. He lifted a fist. ‘Those poor little bastards! They worship you. Was that their crime? Worshipping you?’

  ‘I needed to pay someone,’ she wailed. ‘I owed someone.’

  ‘Who did you owe?’ I asked.

  ‘Can’t tell you.’

  ‘Oh yes, you can.’ Kit pushed her away. ‘Who is this person you love so much that you will betray your family for them? Is it that slimeball Jani?’

  ‘We have to call the police,’ I said.

  ‘No!’ Sacha began to rock back and forth on the bed, her arms locked behind her head. ‘I’m so scared . . . They’ll come after me.’

  Kit sighed. ‘Where’s Sibella’s portrait? I want it back.’

  ‘Shh! Did you hear that?’ Sacha looked terrified. ‘There’s someone on the balcony.’

  I opened her door and looked out. The night was still. Not a sound, not a movement; not even the lights of a ship out in the bay. ‘Must have been a possum,’ I said, stepping back inside.

  ‘Oh, I wish it was.’ Sacha’s mouth stretched wide. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m in so much trouble.’ Her bare feet were stuck out in front of her, the toes splayed. I thought of a film I once saw about cholera victims, their dead feet laid out in rows.

  ‘You’ve got to talk to us,’ I said tiredly. ‘No more lies, Sacha. Please. I can’t take any more lies.’

  Kit glanced at his watch. ‘Shit. We were supposed to collect the boys an hour ago.’

  ‘You go,’ I said.

  He hesitated. ‘Will you be okay?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll talk to her. Don’t hurry back—we don’t want the boys upset.’

  As he was leaving, a horrible thought struck me. ‘The Colberts! This is what killed their son. They mustn’t know, Kit. Nobody must know.’

  Twenty-nine

  What do you do when your daughter smuggles a snake into Eden? It isn’t in the manual.

  I hoped I was dreaming, because this was a terrifying nightmare. I wasn’t reading a book about some naive and witless mother whose child had gone off the rails. This wasn’t Hollywood. This was me. Perhaps human beings need—for their very survival—a fundamental belief in their own invulnerability. It won’t be my family killed on the roads. It won’t be my husband in love with another woman. It will be someone else, and I’ll feel very sorry for them while secretly suspecting that they brought it on themselves. It definitely won’t be my child who takes drugs. That’s for other, more careless families.

  Parking Sacha in front of the sitting-room fire, I staggered into the kitchen and grabbed the hot chocolate. It seemed an absurdly homely and jolly thing to be doing, but it gave me time to think. As I slid a saucepan of milk across the hob, my eye fell on the phone.

  Just dialling his number made me feel closer to my father. It was early morning in Bedfordshire, but he’d be up. The telephone would be calling out to him now, in that softly coloured kitchen. I saw him with the cat on his knee, stretching out his hand to answer me. I had never needed him more than I did at that moment.

  Click. Dad’s resonant greeting. ‘Hello there. This is Hereward Norris.’

  Dad, please be in. I don’t know what to do.

  ‘I’m sorry. You’ve missed me this time, but leave me a message and I promise to call you back.’

  I stood mute as the seconds passed. Milk rose mutinously in a white froth, seething over the edge of the saucepan. Then I quietly replaced the receiver. How could I confess catastrophe to a tape recorder?

  Tama answered at the second ring. I think he was waiting.

  ‘You were right,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Kit’s furious.’

  ‘Yes.’ A moment’s quiet. ‘If I can ever help, Martha . . . you know where to find me.’

  Sacha sat hunched on the end of the sofa, a blanket over her shoulders like a pantomime crone, worrying at her arm.

  ‘Feeling better?’ I asked, setting down our mugs. ‘Start at the beginning.’

  Scrabble, scratch. ‘You won’t listen you won’t listen.’ She spoke too fast, no pauses at all, blinking rapidly. ‘You’ll shout at me.’

  ‘I promise I won’t shout. Are you on something right now?’

  ‘What? Oh . . . yes. Coming down actually, crashing, I really needed another burn when you found me in the hut and r
ight now I’m starting to feel pretty shit. It’s going to get worse, oh God oh God a lot worse, it’s really going to hurt.’ She stared into her mug, shivering. A minute passed.

  I shook her by the shoulder. ‘Sacha!’

  ‘Sorry.’ Tears slid from the corners of her eyes. ‘I was so lonely.’

  Guilt was banging on my door, leading a lynch mob complete with pitchforks and flaming torches. Guilt is female, and she always has the moral high ground in a peculiarly irritating way. Like my mother, come to think of it. The best way to fight her off is by a volley of defensive mortar, which is what I fired now. ‘Don’t try to shift the blame. This is all your own doing.’

  The next moment she’d slowed down, right down, like a train with the brakes on. ‘We got here, nice place and all that, tennis court, river, all lovely for the twins and you and Kit. But so far away . . . I got this ache inside me and it wouldn’t stop.’

  ‘I had that ache, too. You were homesick.’

  ‘I kept thinking how if I found my real father he’d send for me. I imagined flying back to England and this tall, kind man called Simon waiting at the airport, and both of us crying with joy. I just kept obsessing. I couldn’t sleep sometimes because this picture was going around in my head.’ Sacha looked as though she’d lived a thousand years and hated every second of it.

  See? Mum’s voice was accusing. You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.

  ‘I tried to be jolly, tried to fit in. I made friends with Tabby and the cool crowd.’

  ‘I know you tried.’

  ‘The Ivan thing, it was just too much. Somebody else was making him happy. He didn’t need me, Lydia didn’t, even you didn’t. I was kind of . . . unnecessary. I ran out of the library and I was having a meltdown at the bottom of the playing field. Bianka found me there. She looked after me.’

  ‘You mean Bianka got you onto this stuff?’

  ‘No! I mean she listened, understood, made me feel I wasn’t an alien. Mind you, she did . . .’