‘What?’ Scott looked surprised at this, almost puzzled. ‘Oh,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘No. No. I like to …’
‘Get away?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. It was long and straggly now, brushing his shoulders. He looked like a beach bum in his ragged t-shirt and the too big jeans. ‘Speaking of which, I wanted to talk to you about something.’
Pam almost stopped breathing. A dozen scenarios ran through her mind. She must have looked stricken because he let out a small laugh.
‘I’m not doing a runner if that’s what you’re thinking. Not that I’d tell you anyway. But ah, no. I was going to say, how would you feel if I went to stay at Grandpa’s?’
Pam blinked. It was the last thing she was expecting. ‘Dad’s? Really?’
‘Look,’ Scott leaned forward, ‘things aren’t good here. Obviously. So much crap happening—which I’ve brought on. I thought it would be good for me and Loz not to have to be around each other.’
Pam tried to digest everything he was saying but only got as far as him moving to her father’s. ‘Why Dad’s? It’s out of town and you don’t have a car.’
‘We get on all right. And I’m going to do some work up there for him. There’s an old bike I can fix up so I can get around. Pa said I could borrow his car if I need to in the meantime. It makes sense, don’t you think?’
Pam stared at her son. How deeply he’d thought about their situation, seen the way in which they had all been affected, and he’d come up with a solution perhaps not worse than any other. ‘Maybe,’ she said at last.
‘You think Loz and I are going to work this stuff out, don’t you? But I don’t know about that, not soon anyway. I don’t want more bad vibes. It feels too hard right now.’
‘Okay,’ said Pam. She picked up the pen and scribbled a meaningless line under the last item on her list. ‘I understand all that. But I’m not sure about this. I mean the Druitts. They might start targeting Grandpa. It’s isolated up there. I really wouldn’t trust them.’
‘Him,’ said Scott. ‘Ray. It’s only him.’
Pam frowned. ‘Why do you say that? You don’t know.’
‘I do. I’ve talked to Kyle.’
‘What? When?’
‘A few times.’
‘How on earth did you do that?’
‘On the way home from school. I just waited for him one day, told him I was really sorry and I wanted to let his family know. At first he kind of blocked me. But later we talked and he was okay. Said it could just as easily have been Troy driving and me dead. He told me he was never going to pass on my messages though because he reckons his old man would bash him if he knew we’d been talking.’
‘Bash him?’
Scott gave her a flat-mouthed look as if to say he didn’t know the truth of it.
‘Did he bash Troy?’
‘Not that I ever heard. Troy was like the … Well, the sun shone out of his arse, you know.’
‘What about Maxine?’
Scott’s face told her that it had never occurred to him that Maxine might be the victim of Ray’s fists. ‘Troy didn’t tell me about anything like that. Just some of the bullshit he’d have to tell his old man sometimes so he would let him go out. Or to get money. His family weren’t high on the list of things to talk about. I just know his dad was, is, a hard man. Used to hang out with bikies when he was young. He’s got this code of honour stuff going on. I think Kyle was just freaking out, that’s all. He said his dad has gone kind of psycho since the accident. He can’t really cope.’
‘What does that mean?’
Scott shrugged.
‘So how do you know it’s just him making the calls?’
‘Kyle said.’
‘But not Maxine?’
‘He said his mum keeps telling his dad to stop. He said she’s worried he’ll get caught and go to gaol—like me.’
‘So there aren’t any bikies involved?’
Scott looked at her blankly. ‘No. They’re from when he used to live in Wang, like I said, when he was young. I don’t think he even sees them anymore.’
‘Karen and Gary said they were at the funeral.’
‘Wow.’ Scott considered this for a moment.
‘So you haven’t seen them?’
‘Nup.’
‘Do you get harassed when you’re out?’
‘What the hell, Mum? This is worse than those bloody police interviews.’
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart.’ She gave him a long look. ‘I don’t get to talk to you much anymore. I don’t know what you have to deal with. You don’t tell me anything.’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing to tell. No one says much. It’s not like I’m out on the streets. Usually just at Mike’s or Deanna’s. Everyone’s busy with school. I don’t go to parties or anything.’
‘So how does Kyle know it’s his dad?’
Scott sighed. ‘I didn’t ask that. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? It takes energy to make those calls, leave roadkill around. You have to think about it a lot. Who else is going to be bothered? Ray’s the only one.’
For a moment Pam had a flash of pity for Ray. Understood again that the pain of his loss could drive him to such acts. She tried not to think about Troy, tried not to evoke his image, his voice, his laugh. But every now and then something would remind her of his former presence in their house, of the part he played in their lives. ‘You must miss him,’ she said quietly.
Scott looked across the table at her and she saw his eyes were glassy. ‘I’m going back to bed,’ he said.
It was unusually quiet at the supermarket. Pam grabbed a trolley inside the door and pushed it down one empty aisle and into another. It was only when she reached the tea, coffee and biscuit section that she saw another shopper, Mary Robinson as it turned out, her glasses perched on the end of her long nose, peering at a package. Pam was never quite sure how to deal with Mary. She wasn’t someone with whom she had an easy rapport, which wasn’t to say she didn’t like her; it was more that they had never clicked, felt that ease. There was a directness about her that she found slightly unnerving. Des and Mary were not much older than her but, for some reason, Pam always thought of them as being more like her parents. Perhaps because Des and her father had had so much to do with each other in the early days, when her father was the mayor, and Des, the new young constable in town, was sent out by old Sergeant Todd in a fever of 1970s social engagement to represent the police in the community. Law-enforcement gravitas, city-slicker glamour, Des and Mary had something about them that made them seem so much more mature, more grown up than most of the twenty-somethings Pam knew. Even after she got married herself, had her children, the impression remained, bolstered in some way because she never really got to know them well, especially Mary. Despite the fact they lived on the Hill, only a few streets away, Mary’s churchgoing, her childlessness, meant they moved in different spheres.
Mary was looking for sponge finger biscuits to make tiramisu, she told Pam, but she wasn’t sure she was going to find them here. ‘I’m wondering if these will do instead.’ She held up a product that Pam couldn’t readily identify. Pam shrugged. She was a home cook and didn’t buy biscuits too often. Mary said she didn’t either, which was proving to be a problem for her now in sorting out what she needed.
‘I’m sure you could make them yourself,’ said Pam.
‘Perhaps,’ Mary said. ‘Although that would seem like a lot of trouble to go to.’
‘Would a regular sponge do?’ Pam creased her face into a look of possibility. She had no idea what a tiramisu was.
They stood awkwardly for a moment, then Mary said, ‘How is everything going for you?’
Pam had discovered in the last months that people were mostly general in their inquiries about her and her family. They might ask how life was going, but there was a blankness to their faces, an eagerness to move the conversation along that betrayed their reluctance to really know, or at least to go too
deep. But Pam sensed Mary was different. She already knew about their life, what they had had to endure. She genuinely wanted to know how Pam was being affected and Pam suddenly and inexplicably wanted to tell her.
‘I have to say that life is not wonderful.’
Mary nodded. ‘I can imagine. A lot to deal with. Your son’s doing his last year of school, isn’t he?’
‘Actually, he didn’t go back. Doesn’t think there’s any point. So, no.’
Mary considered this momentarily. ‘Is he working?’
‘He’s … Well, he’s about to do some work for his grandfather.’
‘It’s a good thing to work,’ said Mary. ‘I mean to have something to occupy you. And your daughter? Loren?’
‘She is back at school and … she’s very quiet. She’s finding life pretty tough.’
‘I know you were getting some harassment. That wouldn’t help the situation.’
‘Well, some harassment continues. I try not to let the kids be too aware of it. But it still affects us, I suppose.’
‘Have you talked to Des?’
‘Not for a while.’
Mary frowned at this. ‘Keep him up to date. It’s his job to keep you safe.’
Pam spoke matter of factly. ‘I don’t know about keeping us safe. I mean, he wasn’t able to track the perpetrator before. I can’t see how that will change.’
Two shoppers walked past in opposite directions and Pam swivelled her trolley towards the shelf to allow them by.
Mary was close to her now, her voice quiet. ‘But you do know who it is, don’t you? Aren’t you afraid for your safety?’
‘Frankly, it’s disturbing, but I don’t really feel unsafe. Mostly I think he’s a manipulator. He wants us to feel what he feels. And it’s his way of doing that.’
‘So you do know who it is?’
Pam smiled wearily. ‘We can’t prove anything. It could be anyone making the calls. Des couldn’t connect them to the Druitts’ home phone. Only phone boxes. Calls made from different boxes at random times. The police don’t have the time or money to stake them out.’
Mary nodded. ‘How is Mick going with all this? He must find it frustrating.’
‘There has been some improvement. We don’t have as many unwanted gifts on the front path now, which is what he used to see, getting up in the morning to go to work. I’m the one who usually gets the phone calls—the ones I don’t manage to avoid.’
Mary tucked her chin, arched her eyebrows. ‘You mean you don’t tell him?’
‘I don’t want him to worry.’
‘Really? That’s a lot to carry.’
‘I feel that it’s worse when we both get involved. Especially if neither of us can do anything.’
Mary looked sympathetic. ‘Des tells me that too. He doesn’t always talk a lot about his work. About the worst of it. He says he feels better if I don’t know the details. That I can be a sort of neutral territory.’
‘But you still do know, don’t you? You’re his wife.’
‘There are some things you can’t avoid. It’s hard to know if your imaginings are worse than the truth. But, on balance, I think I’m happy that he keeps some things back.’
‘There you go then.’
Mary leaned forward, gripped the side of the trolley. ‘But it’s not the same. What he keeps back are things that disturb him, not those that threaten us.’
Pam felt her heart beat a little harder. ‘You think I should tell Mick about every single call? Would that really help?’
‘Well, of course, that’s your choice. But if I were you, I’d keep complaining. That man should not be able to get away with this behaviour. No matter what has led up to this. There is absolutely no excuse for it—to my mind anyway. It worries me, it really does. He’s a bully.’
‘I think it will peter out, in the end. He’ll go back to work and …’
‘That will be that?’
‘Essentially.’
Mary lifted an eyebrow sceptically. ‘Go and talk to Des again. Even if he can’t prove Ray Druitt has been making the calls, he can give him a talking to. You don’t need to put up with this.’
April 2016
Melbourne
The morning opened black and rainy. Jason left before dawn and Lori, who’d woken as the front door closed, lay in bed listening to the downpour and wishing she could go back to sleep. At seven she roused and went to the kitchen, made sandwiches for the kids and put the cereal, fruit and milk out on the table ready for breakfast. She took a quick shower, dressed and got the kids up. The weather had eased a little by then, but the forecast was for intermittent rain and thunderstorms. She’d probably have to drive them to school, a prospect she wasn’t keen on. Walking in the morning was the best start to the day. Driving in the rain made her nervous.
The three of them ate together, mostly in silence. A shiny curtain of water outside the window rendered the back garden in shades of soft grey-green.
‘Where does all the water come from?’ Cody asked.
‘The clouds,’ said Lori, who had illustrated the water cycle several times now.
‘Clouds are fluffy.’
‘The fluff is made up of tiny drops of water.’
He shook his head in disbelief. ‘It’s not strong enough to hold all that water,’ he replied.
‘Exactly,’ she said, getting up to collect the bowls. ‘That is why it all falls down to the ground again.’
A frown flickered across Cody’s face. She could see he was itching to ask more, clear this up, but she needed to get them moving. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Clothes. Teeth. Five minutes.’ She always said five minutes but in reality she allowed them more like fifteen. She hoped she wasn’t permanently warping their sense of time, failing to familiarise them to their need to keep on a proper schedule.
She stacked the dishwasher then went to check on them. Sophie had brushed her teeth and was in their bedroom, pulling her school t-shirt over her head. Cody was sitting on his bed, still in his pyjamas, looking at a book. ‘What’s he saying?’ he asked, pointing to the text underneath the pictures.
‘He’s saying, “It’s time for school, Mr Fox.”’
He looked up at her blankly. When was it, she thought, that humour kicked in? She was sure Sophie had already twigged by this age. ‘Come on, bud,’ she said, ruffling his hair then picking up his uniform from the chair and placing it next to him. He looked at it for a moment as if he had no idea what it was. Such a dreamer. Had she been like that as a kid? She suspected so, but who would know? Back then, kids were idiosyncratic. All sorts of behaviour was considered normal in the broadest sense. Now too much mental drifting and you were booked in for tests with the psychologist.
She took their bags into the kitchen and put their lunch boxes inside. The rain seemed to have slowed again, but she didn’t trust they could walk. In the hallway she nabbed Cody, pointing him in the direction of the bathroom. ‘Teeth,’ she said.
Soon enough they were out of the house and getting into the car, shoes wet from the grass verge. Warm bodies and respiration fogging up the windscreen. The last time they’d driven to school was the day the police came. Only last Thursday, less than a week before, but it seemed like a lifetime. Even the weather had changed wildly since then.
The traffic to school was better than she’d thought and they managed to park reasonably close. She walked them in, the three of them huddled under the giant golf umbrella she kept in the boot of the car. No gathering in the playground on wet days, just straight into class. As she ran back towards her car she saw Anselma standing under the oak tree at the front gate.
‘Hey, we meet at last,’ she said as Lori reached her. ‘Everything okay?’
Lori squinted out into the rain. ‘Yes. And no.’
‘You want to talk?’
Lori laughed lightly. ‘Yes and no. I need to go home and do some work. I’m so behind.’ She turned her face to Anselma. ‘In a few days?’
‘Sure.’ Anselma gave he
r a searching look, as though she already had a good idea about the very thing that she hadn’t been told, and Lori felt a spasm of guilt. She wished she could say then that in those few days her life had turned into something that she didn’t quite recognise. But there was no nutshell to this story, no way she could simply throw the bare bones at her friend and rush off into the sunset. No way either that she could speak to her before Jason.
At home again, she stared at the pile of papers on her desk. All had been ignored for days now and she wasn’t sure where to start. (Where had she left off?) It was hard to concentrate, but she knew she only had a limited amount of time before she headed back to Fitzroy. She rang the editor she’d been dealing with and told her that her brother had been in an accident and was in hospital and that this had disrupted her work. She had to choke back the sensation that she was telling a lie. The editor was sympathetic enough, and at least grateful to have had some word. She didn’t know Lori well enough to say that she didn’t know Lori had a brother. She didn’t know her well enough to offer more than the usual murmurings of compassion. It was a relief to be free of scrutiny.
Lori set to work then, three pages sketched out by lunchtime. The shape of the book settled again in her head. She put her pen down and passed through the house, pulling the beds to a semblance of made, throwing the toys into boxes and kicking shoes under the beds. In the kitchen she assembled a quick sandwich with bread from the freezer and the depleted stocks in the fridge. She thought about dinner. The perennial question. A trip to the shops for something to put on pasta or rice would be required at some point.
She picked up her phone and dialled Jason. She didn’t often call him at work, his work day so busy that contact was perfunctory.
‘Hey,’ she said when he answered. ‘I’m wondering what time you’ll be home tonight.’
‘Why?’ he said sharply, uncharacteristically. ‘Do you need to go out?’
‘No,’ she replied, trying to keep annoyance out of her voice. ‘I was thinking that if you were going to come home early I might get some fish.’
‘Sure,’ he said, distant now. ‘Sorry, I’m in the middle of something. I’ll ring you back a bit later, okay?’
Life Before Page 22
