Life Before

by Carmel Reilly

  She looked across to the windows, saw their shapes reflected in the window. Jason half turned towards her, she looking straight ahead, eyes wide. ‘When I first met you, my brother didn’t feature in my life. Going into the past—any of it—was too hard. And, later, not talking about it became the way things were. A habit that got more and more entrenched. When the cops came I … I didn’t know what was going to happen, if I’d see him, see him again. I had to wait to know.’

  ‘Shit. So even on Saturday, you’d seen him but you didn’t know if you’d go back?’

  ‘It wasn’t, isn’t, that straightforward.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘It’s hard to explain. So many things going on. So much that happened.’

  I thought you were a little strange on the weekend.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’ve always known there was something,’ he said suddenly. ‘I just figured that losing your family so young, that it made you kind of self-contained. There was that vein of sadness.’

  ‘Sadness?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t describe it. It’s really subtle.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  He looked at her, reflecting. ‘You want to be something else? Something more dramatic? Is that what you’re saying?’

  She shook her head quickly. ‘No. No. I want to know if I am something else. Crazy? Unstable?’

  ‘You’re asking me this now?’ He considered his words. ‘All I can say is that I don’t know what you’re thinking sometimes. That I guess I’m not that surprised about your brother on one level because you keep things in. Insular. That’s the word for it, I guess. But I have known you a while now. I’m kind of used to that.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I never wanted to lie.’

  ‘I’ve never thought you were a liar. I’ve always trusted you completely.’ A look of doubt shimmied across his face. ‘Yet now I’m thinking that there was all this stuff you didn’t trust me with.’

  ‘It wasn’t you I didn’t trust. It was me.’ Her voice wavered. ‘My way to stop things getting away from me. And now I have no idea.’

  He slid along the couch and put his arms around her, holding her close. ‘Hey, it’ll be okay. We’ll work it out.’

  ‘But there are still things you don’t know.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said slowly. ‘Things that will affect me and the kids?’

  She pulled away from him, looked into his eyes. ‘It’s all my shit. Just mine. Nothing can hurt you guys.’

  ‘Look, this is all weird and hard to process, that’s for sure. But I love you and we will work it out, whatever it is that happened.’

  ‘All right,’ she said meekly.

  He rubbed his eyes with his fingers, then drew them down his cheeks. ‘I don’t want to leave it here, god knows, but I need to get to bed, I’m completely bushed and, for now, work goes on.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s getting late.’

  ‘When are you seeing your brother again?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  He considered this for a moment. ‘You want me to come?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve got work. And your own things to sort out.’

  ‘Might be good for you to have someone there. Could be good for me, too. I can take a few hours, maybe later in the day.’

  She pulled away from him and searched his face. ‘I don’t know. I feel like I’ve hardly got used to the idea myself.’

  ‘I want to be there for you. Take some of that weight.’

  She thought for a moment, unsure. ‘Let’s talk about it in the morning.’

  After Jason went to bed, Lori walked into her office and took a book from her shelf. It was the book that contained the photo of her mother and, since Monday, the letter she had retrieved from Scott’s apartment had also been sitting between its pages. She sat at her desk and inspected the envelope for a moment, as if she’d been wondering if it really had been addressed to her. It had arrived a couple of years earlier and she remembered looking at it for a long time, recognising the handwriting but resisting the recognition. There was no name on the back. Just the return address, a post-office box in South Yarra. She’d sent it back without knowing for sure, only sensing it was from him. Then she’d put it out of her mind. She held it in her hand now, feeling its weight before slitting the top and sliding out its contents: two handwritten sheets.

  Dear Loren,

  It’s a long time since we had contact. I’m writing to you now because I have bought a little place not so far from where you live, and I wanted to let you know that you might just run into me one day. I bought it with the trust money from Grandpa’s estate. I realise you haven’t taken yours and I understand why, I guess. I was the same for a while. I didn’t want to use it because it felt wrong somehow. But now, I figure, there’s no point in letting it sit there and I need a roof over my head. The lawyers tried a few times to find you without luck apparently to let you know that the money was available. They didn’t try hard enough in my opinion, because I managed it, with a little help. But maybe you’ll ignore me too.

  I know you don’t want to ever see me, and that’s all right. I’m not asking for anything from you, only to remind you of what is yours. Uncle Peter has information too if you want to know anything about the estate but don’t want to talk to me. I enclose his address in Queensland, and an address for the lawyers.

  Godspeed, sis. You are always in my thoughts.

  Scott

  After a few moments she got up, leaving the letter on her desk, and went down to the bathroom and scrubbed her teeth, locked the back door, checked the kids in their beds. In the bedroom she changed in the half dark and then climbed into bed. The streetlight crept in around the edges of the curtains, giving form to the room. She still found it hard to sleep in the dark, hated not to be able to see.

  ‘You okay?’ Jason’s voice surprised her.

  ‘Still awake?’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  She turned to him and put her arm over his chest. ‘You’re not going to have an easy time getting up in the morning.’

  ‘I’m not going in, I decided.’

  ‘Wow. That’s radical.’

  ‘Ain’t it just.’

  She ran the back of her fingers across his cheek, feeling the sandpapery texture of his day-long growth.

  ‘Talk to me,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to get to sleep anytime soon. Tell me what you can. I want to know.’

  She turned onto her back and looked up at the ceiling, exhaled slowly. ‘Even if it shocks you?’

  ‘Will it shock me?’

  ‘Yesterday I spoke to a policeman about what happened. He was the first person I’ve talked to since I left Northam. Since I was seventeen. And I talked to him because he knew already. And because he didn’t care. About me, I mean.’

  Jason pulled the sheets up higher around his shoulders. ‘Was he investigating the accident?’

  ‘Yeah, well, he doesn’t think it was one.’

  ‘Wow. Has this got something to do with back then? Is that why?’

  ‘It’s possible. But I don’t really think so. I don’t know. It’s complicated, I guess, but it doesn’t make sense really.’

  A moment of silence. ‘So what did happen back then? I don’t need details, just tell me the bones.’

  ‘The bones,’ she said. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to still her churning gut. ‘Two things happened. The first was that Scott was in a car accident. He was driving and his best friend was killed.’

  ‘Shit.’ Jason turned to face her, put his hand on her arm. ‘That must have been devastating? Was he drunk?’

  ‘We all were.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘It was devastating for all of us.’

  ‘How old were you then?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘Did you know that friend?’

  She was quiet for a time, then she said, ‘That wasn’t the end of it. Something else happened. A while later. Maybe six months after the accident, his friend
’s father came to our house …’ A small sob escaped from her and Jason moved his arm across her body, as though she needed bracing, and she placed her hand on his. She started to shake, the words came out in a jagged spurt. ‘He murdered my family.’

  ‘What?’ Jason upturned his hand, gripping hers so tightly she thought her fingers might break. She could feel him rigid next to her. ‘No. Jesus. No.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’ve had a bit of time to get used to it.’

  ‘What? Half that time you’ve been with me. Fuck, how could I not know? I’ve been oblivious. I let you suffer by yourself.’

  ‘No, Jase. It had nothing to do with you. I had to do it like that. I couldn’t see any other way.’

  He sat up and turned, leaned towards her, his features half in shadow reminding her of those block shadow portraits popular in the 1960s. Che Guevara, but without the beard, or the beret. ‘I can’t understand why I didn’t know about your family. You know, put stuff together. Something like that? I don’t even remember it. You’d think I’d remember it on the news or something.’

  ‘People don’t,’ she said. ‘It’s surprising, but people just don’t. Or they remember something vague. But not names or places. It was a long time ago. Even when I met you, it had been eleven years before.’

  ‘Someone must. I reckon Mum would have. She was always a bit obsessed about those gory murders … Shit, shit. I’m sorry.’ He lay back down, rolled towards her.

  ‘Just hold me,’ she said, turning her back to him. He moved in close, pushed his body tight against hers, his arm over hers, the warmth of him seeping into her skin.

  ‘It explains a few things,’ he said.

  ‘Like what?’ she asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

  ‘Just like I said. Being distant sometimes. Those nightmares.’

  ‘Nightmares?’

  ‘Well, you don’t really seem to get them anymore. But you used to a bit. You haven’t forgotten, have you?’

  The night around them was quiet in the way that only cities can be quiet. The hum of cars on distant Brighton Road, a train coming into the station, the blast of a car horn in the next street.

  ‘You always make everything all right,’ she said softly. ‘Just don’t leave me, will you?’

  He pressed her harder. ‘Why the hell would I do that?’

  ‘I’m really sorry. So, so sorry. I had this life before and I never told you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about that. I’m not going anywhere.’

  November 1993

  Northam

  When Des Robinson retired more than a decade after what became known locally as the tragedy on the Hill, he gave a speech to a group of old and new officers over dinner at the newly refurbished Saltram Hotel in the centre of town. He’d always liked the Saltram. Even before the refurbishment it was a grand kind of place, a little frayed at the edges, but beautiful and dignified. It made him feel he was on a 1930s movie set, that Busby Berkeley dancers were about to descend down its curved staircase and tap their way into its front bar. At dinner he was glad to see that the hotel’s tarting up hadn’t been to its detriment. Although perhaps it had been to the local community’s, given the prices had risen appreciably. The fresh look was set to attract a new clientele, a growing group of alpine tourists who were making their way with increasing eagerness to the region each year, and to provide them with more options than the current tents and cabins or homely B&Bs.

  The speech Des gave that evening had nothing to do with the architecture of the hotel, but there was a connection nonetheless. Jim Temple. He’d been a stalwart here for years. Barely a week would go by when Jim wouldn’t come down from his farm in the hills and have lunch in the dining room. Always an excuse for him to meet someone. Des had had his fair share of lunches with Jim when he’d done the police community liaison work early in his time in Northam, when Jim had been mayor. The only thing Des hadn’t liked about it was that he had to pay his own way. He couldn’t accept Jim paying for him when it was police business and the police wouldn’t pay for more than a sandwich in the park. ‘Dammit,’ he’d said on more than one occasion to Mary when he’d got off the phone with Jim. When Jim’s term as mayor came to an end, Des was more than a little relieved not to have to spend those extra dollars each month.

  Des didn’t mention Jim’s name in his speech. He was long dead by then, had passed away less than a year after his daughter, and none of the younger officers would have known who he was, while all of the older ones remembered him, as Des did, like it was yesterday. He used the setting of the hotel’s dining room not so much as an example about the need to keep a line drawn in the sand, even in a small inland town like Northam where there was little sand to be had, but as a way to examine what rural police really do. At the age of forty-nine he thought he’d seen everything there was to see. But when he was called to Jim’s daughter’s house that night, he was unprepared for what lay before him. Not only were all the victims known to him but he had played an ongoing role in the situation that had unfolded that night. Both before and after. There is always trauma attached to violent crime, he told the group in front of him. The victims, the witnesses and those who have to clean it up afterward all suffer. But when you live among the community where something like this occurs, or perhaps, worse still, are responsible for policing that community, there is an added layer of complexity to deal with. Des didn’t use the word guilt. He wasn’t even sure if that was the concept he had in the back of his mind. But he wanted his audience to reflect on their roles not just in looking after their communities but in looking after themselves. Understand the complications that they all faced.

  Of course, Des didn’t regale his fellow police with the details of that night. He’d lived them over and over in his mind, and then in the last few years sought private counselling to try to deal with what his own readings suggested were the symptoms of PTSD. The police then, in the 1990s and even beyond, weren’t sympathetic to the idea of its members suffering from post-traumatic stress. In the eyes of both the hierarchy and the rank and file there were only two kinds of officers: the weak and the strong. Mental illness was weakness, nothing more. On that measure, Des wasn’t really sure where he stood. Somewhere in between, he suspected, perhaps like most people in his situation. After what he’d gone through he’d manage to hobble on for the last few years, survive in his post. But only just. (What would he have done without Mary?) People on the front line have to be looked after, he told his audience. We can’t pretend we’re not human, that we have no connection to what we do.

  Des had been at home that evening in November 1993. It was only just past six and the smells of lamb and rosemary wafted out from the kitchen to the family room (the trendy name coined for these informal areas back in the sixties) where he was sitting in his armchair, Scotch on the table next to him, cigarette clamped between his fingers, reading the magazine from the Saturday paper. He heard the sound of a shotgun, two blasts in quick succession, but didn’t give it a lot of thought. Where they lived, their prime spot on the Hill, was close to the edge of town. It was quite possible that someone was out rabbiting or some kid was practising hitting tin cans off the top of a fence post. Nonetheless, he noted the shots, felt a moment of awareness that he later thought was somewhat prescient. Five minutes after he heard another boom and, alerted now, waited for more. But none came.

  He had squashed his cigarette into the ashtray and risen from his chair, glass in hand, when a fierce knocking started at the front of the house. As he went to answer it the phone rang in the kitchen and he heard Mary take the call as he opened the door. It was a woman he knew only by sight, a neighbour of Pam and Mick Green’s, her face a sea of distress. Behind him Mary’s voice was urgent. ‘Des, it’s the station. There’s been a shooting.’

  Des instructed the officer at the station, a young constable named Ryan, to bring his firearm down when he came. By the time he’d raced around the corner on foot, having on
ly taken the time it took to discard his slippers and haul on his boots, Ryan was pulling up in the patrol car. It was twilight and the sky was streaked with an improbable pink. Des waited while Ryan retrieved his gun and they went onto the property together.

  Des loved silence. As he grew older he found it more and more of a consolation. But there were times when he knew silence to be the most foreboding of sensations, a vacuum to which any sound became a counterpoint. That is how he felt as he and his constable walked across the front garden and down the side path, the sounds of their feet crunching lightly onto the gravel and the distant barks of a dog further along the hill echoing through the stillness. By the time he reached the end of the carport he could see, past the two cars parked bumper to bumper, the doors of the old garage open in front of him, the soft light of a single globe illuminating a mess of boxes and objects. As he came closer he saw a man he immediately recognised as Mick Green lying on his back across a box, his arms outstretched, Christ-like, a bloody mess where his stomach should have been. To his right another body, slumped sideways on the floor, his head in shadow.

  Des, a few steps ahead of Ryan, put his arm out sideways to denote caution, and to signal that the constable should take care to guard in the direction of the back lawn and back door. ‘Police,’ he declared, half surprised he could make his voice work, before stepping into the garage, his gun drawn, but there was no one apart from the two men inside. He stepped towards the younger man and saw that half of his head had been blasted away, his face now obscured. He’d seen that kind of injury before on suicides, but it didn’t make the seeing of it again any easier. He took a quick, sharp breath and looked to Mick, surprised to hear a groan rising up out of him.

  ‘Mick,’ he said, falling to his knees next to the sprawled figure. ‘It’s Des. I’m here. We’ve got you.’ He took Mick’s hand and thought he saw a flicker of eye movement. He turned back to Ryan who was standing in the doorway staring at the scene, face milk white. ‘I came here that night of the accident,’ he said flatly. ‘Got them out of bed.’