Anne Rushmore gave a sisterly grimace. ‘To be fair to Bianca, it’s pretty normal to avoid those closest to you at times like these. If Bianca hadn’t thought she was pregnant, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Now she’s disclosed the truth, I’m guessing she’s terrified of the consequences.’
Christina picked at her Danish. ‘She can’t bear the sight of me.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ DS Rushmore said, stirring more sugar into her coffee. ‘Can we take these with us whilst you give me the grand tour?’
Outside, the detective retrieved her camera and began snapping photos. Christina found herself counting them at each location. At the stables, it was twenty-four shots but the old studio warranted only nine. She took photos of Bianca’s bedroom from every angle, even some outside looking in. Christina’s nerves twanged with every click of the shutter.
The tour ended at Jackson’s office. Christina had always disliked this room with a passion. He had forbidden her from touching it but had failed to do much in the way of refurbishment either. Pride of place went to an old oak desk with an inlaid burgundy leather blotter that Jackson had found on one of his treasure hunts. He loved that desk not because of its aesthetic but because of its secret compartment.
When he’d first brought the desk home, he had refused to show her where the concealed drawer was. ‘I’m not telling you how to find it.’ Christina remembered him giggling like a child delighted with its secret.
She had played it cool. ‘Why? Is that where you keep your porno stash?’
He had feigned horror. ‘You’ve been snooping.’
‘And you’re a liar. Your porno stash is in the games room at the back of the cocktail bar.’
This time his shock was genuine. ‘How did you find it?’
‘I was looking to see if we had any Marsala for a sauce I was making. You were bound to get caught one day, honey.’
‘Not much of a reader, is he?’ said Anne Rushmore, running a finger along one of the rows of empty bookshelves.
Christina started. ‘Sorry? Oh, no, no, he’s not. Just the papers, that sort of thing.’ As she said this, her eye caught the stack of kindling and newspapers in the fireplace. There was a box of matches on the mantelpiece but Jackson never lit it. He preferred using the reverse-cycle airconditioner shoved in the corner.
The detective studied the desk, empty but for a pile of business magazines and a laptop docking station. ‘Does he use this room much?’
Christina took in the spartan desk and realised what the detective meant. ‘Jackson spends most of the day in here, it’s the hub of his business,’ but as she said the words, she realised she was making assumptions. Yes, Jackson did spend so much time in here, but was it business? She could not say.
Anne Rushmore moved around the desk. Above the mantelpiece, where a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II would have been in keeping with the feel of the room, hung a framed Wallabies jersey from the 1999 World Cup, autographed by every member of the squad. Framed photos covered the rest of wall, relics from Jackson’s office at TBK. Some were of surfers catching waves or posing next to their boards, others were of Jackson shaking hands with sporting celebrities. Autographs dashed in black texta covered most of the photos. On either side of the fireplace hung framed certificates of appreciation from a variety of children’s charities and medical foundations.
‘Would you describe him as competitive?’ the detective said, examining each picture.
After a day at a local show, Jackson always said to Bianca, ‘Where’s my blue ribbon?’ The purchase of Licorice had far more to do with Jackson wanting to see Bianca compete on a superior mount than it did with Bianca outgrowing Sugar. And Licorice turned out to be a champion jumper. Now that Christina thought about it, she and Jackson seemed to get far more pleasure out of Bianca’s wins than Bianca ever did herself. She thought of another one of Jackson’s sayings: ‘No one remembers the second man on the moon.’
‘Why would a competitive man tuck himself away up here rather than be in the thick of things in Sydney?’ Anne wondered.
Christina hesitated. The answer was complicated. ‘He wanted to live somewhere far from his ex-wife and children.’
DS Rushmore frowned. ‘Why was that important?’
‘Sarah didn’t know about our affair and Jackson didn’t want to risk her finding out in case she refused to sell their company.’
‘What about his kids?’
‘Well by this stage they weren’t kids any more.’ Christina shook her head in disgust. ‘Those kids had had everything handed to them on a plate. The boys only liked Jackson when he had his hand in his pocket, and the daughter Ashleigh was a nightmare. She just partied, took drugs, that kind of thing. I think her attitude was the breaking point.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When she was little, Ashleigh was Jackson’s little princess. I used to wish Bianca’s dad was half the dad Jackson was.’ Christina paused. How awful those words sounded now.
‘And?’
‘Once she hit puberty, Ashleigh’s behaviour degenerated. She was destructive and apparently very aggressive towards her mother. Jackson came home one night and heard them screaming at each other. He walked in to find Ashleigh straddling Sarah with a kitchen knife at her throat.’ Christina remembered thinking that Sarah must have been a pretty awful mother for the situation to have got so out of hand. Who was to know though what had really happened. Jackson probably made the whole story up, perhaps concealing an even worse truth.
Anne Rushmore seemed unmoved by the story. ‘So the next day he announces he’s leaving his wife. That doesn’t sound very supportive.’
‘Oh no,’ Christina corrects her. ‘That was a few months before he took his sons on a surfing holiday. When he came back from his holiday he told me he was leaving Sarah. He described the family dynamic as toxic and said he was heartbroken about Ashleigh.’ She remembered his exact words: ‘My little princess is gone.’ And then the rest of his words hit her. ‘He’d decided that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with . . .’
Light-headed, Christina leaned against the desk.
‘With?’ DS Rushmore loomed in front of her.
She struggled against the words, what they meant. She whispered, ‘He wanted to spend the rest of his life with the two people who loved him most in the world.’
Anne Rushmore blinked slowly. ‘Not the other way round?’
‘No.’
Then the detective continued her examination of the room. ‘This is sweet,’ she said, lifting a handmade card off the mantelpiece. She flicked it open and read it aloud. ‘Dear Jackson, Happy Birthday!!!! Love Bee XXXXOOOO.’
Bianca had written each letter in a different coloured texta and around the borders she had drawn flowers and love hearts. The detective closed the card. On the cover, there was a hand-drawn picture of Bianca riding Sugar. The pony, Christina noted, had a blue ribbon around her neck. DS Rushmore turned the card over and studied Bianca’s logo of a bee circled with the words ‘made with love by’.
She placed the card back on the mantelpiece. ‘How old was Bianca when she made this?’
‘Eleven maybe.’
The detective took out her camera, snapped off six rapid shots and left the room.
Christina trailed behind her.
‘Do you mind if I help myself to some water?’ Anne Rushmore asked back in the kitchen.
Christina shook her head.
Filling a glass, the detective took a long sip, finished the glass then refilled it. She made no effort to converse.
The long silence grated on Christina’s nerves. ‘What happens now?’
DS Rushmore settled back on a stool. ‘You said Mr Plummer is in Vietnam until the end of next week. If Bianca chooses to formalise her complaint, I’d like to take advantage of his absence.’
‘And if she
doesn’t?’
The detective shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well either way you’re stuck here.’
Christina gasped. ‘What? We can’t stay here!’
‘There’s nothing the police can do unless Bianca decides to press charges.’
Christina was shocked. She expected that after speaking with Bianca, the police would race off to avenge her daughter. The reality was far more crushing. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You’ve interviewed her. Don’t you have an obligation to act on her allegations?’
‘I can’t act unless I have a complaint to act upon.’
‘Then why are you here?’
Anne Rushmore went over to the kitchen sink and poured them both a glass of water. As she drank hers, she picked up a jar of whole nutmeg from the spice rack, unscrewed the lid and inhaled the aroma. Nodding to herself, she screwed the lid back on and returned the jar to its spot between the marjoram and the oregano. Without turning around, she said, ‘Did you know that across the whole of Australia, around four thousand cases of child sexual assault are reported and proven to be true every single year?’
Christina shook her head.
‘And the academics reckon the police only hear about ten per cent of cases. So doing the maths makes four thousand the tip of a very ugly iceberg.’
DS Rushmore returned to her seat, picked at a flake of Danish clinging to the paper bag. ‘What those numbers don’t tell you is how challenging it is to secure a conviction.’
The detective’s brown eyes bored into her. ‘Plenty of cases make it no further than the police. Families don’t want to put their kids through the stress of a trial. Or the DPP doesn’t think the case is strong enough. Even when we’ve got everything right and have the best prosecutor and a victim willing to take the stand, too often the perpetrator gets off scot-free.’
‘Are you telling us not to bother? That Jackson is going to get away with this?’ Christina could not believe her ears.
‘I need you to keep some perspective on this. Just remember, in simple terms, only one out of every ten sexual offences reported results in a conviction.’
The unfairness of it was obvious but Christina wondered how the detective got out of bed every day and faced those odds.
DS Rushmore dusted the icing sugar off her hands. ‘So there are two possible scenarios. Scenario one: let’s assume Bianca makes a formal complaint today. Even if Mr Plummer were in the country, we can’t just barge in and arrest him. We need time to pursue the allegations, develop a line of questioning. If he gets wind of the investigation before we’re ready, who knows what he might do. We’re not going to get a second crack at this, Christina. Until then, you’re not going anywhere.’
‘But we can’t stay here and pretend life is normal,’ she said. The thought of even being in the same room as Jackson revolted her.
‘Scenario two is that Bianca decides against formalising her complaint, in which case you are free to do as you wish.’
Trying not to sound as hysterical as she felt, Christina said, ‘He’s ruined my daughter’s life. We need to get as far away from here as possible.’
The detective turned the glass upside down on the draining board. ‘You need to tread with great care, Christina. If Mr Plummer thinks he has been exposed or feels trapped in any way, his reaction may be a violent one.’
‘I’ve told you before, he’s not like that.’ Why did the detective keep going on about violence? Jackson yelled but he didn’t hit.
Anne absorbed her anger and frustration as if she were a bottomless well. She reached out and placed a calm hand over Christina’s.
‘You don’t wake up at age forty-four and suddenly decide you’re a paedophile. He’s done this before. Maybe his own daughter or one of her friends, we may never know. One thing I do know is this man is a complete stranger to you.’
Tears leaked down her cheeks. The detective waited until Christina had cried herself dry and then fetched her some more water. Christina gulped it down and held the cool glass against her cheek. ‘I’m sorry. I’m okay now.’ She took a deep shuddery breath. ‘All right. So what do we do?’
chapter twenty-two
Four Days Till Christmas
Christina feels she is trespassing being in the rose garden without her mother. The early morning is bright and cool with the promise of a hot day to come. She sits on the wooden bench, cast in shadow by the bush roses. There is Lucia, there is Papa, Bianca, the baby and her. Christina plucks the rust-coloured rose and sniffs at it. It has little perfume. A nasty little thorn sticks in her finger and she sucks it out. It reminds her of that story – she has no idea if it is true or not – about the man who died from infection after being pricked by a rose. She sucks her blood and wonders if that could still happen or whether antibiotics have made an old wives’ tale of it. That such an inconsequential accident could magnify into enormous pain and a lingering death seems a random act of fate, somehow unfair. Though in death pain ends and in that there is at least relief.
And now her mother’s story. It weighs on her too. Three generations of loss. It makes Christina angry to think of how these men get away with preying on vulnerable women and children and that it goes on and on. She’s done the counselling, she knows logically that what Jackson did was not her fault. That she was, in a way, his victim too. The problem with accepting this is that it ignores the unassailable fact that she made it possible to be Jackson’s victim. Blinded by her need to be loved, her loneliness, her vanity and her pride. She once thought everything good about her was because of Jackson. Laughable if it were not so horrifying. It’s clear now that what made Jackson so clever was his way of turning strengths into weaknesses. But she was not about to turn a blind eye from the faults that had allowed Jackson into their life. In her attempts to give Bianca the father Jamie was not, she pushed Bianca into Jackson’s arms. She held him up as a role model, all but told her innocent young daughter that she should adore him. And because Bianca loved her mother, because her mother was the centre of her universe, Bianca trusted that this was the right thing to do. Bianca was a good little girl who did as she was told and look what that had done to her.
Christina can no longer sit. She stalks the gravel paths of the rose garden in agitated twists and turns. Rosa’s Folly, a floral tribute to all that was lost. Death and destruction replaced by a riot of colour and air heavy with scent. But she cannot help wonder if her mother’s pain is still alive. If it is ever possible to reach a point where the past makes sense. Rosa and Massimo created a physical distance from their past, time had done the rest, but had it healed them? Christina reflects on her mother’s hard edges, the deep well of her father’s kindness. She has no idea what they were like before events changed their lives. The saying goes what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger but Christina’s not so sure.
She looks around her mother’s garden. Here the roses flourish, produce flowers and rosehips because that’s what roses do. Christina is the same. She wakes each day, she breathes in and breathes out. She dresses, she eats. She notices a small patch of onion weed has staked its claim. She kneels on the damp soil and digs around it with her fingers, careful to lift the clump of white bulbs. With nowhere to put them, she places them in her pocket. The simple rhythms of the life she lives with her mother make it possible to find a purpose in each day, even if the only purpose is to pick peas, to pod them and eat them.
That is not the same thing as finding strength through misfortune.
Sarah said Christina needed to make peace with herself. But how can she when has caused great harm, has damaged another’s life. She remembers giving birth to Bianca and the midwife saying that labour is pain with a purpose. Christina had not quite believed her, thought such a natural act should be free of pain. But at least that pain had faded into memory. The pain she feels now is a constant enervating burden that she will carry with her until death’s kind release.
chapter twenty-three
When Christina arrived at school, she found Bianca sitting cross-legged on her desk, staring out over the sporting fields, still dressed in her pyjamas. Christina took in the unmade bed, the pyjamas and the mess of Bianca’s hair. In the sun-starved light of a cloudy day, the room had the atmosphere of an infirmary, a place where quiet and calm must be maintained in order to optimise patient recovery.
She crossed the room, wary as she planted a kiss amongst Bianca’s curls. ‘How are you feeling today, sweetheart?’
Bianca shrugged and pointed at the plastic bag. ‘What’s that?’
Mrs Hardcastle had told Christina that Bianca was refusing to eat. Christina had seized on this, at last feeling like a real mother. She knew Bianca’s favourite colour, the names of her closest friends, her favourite TV show and that her favourite treat was vanilla slice.
Christina rustled the bag. ‘I came here via the bakery.’
No reaction. Everything about Bianca was wrong. From the collapsed angles of her body to the sleepless anxiety etched in her forehead to the way her unbrushed hair hung in thick tendrils. It wasn’t just the pyjamas that spoke of Bianca’s invasive weariness, her words too were flat. ‘Mum, I’m not in the mood.’ She turned back to gazing out the window.
The Making of Christina Page 24
