Trip of a Lifetime

by Liz Byrski

  ‘Shut up, dumbo,’ Toby said. ‘Mum’s already told you, they don’t know. It’s a mystery. Like on The Bill or Blue Heelers. Don’t you know anything? This is so cool. I bet no one else at school has anyone in their family that got shot.’

  ‘You shut up,’ Daisy retorted. ‘You’re mean. You don’t even care about Aunty Heather. She might die.’

  ‘She won’t die, will she, Mum? Dad said –’

  ‘Stop squabbling,’ Jill cut in. ‘Aunty Heather’s not going to die. Daddy says she’s going to be fine. You can call him this afternoon and he’ll tell us more about it. Now, get a move on or we’ll all be late.’

  She stared at the screen as the kids gathered up their school things. It was weird that something life-threatening could happen to someone close to you, and you could sit at home watching it on television and then head off to work as if nothing had happened. But Jill knew that something important had happened, something more than a bullet in Heather’s shoulder, something more than all the crap the politicians were talking. Something had happened to her family, to their private world; something that would change them all. She didn’t know how she knew it but as she flicked the remote to off and picked up her bag, she felt quite dizzy with the knowledge that nothing would ever be quite the same again.

  News of Heather’s shooting was almost four days old when Diane heard about it in an email from her daughter. She was getting bored with the poolside chat of her travel companions and had walked into Ubud to browse through the market and the jewellery shops. She bargained ruthlessly over some silver bangles and a ring set with a large turquoise, and waited with satisfaction while the vendor wrapped them. The bargains were some sort of compensation for her disappointment with the holiday. It had seemed like a good idea when the women from the tennis club had suggested going to Bali, but you never really knew people until you went on holiday with them and, away from the familiar surroundings of the club, Diane felt hopelessly out of place. She slipped her new jewellery into her bag, headed for a nearby bar and decided to check her email while she waited for her banana and mango lassi.

  It bugged her that Shaun hadn’t let her know personally and she considered sending him a curt message. After all the work she did for them in the electorate office it was the least she would have expected. It was awful, of course, and frightening. She closed the email and went onto a news site to read some of the reports. ‘It could have been me,’ she murmured. ‘It could so easily have been me.’ She was always at the electorate office, stuffing envelopes, photocopying, making coffee and running errands. ‘I often come out of there in the dark. They could have confused me with Heather.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am?’ said the large American backpacker at the adjacent computer. ‘You say something?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just talking to myself.’

  ‘First sign, they say . . .’

  Diane gave him a forced smile, switched on her mobile and dialled her daughter’s number but Charlene’s phone was diverted to message bank, as was Shaun’s, and all four lines to the electorate office were busy. Tense with shock and resentment, she moved to a small table under a sunshade of palm fronds and sipped her lassi, the creamy sweetness soothing the bitterness of the insult. Had they even given a thought to calling her? Bugger them, bugger the lot of them, she had better things to do than bother about selfish politicians and their ridiculously ambitious staff. But she didn’t like this feeling of being on the outer, just a volunteer, not sufficiently important to merit a call or an email.

  Diane finished her drink and made her way back up the hill in the heat to the hotel. Her room was pleasantly cool and newly serviced. She loved the feeling of being looked after by staff; she was so sick of looking after herself. Peeling off her dress, she stared at herself in the mirror wondering if she could pass for less than her age. Fifty-three, perhaps; fifty, even? No, that was kidding herself. But she looked fit. Three times a week at the circuit gym, frequent games of tennis and watching her diet did pay off. She had a small frame and she’d never tended to put on weight, unlike Heather, who, as was obvious from early photos, had certainly stacked on the kilos.

  Diane stepped closer to the mirror. Her hair was good – as thick as ever, and the grey had merged quite attractively with the natural blonde. But her face seemed to be disappearing, the features becoming smaller, less defined, her eyes less bright. It made her feel colourless and insignificant, and although she was onto the latest beauty products in a flash, they didn’t seem to make much difference. Sometimes she wondered if all these tiny but hugely expensive pots of special oils and serums and creams were just a con. She’d read somewhere that a five-dollar jar of sorbolene from the local pharmacy was just as effective. She looked like a woman of a certain age, whatever that meant, and she wasn’t sure whether it was just age or being a divorcée of a certain age that made her feel so faded and nondescript.

  With a sigh of resignation, Diane turned away from the mirror, pulled on her bathers and a sarong and wandered back down to the pool. There was hardly anyone around, and the line of banana lounges where she had left the other women was completely empty.

  ‘Excuse me!’ Diane called to a waiter who was on his way to the pool bar with a tray of empty glasses. ‘Do you know where the other ladies are? The ones I was with earlier?’

  He paused for a moment. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘They go for massage. Special price before four o’clock. Too late now; you pay full price, I think.’

  Diane shook her head and sat down. ‘I’ll stay here,’ she said quietly. ‘Just bring me a sparkling mineral water, would you? And some of those little dry salted nuts.’

  With a slight bow he turned and hurried away, and Diane, feeling more on the outer than ever, stretched out in the sun and put on her Dior sunglasses and a hat with a big brim. If she were to be alone, at least she would look stylish.

  Several days later, Adam took a cab home from Sydney airport high on the relief that had flooded his veins since they took off from Newcastle. From the moment of Shaun’s first shattering call from the hospital, he had been living a nightmare; as if Heather’s injuries weren’t enough to cope with, there was the full-scale drama of a serious crime. The police everywhere, journalists shoving microphones in front of him when he stepped outside, and Heather’s parliamentary colleagues pumping his hand and promising that justice would be done. And, on top of it all, there was the feeling that as her next-of-kin he ought to take charge, make decisions and know what to do.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Shaun had said. ‘We’ll do it together; crisis management is part of my job.’

  Adam clung to his guidance, marvelling that Shaun seemed to know exactly what to do and could assertively send pesky journalists and members of parliament packing, while he, who was old enough to be Shaun’s father, didn’t know where to start.

  Detective Roussos had asked them to search their files and their memories for clues as to who might have a grudge against Heather, and Adam had been profoundly shaken when Shaun produced a file of hate mail. It had never occurred to him that people would write to his sister with such vitriol. The police had taken the file and urged them to consider the personal as well as the political, to reflect on whether someone from the past might feel they had a score to settle. They had also taken away all the cards and letters whose senders Heather couldn’t identify.

  ‘They’re just constituents,’ Heather had protested, but Roussos had been adamant.

  ‘There may be something useful here,’ he said. ‘We have to make sure.’

  ‘But you can’t think the gunman would send a get-well card?’ Adam said. He found the prospect almost laughable.

  Roussos shrugged. ‘Stranger things have happened, we can’t rule it out. But are you sure there’s no one from your sister’s past? Someone she dumped, maybe, or who was jealous?’

  ‘No.’ Adam was unequivocal. ‘Heather hasn’t had many partners and none of them is a potential gunman. Are you sure she hasn’t been caught
in the flak from something else?’

  Alex Roussos shrugged again. ‘I’m not saying it’s impossible, but so far there’s nothing to suggest it. It’s very quiet around there after hours, not a place for gang wars or drive-by shootings.’

  And in the ensuing days there was no further progress, the only evidence being the bullet, which had, apparently, been shot from an old .38 Smith & Wesson revolver.

  A police psychologist who specialised in post-traumatic stress had been sent to counsel Heather, and advised her to give herself time to recover.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she’d insisted. ‘And I need to get back to work.’ But eventually she had been persuaded that when she was discharged she would go to Barbara’s place in a government car with a police escort and stay there until she was fit to return to work. Meanwhile, there were constant questions from police; discussions about protection at Barbara’s house; plans for new security systems at her own home, the office, and the unit she rented in Sydney for the times when parliament was sitting.

  Adam’s sense of incompetence had dogged him all week. He longed to talk meaningfully with Heather, but she was operating on a superficial plane and her attention span was minimal. He wanted to find out how she was really feeling, and to tell her about his guilt, the guilt he felt for having failed to protect her. He knew that she would consider the latter perfectly ridiculous, but to him it was real and painful, as though he had failed to do his older-brother job.

  Now, as he walked up the path and let himself into his own house, Adam sighed with the satisfaction of being home. The kitchen was filled with the familiar smell of cold toast and coffee, remnants of which were still on the kitchen table. He smiled affectionately at the evidence of his family’s typically chaotic departure for work and school, and began to stack the crockery in the dishwasher. Jill had left her scarf over the back of a chair and he picked it up and buried his face in it, breathing in the scent of her skin, her hair, closing his eyes and visualising the perfect creamy oval of her face under the short dark hair, the strength in her wide-set eyes, and the pure energy and fortitude he felt when he held her. He thought of going out again, of going to her office – perhaps she’d have time for coffee or lunch – but then he remembered that she’d told him on the phone that she was going to be out most of the day at a seminar. Holding on to the scarf, Adam glanced quickly at the mail and then made his way upstairs to the spare bedroom, which doubled as his music room.

  The score of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony lay on his desk, a reminder that he needed to mark up the cello parts, and make overdue phone calls about rehearsals. Taking off his jacket he stretched his arms above his head, luxuriating in the silence and the prospect of a few hours of solitude. His favourite baroque cello stood in its open case beckoning him back to peace and normality. He lifted it out and settled into his chair, reassured by the comforting intimacy of the instrument against his body; he tightened his bow and tuned to a perfect A. The first notes of the Bach prelude soothed him, drawing him, as he had known it would, out of anxiety and into his own musical universe. Once more the cello was an extension of himself, its unique voice transforming the turmoil of the past week into beauty and logic, until the final chord faded away and he put down his bow, sank his head into his hands and wept.

  Diane was not the last person to hear about Heather’s shooting. Lots of people heard later, and thousands never heard at all and didn’t care. Ellis didn’t hear about it until he emerged from a six-day retreat in the Blue Mountains and read the feature story in the Weekend Australian. Along with meditation and total silence, the retreat had included withdrawal from stimulants, including alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, sugar and the print and electronic media.

  Ellis drove a diplomatic distance from the retreat centre, bought the papers, stopped at a café, and ordered a strong coffee and a large double-chocolate muffin. He peered at the file photographs that accompanied the lengthy feature, particularly the one taken as Heather left hospital. It was several decades since he’d seen her in person, although he’d caught the end of a TV interview a few years earlier, and, apart from putting on weight, she seemed to have worn well.

  Ellis studied the images more closely. What would it feel like to be shot at, to know someone wanted to kill you, that they might be out there waiting, hiding behind a bush or a building, crouched behind a parked car or masked by shadows? Six days of silence and meditation were great for clearing the mind and reviving the senses and Ellis shivered at the feeling of threat he had managed to conjure up for himself. He closed his eyes to savour the feeling but it was dispelled by images of the past: a lithe body moving towards him across a room hazy with dust particles floating in the summer light, clasped hands, the brush of skin on skin, the sounds of sighs and laughter, all so long ago.

  ‘Anything else?’ a waiter asked suddenly, jolting him back to the present. Ellis shook his head, and the man took his plate and cup and disappeared behind the counter.

  The papers had made a big thing of her being single, some using it to make her appear more vulnerable, others to imply that women who failed to demonstrate their credentials as wives and mothers were a little odd and possibly even threatening. How would Heather cope with being dissected in opinion columns and the letters pages, with being middle-aged, single and under threat? Was she still as tenacious as ever, still worrying terrier-like at things until she got what she wanted?

  Ellis tipped his chair backwards, locking his hands behind his head, and contemplated the sort of changes that an event as traumatic as a shooting might trigger. One thing was for sure, Heather would be feeling the chill of being ultimately alone in a time of crisis: the lack of a patient ear to hear the oft-repeated fears, a hand to hold when words were not enough. Ellis had had plenty of experience with people in despair; with those who resorted to brashness and false confidence, with those who slipped constantly back and forth between panic and optimism, and those who carried on, seemingly coping with everything that was thrown at them. He knew that independence, spirit and strength of character were small consolation when one looked into the dark pit of fear.

  TWO

  Barbara’s move from a smart little townhouse in Sydney to a damp cottage with an overgrown garden in the Hunter Valley had surprised most of her friends. It had signalled a complete change of lifestyle they had never envisaged for the smartly dressed and successful publisher of academic books who had worked fifty-hour weeks for as long as they could remember. And while the prospect of Barbara in a country cottage, pruning roses and going for long walks, was weird enough, the reality of the dilapidated property and her almost overnight change of appearance had been an even greater shock.

  Ten years on, the cottage had been tastefully, if modestly, restored: dried out, heated, air conditioned, replumbed and rewired, and the garden thoughtfully pruned, replanted, fertilised and fenced. While the house had smartened up, Barbara had loosened up. She had delivered her tailored business suits, neat blouses and court shoes to the op shop and abandoned herself to the comfort of loose pants, shirts and sweaters. Her thick, silver-grey hair, worn for years in a smart bob, was now more often bundled into an unruly knot; sometimes she could even be caught wearing thick woolly socks with leather sandals, and an old pair of spectacles repaired with a Band-Aid. Only a very small handful of her friends had really registered the depth of change represented by her new life and appearance. They assumed such eccentricity was an unfortunate side effect of ageing, and that slacker standards of dress were the result of living alone. They seemed to have forgotten that Barbara had lived alone and well-dressed for many years in Sydney.

  Adam, Jill and the children visited for long weekends and Heather, too, spent occasional weekends there, arriving on a Friday afternoon longing for peace and quiet, and by Monday morning itching to get back to her own hectic existence. She had noticed the changes in Barbara’s appearance, but was too preoccupied with her own life to question them. Sitting now in the thin winter sunshine on the bac
k verandah, she watched as Barbara clambered over a cluster of mossy rocks to talk to her friend George through the fence. She looked all of her seventy-five years, but for the first time Heather noticed how agile she was, and how energetic. Meanwhile, her own body felt as though it were fragmenting, falling apart, as if the bullet had penetrated not just her shoulder but shattered all the muscles and tendons that held her together.

  ‘This emotional numbness will wear off,’ the trauma counsellor had told her, ‘and when it does it’s going to be hard, but remember that it’s really the start of healing.’

  In the brightly lit comfort and security of the hospital with staff always on hand, Barbara, Adam and Shaun in and out all the time, colleagues and constituents visiting and a police officer on duty outside the door, it had seemed eminently sensible advice. Now, in a small cottage in the heart of the country surrounded by unfamiliar noises and with waves of emotion threatening to drown her, it seemed woefully inadequate. Heather closed her eyes and breathed deeply in an attempt to calm herself.

  ‘Let yourself feel, but don’t abandon yourself to it,’ the counsellor had said. ‘It will pass and despite the awfulness it’s actually a good thing.’ And she’d handed Heather a card. ‘Call the afterhours number if you need me. I’ll come as soon as I can or we can talk on the phone.’

  Sometime before leaving hospital, Heather had binned the card. She’d never needed a counsellor in her life and the advice she’d been given would be more than adequate.

  ‘It might be a good idea . . .’ Adam had begun, but she’d silenced him with a look that could have slashed a tyre at twenty paces. Now she wished she had the card, just as she had wished for it in the middle of the last two nights when she’d woken in terror, convinced that the gunman was hiding in the shadows outside her window. The knowledge that the house was under guard day and night was only partially reassuring; a guard could only be in one place at a time – if he were checking the rear garden, he was not outside her window; if he were taking a pee, his eyes were not on the path to the house.