‘She’s going to be fine,’ David repeated.
‘Do you think I could speak to the doctor?’ If she could just see for herself, Theo thought, see her girl with her eyes open, the blood flowing through her veins and the rise and fall of her chest. She just needed to see her. David started to say something, but didn’t continue. He was looking back down the path. Alice was walking towards them.
She came to a stop beside the car. Her face was red and her shoulders were slumped. She didn’t look stately any more. She looked like a little girl.
‘Beth asked for you,’ she said to Theo. Theo didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded.
‘I’m leaving now,’ Alice said, and continued walking, as though she was no more than a stranger who had stopped to ask the time. They watched her walk away.
‘What just happened?’ Theo asked, and David frowned.
‘Theo, I think we may have just seen the last of Alice.’
chapter fifty
That night, Mary sat with Beth and spooned soup into her mouth. Beth couldn’t have said what flavour it was, but it was salty and thin and she felt like every mouthful made her stronger.
‘Is Theo still outside?’ she asked Mary.
Mary nodded. ‘She’ll be there until they let her in to see you.’
‘And Alice? I can’t believe that was Alice. I didn’t realise, my brain is just so slow.’
‘Waterlogged.’ Mary smiled. ‘Alice has gone.’
Beth frowned. She couldn’t quite process that, at the moment. Alice had been here, in this very room, and Beth hadn’t even registered, and now she was gone again. In some way, it seemed to be not such a bad thing. It’s all dragging on so very long, she thought to herself.
When she finished the soup, Beth was tired again. She felt like she could sleep for weeks in this hospital bed, with the starched white sheets and the parade of nurses clucking at her and checking her chart and straightening her blanket and taking her blood pressure.
‘Shall I let you get some rest?’ Mary asked, stroking Beth’s hair back from her forehead.
Beth nodded. Detective Verten appeared in the doorway and smiled at her.
‘Sorry to disturb you. Can I come in?’ He wore an expression that Beth couldn’t read, but she wasn’t sure if that was her sluggish brain or his inscrutable policeman’s face. She had told Verten about Jason in Sabre’s caravan and about the little white pill, but she hadn’t told him that Caleb gave it to her. Verten seemed to know already though. Maybe everyone knew that about Caleb, except for Beth. She couldn’t believe how dumb she’d been. Verten had made some remark about dealers being like dogs pissing on trees.
Mary stood up to leave. ‘I was just going.’
‘Well, ah, you might want to stay for a minute.’
Mary stopped moving.
‘Listen, I’ve just had word from Alice’s lawyers. She’s withdrawn her accusation about Theo kidnapping Beth. That’s all they said. She’s no longer pursuing legal action.’
‘What?’ Mary’s voice was shrill and she grabbed the rail of Beth’s bed so hard that the whole thing jolted.
‘Theo is no longer under investigation. We’re satisfied that she is Beth’s fit and proper guardian. As far as we’re concerned, it’s over.’
‘Oh, God. Theo. Have you told Theo?’ Mary squeezed Beth’s hand with one of hers and fanned her face with the other.
‘She’s waiting outside. The nurses didn’t want Beth to be too overwhelmed. She’ll be easily fatigued for some time, they said. If you’re ready, we can get out of the way and let Theo in to see her daughter.’
‘Oh fuck, excuse me, I mean, of course, my God.’ Mary swooped up her bag, planted a kiss on Beth’s forehead and very nearly sprinted out of the room. After a few moments, Beth heard her squealing from the corridor. She knew she was supposed to be excited but her eyelids felt so heavy, and her thoughts so slow.
‘Did you get all that?’ Verten asked, standing at the foot of her bed and smiling gently.
‘Um, I’m not sure,’ Beth said. She squinted at him.
‘Don’t worry about it now. Your mum’s just going to come in and say good night, okay?’
Beth looked at the badge on his chest, the shining bar. That made her remember the moonlight on the water again, and she closed her eyes. Verten left and then Beth felt someone come in again and sit down in the chair beside her bed. She could tell that it was someone different, there was a shift in the air of the room, a quickening. It wasn’t Mary or Caleb. Not Alice, either. Beth could smell her home: the soap they used in the bathroom, the eucalyptus oil they cleaned with, the English breakfast tea in the metal caddy, the ripe peaches and hot toast in their kitchen, the musty smokiness of the cat, the mint under the dripping tap by the back door. They were good smells, the best smells.
Two hands reached out and enclosed one of hers. They were strong and dry, with nails cut down to the quick and no jewellery. Beth didn’t open her eyes. She felt something warm press against her thigh, and reached her hand out to touch it. Her fingers rasped against prickly short hair on a smooth scalp.
‘Sleep well, I love you, my sweet girl,’ Theo said, the same way she had said it for years.
‘Goodnight Mum, I love you,’ Beth mumbled, and slid into sleep.
acknowledgements
Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle begins with the famous line ‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.’ When I was writing this book, there were times when I would have given my left arm for a nice quiet kitchen sink to sit and write in. If that sink had a sponge resting on the side, I probably would have laid down my head and gone to sleep on it.
A month or so after my last book came out, I had a baby. He is wonderful, and annoying. He is so sweet and so maddening. He had an aversion to sleep which he is only now reconsidering, at 3.5 years of age. Writing was no longer about the muse visiting. Instead, it was about a lot of other stars aligning: Having slept enough to string a sentence together, having the space and time amongst the bottles and nappies and tiny singlets to remember what I was writing, and having a family member generous enough with their time and love to take all those things out of my hands for a few hours.
I need to make a few disclaimers at this point.
The first is that I’m very lucky. I know this. I’m so lucky to have my son. I’m lucky to have a supportive family, particularly my mum and my husband, who so willingly and openly gave of themselves and their time so I could write. I’m lucky that someone asked me to write a book, and told me that it could be whatever I wanted it to be, and paid me for it.
But – and this is a but that I go back and forth over, because I am fully cognisant of those many things I have to be grateful for – it is not easy making a living out of fiction writing. I wrote mostly at night, after working elsewhere during the day. It can be difficult to summon the strength, let alone the creativity, even though I love to write. I just wish I didn’t need a day job to support my creative writing habit. I wish we all got to do the things we loved, all the time. In any case, it takes a lot of other people to make this writing life work, and their assistance deserves recognition here:
My mum and my husband, James, are incredibly supportive, and I actually could not have done this without them. Practically, or emotionally. Mum and James, I love you both. Thank you.
The rest of my family are pretty bloody lovely and supportive, too. Dad, Susan, Nadia, Jessie, thank you for feeding me and cheering me on and babysitting and being there, every time. My extended family and friends were so very supportive of my last book, and of my commitment to this one, thank you all so much, too.
Jenny Darling, my agent and advocate, and the team at Pan Macmillan, especially Julia Stiles, Claire Craig and Mathilda Imlah, thank you so much. Mathilda, you pulled it all together and made it something I was proud of. No mean feat.
And to my beautiful son, I hope I have made you proud. I’m so glad we chose each other. I love you.
About Nel
ika McDonald
Nelika McDonald was born in Brisbane in 1983. Her first novel, The Vale Girl, was published in 2013. Nelika spent her twenties studying, travelling and working in various occupations. She has been a media reader, a museum staff member and a sales assistant in a pet shop, a jewellery shop, a clothes shop and a tea shop. She has lived in London and Melbourne and thoroughly enjoyed both, but eventually returned to Brisbane, where she currently lives and writes.
Also by Nelika McDonald
NELIKA MCDONALD
THE VALE GIRL
I had seen every last secret laid bare in my own house, every briefcase in Banville gaping open.
But I had missed one.
Fifteen-year-old Sarah Vale has disappeared from the small town of Banville.
Resident copper Sergeant Henson attempts to find the missing girl but the locals dismiss his investigations. What would you expect with a mother like hers anyway?
No one really cares except teenager Tommy Johns – for Sarah Vale takes a straight line to his heart.
And, sometimes, one true champion is all it takes to tear a town’s veneer apart.
A delicate and layered exploration of secrets and lies, forgotten children and absent parents, and the long shadows of the past.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.
First published 2017 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Nelika McDonald 2017
The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
EPUB format: 9781760554378
Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia
“love is more thicker than forget”. Copyright 1939, (c) 1967, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust, from COMPLETE POEMS: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
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