Riptides

by Kirsten Alexander

  About the Book

  December 1974. Abby Campbell and her brother Charlie are driving to their father’s farm on a dark country road when they swerve into the path of another car, forcing it into a tree. The pregnant driver is killed instantly.

  In the heat of the moment, Abby and Charlie make a fateful decision. They flee, hoping heavy rain will erase the fact they were there. They both have too much to lose.

  The pair have no idea who they’ve just killed or how many lives will be affected by her death. Soon the truth is like a riptide they can’t escape, as their terrible secret pulls them down deeper by the day.

  Set in Queensland during a time of tremendous social upheaval, Riptides is a gripping family drama about dreams, choices and consequences, from the author of the acclaimed Half Moon Lake.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise

  Imprint

  Read more at Penguin Books Australia

  To Milo

  I want you to remember the perpetrator and I am going to ask you to remember the victims: not just tonight but tomorrow and the next day. I want you to find a way to include them – the perpetrators and the victims – in what you do, how you think, how you act, what you care about, what your life means to you.

  Andrea Dworkin

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Friday 6 December 1974

  Charlie

  I wake when Abby shouts. She reaches across me and grabs the steering wheel. A car horn brays. White beams flare at us then pitch to the right. For an instant, a rump of blue metal shines in our headlights. I elbow my sister out of the way and take the wheel, leaning back hard so I don’t slam my head into it. Abby flattens her hands against the dashboard as I brake and strain to control our sideways skid. She screams my name. We sling to one side of the narrow dirt road and the other car slings the opposite way, like wrong ends of magnets made to meet. We slide to an angled stop, pointing into scrappy bushland.

  Dust swirls in front of our headlights, the only movement in a frozen moment. My window is open but I don’t hear a sound from the surrounding bush, the cicadas and creaky eucalypts dumbstruck. Abby and I stare through the windscreen at the dust, panting, coughing.

  Neither of us moves until the cassette ejects with a clunk, having played its silent end, giving way to static. Abby hits the off button, fumbles to get out of the car and walks through the settling dust. I don’t follow her straight away. I’m clocking what just happened. What the hell just happened? I turn off the engine, feel the thumping drum of my heart, the heat where my jeans sink into ridged vinyl, a breeze through the open door. I watch my sister walk away, her long hair splayed across the back of her singlet like a web.

  Once I get out, I cross the road and stand on the thin verge, shaking my sore wrists. Down in the ditch, Abby stands next to the crumpled car. A blue Holden Premier, stopped on the cusp of a roll, one front wheel and one back not touching earth, the bonnet crunched against the trunk of a white gum, headlights still blazing. Abby’s on her toes, yanking at the driver’s-side doorhandle. I slide down to join her. ‘Help me,’ she says. Instead, I go to the front of the car, worried she’ll pull it down onto all fours, onto us. But it’s pushed so firmly into the tree, pug-faced, there’s no chance of that.

  I can see the driver, a woman, slumped across the steering wheel, glowing under the internal light. She has thick blonde locks shot through with caramel and gold. Blood oozes from her head. She’s coated in shards of glass.

  ‘Charlie, help me. We have to get her out.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to move –’

  ‘It’ll blow up! I’ve seen it on TV.’

  We stand side by side and pull on the handle, yelling at the woman to come to, poking her limp arm through the open window, until the door gives. I’m jammed into the join of door and car when she falls out onto Abby. They hit the ground together, a mess of bloodied skin and hair and glass. Abby screams. ‘Get her off me. Get her off.’

  I shove the car door away from my chest, then squat beside them and lift the woman so my sister can get out from underneath her. We lay the woman on the ground’s coat of leaves, sticks and bark. She’s honey-skinned, with a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and her hair is incandescent even away from the light. She’s beautiful, and heavily pregnant.

  I look across at Abby. We’re both open-mouthed, mirror images of shock.

  ‘Charlie,’ she whispers.

  I nod.

  ‘Wake up,’ Abby says, kneeling closer to the woman. She shakes her by the shoulders.

  ‘She’s not sleeping.’ I speak more loudly. ‘Hey, lady, hey! Can you hear me?’ I stare at her. I’m not sure but – ‘Is this Stevie Nicks?’

  ‘No, you idiot.’ Abby places two fingers on the woman’s wrist.

  ‘It might be,’ I say. ‘You don’t know.’

  ‘No pulse.’ I hear panic in her voice.

  I put my hand on the warm skin of the woman’s neck, pushing aside hair, but I’m shaking and can’t be certain if I feel the throb of blood. I scan for movement under her closed eyelids, block song lyrics from filling my head.

  ‘See if you can feel her heartbeat.’

  ‘Why me?’ Abby asks.

  ‘I’m not touching her boob.’

  ‘It’s not a grope. We need to know if she’s alive.’ She rests her palm on the woman’s chest while I wait in silence. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Fuck,’ I exhale. ‘Holy fuck.’

  Abby moves her hand to the woman’s belly. The rolling lump lifts her fingers like a wave pushing a board up and over. A shoulder maybe, or a foot. She jerks her arm back.

  ‘We need to get to a hospital. We’ll drag her up to the road, move the car closer. Charlie?’

  It occurs to me that we didn’t check if there was anyone else in the car. I yank open the heavy door, haul myself up onto the front seat. There’s a bag on the floor of the passenger’s side but nothing and no one else.

  ‘Charlie!’ Abby shouts.

  ‘It’s not going to blow up. That doesn’t happen,’ I call back.

  ‘Come here.’

  I clamber out and go to her side. ‘She’s alive?’

  Abby is holding up the woman’s limp wrist. ‘Mum’s ring.’

  ‘No way.’ I frown at my sister. ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’ I mimic her, knowing this is stupid. Even now, in a disaster, I can’t help my
self.

  Abby narrows her eyes at me. ‘A cleaner, a neighbour.’

  ‘Or Dad’s . . . no.’

  ‘We’d know if he was seeing someone.’ Her voice quiets at the end of her sentence. Then, as if it’s the next logical action, Abby tries to twist the ring off the woman’s finger.

  ‘Don’t do that, Abby.’

  ‘When you’re pregnant, you swell up and –’

  ‘Seriously, stop.’

  ‘Why, you think I’m hurting her?’ She starts to cry, and in her frustration tugs the ring hard enough to almost pull the finger out of its socket. I touch her arm but she shakes me off. ‘Got it.’

  When she’s freed the ring she examines it, pushes it deep into her jeans pocket, and closes her eyes for a moment. ‘Okay.’ She wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘Okay. Let’s get her up to the car.’

  ‘Hang on. I need to think.’ I look away from her, into dark bushland dotted with anthill mounds. ‘Where would we take her, Abby? There’s nothing here, no hospital for miles.’

  ‘We’ll drive back to Chinchilla and find a doctor. Take her arm.’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I’m not doing that. I’m not driving into some strange country town with a dead body. That’s a bad idea.’

  ‘What’s the alternative? You want to leave her here? Charlie, the baby’s alive. We can’t leave her!’

  I scramble up to the road, drop into the driver’s seat and close the car door. I wait for what seems like an eternity – radio on, immediately off, glove box open, closed, looking for any distraction – before giving in to the fact she’s not following me.

  By the time I walk back, she’s decided to drag the woman up the slope by herself, making small gains then sliding again into the ditch.

  ‘It wouldn’t live,’ I say. My voice sounds too loud, doesn’t belong here.

  ‘You don’t know that. She’s seven or eight months. The baby’s still moving.’ She persists a few minutes more then shouts up at me in exasperation. ‘Get down here and help. What is wrong with you?’

  ‘Let’s go, Abby.’

  ‘What the hell?’ she yells, now standing upright. Her words cut through the silent night, ricochet between the trees. ‘You are not serious.’

  I am though. Usually Abby calls the shots. Older sister, younger brother. But I’ve never felt so sure in such a weird, dark situation. We need to leave. I watch her bend down once more with renewed determination. She holds the woman’s arms and pulls. It’s hopeless. I don’t know why she’s not seeing it. Even with my help we couldn’t get the body to our car.

  Abby flicks her head up when rain begins to tap onto the dirt around her. It’s light at first, then quickly becomes insistent and heavy. I stand still, watching my sister. When she’s so wet that her shirt hangs forward like a billowing sail and her hair forms a long slick, when I can smell the leather of my watchstrap, the grease on my scalp, and I can see the woman’s dark nipples through her cheesecloth smock, I shout Abby’s name again. This has to stop.

  Abby sits on the wet earth, her head slumped forward. She folds the dead woman’s arms low across her belly, removes a piece of glass from her hair and throws it into the bush.

  The crashed car’s headlights go out.

  Abby hits the driver’s-side window with her fist until I wind it down.

  ‘A doctor could save the baby.’ Her voice turns to a plea. ‘We can’t leave her.’

  ‘Get in the car.’

  ‘It was an accident. It’s the worse thing not to help her. And what about the ring? Dad must know her somehow. Stop – what are you doing?’

  I wind the window up while she presses her fingers down onto the glass, pulling out at the last second. I point to the passenger’s seat but she yells insults at me to the effect that I should never drive again.

  I slide over, then glance at the back seat, where I’d put our carton of beer. Crushed empties litter the floor. How many did I have? I resist the urge to open a fresh one.

  Abby drops onto the seat, all wet air and fury. She’s about to speak again when she sees where I’m looking.

  ‘I said two, two. Is that what happened? I thought she’d – I thought she might’ve been asleep. You were asleep?’

  ‘You were asleep, too.’

  ‘I was the passenger. My God.’ She rests her forehead on the steering wheel.

  ‘I’m not that drunk. I haven’t slept in days. It wasn’t my fault.’

  She jerks her head up. ‘You can’t possibly think this is anyone’s fault but yours.’

  ‘You let me drive.’ Even to my ear this is bullshit. She punches me in the arm. I shove her off. She thumps me a few more times then takes a deep breath, stares out the rain-slashed window. ‘How long was I asleep? How far are we from Chinchilla?’

  I shrug, dig around in Abby’s bag for the cigarettes she made such a big deal of buying for me at the bottleshop.

  ‘Charlie, I’m driving us back there. We’ll go to the police and they can come get her.’

  ‘Where will you send them – third tree after the rock?’

  We could be anywhere you’d call ‘the bush’, on a road to nowhere except Dad’s farm. There’s not a single thing in my sightline that makes this place different from the miles of other bushland we’ve passed through. And Abby knows it. It’s not like it’s a straightforward trip back to that couple of chopstick roads she’s calling a town either. We took a lot of left then right then left to get on this road before she fell asleep, and that was when it was light. I think, though, we’re about an hour and a bit from Dad’s farm. I’d followed the few signs she’d said would take us close, planning to wake her up once her map let me down. The baby will be long gone before anyone gets to this place.

  ‘How old do you think she is?’ Abby asks.

  ‘Mid-twenties maybe, our age.’

  She hits the steering wheel. ‘Damn it, damn it.’ She climbs out of the car into the rain, back to the dead woman.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sunday 27 January 1974

  Abby

  At sunrise, dark clouds gather like an angry mob and throw down thick rain onto Brisbane. Thunder lopes from the fringes to the centre of the city, building from a low growl to an unrestrained roar and snap. Currawongs and magpies shelter in the crooks of our ironbark tree, possums hide under our roof. Stocky banksias whip about in the wind as though they’re made from hair. And we seal ourselves from the storm.

  Mark puts beach towels along the bottom of the back and side doors. He checks windows for leaks. I make a pot of coffee and put a torch, a kerosene lamp, batteries for the radio, candles and matches on the kitchen bench in case we lose power. I straighten the towels when Mark isn’t watching. And when we’re done we stand, holding hands in the stifling heat behind our glass veranda doors, barely able to hear one another over the smash of water onto our tin roof. We watch the rain slash gravel, grass and concrete, and form quick rivers in the gutters. Woof sits alert beside me, his shaggy tail still.

  The football fields at the bottom of our hill are four feet under within a few hours; the stately eucalyptus trees that ring them are cut off from one another, arms up, surrounded by a push of muddy water. By the time the kids wake up – hair plastered to sweaty heads, pillowcase wrinkles on doughy skin – our access roads have vanished. I’ve never seen anything like it. We heard on the radio last night that Cyclone Wanda would lose its puff before it reached the city, but the newsreader warned that another kind of trouble was on its way.

  It’s rained on and off since October. Three months. On TV, I watched Queen Elizabeth struggle to control her notes in the wild wind as she declared Sydney Opera House open. The air was manic but the sky was blue and dry. Here, that day heralded a seemingly endless wet patch. No matter how much I clean, our house smells dank. Mould spreads across the bathroom ceiling, magnified – after we shower – in hanging drips of water. Our canvas sandshoes, left by the back door, grow black spots, and clothes draped on the drying
rack are wet for days.

  The children sleep under gauzy white nets hung from ceiling hooks, to protect them from mosquitoes that thrive in our mushy garden. Fidgety swarms of midgies hover above my pot plants. The air lies like a clammy veil on my skin.

  Outside, rain pools on the earth; the nearby creek bloats and heaves itself onto the surrounding ground.

  Late morning, as we’re cleaning the breakfast dishes, Mark says we need to cancel our barbecue, which we’ve had every Australia Day weekend for the past five years. ‘I guess we should ring people. Or maybe it’s obvious.’

  ‘The water will go down, won’t it? The roads will clear.’ I wipe my tea towel this way and that across a smoky-grey glass plate. ‘Can you see what the kids are up to? I get worried when they’re quiet.’

  ‘This will get worse before it gets better. Geoff says –’

  ‘Geoff got himself into a knot over Cyclone Wanda, too. But nothing happened.’

  He frowns. ‘What do you mean nothing? That cyclone’s the reason the city’s underwater.’

  ‘It’s not underwater.’ I move on to wiping the laminex benchtop, admiring the sparkle where the light strikes gold flecks.

  ‘It will be by tonight.’

  While I’m on the phone, apologising to our friends for cancelling the barbecue and talking about their kids, the weather, I scan a magazine article: ‘Creative Ways with Pineapple’. I draw overlapping circles on the glossy paper. All the while, Mark comes in and out of the kitchen, opening drawers and pulling out scissors, string, rubber bands and pointing at his watch.