Sheerwater

by Leah Swann

  ‘That’s a strong message to forget.’

  ‘No, I hadn’t forgotten the message – well, I guess I had . . . I – I don’t know.’

  ‘You seem a bit confused, Ava.’

  ‘No. I’m not. I’m not hiding anything.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were.’

  Ava shook her head. ‘I can’t speak properly. I apologise. It was a slip-up.’

  ‘He seems upset in the message. He blames you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you blame yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did this message make you angry?’

  ‘It made me feel desperate.’

  ‘Desperate?’

  Ava licked her dry lips. ‘Well, yeah. Not in a crazy way.’

  ‘So, he told his mother last night he didn’t trust the cops to find his sons. What do you think that means?’

  Ava didn’t reply for a moment: she was trying to bring order to the reactions that were threatening to overwhelm her. Ballard seemed in no hurry.

  ‘I don’t know what it means,’ said Ava at last. Her voice was low, as though she was talking to herself. ‘This is Lawrence: confusing. He says he’s doing something for one reason, and then you find out he’s doing it for another reason. It’s like his signature.’

  The room seemed to have become smaller and darker. The two orange bars of the heater glowed above the gunmetal-grey carpet that was hard and thick and smelled of damp. Everything was pressing in and closing over; she was drowning inside of some massive rupture, a psychic squall. She knew now that she shouldn’t have fled. She’d dreamt of safety as others dream of money or success, a fantasy of safety for herself and her boys, of refuge and freedom, but the safety she’d reached for was a mirage. How had she let herself forget that? Lawrence would punish her; he always did. Perhaps he was already punishing her and she couldn’t quite see him in it yet. It seemed that all she could see was the deepening fog.

  2

  Ballard guided Ava to the front door of the police station and pointed across the road to a bakery with checked bunting fluttering over a doorway. ‘Get a strong coffee. Keep your phone close.’ She put a hand on Ava’s shoulder. ‘You’re no use to your boys if you flake out. You have to stay strong.’

  Her manner was blunt but not unkind. Ava fought off an unseemly desire to cling to her, and stepped out onto the pavement where a violent southerly wind blasted her so hard she had to grab hold of a fence post to stay upright. Please, help me, please. Send me a sign that my boys are okay. She started across the road like someone unsure of her balance. Again she had the sensation of not being within herself, of details isolating themselves and jumping forward and everything else receding. A cigarette butt in the gutter. A car ignition shuddering. A red pillar box. An English novelist had introduced pillar boxes. Wasn’t that right? A school quiz question. She saw the author’s name in her mind’s eye as if scrawled in pencil on a scrap of paper torn from a notebook and now floating off in the wind. Her mind was shredding. If she could go back in time, that would be the thing! If only, if only, if only. She’d hug them so tight, her boys; she’d never let go.

  Did Lawrence have them? Had he somehow orchestrated this? And why had he taken his mother’s car? What was he up to? If Lawrence didn’t have them, was he frightened too, could he feel this? A car honked its horn and she stared at the windscreen without seeing the driver’s face. Run me over, why don’t you? Make it end.

  No, no, not yet, keep moving, they need you, the boys still need you, alive, functioning and sane. All she saw were reflections of white clouds drifting like horses across the glass. Keep moving. She got to the other side of the road and saw a brown shape, a kookaburra, settling on the red postbox, close enough to touch; first combing his breast feathers with his long beak, then looking up at her, his cream and brown feathers fluffed up to a cuddly fatness below his smiling beak.

  You’re no use to your boys if you flake out. Okay. So. Eat something. Drink something.

  The bakery smelled of rich butter and sugar. A glass cabinet displayed the stock favourites: doughnuts, pain aux raisins, sausage rolls. She ordered coffee and a croissant, and thought of the boys, how they loved eating croissants with butter, their lips shining and their t-shirts covered with pastry crumbs. She was flaking out. Where was her famous stoicism when she most needed it? She heard Wes shouting instructions from beneath the diving board. Keep that chin tucked! When you get in the water, exhale, and then hold your breath! Hold steady, keep steady! Wes’s instructions were of no use to her now. Still, she exhaled. And again. She took the cardboard cup and the paper bag and was walking out when a few teenagers came up to her.

  ‘You that woman that pulled Uncle out of the plane?’ said one of the younger girls, elbowing a tall boy next to her, gesturing at Ava. ‘Look, it’s her. It’s the one.’

  Ava nodded.

  ‘Thank you! Thank you so much,’ the girl said, throwing her arms around Ava’s waist so that Ava had to fling out an arm to steady her coffee. ‘They said at the hospital you saved his life. You saved Uncle Dave.’

  ‘Get off her, Nan,’ the tall boy said, pulling the girl away. ‘Any news on your kids?’ he asked Ava.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ the girl said. ‘Oh – sorry, lady, forgot all about that.’

  The boy held the door open for Ava. Outside, she pulled up the hood of her jacket and turned left towards Smoky Point Road because she had nowhere else to go. She passed the cottage and the church and the hall and kept going to the end of the road, where there was a high bank of sand covered in spindly grass. She climbed it and came to rest on the other side. Squinting against the overcast glare, she pressed her back into the dune to shelter from the wind, and sand showered over her jacket.

  She thought of Lawrence’s backpack, the one he used for bushwalks, and the way he’d become interested in equipment – a knife, a first aid kit, a foil blanket. She knew it was connected to his fantasy of living ‘off grid’. Was he planning to take the boys and get them lost somewhere? It was possible. Unlikely, but possible. Was someone helping him? Had he somehow paid for the pilot to crash? No, no, that was insane, ridiculous. You can’t make an accident happen. Lawrence wasn’t that powerful. Maybe she had this all wrong. Maybe Lawrence was at this very moment driving along the Great Ocean Road near where the accident took place, or combing the hills on foot, searching for the boys, mad with worry. Had she ever seen him mad with worry?

  She got up and shook out the sand from her clothes and was surprised to notice a crowd at the shoreline. There was a sense of purpose to the gathering, but why had they come? There wasn’t a kite or a boat or jet-ski or windsurfer in sight. And they were dressed so formally for the beach, it looked odd, many in suits or skirts, and children with combed hair in cardigans or coats. Everyone wore shoes.

  The crowd separated. A tall figure robed in white came out from among them and she recognised the slightly stooped shoulders of Reverend Caleb. And then she remembered: today was Sunday. She watched Caleb walk into the sea until he was waist deep. He turned and beckoned and her heart gave an odd little thump because for a moment she thought he was beckoning to her, but how could he even see her here? Then she noticed a young man, robed like Caleb, moving out of the crowd to step into the glinting foam. When he reached Caleb, he turned and leant backwards into the Reverend’s outstretched arms. Caleb’s gesture evoked a mother with her newborn child – one face bent towards the face of the other, one hand resting over the heart of the other – and in a single, swift movement, the Reverend submerged him.

  When the young man rose, with water streaming off him, a shout went up from the congregation. A rogue wave soared over him and Caleb, and Ava tensed, the rescue instinct quickening within her. Two shining heads emerged, floundering arms clutching each other, and they were possibly laughing, Ava was too far away to see. They staggered out of the ocean like survivors, arm in arm, to be met by a second pair of men b
earing lurid beach towels which they draped around them.

  ‘Hey, Ava,’ said a voice, shocking her. Turning, she saw Simon. ‘Just spoke to Detective Ballard,’ he said. ‘Really sorry to hear there’s no news yet.’

  Ava wrapped her arms around herself and did not speak.

  ‘She asked me in my interview if I’d seen anything,’ said Simon, raising his voice to make himself heard above the birds and the wind. ‘She stepped me through what happened yesterday and tried to make me think if I’d registered something or someone subliminally.’

  ‘Yes, she asked me something like that too.’

  ‘And for some reason I keep thinking of a woman with a red ponytail. Know anyone like that?’

  Ava shook her head. ‘Why?’

  ‘There was so much going on yesterday. But I thought maybe someone who the boys know and trust might have picked them up?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Someone known, someone unknown; either way, the mystery stabbed at her without mercy. Inwardly she searched for a picture of a red-haired woman and found nothing. It was the boys’ faces she saw. The boys looking at her from the back seat. The boys looking at her from inside the car as she turned away from them and ran towards the plane. She knew one thing, yes, one thing was definite: if anything had happened to Max and Teddy, if their lives had somehow come to an end, she’d march into the Southern Ocean and be baptised into death.

  The congregation passed by Simon and Ava, making their way over the dunes towards the church, the women’s heels sinking into the sand. They were singing, their voices blending with the cries of sea birds. Oh, that old rugged cross, so despised by the world . . .

  Ava and Simon followed, treading through the dunes to a beach path that stank so strongly of seaweed it made her queasy. She crushed the cardboard cup in her hand and coffee sloshed over the cuff of her hoodie.

  Simon paused and cupped his eyes against the wind. ‘Over there, where the coast curves around and the waves come from two directions?’ he shouted. ‘That’s Smoky Point. The waves smash into each other and make that thick spray.’

  Ava jerked her head around to look and the sudden movement made her neck spasm. The sun vanished under clouds as the dark pillar of water rose and fell.

  ‘Me and Caleb made up stories about it as kids – sort of like the Bermuda triangle: if you got caught in it you could vanish into another realm.’

  Ava’s hood fell back and the chill wind crossed her skull, the waves flapped and curled over the sand, and she recalled the warm hiss she’d heard under the gum tree in the sandpit, words she’d tried so hard to banish now replaying ceaselessly in her mind.

  I’ll do what will hurt you the most.

  3

  It hurt.

  She couldn’t think. Simon stood beside her as though waiting. Why was he here? She didn’t know him. She would tell him to go. She would get in the car. She would find the boys. She took a single step forward. Nothing was coming to save her. Not the angel with red wings who knew of nightmares, not Lawrence, not Ballard, not Wes, not Vanessa. This was it. She might see Teddy and Max again. She might not. She squeezed the cup to a quarter of its size. She took another step towards Smoky Point Road. Towards the car, towards the cottage – towards the future or towards the past?

  Simon touched her elbow. ‘Those clouds are getting dark. I thought maybe we could unload your car, what do you think? Then you’ll be ready for the boys when they’re found.’

  When they’re found. He thought they would be found. Maybe they would be. Maybe it was just a fever of anxious madness to feel they were lost forever.

  ‘There’s nothing less rational than hope.’ She said it brutally, daring him to try to convince her otherwise. A sudden burst of rain drenched them both. They hurried towards the manse, got in her car and she drove up along Smoky Point Road to the cottage. She avoided looking at Teddy’s toy rabbit squashed by the car seat.

  Neddles was as beloved by Teddy as the old Tonka truck was by Max. Oh, she should have let Max take that truck! She pulled over at the cottage, curbing a desire to reach for Neddles, to clutch at him and sniff for a trace of Teddy. She remembered Teddy singing and hugging the soft toy before throwing it high in the air and singing: And down will come Neddles, cradle and all! Little Teddy, so rough and beautiful at the sunny playground only yesterday, filmed with gold light. Dear sweet little wild boy. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. She opened the car door, got out, took a breath.

  ‘So this woman, this red-haired woman, you think she’s got them, you think that, is that what you think?’ Her tongue felt thick; thoughts and words were separating and falling apart.

  The last few raindrops sent white circles spinning through the puddles by Ava’s feet. Simon opened the boot of the car and lifted out a heavy wheeled case and put it on the footpath as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘Let’s get this stuff into the house.’

  He strode up the path, dragging the case with his right hand and a sack of Lego in his left. Ava watched him go. What was the point of unpacking? She knew already. The point of unpacking was to take action. Any action. Decisive action. Purifying action.

  She loaded her shoulders with bags and followed Simon to the front door. It was a soft violet colour with a chalky dove painted on it, a naive thing like a child’s drawing. A book illustrator used to own the house, the agent had said. The same woman who’d planted the flowering gum in the front yard.

  When Ava had first rung up to enquire about getting a rental she’d been worried they’d end up in a ramshackle shanty. ‘I don’t have much to spend,’ she’d said. ‘But do you have anything that’s a bit, well, pretty?’

  ‘Do you know,’ the agent said, ‘I have the perfect place. It’s a weatherboard. We’ve nicknamed it the gingerbread house.’

  Ava had imagined this moment so many times in the intervening weeks. A home of her own, a home free of Lawrence, a home free of everyone except the boys. If Max was here he’d be commenting on everything. She could just imagine him examining the dove and declaring the drawing ‘quite good’ and asking if there were any doves in Sheerwater and what doves meant and whether they had anything to do with good luck. He adored the concept of good luck. And she’d say, Yes, darling, doves have lots of special meanings. Traditionally the dove stands for peace – we can look it up, but right now let’s get these bags inside! And she’d put her hand in his shaggy hair and let her fingers catch in the matted curls.

  The hallway was painted lemon yellow. The master bedroom was mint green, the boys’ room the sweet pale blue of sugared almonds, and every room, even the bathroom, had a seashell chandelier and smelled vaguely salty like driftwood.

  While Simon carried in the last cardboard box, the one filled with photo albums and kitchen implements that had been wedged below Teddy’s feet, Ava sat on the wet front step and scrolled through her phone hoping for a message from Ballard. Friends had texted and Teddy’s kindergarten teacher had left a voicemail that Ava could hardly hear over the distant thunder of the sea.

  ‘Any news?’ Simon asked from the hallway.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come inside, your lips look blue.’

  She stood up and followed him into the living room which had an old couch in it, not unlike the one she’d left behind. He switched on the electric heater and they huddled close to it while whatever it puffed out barely touched the frigid air. He was perspiring and smelled slightly toxic. ‘Apparently your husband suggested you might have something to do with the kidnapping – did Ballard ask you about that?’

  ‘I was shocked,’ Ava admitted. ‘And then I realised – she met Lawrence first. Maybe she’d been Lawrenced. Maybe she had to ask the question.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Ava shook her head. Under her feet the old carpet gave off the smell of previous occupants. Layers of people, their vibe, their dust. She was too tired for this; her mouth was gluey, inarticulate, just as it had been when she’d told friends why she’
d had to leave her husband. She pictured Lawrence emerging from the Coral Sea in Port Douglas, sinuous and glistening like a seal, the gloss of his skin, the wet sheen of his hair, the over-bright eyes, and gave a helpless gesture.

  ‘He’s – impossible to explain. He is a force. He just – is.’

  Simon picked up an album from the box and started flipping through it. He stopped, staring at a page. ‘Who’s this? She’s got red hair.’

  The photograph had been taken at Max’s first birthday party. There was Max, bare-chested on that hot summer’s day, standing up in his high chair, his chin sticky with chocolate cake and cream, streamers dangling over him from the ceiling. Beside him was Lawrence and Lawrence’s mother, and in the background, under Simon’s fingertip, was another woman, a blurry face beside some green balloons, red hair curved over one shoulder like a squirrel’s tail.

  ‘You saw her at the crash site?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe. I mean, no, I didn’t actually see her, but maybe . . .’

  Simon photographed the image on his phone and asked if there were any more of her. Ava handed him the wedding album.

  ‘Maybe in here? I don’t know. I can’t really remember.’

  Simon turned the pages slowly and stopped to point out the same woman. Here she was clearer, more tangible, wearing fuchsia lipstick that emphasised her thin-lipped mouth, and a strapless dress that exposed her freckled shoulders. There was no trace of any emotion, no generosity or happiness or jealousy or anything, on the woman’s pale face.

  Ava shook her head to clear it. She needed to think. She pressed her temples. What was that woman’s name? Lawrence must have invited her. A friend? An employee? A personal assistant? Something like that. Something that crossed over from a job to a relationship and – as usual - ended in some puerile conflict.

  ‘That was years ago. I doubt they’re even in contact.’

  ‘Would you know if they were in contact?’ Simon asked. ‘Is he honest? Or secretive? If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But don’t the police need all the help they can get? We’ll take this to Ballard. Get them to check her out.’