‘Should we check?’ I said, when we managed to stop our chortling. ‘Have you got some special detective-y database we can use?’
He shook his head once. Very definitely. ‘Wrong jurisdiction. Risk of corrupting evidence. My computer’s not here. I’d rather not get fired.’ He paused. ‘It’s your sister, babe. Of course I’d do it, if it’d be best.’
‘But maybe I should talk to her about it?’ I reached for my phone, then hesitated. It was very late. ‘Tomorrow? Or whenever she’s finished her “technology break” and he’s not there?’ It would be a freaking marvellous conversation, obviously: ‘Hey, Bec, Adam and I think the fire-eater is way too hot to actually like you. He’s probably after your money, even though you hardly have any! And no, we’re not just getting you back for thinking pretty much that about us!’
Adam nodded. ‘He’ll be playing the long game.’
And then he said I must be tired, and was I all right, and could he get me anything, and I said don’t be so silly I’m probably not even pregnant. We sorted out the complicated hotel bed covers and cuddled up.
I settled my back against his chest. He rested his hand on my tummy, which he didn’t usually do, and I weaved my fingers through his. I closed my eyes. He made a little tired-and-very-happy-to-be-here noise, and so did I.
But I didn’t feel quite right. It wasn’t just what Adam had said about the fire-eater. It wasn’t to do with maybe being pregnant. There was something else. Something weird. It was trickling, deep and subtle under all the lovely feelings, but definitely there.
Adam’s breath became slow and rhythmic. I lay awake.
From outside, despite our billionfold-glazed windows, I could hear the dull throb of a bass beat. A siren, and occasional shouts – angry, or gleeful, or possibly even frightened; it was hard to tell – penetrated our bubble. We’d left our blinds partly open, and a spotlight was candling into the sky like some biblical column of pale fire. It made the heavy clouds glow a dull yellow-white. I could see silvery pellets of rain against the windows.
My face creased as I tried to figure out what was wrong.
Then sleep began its inexorable creep.
*
When I woke, I thought the time on the hotel clock-radio must be wrong. Adam’s arm was lolling near my pillow, so I looked at his watch. It really was almost midday. We were apparently leading a dissolute life. Goodness me.
The market would have started hours ago. People in merino wool fingerless gloves would be buying lovely cheeses and apples that still had leaves on and whisky-and-apricot jam. There would be buskers, and kids in soccer uniforms, and tourists ordering lunch. But I still felt funny. Perhaps I believed I didn’t deserve happiness: that sounded like a sound, therapy-approved sort of reason for emotional disturbance.
I wriggled around a bit and wondered when Adam would wake up. I recalled the talk we’d had about contraception, if you could actually call it that. I thought about when we met, and about the first time we slept together. I remembered the night back in autumn, when Bec told her sad story about Stuart’s work, and the tiny, enormous look Adam and I exchanged when she said the word ‘baby’. It was amazing, I was thinking, how much we said in that single, silent instant. I turned my body towards his. I was thinking I wanted to drink coffee and eat brunch and then maybe even go and buy a pregnancy test.
But instead I suddenly said, ‘Oh!’
I scrambled up. I threw on Adam’s jumper and ran to my handbag and grabbed my phone.
I’d worked out what was wrong.
‘Bec!’ I said, to the still room.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Bec
Bec was washing the lunch dishes. Mathilda was reading, and Lachlan was doing an old Rubik’s cube that he’d found in the lounge room of Mount Dobson Nature View Cottage. Ryan was standing by a closed aluminium window. The vertical drapes had been rickety-racked open, and he was looking out at forested hills and turbulent sky.
‘Weather’s clearing,’ he announced. They’d been cooped up inside all day, the rain relentless and dense.
Bec turned from the sink. ‘It’s getting late,’ she said.
‘It’s not even three.’
‘You’re further south than you once were, Byron boy. It’ll be pretty much dark by four.’
‘Five-ten is sunset.’ He held up his phone to clinch the argument. ‘Sorry, Bec. I bailed on the technology break about thirty-seven minutes ago.’
‘I noticed about thirty-six minutes ago.’ They shrugged silly pretend-guilty/pretend-cross shrugs. But he switched his phone off again.
‘Come on, Bec. We’ve driven all this way. It’ll be fun. Bit of an adventure.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You’d want to come for a walk, kids, wouldn’t you?’ said Ryan. ‘To a secret lake? And have ice cream on the way back?’
‘Yep,’ said Lachlan, looking up from his Rubik’s cube.
‘Yes!’ said Essie. ‘Because there’s sharks, in the sea, but not in lakes, and also I’m a good little swim—’
‘What about you, Mathilda?’ said Ryan.
‘Thank you, but that’s not my cup of tea today,’ recited Mathilda, who was perhaps the only child in the world who didn’t really like ice cream. She looked towards Bec, as if she was wondering whether that was the right answer. Bec gave her an affirming nod. Little girls must be taught they can say ‘no’.
‘The three of us could go?’ Ryan said. ‘And you and Mathilda could stay here, Bec?’
‘Well—’ Bec said. Stuart would find out, and he would hit the roof. And, to be honest, she didn’t feel very comfortable with Ryan taking Lachlan and Essie off into the forest at this hour. Especially in the cold. It just didn’t seem that sensible.
It felt a bit irresponsible. A bit reckless. Even a little bit . . . odd.
Or maybe she was just getting old.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kate
‘I’ll drive, mate, you won’t be able to concentrate,’ Adam said, when Stuart picked us up from the hotel. It was almost three o’clock, nearly three hours since I’d first woken up, and we were going to Mount Dobson to look for my precious, trusting little sister.
Stuart nodded. He was white-faced and terrified in a way I had never seen before. I sat in the back. We travelled right on the speed limit, and Adam overtook whenever it was safe.
Mount Dobson is both a village and a mountain, a couple of hours’ drive out of Hobart. The bottom slopes have nice waterfalls and are very touristy, but the higher bits have ancient trees and alpine lakes and earnest-looking bushwalkers. People used to make jokes about locals with a lack of teeth, but they don’t anymore. Now it’s all about the world-class mountain-bike tracks and the farm-to-plate cooking schools and the rejuvenating experience of the ‘landscape’.
As Adam steered the car out of the city, Hobart’s biggest bridge was a distant leap across the blue-grey. Usually I thought that bridge looked beautiful, but that afternoon I remembered the terrible things that had happened there.
‘Stuart? Adam and I think we should call the police.’ I spoke as soon as we were on the open road. ‘Is that all right?’
Adam said, ‘We wanted to check with you. Because my worry is Child Protection might get involved. Believe me, it can be a total shit-show if you get the wrong worker.’
Stuart said, ‘I think we have to call them.’
Adam said, ‘Yep. Good.’
I made the phone call, and as we sailed past a hardware store and a car wash and a defunct dog-grooming business, the officer in the radio room asked me lots of questions.
He used telecommunications data (with unexpected promptness) to look for Bec, but her phone was off so it didn’t work. He said things like ‘concerns for welfare’, ‘crime car’, ‘manage resources’. It seemed the police stationed in the Mount Dobson area were taking a suspected drugged driver to hospital in Hobart for testing. After that, those police would come. In the meantime, he’d see who could he
ad to Mount Dobson from New Norfolk, but the officers there had their hands full with a domestic matter. And there was a two-vehicle collision on the Lyell Highway.
I should stay in touch, he said. I should call back immediately if anything changed.
It was a very busy weekend, he said. Everywhere. With Dark Festival and all.
*
We drove for a long time. No one spoke. I looked out of the window. Most of the river was in shadow, and there were black swans drifting near the reeds. Their feathers were puffed up against the bitter air.
‘All right back there, babe?’ said Adam.
‘Sort of.’
The sky was changing. Soon it would start to get dark.
*
It was a look Ryan had given me.
The night before. He’d been standing with a jug of mulled gin in one hand and two glasses in the other. Adam had passed me my lemonade – ‘Yay, vodka,’ I’d said.
I am adept at deception, and Adam was almost unsettlingly natural. But still. Ryan glanced at us.
He saw. He observed. He knew. Because he was more alert, and more sober, and much, much cleverer than he was pretending to be.
And then his face moved. I had almost not noticed, because straight afterwards, he’d been really sweet. He’d grinned at me, affectionately, all hippy sensitivity and easy-going warmth. With a mixture of pleasure and humour and understanding. Enough to make me believe he was a gorgeous, eager-to-please rainbow child. Enough to make me forget, so nearly forget, about what I’d seen on his face.
Which was hatred. That single unguarded moment. That silent instant, tiny and enormous, when everything was said.
That morning, when I’d jumped out of bed and run to my handbag, I still hadn’t known who he was, or why he hated us. But I knew he had my sister, in a forest, without her phone. And with the children.
*
We passed a tiny shop with lacy curtains closed over its windows. Outside stood a single petrol pump and a hand-lettered sign that read LAST MAJOR FUEL STOP. The road became bendy, narrow, and slick with recent rain.
I rang Bec, again, and once more it went straight to voicemail. I’d already called her eleven times.
The first time was straight after I’d got up. She hadn’t answered then, either, so I’d texted.
Call me as soon as you get this, it’s urgent. Xoxoxoxoxo
Adam had been stirring in his sleep as I called Mum. No answer. I imagined her scrabbling around inside her handbag, saying, ‘Where are you? Oh, don’t stop ringing, you stupid thing!’
I left Mum a message, and then I rang Allie. She said (rather coldly) that she had no idea where on earth Bec might be staying. So I called BFG. I love my dad, but he is not a phone person in the same way that the Queen is not a vinyl minidress person.
‘Hello?’ he answered, as if he was talking down a tunnel.
‘Dad! Hi! Do you know where Bec is?’
‘Is that you, Kate-o?’
‘Yes.’ How many daughters did the man have? ‘You spoken to Bec today?’
‘No, love. She’s gone off with that fire-eater of hers. Mount Dobson. Went last night.’
‘Yep. Do you know where they’re staying?’
‘No. But I don’t think she’s quite herself, your sister,’ he added, unexpectedly.
‘Really?’ But BFG only ever proffers information when it’s correct.
‘Not herself. This business, taking the kids off so late. Not like her,’ he said.
‘I know.’ I’d thought it was weird, too. ‘Get her to call me straight away. If you hear from her.’
‘All right, Kate-o.’
‘Love you, Dad,’ I’d said, finally. We’d hung up without saying goodbye.
I’d stared at the hotel-room window, seeing none of our expensive view.
*
Near a tight bend, a home-made wooden cross had JOANNA written on it in white paint. The cross was old, but bunches of fresh flowers in plastic wrap were stacked at its base.
‘You OK, Stuart?’ Hopeless question, but I thought I’d better ask it.
‘Yes, thanks,’ Stuart said. He turned right around in his seat to look at me. He’d mastered himself, which was typical. ‘I’m fine. But, Kate, would you step me through it again? Maybe there’s a detail that will help.’ It was not the time for criticism, obviously, but sometimes Bec must have felt that she was married to a computer.
‘Adam thought the fire-eater was dodgy,’ I said. I sounded upset, and I made no effort to hide it. God’s sake. ‘And then I worked out he was very smart, and that he was only pretending to be all lovey-dovey. That he was full of hate.’
‘I see,’ said Stuart. He was still looking at me. I moved into the middle of the back seat, so we could talk more easily.
‘I rang Bec, and my parents, and Allie and you, and I got a text back from someone that you were operating. And then I started thinking about your work, and how sometimes things must go wrong.’
‘You just had an inkling?’
‘I knew he was full of hate,’ I corrected Stuart. ‘And your job, I mean, it was all I could think of. Revenge for something he thought you’d done wrong.’
It sounded methodical, but I’d been frantic. By the time I’d considered Stuart’s job, I’d already trawled through fruitless pages of Google entries. There was a Scottish Formula One driver called Ryan Abbott. There was a Perth recruitment specialist called Ryan Abbot. Pages and pages. Time had passed. I’d woken Adam.
‘I use the coroner’s website in tutorials sometimes,’ I told Stuart. ‘That’s why I thought of it.’ I talk to the students about sources of data, about archives and reporting. I talk about individual privacy versus community interest; personal welfare and public wellbeing; records of workplace accidents and traffic fatalities and health system errors.
Those reports are pretty gruelling reading, to be honest. They’re chronicles of deaths that were unexpected or violent, or both. Some are so sad you can’t believe everybody doesn’t know about them. The dodgy smoke alarm, the sleeping family. The icy road, the young driver. All those stories, just sitting there, minding their own poignant business in their obscure little corner of the internet.
Adam had been sitting next to me when I opened the coroner’s website. He’d been trying to call Bec. Talking to Mum and BFG, pressing them for details. When he saw how scared I was, and how certain, he called a mate on the police force in New South Wales to see if he could check the fire-eater’s background in Byron. The mate said he’d see what he could do.
I scrolled down the ‘Name Of Deceased’ column. Next to each name was a cluster of keywords, like macabre hashtags. Boating accident. Drugs and Alcohol. Safety Gear. Or: Nursing Home. Infection Control. Communicable Disease.
My heart was beating, hard, as if I’d done something wrong.
‘I can’t find anything,’ I said. ‘There’s nobody with the surname Abbott. Why don’t we just get a car and go to Mount Dobson?’
‘Maybe Ryan’s his surname. Crims do that sometimes. Try that.’
‘OK,’ I said.
And there it was.
*
Our car slowed. Just ahead was an old ute, with firewood piled high on its tray. Adam put on his indicator, pressed the accelerator hard, and we crossed double white lines to overtake.
‘Anyway,’ I said to Stuart. ‘That’s when I found the report on Danika.’ Danika Janelle Ryan.
Stuart nodded.
He already knew a lot about Danika. He’d known about her for a long time. He’d known Danika arrived at the Royal Tasmania Hospital early in the afternoon on an ordinary Thursday, two summers ago. She was 28 years old, and twenty weeks pregnant; she was very ill. Stuart had operated on her. He’d saved her life, but afterwards, her baby’s heart had stopped beating.
We’d all known about her, in a way.
Bec had told me and Adam, while we were drinking wine. Stuart was involved in a case where a baby died. An unborn baby, I mean . . .
Stuart had also known that Danika died by suicide last winter.
The suicide was made public . . . Stuart certainly takes things to heart.
But none of us had known who Danika Ryan was.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bec
‘Please, Mum!’ said Lachlan.
‘Please, Mummy,’ said Essie. ‘Ryan could carry me on his shoulders.’
‘Come on, Bec.’ Ryan smiled his most affectionate smile. ‘Rain’s stopped. Resilience. Risk-taking.’ He winked, man-to-man, at Lachlan. ‘And ice cream.’
‘Give it a rest, all of you!’ Bec said. Everyone looked at her. A surprised-hurt look crossed Ryan’s face, the way it did whenever he was reminded there were limits to how involved he could be with the children.
For some reason, she was thinking of Stuart. Stuart, who hardly ever came on day trips, but who, when he did, made everything easy. As if he thought bad weather or complaints about long drives were inevitable – as if dealing with all that was just part of being a dad – and who never would have suggested ice cream right before dinner. She missed him, suddenly. She missed her kids’ father.
‘Look, I just need to think,’ she said.
‘Ma-ar-umm!’ Lachlan stretched the word out to three syllables. They were laced with a subtle scorn, in a way Stuart would never have allowed. (‘Where’d you get the idea it’s OK to use that tone to your mum?’ he would have asked Lachlan. ‘Not on, mate. Absolutely not on.’)
‘’Course it’s up to you, Bec,’ Ryan said, after a moment. ‘’Course it is. Only if you’re comfy.’ He looked at Essie. ‘Your mummy loves you, and she knows best.’ But he added, in a loud whisper, ‘I’ll carry you on my shoulders, and we’ll beat Lachy.’
Essie nodded, vigorously. ‘Now, Mummy. You please have your think,’ she said, very politely.
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