Afterwards, in the middle of the night, the same doctor arranged chairs on the turquoise carpet tiles and sat them down and told them that Essie’s bleeding had stopped but there was still some swelling near her brain. They were going to wait for it to reduce and then try to take her off the ventilator.
‘We’ll see what happens,’ he said.
‘OK,’ said Bec.
‘Of course,’ said Stuart.
Despite everything. Despite the efficient unfurling of the blue-green surgical drapes, despite the practised ballet of sterile tubes, despite the inimitable pop of the glass ampoules as the magical, terrible drugs were unleashed, despite the scans and the instruments and all the long years of training, everyone still had to wait and see what happened.
The doctor spoke again. It was difficult, he said, to predict the degree of ‘neurological insult’ should Essie survive. Bec wondered, randomly, inconsequentially, why the doctor didn’t just call it brain damage. After he left, Bec sat on the couch. She held Kate’s hand again.
She thought: why didn’t I make that Peter Rabbit radish cake myself?
She thought: I should have let Kate pay for Briarwood. I should have forced Stuart to let Kate pay.
She thought: How is it that Stuart can stop having feelings for me? Just by deciding to?
*
Some time on the second or third day, the police came back.
Ryan – no, not Ryan, because the fire-eater’s name was Jacob; in reality Ryan was his surname – had been charged with grievous bodily harm and his application for bail had been refused. If Essie died, he could be charged with murder. Or maybe they’d get him on attempted murder anyway. The police said they’d have to talk to the DPP.
Ryan had drug convictions in New South Wales. He’d made money selling marijuana and pills. His mum lived in Western Australia; she worked at a petrol station. Over the years, she’d taken out six Family Violence Restraining Orders against Ryan’s dad, who had four convictions for assault. The fire-eater had no siblings apart from Danika, who had been three years older than him.
‘He said he was from this big, happy family,’ Bec said. ‘He said his mum was an artist.’ It felt as if the words didn’t quite fill the whole room. Kate squeezed her hand. Stuart didn’t react. Maybe the words didn’t make it all the way over to his ears.
While a monitor beeped sedate time with Essie’s heart, and a machine hissed breath into her perfect lungs, the police said they’d found a folder under the fire-eater’s mattress. It was labelled COMPENSATION. On its inside was written, ‘Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. I will restore the true balance of universal justice. I am a co-creator.’
Bec wondered how often the fire-eater thought of his folder, lurking tidily within his bed, while he had sex with Stuart’s wife.
In the folder was a letter from the coroner’s office, dated a couple of months after Stuart had operated on Danika. It thanked the fire-eater for his request, but said that the coroner would not be holding an inquest into the death of Danika’s baby, because that kind of foetal loss was outside the purview of the coroner and anyway, the loss was neither unexpected nor violent. Someone had written BULLSHIT four times in green pen across the letter. At the bottom, in blue pen, was Stuart’s clinic address, and then, in black, his home address. They thought the fire-eater probably followed Stuart home one night. Followed her. Learned her local deli, learned her kids’ schools.
There were also copies of fliers. Purple paper, professionally printed. Bec only vaguely remembered them: she always just threw that stuff in the bin. But it seemed he’d letterboxed at least part of her street, advertising gardening and then – on green paper, in a different font – kids’ circus skills workshops and – yellow paper – children’s party entertainment. He’d got himself a Tasmanian Working With Vulnerable People card. He’d applied for a job as a gardener at Briarwood. There was a copy of a cover letter and his CV; he’d sent them to Lachlan’s school, too. Jane Payne, Stuart’s practice manager, recalled he’d visited the clinic. He’d said his business supplied fair trade coffee beans to workplaces; he’d left a card, but she’d thrown it away. (Jane Payne would not believe in paying the extra for fair trade, Bec thought, irrelevantly.)
There were copies of receipts, pristine, from an online bookseller. Over weeks, he’d had four kids’ books about the circus delivered to their home address. One of the books was Five Have A Wonderful Time by Enid Blyton. Mathilda had loved it. It featured a circus. It even featured a fire-eater. Stuart remembered that Mathilda was the one who’d suggested having a fire-eater at his party. (Not that Stuart told Bec that. She found out from Kate.) Bec hadn’t properly questioned where that book had come from. Book parcels turned up all the time. She ordered them. Stuart’s dad sent them. Kate did too.
It would have been a few weeks after the date on that receipt, that she saw his advertisement on the Briarwood website.
When Bec contacted him, he’d asked to friend her on Facebook. ‘I don’t use Facebook, but Messenger’s best with my data plan,’ he’d said, meaninglessly. She’d thought it was some young-person save-money thing.
She’d made it so easy for him. She’d been so easy.
‘Your wife was the easiest bit,’ he’d said to Stuart, from the floor of the pub. Adam had leaned down hard and said something that made the fire-eater stop talking.
He’d broken up their marriage, and then he’d set his sights on the children. He’d insisted on staying over. Manipulated her into letting him meet the kids. The night before Essie’s beach excursion, he’d said that it was tension, not red wine, that gave her migraines. He’d said she should have some and then he’d give her a massage. Had she told Ryan the joke about Essie being Stuart’s favourite? Is that why he’d targeted their youngest? Or maybe Lachy was just too good a swimmer, or the beach was too busy, on that boogy-boarding trip.
The police said they might be able to charge the fire-eater for the morning at Clifton Beach, but only with something like wilful negligence. The oldest officer said he’d bet his house that it’d be impossible to prove Jacob Ryan had intended to watch Essie drown, and that Essie herself, even if she recovered, would probably be too young to make a useful witness.
There was no way the police could prove anything about what he’d planned for Lake Themis, but they seemed to think he’d designed it for a weekend when emergency services would be busy. In the cold, dark month Danika died. ‘Good you said no to the walk, love. I mean, Mrs Henderson, apologies,’ said the oldest officer.
All the police were very kind.
Stuart looked at Bec, stonily, the whole time they were speaking. She didn’t really care. Did he think him looking at her like that would make it worse for her? Did he think anything he could say or do or be could make it worse?
She knew all the stuff about victim blaming, and she never thought she’d be part of that. But she also knew that she was the one who’d let him in.
*
At some point, Kate went home to sleep for a few hours. Bec was alone with Stuart in the turquoise-floored room.
He was sitting on one of the vinyl chairs. His back was to her. She was slumped on the couch with her eyes closed. Every time she moved, the fake leather squeaked in a way that made her feel self-conscious. After a long time where nothing happened, he stood up and turned his chair around. Its wooden legs grated unpleasantly against the floor.
Stuart sat back down, facing her. Still a long way away, though. The vending machine, right over against the wall, was the third point of their equilateral triangle. She looked at the Fruit Jubes.
‘Bec?’ he said. It was the first time for ages that he’d made her name sound like something other than a stab. He cast a glance towards the door, as if to check that no one would interrupt them. ‘I thought I had her tight enough, Bec.’
‘Of course you did.’ She saw the teenage boy he used to be flickering behind his face. Stuart’s still here after all, she thought, illogically. At least that’s so
mething. ‘Sweethear— Stuart. Of course you did.’
There was nothing else they could say, right then, but he didn’t turn his chair around again. They sat. Someone clipped along the linoleumed corridor outside. The elevator doors dinged open and slid closed. Bec remembered her own enjoyably professional hurries along that very corridor. So long ago. She imagined all the times Stuart had walked along it since. Residents would nudge each other when he entered ICU, would murmur, ‘Mr Henderson’s here,’ would make haste to find the right file.
Her world was going to be so bleak, now, without them. Without Essie. Without Stuart. Without, somehow, and inexcusably, Ryan. She let her head wilt onto her chest.
‘I know I should have realised,’ she whispered. ‘I know I should.’
She sobbed for a few indulgent and relieving breaths, and then raised her face. He was still looking towards her. A few seconds passed before their eyes properly met. It felt like tuning a radio. Static, static, then, there. Stuart.
‘We can’t dwell on it,’ he said. ‘You can’t. We have to look after them all. All right?’ He didn’t look away. ‘They’re going to need us. All three of them.’ They nearly started crying, because he’d said that automatically and they both knew it might not be all three. ‘Especially you. Especially you, Bec. So you have to . . . we both. We both have to just get on with it.’
Without thinking, she reached part of the way across the space between them.
He looked down at her hand, which hung in the empty hospital air. He wasn’t cross, or contemptuous. Just sad. Just decisive. Just . . . aware that the two of them were finished. Sharp scalpel. Clean cut. Quicker to heal, in the long run.
She hauled her hand all the way back into her own lap, and nodded at him instead. Touch. She had only just realised she was never to touch him again. Impossible.
‘Yep,’ she said. She pulled her hair back behind her neck as if she was making a business-like ponytail. Then she let it sag. ‘You’re right, Stuart. I’ll try.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Me too.’
He nodded, just the once. He gave her a tiny smile. But only, she knew, because that was what had to be done.
Chapter Thirty-One
Kate
On the third morning, I drove Bec to Mum’s so she could see Mathilda and Lachlan before school. Bec’s car was as immaculate as ever. Adam had retrieved it from the police, and sorted it out. There was the blue bottle of water in the console. There was the handle on the steering wheel for me. There was the booster seat in the back, for Essie.
At some traffic lights, two young women crossed the road with hurried strides. It was a small, predictable shock, that people were going to work. And that, when we arrived at Mum’s, the wattle in the front garden was starting to bloom.
Once the engine was off, I turned away to open my door. Bec spoke.
‘Kate?’ she said. I stopped immediately, and as soon as I looked at her, her face crumpled up. It was the first time I’d seen her cry since the pub.
I leaned across the car. I put my arm around her neck and my stump on her cheek. For a long time the only thing I could hear was her broken breath.
‘I liked him so much,’ she said, in the end. She looked up at me the way three-year-old Mathilda used to as she said something like, ‘That big door hit into my head!’ ‘But you knew, Kate. You saw, straight away.’ She started crying, harder, against me. ‘I was . . . you were . . .’ She couldn’t properly talk.
‘Oh, Becky,’ I said. ‘It’s not your fault.’
After a while she sat up. I reached for her hand, but she shook her head, gave her cheeks three brisk little slaps with the flats of her fingers, and gestured to the clock on the dashboard. ‘We have to get going.’ She reached for the door handle.
‘Hey, Bec, just a sec.’ She turned to me. Tiny capillaries were visible in her eyes.
It almost seemed as if telling her didn’t matter – because in one way nothing mattered except Essie – but also, I knew it mattered very much. I tapped my closed lips with my forefinger a few times.
‘Bec, all the stuff about men I used to say,’ I began. ‘Before Adam. Adam’s the first man I’ve been with since the amputation. That side of things got really, really difficult for me, and so I sort of lied. I lied. I couldn’t handle you and Mum and Dad and’ – the air made a noise when I breathed in – ‘Stuart, all feeling sorry for me.’
Then I waited.
‘Wow,’ she said, but flatly. There was silence. ‘And there I was.’ She sort of laughed. ‘Feeling like the boring one, all those years.’
We both sat and thought about that. But after just a little while, Bec smiled, sadly, and fluttered a tender little dove of a hand onto my cheek. ‘I can see why you might’ve felt you had to, Kate,’ she said.
Then she opened the car door and got out.
*
That night, I woke up in Bec’s spare room. Adam was sitting in the dark, with his feet over the side of the bed.
‘Adam?’ I put my hand on his back. ‘You all right?’
He didn’t turn around, didn’t speak.
‘Adam?’
‘I thought if he went for anything it’d be the steak knife.’ He sounded very sad. ‘I only saw the knife.’ His voice barely stretched around the words.
I sat up, and knelt next to him. I stroked his hair and held him with both my arms, and after a moment he turned and let his face rest against my collarbone.
‘I love you so much, Adam,’ I said.
Of course it was easy, in the end.
*
She didn’t die.
They pulled the tube out of her throat, and she coughed a lot, which Bec said was a good thing.
My period came that same afternoon. A whole six days late. I sat in the hospital toilets looking down at my underwear and, to be perfectly honest (yes shameful, yes ugly, yes vile, yes completely unforgivable), I had to push aside the thought that it’s not fair, the way Bec always seems to get away with things, and I never do.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Stephanie
The week before Stuart’s fortieth
I waited thirty-eight minutes for the doctor to call me in. Like usual, she smiled and said, ‘Sorry to keep you, Stephanie.’ No one except her and teachers call me Stephanie, and teachers would never say sorry to me.
‘I’ve come about my pimples,’ I said. ‘Still pretty bad.’ I’d put concealer on. You could still see them.
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ She touched my chin with her fingertips, tilted my face to the side. ‘Hmm,’ she said again. It’s only when you’re right close up you can even tell she’s wearing make-up. ‘And you’ve been using the cream? And taking the tablets?’
I nodded. The cream costed thirty-two bucks. I nicked money out of Dad’s wallet, and he spat it with my brother.
‘You’re going to need a specialist,’ she said. I knew that. I’d looked it up. It said if your acne was severe and your GP couldn’t help you then you should ask to see a skin specialist.
‘Yeah.’ I showed her my phone. I’d taken a screen shot of the site.
‘That’s right.’ She was surprised. ‘A dermatologist.’ She looked at me like she was thinking I was poor. She wouldn’t say ‘poor’, though. Reckon she’d say some other bullshit doctor word for it. ‘I’m afraid they’re rather expensive.’
‘How much?’
‘In the order of a couple of hundred dollars for the first consultation.’
‘Two hundred?’
‘Afraid so. Is that something you think you could manage? Could your parents perhaps help you out with that?’ She had a picture of her kids on her desk. Two boys and a girl, all wearing school uniforms with jackets, and the girl had braces. None of them had any pimples.
‘Um. I reckon,’ I said.
‘Lovely.’ She smiled. She typed a letter and gave it to me in an envelope. She wrote a phone number on the front. ‘Daniel’s very good,’ she said. ‘Dr Gilbert. He’ll sort you out.�
�
‘Thanks,’ I remembered to say. I stood up.
‘Anything else today, Stephanie?’ she said, standing up too. ‘Everything all right at school and things? Year Eleven going well?’
‘Pretty good,’ I said. I took my letter and put it in the bin at the mall. I’d missed my bus. Dad kicked my arse.
The night of Stuart’s fortieth
I got ready in the bathroom. I took ages. Dad said to get out, in the end, he reckoned he needed a shit.
I looked all right in the mirror except when I stepped back under the light and then my skin looked bad again, and we had to wear our hair in ponytails. I hoped the light wouldn’t be too bright at this party. It was in Sandy Bay, near the Casino.
Even though I’d turned seventeen, I didn’t have my licence. So it was two buses to get there and then I thought I could maybe get a lift back. I didn’t know what time it’d finish but sometimes if things go late, I get twenty bucks extra. Dad says I’m a very lucky girl to have this job. Our next-door-neighbour’s son gave it to me. Brody, he’s called.
I reckon boys don’t talk to you much when you’re waitressing, cause you’re working and that, but still, I thought there might be someone all right there, so that’d maybe be good.
*
There were three of us waitresses, plus Brody, plus this guy who knew how to make cocktails and shit. The other waitresses knew each other. Snobby bitches. Brody said they could take the trays around and I could stay in a little room next to the kitchen. I had to get stuff out the containers and put it on trays, and help Brody carry them to the oven. I had to pour all different kinds of sauce into bowls.
After that I did washing up in the little room. The others kept bringing plates and glasses and stuff in. I heard people singing ‘Happy Birthday’. I heard people cheering. The other waitresses reckoned that the doctor whose party it was told them they could have some of his cake, but he hadn’t offered me, so I thought better not in case Brody spat it.
*
The Mistake Page 32