by Debra Oswald
The most recent photo was taken on a day trip to Whale Beach. By then Remy was dead, Matt was in jail, and Stacey and the kids had been living with Paula in the Earlwood house for four months.
In the shot, Poppy was posed on the sand with her legs far apart and arms in the air, as if about to do a cartwheel. She couldn’t, in fact, do cartwheels but she requested that Paula take this optical illusion photo now, on the understanding that Poppy promised to learn to actually do cartwheels very soon. Cameron stood closer to the waves, looking back at the camera anxiously. He had heard Stacey’s voice calling out encouragement to Poppy and he was compelled to check it was happy yelling, not frightened yelling.
They should have been safe in Paula’s house. Stacey and Cameron and Poppy should have been safe in her house.
FIVE
PAULA HAD PLANNED TO FLY TO MELBOURNE IN LATE MAY and join two medical school friends for a walking holiday along the Great Ocean Road, figuring it’d be considerate to give Stacey and the kids a break from her, a chance for them to swan about the house on their own.
Now she didn’t feel up to the social duties of being a travelling companion. In the two months since the murders, Paula had excused herself from her book club and sidestepped all other invitations, including dinners at Li-Kim’s place and events with Remy’s extended family—lovely people of whom she was genuinely fond. She had been using cheerful texts and the occasional short phone chat to hold friends at bay. Every friend apart from Anita. For both women, all personal connection had telescoped down to their friendship.
So Paula cancelled the holiday leave and worked on into June, doing fill-in sessions at the practice on top of her regular load. She found that with a busy run of patients through a day, she might not think about Stacey and the children for an hour at a time.
She arrived at the surgery on a Tuesday morning to fill in for Mark Lang. Mark was the youngest doctor at Marrickville Family Practice—an eager, big-hearted guy, a good GP, even if he still needed a bit of guidance when it came to the more delicate judgements the job required. He was a fervent mountain biker, rock climber and scuba diver. Just hearing Mark cheerfully recount his strenuous weekend activities made Paula feel limp with tiredness. This week, he’d flown to the Solomon Islands for a diving medicine conference and Paula was covering his open appointment morning.
The first patient was already waiting on the blue chairs—six-year-old Brody with his mother Rochelle. Paula smiled hello to Rochelle and gave Brody a little wave.
‘Hi, guys,’ she said. ‘I’ll be with you in one sec.’
Paula stopped by the front desk to check on a few bits of admin with Jemma. Meanwhile, she could see Brody pressed up close to his mum, holding her hand. He was a sweet kid, shy, always keeping his mother in his sight and usually clinging on to her. The family had moved into the area a year ago and, even though Brody was on Mark Lang’s patient list, Paula had treated him three or four times. His mother often brought him in with stomach pains and the doctor’s role was to check it wasn’t anything alarming and then to offer reassurance. Paula figured that Brody missed a lot of school because of anxiety-related ailments.
The mother, Rochelle, was a reserved person, on the anxious scale herself. Clearly devoted to her son. On a previous visit, she’d explained to Paula that she worked as a beautician but only in the middle chunk of the day, so she was available to take Brody to and from school.
She was a woman who made an effort to keep up a look—face always made up, spray tan even in winter, long foiled auburn hair, acrylic nails in a muted pink colour at a tasteful length, not talons. Today Rochelle was wearing high-heeled boots with jeans and a close-fitting zip-up blue jacket. She’d draped a burnt orange pashmina around her neck with one of those chic knots that Paula could never manage.
‘Come with me, guys,’ said Paula, ushering mother and son into her consulting room.
‘What can I do for you today, Mr Ferguson?’ Paula asked Brody, as he slid onto a chair next to Rochelle.
Brody didn’t answer; he just looked to his mum, who smiled apologetically at Paula and mimed that there was a problem with her son’s throat.
‘Can I have a bit of a look at your throat?’ Paula asked.
Brody dutifully opened his mouth and Paula peered in with the otoscope, being as gentle as she could with the tongue depressor. It wasn’t difficult to see that his tonsils were swollen and dotted with pus. She checked his ears, took his temperature, examined the slightly enlarged glands in his neck.
As she felt the delicate pulse under the skin, she was struck by the softness and vulnerability of his small body. Whenever she was treating children now, Paula could so easily find herself flooded with memories of Cameron and Poppy. She consciously fought off those images. She couldn’t do her job properly if she gave in to intrusive thoughts.
‘Well, Brody’s tonsils are infected,’ said Paula, ‘so I think some antibiotics would be a good idea. Is he allergic to anything?’
Rochelle shook her head and Paula turned to the computer to type up the prescription. The infection probably explained why the boy was so subdued and clingy.
Paula ran through the standard advice for looking after a kid with a bout of tonsillitis and Rochelle listened, attentive.
‘I reckon three days off school,’ said Paula. ‘Is that okay with you, Brody?’
He nodded earnestly, but then he quickly glanced at his mother to check.
‘Can you get the time off work, Rochelle?’ Paula asked. ‘Or is there someone else who can stay with Brody?’
Rochelle squeezed her son’s hand. ‘I’ll take time off.’
Paula heard it—the cracked sound in her voice—and realised that those were the first words Rochelle had uttered since she’d walked into the surgery.
‘Ooh, sounds like Mum might have a sore throat too.’
Paula turned to smile at Brody, but in her peripheral vision she saw Rochelle’s hand go to the scarf that was swaddling her throat. A centimetre above the edge of the bright fabric, the purple bruising on her neck was unmistakable. She tugged the scarf back up to cover the marks, but it was too late—Paula had seen. ‘You know what, Brody? I need to look after your mum for a little minute. Would it be okay if you hang out in our playroom for a while?’
Brody grabbed on to the sleeve of his mother’s jacket.
‘I’m okay, sweetheart,’ Rochelle assured him. There was that fractured rasp of a voice. ‘I’ll have a chat to the doctor and then I’ll come right out.’
Paula showed Brody down the hall to the corner of the waiting room. It had been Jemma’s idea to make a little corral out of play furniture to define a kids’ zone, with plastic bins full of toys and a bright ‘roadmap’ rug inside.
‘Jemma, can you keep an eye on Brody for a few minutes?’
Jemma grinned and waved extravagantly at Brody.
By the time Paula walked back into her consulting room, Rochelle was sitting on the edge of the examination bed, shaking.
‘Look, if you could just check my throat is—y’know—check it’s basically okay and then I’ll go.’
‘Let’s have look,’ said Paula softly.
This woman was clearly ready to bolt out the door at any moment, so Paula knew better than to bombard her with questions.
The moment Rochelle removed her scarf, Paula took a sharp intake of breath. Doctors weren’t supposed to react audibly like that, but the lurid strangulation bruises, the handprints around her throat, were so vicious that Paula’s immediate response was the instinctive human one.
Many abuse victims who showed up in a GP’s surgery had been cowed into secrecy and were reluctant to reveal anything. The doctor would need to coax them gently in order to elicit information.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’ Paula asked. ‘Who did this?’
Rochelle answered with surprising bluntness. ‘My husband. But it’s the first time in a while.’ This woman was a veteran.
Taking her cue from Rochell
e, Paula jumped straight to the direct questions. ‘Did you black out when he strangled you? Did you lose consciousness?’
‘Not this time. He said he didn’t want to actually kill me this time.’
‘But he wanted to demonstrate that he could kill you if he chose to?’
‘Bingo,’ Rochelle answered, with a small mordant smile. ‘You’ve met my husband, have you?’
Paula examined the woman’s injured neck as tenderly as she could, not wanting to add to her physical pain. She could feel the tension in Rochelle’s entire body, every muscle and sinew braced tightly.
‘Do you have any difficulty swallowing?’
‘No. Well, it hurts when I swallow, but no trouble getting food down.’
Paula examined Rochelle’s eyes and saw some petechiae—tiny red haemorrhage marks. The throttling attack had been brutal. It was amazing she hadn’t lost consciousness, hadn’t died.
Paula recalled seeing Rochelle with her husband outside the practice once. Ian Ferguson was much older—she in her early thirties, he in his early sixties—and he was physically much bigger than her too. Paula had observed them for a few moments as Ferguson steered Rochelle into the car, his fingers digging into the flesh of her upper arm.
‘Can you take off your jacket?’ Paula asked.
‘Look, if you reckon my throat’s okay, I’d rather just go home and get my sick little boy into bed.’
‘Be good if I could take a proper look at your neck.’
Rochelle hesitated, then unzipped the blue jacket and slid it off. Paula noticed a small bony lump along her clavicle, where a previous fracture had healed.
‘How did you break your collarbone? Was it your husband?’
‘That was ages ago.’
Rochelle’s hand went up to touch the slender line of her collarbone. That’s when Paula saw the puckered red skin on the pale underside of her forearm—the healed scar from a large rectangular burn.
Rochelle met Paula’s gaze. ‘He pushed my arm onto the barbecue.’
‘Did our Dr Lang treat this burn?’
Rochelle shook her head. ‘I never come to the doctors at this place. My husband does. And I bring Brody here when he’s sick. But I go to other medical centres if I really need to.’
She made sure she moved between doctors, never seeing the same person twice, to avoid anyone noticing the string of suspicious injuries.
‘This …’ Rochelle looked down at the scar on her arm. ‘This was because I told him I didn’t want to have another baby.’
‘Is Brody his son?’
Rochelle nodded and then scrunched up her eyes, squeezing tears away. ‘Look, he never hurts Brody. Never lays a hand on him. Please believe that. Please believe I would never let him hurt Brody.’
Paula reached out to put her hand on Rochelle’s arm. ‘I believe you.’
‘But no way I want any more kids with him. That’s why I have injections every three months.’
‘Depo-Provera?’
‘Yep. Those. He searches through my stuff, so if I tried taking the pill, he’d find them.’
‘But with the injections he doesn’t have to find out you’re using contraception.’
She nodded, then pulled her jacket back on, started wrapping the scarf around her neck again. This woman was used to finding work-arounds and survival tactics.
‘No, no, please don’t go yet,’ Paula said. ‘For one thing, I want to send you for some tests to make sure you don’t have other damage from—’
‘Better not,’ Rochelle interrupted. ‘Then he’d know you’d seen my neck. I’d pay for it.’
‘Rochelle, please wait.’
‘Dr Kaczmarek, I know what you’re going to say. I should leave. He’s dangerous.’
‘He is. Clearly. I’m worried you could be—’
‘Look, I’m handling this the only way I can. Main thing is he doesn’t hurt Brody. Trust me about that.’
‘You don’t have to put up with it.’ Paula reached for the pamphlets on domestic abuse, women’s refuges, support services.
‘Forget that stuff. It’s no good to me.’
‘I can’t let you leave here without—’
‘No. You don’t get it.’ Rochelle’s voice, fractured and hoarse though it was, came out with a steely edge Paula had not heard before. ‘I tried leaving him—couple of times. I did all that stuff they reckon you should do.’ She waved her hand at the pamphlets Paula was holding. ‘He tracked me down every time. The last time, this happened.’ She indicated her healed collarbone. ‘And the thing is, I’d never leave without Brody.’
‘Of course not. No one would suggest—’
‘No. I really don’t think you get it.’ Rochelle was shaking, but there was a firmness in her gaze as she tried to make Paula understand. ‘He said if I leave again, he’ll find me. And he can find people—that’s what he does for a living, okay? He said he’d find me, then kill Brody in front of me. And I believe he’d do it.’
To punish her. He’d kill his child to punish her.
‘Thank you. I know you want to help me and everything, but the best way you can help me is if you don’t say anything to anyone.’
‘Come on, Rochelle, if you go to the police, they can—’
She shook her head emphatically. ‘He’s got lots of old mates in the cops. Even if they did arrest him, he’d be released on bail, then he’d find me and … Look, it’s better if—I’m asking—I’m really begging you: do not say anything to Ian or the police or anyone. That’d come back on me, okay? Make things worse for me. It’d be much safer for me if you don’t even—if you just leave it.’
Paula felt paralysed, useless, as she watched Rochelle pick up her handbag and open the door.
‘I’m going to take my sick boy home and look after him.’
‘Rochelle, please …’
‘I’ve been handling this a long time, okay? You don’t need to worry about Brody. You don’t need to worry about me.’
When Rochelle headed out into the corridor, Paula scrambled to follow. She watched Rochelle open her arms as Brody bolted out of the play area to reach her. She saw the relief on the boy’s face as he wound his fingers around his mother’s wrist.
Paula realised she’d been seeing Brody’s clinginess from the wrong angle. Really, this little boy had assigned himself the task of protecting his mother, so when he complained of illness, it was so he could stay home and keep watch over her—a child’s logical response to the danger she was in. Paula recalled Cameron’s vigilance around Stacey, constantly checking she was safe. Maybe the tonsillitis was a piece of luck, if it brought Rochelle here, if it meant there was a way to help her.
Rochelle was steadfastly avoiding eye contact but Paula demanded her attention with her authoritative doctor voice. ‘Rochelle, can you make an appointment to bring Brody back on Monday, so I can check his tonsils have cleared up?’
‘Oh. Okay. If you think …’
‘In the meantime, ring me if you’re worried at all,’ Paula added. ‘Ring anytime. Please.’
Paula wasn’t naive. However strong the urge to swoop in and wrap that woman in a protective force field, this had to be handled cautiously. The risk was clear, and instruments like apprehended violence orders had their limits. An AVO wasn’t a magic spell that kept all danger away. But still, but still, she would find a workable solution for Rochelle Ferguson.
For the rest of the day, whenever there was a gap between patients, and then at home in the evening, Paula conducted her research, tackling the problem methodically, compiling a list of refuges, welfare agencies, private companies that advertised their ability to help someone disappear. She discussed the situation with a smart woman at a refuge interstate (possibly a safer option) and put in a call to a police sergeant who’d offered helpful advice a couple of years ago. In all her enquiries, she took care not to let slip any identifying details, just in case.
The emotional burn about Stacey was fuelling this—in part, at least. Paula was
conscious of that, which was why she made an extra effort to check herself against the steps any responsible GP would take. Rochelle was like a prisoner wearing an electronic ankle bracelet, her range of movement restricted by the realistic fear her husband would kill her or her child. Any doctor would work hard to find an escape route for that woman.
Paula had looked after people for whom there’d been no true solution. On that list was Andy—one of her favourite patients, even if it was inappropriate to have favourites—who’d been diagnosed with motor neurone disease three years ago. There was the super-chatty woman who’d wanted a baby so fervently but, after throwing IVF, multiple surgical procedures, hypnotherapy and money at the problem, had been forced to give up.
And Paula had been sitting next to Remy when the specialist told him they’d exhausted every treatment. She’d peppered the oncologist with questions, mentioned a new drug trial cited in an online journal, asked for tests to be run again. But Remy had put his hand on her arm, without needing to say anything aloud. Stop now. There’s no way to fix this.
After that day, Paula had shifted tactics, throwing her energy into researching the most effective drug combinations for end-stage pain and the best ways to manage the dying process. She was pretty sure this had made things easier for Remy towards the end. He had said so, anyway. But it never felt like a solution to the problem they faced.
That was a lesson she’d had to learn as a young doctor—learning to sit with your inability to fix some patients. But Rochelle Ferguson didn’t belong on the unfixable list. The follow-up appointment on Monday would be another chance to talk to her without arousing her husband’s suspicion. This time, Paula would be equipped with information and viable options, even if she had no protective magic spells to offer.
SIX
ANITA REALISED SHE HAD UNCONSCIOUSLY STARTED TO car-dance, bum bouncing on the driver’s seat, shoulders twitching and hands drumming the steering wheel to the rhythm of the dance music on Fernanda’s playlist—a string of cumbia numbers, mostly Colombian, pulsing with percussive energy.