by Brandy Scott
But Lou had never got her drink, because Tansy had started dry heaving as they pulled into the driveway. She’d run into the house, Lou hot behind her, and slammed the bathroom door so hard a large lump of plaster from the ceiling had come crashing to the ground. Lou stared blankly now at the clumps of white sprinkled up the hallway. No one else, she thought. No one else is going to pick this up but me. Lou crawled across the carpet, gathering the pieces in her hand. She’d cleaned up vomit this morning, and she’d be the one bleaching the loo this afternoon. This was her life for the foreseeable future: bodily fluids and breakages. And she was too old for this. She didn’t have the energy to make sure the cleaning products were locked away, or the patience to answer endless questions about why the kitten couldn’t come home with them and where farts came from. Although it was unlikely this child would ever ask bright, inquisitive questions. Lou heard a sob from the other side of the wall and swallowed down one of her own.
And the worst thing was, Tansy was right. It would be easier for everyone now if she lost the baby, if she woke up in the middle of the night all cramps and blood. Lou clambered awkwardly to her feet, knees cracking. Had her own mother wished the same thing, standing outside this very bathroom door? Almost definitely. But this is different, Lou thought, as she dumped the plaster flakes in the bin. Totally different. This baby’s not going to have a proper life. And neither are we.
CHAPTER 24
‘Why’d you stop taking the pills?’
Pete twisted the beer bottle around in his hand, as though he could read the label. ‘Just here to pay my respects,’ Arthur had said when he’d turned up, clinking. Cameron had told the policeman to bugger off — ‘Are you fucking kidding me? He’s not even bloody cold’ — but Pete intervened. Although more to remind Cameron whose house it was than out of any desire for conversation. He placed the bottle carefully down on the concrete step. ‘Thought you said you were here as a mate.’
‘Oh, I am,’ said Arthur. ‘Trust me, this is the friendly conversation.’
‘Now that sounds like a bit of a threat.’
Arthur sighed. ‘Not a threat, Peter. More a warning. Because I’ve seen the paperwork, and they’re zeroing in on this. And given the circumstances — well, I wanted to give you a heads up. That this is going to be a thing.’
The door was open behind them; Pete could feel the colder air on his back, a stark contrast from the afternoon sun on his face. ‘Let’s walk,’ he said, reaching for his stick.
He led the senior constable down to the bottom of the garden, steps slow but fairly sure. ‘You’ve got the hang of that pretty quick,’ said Arthur. Pete waved away the compliment, even though he’d been quietly chuffed at how he was getting around. He’d ditched the sling as soon as he’d got home, preferring the stability of two arms and the punishment of the burning in his shoulder.
‘Fig trees?’ Arthur said, as they stepped off the path. His words were muffled by the long grass, the leaves whispering above their heads and crunching below their feet. ‘You’ve got quite an orchard down here.’
‘Just half an acre,’ said Pete. ‘Figs, apples. Kids used to have a stand outside.’ But he wasn’t down here to make small talk. ‘So tell me then. What are they going to ask?’
Pete paused to catch his breath, pressed a hand in to his aching ribs. ‘Sure you’re up to this?’ Arthur said. Pete nodded. ‘All right then. They want to know about the antidepressants, why you suddenly stopped taking them. A new prescription, unfilled. Follow-up appointment cancelled.’
‘I felt better.’ The inertia that had weighed him down since Julia died had finally lifted. Pete had become interested again, in flying, in his job. In life.
‘But that might have been the pills.’
‘It wasn’t. It was just a matter of time. Time sorts everything, eventually.’ Although Pete doubted time or pills could help with this one. He almost missed the numbness that had come after Julia’s death.
‘Did your doctor know? That you were planning to stop taking them?’
Pete shook his head and heard Arthur sigh.
‘You saw a psychologist. As well as getting the prescription from your GP.’
‘For God’s sake, my wife died.’
A pause. ‘You told him you wanted to die too.’
Could the psychologist disclose that? ‘A figure of speech. Over-dramatic. I was grieving.’
‘Pete, you talked about deliberately crashing a plane.’
Pete reached for a branch that wasn’t there, pushed his hand through a thick patch of leaves that offered no support. ‘Once,’ he said. ‘I mentioned it maybe once. And that’s all confidential,’ he added. ‘He shouldn’t have told them that.’
‘Your psychologist has a duty of care to report it, now that . . . well.’ A thick hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Peter. But you can see why it has to be followed up.’
Pete shrugged the hand off. ‘Are they saying I killed my boy?’ he whispered. ‘Is that where you’re going with this?’ He grasped his stick. ‘You know I didn’t. I wouldn’t. This is ridiculous.’
‘You have to admit, it doesn’t sound great. Under the circumstances.’
‘It was years ago.’ Three easily, just before Cameron left. ‘And it wasn’t how it sounds. There wasn’t any plan. It was just a . . . fantasy. To escape everything. I was never going to do anything.’
‘So explain that to them. Because with the alcohol —’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’d had a couple of beers. I thought they’d be out of my system.’
Arthur was somehow closer, in their chamber of leaves and tree. ‘The important thing now is to be honest. For Lincoln’s sake.’
‘I am being honest. I wasn’t drunk, and I’m not suicidal. I was, at one point, depressed, which is why I went and saw someone. I was being responsible.’ He hadn’t really wanted to hurt himself. It was more the absence of want; the lack of desire to do anything at all. ‘It’s what we tell the kids to do. Act before there’s a crisis.’ Pete had found himself looking at the controls, thinking, I could just keep flying. I could just keep going until I ran out of fuel and then it wouldn’t even be my decision. ‘I needed help, so I went and got it. It was a good thing to do. Christ.’
Arthur was standing beside him now, leaning against the same branch, which dipped under the strain. ‘Saying you don’t remember the accident, well, it sounds like you’re hiding something. Or that there was nothing to remember. Nothing out of the ordinary. Everything fine. No logical reason for you to crash.’
‘It wasn’t fine.’ The words were out of Pete’s mouth before he knew he was going to say them.
‘No?’
Could he do this? ‘The engine was running rough. Vibrating. Just before we came down.’
‘So why didn’t you say something earlier?’
‘My memory was hazy. I couldn’t be one hundred per cent. And I didn’t want to dump Smithy in it if I wasn’t absolutely certain.’ Pete pictured the shambling old mechanic and waited for a tug of guilt, but there was nothing. The man must be near retirement anyway. It wasn’t like he was ruining a career.
‘But now you are.’
What the hell. ‘Yes. We were only getting a partial amount of power. I couldn’t keep altitude. I don’t remember the actual crash, but I remember struggling, that the nose kept dipping. And that must have been it.’
‘Straight into the side of a hill.’
‘I think we probably clipped some trees on the way down. But yes.’
There was a creak as the branch released its heavy burden. ‘Right. Well, I’ll let them know. That you’ve remembered.’ Arthur’s voice came from a slightly higher place, now he was standing, and had a different tone. Disapproval? ‘You know they’ve recovered the engine, don’t you. And that they’ll test it.’ Scepticism. Maybe a bit of disappointment. ‘Don’t worry, if there was a fault or a maintenance issue, they’ll find it.’
‘I don’t want —’
‘You d
on’t want what?’
‘Smithy and the guys who run the club. They do a good job. With limited resources. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble.’
Arthur’s big hand was firm as he took hold of Pete’s arm. ‘It’s not about getting anyone in trouble,’ he said, as he led them both out of the dark thicket of trees and back into the sunlight. ‘You’re a teacher, you should understand that. It’s about taking responsibility. And if someone’s caused this accident, then they need to be held accountable, no matter who it is.’
Pete found Cameron lurking in the kitchen, back door wide open. All the better for eavesdropping. ‘You don’t need to hang around,’ he told him as he leaned against the bench to get his breath back.
‘Sorry?’
The jug had boiled half-a-dozen times that day already for sympathetic visitors. Pete felt along the bench until he found it, still warm and half-full, judging by the weight. ‘Here in Meadowcroft. You can head off now.’ He patted the top of the cups, selecting a bumpy clay mug one of the boys had made at primary. Cracked and mended a dozen times, the glue running over its surface like Braille, but it had outlived half his family. ‘You didn’t come back for me, just Lincoln,’ he told the window. ‘So you don’t need to stay.’
‘Oh, I’m staying,’ said Cameron. Standing behind him, but not bothering to hand him a tea bag or get the milk. ‘I might even move in for a while. You can’t see. You have to stop and rest every few minutes. You won’t be able to cope on your own.’
‘They’re sending a nurse,’ said Pete, rummaging awkwardly in the fridge. A container of something tipped over; he ignored it. ‘And the entire female population of Meadowcroft seems to be rostered to bring me lasagne. I’ll manage.’
‘Maybe I want to be here.’
‘You’ve barely been here. It took you three days to even get here.’ Pete filled the mug the way he’d been taught, one finger curled over the top so he could stop pouring when it hit the sensitive skin at the tip. So many tricks, just to survive.
‘I was working.’
‘Good to see you’ve got your priorities straight.’
‘At sea. I couldn’t exactly just leave.’ The voice hardened. ‘At least I was there when it mattered. Where were you when Mum died?’
‘You’re never going for forgive me for that, are you?’ But there was something comfortable in the familiar argument, the old hatred. It felt right, being hated.
‘Where is Suzanne these days? I haven’t seen her around town.’
‘She’s gone. You leave her alone.’
‘So who is it now?’ Cameron followed Pete into the living room, sounding exactly like the angry teenager he’d been when he left. The broken boy kicking out at the world, wanting everyone to hurt as much as he did. ‘The dark-haired woman? The fat one? Aimee whatsit.’
Pete felt for the dining room table, put his tea down carefully.
‘The two of you seemed very cosy at the hospital. Cosy enough to drag you away from Lincoln anyway.’
‘He was asleep,’ said Pete. ‘And she’s an old friend. We used to be on committees together. She does a lot for the community.’
‘Does she do a lot for you?’
Pete didn’t bother to answer that.
‘She’s not in your phone, this Aimee. Or is she there under a nickname? A pet name?’
Which was more disappointing — the fact that Cameron had gone through his things, or that Pete wasn’t surprised? He stared sadly out the sliding door at a garden he could no longer see. ‘Do you still have it?’
‘Might have,’ said Cameron, from the reclining chair. Pete’s chair. ‘Or I might’ve given it to the police. Does it matter?’
Did it? Pete wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember what was on it. A genuine memory lapse.
‘Or is it one of the others in there? Like Fionna, who’s Fionna?’
‘She’s my assistant.’
‘And Melinda?’
‘A local businesswoman. She came in to talk to the Year Tens about entrepreneurship.’
‘Right. Then what about —’
‘Cameron, what do you want?’ Other than to punish him, again. Which Pete perversely welcomed. Was he after money? But Pete was hardly taking round-the-world cruises on his school salary, and Cameron hadn’t tried to hit him up for the flight home. Pete realised he didn’t even know what his son was doing for a living. He’d ask, but it didn’t seem like a cosy-chat kind of moment.
‘I want to know what happened,’ came the voice from the recliner. ‘The police obviously think there’s more to it. So do I. I’m here to find out what you did.’
CHAPTER 25
Melinda had never really thought about babies before, but now she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
It didn’t help that half of Hensley was up the duff. What was the old saying — that when you were pregnant, you saw pregnant women everywhere? Obviously it was the same when you were trying to adopt. Melinda followed the curve of the river, enjoying the hard thud of the packed earth under her feet, the satisfying crunch of dry eucalyptus leaves. So far on her run, she’d passed numerous waddling basketball bellies, and three — three! — women with strollers, including one who was running almost as fast as Melinda. Melinda had dug in, put on some speed, left the woman back at the rail crossing. There was no way she was being beaten by someone in a maternity bra.
But. Trying to adopt. Melinda ducked to avoid being hit by a low branch. Was she? Really? She’d felt relieved when Claudia Lang had first mentioned the kind of waiting period they were looking at. Two, three years. At least. Visits and assessments and approvals and reports. Melinda’s application would be safely tied up in admin for the foreseeable future, with no danger of anyone presenting her with an actual live baby.
But at some point during their meeting, her feelings had changed. She’d wanted to beat the system. To make this happen. To get the damn baby already. Was that her natural competitiveness, or something else?
Two kilometres to go, and she could tick off her thirty for the week. Melinda ignored the cramping in her calf as both she and the river headed back into town. It didn’t really matter either way. She couldn’t lose. If this took forever, if it ultimately failed, at least she’d look good trying. And she wasn’t going to feel bad about capitalising on that. Melinda had put up with discrimination for years because of her childlessness. Constantly overlooked for Inspirational Women awards in favour of super-mums; people intimating that she somehow had it easy because she wasn’t juggling meetings with school runs. It wasn’t on a par with racism or anything, but it still wasn’t fair.
And if she didn’t fail, if she actually managed to adopt — well. There it was again, an unexpected excitement fluttering in her stomach, just below her navel. A gut feeling, as it were. Maybe she wasn’t as hard-boiled as everyone thought. Maybe, deep down, Melinda actually wanted to be a mother.
Either way, it proved she’d been right to go all tough love on Aimee. A small sick guilty feeling joined the happy flutter, but Melinda chose to ignore it as she picked up her pace on the home stretch. Because she needed to control the situation. Claudia Lang had virtually said so. The last thing you need is a scandal. Aimee thought Melinda was worried about her money, the company — and you are, let’s be honest — but it wasn’t only that. There was more at stake here.
And there was no way they’d caused that bloody accident.
Although Aimee seemed convinced.
And they all knew how Aimee could get when she was convinced about something.
You’re doing it for her own good, Melinda told herself as she turned off the river track. She’ll thank you when all this is over.
Melinda jogged down the road, slower now. Hensley High Street was almost deserted, shopkeepers shutting up for the day even though the sun was still high. ‘How does anyone make any bloody money?’ she’d exclaimed when she first moved back, but she’d secretly grown to love the early closing. The peace and quiet. There were a few tourists, win
dow shopping; Melinda made a big show of swerving round them. She knew she should be on the side of progress, pushing the town to open up more. But she’d also spent hours stuck in long-weekend traffic in Echuca, crawling along behind a procession of jet skis and motor boats. If Hensley stayed an anachronistic throwback, if the ban on tourism lasted forever, she wouldn’t mind at all.
Melinda fumbled for her key in her shorts pocket — not that there was any real need to lock up out here, but she’d promised Clint. Insurance. All that stock on the premises. Blah blah blah. She leaned against her front door — deep glossy cream, to match the iron railings, a magnet for graffiti but totally worth the hassle — and promptly fell through it.
Because the door was already open.
Burglars. Arsonists. Rapists. Kidnappers. Melinda’s heartbeat thudded in her ears. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself, as she picked herself up off the spiky rattan mat. There hadn’t been a break-in in Hensley for nearly a decade. But beyond the whoomp-whoomping of her own pulse, she could hear muffled thumps above her, like furniture being moved. Televisions being taken. Melinda grabbed an umbrella from the stand and began creeping up the stairs.
The footsteps were man-sized, heavy and flat. They were coming from her stockroom. Of course they were. She crept up to the first-floor landing, back against the wall. The door to her mini-warehouse was ajar, the light on. Melinda paused. Maybe I should just call the police, she thought, but then the door was pulled open and Melinda, shocked, swung the old-fashioned wooden umbrella into the face of the only other person in Hensley who had a key to her flat.