‘I must get in through the O’Bough door first. You think you’ve talked your way in but they turn on you. It’s dispiriting. I almost had him. For a second. He was trusting me.’
‘If you almost had him shouldn’t you go back?’
‘I intend to.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow. Got to keep him fresh. Can’t let him think I’ve slunk off. I want to ask another favour of you, Peeko. I want you to come with me. I want you to play being my wife.’
She couldn’t speak, she was so stunned.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘Well?’
‘You’re serious?’
‘I am. I usually work alone.’
‘I’d be your wife?’
‘You would, in the playacting sense.’
Would the ruse be believed? One look at her, one look at me. Man and wife did not spring to mind automatically. She’d have to put on a flash dress. High heels. Perhaps straightened hair. She’d given up smoking, at least in my presence, but she’d have to smell of Chanel and not nicotine. The more I considered it the more I regretted the suggestion but Peeko wouldn’t let the plan fizzle. She would doll herself up, she promised. She’d be Mrs Words perfectly.
‘This is such fun. Trust me. I’ll make a good wife.’
‘The girl, Kelli, she had postnatal depression. That was her defence. I’d want you to say that you had it with our child.’
‘We have a child?’
‘Yes. Called Ollie. Fourteen years old. You had postnatal depression with him.’
‘It was terrible,’ she said.
‘Don’t overact.’
‘Sorry. I’m getting into the swing.’
‘You went and saw someone.’
‘And I got better.’
‘Yes, you did. The illness passed.’
‘I was so relieved.’
The next part I had to say carefully, sensitively.
‘The illness passed but left you different physically. You let yourself go, so to speak. You are not the woman you once were. But I stuck by you.’
I’ll give Peeko this, she’s no thin-skin. Couldn’t insult her if you dredged up all the worst slurs in this mean-mocking world. She nodded and smiled her enthusiasm.
‘You say all that to Mr O’Bough. Then if we get in the door you say it to Kelli. You’d have to let me run things. This is delicate work.’
‘I will, darling. I should call you darling.’
‘I suppose. But you follow my lead on things.’
‘Sure.’
‘My line will be that you’ve dealt with it so bravely. You’ve kept the pain to yourself. I admire it—a link in us to the hardier generations, grandparents and their trench wars, their feeds of stale bread and dripping. You have suffered in the old way: in silence. But that is not the new way. That should not be Kelli’s way. Kelli should be open and talk the pain out. It’s cruel of the courts to deny her catharsis.’
‘That’s lovely.’
‘The mission might get dangerous, you know.’
‘I understand.’
‘One wrong word and whack! the guy thumps us.’
‘Really?’
She did not say ‘Really?’ fearfully. This was Peeko Mellich. She’d been thumped, bitten, shot at, knifed. She was titillated. And her eye slits—there was dead glitter in them, a watery glistening across the grey sunken whites.
‘Do we fight back?’
‘Settle down, Peeko. We want in, not fighting.’
‘Of course. Sorry. All the things I’ve done, Words. I’ve never sat down and got intimate with a killer.’
‘Stop right there. You’ve used the poisonous word. “Killer” will get us turfed into the gutter. “Killer” was what the headlines called the girl. And “murderer” and “mad-dog mum”. Our angle is the opposite. She’s the victim. The softest language we can use we use.’
‘Sorry. Stupid of me.’
‘When the Bough Breaks will be my headline. Soft and sensitive.’
‘Clever use of their surname.’
‘Thank you. I have to run. Got lines to write.’
A kiss on the mouth again, and again I let her.
27
The next day we were sitting in my car outside the O’Boughs’.
‘I’ll knock. “I’ve brought my wife along”—that sort of thing. Then you say you have stood in Kelli’s shoes and thank God you were saved. You’ll have to talk quickly before the door gets closed. It’s important they think we’re as one with them. Then I’ll try to talk us inside the place. If that happens, you let me run the show from there.’
She had a bouncy spasm in her left leg. Not nerves, thrills.
Off we went, up the drive with white pebbles for a garden and a box hedge going curly brown from seldom seeing a hose.
I knocked four times, gently as if a neighbour with a favour to ask and an offering of cake. Should have brought a cake. Too late now.
Mrs O’Bough stood there but then came hubbie. I barely got a word out and he’d jumped down the step. His face so close to my face our noses touched and I craned backwards. That’s when he saw Peeko. He turned from me and stared at her. At me. At her. At me again.
‘You two together or separate?’
He took a pace towards her. I threw down my satchel and prepared for fighting, jaw jutted.
‘She’s my wife,’ I yelled.
I was about to yell Leave her or I’ll hit you but Peeko spoke to the man. She wasn’t scared, which was unnatural but typical Peeko. She said, ‘Please forgive me, Mr O’Bough. This is all my fault.’
He jerked his head up, confused.
‘You see, Mr O’Bough, I’m Callum’s wife and I was so touched by his concern for your daughter that I asked him to bring me here. Because I have had those terrible feelings that poor Kelli had. I know the way they crush your senses. You’re so tired and desperate, like you’re being tortured.’
He grunted his lack of interest in Peeko’s experiences. Said he didn’t manhandle women but if we didn’t leave he’d throw us both through his gate like bags of rubbish.
I waved for Peeko to follow me: we should give up and not risk an incident. At times like this you retreated and made new plans, but Peeko stood there and repeated her line about being desperate.
‘Like your brain can’t do its thinking properly. What Kelli ended up doing could have been me or anyone. Look at me…I used to be attractive and it turned me into this.’
She spoke with such forcefulness that spit flew out of her throat. I didn’t want her overdoing the acting with spitting.
Yet her ‘this’ business was working. Bitter O’Bough asked for proof we were married.
Would driver’s licences do? I asked. We’d rehearsed this too. Basic bullshitting.
She showed hers first and I handed him mine.
‘Your names are different. Your addresses are different.’
‘I’ll explain that,’ I said. ‘It’s European.’
‘Don’t fib to him, Callum. Mr O’Bough, it’s not European. We’ve been through problems. My husband has not been a faithful man. I’ve got him on a leash now but we’ve lived separately for a while.’
He scratched the stubble above his ears. His eye corners arched at ‘leash’ as if a word to make men laugh. Even hard men guarding their family home.
‘What I’m saying, Mr O’Bough, is that we’re not innocents here, me and my husband, I’ll be honest. But we do have a proposal.’
O’Bough tossed our licences to the ground and said, ‘Not interested.’
‘You haven’t heard it yet,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a way for Kelli to see her baby. Little Jade. Isn’t that the baby’s name?’
‘Court said no to that.’
‘They said doubtful. That’s very different from a definite no.’
‘Jade’s father’s against it. He’s turned on Kelli. I never liked him much but I guess I can’t blame him.’
&nb
sp; ‘How desperate is Kelli to see Jade?’ I said. I bent down, picked up our licences. ‘Pretty desperate, I’d bet.’
‘You have no idea. It’s the only thing keeping her alive. She’s tried to top herself three times. A chance to see Jade, that’s all she lives for.’
‘I can imagine it,’ Peeko said, a gentle inflection of empathy. Didn’t know she had it in her, that soft voice, the sight of a tear in her eye.
It was working. O’Bough had gone limp in the shoulders. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘How do you help someone, all that guilt in them? How do you stop that guilt? You can’t. I’d do anything.’
Peeko was pretending to lift tears off her eyelids with her finger. ‘I would too,’ she said.
I thought O’Bough was about to join her with his own real tears—out came his handkerchief and he gave a soft blow. He folded the handkerchief and stared down at it. Then he sneered, at himself I presumed, his hopeless situation. I could tell it was not a sneer of hatred for us—he nodded thank you to Peeko for her kind words. He looked at me and said, ‘She’s a good sort. A good heart.’
He blew his nose again and Peeko moved closer to him and said he was being too generous. ‘To be honest with you, I was only helping Callum because, well, my husband’s career’s stalling and he’s desperate to make history.’
This was not rehearsed. It was instinct, initiative. This was my foot-in-the-door intrusion, not hers. I did not appreciate the interference.
‘Steady on, Peeko. I think what Peeko means is that there are multiple motivations for my…’
She spoke over me, reached out and tugged at my sleeve. ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘We’ll leave Mr O’Bough alone.’
‘No, no.’
She shushed me, had me by the arm, pulling and shushing.
We got to the gate and I grabbed on to the brick fence.
‘We’re almost in, Peeko. We’ve almost cracked it. We had him and you’ve fucked it.’
‘I have not. I know what I’m doing. We’ve got him.’
O’Bough was standing in front of his door watching us. I yanked my arm free and started back towards the house but Peeko was tugging again and made me stop.
That’s when O’Bough called out. ‘You can meet Kelli. Tell her what you told me,’ he said. ‘The proposal.’
We were in.
I did not want Peeko taking credit for this moment. ‘I knew I had him,’ I muttered. ‘Had him in my palm.’
‘I finished him off.’
Peeko kept taking the initiative. ‘Mr O’Bough,’ she said. ‘My husband’s reasons may be all about him but he does know how to apply professional pressure. If anyone can help Kelli, he can.’
‘Don’t overdo it. I’ll run this,’ I growl-whispered. ‘You come in and be the kind face. Don’t interfere.’
We walked up the drive.
‘We’re squabbling like an old married, Mr O’Bough,’ Peeko babbled.
‘Mr O’Bough, we’d be honoured to meet with Kelli.’ I offered my hand and his strong hand took it and gripped for two shakes. He shook three times with Peeko.
The interior wasn’t to my taste but I said lovely house and pretended to be envious.
‘We’ve always gone for the heritage-style properties, but we’re tired of them, aren’t we, Peeko? Too much maintenance.’
We were following him up the hallway.
‘Lovely colour, this carpet. Not too white. Isn’t it, Peeko? Sort of pearly.’
Photos on the wall of Irish cottages and crumbled castles. Where the hallway opened out to the kitchen there were picture hooks in the plaster but no pictures. No ornaments or flower vases on the shelves. White stone benches with no homely fruit bowls. No dishes in the sink or pans on the stove—they were hanging along a rail above the serving island. And were glinting as if polished with Silvo.
‘Lovely and clean,’ I said. ‘Whoever does it can come and do our house.’
‘All Kelli,’ said O’Bough. ‘She’s got this obsession now. Cleans everything all the time. She can’t sit for long. Has to get up and scrub things.’
I asked if we should take our shoes off. He said don’t bother; Kelli would mop the entire floor once we’d gone.
I usually ask to go to the toilet once I’m in. Toilets betray the character of a person: trustworthy-spotless or warning-sign grime. I poke around the bathroom to read their medication. Heart pills don’t worry me, or anything diabetic. I’m wary of taking their word if they’re on sedatives. No point in this instance, she’d have sedatives stacked roof-high. If she didn’t I’d be worried. She could arc up and start screaming or worse if I wasn’t perfect-pitched with my finessing. There were no knives on the magnetic knife strip in the kitchen, I noted.
Beyond the kitchen was a dining area, a misted glass-top table and chairs steel and high-backed. Beyond that a living room, a TV half the wall’s size and L-shaped couches.
‘I’ll get Kelli if you want to sit down.’
He pointed to the dining table but sitting round a table too soon would look official, as if we were police or barristers interrogating her. I wanted some soft-cushion relaxation. The couch. The chance to sink into it and be a friend.
‘Do you mind?’ I asked.
‘Suit yourself.’
Peeko was on my left side, puffing from the exertion of collapsing so low into a yielding couch.
O’Bough went up a hallway that veered deeper into the house. He opened a sliding door slowly and went in. He slid the door closed behind him.
‘Notice the knife magnet?’ I whispered.
‘I did.’
‘I’d say that’s for safety. Her safety. Suicide and that.’
‘I’d say so.’
‘Be a nice touch in the story. Good minutiae.’
The sliding door opened and here they came. O’Bough the leader, then his wife. Behind her, Kelli.
What a relief. She wasn’t tattooed and trashy-looking, which makes readers think the poorer of someone. I like to describe people in my stories—tattoos and trashy would spoil that option. Kelli was perfect. Late twenties. Timid and elfin, no hard face like her father. No truculent scowl. She had her mother’s tenderness in her features, her long brown plaited hair. She blinked and didn’t look at us directly. She held her mother’s hand and took small steps in pink thongs. She had on Levi jeans. I nearly clapped my hands. Levi’s say young and innocent. Tracksuit pants say rough and dire. I’ve been known to insist on a change of clothes: ‘Give me something to work with that sells the good in you.’
I stood to greet her. I helped Peeko stand and I smiled and waited to be spoken to.
‘This is my daughter, Kelli. This is Mr Smith.’
‘Call me Callum. And this is my wife, Peeko. And you are…’
‘I’m Marie,’ said Kelli’s mum.
We shook hands. I held Kelli’s tiny handshake with the lightest of squeezes. Her fingers were freezing. Sedatives can do that—lower your blood pressure. I took my hand away so she didn’t judge me as too forward. I helped Peeko sit and then I sat down.
I had to say something inane. You just can’t go bang and fire off questions.
‘How’ve you been, Kelli? Enjoying this sunny weather?’
‘She’s been better,’ said her mother. ‘She was better when there was a chance, you know, to see Jade.’
‘I understand.’
‘They take away her hope if they take away that.’
‘I don’t blame them,’ said Kelli. We had to lean to hear her. ‘I don’t blame Greg.’
‘Greg’s the father,’ O’Bough said.
‘He was a good father. But he can’t look at me now.’
‘Our theory is his family has got in his ear,’ Marie said.
‘We were on good terms. He hates me now. He didn’t believe I did it. Not till the evidence was out. I don’t blame him.’
‘Kelli, I have an idea. I believe I can help you see Jade. Not for certain. Please, I’m not offering false hope. I’
m not promising the sky will part and mercy will shine down. But I know a few tricks.’
O’Bough sat beside his daughter and craned forward to speak to me. ‘The lawyers suggested it at one stage, early on when Kelli was charged and in the adult courts. Get a journalist on side, they said. Drum up support and public sympathy. I was against it big-time. The way they’d called her murder mum. You seem a bit different, with your wife coming along. Kelli, sweetheart, Peeko here, she had problems herself, didn’t you? It ruined her health. She’s not the same woman.’
Peeko nodded and had the good sense not to talk. I knew what to say.
‘Nature is so indiscriminate. With Peeko it says, She will get better. It will take its toll physically but leave her functional. With you it keeps going and doesn’t let up. Your lawyers were right to suggest what they did. And your father was right to reject it. The difference with me is that I’ve had personal experience. Peeko has opened my eyes to your world because she headed down the same pathway.’
‘You see, Kelli? I told you this was different. The thing is, Mr Smith…’
‘Callum.’
‘Could it do more harm than good? When Kelli wanted access to Jade we went from adult to the Children’s Court. The lawyers said it’s illegal to speak out now.’
Kelli took her hand from her mother’s to her father’s.
‘That’s what I worry, that’s what I say to Dad: if it upsets the judges they might say, No, you’ll never see Jade as punishment.’
‘That is very true,’ I said. ‘There’s always that risk. And I would advise against that risk if your case was more hopeful. As it stands you have little hope. My writing your story might turn matters in your favour.’
‘Or might not,’ she said.
‘Or might not.’
I left it there. Let the silence work on her.
Off the Record Page 18