The Other Girl

by C D Major

  ‘Oh, she’d be late forties or so now, I’d think.’

  Her doubt threw Declan off his stride. ‘How do you mean, you think?’

  ‘She hasn’t lived here in years. They moved away after the war ended, that I’m sure, a long time ago now.’

  ‘Away, where?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. It’s not my way to get into other people’s business.’

  Her husband made the smallest cough and Declan glanced at him, a thin smile already fading.

  ‘So they no longer live here.’ Declan felt his body slump as he said the words, his excitement draining away. He didn’t want to hear the answer.

  What else could he ask? It had all seemed tantalisingly close. For a few seconds he’d imagined the woman directing him to a house with a red roof and a washhouse in the garden, chickens pecking at the dirt, a woman with an apron tied around her waist greeting him from an open door. It was all over. They had moved away. There was no one to find. Of course there was no one to find; what had he been thinking? And yet for a second, the details of Edith’s imaginings had seemed real, had seemed like something she really had experienced. He was about to make his exit.

  ‘Wild family in many ways,’ the woman said suddenly, as if aware she was losing her audience. ‘The girl left.’

  ‘Left?’ Declan stopped, turning back. ‘Left with the family?’ He was confused now.

  ‘There was a girl. Nina had a daughter with her first husband, I forget her name. She ran away a little time before they upped and moved. The woman collapsed in the grocery aisle once – my friend told me she had to summon the doctor.’

  ‘Ran away where?’ Declan asked.

  The woman gave him the look that told him she thought he was a simpleton. ‘That’s rather the point of running away, isn’t it?’

  ‘But was she ever found?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure now. I don’t think so, but perhaps. I didn’t know them myself.’

  ‘Why was she running away?’

  The woman raised both eyebrows. ‘Blow me down if I know. Young people – could be anything. She had a name that was a flower. Unusual.’

  Declan felt unease swirl within him.

  The woman paused for a moment, looking to the sky, her lips moving. Then, just when Declan was about to give up waiting, she looked back at him, one eye slower to focus than the other. ‘Oh, I remember now. Primrose. Her name was Primrose.’

  The first of the rain fell around him in big, fat drops.

  Chapter 26

  BEFORE

  Mrs Boone has died and Father wants Mother and me to join him to ‘pay our respects’. I’ve never seen someone who has died before and I wonder if Mrs Boone is still covered in the rug she wore by the fire.

  The pavement is wet from the rain and my button-up shoes are darker on the toe where the water is getting in. Mother and I are under a big, black umbrella but sometimes little drops get me and cling to my dress.

  We crunch, crunch over the stones to the big front door and the man who doesn’t speak opens it when Father pulls on the rope that makes the bell ring. I want to pull on the rope but I don’t ask because Father doesn’t look as if he will say yes, and he has told me I have to be on my ‘best behaviour’.

  The man shows us into a different room this time, down the hallway to the right, past the bottom of the big staircase with the shiny balls on top of the posts. The room is darker because the curtains have been pulled half closed. It’s funny walking into it: my eyes have to blink twice. It isn’t a big room, not like the other room with the fire and the sofas; there isn’t a lot of furniture in it, just a grandfather clock and a table pushed up against a wall, and on the table is a long wooden box which Mrs Boone is in.

  The room smells of spices and I don’t want to look in the box and I can hear the ticking of the clock, which seems very loud in the small room. Father has taken off his hat and he moves over to one end of the box and Mother puts her hand on my back and that makes me jump a little and I don’t want to move my feet forward, but she is moving and I don’t want her to move away from me so I hold on to her skirt and hide behind her leg to see what Father is doing. I can only see a bit of Mrs Boone’s nose over the edge and I am glad I’m not taller like Mother who would be able to see inside the whole box.

  Father says a prayer and Mother holds my hand when we say the Amen. There are flowers on the table. They’re already wilting. It seems sad that the flowers are dying too. I stare at the flowers and not at Mrs Boone’s nose, and then Father tells us we can leave.

  When we are back in the hallway I pull on Mother’s skirt. ‘Mother used to put aspirin in the water to make the flowers last longer.’

  Mother stops by the bannisters and looks over her shoulder quickly at Father who is talking to the man who doesn’t say anything. ‘Shh,’ she says, pushing me in the back towards the front door.

  ‘It would mean they would last longer. She told me.’

  ‘Edith, please.’ Mother is standing too close to me.

  I want her to know about the flowers, though. ‘My other mother said it was the best thing for them.’

  Mother grips my hand tightly, so tight that I make a noise because it hurts. Father looks over at us from next to the shiny balls at the bottom of the stairs and I am worried because his mouth moves into a thin line and his moustache twitches as he stares.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he says, walking towards us.

  ‘The flowers, Father . . .’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Mother says, as the man who doesn’t speak shakes out our umbrella in the porch.

  ‘I want to tell him about the flowe—’

  ‘Don’t, Edith,’ Mother says.

  ‘Don’t make a scene, Edith,’ Father adds, his voice extra quiet.

  I’m not making a scene, I think, but I don’t say anything because I know that wouldn’t be being on my best behaviour. Sometimes I hate being little and want to be big again because when my stepfather Roland told me off I would tell him to bugger off and run to the plannies and smoke the cigarettes I stole from the pocket of Mother’s house dress.

  The man who doesn’t speak hands Mother the umbrella and we leave over the crunchy stones.

  Mother and Father don’t talk at all when we walk, and the rain is harder now, bouncing off the ground, and my button-up shoes are wet through. I almost miss the lace-up shoes I had when I was the other girl; the heavy soles stopped my feet getting wet. I remember I’d always wanted pretty button-up shoes then. How silly.

  I’m glad we’ve left the house and the box with Mrs Boone lying in it. She is going to have a funeral; Father is going to speak at that too and then she will go to heaven. This thought makes me stop still in the street. Mother keeps walking and I am out in the rain feeling the fat drops hit my head and drip from my plaits.

  ‘What happens when you’re not found?’ I ask.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Father says.

  ‘Edith.’ Mother bites her lip. ‘You’re soaked through.’

  ‘What happens?’

  I wasn’t found and put in a box. I was left there; even if I probably wouldn’t have wanted to be put in a box, I was still left there. And now I’m here and my head is hurting again and I feel the ache that I feel more and more now when I think of my old home and what happened.

  ‘Will she find me?’

  ‘Will who find you?’

  ‘Will my other mother find me?’

  ‘Edith . . .’

  Father is gripping the handle of his umbrella and telling us to get home now. He is angry; I know he is angry, even though his voice is so quiet I can hardly hear him over the rain. Someone on the other side of the road stops, looks over – a man in a round hat, his collar up. Father turns away, his cheeks two bright spots of pink like Mrs Periwinkle’s.

  ‘Get that girl home.’

  Mother tugs on my arm and pulls me under the umbrella next to her.

  I know I was never found; he left me there. He wouldn’t hav
e told them where I was; he had always lied to them – ever since he had appeared with his father to live with us. He’d lied when Mother asked him about the yellowed bruises on my thighs. She’d believed him: that they were nothing to do with him. His dad had asked what she was suggesting. He’d lied that it wouldn’t hurt when he’d followed me down to the plannies, pushed aside my singlet. He’d lied when he told me he didn’t follow me: I used to see him in the creek watching me in my swimsuit.

  He wouldn’t have told them. And only he would have known where I was.

  My skin has little bumps on it now and my teeth have started to chatter but it isn’t just from the rain.

  What happens if no one finds you?

  I feel like the water is inside me, too. Inside the other me. The one still left in the cave. I walk all the way home feeling full of it, my head swimming with it.

  And that is when the dreams started.

  Chapter 27

  NOW

  Her name was Primrose.

  He realised he had never planned anything much, imagining a hopeless day in Oamaru and returning to Seacliff satisfied he had truly tried everything.

  Her name was Primrose.

  It was an unusual name. How had Edith known it? He sank deeper into his jacket, a cold stealing over him as he tried to explain it away. He barely registered the waiter removing his cup, the liquid stone-cold. It was all impossible.

  He knew he couldn’t drive back now. What did all this mean? If one detail was correct, what else might be true? He shook his head from side to side, feeling dizzy with it.

  He got up quickly, leaving a tip, reaching for his hat and pushing outside. The woman hadn’t been sure, but had directed him up to a few streets that ran along the clifftop. The rain had eased and there were drying spots of water pockmarking the pavement.

  He walked for a while, past the harbour and up on to a road that wound itself back along the coast. There were road names he didn’t recognise, a telephone exchange, a post office, a dusty poster, peeling in one corner, appealing for army recruits. He wondered how many men from the town were over in Europe or fighting in the Pacific, felt the familiar squeeze of guilt that he had stayed at home. Pushing the thought back, he felt a renewed focus. If he was here, he needed to be useful.

  His breaths shortened and his legs ached as the incline became steeper. Then there was a fork in the road; a cluster of houses sat behind a newer row of homes that looked out over the sea.

  With only a handful of vague details to go on, he seemed to spend hours searching the nearby houses for a red roof, disturbing a man who had moved in with his daughter a few years ago, an elderly woman in the middle of cleaning, hair tied up in a scarf, a harassed look on her face as he apologised for wasting her time.

  He was hungry now, and the weather had picked up; the wind was stronger, making his ears ache as he kept searching. He reached the end of a row of two-storey houses, some with manicured patches of lawn in front of them, tended flower beds, others with rusting trucks on the driveway, rotting benches beneath peeling windows.

  At the end of the row was a small house, the tin roof rusted, burnt orange in places, and something in him stirred. He moved across, eyes not leaving the building, which looked as if it might collapse in the next storm. It was derelict: boarded-up windows on the ground floor, a shattered pane of glass on the first floor. He tried to peer through the cracks in the wood, his hands avoiding the nail sticking out, see inside the house, but it was impossible; the glass was smeared or the curtains closed and he only saw darkness.

  He moved around to the back of the house, down a pathway overgrown with weeds and plants that caught on his trouser legs. He emerged into a garden and found a porch, a few steps leading to a back door that was locked shut. He stood looking out over overgrown grass, an area at the bottom that might once have been a vegetable patch, a washhouse on his right, the roof now collapsed in. He felt his hands prickle, the truth edging closer, the beat of his heart a little quicker.

  He approached the washhouse door, which had rotted, swinging back on its hinges as he pushed at it. Scratching somewhere in the darkness; he felt his skin itch. The smell was musty and damp, the air heavy in the small, dark space; a whisper of cobwebs brushed his cheek and he jerked backwards, swiping at his face. He made out a hole in the floor, a stained ring of wood around it; on the shelf above it a stub of grubby candle. He stared at it a moment, wondering when it had last been lit.

  Backing out of the rancid outbuilding he breathed in deeply, the air sharp and fresh, his lungs full of it. He looked up at the house. The windows at the top were intact and he could make out the white-plastered ceiling of a room, felt a spark of excitement. Perhaps he could get up there, peer inside? He felt another stirring within him, that perhaps this could be the place Edith had described. He shook his head: impossible.

  He couldn’t stop himself moving, though, looking for something to try and climb up; he roamed the garden, the long grass soaking through his shoes and socks, his feet damp as he returned triumphantly with a ladder that had seen better days. Propping it up on the side of the house he placed one foot on the lower rung, his shoes slipping, a hand shooting out to clutch at the flaking wood. He stepped up slowly, feeling his heart beat faster as he moved higher, trying not to think of the crunch of bones if he fell, that he could lie there for days, weeks, without being found.

  Ivy crept up and over the windowsill as he placed both hands on it, the leaves tickling the palms of his hand. The glass was dirty, spattered with rain marks and dead insects, a large cobweb across the top left pane. He stepped up on to the top rung, shifted his hands, trying to feel more secure, and stared inside. It was a small bedroom. On a single shelf on the wall opposite he could make out an old tin; a book, thick and leather-bound; a comb; what might have been postcards or letters; and a doll with one eye missing. He stared at the doll as if it were staring straight back at him through the glass, remembering another half-sentence from five-year-old Edith, something she had said about her old doll: she hadn’t been smart like Mrs Periwinkle – she’d only had one eye. He felt his left foot slip and cursed under his breath as he gripped the windowsill tighter.

  For a moment he thought he saw a flash of something through the half-open doorway: a movement. The room was making him feel edgy; he felt sweat bead on his hairline despite the cold. He looked down and saw a single bed underneath the window, a worn blanket on top of a filthy mattress, straw poking out in tufts. Above it was a lopsided picture of boats bobbing on a blue sea set in a cheap wooden frame; next to the bed, a small table, another stub of candle and a small, square sepia photograph. He squinted at the image, of what looked to be a teenage girl; a thin, worried face, staring up at the ceiling. He was too far away to make out any details but he felt his muscles tighten. Primrose? His eyes swept across the rest of the room, resting on the marks on the bare wooden floorboards that could be footprints.

  A gust of wind nudged at him and he clung on, eyes closed, before descending the ladder slowly, wanting to be back down on solid ground. The doll was the last thing he saw as he lowered himself, its one eye watching him. He pictured it suddenly whispering a goodbye, and shivered. He slipped on the second-to-last rung and felt himself twist as he landed in the grass, breaking his fall with an arm, feeling a muscle pull in his shoulder.

  Lying there breathless he slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. Rotating his shoulder he stood up, taking a last look at the window. Lowering the ladder, he left it propped against the side of the house. As he did so he noticed faded lettering on the back door, near the top. He craned his neck to peer closer, making out the hand-painted letters, many worn with age. A word, ‘Karanga’, made him jerk backwards.

  He wondered about it all: the name ‘Kara something’, the doll, the girl in the photograph, the feel of the place, as he made his way back down the pathway, as he brushed the debris and mud off his clothes, as he moved back down the road. He turned down the winding coastal path, t
he wind buffeting his coat, making it billow out behind him. If it was the same house, what did that mean?

  He didn’t know why he did it; he felt a tug in his consciousness, something forcing his head to turn. The house had been empty. He’d been sure. He pictured the dust, the boarded-up windows, the single shelf, the doll, the air of neglect. He only glimpsed it for a moment: a silhouette in the side window of the house, a woman looking out in his direction. The girl from the sepia photograph, trapped in the small, square window. He blinked and the image left him, the window now empty, a grey rectangle, blank, but something still unsettled him as he finally walked away.

  Chapter 28

  NOW

  As he pulled into the driveway of Seacliff he came to, looking up at the imposing institution; no memory of the drive back, the landscape slipping past, the sun sinking. His neck craned to see higher and higher, the silhouette of the turrets and towers against the moonlit night sky, the dark windows striped with iron bars, locked shutters. The place appeared like a great grey sleeping giant, swallowing up everyone within it. One narrow window at the top of a nearby turret glowed orange. For a moment he imagined Edith up there, sleeping peacefully in a circular room, waiting like a medieval princess for a kiss to awaken her from her endless nightmare. He shook his head, shifting in his seat as he circled the driveway and moved through the narrow stone drive into a courtyard behind the kitchens.

  Turning off the engine he sat for a moment, not wanting to get out of the vehicle; instead he imagined Oamaru again, the things that matched the notes he’d read, the snippets Edith had mentioned. He caught his eye in the driving mirror, clouded with what he had discovered. His rational mind was perplexed, two thin lines appearing between his brows. How was it possible? He thought back to an article he had read at university, something he had dismissed out of hand: a child in India who had purportedly known facts about a woman who had died a few years before in a different village to her own; she had been able to pick out relatives, and recalled details of her death a few days after childbirth. He’d skimmed and scoffed and now he was desperate to find it again.