Senator strolled home the following morning and busied himself eating grass by the shed, ignoring Nellie’s incessant barking. Police, volunteer search-and-rescue teams and Bill were already out looking for Rebecca; they’d headed out at first light. Bullaburra station covered around 80,000 acres, followed by the Williams’ station. If she was headed in that direction, there was a lot of land to cover. By the time Meg and Eve had returned the previous afternoon, it had been too late, too dark to look. Bill had gone out anyway, to no avail.
A young probationary police constable, Kristin Wran, a city girl who was in her fourth month of a two-or three-year stint at Bourke Police Station and was no use on a horse, asked the girls the same questions they had been asked the night before by the police, by Bill.
‘Where did you last see her?’
‘Can you take us to where you last saw her?’
‘What was she wearing?’
‘Did she take any water?’
‘How skilled a rider is she?’
‘Is she capable of handling Senator?’
‘Why did she take off on her own?’
‘Are you girls okay?’
Only Bill had mentioned Rebecca by name.
Over the course of that day, a strange circle of comfort developed. In the kitchen, Probationary Constable Wran comforted the girls, telling them not to be upset, it would all be okay, that it sounded like this girl had a mind of her own and there wasn’t much they could have done about it. In the bedroom, Eve comforted Sarah and Meg, telling them that Rebecca should never have ridden off, it was her decision to ride off. Back in the kitchen, Meg comforted the searchers by making endless cups of tea.
When Bill arrived back in the afternoon, he sculled a glass of water over the sink in the kitchen and called Meg into his bedroom. He had been searching for nine hours. There were black patches all over his face and down his arms. He smelt. On the edges of his panic and in the centre of his planning, he’d had time to think since he’d spoken to all the girls one more time that morning, since he’d asked his questions, since they had all lied to him. Meg stood at the end of his bed, the bed she used to walk up to to tap her dad on the shoulder at night when she was scared. He would roll over and whisper, ‘Cuddle up to my back, Meggie,’ and she would. Her hand would just make it to his neck, and it would stay there until she fell asleep.
‘I don’t understand, Meg. I don’t understand why you would let her ride that horse. Why you would leave her to ride to the Williams’?’
‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry.’
Bill’s raised voice came crashing down the hall to Sarah and Eve, who sat on the floor in the bedroom. Meg never told her dad that she was at home when all this happened, that she was asleep on the ruby couch in front of the TV. It was too big now to go back.
‘She was my responsibility,’ he said.
‘I never wanted her to come.’
‘Meg!’ Bill’s voice thundered.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘Stop. Stop, Meg. It’s too late.’
Eve and Sarah heard Meg scream. Bill had punched the wall so hard he broke two knuckles. They heard Meg beg him.
‘Dad, let me clean it,’ she said, reaching for his bloody, broken hand.
He snatched his arm away from her. ‘Stop it.’ He pushed past her. ‘I have to go.’
They could hear Meg through tears, repeating, ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry. We’ll find her soon.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Meg.’
The sound of Bill’s heavy footsteps stopped at the back door. There was that pause to put on his boots. Bill whistled for Nellie to jump on the back of his motorbike. Eve and Sarah found Meg on her dad’s bed, curled up in the foetal position, her hands over her face.
‘Go away!’ she yelled at them through her hands. ‘Go away!’
In the end, it was David Wilson, an electrician, who found Rebecca – eight kilometres east of the homestead in tall scrub and small rocks. She hadn’t got as far as they’d believed, and the searchers had been combing the wrong territory for the day. Rebecca had come off Senator, giving her a compound fracture of the femur, so she was unable to walk. Drag marks showed she had crawled about three hundred metres.
David shrugged. ‘If it was her arm and not her leg. If she came just one kilometre to the west, we wouldn’t have missed her. If the bone hadn’t gone through her skin and made her bleed. If she had been found earlier.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Ants got her,’ he said.
The ants in her nose, mouth, eating her leg, moving up her torso: it would become yet another story out here to balance the heartwarming tale of the loyal kelpie who, when her owner came off his horse, kept running to the dam and jumping in and returning so he could lick her fur to stave off dehydration. This one would be about the city girl who fell off a horse and was eaten by ants.
Bill sat at the all-in-one telephone stool and table in the hallway. He wrapped the twisted telephone cord around his fingers. There was a light on at the bottom of the hallway, far away, and he cleared his throat and then hung up.
‘I just need a second,’ Bill said to the telephone. He went and poured himself a whisky and sculled it. Then he poured another and took it to the telephone table and placed it near the phone.
The three girls sat in a circle in the bedroom, barefoot, facing each other. Eve grabbed Meg’s hand, and Meg snatched it back. The door was closed. They were still. They didn’t say a word and knew they never could. Bill had told the police he should be the person to tell Janice, Rebecca’s mum.
‘I’m sorry, Meg. I’m so sorry,’ Eve said.
‘I’m sorry, Meg,’ Sarah repeated.
Sarah wiped the tears from under her eyes. Then Eve did the same. Meg was still. Eve grabbed her hand again and wouldn’t let go. Meg tried to pull her fingers through Eve’s grip, and Eve added her left hand, grabbing the top of Meg’s wrist so tightly that Meg gave up, letting her hand go limp. Meg didn’t pull her hand away and Meg didn’t look up.
‘Hello, Janice, it’s Bill Patterson. God, I’m so sorry. There’s been a terrible accident.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Her shadow mocked her. It was stout and dumpy and formed a messy puddle in front of her feet as she walked around the car, packing it with bits and pieces, making sure she didn’t forget a thing. Eve rechecked her tote bag, opening it up on the footpath and bending over it to make sure everything was where it should be. She closed it, picked it up and put it on the front seat.
Kat began to cry, and Sarah patted her back firmly, Sebastian and Ben tucked into her hips, both looking up at their mother. Tomato sauce from lunch was smeared on Sebastian’s top lip. Sarah passed Kat to Eve. Eve kissed Kat’s belly and the cry grew. Eve put Kat’s face into the soft curve of her neck and rubbed her back and sang, in a small, tentative voice, into her ear as she carried her around to the back door of the car.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy when skies are grey.
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away.
She saw the long, straight stretch of bitumen in front and Bill’s thick hands on the wheel, as he sang to Meg in the car. She saw Meg hitting him in the arm and calling him a dag. She saw Meg standing at his wake with an uneaten cucumber sandwich in her left hand, and she didn’t understand how Meg could forgive her. She took the sandwich, and Meg flinched. Eve knew that her sin was contagious.
Kat’s mouth opened and sucked in the heavens, and then replaced the emptiness, the nothing, with an almighty roar. This giver of strength roaring at the endless stream of cars.
‘I better get her home, Sarah.’
Eve knew she lacked courage, but she didn’t need it. She knew her fingers were numb, but she didn’t need to feel just yet. She fumbled at the door handle with one hand and held Kat close to her chest with the other.
She needed one moment. To take one moment and use it. One mo
ment, one step, one word, one hand outstretched pointing west into the golden light, and everything could change.
Her new life began with six words. No fire and brimstone. No screams or shots fired beneath the flesh. ‘Richard, I didn’t take my plane,’ she said. He said he would come and get her. She said just try. He said she was stupid. She said it was time to stop caring even if she was. Richard dropped his voice. He told her she was his princess. She was his princess.
The horse, its mouth open, being pushed on by its master, charging, soaring over Richard’s shoulder, came towards her.
Just try to catch me now, Richard. I’ve gone.
Eve put her hand on top of Kat’s head and leant into the back seat of the car. Kat’s sweet smell was bigger than her cry. There was a map of New South Wales on the back seat, and Eve brushed it onto the floor, out of her way. A guide to the earth, the earth that opened up and swallowed things. It opened up. It opened her up.
She traced the soft curves of Kat’s right ear with her thumb and forefinger. She would return after the Saturday-morning cello lesson with the little girl who pouted. The girl whose mother sat in the corner of Eve’s front room, pretending to read her book, always watching, making sure her money was well spent. She would go back to Tallow again.
She would take Kat to see her mother, and they would lay down fresh flowers. Kat would crawl over the stone, and Eve would take the pebbles out of her chubby hands as she raised them to her mouth. ‘Meg Patterson. 1976–2010. Mother, daughter, friend. She loved and was loved.’ Eve thought it still wasn’t enough. She wanted to tell everyone that Meg was the one who knew. Meg knew who she really was. Before and after. She hadn’t wanted to save Eve this time, but she had. Meg knew what Eve could do.
She would visit Sam in Tallow. Sam liked to see Kat. Kat liked sleeping in his arms, her face flushed and sweaty when she woke. He let her sleep on his chest for as long as she wanted. Then Kat would crawl up the verandah, a biscuit in her hand, victorious. Eve would sleep with her in the spare room beside the curtain that danced in the breeze. Kat on her lap in the early morning as they watched the sun rise on the verandah. Eve playing Bach in her head, her knees bouncing Kat in time. Sam stumbling out the doorway in half-light, hair a mess, with two cups of tea.
She saw Rebecca in her uniform, waiting by her locker, fixing the top button on her white blouse, so beautiful and ready, and Eve knew it wasn’t only fools who confused power with strength, control with love, fools who thought the weak needed courage.
She saw Kat. In the end, it was simple. It was pure.
Eve strapped Meg’s daughter into her capsule – her mouth wide open, still roaring at the world – and she kissed the soft, pink soles of Kat’s feet one at a time.
SPECIAL THANKS
To my first readers, Liz Purnell and Kylie Little, for their wonderful, biased hearts. To the women in my book club for reading and then talking, talking, talking. To Clare and Mark McConochie for inviting a stranger into their home, feeding me and then letting me ask any questions about life on a farm I wanted. To Marc for pointing me in the right direction with the cello, Susan and Al for answering my unusual medical questions, and Mia for giving me a push when I needed one. To Mum and Dad for letting me write in my old bedroom, and Cassidy for lending me her quiet apartment. To publisher Meredith Curnow at Random House for her skill, intelligence and warmth, editor Kevin O’Brien for his clever scrutiny and patience, and agent Fiona Inglis for taking me under her wing. Finally, to Phil. For everything.
Random House
Under the Influence Page 35