The Astrologer's Daughter

by Rebecca Lim

  For a second, I’m paralysed by joy and relief; that she came back.

  But then I wake in earnest to a pitch-black bedroom and panic makes me lash out for the lamp switch, sending the whole thing crashing to the floor off the bedside table. My mobile phone begins to shrill.

  Crawling amongst the soft-hard debris on the floor, I finally locate my backpack near the foot of the bed and crack open my bedroom door to let in the watery day. Back against the doorframe, I look down at a number I’ve never seen before and breathe out my name. The person on the other end inhales shakily, as if they might speak, then hangs up. Seconds later, I almost drop the phone when it starts ringing again in my open palm.

  It’s Wurbik, crisp, best policeman voice. ‘Just checking you’re still alive, kiddo. I take this liaising business seriously.’

  I give him the upshot of the reading I did for Hugh de Crespigny; though I don’t tell Wurbik about how mean I was, because I actually care about what he thinks of me. The act of talking begins to slow my racing heart.

  When Wurbik doesn’t respond right away, I tell him I’m planning on calling Don Sturt later in the day with the results of the horary readings I’m doing on the Bawden suspects. ‘As far as I can tell, they’re all loaded.’

  ‘It’s your funeral,’ Wurbik replies, sounding distracted, like he’s suddenly got someone in his other ear.

  ‘Has there’—I swallow, wanting to know, but also wanting to hide under my bed with my hands over my ears forever—‘been, uh, any word, yet, about Mum?’

  ‘Too early.’ Wurbik’s voice is almost curt. ‘Give us a chance. And you stay away from that boy’s mob—they all love a recreational drug. All sex addicts, too, the judge especially; he’s had to work hard to keep it out of the papers, his weakness for the rough stuff. Big breeders. Tentacles in politics, law, racing, fashion, philanthropy.’ Wurbik’s voice is heavy with sarcasm. ‘Too fast for you; you’ve done your bit. Call you when I hear. Hang tight.’

  Wurbik cuts the connection and it takes me a while to put my phone away and scrape myself up off the carpet. The apartment is redolent with the bitter smell of burnt toast, which is what I ate for dinner last night. I’m ashamed by how much I crave the sound of another human voice. It’s like a sickness.

  It is the sameness that gets to me, every day the same; the Mum-shaped hole in the fabric of things. I wake, and there is a split second of the way life was: What’s on for today? What do I have to wear that’s, maybe, clean? Then it all comes crashing down—the lack of her, like a rock settling on my chest. And I have to get up and haul that rock—while I eat, while I brush my teeth, while I interact with the rest of the human race.

  The morning rapidly turns into a re-run of the one before, right down to the choice of outfit (jeans, runners, polar fleece), the icy, sunny weather, and me taking a special detour up Little La Trobe Street, past The Ark of A–Z.

  This time, when I get there and press my forehead up against the glass, there isn’t a silver-haired giant standing at the counter behind the Closed sign. There is nothing to see except dust and eclectica inside a faded, empty store. Even the old black book has been put away. I could have imagined everything.

  ‘But I know what I saw.’ My breath makes a circle of fog on the dirty upper pane of the front door as I address the dim glass. ‘And I saw you.’

  The footsteps of a lone passerby drawing closer cause me to pull my beanie down lower over my forehead and hurry back the way I came. Everyone I ask looks at me strangely, but at school no one has seen or heard from Simon Thorn, who has never taken a sick day in living memory.

  But Dalgeish lights up when she spots me going into my form room and hurries over, leaning into me with a bony elbow. ‘You’re doing the talk with or without him,’ she hisses through lipstick-stained front teeth. ‘Your situation’s been noted. All you need to do is stand up and say something. I’ve told Ednah Daniels this is the year one of my kids takes out the Tichborne, not hers, so don’t let me down.’

  ‘No pressure.’ I find Vicki at my elbow after Dalgeish’s lurid purple and yellow calf-length sweater-and-skirt set has flounced out of view. ‘Catch you in the Common Room after first period?’ she says as we slide into our usual places up the back, for rollcall.

  I shake my head, knowing it’ll be too hard to explain what I’m doing; my reputation’s bizarre enough as it is. ‘Double spare. Something I need to finish in the library. Catch you when I catch you.’

  The implication is to leave me alone; we both hear it.

  Vicki pouts, her dark eyes suddenly dangerous beneath her curly fringe. ‘I’m still waiting,’ she says pointedly.

  She means the word game we’re in the middle of playing and how the word sluts needs, urgently, to be addressed. But I also see that she’s asking about when it’s going to get back to normal: me and her, the big-haired, bosomy twins who get around being ballsy, loud and notorious; everyone’s favourite general pains-in-the-arse who are guaranteed to shout out from the back of the room.

  I want to tell Vicki that I’ve somehow left normal far behind, as if it’s a country and I’ve stowed away on the wrong boat, and it’s sailed. Instead, I smile tightly and bellow—Here!—in a hearty voice when Clarkey calls out my name. When the bell rings, I rise to my feet and leave the room without a backward glance, feeling Vicki’s eyes—all their eyes—doing things to my back.

  In the library, there is a round of double takes when I walk in. I invoke the forcefield so successfully that, when the dust settles, mine is the only table for four without a single extra person crammed up against it. Everyone leaves me alone near the shelves dedicated to warfare and catastrophes of the Far East, and this time I’m not obscurely hurt. It means I can spread out my workings for Mallory Bloch, Geoffrey Kidston, Lewis Boardman and Christopher Ferwerder without some sightseeing ghoul trying to get a handle on what I’m up to.

  Putting the finishing touches to the fourth and final chart a moment later, I am struck by one thing. If the charts are to be believed, none of these four men was responsible for raping and murdering Fleur Bawden that day.

  I look up when the bell goes for recess. But I can’t face the avidity, the questions, so I go over all of the charts again, house by house, segment by segment, from start to finish; first checking the radix, then the wheel representing the progressions, then the outermost wheel, where the triggering, focusing transits are arrayed in a less-than-perfect circle.

  I wasn’t joking when I told Wurbik all four men appear to be loaded. Collectively and individually, their second house and fourth house stars for wealth and assets are off the charts and their first house indicators (delineating abilities, looks, energy) and tenth house stars (professional standing) are uniformly phenomenal. A couple of them look to have lost and regained their fortunes a few times, but all seem to be self-made men with money to burn. Jupiter in good aspect is in evidence in all of the progressions.

  But on the day in question there are no squares between progressed sun and moon in the men’s charts, no significant afflictions affecting progressed moon and Venus, or signs of the malefic planets—Mars and Saturn—being in prominence or in harsh opposition from the angles, or afflicted by the signs of violence—Capricorn, Aries, Scorpio. Progressed Pluto, signifying death, makes no significant
connection with the men’s progressed moon that day, nor is it transiting the seventh house—which traditionally indicates other people. And none of the charts contain aspects for bereavement, misfortune or intense violence for the date in question. Even if any of them knew Fleur Bawden, she meant nothing to them.

  The library is empty now, so I pull out my phone, wishing I knew Simon’s number, or he would maybe call and tell me what had been so urgent he’d just left me standing there in the street. Then I dial Don Sturt. After two quick rings I get, ‘Don.’ His voice is dry as dust, cautious.

  I find myself furtively racing through a summary of the men’s charts before someone overhears me talking like a witch, in a public place.

  ‘Okay, so Bloch’s in his late sixties now, and he’s got this explosive temper and an apparent lifelong dislike of women. But according to his chart, he’s almost pathologically obsessed with cleanliness and hygiene—I don’t see him messily bludgeoning anyone to death, wouldn’t want it on his hands—and he wasn’t even there the night Fleur was killed. According to his stars, he was travelling that day, moving around; because the man has never been able to stay still. Bloch was born in a situation of transit, and that pattern has continued throughout his life.’

  ‘Okay,’ Don says, sounding muffled now because he’s probably struggling to write all of this down in that tiny private investigator notebook of his.

  ‘Kidston—who’s almost fifty now, right?—is an intellectual snob who loves cultivating friends in high places. He’s got loads of unresolved daddy issues. And he’s really highly strung, super emotional, so there appear to have been a few mental breakdowns in his past? But nothing around the date of Fleur’s death. There are no indications for physical confrontation regarding his ruling sign or progressed ascendant for that day. At the time Fleur died, Kidston was in the middle of a good period for physical and mental health.’

  ‘Go on,’ Don rasps curtly. He’s barely said a word the entire time I’ve been firing away at him about the predilections of strange men.

  ‘Boardman—the other Australian-born suspect, now in his mid-fifties—is some kind of charismatic, smooth operator with a wide circle of friends and great business sense. His seventh house stars for marriage and long-term relationships are unbelievably bad—in the sense there’s heaps of movement, but maybe he likes that, being a playa—but he’s never been seriously ill or suffered any serious form of bad luck, violence or affliction, whether physical or mental. There are indications for sex and pleasure on the night that Fleur died, but nothing resembling an accidental or purposeful involvement in the violent death of another. Maybe he saw her or knew her? But it’s hard to say, nothing is definite.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ is all Don says as I look out the window and see people returning to the main building, flooding in through all the doors off the sodden playing fields. I’m suddenly talking so fast, I’m almost impossible to understand, my voice dropping to a whisper because people are filtering back into the library and glancing over at me in undisguised interest, with all my papers and books spread out everywhere.

  ‘Ferwerder, the Scottish guy, is nearing ninety now. But on 9 July 1984 he would have been a man in his late fifties and entirely capable of murdering someone. But again, I’ve got nothing, Don. Happily partnered-up at the time; though he’s a highly social, touchy-feely, flirty kind of guy with a short attention span who was likely to have been in town on the night in question. But the stars indicate no acts of extreme rage or violence for the time frame you’ve indicated. There’s nothing of note for that day. Nothing.’

  Don digests all this in silence. ‘Does it change anything,’ he finally says, ‘if Kidston, the nervy, high-strung guy, was born at noon? We’re still talking Melbourne, but 12pm exactly.’

  I feel the blood rush up into my face as Wez Ellery wanders right past—close enough to touch—with his hand shoved down the back pocket of Mila Abramovich’s jeans. Both of them have no reason to be over here, craning their necks to get a look at what I’m doing. I actually hiss at them, while I scoop piles of papers together untidily and start shoving them into my pack.

  Don’s tone is apologetic. ‘You were right, the birthtimes for the two Aussies weren’t the same. Transposition error on my part, sorry. Don’t know how it happened. Does that change anything?’

  Of course it does, you idiot. It changes the entire thing, I almost say, knowing I’ll have to start Kidston’s chart all over again from scratch.

  ‘It will,’ I murmur tightly as Ozzie Palomares and his massive fro approach my table. I look up as he levers his vast frame unapologetically into the seat opposite mine, nylon-clad arse cheeks squeaking against the vinyl. He raises his monobrow at me as if to say: This okay? I shrug, trying to seem cool with it.

  ‘Look,’ I say tightly, ‘if I re-run Kidston’s again, am I off the hook? I’m not a public service, you know. It has to end somewhere.’

  ‘Look,’ Don counters right back, and I hear a faint swish of passing cars down the line and realise he’s actually driving, he’s on the road. ‘Eleanor will want to hear all of this in person. Can you rejig the Kidston reading and I’ll…’ There’s a long pause. ‘I’ll pick you up outside your school at, what, three? And take you straight to her. I’m coming back from her place up country at the moment—she wanted me to fetch a few things from the vineyard—but I’ll try and make it across town so that she gets the wash-up straight from you. El’s going to be disappointed. But at least now she knows we’ve tried… everything.’

  I think of being trapped in a car with Don Sturt and his nervous, yellow-flecked eyes and gangly teenage awkwardness that sit so at odds with his old-guy body. ‘Do I have a choice?’ I reply as Ozzie pretends, laboriously, to read. He’s either checking out my rack again at close quarters, or running interference for Vicki; because all the Greek kids at Collegiate have each other’s backs. It’s an unspoken rule. I turn my back on Oz, leaning up against the edge of the table so that all he sees is a big expanse of dark-purple polar fleece and maybe half an inch of my squashed-down backside.

  ‘Please,’ Don rasps. ‘You do this for Eleanor and I promise you’re out, you’ve done your bit. Some things—as tragic as they are—they don’t have answers. I told her that—that having some person do a bunch of horoscopes wouldn’t prove a bloody thing.’

  I want to say: I could’ve told you that.

  But instead I say brusquely, ‘I’m already late for Chem. Meet me outside the Catholic hospice two doors down from school at 3.30. And you have one hour of my time, right? If you don’t make it, Don, you don’t make it; there aren’t any re-runs and I’m not waiting. My mother is missing, don’t you people understand?’

  I’m almost in tears as I cut the call, and I’m sure Ozzie can hear it in my voice, so I don’t meet his eyes, or anyone else’s, as I careen out of the library. I just head to Chemistry like nothing’s happened, and all Dr Terrasson says dryly is: ‘Well, look who’s decided to grace us with her presence today,’ and then it’s business as usual from his perspective, no special favours, which I’m grateful for.

  Though, again, there’s that weight of eyes. And no one will partner with me until the Doc forces Candice Ong to do it and she insists on doing everything herself like I’m injured or retarded: gathering up all the materials with her own tweezers, doing all the measurements,
firing the Bunsen burner up so that the flame blazes between us like a boundary that may not be crossed; all in silence. It’s like I turned up at school with no hands, rather than with no mother, but I don’t make a fuss.

  As Candice burns shit and I look on helplessly, I think:

  Right now, Cenna, right now, there are people out there in the bush looking for her, thousands of kilometres away.

  In the meantime, all I can do is put my head down, pick up my ballpoint pen and swim. Swim for the distant shores of normal—even though I know I may never make it back again.

  Something about Don Sturt makes me sit very straight on the edge of my seat, my pack between my knees, hands on my kneecaps, wishing like hell that the car ride was over. I’ve never been this close to the guy. It’s not that he’s a talker—he’s not, he’s silent and hunched-over—but there’s just…something. It’s like his body is emanating some weird, screamy vibe so supersonic I should be able to read it. It’s possible that he’s even more uncomfortable about the whole situation than I am. The phone call earlier was bad enough, but this? A whole other level of awkward. Maybe he doesn’t like girls, I dunno. When I sneak glances at him between the stops, I sense he doesn’t like me. It’s in the pinched lines of his gaunt face. He wants me away from him somehow, even though he suggested the ride, and the knowledge makes me almost want to leap out of the car while it’s still moving. Even his driving seems erratic, twitchy; the car drifting across lane boundaries and skidding on the tram tracks when he accelerates at the lights.

  When we leave the known universe that is bounded to the south by St Kilda Road and the Shrine of Remembrance, turning off to points leafy and even more traffic-jammed, I’m officially lost. We’re not far from town, I know that much. But the inner-city suburbs that surround Collegiate High do not remotely resemble what we are driving through now. It’s like we’ve entered that part of the map that some higher power has designated: the better part. Once we leave the ritzy strip shops, art galleries and tram-clogged main road behind, the side streets are broad and alien, with houses and accompanying grounds that are enormous, almost unfeasible, surrounded by high walls or spear-topped iron fences that seem to go on for miles.