Being back in the house made him relax a little. Most of the neighbours had lived here for ages. And the brick walls felt stronger than the flimsy weatherboard house near the beach. His bedroom upstairs was further away from the front door—a door which had a security screen, as well as a deadlock.
He’d never seen Dad like that before. Shaky, pale, testing all the locks on the windows and the doors. Dad had tried to hide it from them but he couldn’t. It’d freaked Felix out. If Dad was worried …
In all the whispered conversations at the house in Curl Curl, Felix hadn’t heard what the ex-husband had actually done to Helena, but he’d picked up bits and pieces.
He thinks he owns me.
So jealous of every person I speak to.
Tracking my phone.
Every time the baby cried, he’d snap.
Blamed the baby for making him tired for work.
Mum was so angry about Helena but she didn’t get that the woman was terrified. Felix had learnt to be calm and quiet, no sudden movements, no shouting. Since they’d been living together in Curl Curl, Helena had barely left the house. The drive-bys, the phone calls—Mum’s dumb behaviour had made everything worse. And it meant that Dad had asked Felix to stay home as much as possible too.
Dad set himself and Helena up in the guest bedroom—Luke’s room—and put the baby in Gracie’s room. It was weird to see them all here. Dad back home but in the wrong bedroom. Dad hadn’t said anything about Luke, only that Mum was coming home early. Even though Gracie was in kindergarten, her death had been all over the socials. Some kids at Felix’s high school still had siblings at Wirriga Public, so they’d posted love hearts and crying emojis. When he’d gone back to school the day after, all the girls were wearing their purple bracelets. Pearl had written him a card with a poem and Darcy gave him a block of dark chocolate.
‘It’s not like Gracie’s his sister,’ one jerk had said.
‘But she was living in his house,’ Pearl argued. ‘And she was only five years old.’
That was the thing that scared the shit out of him.
Felix hadn’t been back in the house since Gracie had died. When he went to get the ice-cream out of the freezer, he stopped with the door half open. He’d forgotten about the photos of Gracie on the fridge. Gracie with Mum, with Luke, by herself and one with Felix. Standing on the beach, Felix with his surf board, Gracie with a bucket. She’d been making mini sandcastles that day. At one point, she’d asked Felix to collect shells for her so she could decorate them. Felix had rolled his eyes and pretended not to hear. Walked away. Embarrassed that some of the other surfers might see him with a kid on the beach. And then Luke had jogged down to the shore with him. Felix knew that all the sun-baking girls were watching, comparing the two of them. Felix’s arms and legs would appear even skinnier next to Luke’s toned muscles. The gym instructor could’ve stepped out of a magazine with his bronzed thighs in short trunks.
‘You must have strong abs to pull yourself up on the board,’ Luke had said. ‘I’ve always swum but I’ve never been into surfing. Can you show me a few moves?’
Felix gave him a lesson on how to kneel, stand up and balance. Luke fell off a few times; he really didn’t know how to surf. Mum had taken some photos of them—another embarrassment. But at least the girls on the beach would’ve seen Felix instructing the guy with the pecs.
Later, Luke had been spooning sand into a bucket for Gracie to build another castle.
‘Can you find us a few shells, mate?’ he’d asked Felix.
‘Sure—big or small?’
The sound of the doorbell made Helena rush towards Dad.
‘Stay in the kitchen with Felix,’ Dad said, shutting the doors between them as he went towards the front of the house.
They could hear a young female voice, and then Dad called out for Felix to join them.
‘Felix, do you know this woman?’ Dad asked.
‘Yeah, it’s Maz. She’s Luke’s friend.’
Maz was in leggings and a red Nike hoodie, like she’d just come from the gym.
‘I was telling your dad that I’d lent Luke some supplements and I’ve run out myself so I just wanted to get them. And I know exactly where they are in the kitchen.’ Maz spoke without taking a breath.
‘You can follow Felix into the kitchen.’ Dad nodded in that direction. ‘I’ll lock the door.’
Funny how Dad was telling Maz where to go, as if she hadn’t been here heaps of times. But of course, he wouldn’t know; Dad hadn’t been in the house for months. Helena said a quick hello, then disappeared upstairs to the baby.
Maz went straight to a cupboard below the microwave. She squatted down in one smooth motion. Felix could see the outline of her quads through her tight black leggings; the sides had a band of netting down them, showing the skin underneath.
‘How’s Luke?’ he asked.
‘Well, you know, it’s hit him pretty hard.’ Maz shook her head and the blonde ponytail swung from side to side.
‘I guess now’s probably the wrong time to ask about the protein powder? I’m running out.’
‘Sorry, I’ll sort that out next week. Just keep on training.’
Felix already had the money for her. When Dad had asked Felix to stay home more with Helena and the baby, he’d started handing over cash regularly. An unofficial babysitting job. A bodyguard against Helena’s husband. But what if the man arrived and Felix ran, just like he’d done at the beach?
Maz was still fumbling around in the cupboard.
‘Luke kept the supplements here,’ she said. ‘Have you seen them?’
‘Nup.’
‘Where’s the blender? Wasn’t it down here?’ Maz opened the cupboard doors on either side. Did the same thing all the way around the kitchen.
‘Have you seen any pill containers?’ she asked. ‘White ones called Bio-Antidotes. Not the same as your creatine.’
‘Nup, sorry.’
The other kids at school bought protein powder from the discount chemist but Maz said hers was better—more powerful, because it came from overseas. Was it the same with these supplements?
‘Did your mum mention any herbal pills to you?’
Shaking his head, Felix didn’t like to admit that he’d barely been here lately.
Maz started opening drawers.
‘We keep our medicines up the top, above the fridge,’ Felix said. ‘You know—out of reach of … children.’
He’d been about to say ‘out of reach of Gracie’.
‘I don’t think they’ll be there,’ she said but looked anyway.
After another frantic search, Maz stopped and stood still in the middle of the kitchen, her hands on her hips, her usual smile replaced by closed lips in a long thin line.
‘Maybe Luke took them with him,’ Felix said with a shrug.
Was it really that big a deal?
34
ALLISON
Enclosed in an alternate universe inside a metal box in the sky, Allison’s flight seemed to take days and days. She dozed on and off, tried to watch a movie, but her thoughts kept circling. Had Luke killed his own daughter? He didn’t seem to fit the profile of Munchausen by proxy; didn’t appear to be deliberately seeking attention. But everyone wanted to help the widower with those sad eyes and sick child. Working through hypothesis after hypothesis distracted Allison from her fear of the plane crashing.
When they touched down in Melbourne and Allison opened her eyes to see the safety of the ground, she wished she were in Sydney. Where she could go home, have a shower, collapse, hug her son. While she’d been in the air, her phone had filled with messages. None from Luke. One with No Caller ID. Luke on a different phone? A doctor? The police? She dragged her suitcase to an empty seat away from the luggage carousel and dialled the number for her messages. Would the police leave a message? With the loudspeaker announcements and noise of the travellers around her, she had to push the phone hard against her ear to hear anything.
‘Hi, Alli
son. How are you?’ A deep voice, vaguely like Luke’s but not quite. Tired by the long flight, muddled by the time difference, Allison struggled to recognise it. ‘I left a message last week with my condolences. I’m so sorry to hear about Gracie. I’m guessing you’re busy with … everything, but if you need a hand or a shoulder to cry on, I’m here. Can you give me a call, please? I wanted to ask you something.’
Emmanuel. He must be ringing from a work phone. She didn’t have the headspace for him right now. Whenever Allison gazed into the future, the picture was too cloudy—she couldn’t imagine Tony coming home but then she couldn’t imagine being with Emmanuel.
Crowded into a bathroom at the airport with other exhausted passengers, she splashed water on her face and sprayed deodorant under her arms. Watched the water go down the plughole. She couldn’t remember if it had swirled the opposite way in the sink at O’Hare airport. Allison stopped for a moment to study her reflection: bloodshot eyes and slightly greasy hair. She’d done it—flown halfway across the world by herself, without Tony or Nadia or Valium. That feeling of empowerment should keep her going for the next few hours. She grabbed a flat white, a ham-and-cheese croissant, a packet of chips and a bottle of Coke. Rushed out to the rental car place. If Tony were with her, he’d tell her this was ‘unwise’—driving out into the countryside after a day and a half in the air.
Plugging the destination into her phone, a robotic voice told her the journey time: two hours and twenty minutes. She could stay awake for that long.
The bungalows of the flat Melbourne suburbs gave way to paddocks, then hills lined with gum trees. Allison had only been in America for a few days but she’d been wobbly the whole time, struggling to orientate herself in the city, connect with the people. Driving along this country highway, a place she’d never been before, felt like coming home.
The lower part of the hills hadn’t been impacted by the fires; the blaze must have come from the north—the remote mountains of the national park. On an unusually hot, windy day last October, before summer had even officially begun, a young man lit a series of small fires which had rapidly combined. With so little rain over the previous six months, the forest went up like fireworks. No-one had been prepared. Allison remembered reading about the heroics at the school: in minutes, two teachers had crammed the children into a minibus and driven them down the hill, away from the flames and smoke. The fire had burnt half of the classrooms.
Along the road winding up to Hythorne, the grass was growing again in patches, green here, brown there. Before, the dense undergrowth would have hidden the lay of the land. Today, Allison could see each dip and curve of the mountain range, its underbelly exposed. A single dark shape circled beneath the grey clouds, wings wide—a wedge-tailed eagle, searching for prey.
As Allison drove into the small town, the scarred reality stood out: twisted metal sheeting, a brick wall in a blank space between the houses that had been spared. The church had no roof, its stone walls standing by themselves, as if the BFG, Gracie’s favourite giant, had plucked off the top to peer in at the tiny people.
Outside the general store, Allison was opening her car door when a huge truck groaned by, blasting its horn. She pulled the door closed again and leant back against the seat. Shut her eyes for a moment. When she looked again, the truck was half a block in front of her, trundling down the main road, its tray heavy with bricks.
Compared to the devastation out on the streets, inside the general store resembled a fairytale land. Shelves of brightly coloured tins and packets, a freezer offering a rainbow of ice-blocks. Everything new and modern and clean.
The woman behind the counter was flipping through a postage folder, organising pages of stamps. ‘Hello, love. Come on in. The baskets are over there.’
In her blue faded apron, the middle-aged shop assistant seemed friendly enough. Above her top pocket, a name had been embroidered in red thread—Kayleigh.
‘Actually, I was hoping you could help me find a friend.’
The woman stopped flipping through the stamps and glared at her.
‘Are you a journalist?’
Allison had seen the newspapers at Melbourne airport that morning. Seven months after the fire, the headlines were still on the town: an investigation and a court case against the arsonist.
‘No, I’m a schoolteacher from Sydney.’
As Allison repeated the words she’d spoken at the healing centre in Chicago, jetlag made her head spin. Two very different people in different hemispheres distrustful of the media.
‘Sydney, huh?’ Kayleigh shrugged as if Sydneysiders were as bad as journalists. ‘Listen, love, would you mind buying something? A lot of people come up here, ask questions, take photos and buy nothing. We’re just trying to survive.’
Her cousins in Tathra had echoed a similar sentiment after a fire which had destroyed more than a hundred buildings in their small town. Journalists and politicians had been and gone while everyday people found ways to help. Donations of furniture and food, bedding and books. A community had come together then, just like Wirriga had for Gracie.
But with two hundred serious fires burning in Queensland last November, had Hythorne been overlooked? The top half of Australia had seen hundreds of thousands of hectares burnt; farms, houses, livestock and wildlife obliterated. Further south, Hythorne, with its arsonist and its anger, hadn’t captured the nation’s sympathy in quite the same way.
Allison grabbed a small shopping basket and began filling it with snacks. She threw in a bottle of red wine for good measure.
As the shopkeeper scanned the items through the cash register, she examined Allison from head to toe. Flushing, Allison moved the bottle of wine and the nuts to one side and slid them across the counter.
‘These are for you,’ she said.
Kayleigh laughed and her face lit up. Allison guessed that, before the fires, this had been her typical expression.
‘You’ve only been here five minutes and you know my reputation. Thanks, love, I’ll enjoy that wine tonight. So, who’s this friend you’re trying to find?’
‘Luke Branson and his daughter Gracie.’ Allison steeled herself to say the next sentence. For all she knew, Kayleigh could have been his wife’s best friend. ‘Gracie’s five years old. Gorgeous girl. She has cancer.’
The woman massaged her left temple with two fingers and said nothing. Allison didn’t know whether to push on; she didn’t want to cause anyone in this town more pain. Finally, Kayleigh raised her eyebrows in a question, so Allison continued.
‘Their house was lost in the fire. And Gracie’s mother … passed away afterwards. Luke and Gracie moved to Sydney.’
‘Sorry, love. Never heard of any Bransons. Well, only that rich fella—Richard Branson—but I reckon he never lived here.’ She barked out a bitter laugh.
‘They kept horses,’ Allison added. ‘They lived out of town, so maybe you didn’t know them.’
‘I’ve been working here for twenty years. I know everyone.’
Sighing, Kayleigh reached under the counter and pulled out a box. She sifted through bits of paper. Produced a double-page spread from the Melbourne newspaper, with four large portraits.
‘This is a list of—’ Kayleigh cleared her throat ‘—the people who …’
The fire hadn’t discriminated: male and female, two young, two old. Sarah Branson had died from injuries after the fire, perhaps that was why she didn’t appear on the list. Or maybe she went by her maiden name. Turning the page over, Allison found another list: twenty-one people who had sustained injuries.
The bell above the door jangled and an old farmer in King Gees and an Akubra entered the shop. Kayleigh called out a cheerful hello and moved the box of newspaper clippings under the counter, out of his sight. She picked up a green shopping basket and carried it over to him.
Allison read every name on the list of injured. No Sarah.
The farmer acknowledged Allison with a nod. ‘Up from the city?’ he asked.
‘She’s from Sydney,’ Kayleigh answered for her. ‘Looking for a family called Branson. Know them?’
‘Nope.’ The old man’s watery eyes, a startling light blue, fixed on her. ‘Not like the Harveys, are they? Those bastards didn’t lose anything and put in the biggest insurance claim. Made it harder for the rest of us.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Allison had to turn away from his piercing gaze. ‘This isn’t to do with insurance.’
After he’d left the shop, Allison tried once more with Kayleigh. On her phone, she clicked onto Sarah’s online memorial site and showed the photo.
‘Never seen her before in my life,’ Kayleigh said. ‘Does it actually mention Hythorne? Are you sure it’s not another town?’
‘Luke said they lived in Hythorne but it’s not written here.’ Allison only noticed that as she was re-reading the webpage now. ‘Sarah was a dental nurse who kept horses.’
‘No dentist in Hythorne.’ Kayleigh ran her fingers through her unruly fringe, then patted it back in line. ‘The only family with lots of horses are the Luxfords. Terrible tragedy. Rose died in the fire trying to release them.’
The same heartbreaking ending as Sarah Branson. But the picture in the paper of Rose Luxford showed an older woman, around sixty-five, short blonde hair, glasses, outdoorsy type. Nothing like Sarah Branson.
‘Thanks for your help anyway. I appreciate it.’
Taking a step towards the door, Allison stumbled as the whole world tilted in front of her eyes. Kayleigh was beside her in an instant, holding her up.
‘All right, love?’
‘Jetlag,’ Allison mumbled.
And fear.
‘Oh-la-la. Fancy shmancy,’ Kayleigh muttered loudly enough for Allison to hear.
‘Would I be able to … can I just sit down for a minute?’
The Good Teacher Page 21