The Vale Girl

by Nelika McDonald

  3. This is a beautifully written novel full of descriptive observations of nature, many of which are from Tommy’s perspective because he is so interested in the landscape and studies it closely. It is also full of descriptive literary devices. ‘There’s a ring of trees crowding around it, drooping down and huddling in like bent old ladies in green cloaks with their arms around the building, sheltering it from the world.’ (p 2) What aspects of style did you particularly notice when reading this novel?

  4. The novel contains several main characters such as Sarah Vale; her mother Susannah; Tommy, her best friend; the enigmatic Graham Knight; and the tough but kind Sergeant Henson.

  Minor characters include: Henson’s wife Gertie; Cameron Wolfe, Sarah’s tormentor; Marjorie Wilkinson, the daughter of a lawyer and well-connected mother Monica, who ‘would trample anything that came between her and the things she wanted.’ (p 26); Andrea Price; Salvatore D’Angelo; Tommy’s father and his late mother Alice, Mr and Mrs Montepulchiano; angry Mr MacLachlan, the principal; Ms Steph Bay (Death Ray), the unsympathetic secretary; Geraldine Knight (nee Spencer), Graham’s disappointed wife; Elspeth Mackey, the postmistress; Crane, the city policeman; Roberts, the vain and lazy offsider to Henson.

  Which characters particularly intrigued or touched you as a reader? Why?

  5. Suspense in a mystery novel is essential and this novel plays with the reader by sowing doubts and creating a trail of false leads. Which moments did you find particularly suspenseful?

  Questions for Discussion

  1. ‘That was the problem with living in such a small town – there was no avoiding the other residents.’ (p 13) There are lots of myths about the friendliness of small communities. But Sarah sees things differently. Is she right? ‘In Sergeant Henson’s opinion, the see-no-evil policy of the residents didn’t help matters. Misery met violence down dead-end streets on hot nights and despair festered like an open gunshot wound.’ (p 37) Do residents in small towns often turn a blind eye to those in danger for fear of becoming involved?

  2. ‘. . . in Banville, you are who you come from.’ (p 21) Can we ever escape our backgrounds? Is it easier to hide in a city, as Susannah thinks it is? Or does the past always catch up with us?

  3. Susannah’s journey is heart-rending in its honesty (pp 42–3). People like to think that innate evil or flaws in a person’s character lead to lives of prostitution or crime, but often it is simply a question of circumstance and timing, and such a decline might happen to anyone. Discuss.

  4. This is a rite of passage and a mystery novel, in which the protagonists are teenagers but the action is adult. It has the same wide appeal and power as other such ‘crossover novels’ such as Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones, Torsten Krol’s Calypso, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; or Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend. Sarah is reading J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye when she disappears, another classic work for both teenagers and adults. Compare this novel to one of these books and discuss why it has such general appeal.

  5. ‘Those families prayed to the capricious gods of weather for the rain to soak their fields, but everyone else just prayed to the New South Wales Tourism Board’ (p 58). Tourism is a vital source of income in rural communities, but can over-reliance on it have detrimental as well as positive effects?

  6. ‘If you are completely sovereign,’ she said, ‘and truly independent, you don’t need anyone else to recognise it for it to be true.’ (p 77) Discuss the veracity of this statement. Is Susannah, for example, as independent, as she believes she is?

  7. ‘The right and left sides of his brain had to work in tandem to do his job properly; police work required creativity as well as intellect.’ (p 96) Is this theory reflected in the police action which follows?

  8. ‘Banville puts on its best dress for the Grevillea Festival but it’s held together by sticky-tape and safety pins.’ (p 169) This might be a description of many small towns. Discuss.

  9. ‘Sometimes when you think you want something, it’s only when you get it that you realise you were wrong. That it wasn’t what you wanted at all. But by then, it is usually too late.’ (p 190) Discuss.

  10. ‘And most important moments don’t feel important at the time.’ (p 226) ‘That was a pivotal moment. I see that now . . . It was when Tommy showed me, and everyone else, exactly how smart he was. And how brave.’ (p 233) How much does life reflect the statement about seemingly unimportant moments having significant influence later on?

  11. Where is inner peace to be found? Is it, as Henson suggests, with someone you love close by? (p 291) Or is it to be found alone?

  12. The novel ends not with Sarah, but with Tommy reflecting on what has happened in his life and on the second disappearance of Sarah. Whose story is this really, and what does it say about growing up, about friendship, and about love?

  acknowledgements

  Many people helped bring this book into the world, encouraging and supporting me through a long gestation. Cath Crowley, Sonia Orchard, Toni Jordan and the students at RMIT, my Writing Group Extraordinaire girls (you are all actually extraordinary), Simon de Bruyn, Jenny Darling and Donica Bettanin, Claire Craig and Samantha Sainsbury at Pan MacMillan (Claire, your leap of faith changed my life) and Ali Lavau. And of course, many thanks to my awesome husband and family, who rearranged their worlds so I could write this book and cheered me on all the way. May the midwives at the birth of my human baby be as sensitive, patient and nurturing as all of you are!

  About Nelika McDonald

  Nelika McDonald was born in Brisbane in 1983. After finishing a bachelor of Arts from QUT, she spent her twenties studying, travelling and working in various occupations. She has been a media reader; a museum staff member; and a sales assistant in a pet shop, a jewellery shop, a clothes shop and a tea shop.

  After living in London for a few years, Nelika and her husband returned to Australia and settled in Melbourne, where Nelika finished a Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing from RMIT. She now lives in Brisbane.

  First published Pan in 2013 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  Copyright © Nelika McDonald 2013

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  McDonald, Nelika, author.

  The vale girl / Nelika McDonald

  9781742612423 (paperback)

  Missing persons--Fiction.

  A823.4

  EPUB format: 9781743289617

  Typeset and eBook production by Midlands Typesetters Australia

  Cover design by Sandy Cull

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  Read on for a special preview chapter from Nelika McDonald’s next book, Deeper than the Sea.

  chapter one

  On her way home from work, the same way she walked each night, Theo rounded the curve of the cliff path that led to the lookout in just enough time to see the feet of the woman in the blue pants leave the ground.

  She saw, she bore witness to, the few mesmerising moments after the woman stepped into the air, when she soared, a weightless feather aloft on the breeze, before she disappeared from vi
ew.

  Theo dropped her backpack and ran to the fence, leaning over as far as she could. She could see only a mesh of scrub and rock, nothing else visible through it. No trace of the woman in the blue pants. She scanned the water and rocks directly below the lookout, and again saw nothing. She looked around her, but nobody else was there.

  ‘Hello? Are you okay?’ she shouted down the cliff, and then cursed herself for asking such a silly question – could the woman be considered okay in any sense of the word at this moment? There was no reply. Theo’s heart jutted against her rib cage like the heel of a palm. What now? The bush was thick and she could see no way into it; she could climb over the fence herself, but then what? She was not the right person for this, she was not the sort of person who knew what to do in times of crisis. She looked around for help again; she didn’t carry a phone, and it occurred to her that this was that time people had warned her about, when they said, ‘One day you will be sorry you don’t have a mobile yourself.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Theo started to run down the path and collided with an older couple, a man and woman in exercise gear with a terrier straining at his leash. She grabbed the man’s forearm and pointed back up the cliff. ‘Please, help me, I think someone just jumped from there.’

  The couple stared at her and Theo waved her arms. ‘Please, I saw her, she jumped. I saw her . . .’

  She could see them recoil. No, not us, don’t bring us into this, you crazy woman. Get away from us. She became aware of her appearance, dishevelled after being on the floor with the children at work, her cheeks flushed, glasses smudged. She panted, trying to catch her breath. They seemed to decide to believe her anyway, and all three of them rushed up the hill and over to the fence. They peered down into the scrub, the thick thatches of bush with grey boulders jutting out through it, and at the water at the base of the cliff. The waves were playful, darting up to lick at the rocks, then retreating as if coy.

  ‘I saw her,’ Theo said again, both to herself and the couple.

  The man nodded and said, ‘Okay, okay, now,’ as though to placate her, as though she was the one about to jump. The woman made a sympathetic sound and went to touch Theo on the arm. Theo stepped back. Someone else had arrived now too, a man in lycra with a bicycle, and he seemed to understand what was happening very quickly.

  ‘Is someone down there?’

  The others nodded. ‘Yes, yes! A woman.’

  He dropped his bike and came to the edge of the fence too, bending over it to look down. The wind whipped and plucked at all their clothes and hair, and the seagrass bobbed and waved. A family with a small boy arrived. The boy had a toy car and kept pressing buttons that emitted a series of staccato beeps. The cyclist got his phone out and Theo felt absurdly grateful that he had believed her, he had chosen to trust her, and that now he was taking over.

  Three young women jogged into the clearing. The father of the small boy put one leg over the fence and his wife made careful noises and they all held their breath as they watched him and someone was crying, the little boy, and he said, ‘Daddy, home time.’ The toy car blipped and beeped, and the wind picked up again, dragging their hair across their faces. The cyclist shouted into his phone and the mother pulled her son close, holding him against her to shield him from the gusts.

  ‘Lifeguards!’ said one of the jogging women. ‘I’ll find the lifeguards.’ She ran back the way she had come. The other two huddled together. Theo wished that she had someone to huddle in with. Better yet, she wished that Beth was here so she could hold her close to her side like the woman with the small boy.

  ‘I can’t see,’ the father said, ‘I can’t see anything, but I think I can hear her,’ and just then they all heard her – a low moan when the wind abated, a sound that was unmistakably pain, an awful, raw, wrenching sound. The mother’s face crumpled then, and the father stumbled a little, a fountain of rocks sliding under his shoe. The little boy screamed.

  ‘Hello, I’m coming, just stay there, I’m coming,’ the father called, but he wasn’t, he couldn’t. There was no response.

  More people appeared. Where were you all when I needed you, Theo thought.

  ‘What’s wrong, what’s happened, is someone hurt?’

  ‘Have you called an ambulance?’

  ‘Has someone rung for help?’

  The cyclist flapped his hand at them for quiet and pointed at his phone. Theo could feel him looking at her from behind his sunglasses, the type that wrapped all the way around to his temples. She wondered what the operator was saying to him.

  People were still asking questions, but Theo didn’t answer them.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Is the boy hurt, why is he crying?’

  ‘There’s a woman down there. She jumped.’

  The older woman with the terrier started to cry too, a soft keening, pulling at the collar of her shirt. Her husband didn’t step towards her, but away, and Theo felt bad for her, so she moved in a little closer, but not too close.

  ‘How awful, just awful,’ the woman whispered. Theo nodded, and felt the thinning of the air, the strange and horrible excitement of it all; the dog was barking and everyone was talking at once. Two men were talking about rope, in the car, and one of them came back with it and tied it to his belt and the fence post. Then, he slid on his bottom down the side of the cliff. He yelled something back and they all shook their heads. A fishing knife was passed to the front, and Theo watched as the man cut away at the bushes. Then, she saw it, a glimpse of blue, and she said, ‘There!’ but nobody heard her, they had all seen it at the same time, and they gasped and swore at the sight of the body, one leg thrown sideways over the other.

  The woman’s torso was twisted and pointing downhill, her head to the side and back, hair threaded though the dirt and pale throat exposed. No human limbs should look like that, the configuration was all wrong, Theo thought. The woman’s shirt rode up over her stomach, pale and soft-looking, and the bottom of her bra was visible, lace against the white flesh. Theo thought of pantyhose, compacts with scented powder, silk scarves and negligees, rosewater in a cutglass bottle on a dressing table. Intimacies. That lace and flesh belonged to more purposefully intimate settings than this. She wanted to go and pull the woman’s shirt down, wanted to cover her with a blanket.

  The woman was not moving.

  ‘The police and ambulance are on their way,’ the cyclist called. People moved closer together, patted their pockets for things that might help, came up empty. In front of them all the ocean loomed and then receded, scraps of white curling along the tops of waves.

  ‘Is she . . .’ one of the jogging girls started to ask, then trailed off.

  Above her, the lights of the path flickered on, and Theo was suddenly aware of time passing. How long had she been here? Ten minutes? An hour? The sky had ruptured and pink and orange streaks drained into the water. It grew dark quickly at the beach. Theo had always thought it was because they had room to see it here, not like the artificial light of the city, streetlights on a timer. Here it was just a smudging. The horizon grew blurrier until, all of a sudden, it wasn’t there any more. Theo made a point of not thinking about that too much, because then it felt like the world didn’t have edges and anyone could just fall right off the planet, where the sea bled into sky that bled into land.

  Theo kept her mouth closed but could feel the stinging pinch of sand in the wind against her face. The wife of the man with the terrier was still crying. She clawed at Theo’s shoulder, but Theo backed away until she was at the fringe of the crowd, standing where she had been when she saw the woman jump. She retrieved her backpack from where she had dropped it. Just a few weeks earlier there had been whales in the ocean in front of the jetty and crowds had gathered in this exact spot to watch the shimmering hulks appear and then disappear under the cloak of water.

  Theo shivered and pulled the thin sleeves of her shirt down; she hadn’t been expecting to be outside when it grew cold. She hoped Beth had her jumper with
her.

  ‘Here they come,’ someone said, and she heard the sirens.

  Theo wondered if she could leave now, she wanted to go home and close all the doors and windows. She wanted Beth to be at home with her, both of them in front of the telly with dinner plates on their laps, inside in the lamplight while this wind thrashed and tore around the trees outside. It could rain, that would be nice; to be safe and dry in their house with Beth while everything was being washed clean outside. Theo would be able to glance over from her chair at her girl every now and then, at her dark hair funnelled into a ponytail at her neck, the span of her shoulders, the spritz of freckles on her nose. She would be fiddling with her necklace, a little silver donkey charm on a thin chain. She loved donkeys, she thought someone had to because they were a bit stupid and they weren’t as pretty as horses, so they needed champions for their cause. Beth wasn’t often an underdog herself, but she was drawn to them. Beth thought she could solve anyone’s problems. Theo thought she probably could, too.

  When she was anxious or concentrating hard on something, the show they were watching or a book she was reading, Beth slipped the donkey between her lips and tapped his tiny hooves against her teeth. At her last visit the dentist had said she was wearing the enamel away and Beth had said, ‘Well I’ll wear falsies, then I can drink loads of Coke and coffee and shovel loads of sugar into my Weet-Bix in the mornings.’

  She had arched an eyebrow at Theo, and Theo had said, ‘Tasteful.’ The dentist had shaken his head and Beth had laughed at them both. She had a good laugh.

  Sirens cut the air and a few people ran down the path on the other side, waving and calling to the police. Theo wrapped her arms around herself and watched them. Surely she could leave, now? These other people had things under control. She knew the police might want to talk to her, but what would Theo say, apart from, yes, she had seen her jump? Seen her feet pedal frantically in the air, seen her dull brown hair fan out like a riflebird’s wings. Heard the flour-sack thud of her collision with the earth. Had she even heard bones cracking and splintering? Theo thought she probably had, and the shock and disappointment of the cry the woman had uttered, the pain in that register that Theo recognised in a primal way, from one animal to another: I am very badly hurt.