She stumbled to the bathroom, resisting the urge to run as she fought off an image of being on the dark streets with a dangerous pursuer only two steps behind.
‘I won’t be a minute Danny,’ she called out, a false brightness making her sound like she had just inhaled helium. Oblivious to her trauma Danny pulled his shorts back on and walked half naked to the kitchen to rescue the risotto they’d neglected. He was used to it by now, this happened every afternoon when Christine arrived home.
Christine filled the basin with hot water and dropped a face washer in, getting it to the perfect temperature before covering her whole face in its warmth. She pumped a large drop of her favourite face wash onto her fingers and rubbed them all over her cheeks, forehead and eyes, to wash off the day’s layer of makeup and city grime. She stared at the face staring back at her. A smudged mess of colours. The black mascara and eyeliner that snaked halfway down her cheeks reminded her of the morning after the long nights on the streets. Panic twisted and gripped her from the inside. In an attempt to regain control she wet the washer again and moved it slowly over her face. Then again, and again, until her face was completely clean. She breathed in and out, trying to calm herself; desperately fighting off a past that threatened to destroy her future.
CHAPTER 3
Bad mix
1988
Christine stared vacantly at a face she hardly recognised in the cracked, dirty mirror that looked like it hadn’t seen a cleaning cloth since 1970. The mirror vibrated from the doof doof doof of the music on the other side of the wall as her face went in and out of focus. She’d just taken a hit of something which had bent her mind in ways she’d never been bent before.
The door opened, letting in a loud blast of music and smoke before it whooshed shut again and muffled everything on the other side.
‘You right, sweetie?’ It was Annabelle, searching for her friend who’d been missing for longer than usual. They had a pact to stick together when they were out on a Saturday night. Travel in twos, never go solo. Annabelle had been deep in conversation with a couple of blokes from Melbourne, and didn’t realise Christine had disappeared into the back alley to score in exchange for a blowjob. She’d disappeared with one of her regulars, a decent guy but for one thing. He moved drugs from one end of Darlinghurst Road to the other and, of late, he’d developed his own taste for his wares. This made him careless with his sources, and this new batch of speed hadn’t been cooked right. He’d taken on a new supplier, someone who cut corners. Christine had been one of the first to sample it and something didn’t feel right.
Her legs gave way and she lay in an awkward crumpled mess on the sticky disgusting floor. Annabelle crouched down, shaking her friend.
‘Christine, Christine, what’s happening, what have you taken? Christine!’
Christine’s eyes started to roll backwards and her body was trembling. Annabelle, a strong girl who’d grown up on a farm and could easily lift her more petite friend, scooped Christine into her arms. Wearing heels she was slightly unsteady, but once she had her balance she was right.
Christine’s shaking got worse and Annabelle pushed the bathroom door open with her backside, suddenly in a panic to get out of here and back to Bessie’s. Or, should she call an ambulance? No, it would be quicker to go to Bessie’s, no way an ambulance was going to get here on time.
Nobody took any notice of them as Annabelle pushed through the pulsing crowd to the stairs that would lead them up onto the street. It was only a short walk to Kellett Street, but these heels weren’t making it easy. She kicked them off at the top of the stairs, the short pause giving her a chance to catch her breath.
She talked to Christine the whole time. ‘Come on baby, tell me what you took.’
Christine was muttering incoherently and Annabelle leant down so her ear was closer to Christine’s mouth.
‘Ant, new batch, speed, don’t feel right.’
Annabelle looked around, hoping to catch sight of Ant. He’d been wandering in and out of the club all night, and she was hoping he’d be up on the street peddling his wares. She was in luck, he was two doors down, talking to a group of street kids.
‘Ant,’ she called in her loudest farm girl voice. ‘What the fuck have you given Chris?’
Ant pressed something into the hands of the girls he was with. ‘Hey Ant, can you hear me?’ He turned to Annabelle and his face fell. ‘Don’t take that shit he’s given you girls, chuck it, unless you want this to happen!’ Annabelle was getting hysterical now, waiting for traffic so she could cross the road. Ant raced over to her.
‘Christine, Christine, what happened?’
‘You fucking tell me you creep, what the fuck did you give her?’
‘Just some speed, she was fine when I last saw her, she was absolutely fine.’ He stood helplessly as Annabelle changed position so she didn’t drop her friend.
‘Well, don’t just stand there you useless cunt, get an ambulance or something. Tell them to meet me at Bessie’s.’
‘You can’t carry her all that way, can you?’
‘You just watch me, mate.’ Annabelle ran awkwardly across the road and out of sight. Ant looked blindly around, trying to think where he could call an ambulance. He raced into the Beef and Bourbon and pushed through the crowd to the bar. ‘Give me a phone,’ he yelled over the noise. ‘There’s a girl in trouble, she needs an ambulance. Give me a phone, now!’
The girl behind the bar gestured for him to come behind the bar to the phone. He punched in 000, his hands shaking. In his panic he dropped one of the bags of pills he was carrying and the contents scattered across the floor. He was torn between picking them up and saving his precious cargo, and holding on the line to wait for someone to speak to him, so he could get an ambulance to Bessie’s. He chose the latter, deciding to stomp and crush those tablets to powder. Fuck. How did his life end up like this? What was he doing here? You wait until he got his hands on those fuckers who’d given him this shit, you just fucking wait.
CHAPTER 4
Swings and roundabouts
2015
Christine had blocked out the night she nearly died at the hands of Ant, who she called Antonio in tender moments. The guy on the train was Antonio; she was sure of it. She hadn’t recognised him easily without his mullet and with facial hair, and the cap had thrown her off. Plus he was around twenty kilograms heavier than when she knew him. Twenty-seven years could do that to a person. It was definitely him though. But how?
She thought he’d be dead by now, shot in the back for some dodgy drug deal on the streets of Kings Cross. Her memories crashed together the way the foamy waves of a deep low pressure system collide and butt against each other angrily over weather-worn rock cliffs. When she last saw him he was in fairly deep, supplying the police as well as the streets. Taking risks as though he was bulletproof. She worried about him being in way over his head and when he went down, she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. It was a tough call when she knew he cared for her. She cared for him too.
She’d vowed never to get involved with one of her customers, but she had been with Antonio the night Annabelle disappeared, intimately and in a way she’d never been with anyone before. This hadn’t been long after the night she nearly died from a drug overdose.
She tried to use the warm washer to stop her mind right there but it was too late. The past was pushy, jostling for her attention. She couldn’t look away.
Getting out of the noisy city into the quiet and peaceful bush that night in 1988 had been Annabelle’s idea. Dear, lovely Annabelle. Things started to unravel for Christine after that night. Increasing paranoia stemming from not knowing what happened to Annabelle.
‘Where are you Annabelle?’ Christine whispered into the mirror.
Jolt. She was back in The Cross again, making the decision that if she didn’t want to end up a missing person she needed to get off the streets. Saying her goodbyes to Bessie Fleetwood in Bessie’s Kellett Street brothel. Fighting with Ant wh
en he didn’t want to let her go. Getting on the train at Kings Cross station. Getting off at The Rocks. Reinventing herself. Finding work in a jewellery store. Proving she was a natural with the customers, and later with the jewels themselves. Nobody ever knew she’d arrived from the other side of the tracks.
All these years later, wearing expensive charcoal grey pants suits and delicate pink shirts with the thinnest of grey stripes, Christine looked like thousands of other corporate women who stood on the packed Melbourne platform before the train opened its doors and swallowed her whole at five o’clock every afternoon. A long way away from her shameful past. So far away she mostly forgot that past was even hers.
…
‘Dinner’s ready,’ Danny called, shaking Christine out of her dark reverie.
‘Coming!’
Danny had poured two glasses of white to enjoy with their risotto, in funky tumblers she’d been thrilled to discover, having knocked over more stemmed wine glasses than she could count while her hands described one of her over animated stories.
‘You okay Hon? You look a bit pale.’
‘That’s because I’ve just removed all my makeup,’ she laughed, trying to jolly herself out of her mood. ‘I’m absolutely starving, this looks sensational. Yummo!’ Danny tried not to notice her shaking hand reaching for her wine. She took a sip, continuing the pretence. ‘Nice drop, where’d you find this one?’
‘Swings & Roundabouts, all the way from Margaret River. I’ve signed up to their wine club. This one’s called Kiss Chasey, which made me laugh because I remember playing Kiss Chasey with the girls in primary school.’
‘Ha ha, how funny. I can’t imagine them running from you though, and I bet there was a lot more kiss than chasey going on!’
‘Yeah, well I reckon you would have been pretty hard to catch,’ Danny smiled. ‘I can’t imagine you making it easy for the boys. It took me five years of chasing before I got my first kiss.’
Christine smiled. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were not just after me for the kissing, I needed to know you wanted me for my high intellect and talented interior decorating.’
Danny pushed his concerns aside. He could tell something had snapped. She did this sometimes, retreated into herself. When she told him the condensed version of her checkered past, she said she’d only share it on the condition he would only ask her once. It was difficult for him to honour that at times like these.
By the time they finished their risotto and the full bottle of Kiss Chasey, Christine had pushed Ant and Annabelle back to the eighties where they belonged. So what if it was Ant on the train? She’d probably never see him again. And if she did, so what? She had moved on and he probably had too. Old Christine was long gone. She snuggled close to Danny all night, clutching onto him and new Christine like a baby koala to its mother.
CHAPTER 5
Normal
The next morning Christine got up at the same time she always did, kissing Danny lightly on the cheek before rolling out of bed to enjoy her morning coffee in complete solitude in their little French cottage. She left her rinsed cup on the sink, gathered her things and let herself quietly out the front door, ready to face the world again as the skilled and sought after jewellery designer for the elite.
Despite her routine, her thoughts were scrambled and loud, making it difficult to keep herself in her usual order. Bessie, the big, boisterous, eccentric pimp from Kellett Street, was the noisiest. As Christine walked up her leafy street towards the train station the early morning kookaburras made her jump. She thought it was Bessie calling out to her. She was instantly transported back to Bessie’s cheerful kitchen, the table covered in fifty and one hundred dollar bills. Her evening haul. The bright morning sunshine beamed through the window, illuminating the notes so they shone and glistened like a pile of gold.
…
Christine’s eye makeup was smudged and she had a sore rear end from the customer who liked to give it up the arse. She charged extra for that.
‘Well, lookee here, Miss Christine,’ Bessie chuckled as she counted the money, carefully dividing it between herself and Christine. ‘You are the best little earner in my history, they just can’t get enough of your pretty little face can they? Or should I say fanny, and arse!’
Christine laughed along with her, feasting her eyes on the money in an effort to block out everything she’d gone through to earn this cash.
Bessie sighed. ‘Aah, there was only one other who could earn like this eh Christine?’
Christine suddenly felt weary. Weary of this life, weary of who she’d become, weary of where she was headed.
‘I wonder where she is,’ Christine said quietly, a cloud covering the sun that streamed in the window and transforming the cheerful kitchen into darkness and gloom. ‘Do you think she is out there somewhere, living a new life away from all this? Do you think she just decided to go deeper into the bush and start heading for home? She grew up in the country you know, maybe that’s what she did.’
Bessie shook her head. ‘I don’t know love, I honestly don’t know. That’s what I’d like to think, that being out in the bush that night snapped something for her, that whatever troubles she was running away from took her back home.’
‘She definitely changed after seeing Nick, you know, her fella from back home. She was sweet on him, so sweet on him. And why not, he sure is a looker. He keeps coming back to the park. Every weekend. I have started going back too. Just to watch him. He sits there, on the edge of the fountain, for hours. Looking around, waiting. Just in case she comes back.’
‘You should talk to him,’ Bessie said.
‘Nah, couldn’t do it. Don’t want him to know what she was doing while she was here. She told him she was living with a rich old lady, looking after her. No way I want to shatter his illusions. He’ll spot me a mile off, he’ll know exactly who I am and what I do. Then he’ll put two and two together and bam, he’s completely blindsided. Nah, I’ll just keep him company from a long way away, and who knows, maybe she will come back and meet him like she promised. Maybe she will…’ Christine’s voice trailed off and they sat in silence.
Bessie heaved her heavy frame out of the chair and went over to the kettle and flicked it on.
‘Tea?’
Christine nodded. Yes, that’s exactly what she needed. A cup of hot steaming tea.
‘You know what Bessie? I’m tired.’
‘Well of course you’re bloody tired,’ Bessie tried to lift the mood. ‘You’ve had your legs in the air all night!’
Christine didn’t smile. ‘No, I don’t mean that sort of tired. Tired of all this. Tired of the life. Tired of standing on the corner, tired of getting into the back of cars, tired of walking up the stairs in that grotty hotel, tired of them trying to kiss me and pretend they care when all I am is just one big fantasy…tired.’
Bessie brought over the steaming cup of tea and Christine took a long, comforting sip.
‘Good,’ she sighed. ‘Apart from Annabelle, you make the best cup of tea ever.’
‘Must be the way I jiggle the bag.’ Bessie was avoiding the subject, knowing what was coming but not wanting to hear it.
‘I’m going to give it away, Bessie,’ Christine continued. ‘I can’t do it anymore.’
Bessie’s eyes filled with tears.
‘I appreciate all that you’ve done for me Bess, you’re like a Mum to me, but I’m giving it away. I’ve got to change my life, no bastard’s gunna change it for me.’
‘But this is your life Christine, this is what you do. And you’ll always have a roof over your head, and anything you need,’ Bessie said. Christine took another sip of tea while Bessie watched her closely. She knew this day was coming, ever since Annabelle disappeared something had shifted in Christine.
It had shifted in Bessie too, made her wonder about what she was doing here in The Cross. Her young ones came and went on a daily basis, but Annabelle was different. Annabelle reminded her so much of her own little girl,
with her soft blonde curls and blue eyes. Her little girl, who had died a long time ago. Her little girl, who had come back to her in the form of Annabelle.
Bessie sighed, there was no point trying to persuade her to stay. If she didn’t let her go, she’d back her into a corner and lose her forever.
‘What am I gunna do without you, luv?’
‘Oh, you’ll be right Bess, plenty more where I came from.’ Christine winked and reached across the table to grab Bessie’s hands.
‘I mean it when I say you’re a Mum to me, and I hope I’ll always have a place at your kitchen table.’
‘Of course you do, you come back whenever you want. Anything you ever need, you’ll always find it here. Don’t be a stranger, hey?’
…
Christine was on the train, her mind so lost in the past she hardly realised she’d been through all the motions of her early morning commute to work. Disoriented, she looked around wildly, trying to spot him but hoping like hell she wouldn’t. After a few minutes, realising he wasn’t on the train, her breathing returned to normal. She had to stay strong, and stay in the present. The past had no place in her life.
Her thoughts stayed on Bessie, who was now living a quiet life at Anglesea, a tiny, quaint seaside town on the Great Ocean Road. She hadn’t seen her in a long time but Bessie sent her a birthday card with a letter enclosed every year. She always included her return address in case Christine felt inclined to write back.
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