The Lone Child

by Anna George

  It was maddening.

  ‘Please? Can I stay a bit? I’ll be good.’

  In the silence, Neve slumped against the wall; she felt the cold stone on her warm flesh. She heard the child’s question repeating like a pealing bell, calling her to action. She rested her fingertips on her eyelids, felt the quivering of her eyeballs. She was a clock ticking too fast. Rarely did she do the wrong thing. Break rules. Flout the law. But now, alone with her baby and this child, the rules seemed distant. In a broken world, where men like her dad and Kris got off scot-free, the right thing wasn’t always obvious. What was obvious, though, was the girl was now safe.

  Someone’s stomach grumbled: hers or the girl’s. She couldn’t tell.

  ‘Would you like a piece of fruit?’ asked Neve.

  The girl nodded, dejected but grateful; she pulled something from the shopping bag. Paused. ‘What’s this?’ she whispered.

  Anticipating something exotic, Neve thought, Persimmon. But when she looked up, she felt a pang of sadness. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is a banana.’

  She put the phone down.

  11

  In the swanky car, they didn’t talk for ten minutes. The lady had been surprised by Cyndi’s sudden appearance but she didn’t say anything. Her tanned face had relaxed, and Leah had been relieved, not having to answer any questions. No one but Kelly and Phil and her friend Suzy knew her housing situation; and that was enough. Everyone knew people from school who’d ended up dead or on drugs, or in gaol. She didn’t want to be one of the people everyone else talked about. Or seen as a victim. Being evicted was crap, and couch surfing with her kids was super humiliating, but losing them would be worse. A year ago that would’ve been her wildest nightmare; today, she’d fallen down that many rungs on the ladder, it felt possible. Her fall had been that quick! She bet the lady wouldn’t understand.

  Leah kept her eyes dead ahead. The roads were straight, which was good, and the rain was behind them. There were only a few hills. She felt less sick, moving forward, in the dry. She wished the woman would go faster.

  Her right leg began to jump. She tried not to think about what Kelly would say. The car was clean and warm. The way she would’ve kept it, if it were hers. It was the flashest car she’d ever been in. A telephone fitted somehow to the dash. Radio stations in big red numbers on a screen. It looked like a plane’s cockpit, not that she’d been in a cockpit or a plane. She felt hot from her cheeks to her butt. Too hot. With her left hand, she touched the cream leather beneath the towel. It was warm, like another bum had sat in it. A big, hot bum.

  In her head, Mitch was sneering. She tried to ignore him. It sucked how he’d left the state six months ago but was still loud in her head.

  In the back Cyndi was sitting in the cleanest, most padded child seat Leah had ever seen. It looked brand new. There were two of them, both too big for Cyndi, but she wasn’t complaining. Cyndi was wide awake and looking out the window like Lady Muck, as Gran would’ve said. From the front, the woman smiled once or twice in the rear-view mirror. Leah ignored the other unoccupied seat and picked at her nails, rimmed with dirt.

  She was having trouble staying seated and, on top of everything else, the silence was getting awkward.

  Should she tell the lady about Tayla – and beg her to turn around? Or was it too late? The lady was on her way to a wedding . . . The woman’s hand pushed a button on her door. The window slid down. Cool air rushed into the cabin. Leah turned to her window and tried to sniff her armpits casually. Could be she was a bit whiffy; and she could tell Cyndi needed a change.

  She wondered if the lady would kick them out for smelling bad. ‘Are you a farmer then?’ she asked.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Are you a farmer?’

  ‘I’m a vigneron.’

  Leah frowned. Lately, hardly a day went by when she didn’t regret quitting school. ‘Don’t be like me,’ Gran had said. ‘Go as far as you can.’ But she’d wanted to earn money, to pay Gran rent. School, with its algebra and periodic tables and poetry, had seemed pointless. Irrelevant. A job came up at the pet shop and she took it. And then she met Mitch. She wiped her nose again on her hand.

  ‘A winemaker,’ said the woman, with a sharp sigh.

  Leah nodded and gave up. Panic was twisting in her chest.

  They seemed to be passing the same land, over and over. Hilly,

  fenced green paddocks. Worth a bomb. She glimpsed the lady’s watch on her left wrist. It was 9.10. Late for her family of early risers. Much later than she thought. She felt giddy and sweaty again. She wiped her face with her fingers. The lady’s watch had a large, white face and a thick, leather strap. It was simple, without being plain. Sometimes simple stuff cost more than the tricky stuff. Mitch had told her that once. ‘Shoes and watches, mate.’ He was right. You could tell a lot from a watch and a pair of shoes. She bet that watch cost a packet. The woman’s shoes were leather too. Brown work boots, but clean, shiny and thick-soled. They didn’t look like they ever stepped in mud or shit. This woman was different to the tourists that came each summer to Rosebud and took over the joint. This woman was the real deal. The sort that flew through pretty but ordinary Rosebud on her way to the posher spots, the ones with the views and tennis courts, like Portsea or Sorrento.

  The woman must’ve caught her staring; she moved her arm abruptly.

  Leah wondered what the lady would say if she told her the truth. Would she help or dob her in? The lady did seem kind of suss on her already.

  Leah looked behind her again. In the back, two coat hangers held a tan coloured suit in a cover and another outfit she couldn’t see, maybe the lady’s. Between the car seats, two bread rolls were in a paper bag. The rolls were long and crunchy-looking. At the top, frilly lettuce and something pink-brown, roast beef, was poking out. Morning tea?

  Once Tayla went on a hunger strike because she didn’t want to die, like Gran. A month after Gran had passed, Tayla had choked on a bit of bacon rind and thought she was dying too. Even though Gran died of kidney failure, not choking. But dying was on Tayla’s mind. Probably because Leah worked with old people and Tayla had taken to asking: ‘Who died today?’ And because Leah read about it in the paper, a lot: how people died. She read about it and told Kelly about it in front of the kids. She probably shouldn’t but she wanted everyone to know what not to do, while they had the chance.

  Some of them, especially the younger dead people, stuck in her head. Like the man who died when he tripped and fell, walking with his dinner plate. And the little kid who died at the beach when the hole her brothers were digging caved in on her. And the teenager who fell over in the snow and froze overnight. Except her story had a happy ending. When they found her, she had her eyes open and no pulse but they warmed her up and she lived. That one stayed with Leah. The luck of it! But what fascinated her most was how some people could linger and linger, even when they wanted to go, while some were brought back, and others died just like that. In seconds. Not paying attention.

  Today, she didn’t dare think about it. She swallowed, forcing her thoughts back to the bacon. After coughing it up, Tayla didn’t eat for three days and she was stick thin as it was. Leah had yelled until Tayla was more scared of her than of dying. Then, tiny bite by bite, like a baby learning, she started again. Leah wasn’t proud of that, but at least the kid ate. Back then, the fridge had been pretty full, so she had no reason not to.

  Leah’s stomach growled and she squirmed, thinking of the food she’d left at Kelly’s. The woman tapped the steering wheel and the radio came on. When had Leah and her girls last eaten? Yesterday lunchtime? Baked beans straight from the tin? Whenever it was, whatever it was, it was gone now. Tayla would be starving. What’d Tayla told her? Redback spiders could go a hundred days without food. Yeah, Leah had thought, but you’re no spider.

  The lady put her foot down and the trees whizzed by.

  Flinders was getting further away. Mitch’s voice in her head was getting cranky: You’re going in
the wrong direction! Say something!

  Finally, the country roads turned into double lanes, then suburban streets. Kelly’s two-bedroom house in Mornington was close. As they pulled up, she prayed Phil wasn’t at work. That he hadn’t taken their car. That Kelly wouldn’t be too mad. That her big sister would say, It’ll be okay. Her nephews were playing footy with the neighbours. She saw their eyes pop at the four-wheel drive. She ducked her head and hopped out.

  Leah’s gut was growling and her right ear buzzed. She unbuckled Cyndi quick-smart, as the lady said: ‘Here.’ And passed the two rolls. Leah managed to say thanks and hide her surprise; but she felt giddy again too, on that moving train, as the woman took off.

  Then a kid yelled, ‘Heads!’

  The football bounced hard into the side of her skull. Wham! The pain in her right ear exploded. She screamed as she fell, with Cyndi in her arms.

  12

  What was she meant to do, if not call the police? Ring the department of human something? Neve hadn’t any experience in matters like this. Other people’s children. The poor. She thought of her friends. She knew few, if any, ‘helping professionals’. Besides Kris, of course. And his doctor wife.

  Perched on the edge of the couch, Neve attached her baby to her breast and pondered. It was well after 11 a.m. and her routine was a forgotten dream. She licked her lips, tasting the last hints of maple syrup. The pancakes she’d spun together had been unexpectedly good: thin, almost translucent and speckled gold, the way her mother used to make them. She’d demolished her high stack in minutes and returned for seconds. The child had been more circumspect. With a fingertip, she’d pushed bite-sized pieces about in their sticky sea. Her knife and fork untouched. The problem was the cutlery, perhaps, or her predicament. When Cliff began to whimper, Neve hadn’t had time to find out.

  Cliff latched on as the child approached, bearing a glass of water. Neve downed the lot, surprised by its deliciousness, then the girl trotted to the recessed television. With great care, she retrieved a remote control.

  ‘I don’t need that, thanks.’ Neve clicked her tongue: television, in the daytime?

  The girl gestured to Neve’s telephone.

  ‘I’m good now, thank you.’ When Neve sat back on the couch, her baby opened his eyes, like a sleeping traveller on a bus going over a bump.

  The girl squatted on the nearby heating vent. As the dressing gown billowed around her knees and fell off her shoulders, she tugged at it, self-conscious again. And Neve considered her, as if the girl were a knot. They blinked at each other in a silence broken only by Cliff’s rhythmic murmurs. Although the child was clean, she still looked mildly dreadful. Recently shipwrecked.

  Neve struggled up. That dressing gown had to go.

  From a wardrobe in the bedroom, Neve unearthed an overflowing wicker basket then lumbered back to the living room, as Cliff protested from the rug. ‘There’s a dress here somewhere, I’m sure of it,’ she said. Spying the basket, the girl stood. Her mouth formed a perfect ‘O’ and her hands shot up to cover it. There was no artifice in her eyes, no affectation. Despite herself, Neve smiled. Until that moment, she’d thought only children in musicals or American sitcoms made that face. She considered the various gifts in the basket, all intended for Cliff. Some were wrapped, some partially opened. They were, she supposed, pristine if generic. One by one, she flung the soft toys and tiny jumpers, jumpsuits and beanies onto the couch.

  Cliff’s face was twisted and about to howl, as Neve dove back into the basket. Tearing open a flat cardboard box, she discovered a delicate mass of strings and coloured cardboard – an atypically whimsical gift from her father in faraway Brazil. Since Cliff’s birth, they’d spoken only twice, mostly about her father’s latest business. That he’d sent a gift was of itself notable. She lifted the strings to reveal miniature hot air balloons. Red, green, yellow, pink. The balloons were twisted but spinning, their wonky baskets twirling. Jessie studied the minute, tangled contraption, her head to one side.

  An uncanny gift, thought Neve, stalling. The morning Cliff was born, she had looked through the hospital windows to see two hot air balloons inching across the pure morning sky. She couldn’t recall recounting that moment to her father, or anyone else. Somehow the gift made her father feel both closer to her and further away. She pushed the box aside.

  Retrieving Cliff from the rug, she jiggled him on her shoulder as he grizzled, until a piece of fabric caught her eye in the basket. She snaked her hand in to pull out a pink dress. The dress was big, bigger than the rest. Aha! She lifted it to inspect its size. Size 2. Damn. She read the card stuck into its pocket: Myrtle Endicott. Her distant, clearly illiterate great aunt hadn’t fathomed her half-sister Marcia’s Facebook birth announcement. Making the gift yet another example of her estrangement from the world. She wiped Cliff’s wet face with the dress and reattached him to her chest. He shuddered as his cries abated and his rhythmic swallowing resumed. Oblivious, the girl swung the twisted mobile, her eyes alert. Her reactions, though subtle, were becoming more detectable.

  ‘Here,’ said Neve. Propping her feeding baby with cushions, she managed to untangle the strings and the fragile device whirled freely. Jessie watched the balloons spin.

  ‘Is that for him?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Is everything for him?’

  When Neve nodded again, the girl’s mouth opened again, sit-com-style. Neve tried to see what the girl could see. The munificence. What she saw was a mass of things she didn’t really need, and probably wouldn’t use. From people she rarely saw.

  Cliff spluttered and milk spilt from his mouth onto her breast. She felt inexplicably irritated.

  A moment later, the lights in the room flickered and snapped. Out.

  Worry was writ large in the child’s eyes. ‘Did your daddy forget to the pay the bill?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Neve, with a snort that disarmed them both, ‘probably.’

  Was something, or someone else, in the garage? The thought only occurred to Neve as she flung the internal door open to the shadows. Irritated, she stomped in, as though to scare off snakes. She was conscious again that whatever needed to be done, today and in the foreseeable future, could only be done by her. In the garage, the light was grey and dull and her car cold and silent. She trained her torch on the far wall, the yellow beam sliding across rows of hanging tools and steel stepladders, her mountain bike and the second fridge. The pram. As far as she could remember, everything looked as it did yesterday. Not an unused peg or open drawer.

  Warily, she moved around her car to the fuse box. Touched her fingertips to the switches: all uniform and on. Closing the box, she listened, half expecting to glimpse the mother sprawled on the concrete floor or poised, bearing a hammer, beneath the bench.

  In the corner of her eye, Neve saw a shadow dart behind her car; she chased it with the light to find only a tall mirror. A gift from Kris she’d never used. Avoiding her own reflection, she stared hard. Despite the odd spinning triangle, no one and nothing else was there.

  Perversely, she was almost disappointed.

  The torchlight inched across the floor one last time then she turned to leave. The unnaturally faint daylight was making her claustrophobic. But then she saw it. Low down, on a shelf. The only box of mementos that she’d saved, and ignored. Could she . . . Especially this morning? Bracing herself, she strode to the box and yanked off the lid. Took a breath and dove in.

  Inside was an orange and yellow striped windcheater with Donald Duck on its chest. Horse-riding boots, caked in dirt. A pair of jeans with two cherry patches on the knees. Pulling out the stiff denim, instantly, she was nine again and tugging on those jeans, fingering those red patches. She inhaled the scent of mothballs and old wool and leather boots. The sweet and sour notes of her childhood.

  Decades’ old sadness kindled within her as, digging deeper, she found larger clothes and bigger shoes. Swap cards. Books. At the sight of candles and an oil burner, abruptly, she r
efastened the lid. Breathing hard, she made herself focus on the scattered items on the garage floor. Two faded picture books: Anatole, about the French, cheese-tasting mouse; and Snowy, the Circus Pony. Torchlight created a halo on the faded images. Turning pages, she made her lips move, reciting the words. And, suddenly, another memory came: of her mother on the sofa, nestled into her and listening as she read. The warmth of her mother’s breath, the cushiony softness of her breasts, her citrusy scent. A feeling of absolute safety descended on Neve. A feeling she hadn’t had since.

  Clamping the cold books to her chest, she bore down against the urge to sob. This urge was another shock: sobbing was not her style. Long ago, her father had said that her tears upset him, so she had obliged. Now, listening to the silence, she willed the grief to lift. Then she gathered herself, her peculiarly swinging emotions. Her thoughts returned to the slip of a child, waiting for her in the house.

  What sort of attention – close, genuine attention – did she get?

  The lights flickered on, tantalisingly, and off again.

  Faintly, she heard her name.

  With the two books and a bundle of clothes under her arm, she stood. Her fingers stopped quivering; her body’s ticking slowed. She would keep the girl, for a few hours. If the mother was foolish enough to lose her daughter, for a second time, she could go without her a little longer. In fact, this scare might teach the woman the lesson that yesterday’s didn’t. And if the mother didn’t return by dinnertime, well then, Neve would call the police. Without question.

  In the meantime, she would try to inflate the girl, buoy her. For this child, if only for a very short time, Neve would be like the mother she’d lost. And the girl would be perfectly safe.