The Lone Child

by Anna George

  ‘As a matter of fact, he does.’

  Her laugh, throaty and rich, surprised them both. It ran on. So long he feared it would fold back onto itself and crumble into tears. He took another bite of muffin.

  __________

  Sal stayed for almost an hour. When he left, he promised to return the next day. Inexplicably, his plans had changed and she was pleased. Her wall would be restored in no time. Checking on Jessie, Neve found the girl happily ‘reading’ Anatole in the guest room. Sitting beside her, Neve wondered why she hadn’t asked Sal directly: Had he seen a strange woman loitering outside? Did he know a local girl, who roamed, alone? Did he know the family? Or the Holden?

  Watching Jessie’s finger tracing the words on the page, Neve told herself that she hadn’t asked because . . . well . . . she didn’t know. But perhaps because there was no need. Sal wouldn’t know the girl. And, on reflection, the roller door must have malfunctioned. The garage had been empty. She wondered then, if, occasionally, other families fed and cared for Jessie, until the mother turned up. That would explain the absence of any sense of emergency. Anywhere.

  She could call triple zero again, she supposed, with a yawn.

  Through the window, she considered the darkening sky, the blustery wind. What if the mother was on her way? What if she had been affected by the storm, the road closures? Flinders was hardly an island with a single bridge in. But it was getting late. If she called now, where would the girl have dinner? And with who? Senior Constable Jenkins? Neve thought of the food in the fridge. She had a lot to eat, which was spoiling. She ought to cook first. Feed her properly. Having rescued the girl yesterday . . . surely Neve could afford a little leeway today. Another hour wouldn’t hurt.

  Hopping up, Neve wandered to the kitchen and took chicken fillets from the freezer. The flesh was not quite frozen, not quite thawed. Almost translucent. With some effort, she managed to cut breast after breast into strips. Busied, she felt the conundrum presented by the girl disappear. Denial, she supposed Kris would call it. Cloaked in busyness. She doused the chicken in soy sauce, garlic and ginger. There was a mountain of it, which she couldn’t refreeze. She emptied the soy sauce bottle. Jessie would have to find her appetite. She set the marinade to one side, along with bowls of bok choy, and strips of onion, snow peas and red capsicum, and lit the heat beneath the wok. Warmed the oil. Cooking in the semidarkness reminded her of summer-long camping with her parents at Shoreham when she was a child. Semi-permanence. Transit.

  Ten minutes vanished and then, un-hungry, she served Jessie’s meal and called the girl. She ambled to the couch to feed Cliff. This time, she’d left Jessie with a spoon and fork and did not watch. Again, Jessie pushed the food about in its bowl. Was her cooking off? The vegetables had seemed slightly soggy. And, certainly, those muffins, which she’d whipped up in record time, hadn’t been her best; she allowed herself a smile as she remembered the stonemason’s face as he chewed. Bless him. Nevertheless, she willed the girl to eat, as she tried to remember what she’d planned to do . . .

  Directly after his feed, Cliff started to vomit. Projectile streams of faintly rancid milk shot across the floorboards, in her hair, up the wall. Jessie trotted about with cloth nappies, mopping up puddles, fetching jumpsuits. They were each busy at it. Vomiting. Cleaning. Changing. Neve ran the bath again and Cliff whimpered as they both, she and he, hopped in. It was after seven by the time she realised she’d forgotten to call. By then Jessie was dozing in the guest bedroom and Cliff was overtired. It took another hour to get him down.

  By nine, the call was beyond her. The power had not returned and the house was swathed in a thick, mute darkness. She crawled into her bed and lay beneath her doona. Exhausted yet restless, she lay, thankful the girl was safe and for her help. But concerned too: her own tiredness was overwhelming everything – her cooking, her mood, her thinking. And somehow she was caring for two children . . . When would she be herself again?

  easter saturday

  19

  Around 1 a.m. the bedroom burst into light and Neve stirred, disorientated. Music blared. Beyond the bedroom, the house was buzzing. She could hear the dishwasher. The washing machine. The heating. Struggling into her gown, she ran along the hall. Every light in the dining room and the kitchen was aglow. Even the balcony was spotlit again, its great whiteness jutting into the night. She reeled from panel to panel, shutting off switches she didn’t recall turning on. She paused the washing machine. She silenced Maria. When she was finished, she was puffing, her nerves jangling. Was it her? The mother? Finally.

  She circled back, flooding white light into her garden, until she became conscious of Cliff, rousing. And the answer: no.

  Fifteen minutes later, she sat, with her baby at her breast. This time, she was folded over her laptop at the dining room table. By then it was almost two and her house had resumed its customary pitch and hue. Steady red eyes watched from assorted appliances; the fridge hummed and the heater purred. Thank god, she thought, for electricity!

  One-handed, she tapped at the keyboard. Missing children were a big deal, everyone knew that. Whole communities banded together when a child disappeared. People turned up in droves to help search. Flowers lined the scene of the last sighting or the family home. News crews descended. Helicopters circled.

  Australia had a long tradition of losing children. Initially in the bush. Then they were stolen. And abducted. These children and their stories became emblematic of entire eras. She thought of that McCubbin painting, and Picnic at Hanging Rock . . . Azaria Chamberlain, and Archie Roach.

  Today a girl, possibly called Grubby, was missing. Who cared?

  Her screen filled with columns of text. She scanned it quickly. But the day’s news stories focused on the local weather or wars on the other side of the world. Overnight, the temperature had plunged to two degrees. A homeless man had perished in a shipping container at the port. She skipped the details. There were no stories of children missing. No pleading parents or crimestopper numbers. Over and over, she stroked Cliff’s silken forehead until his eyes shut. She tried to understand but her thoughts were jittery.

  She watched Cliff’s chin pressing into her breast. She was not a perfect person, or a perfect mother; she could concede that. She had a sneaky wine, was a tad resentful. But, under the circumstances, without Kris, without support, she was doing her best. Over time she would like it more, resist it less. Especially once Cliff could speak. In the meantime, he was warm and fed, clean and safe. That was the absolute minimum required of any mother. Anywhere. Wasn’t it?

  Her confusion morphed into disquiet. Why hadn’t the mother, or the father, come forward? God forbid: were they more dysfunctional than she’d imagined? Her knowledge of people like them was, at best, limited.

  At university in her very first week, she’d sat in a lecture theatre with a hundred or so other freshers. A mildly intimidating professor, with black, flyaway hair, had asked: who among you has come from a public high school? Three or four hands were raised. And of you, she continued, who came from regional Australia? One hand remained, that of a buxom, excitable girl with an oversized bag. Congratulations to you, said Professor Mullaway. You should do well here. Neve had studied the blushing Heather Richards from Shepparton. Fleetingly, she’d been affronted. Why would she do well?

  While she certainly wasn’t elitist and Australia wasn’t a class-based society, she had to admit – not that she’d say it out loud – she’d thought of people like Jessie and her mother (and yes Heather Richards, though she was further along the spectrum) as coming from ‘across town’, ‘the West’ or ‘the North’, or ‘the country’. Somewhere vague and out of sight. Where rough types languished and most youths dressed badly and ate poorly. Where schools were hives of drug dealing and gang warfare. And unemployment was sky-high. Where too many babies were born with fetal alcohol syndrome or drug addiction, to single mothers. While she considered herself an adventurous traveller, she’d never wanted to visit there.

>   She wondered, then, how she’d come to form the views she had. Especially in light of Jessie, who seemed a thoughtful and kind child. A better behaved and worse dressed version of Neve’s nieces in Adelaide.

  Puzzled, she revisited what she knew of her house guest’s mum. The car. The overheard argument. The clothes . . . Feverishly, she typed. She skimmed the list until she found a likely match. Clicking through to a website, she found the crest. Aha! A logo for an aged-care facility at Mount Martha! The mother, it seemed, had a job . . . only half an hour away. Neve sat back. This wasn’t the result she’d been expecting. Deflated, she shut her laptop. In the humming and purring house, with effort, she rose.

  At least now, she thought, I can find you.

  20

  Leah blinked into the shadowy green fabric surrounding her and tried to wake up. Beyond the curtain, people were snoring, like they were talking from bed to bed. They sounded close. She tried to move but her gown was twisted and a drip was attached to her arm. The curtained space whirled. She touched the side of her head. What did the doctor say? Infection or rupture? Or both?

  Not that she really cared. She pulled the tubing from her arm and wobbled out of bed. With the gown wrapped around her, she hunted for her clothes but couldn’t find them. She tried to feel her way through the curtain. In the dark, it took some doing. When she finally got out, she was rattled and in the middle of a six-bed ward. Someone farted as she opened a cupboard, which turned out to be a bathroom. Unoccupied and clean. She dry-retched into the metal toilet. Coughed and spat. Then she stumbled into the large room again to hesitate among the six cubicles, lost.

  The snorer next to her was the loudest. She tried to breathe through the nausea, ignore the noises, and think. How to get out . . . She swayed and her eyes closed. Someone else murmured in sleep, a one-sided conversation. Yes, that was it. She staggered back through the open curtains. In her cubicle, on a nearby table, was a telephone. It was 5.05 a.m. They’d have to be home by now. She lifted the receiver and heard the dial tone purring in her good ear. Tayla would be asleep, tired from her night in the bush. But cosy and clean. Not scared. Leah gulped. She couldn’t wait to see Tayla’s little face and hold her thin, warm body . . . to tell her how sorry she was.

  But what was Kelly’s mobile number? Leah’s head felt that heavy, the numbers didn’t come. Then the dial tone dropped out. Leah was mumbling in frustration when a nurse stepped through the curtains.

  ‘What are you up to?’ The girl was about her age with a posh bun and round glasses.

  Leah yawned. What could she say to that? I have to see my daughter.

  ‘I need to go . . .’ The nurse stared at her mouth, or maybe her teeth. The twisted eye-teeth, the overlapping bottom ones.

  ‘Whoever you’re ringing can wait until morning.’ The nurse snatched the phone out of Leah’s hand. ‘You need to rest.’

  ‘I . . .’ Leah made her eyes open. ‘I need . . . to go.’

  The nurse steered her onto the bed

  ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ The nurse turned her attention to the drip.

  Leah tried to fight the tiredness but its pull was too strong. Typical. She’d worn herself out, and made no progress. Her eyes closed, again.

  ‘Please . . . Can you wake me up in an hour?’

  ‘Will do,’ said the nurse. ‘Night, night.’

  ‘Please . . . don’t forget . . .’

  The curtains shut with a hiss.

  21

  On the dot of seven, Sal buzzed her gate. Once the hour would’ve been hideous for receiving people. But today, she met him on the driveway. He greeted her warmly, and she hoped he didn’t expect a repeat performance of coffee and muffins. She’d been awake since the four o’clock feed – worrying about herself and planning the return of the child. The lives of the girl and that mother were none of her business. By 5 a.m., Neve had decided it was time she drove the girl to the Rosebud police station herself. There, swiftly, she could hand her over – preferably not to the likes of Senior Constable Craig Jenkins – and get on with her life. At six, when Cliff had gone down, she’d tugged on jeans and her camel leather boots and a roll-neck, caramel-coloured jumper. The jumper was last season’s but it set off the flecks of gold in her eyes. She had, she realised, dressed deliberately, for the first time since Cliff was born. A challenging morning lay ahead.

  By the wall, Sal presented her with a jar of something darkly red. Seeing the startle on her face, he said, ‘Jam. Blackberry.’

  Neve held the jar, as though it was something precious and foreign she hadn’t earned. She blinked, her lips apart, wordless. She had a pang of regret that she’d invited him in.

  ‘I’ve been making jam for decades,’ he said. ‘We pick the berries around Merricks, Red Hill. This batch isn’t too bad.’ His gaze was steady on hers; it seemed to say, ‘You okay?’ When she didn’t respond, he shrugged and with a smile headed for the toppled midsection.

  ‘Your fridge’s back on, isn’t it?’ he tossed over his shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Neve was struck by his gait, his arms by his side, his legs doing all the moving. There was something calming about his bearing, something contained. He intended to finish around lunchtime. Already, she felt bolstered by the temporary fence. Any work on the stone today was a bonus. What were his plans for the afternoon, once he was done? When she was alone again. Was he free? These exotic thoughts fluttered across her mind, then she left him to it.

  She didn’t rush to wake Jessie. When would the girl next sleep in such a clean, big bed? Instead, with a perverse burst of energy, Neve swept the floor and hung yet another load of washing, emptied the dishwasher and dusted the uncluttered surfaces. The house looked pristine, almost unlived in, the way she preferred it. Around eight, when she was done, Cliff and Jessie were still silent. But Neve was too agitated to rest.

  It was almost nine by the time her baby woke. That was his longest stretch of sleep in the last twenty-four hours – in the wrong part of the day. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to wake him either. He was lying with his feet at the bottom of the bassinet, the wrap firm across his chest, as she’d left him at six. When she picked him up, after a few seconds delay, the alarm sounded, high pitched and insistent. She jumped. Although he was safe and breathing in her arms, she felt her anxiety escalate. The monitor’s flashing red light and its beeps were blunt reminders of the ever-present prospect of SIDS. She clamped him to her chest as she cursed softly and shut the thing off.

  On the upside, the device worked and Cliff was oblivious to his own fragility. As he was to what lay in store, this morning. He seemed in good spirits, beaming gummy grins up at her as she dressed him. It seemed they were entering a new phase, of smiles and eye contact – not a moment too soon. He was becoming more human, less amoebic. With a pang, she thought: Cliff will miss Jessie too. One day, she’d tell him about their young guest . . . but what would she say? She tried not to surmise where Jessie would end up tonight. Or in the years ahead.

  Between the ages of seven and ten, Neve had lived with three families. Her two aunts and one of her mother’s friends. The families had multiple children and holiday houses, slobbery pets and swimming pools. But other people’s families were like other tribes, with their own customs and rituals and language. She had never managed to assimilate. Boarding school in Geelong had been her salvation. But an unlikely option for Jessie.

  As she stood, imagining the trajectory of Jessie’s life, Cliff filled his nappy.

  Half an hour later, she couldn’t delay it any longer. Cupping Cliff in her elbow, she headed for the upper-level guest room. She knocked on the door twice before stepping into the dark.

  ‘Wakey, wakey,’ she said, as brightly as she could.

  She pushed a button and the silver blind rose. The day tumbled in as sunlight swept across the queen-sized, tidy bed. Neve faltered.

  ‘Hey, Jessie?’

  With Cliff in her arms, Neve bent to peer under
the bed. She strode across the room, her baby bouncing in her grip. She searched in the ensuite, the powder room, her bedroom and Cliff’s. She trotted downstairs and searched the other two bedrooms and their ensuites. The guest sitting room. There was no sign of the girl. Her jam toast repeated on her.

  ‘Jessie, where are you?’ Her voice rose. ‘Grubby?’

  She paused. Perhaps the girl wasn’t as comfortable here as she’d thought. Perhaps the child was missing her mother more than she let on – talking tough but feeling it. That would hardly be surprising. Tender or harsh, that woman was her mother. And, potentially, not as dysfunctional as Neve had feared.

  Neve sprang back to the upper-level guest bedroom. Semi-delirious the night before, she’d left Jessie to undress and climb into bed. She’d checked on her only once in the pitch dark, and thought she’d heard a murmur, around the eleven o’clock feed. If only the power had been back by then, she could have left a light on. Why hadn’t she checked on her when the lights returned? She peered at the bed, willing it to confess its secrets. She felt a sense of impending loss, her world contracting again. Curious, considering the child had only arrived a day ago, was a stranger. Odd, too, considering she’d decided, this morning, to turn her in, like a lost wallet.

  ‘Oh, Jessie,’ she whispered. ‘Where are you?’

  A noise came from the wall of built-in robes. And another, like a cat’s meow. She slid the three panels to one side; there curled on the carpet, beneath a mound of blankets, was a figure. A real one. Cowering.

  ‘Hello, hello.’ She could not keep the smile from her voice.

  A bunch of bananas peeked from the foot of the blanket. Along with a handful of broken crackers.

  ‘Well, it does look comfy in there, I suppose.’