Let Her Go

by Let Her Go (retail) (epub)

  Zoe stared at it in confusion. Why had Nadia highlighted this particular provision of the legislation? And why had she done it three weeks ago – not before Louise was born and not today, after finding out about Lachlan? What was an ‘exceptional reason’? Zoe’s heart thumped in her ears as she realised that Lachlan had just given Nadia exactly what she wanted – her justification for getting Louise back. And by running to her mother’s house, and telling her family what Lachlan had done, Zoe had played right into her hands.

  Domestic violence.

  Alcohol abuse.

  These would be textbook ‘exceptional reasons’.

  Even as she held the evidence in her hands, Zoe still couldn’t believe that Nadia would do this to her. Not her sister. But then she thought of all the other things that, together, were now so clear: secret photos she’d never seen; Nadia’s phone conversation with Eddie today; the way she held Louise and gazed at her; the expensive bracelet … Would she really do this?

  Zoe heard laughter from the kitchen. She wiped her eyes then rapidly stuffed everything back in the box, making sure that the photo of Louise and Lachlan was placed on top. She quickly put the box back into the bookshelf, grabbed the pile of baby things, and opened the door.

  She kept a smile fixed on her face as she walked along the hall and stood in the kitchen doorway. The four children were seated around the table, Louise in a high chair. Louise was the only one with blue eyes, but otherwise they all looked similar, like siblings. Nadia and Eddie pottered around them, pouring glasses of water, wiping up spills, helping cut up food. Louise looked like part of the family already.

  Zoe wouldn’t let herself cry again; that was what Nadia wanted. Louise wasn’t part of Nadia and Eddie’s family: she was Zoe’s child. Louise belonged to her, and no one was going to take her away.

  She walked casually into the room, though she was certain that Nadia and Eddie could see the confusion and fear seeping out of her.

  ‘Did you find what you needed?’ Eddie asked.

  Zoe tried to keep her voice even. ‘Yes, I did. If it’s all right with you, we’ll get going now.’ She walked towards Louise.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay overnight, save you the drive back?’ Nadia said.

  Zoe paused in the midst of unbuckling Louise from the high chair and stared at Nadia. They locked eyes. Zoe wasn’t going to be the one who looked away first; as they stared at each other, she saw a flicker in Nadia’s eyes, as though her sister had realised that Zoe knew what was going on. Nadia looked away first.

  ‘No,’ Zoe said, feeling more in control. ‘I need to get Louise back and settled. It’s late, past her bedtime. She’s had too much excitement for one day. Tonight, she needs her mum.’ She picked up Louise. ‘Don’t you, sweetheart? You just need your mummy.’ She looked at Eddie. ‘If you’re too busy right now, I can get a taxi.’

  Eddie frowned, then stood up suddenly. ‘No, no, I can take you.’

  ‘But —’ Nadia started to say something, then stopped when Eddie looked at her, nodding so slightly that Zoe was sure she wasn’t meant to see.

  At that moment she knew her suspicions were right. She had to take Louise, and she had to go.

  * * *

  Zoe smiled brightly during breakfast the next morning, avoiding her parents’ anxious glances. While her mum and Martin got ready for work, she rinsed out Louise’s bowl. She glanced at the clock on the microwave; it was after seven. She had booked the ferry and accommodation last night, secretly, when they got back from Nadia’s.

  She ran a cloth under the tap, wiped soggy cereal from Louise’s hands and face, then unstrapped her from the high chair and sat her on the floor. She wondered if Lachlan was thinking about her. No, he was probably at home, fast asleep, sure that she and Louise would be back soon. She wasn’t going to cling to him any more, and she wasn’t going to let Nadia take control either. Zoe stretched out her fingers, looking at her thin, freckled hands and bitten fingernails, the skin around them torn, then rolled her wrists to get all the tension out. She looked down at Louise, who was staring, hypnotised, at the television; she’d probably learned to love it from all her hours with her father. Zoe shook her head and bit the inside of her cheek. Leaving the living room door open, she went quickly to the spare room. She could hear her mother’s hairdryer whirring from the bathroom. She collected her dirty clothes from yesterday and balled them up in her bag, then picked up her phone and glanced at the screen. There was a text message.

  Zoe’s stomach lurched as she opened the message. It was from Lachlan, sent ten minutes ago. I’m sorry. Where are you? Come home.

  Zoe sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it, knowing that he’d be staring at his phone too, waiting for her to reply. She threw the phone down on the bed. Who the hell did he think he was? She looked at the message again: seven words, that’s all he’d written. Was that all their marriage, their family, was worth to him? Did he think he could do whatever he wanted, then send a message the next day and everything would be OK? He’d probably only just noticed she was gone. Had he stayed out all night, and just stumbled in, pissed, or feeling sorry for himself after spending the night on someone else’s floor, with the excuse that he was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing? He should have called last night, come over and begged on the doorstep, told her he couldn’t live without her. But no, he’d gone to bed, and then sent a seven-word message. It wasn’t very hard to find her, here at her parents’; he hadn’t really tried, had he? Well, see him try now.

  Zoe shoved her phone in her bag and zipped it closed. Then she opened it again, tore a page out of her notebook and wrote a quick note, just so her parents wouldn’t worry. Unlike Lachlan, she thought about the consequences of her actions.

  She heard a thump from the living room, then Louise began to cry. Zoe took a deep breath and fixed the smile back on her face, then went to pick her up. In three hours, she and Louise would be on the ferry to Rottnest Island.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lou and her parents sat in their usual chairs in Ross’s office. They had been coming here for months now, and even though things had definitely been better at home, it seemed to Lou that they were just covering the same old stuff every week. Sometimes she saw Ross alone, and that was easier. She dreaded these family sessions; not because she found it any more difficult, as she knew very well by now how to play the game, but because she hated seeing her parents get upset. When her mum cried, or her dad squirmed and clenched his fists and talked so slowly and quietly that she knew he was only just holding it together, Lou wanted to scream at them: I’m the child, you’re the grown-ups! You’re meant to be in control here. She supposed that Ross thought it was helpful for her to see that her parents were just people too, that they had emotions and flaws, but she needed to believe that they knew what they were doing; she needed them to hold the boundaries of her life firm so that she knew exactly where she belonged.

  ‘How have things been?’ Ross said, smiling and settling back into his chair.

  ‘Lou has been doing much better at school, haven’t you?’

  Lou glared at her mum, hating the sickly-sweet voice and the hopeful smile. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. She had been getting better grades, it was true, even if it was mainly to keep her parents off her back. She was also sensible enough to know that this was her final year at school. In two months she’d be done with it, and she needed to get into university. While she told her parents that she didn’t care about it, she did. She wasn’t ready to work: what would she do? No job she could find would pay enough to get an apartment of her own, or even a room in a share house, and that would mean she was stuck at home. She wanted to leave Perth, study somewhere far away from here, maybe Melbourne or Sydney, like Charlotte, Violet and Harry had done.

  They were all still looking at her, waiting. ‘My exams are next month, so I’ve been studying a lot,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘And are you finding that you’re able to concentrate all r
ight on your studies?’ Ross asked.

  She shrugged and nodded.

  ‘We’re very proud of Lou, and how she’s turned things around in the past few months.’

  Lou looked at her dad from the corner of her eye; he too was smiling at her. Why didn’t he tell her that when they were at home, instead of flicking through his emails constantly? She wondered why they came here when it was clear that all three of them were just putting on an act – but for whose benefit, she wasn’t sure.

  Ross put the palms of his hands together as if he was praying. ‘Well, it certainly seems as if things are improving. Slowly but surely!’

  Lou raised her eyebrows. He looked pleased with himself, as if it was his doing.

  Her mum cleared her throat. ‘We have something we – well, Lou – wants to ask you. After her exams … well, it’s year twelve, and it’s schoolies, you know, she’s graduating from high school and going off to university. Well, hopefully. Anyway, Lou’s friends from school are going to Rottnest for a few nights. We’re just a bit anxious about letting her go, you know, after all the trouble she’s been in before.’ She laughed. ‘We’ve all been there, I’m not naive enough to think they’ll be sitting around playing Scrabble!’ Then she spoke more quietly. ‘There’ll be alcohol.’

  ‘I won’t be drinking, Mum. As you’ve told me a hundred times, I’m still under age.’

  ‘Well, Lou, I know the pub will be strict with ID, but that won’t apply in the houses.’

  ‘The police check on all the parties, so I won’t be able to drink.’ Lou looked at her mum with her eyebrows raised and her hands held open, but they both knew that everyone would be drinking, including her. That was what you did when you finished school. But this was the game, the dance they needed to go through, otherwise they’d never let her go.

  Still smiling, her mum turned back to Ross. ‘You can understand that we’re a little unsure. It is true that Lou has been trying really hard since she was arrested, since we started coming here. She’s done all the right things, and she hasn’t been using alcohol or drugs, or self-harming.’

  ‘Is that true, Lou?’ Ross tilted his head to the side. Lou knew that he was trying to get her to be honest: she had admitted to him that in those early weeks, while her friends abandoned her and her parents argued in shrill whispers, she’d cut herself a few times. She’d been careful, doing it on her thighs and her stomach, where her parents wouldn’t see, but she’d been honest with Ross when she’d said she wasn’t trying to seriously hurt herself. It was just what she had needed to do to relieve the tension, to feel something. He also knew that she wasn’t doing it any more, that she hadn’t for ages now.

  ‘Yes, it’s true.’

  ‘Can you understand why your parents would be anxious about you going away, unsupervised, to a place where we all know it will get pretty wild?’ He smiled again, and nodded at everyone in the room.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Talk to them, not me.’ Ross waved his hand towards her parents.

  Lou hated this, the way he used his touchy-feely counselling tricks. Just because he forced her to talk to them in this room didn’t mean he was magically transforming their family. She pursed her lips and sighed loudly, then swivelled her body round.

  ‘Yes, Mum and Dad, I can understand why you’re worried. You’re scared that I’ll get into trouble again, or that I might come to some harm. But I’m worried about the fact that I’m about to turn eighteen, that I’ll be going off to uni in a couple of months – if I get in – and you won’t trust me to go away for three days with the friends I’ve known my whole life. If you can’t trust me now, what’s going to happen when I leave home soon?’

  Her mum frowned, and looked at Ross, then her dad, who sat forward. ‘Lou, we do trust you. Your mother and I are worried, but it’s because we love you very much.’ His voice broke; Lou shifted in her chair and started wiggling her toes inside her school shoes, but he managed to compose himself. ‘As you know, we said we’d discuss it here because we think it’s also important to involve Ross in the decision.’ He looked at Ross.

  ‘Well, it’s not my decision to make, I’m afraid. This is something that you as a family need to decide.’

  Lou pressed her lips together to stop herself from smiling.

  ‘But I will say,’ Ross continued, ‘that Lou’s behaviour has been quite stable for the past few months, and she has a point about trust. It seems that she is asking you to let her prove to you how much she’s changed.’

  Lou watched her parents as they looked at each other. Her mother was biting her lip, her dad scratching his chin. She knew that they wanted to go and talk about it between themselves in private. Well, this was about communication, wasn’t it? After all, it was her life they were making a decision about. ‘Well?’ she asked.

  Her mum sighed, then nodded a little. ‘OK.’

  ‘Yes!’ Lou shouted, grinning. She jumped out of her chair and went over to hug her parents. They both laughed and hugged her back.

  ‘But,’ her dad said in a stern voice, ‘between now and then you must study hard, and if there’s any concerning behaviour before then, the trip’s off, OK?’

  Her mum added, ‘And I need you to tell me where you’re staying, who you’re staying with, and you must have your mobile phone on all the time, and be contactable. Otherwise I will come over there and collect you myself, understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mum!’

  Her dad grinned and leaned towards her, speaking in a stage whisper. ‘And what could be worse than your mother arriving on Rotto in the middle of schoolies?’

  Lou grinned back. Finally, she had something to look forward to.

  * * *

  Lou jostled at the exit with everyone else as they waited to alight from the ferry. There was a cheer from the crowd of teenagers when the door opened and they all poured out, down the ramp onto the jetty. Lou still felt queasy from the big swell on the trip over; she took a deep breath, and stretched her arms up. She straightened up and took off her hoodie, then tied it around her waist. The sun was warm now she was out of the sea breeze, and her nausea started to settle.

  She looked around at the other kids on the jetty. Many she knew, but school leavers from all over Perth were here this weekend. Most of the kids from her school had grown up spending summer holidays on Rotto, either in rented villas or staying on their parents’ boats, moored in one of the bays. Lou had only been here twice before: once on a primary school excursion, and another time on Astrid’s dad’s boat when Astrid’s older brother was doing the Rotto swim. Her parents had never brought her here, though; they had always preferred to go south, to a house they rented every summer in Eagle Bay. It wasn’t that Lou hadn’t loved it there; she had – swimming among rays and schools of fish in the clear water of the sheltered bay, fishing with her grandad, cycling through the bush with the other kids. But Rottnest had always been there across the ocean, unreachable, teasing her with glimpses of the white lighthouse.

  Now she was here, standing on the island. Exams were finished, school was over forever, and she had three nights of freedom, away from her parents, to relax and have fun with her friends. She couldn’t wait.

  She and Astrid chatted while their bikes were unloaded from the ferry. They waited until the police dogs had sniffed them for drugs, then pushed their bicycles along the jetty towards the visitor centre. They had booked a three-bedroom villa with four other girls from school. Two of them – Melissa and Claire – had already turned eighteen, so they had to collect the key. It had already been decided that Lou and Astrid would share one bedroom, Melissa and Claire the second, and Julietta and Heather the third. Theo and Ben were staying in the same bay with friends from their own school.

  The two girls came out of the office, grinning. ‘Got the keys!’ Claire said. ‘Let’s go!’

  They all jumped onto their bikes, fastened their helmets in case the police were watching, then set off. Lou soon found her balance and pedalled hard, listenin
g to the crunch of the sand under the tyres and the flap of her thongs against her heels as she rode out of Thomson Bay, along the edge of the salt lakes, then up the hill until Geordie Bay was spread out below them. They found their villa, propped their bikes against the wall of the small courtyard, and ran inside to claim their beds.

  Their bags had already been delivered. Lou threw hers on the single bed nearest the window in one of the tiny bedrooms. The walls were whitewashed brick, and thin blue curtains hung at the window. Between the two beds was a small table, and on the far wall was a set of wooden shelves.

  Lou opened her backpack and took out the cooler bag that her mum had packed for her and went through to the living area. The polished cork floor was already coated in a film of fine sand. She put the bag on the kitchen table, then rummaged around in it: a box of muesli bars, three apples, a bottle of lemon cordial, a bag of chips, a block of cheese, crackers, and a plastic bottle of multivitamin tablets. Lou smiled as she opened the vitamins. Chewing on one, she hurried back to the bedroom where Astrid was looking through her own bag.

  ‘Beach?’ Lou said.

  Astrid smiled. ‘Definitely! Everyone’s meeting there at twelve.’ She turned back to her bag. ‘I’m just trying to find my bikini …’

  ‘I’ll go put mine on now.’

  In the bathroom, Lou changed into her bikini then stood as far back from the mirror as she could in the tiny room. She had to stand on tiptoe to see herself. She turned from side to side. There were still some scabs on her stomach, just above her hipbones. She tied her sarong around her waist to hide them. She’d lie on her stomach on the beach.

  Astrid knocked on the door. ‘Hurry up!’

  ‘Coming!’ Lou checked the mirror again, then opened the door and ran back through to the bedroom. She unfolded a beach bag, packed her towel, hat and sunscreen, put on her sunglasses and hurried after Astrid.