Cecile was furious about the whole thing and would stay that way. It was such an unlikely response to this tragedy but the only way she knew to deal with anything unpleasant was to fight it and banish it. It would be a long fight to banish something as awful as Zoe’s death.
Edie was unhinged by it all already. She was only standing and functioning within the confines of Con’s big arms. Sadie envied her little sister her husband and her marriage. Con was a fantastic man, generous and hilarious and strong. And he was Edie’s. Being around Con and Edie was a painful reminder to Sadie of what her own marriage was not.
Zoe’s death would become a piece of theatre for Edie. Probably not for a few years but one day too soon for all of them they would be at the premiere and they would all be aghast that Edie had turned Zoe’s death into performance art.
Sadie needed to keep close to Matt and Jess. Detective Vincent was right; they knew Zoe better than her own siblings did. Sadie had heard Jess crying last night in her room and talking quietly to one of her cousins. Sadie had stopped by the door but hadn’t gone in. She was afraid she wouldn’t even recognise the girl they were talking about. Matt would be missing Zoe this morning. They often went for a morning surf together, coming back to Rosetta wet-haired, laughing and still talking of the waves. It was a new year for them all.
As the car pulled away from the house, Sadie sent a silent prayer to something to protect her son in the water. Don’t let him too disappear into the blue. Matt had been swimming and surfing his whole life, it was unlikely he could come to grief in the sea, but Zoe was gone so anything was possible. Sadie wondered how she would cope if Matt were to disappear as Zoe had. Would she be acting any differently to her mother or father now? Wouldn’t she also be pretending the police weren’t here? Stepping back to let others bear the brunt of the practical? Or living in some other world where Matt was alive and safe and would come home any day now? She remembered how she had been after Tim’s death. Her mother was the same as she always was. But her father was holding up better than any of them deserved. He’d lost his child and he was still functioning, still polite, still attentive to others, particularly all the grandchildren. Sadie should treat her parents better than she had been these past days. Especially her father.
She got up and went downstairs. The sun wasn’t far away. The house was silent. She decided to let it sleep on and not disturb the morning with the coffee machine. She walked outside into the cool air and down to the dunes. It was going to be another hot day. Max was going back to Sydney today and Cecile and the girls wouldn’t be too far behind him. Maybe another couple of weeks. Con was off tomorrow. His work couldn’t wait for the summer to end or for Zoe to be found.
But Sadie would stay. She had nothing waiting for her in town. Roger didn’t count. She knew that now. She’d resigned from her job in October because she was sick of it and she hadn’t yet decided what she’d do. Social work hadn’t sustained her interest as much as she’d hoped but she’d done it for twenty years. Now the mortgage was paid, she didn’t need to do it any longer. Time to find something to sustain her for the next twenty years.
The sky lightened to deep pink as she sat looking out over the water. The sun was on the rise. She tried to remember all the steps that had led to this moment.
The early steps were vague. She had seen the psychologist Dr Peter had encouraged her to visit after Tim’s death. Dianne had been an insight into Sadie’s mind and how she could control it. Dianne said that she was just teaching Sadie a few tricks of the trade, coping strategies. Sadie learned to anticipate difficult times and situations and prepare for them. She learned to recognise the first signs of the despair that could flatten her in less than a day. She got to know the anxiety that would build in her for days before paralysing her in a swamp of obsessive uncertainty.
If these were the tricks of Dianne’s trade, Sadie wanted to be one of its tradesmen. So after a year of seeing Dianne off and on, Sadie went back to being an undergraduate and began a degree in Psychology.
There she’d met Roger. Looking back, he was beside her almost from the beginning. At the time, he was attentive and undemanding and by the time he assumed he was with her, it seemed too harsh to stop him. She couldn’t remember it all clearly but some things stayed with her. His kisses were too wet, his lips too slippery. And she could hear him thinking about every move before he made it. Open lips bit more, insert tongue not too far, move tongue around gums. His kisses confirmed to Sadie that she didn’t want him so close but she didn’t have the strength to withstand his constant presence and not unreasonable demands of her. He was so wounded whenever she pushed him away. She couldn’t do to anybody what had been done to her by Tim’s death. And after a while she thought that maybe he wasn’t so bad. He tried so hard to please her. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t. He just wasn’t Tim and, by then, Sadie had accepted that the fullness of those years with Tim – his touch which aroused but also sustained her – was a once in a lifetime experience. She had had hers.
Roger was what she guessed most people had. Now it was her turn to begin on another lifetime, that of the ordinary with bodies and minds that came together with the best of intentions but didn’t fit perfectly every time. Didn’t make the whole. Didn’t obliterate the mundanity of an ordinary life with the delight of pure selfless pleasure and communion. Plato had said it would be like this. And Sadie accepted the words of the master.
Roger pestered her out of Psych and into Social Work. He thought her too damaged for the clinical aspects of psychology. She would be better at the less demanding end of helping people. Leave the heavy lifting to him. Sadie wondered later if it was because she averaged high distinctions while Roger worked hard for passes and credits. Back then, at the beginning, it was easier to do as he asked.
He wanted sex and so she had eventually given him that too. It was nice and she enjoyed the warmth of being with someone again. She would forever compare it to the joy she had known with Tim. She became pregnant. Roger was delighted. Sadie was ambivalent. Dianne helped her through the pregnancy and then Roger insisted Sadie stop seeing Dianne. He practised narrative therapy and said he would provide Sadie all the help she needed. He would rewrite Sadie’s life into the positive narrative she needed to believe. Roger became insistent about a lot of things after they were married.
Now on this summer’s morning, Sadie decided to stay at Rosetta when everyone else went home. Her parents would go back to town by mid-February. Her father was setting up a new gallery with an old friend and they had two big exhibitions to host in March and May. Her mother wouldn’t stay down here without him. Jess could catch the bus up to town for school, or she could stay with Roger at home. Sadie knew Jess wouldn’t choose that option.
Her marriage had been a mistake from the first but she had two great kids who she loved with all her heart. She did not regret them. Matt had saved her all those years ago when she still cried unexpectedly; when she lost herself in the gaping hole Tim had left behind him. Matt had drawn her away from that hole and to his greedy baby needs and adoring love. She was as grateful now for that love as she had been then. There wasn’t a moment of her life as Matt and Jess’s mother that she regretted. So if marriage to Roger was the price she’d paid for her children, it was a fair price. But it was paid in full.
Sadie heard the squeak of footsteps on the damp lawn. She turned to see who was up. Carl was walking over the lawn carrying two cups of coffee. He sat on the dune beside Sadie and gave her a cup. He lit up a cigarette and they sat in silence watching the sky seep into pink and the water sparkle into life. The big kids alone in the early morning quiet.
She sipped the hot aromatic coffee. Carl took his coffee seriously.
‘Red sky at morning, sailors’ warning,’ said Carl looking out at the reddening sky.
In the morning stillness it was impossible to imagine that a storm could be building but the old saying was usually accurate. Sadie thought again of Matt and wished him back safe.
Sadie knew what he was asking.
‘Kind of.’ Her reply sounded as weak as it was. ‘I tried last night. She says that she still expects Zoe to come home.’
‘Any explanation as to how that might work?’
‘Not really.’
Neither spoke for several minutes.
Sadie leaned her head onto Carl’s shoulder and she felt him softly kiss the top of her head.
‘Do you believe Zoe is coming back alive and well?’ he asked.
‘I want to but, no, I can’t.’
‘Dad doesn’t think she’s coming back. He’s in a really dark place at the moment. Do you think there’s any point at which Mum will accept that Zoe’s gone?’
‘I suppose there must be, but nothing she’s told me. She’s worried but she thinks she will come home.’
‘God, I hope she’s right.’
Sadie placed her hand on her brother’s thick arm. She sat back up straight and looked across at him.
‘I never told you this,’ he said, still looking straight ahead over the water, ‘but when I was a kid, about eight or nine, I saw Mum down here on the shore.’ He paused but Sadie didn’t prompt him. ‘It was late at night. I was in bed and something woke me. I was sitting up in bed looking out the window and I saw this white phosphorescent light, you know like you sometimes see when the seaweed lights up and is carried into shore in the waves?’
Sadie nodded.
‘Well, the light was like that but it was just one long continuous stream, not flickering and bouncing around in the swell. And it was so much brighter. The light streamed across the channel and Driving Sound from way out deep and stopped down at the beach. Mum was standing on the beach in a wet dress. That old pale pink one she wore a lot that summer. She was just standing there. I had the briefest glimpse of her then I lost her in the blackness.’
The sky was crimson. It was night silent. This day was reluctant to start.
‘I’m leaving Roger,’ said Sadie.
Carl continued to smoke the last of his cigarette as he looked straight ahead to where Betsey Island in the distance was coming into view. It would be a clear hot day and the entrance to Storm Bay behind the island would soon emerge out of the dawn dimness. Carl sipped his coffee. He made no response to his sister’s news.
‘You don’t like Roger, do you?’
‘No, but more importantly, Sade, neither do you.’
Sadie smiled at her brother’s words.
‘You’re right. I can’t remember if I ever did. He and I have never even had that closeness, you know, that you have with a real friend. That you need with a partner.’
‘None of us have ever known what you saw in him,’ Carl said tentatively.
‘Why didn’t you stop me from marrying him then?’
‘Oh, come on. We tried everything we could short of abducting you or shooting Roger. And then you were pregnant and marriage seemed like a less bad idea than the other options.’
‘I know,’ said Sadie softly. ‘I think I let the pregnancy determine the matter. It’s so hard to remember being that girl who went off to Melbourne in control of her life.’
‘You probably couldn’t remember her all that well back then. It was too soon after Tim.’
Tim’s name sat between them. Neither spoke for minutes.
‘You and Helen seemed to be so in love. And such good friends. I really thought you two would make it. What happened to you guys?’
‘God knows,’ said Carl. ‘I remember standing here on the lawn at our wedding promising to love her til death us do part and thinking, this is the easiest promise I will ever make. And then, I don’t know, time passes and the intensity fades and after a while you both know you’re waiting for someone more exciting to come along. And for Helen, that someone came along.’
‘Was it hard? Breaking up?’
‘The worst,’ said Carl, ‘but we both wanted it so we just pushed through. It was really hard on the kids. They were still so little. Josh really suffered. Still does, I think. Matt and Jess’ll be fine. They’re older and they can see. Little kids can’t see their parents’ pain.’
Sadie put her arm around her brother’s shoulders.
‘Is there someone else?’
‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’ said Sadie. ‘A man who adores me and cannot get me into bed fast enough or often enough.’
‘Jesus, Sade. You can’t be telling me that. Anyway, I always assumed that the only reason you stayed with Roger must be because the sex was so good. I couldn’t see any other reason.’
Carl was laughing now and he nudged Sadie as he spoke.
‘How little you know, baby brother.’
Carl shook his head and smiled at his sister.
‘Roger’s got a skinny dick. That was definitely part of the problem,’ said Sadie.
Carl exploded with laughter and choked on his coffee
‘Roger won’t take it well,’ he said, when he’d recovered.
Sadie didn’t need Carl to tell her that. She would start preparing herself today. Today while her family was still here with her and her mind was filled with thoughts of Zoe and the life her little sister would not get to live. The life Sadie was going to live for them both.
Tony
IT WAS NINE O’CLOCK ON WHAT WAS GOING TO BE A SCORCHING HOT New Year’s Day.
Tony and Narelle had talked on the short trip from his house to the office. If he’d betrayed his thoughts to her last night, Narelle gave no clue this morning. From her brief comments, it had all been pretty routine. They’d had a meal and a drink and he’d left soon after, worn out by work and sun and too much champagne. He had looked across at her as she drove, waiting for a tell-tale look or smile. But Narelle was her usual relaxed self.
The cells were full and the station was buzzing. Parents bailing out their kids, drunks all sobered up and wanting to get out. Lawyers arguing with the duty sergeant and trying to push through bail applications. Too many young girls with panda eyes and matted hair in silly strapless dresses and holding shoes they were now too sober to wear. But nothing too serious overnight. The usual brawls. One alleged sexual assault. A couple of near drownings. The marines had been busy pulling people out of the river all night but, considering that it’d been hot, no drownings was a good outcome.
Tony was in his office checking emails, following up other cases and writing a briefing for Ryan. He felt like he had things back under control. He knew the commander would have a different view but Ryan wasn’t here and he hadn’t called.
Paul entered Tony’s office without knocking and closed the door behind him.
‘I hear you went round to Narelle’s last night?’ He was leaning up against the closed door looking straight at Tony.
‘You hear right.’
Who had Paul heard from? It had to be Narelle. Or, then again, any one of a dozen uniforms who saw them leave in Tony’s car last night and arrive together this morning. It would be on the internal CCTV. Not to mention the grapevine.
‘Tell me you didn’t,’ said Paul. He had his hands in his pockets and Tony saw for the first time that Paul could bring menace to his height and bulk.
‘No, Sergeant, I didn’t,’ replied Tony, keeping his voice low.
The CIB office was full and this lot were trained to hear everything. Even through a closed door. And Tony’s door being closed would immediately arouse suspicion.
‘Good,’ said Paul not moving.
‘Not that it’s any of your business, Sergeant.’
‘Oh it’s my business all right. She’s my partner. Anyway, nothing happened. Nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ repeated Tony, ‘and it never will, so relax.’
Paul stood up to his full height and took his hands out of his pockets. He was a big man.
‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘It might, unless you make a real conscious effort to make sure it doesn’t. I like to think you’ve both got more sense b
ut lonely bodies have a way of finding each other late at night. But I’m telling you now just in case you don’t already know. It will be a fucking nightmare for both of you. But particularly for Narelle. She will be fucked in more ways than one.’
‘I wouldn’t do anything to harm Narelle or her career.’
‘See that you don’t. You’re better than that.’ He smiled grimly. ‘The three of us make a great team. Don’t muck it up.’
‘Oh God, are you going to have this little chat with Narelle too?’
‘Don’t need to,’ said Paul turning and opening the door. ‘I’ve had it with you.’
The three of them were in the main office. Narelle looked fresh and businesslike this morning. Tony had been too hungover in the car to really notice but coffee was clearing his head. She was wearing a plain but slick cream suit with a thin white blouse under the tailored jacket. She was also wearing high heels. Higher than usual. Her long red curls were held back with an ornate silver clip and twirled up in some style Tony guessed had a name. She looked better than he did this morning. As he looked more closely at her across the room, he realised that she was also wearing makeup. Her usually pale lashes were black and her lips were a glossy pink. Maybe she was letting everyone know she was running the show in the missing businessman investigation. Tony hoped it wasn’t for him.
He was sitting at his desk in the main office and had just told them the upshot of Eva Kennett’s story: that Zoe was charmed and could swim to the islands and beyond.
‘Yeah?’ said Paul. ‘She said that?’
‘You don’t sound very surprised,’ said Tony.
‘I’m not prepared to rule it out.’
Narelle couldn’t help herself.
‘Oh, come on. You think Zoe Kennett might be charmed? Magical?’ She walked up close to Paul. ‘Really? You going to write that report up? For Commander Ryan?’
‘Ah, that’s different,’ said Paul. ‘We’re in the brainstorming, problem-solving phase. Not the report-writing phase. All I’m saying is we can’t rule it out.’
To the Sea Page 34