The Pretty Delicious Cafe

by Danielle Hawkins

  ‘We went back up to the café for a better look around. Dipshit’s car was hidden round the back and we found some blood in the garage –’

  ‘What about Craig?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Hmm? Took him to Mum’s. Jed was quite –’ he paused to select a word – ‘forceful about coming with me.’

  ‘I expected you guys to hit it off better,’ I said, wistfully and irrelevantly.

  Rob shrugged. ‘He’s alright. Takes himself a bit seriously, maybe, but you’ve brought home much worse blokes.’

  ‘He does not take himself seriously!’ I cried, before it occurred to me that my twin was merely fishing for a reaction.

  ‘Settle down. I’m sure that when I get to know him I’ll love him almost as much as you do.’

  ‘You’d better,’ I said. ‘Anyway, what happened after you found the – the blood?’

  ‘That wasn’t my finest hour,’ said Rob. ‘I kind of lost the plot, and Jed told me to shut up and get in the ute. He stopped at the end of the drive and said, “Left or right?” I must have just stared at him like a stunned mullet, because he started screaming at me.’ He rested his head back against his seat. ‘So we tracked you. Worst couple of hours of my life, trying to decide which turn-offs you’d taken . . .’

  ‘And you could actually tell,’ I said wonderingly. ‘Wow.’

  ‘It was hideous,’ he said. ‘Trying to make decisions on instinct, when I’ve spent my life thinking all that stuff is complete shit.’

  ‘Well, thank you. I think you two might have saved my life.’

  ‘Yeah. So do I.’ And taking my hand he laced his fingers through mine, a thing he hadn’t done for about the last twenty years.

  Chapter 25

  On the outskirts of Dargaville Jed pulled off the road, got out of the car and walked back to where Rob had pulled off behind him. ‘Do you know where we’re going?’ he asked.

  ‘More or less,’ said Rob through his open window. ‘You can follow us. Any noise from fuckface?’ He seemed to be making it a point of honour to neither call Isaac by name nor use the same insulting label twice.

  ‘A bit of thumping and crashing. Hey, I’ve been thinking. They’ll probably interview us separately when we get to the police station, so we’d better all say the same thing.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t we?’ I asked, startled. ‘Oh. You mean the freaky telepathic stuff.’

  He smiled at me and nodded. ‘We can’t tell them the truth. They’ll never believe us.’

  There was a short, pensive silence while all three of us tried and failed to think of a plausible alternative to ‘It’s a twin thing, Officer’.

  ‘Maybe if you’d seen Isaac go past in my car . . .’ I said doubtfully.

  ‘What, as we went for a pleasant country drive at quarter past six in the morning?’ said Rob.

  ‘Be nice. I’m not at my best right now.’

  ‘We’ll have to just tell it like it happened,’ said Jed, rubbing his eyes wearily with his uninjured left hand. ‘It’ll sound like complete drivel, but at least it’ll be consistent drivel.’ And straightening up he walked back along the side of the road to my car.

  * * *

  The initial reaction of the woman behind the front desk at the police station, on being approached by a group of bloodstained and dishevelled people claiming to have an offender in the boot of their car, was faintly weary distaste, as if it were most inconsiderate of us to interrupt her tea break with our sordid little story of assault. But she summoned a grey-haired sergeant from his office, and he radioed for extra officers. Putting the handset down he looked from me to Jed, whose T-shirt was liberally streaked with blood, and said, ‘Call St John’s, would you, Suzy? If you three would take a seat here in the watch house . . .’ Noticing our blank looks he broke off and gestured towards a row of plastic chairs against one wall of the reception area. ‘Over there. We’ll get you some medical attention in a minute or two. Please don’t discuss what’s happened between yourselves – it’s important that everybody’s version of events is their own, not affected by anyone else’s.’ He gave us a brief, distracted smile, relieved Jed of my car keys and hurried outside.

  The woman picked up a phone, and the three of us sat down cautiously on a row of plastic chairs. I felt grimy and bruised all over, my eyes ached and I wanted a very long, very hot shower.

  ‘How’s your throat?’ Jed asked, touching my knee with his.

  ‘Sore. How’s your hand?’

  ‘It’s alright.’

  He was holding his right hand across his body, and I picked it up carefully in both of mine. The bleeding had stopped, but his second and third fingers were fat and swollen. ‘They look broken,’ I said.

  ‘They feel it.’

  ‘So by “alright” you actually mean “extremely painful”?’

  ‘Only if I bend them.’

  ‘You may never play the violin again,’ said Rob. His cell phone beeped, and he pulled it out of his shorts pocket to look at it. ‘Mum. They’ve made pikelets, Craig’s having a nap and she loves us very much.’

  ‘Better ring her back and tell her where we’re up to,’ I said. We’d called her already, of course, as soon as Rob’s phone got reception, but the more frequently she was updated the happier she’d be.

  He nodded, the phone already at his ear.

  On arrival, the paramedics were ushered straight out the back of the building, presumably to see Isaac. It was quite a long time before the grey-haired sergeant returned, flanked by an officer who looked about sixteen. ‘I’m Senior Sergeant Waters, and this is Constable Martin,’ he said. ‘The paramedics will come and check you over shortly. In the meantime, ma’am, I’ll ask you to come with me. Constable Martin will stay with you gentlemen for now, and we’ll get your statements as soon as we can.’

  He ushered me into a small, bland room, sat me down and fetched me a glass of water. The woman from behind the front counter came too, presumably for reasons of political correctness. But I’d only got as far as spelling out my name to him – ‘A-U-R – yes, that’s right – E-L-I-A, Jane’ – when the paramedics knocked on the door.

  There were two of them; she was large and motherly, and he was small and dry. They felt the egg on the back of my head with gloved fingers, peered into my eyes and at the bruises on my throat, and left before I could so much as ask them for a couple of Panadol.

  ‘We’re sending you on to Whangarei Hospital in an ambulance,’ the sergeant informed me as he came back into the room, which he’d left during the medical exam.

  ‘An ambulance?’ I asked, slightly alarmed.

  ‘It’s just routine. There’s a special protocol for dealing with assault cases. They’ve got all the proper equipment at the hospital.’

  This sounded even more alarming. ‘What sort of equipment?’

  ‘I haven’t seen it firsthand, so I can’t tell you all the details,’ he said. ‘They’ve got a special, er, kit . . . They get you to remove your clothing on a sheet . . . It’s all about preserving any DNA for evidence. And they’ll take photos of your injuries.’

  ‘He – he didn’t rape me,’ I said.

  ‘It’s just routine.’

  ‘Then will I come back here?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I expect a detective will come and interview you in hospital. In that case you’ll be released from there.’

  * * *

  Jed and I were sent to Whangarei Hospital in the same ambulance, unaccompanied by a police officer.

  ‘I thought they’d send someone with us,’ I said as it pulled out onto the street. ‘Weren’t they worried we’d change our stories if left unattended?’

  He smiled and shrugged. ‘Maybe they think we look honest.’

  I rested my head back tiredly against the seat. ‘Or maybe it’d just be too much of a hassle to retrieve the person who goes with us from Whangarei.’

  ‘Or that,’ he agreed. He reached across awkwardly with his left hand, the right being now in a sling, and took mi
ne. We sat without talking as the ambulance made its way out of town and turned east alongside the wide, brown Wairoa River.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said suddenly.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Taking his arm out of the sling he put it around me.

  I closed my eyes and relaxed against him, but only for a few seconds. ‘I smell.’

  ‘That’s alright,’ he said, tightening his arm.

  ‘The correct response was: “Of course you don’t, my angel.”’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to you,’ he said, and I heard the smile in his voice.

  ‘I’m getting used to it,’ I said. ‘Oh, how’s the food poisoning?’

  ‘Fine. Forgot all about it. There you go; a broken hand has its good points.’

  ‘I’m guessing that’ll be the only one.’

  ‘It was worth it,’ he said.

  * * *

  My assault exam wasn’t upsetting, or demeaning, or indeed anything bad except for slow to eventuate. Jed and I were sent in different directions at the hospital door, he to be X-rayed and I to spend a long period of quiet contemplation in a small exam room with a choice of reading material between Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes and a March 2006 Woman’s Day.

  Eventually a doctor and a nurse arrived. They helped me out of my clothes – which they then bagged, labelled and took away with them – and into a green hospital gown. They took DNA samples from beneath my fingernails and inspected my various cuts and bruises. I would have dearly loved a shower, but I wasn’t allowed one until the police photographer had been. I did, however, eventually get some lunch on a tray. It consisted of staleish asparagus rolls, tinned fruit salad and virulent yellow custard, but it was after two when it arrived, and I’d never been happier to see food in my life. Having eaten it, I finished my Woman’s Day, inspected the bruises around my throat in the little mirror above the wash basin, lay down on the narrow bed and waited for something else to happen. It was all quite surreal, and I found myself oscillating between boredom, gratitude at being alive to be bored and regret that I was spending my first day off in a month shut in a small cream-coloured room overlooking the Whangarei Hospital car park.

  At ten past three a police photographer and a female detective arrived. They took the pictures first, and then the photographer left. The detective was a crisp, business-like woman in her fifties, lean as a whippet and seemingly quite devoid of humour. I found her unexpectedly reassuring. You just can’t succumb to the horror of your experiences when the person taking down the story gives the impression that nothing you say is in any way remarkable or even interesting.

  ‘I think that’s all we need at this point,’ she said at last, removing her glasses and putting them into their case. ‘Someone may be in touch by phone if anything further arises in the next week or so.’

  ‘So I can go home now?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, once you’ve been discharged.’

  ‘And do I need to go and get my car from Dargaville?’

  ‘Not at this stage. It’s been towed to a secure site for further testing. You’ll be informed when it’s released.’ She stood up. ‘Is there someone you can call to collect you from here?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What – what will happen to Isaac now?’

  ‘He’ll appear in court and be charged in the next day or so. Then the judge will set a date for sentencing. You’ll be kept informed.’ She shook my hand, smiled in a perfunctory sort of way at a spot somewhere beyond my right shoulder and left.

  Finding Jed seemed to be the next step, so I wandered out of my room and along the corridor, holding my gown closed at the back, until I met a nurse coming the other way. ‘I’m wondering how to get discharged,’ I said. ‘And I’d like to find the friend who came here with me. And I’d really love a shower.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Right. Come along to the nurses’ station, and I’ll look into it for you.’

  I was waiting at the desk while she phoned when Mum rounded the corner at a canter, saw me and broke into a run. ‘Oh, my darling,’ she murmured, enfolding me in a fervent, patchouli-scented embrace. ‘My darling.’

  I subsided against her shoulder and shed a few tears of weariness and relief. ‘Love you, Mum.’ And then, as her arms tightened to the point of discomfort, ‘Mum, it’s okay, I’m alright.’

  Letting me go, she held me at arm’s length, looked me up and down and burst into tears, which seemed to suggest I didn’t look alright. She groped for my hands, found them and held them tight.

  Behind her, to my surprise and delight, stood Mike. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. ‘Hey, little blister,’ he said.

  ‘Hey.’ I detached a hand from Mum’s and held it out to him, and we formed a three-way family hug, blocking up the hospital corridor.

  Jed was waiting when we finally made it downstairs, still in his bloodstained T-shirt and shorts, with his hand bandaged and his arm in a sling. He had a battle-worn and faintly heroic air, which seemed unfair, when I was merely grubby and bedraggled. ‘Is your hand broken?’ I asked as we crossed the floor towards him.

  ‘Two bones cracked,’ he said, standing up.

  ‘Ouch.’

  He gave a manly shrug, nicely in keeping with the hero-wounded-in-the-course-of-duty theme. ‘It’s fine. Three weeks in a splint, they reckon. Are you wearing that home?’

  I looked down at my green cotton skirts. ‘Yep.’ It wasn’t hospital policy to discharge patients in hospital gowns, but the nurse who had suggested that some clothes for me should ideally be fetched from home had encountered a truly frightening display of righteous maternal wrath, and had decided quite quickly that returning the gown later would be fine.

  We crossed the sunny car park and got into Mike’s car, Mum still clutching my hand in the back seat. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you home. How are you feeling, love?’

  ‘Happy,’ I said softly, and regretted it instantly when she burst into tears again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she choked, mopping her eyes with a crumpled wad of tissue. ‘Just ignore me . . . Oh, Lia, if you’d – if Robin hadn’t –’

  I squeezed her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. You’re safe now; that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Is Rob home yet?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. He got home just after one. And then Mike arrived soon after that.’

  ‘Thank you, Mike,’ I said soberly. It’s a bloody long way from the farm to Ratai.

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ he said. ‘How’s the temperature back there?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Your father sends his love,’ said Mum.

  ‘That’s nice.’ Wouldn’t have hurt him to come, though, whispered a small inner voice.

  This was entirely unreasonable – I would have been much more put out by Dad’s arrival on the scene than I was by his absence. But my relationship with my father, sadly, was the sort where while you claim to love each other, neither of you passes up the smallest opportunity to take things the wrong way.

  Shelving this unpalatable bit of self-knowledge, I asked, ‘Jed, how did your interview go?’

  ‘It was fine,’ he said, turning to look at me.

  ‘Really?’ I said, meaning, What, even the freaky psychic twin stuff?

  He smiled at me and nodded.

  ‘Will you get in trouble for hitting him?’

  ‘In trouble for hitting someone who was trying to kill you?’ Mum cried.

  ‘Apparently you’re allowed to use – what was it? – “reasonable and proportionate force” to defend yourself or someone else,’ Jed said.

  ‘How do they define reasonable and proportionate?’ I asked uneasily, recalling Isaac’s face.

  ‘Lia, he had you on the ground with his hands around your throat.’ He looked apologetically at Mum. ‘They did say that he can lay charges if he wants to, but I got the impression they wouldn’t be all that impressed.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ said Mum grimly.

  * *
*

  It was still bright and hot when Mike turned into Green Street, and there were four extra cars parked along the street outside Mum’s house. The welcoming committee advanced as soon as he turned into the driveway; as well as Rob, Anna and Craig, it included both Monty and Mum’s friend Carole. Lovely people, both of them, but neither discreet nor restful.

  ‘Oh, good God,’ I said.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll ask them to leave. They’ll understand.’

  ‘No! No, sorry, it’s all good.’ I opened my door.

  There was a general hubbub of greetings, hugs and shocked exclamations, during which I was swept into the kitchen and settled on the window seat.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Carole asked me tenderly.

  ‘I’d really like a shower, and to get out of this,’ I said, plucking at a fold of hospital gown.

  ‘Of course you would; I’ll come and find you some clothes,’ Mum said. She and Carole took an arm each and helped me to my feet, which greatly impeded my attempts to hold the gown closed at the back.

  That shower was heaven, and I’d have loved to stay there beneath the water for an hour or so, away from too many concerned and loving eyes. But it would have been both ungracious and a waste of water, so having scrubbed the dirt and blood off with a loofah I got out of the shower and began gingerly to towel my hair dry.

  Mum had provided me with a pair of baggy linen trousers and a blouse with a little Chinese collar that did a reasonable job of hiding the bruises around my throat. Putting them on, I wrestled a comb through my wet hair, made a face at my pale, battered reflection in the mirror above the sink and went out into the hall.

  Jed was leaning against the sitting room doorframe with Craig on his hip, admiring the yellowing extension cord that ran around the bottom edge of the sitting room door, along a skirting board, up the wall, across the ceiling and back down the other side to vanish through a hole into the conservatory.

  ‘Previous owner’s work,’ I said. ‘Who needs electricians?’

  He stood up straight and smiled at me. ‘How are you doing?’