Darkwater

by Georgia Blain

  I rounded the corner into the Clarkes’ street slowly, bracing myself for the steep hill that led down to their house. Body crouched low, I took half the dip and then, panicking, I jumped off, letting the board rocket down to the gutter where it crashed, tail up.

  The big ‘For Sale’ sign was still out the front, although Sonia had told me her mother had heard that they’d had an offer and had accepted. I looked up at it, reading the words without taking them in. I was nervous. I had written Daniel a letter, telling him how sorry I was that I’d been pushy and that I knew he was having a hard time. It had taken me four attempts to get the words right, and even then I wasn’t sure that I had managed to say what I really wanted to.

  My plan was simply to slide the letter under the front door and disappear, but when I opened the gate (it was a large wooden one, the only entrance in a long stone wall that was too high to look over), the first thing I saw was Roxie Clarke floating on a li-lo in the middle of their swimming pool, small droplets of chlorine-blue water covering her arms and legs, her skin shiny and slick with tanning oil.

  I raised my hand in greeting, calling out a hello, although I was aware there was something wrong as I made the gesture. It was simply too late in the day to be sunbaking. To the west, I could see the great splash of orange sunset, not giving off enough light, let alone heat. The second problem was even more obvious. She didn’t acknowledge my presence at all.

  ‘Mrs Clarke?’ I walked over the pebbles on the edge, suddenly anxious that she was no longer alive. ‘Mrs Clarke?’ I called out louder this time, and when she still didn’t stir, I reached for the pool net and tried to draw her in with the pole.

  It was only then that she moved, lurching suddenly on the mattress and miraculously not losing her balance.

  She tried to sit up, the li-lo squeaking as her hands slipped on the rubber, and her sunglasses fell off, twirling to the bottom. Her eyes were bleary, ringed by black mascara, and as she leant forward, putting one foot down on the first step, her bikini top, which had been untied, came off completely, leaving her breasts, shockingly white against her tan, in full view.

  ‘Can I get you a towel?’ I knew how bad Daniel would feel if he found out I had seen his mother like this.

  She reached for my arm to help her out, her hands slippery against my wrist and her limbs scrawny. There was a robe on one of the lounge chairs and I was relieved when she pulled it on.

  ‘Thank you.’ Her voice was slurred. ‘Must have fallen asleep and didn’t know where I was.’ She bent down to pick up the glass she had left on the small poolside table. The little liquid that was left would have been warm from the afternoon sun, but she drained it anyway. And then she looked at me, her smile quizzical and slightly askew.

  ‘Are you here to see Amanda?’

  I shook my head as I tried to tell her that I’d just come to drop in a letter for Daniel.

  She looked at me again, her face like it was behind a glass, slightly blurred and distorted. ‘Daniel?’ And then, to my distress, she called out his name loudly.

  Fortunately there was no answer.

  ‘Come inside.’ She began to lurch, slowly, towards the house, her robe now undone and flapping behind her.

  I didn’t want to go, but she insisted and I followed, thinking each time she stumbled that I was going to have to catch her.

  Inside it was dark. What was left of the sun had slipped round to the other side of the garden, leaving the family room and the kitchen in gloom. She flicked on the lights and then sat back on a large purple sofa, her legs up on the coffee table, as she reached for a cigarette, almost singeing her hair with the match.

  ‘Would you like one?’ She held out the pack to me, with clearly no idea as to who I was or why I was here.

  I shook my head again and told her I had to get going. I just wanted to leave my note for Daniel.

  ‘You can give it to me.’ She held her hand out, the large gold and enamel rings on her fingers too big for her.

  I knew if I handed it to her it would be forgotten, crumpled at the back of the couch and possibly not found for months. I looked for a spot to leave it, but couldn’t see a place where it was likely to be noticed by Daniel. There were empty glasses throughout the room and overflowing ashtrays. The shag pile carpet on the floor was damp, with wet leaves from the garden trailing across it. There was a stain across the other armchair and a long burn mark on the coffee table. Each surface was covered with unopened mail. It was like the place had long been unoccupied, apart from Mrs Clarke who lived in the house as though she were an intruder, a person who didn’t belong.

  ‘Can I just take it up to his room and leave it there?’ I asked.

  She waved her hand in the direction of the stairs, her eyelids drooping as she did so.

  I’d never been in Amanda’s house. Dee had always described it as a showpiece, ‘nothing more than a display of wealth’. Joe and the others hadn’t hung there often. Most of the time they were at the waterfront, or if they went to someone’s place, it was usually ours, or Kate’s, unless there was a party at Cherry’s.

  Once Amanda had a party. It was for her sixteenth. Max had hired a well-known band (they’d had a hit on 2SM), and there were rumours about Amanda being caught taking drugs with the guitarist. Lucky Roxie was so pissed, Joe said. She forgot she’d threatened to ground her for a month. But Stevie hadn’t forgotten. He’d been upset, thought there’d been more than drugs and he’d dropped her for a week.

  I walked upstairs quietly. On the second floor there was a long corridor, the doors to each of the rooms shut. I cautiously opened the first.

  It was Amanda’s room. The bed was made, the desk was still covered in her homework books and the walls were plastered with her posters. There, on her bookshelf, was a photo of her, Kate and Lyndon by the waterfront.

  She was looking straight at the camera. In the darkness, it was difficult to see her clearly. Her long dark hair was in two low ponytails, the part neat. Her skin was tanned. She was smiling but it was posed. Kate, on the other hand, was laughing, her head tilted back slightly towards the sparkle of water. Lyndon stood behind Amanda, one finger up at whoever was taking the photo. I looked at him closely. His other hand was in front of him, directly behind Amanda. I wondered whether he had been seeing her secretly, whether right there in the picture he had his palm resting on the smooth line of her back. Why wouldn’t she have told anyone? Was it because he lived on the overpass and she was ashamed? Or just that she didn’t want Stevie to know?

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  I jumped, knocking the swimming trophy on the shelf next to me. It fell to the ground with a loud clatter as I turned to see Daniel standing in the doorway, the anger on his face harsh and cold.

  ‘I was looking for you.’

  ‘Well, obviously I wasn’t here.’

  I apologised, stumbling over my words as I said I hadn’t meant to come in, I’d just opened the door to see if it was his room and then I’d walked in without thinking. In my hand I was holding the note I’d written and I held it out, offering it as an excuse for my presence in his house.

  He took it without a word.

  ‘So, this is her room.’ He waved his hand around the space. ‘Had a good gawk?’

  I didn’t even attempt to respond.

  ‘They keep it just how she had it. As though she’s going to return. Which she’s not.’ He sat on the bed, and looked at me, defiant, because it seemed wrong to be in there so casually. He was almost daring me to tell him we should leave. ‘Was she downstairs?’ He glanced in the direction of the door and I knew he was referring to his mother.

  I just nodded.

  ‘Drunk?’

  There was no point in lying. I nodded again.

  ‘She starts in the morning and then usually ends up in here, crying, by dinnertime. She drank before Amanda died, but it’s just getting worse.’

  ‘Where’s your dad?’ I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders.
‘He comes home,’ he added. ‘It’s not like they leave me completely alone.’

  I had been standing in the doorway but when he didn’t move from the bed, I slid down to sit on the floor.

  ‘They’re going through a bad time.’ I was aware of how feeble my attempt to comfort him was. ‘It’s still recent.’ And I too waved my arm around the room.

  ‘You know the police have found out who she was going to meet that afternoon?’

  I didn’t.

  He looked towards the window. Amanda’s desk was underneath, her homework book still open at the page of maths exercises she had been working on, a biro in the bent spine. On the wall, she had stuck small pictures, cut-outs from magazines and a photo-booth image of her and Kate, their faces multiplied by four as they grimaced, grinned and giggled into the camera. The curtains were drawn. They were a pale gauze, insubstantial, offering no barrier between here and the outside world.

  ‘I guess one of her friends knew and they finally got the guts up to tell the police.’ He rolled his eyes in disgust.

  Cherry must have gone to the station. And then I thought of Lyndon again and I felt sick in the stomach.

  ‘And do they think this person killed her?’ My voice was soft in the quiet.

  He didn’t answer me. ‘Dad wanted to know who it was, but they wouldn’t tell him. He was furious. Said he’d kill them. He shouted at the policeman when he came around here. Told him he didn’t understand why they couldn’t just find this person and arrest them. And if they couldn’t, he would. He just needed a name.’

  I remembered Stevie telling me about the time Mr Clarke had come to his house. I had been staring down at the rug on the floor but I looked up now, quickly, wanting to see Daniel’s face. His gaze was still fixed on the desk and his expression was blank.

  ‘And the police didn’t tell him?’

  Daniel shook his head.

  ‘Have they arrested him? The person she was meeting?’

  Daniel shrugged. ‘If they have, they haven’t told us.’ He stood up now. ‘Or maybe they have. I mean, what would I know? If they told her–’ and he sneered as he once again looked to the door to indicate his mother – ‘she wouldn’t remember. She doesn’t even know who I am half the time. If they told Dad, he wouldn’t have bothered telling us. He just would have gone out and beaten the crap out of whoever it was.’

  From downstairs I heard the television turned on too loudly, the blare of static, followed by silence as Roxie eventually managed to turn it off.

  ‘Why don’t you come to our house?’ I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him here alone in the darkness. ‘You can have dinner with us. I’m sure you could stay the night, too, or Dad could bring you back later on.’

  He stood up slowly and walked over to Amanda’s desk, taking the photos of her and Kate off the wall. He considered them for a moment and then laid them down again, face-up.

  ‘You know, she was always the perfect one. School captain, lots of boyfriends, everyone liked her. But she had to live here too.’

  I wasn’t sure what he meant.

  ‘She was tough. She’d learnt to look after herself. She’d learnt how to get what she wanted. That’s what I meant when I said she would never have killed herself. You know, the other day?’

  He turned and looked directly at me for the first time. He’d clearly been troubled by how he’d described his sister and he wanted to clarify it.

  ‘But sometimes she wasn’t that smart. She did things that were going to get her into trouble. You know she recently stole a whole lot of money from the staff room?’

  I hadn’t known.

  ‘It was when Dad cut off her allowance. I think she did it to piss him off. But she was caught, and he had to work hard to stop the school from calling in the police, or even expelling her.’

  I nodded silently, and he turned back to the window, opening a small gap in the curtains. It was well and truly evening now and I had to get home. I stood up slowly, inching my way up the wall, wanting to try and get him to come back to our house but knowing I didn’t have much chance.

  ‘We used to fight all the time,’ he continued. ‘Sometimes I wished I didn’t have a sister.’ He wiped at his eyes and I stepped towards him, awkwardly, but he only moved away. ‘And now she’s gone–’

  ‘Will you come with me?’ I asked. ‘Back to our house?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  From downstairs, Roxie called out, ‘Daniel?’

  ‘What about another time?’

  He had already turned to the door, leaving the letter I had written for him, unopened, on top of Amanda’s bed.

  That night, I cried. I told Dee about Daniel, and his mother and father, and I cried. She thought that was what had been upsetting me over the last few days and she hugged me.

  ‘You should have talked to me sooner.’

  We were sitting in the sunken lounge, Carole King playing softly on the stereo, our half-eaten bowls of dessert on the coffee table.

  ‘It’s hard to imagine how terrible it must be.’ Dee brushed my hair off my eyes. ‘To lose a child like that.’ She shook her head. ‘Who knows how your father and I would cope.’

  ‘Why haven’t they found out what happened to her? Who did it?’

  ‘Those things take time,’ Dee said. ‘They can’t rush it. They can’t accuse the wrong people. It would have an appalling impact on their lives.’

  ‘But if they know who she was meeting?’

  Dee leant forward and picked up her bowl of ice-cream. ‘It still doesn’t mean that person was responsible for Amanda’s death.’ She scraped her spoon around the edge. ‘And even if they find the person – well, it doesn’t necessarily put an end to the pain the Clarkes are going through. You might have a moment of relief – you’ve found out what happened, you might think that’s brought some kind of closure – but you’re still left with the loss.’

  I asked her if there was anything we could do for Daniel, and she considered my question for a moment. ‘I might go and talk to Roxie, see if she needs some help, perhaps suggest that Daniel has dinner with us occasionally.’ And then she paused. ‘I don’t know. It’s hard. And they’re moving soon.’

  We heard the front door open, the slight click of the latch, and then the tap tap tap of Sammy’s feet as she ran down the corridor.

  It was Joe. He had been round at Kate’s, and he dropped his schoolbag on the ground, looking at both of us.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Dee told him I had been to see Daniel and I’d found it upsetting.

  He bent down and picked Sammy up, tickling her under her chin, before she squirmed out of his arms. He asked Dee if there was anything left to eat.

  Sighing, Dee stood up. ‘In the kitchen,’ she told him, and then talking more to herself than to me she said she didn’t know how she’d ended up with two such uncommunicative kids.

  ‘At least you’ve got us,’ I told her.

  She looked at me for a moment and her eyes were glassy. ‘That’s true,’ she said.

  sixteen

  Fact: There’s too much talk. I’ve had enough.

  The day after I visited Daniel, I walked with Cassie and Sonia to our usual lunch spot under the shade of the awnings.

  We sat, as we always sat, with our backs to the wall, unwrapping our sandwiches on our laps and looking out across the flat expanse of the oval and beyond to the curl of the river.