On The Job

by Sandi Wallace

  Julia let the curtain swish into place. The vile white drapes, in the white-walled mausoleum of a living room, with its rigid white couch, white sateen throw cushions and stupid white shaggy carpet. All a pose, all of which she’d agreed to in order to keep the peace. As she always did. She’d spent half of Bella’s life chasing the child out of this room to keep it pristine and please her husband.

  The surge of anger fizzled.

  What she would give to see Bella streak through, brush her finger-paint plastered hands over everything.

  She turned away from the window, her actions unsteady. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed Bella peep from behind the island bar.

  A burst of joy died in the next beat.

  She would never again see her baby play peek-a-boo. Smell her sweet, freshly shampooed hair. Hear her giggle. Or feel her slender arms drape around her neck.

  Her heart tore anew.

  Michael hadn’t moved from the sofa. She had too much pain inside to worry about him. Instead, she gathered the mugs and stacked them in the dishwasher.

  Better. Better to be busy. Better not to think.

  She hummed. Low. Tuneless. With occasional catches in her throat.

  ‘Julia.’

  He touched her. Her nerve endings were raw and she shrieked, pulling away.

  The kitchen floor needs a mop. I’ll scrub the grout. Hot, hot water.

  ‘Julia… Listen…’

  She looked through her husband and scuttled into the laundry.

  In her fog, she failed to notice the bucket fill and overflow or even the bloom of angry red as boiling water seared her hand.

  The man couldn’t shut off what had happened. He didn’t think he’d ever get behind a steering wheel again. His hand shook so hard that liquid sloshed over the rim. His gaze followed the drips of beer onto the carpet, equally incapable of dealing with it as he was unable to drink from or put down the glass.

  It was plucked from his fingers.

  ‘Come on, love,’ his wife whispered. ‘It’s after midnight. Let’s go to bed.’

  He tried to reply but made only a garbled noise.

  She hugged him. Rubbed his back and murmured. He cried. His body shuddered.

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ he managed to say.

  His wife leaned back and stroked away the tears on his cheeks. Fresh ones streaked.

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘My bloody truck killed her. It’s my fault.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  She held down his hands. He hadn’t realised he was throwing his arms around.

  ‘It is. If I hadn’t been driving…’

  She pressed a finger to his lips. ‘The little girl rode out in front of you. She wasn’t paying attention. There was no way you could stop. You said it yourself, love. And the police understand what happened. Nobody’s blaming you.’

  ‘I am.’

  He squeezed his eyes shut, watched the impact again in slow motion and moaned.

  She shushed him, embracing him harder than before.

  His next moan erupted and echoed in the quiet house.

  ‘Try not to wake the kids.’

  She had spoken gently, but he fired back, ‘At least our kids can wake up.’

  He jumped to his feet, grasped the beer, downed the liquid in one and hurled the glass against the wall.

  It shattered and sprayed glittering fragments.

  The night crept slowly to morning. She couldn’t contemplate sleep, although Michael went to bed directly after they returned from the morgue. She didn’t get it. Even though it was long after midnight, how could he sleep after seeing their dead baby?

  For a long while, Julia stood in the centre of Bella’s room, rotating slowly, then frantically. The rainbow of colours and images blended as in a kaleidoscope.

  She collapsed onto the play rug and dug her fingers into its pink pile. Pink was Bella’s favourite colour.

  Several times she held her breath, desperate to float away to be with Bella, but her body denied her. Involuntarily, she gasped and breathed.

  Still no tears came. She wondered how someone could feel numb yet hurt everywhere. How her eyes could burn as acutely as the blistered scald on her hand but stay dry, empty.

  Through those bloodshot eyes, she stared at Bella’s wall. A butterfly-patterned umbrella hung on a peg by its curved hook, alongside an anorak, long scarf and cape.

  All of her baby’s most treasured winter items.

  Next, she gazed at the hot pink gumboots upside down on their rack and a pair of fluffy slippers. The gap between them belonged to a pair of dress shoes, the shoes Bella wore today – no, yesterday.

  Exhausted but sleepless, Julia lay on Bella’s single bed. She buried her face into the doona, pillow, pyjamas. She drank in the sweet scent of her child, then her fingernails wrenched at the skin over her heart.

  Later, her cheek rested on the mattress. She clung to the pillow, her eyes fixed forwards.

  Bella loved to paint and draw. Her pictures were typical four-year-old stuff: unsophisticated stick figures, vividly coloured. A little girl holding her mum’s hand, both donned in pink triangle dresses. A big white house outlined in black crayon, trees, grass and flowers, mum and child playing catch. At the seaside, massive beaming sun, tricoloured umbrella, two beach towels, mum and daughter building a sandcastle.

  It was the first time she’d noted a recurring theme.

  Sara pulled on the handbrake. She sat for a moment, thinking, observing. Many descriptors jumped to mind: contemporary, stark white, extensive glass, expensive, cold. A house, not a home – it was far too large and imposing for a family of three.

  She corrected ‘a family of three’ to ‘a childless couple’, shivered and left the cocoon of the divvy van.

  At the front door, she flashed back to waiting here yesterday. She felt much older this afternoon. The experience of looking after the boss and managing the death knock had matured her more than any previous twenty-four hours of policing.

  Sara pressed the doorbell and after a minute, knocked on the frame.

  No response.

  She tracked around the house, checked windows and came to French doors at the rear. She peered through and spied Julia seated at the island bar in the kitchen. The mother was pallid and dressed the same as yesterday. She clutched a small stuffed toy and stared into the distance.

  Sara tapped and waited. Then she called gently, ‘Mrs Avery? Julia?’ and let herself in.

  Julia stirred and turned. Her forehead creased when Sara placed her hat on the bench before her eyes glazed.

  Sara fixed the woman a coffee and the movement or aroma eventually roused Julia.

  ‘Oh, you. Sara?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Sara Pratt. I was on patrol nearby and wanted to see how you’re doing.’

  The mother shrugged, signifying no words could describe how she was doing. Sara had messed that up.

  ‘Is Michael home?’

  Julia shook her head.

  ‘Is someone here with you?’

  After a pause, Julia said, ‘I sent Mum home. Same for the others who came with their casseroles and well-meaning bullshit.’

  She had sparked up with that sentence, but Sara saw her vanish again. She tried to draw the woman into conversation. It was a constant battle against suffocating grief.

  Nonetheless, the constable persevered. She had questions. The sarge didn’t know she was here. Maybe he’d back her all the way or maybe he’d haul her over the coals. It didn’t matter because he’d trained her to investigate anything that made her nose twitch.

  And it twitched like a bunny’s now because the story didn’t add up.

  So Sara prodded cautiously. It was poor timing for the mum, but critical to the investigation, even if everyone else was calling it ‘the accident’.

  ‘Was yesterday the first time Bella went off on her bike alone?’

  Julia passed a hand over her eyes as if blocking the image. She shook he
r head, yet replied, ‘I think so.’

  Sara talked of other things awhile, then circled back. ‘She was a tiny thing. Didn’t feel the cold?’

  Dressed as she was, on a freezing winter’s day, Bella must have been of hearty mountain stock.

  The mother angled her head. ‘We keep the house this hot for Bella.’

  She lifted and dropped a hand.

  Sara saw her slip away again and asked a final question.

  ‘So, when will Michael be home? I’d like to have a chat with him, too…’

  Red-veined eyes swivelled to hers.

  They held a long look.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  At nightfall, she trudged up the stairs and down again.

  She placed the items on the floor in front of him. He lowered his gaze to the pathetic pile.

  ‘You want to tell me why my daughter –’ Julia’s voice caught. She swallowed and said, ‘Why my daughter was outside, at dusk, in winter, wearing a skirt and T-shirt? Two degrees and she goes for a ride in her best shoes and socks, without her coat?’ She picked up her baby’s anorak and stretched again to retrieve the set of pink gumboots. ‘And without her boots?’

  ‘What?’ Michael’s eyes widened.

  Julia’s thoughts strayed to dried mud from the tiny gumboots that marred the pretentious shagpile. Her eyelids fluttered and her lips curved briefly.

  Mouth flatlined again, she pressed, ‘And why you thought my daughter was upstairs having a nap, when she was actually riding her bike, by herself?’

  ‘I thought she was upstairs.’

  Her breath hissed through her teeth. She drew his eyes into her soul.

  ‘Come.’

  Something—her hard expression or her lack of fear—inverted their usual roles and he followed. They walked through the internal door to the garage.

  She tossed him the car keys. ‘Drive.’

  The roller door lifted. Michael reversed. The door slid closed while she watched numbly.

  At the top of the steep driveway, she instructed, ‘Our lookout.’

  Her husband nodded and pulled left. She jabbed off the radio, halting a love song.

  They reached Five-Ways and parked with the engine running, the heater ineffectual against the frigidness inside her.

  The car park was otherwise empty—the tourists either tucked up in restaurants, B&Bs or gone—and completely dark. There were no street lights here and the fog was a pea-souper. Their headlamps barely illuminated past the safety barrier, but Julia pictured the carpet of lawn, the canopy of trees far down the hill and the catchment dam further beyond.

  ‘I should have known. But it took this,’ she waved, ‘for me to realise.’ The words quivered.

  After a long pause, she went on, ‘Bella wasn’t just a mummy’s girl, clingy, going through a stage. That wasn’t why she always wanted to be with me, why she didn’t want to stay with you when I went shopping yesterday.’

  Another piece of her heart broke. She forced herself to breathe. It didn’t matter what happened to her later – she needed to finish this.

  ‘True, Michael?’

  She shuddered over his name.

  ‘Things changed after we had the baby. You were obsessive-compulsive with me and Bella, but I thought you didn’t have the greatest role models, so it wasn’t your fault. I put it down to you just not getting parenting. I never realised what you really were.’

  Julia chafed her arms. ‘Maybe that makes me as bad as you.’ Her tone coarsened. ‘No, I’m not.’

  He shifted to look at her. She fixed on a leaf stuck to the windscreen.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened yesterday?’

  ‘You know what –’

  She cut him off. ‘Here’s what I think. I think Bella was running away.’ She glanced at him. ‘From you.’

  She turned back to the leaf above the wiper. ‘Well?’

  She hammered him until he stuttered, ‘Oh, but, it’s…I thought she’d hidden in the garden. Really, I did.’

  Her poor baby wasn’t safe in her own home.

  ‘Huh. Maybe I believe you. But I think—no, I know—that you bullied us because you’re too much of a goddamn pussy to stand up to your Type A parents.’

  She changed tack. ‘That policewoman came back today. Sara Pratt.’ She studied him. ‘She’s smart, that one. She’s suss about the details. She asked about you.’

  He cringed, confirmation she expected but didn’t want. She faced forward.

  ‘I wasn’t certain until she came around. I’d started to piece it together, though. From Bella’s anorak and gumboots, initially. Then I noticed something in her bedroom. Not one of her pictures has a man in it. There is no dad. Only a mum and daughter. Me and Bella. Or us and her nana. Nothing of you.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Shut up. You don’t get to talk. Yet. Anyway, so things were dropping into place and I remembered how strangely Bella always acted after she’d been alone with you. And Pratt sealed it.’

  She realised she’d been grinding her teeth and unclenched her jaw.

  Michael sat stiffly.

  ‘Pratt would break you in five minutes. And even if you did bluff your way past her, there’s no way that you’d survive a coroner’s inquest.’

  She glared at the leaf.

  ‘And there’s no way I’m going to let it be known what sort of man,’ she grimaced, ‘you are.’

  ‘What are you on about? Stupid woman.’ He’d reverted to type: intimidating. Then he faked outrage with, ‘Just what the hell are you insinuating? I didn’t do anything bad.’

  She answered with a repulsed snort.

  He switched to pleading. ‘I promise you. I just played around…’

  In her peripheral vision, lit by the luminous green of the dash lights, she saw his hands flutter.

  Julia’s stomach pitched. She pushed down the vomit. She wouldn’t leave trace of being in the car tonight.

  As one part of her mind raged, another hoped he was telling the truth – that the post-mortem wouldn’t find evidence of sexual assault. They wouldn’t prove anything, concluding that Bella’s imaginary race and limited road sense led to an awful accident.

  Her hand pulled the lever. The door released but instead of alighting, she said, ‘You’re too weak to go to jail.’

  She twisted sideways, pointed a finger at his temple and said, ‘So, you’re going to gun the engine of this fancy-dancy midlife-crisis sports car of yours and you’re going to point its nose down the reservoir road. No steering, no braking. Accelerate full power.’

  He nodded and sobbed.

  ‘Because you’re too much of a coward to go to jail and let some arsehole do to you what you did to my daughter.’

  ‘I only –’

  ‘Even if you only…’ she faltered, nauseated, unable to repeat his words. ‘We both know what you would’ve done to her if she’d lived, sooner or later.’

  She stumbled out and before she slammed the door snarled, ‘Don’t worry, you won’t make it past the Elbow alive.’

  Devil’s Elbow, the local nickname for the sharp corner on the steep hill. And hideously appropriate.

  Julia walked in the direction of their empty home. She heard the BMW crawl forward, then give a sharp rev before it launched down the plunging gravel roadway.

  It seemed a long interval before she heard the impact. One mountain ash would do the job and the thicket of trees at the Elbow guaranteed success.

  Tears curled from the sides of both eyes. The fog enveloped her.

  Now she could grieve for Bella.

  The stone church was packed for the funeral, with every seat filled. Not even standing room remained. Pressed against the cold back wall, McCain stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his wife, Sally, and Sara Pratt, three figures in their immaculate police uniforms among a sea of others garbed in blue: every available member from their station, plus their counterparts from the neighbouring towns and even a few from further afield.

  Sara�
�s back and shoulders were set, her body so tight she barely seemed to breathe. In contrast, Sally’s chest and belly lifted and deflated with her inhales and exhales in McCain’s side vision. Inhale, exhale, repeat. She swore the technique was the reason she’d survived the worst of the job; the only way she could present a façade of calm while screaming and swearing mutely.

  McCain blinked eyes dry from too much whisky, too many tears and too little sleep. His gaze fell on the infants perched on the steps below the altar, their expressions ranging from bewildered to miserable.

  He looked away and screwed his eyes shut, but instead of blanking the kids’ pain, he pictured Bella, her broken body and her broken bike.

  Hold it together, man.

  He opened his eyelids, determined to be strong for his colleagues, his shattered community and Bella’s loved ones. At least for today. He couldn’t think beyond that, though. Wasn’t sure he could ever return from stress leave.

  Not wanting to and yet unable to stop himself, McCain’s eyes travelled to Julia standing at the front of the church. Her shoulder blades were sharp bumps inside her heavy woollen coat as her body bowed forward, her hands resting on the end of the shiny, undersized white casket, her fingertips pointing to the large portrait of her daughter.

  Alone, when by rights she should have had her husband for support. But him dead, too.

  God help me.

  McCain wished Sara had never shared her theory with him and he was relieved they couldn’t prove it. Not a witness or piece of physical evidence so far pointing to anything but Bella’s death being a terrible accident and Michael’s a suicide – his inability to cope with the tragic loss of his child.

  But Sara was born for the job; she had good instincts. And deny it all he liked, but McCain’s gut agreed. Michael’s single-car fatal accident and today’s funeral for only Bella were no coincidence.

  Beside him, Sara took an audible breath, clearly steeling herself, as the minister comforted Julia. She had admitted regrets: ignoring her impulse to check on the parents and delaying her return for further questions until the very time Michael wrapped his BMW around a tree.