I turn on the radio and stare at it instead of her. It’s weird that she’s looking at me for so long. Uncomfortable. I’m not looking but I can sense her.
It’s the first story on the news. They’re looking for someone dressed in a Japara, and for someone who drives a white Ute. They’re also questioning a paedophile, some guy who lives nearby and was released recently. He’s forty-seven. I feel ill.
I look to the window again. Yep, she’s still there. I wish she’d go away. It’s creepy. Why is she staring at me? Shouldn’t she be doing something to find her child instead? Her nine-week-old baby is gone, for God’s sake, and they’re questioning a paedophile.
*
Chloe comes out an hour later and slams the car door after her. She won’t talk to me.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask Chloe again after we’ve driven a few blocks, but she doesn’t answer. The little girl who still clings to a teddy bear in bed has morphed into the teenager that’s been taking over these last two years. Loving eyes have turned angry. Admiring smile now suspicious, disdainful. I know better than to press her when she’s like this. I wait till she’s asleep to find out what happened.
‘Tell me everything,’ I say to Dad when she dozes off half an hour later.
Dad, like me, is good at recounting events and conversations. He does it in order, and doesn’t leave anything out. Chloe hugged her father, he tells me. He told her he loved her, that she hadn’t changed a bit. He told her she was like a bright light, that when she came into the room everything changed for the better. He told her he could cope with anything with his beautiful girl by his side. She might have found this gushing a bit much, because she stopped him short, asking him and the police question after question about exactly what happened and where and what Noah was wearing etc. She asked for a printed photograph of him and took notes in a small notebook, which is now in her jeans pocket. She completely ignored Joanna, who didn’t even try to talk to her. There were three police officers in the house, tapping phones and whispering to each other but otherwise not doing very much at all. Alistair was ‘as much of an arsehole as ever’.
‘Why?’
‘Mega efficient,’ he says, ‘brushing Chloe off when she began repeating her questions, ordering the police about.’ Dad puts on a deep authoritative Alistair voice: ‘Question the shop assistant . . . Search the houses again . . . Japaras! Look for Japaras! And Utes! White Utes! What other sex offenders live in the area?’
The voice is spookily accurate. It’s so weird that I once found Alistair’s voice a turn-on.
‘He didn’t say a word to me or your mum,’ Dad continues, ‘although we didn’t push it after saying how sorry we were. And once Chloe sidled away he just ignored her too.’
Same old same old, I think to myself. ‘And what about Joanna?’ I ask.
‘Oddball, if you ask me,’ he says. ‘Not crying. You’d cry, wouldn’t you? She just stared out the window. Chloe?’ Dad turns round to make sure she’s still out for the count. ‘She really sound asleep?’ he asks Mum.
‘Yeah, the blossom,’ Mum whispers, kissing the top of her head.
‘When we stood to leave,’ Dad continues in a hushed voice, ‘Chloe said to the police, “Maybe she did it,” pointing to Joanna.
‘Alistair was furious with her: “What a thing to say!” He told her to apologise.
‘She refused and he yelled: “Apologise this minute, young lady!”
“Why should I?” she said. “I’m not the one who keeps losing you your children.” Then she stormed out.’
‘Shit, what did Joanna do when she said that?’
‘Just stared at her. Weird woman. Maybe Chloe’s right.’
‘No, you think?’
‘Ninety per cent of cases like this it’s the parents.’
14
ALEXANDRA
16 February
I don’t wake Chloe for school and she’s furious when she realises it’s 10.30.
‘Of course I’m going in! I need to tell people to look for him. They might let me talk at assembly,’ she says, throwing on her uniform.
‘Hang on!’ I yell, chasing after her with the first packed lunch I’ve prepared in years. ‘Stand at the door with this.’ The lunch box is new, blue, and impressive, with containers inside for fruit, and a clip on the side for a non-sugary drink. ‘Smile!’ I say, holding the camera.
‘I really don’t feel like smiling,’ she says, and shuts the door behind her.
I print the smileless photo and stick it in the scrapbook – proof that I am the kind of mother who makes lunch from scratch and packs it neatly into a nifty blue box.
Phil’s already texted me twice. I ring him on his mobile. ‘Yeah, we’re okay. In shock.’
‘I’ve not gone in yet. I’ll take the day off.’
‘No, no need. I’ve got things to do. I’ll see you for lunch – The Lemon Tree?’
‘Okay, twelve thirty. Let me know if you want me to come over before then.’
I go for a run to clear my head then meet Phil at the café round the corner from Melbourne University in Carlton, where he works as a physics lecturer. He’s sitting at the window and it strikes me that we have a regular table. The television is on in the corner and Phil’s watching the same report I saw last night. He’s wearing the kind of mismatched gear a prospective girlfriend would need to change immediately: brown shoes, blue jeans, black T-shirt and grey zip up cardigan. I think he looks ace.
He stands to hug me. ‘Is Chloe okay?’
‘In shock, I think. She asked if she could use your scanner to get posters done after school?’
‘Course, tell her to ride over. We could take Ziggy out for a walk after.’ Ziggy is Phil’s ten-year-old Australian terrier, Chloe’s favourite creature in the world.
I usually wait at least ten minutes before seeking counselling from Phil. I can’t wait so long today.
‘I thought if I saw him I might feel nothing.’
He must be so sick of saying the same things: No, Al, you did nothing wrong. He’s the bastard, not you, him. You just have to get your head around the fact that he’s not who you thought he was. If he is fed up, he never lets on. ‘To feel nothing, you need to forgive him,’ he says.
‘Forgiving him seems as appropriate as forgiving cancer.’ I was pleased when I came up with this line in my head, and excited to finally say it out loud. When Phil doesn’t respond or look impressed by my insight, I turn to wave for the bill and knock over the vase on the table, spilling water all over his jeans.
‘My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,’ he says, patting his trousers with a napkin.
‘What?’
‘It’s from a poem I like. Makes me think of you.’
‘Shit, I know that woman!’ the guy at the table next to us says, looking at the television.
We prick our ears to listen. Both men at the table are in suits: business lunch, I suppose.
‘Really?’ The older man opposite him says.
‘Yeah . . . well, she was on the same flight. Her baby wouldn’t stop screaming and she went nuts – held her wee boy at me, kinda dangled . . . like this . . .’ The man holds his hands before him as if strangling something. ‘. . . and yelled: Why don’t you complain to him personally? or something like that, can’t recall exactly. I suggested she calm down and she practically threw the baby at her husband. That’s her! I can’t believe it. God, that’s terrible.’
The news report is live outside the Point Lonsdale Milk Bar, and is intercut with pictures of Noah, and the Facebook one of the three of them on the sofa in Edinburgh. The young guy in the suit tut-tuts then says very loudly‚ ‘He seemed like a good guy on the plane. But she’s fucking nuts. A hundred bucks says she did it.’
*
Chloe chucks her school bag on the floor when she gets in at four, feeds her budgies and hamsters and cat, and makes to rush out.
‘Hey!’ I yell. ‘Why don’t you take Blake with you?’
‘No
,’ she says, putting her helmet on in the hall.
That’s a shame. She and Blake Henderson have been best mates since we moved here. He’s a serious boy, with a gorgeous Corgi and a love of books and photography. Then, a few weeks ago, it just stopped. It’s been weird not having him around the house, even weirder that neither of them will say what happened.
‘What about a kiss, then?’ I say to Chloe.
She makes a noise by my cheek, wheels her bike out of the hall, and rides off towards Phil’s.
A few minutes later, Gene Henderson arrives at the front door. Blake’s mother is the only school mum I’ve connected with. Happily married, and running her own business as an interior designer, she’s down to earth and uncomplicated. She asks about Noah and gives me a hug of support, knowing how difficult this will be for my daughter. After I’ve told her everything I know, she changes the subject. ‘I finally got it out of Blake,’ she says.
‘And?’
‘And . . . I quote . . . “It became awkward between us when Chloe began straightening her hair. At our age, it’s difficult for boys and girls to be friends. I’m sure we will again one day.’’’
‘He’s like forty!’ I say.
‘He’s weird right enough,’ Gene says.
How sad, but Blake’s right – they’re kindred spirits, they’ll be mates again one day.
‘I’ve been roped into a ladies’ night,’ I tell Gene.
‘You idiot! I’m eating an entire chocolate cake, opening a bottle and watching Offspring – again. Which reminds me I need to go for a swim to earn it. Check ya later.’ With that, Gene’s out the door.
*
I don’t get to the phone in time when Alistair calls – thank God. He leaves a message. ‘Chloe, it’s Dad. No news yet, I’m afraid. I hope you’re okay. I’m really sorry about last night. Can I see you this week? I’ll call again tomorrow. Bye darlin’. ’
She plays the message over and over when she gets home from Phil’s. ‘He’s got an accent,’ she says. ‘I didn’t notice last night.’
‘You going to call him back?’
‘Nah,’ she says, heading to her room.
Mum and Dad arrive to babysit at seven and I go to the school with a cake from the coffee shop. I’ve put the cake on one of my plates and messed up the icing a bit so it looks like I baked it. The hall is filled with tables selling soaps and make-up and stuff considered to be of interest to ladies. I’m not comfortable with all these girly things, and hate the word lady, but I decide to try and overcome this, placing my cake on the baking-goods table and smiling at the two women behind it. They don’t know who I am and my presence does not interrupt their conversation.
‘She seems aloof, know what I mean?’ Woman One says.
Woman Two: ‘Apparently there’s like two dozen paedoes in a thirty k radius.’
Woman Three (who has overheard from the Nails table): ‘You talking about the Robertson baby? My aunty Mary’s from the next town, Queenscliff . . .’ The eyes of the other two light up. ‘. . . and she heard they’ve already taken someone in for questioning. Check this . . .’ Woman Three scrolls on her iPhone till she finds the relevant item, then passes the handset to One and Two.
I’m hovering and they don’t find this odd – in fact, they tilt the iPhone so I can see the screen, which has a photo of a man who’s around fifty. The caption reads: ‘Convicted sex offender Henry Kelly released from prison to address in Wallington.’
Woman Three: ‘Got out a week ago. Living just down the road from Point Lonsdale.’
Woman One: ‘What an ugly man.’
Two: ‘Sick bastard.’
Three: ‘Should tell people when someone like that moves round the corner.’
One: ‘Look at his eyes.’
Two/Three: ‘God’/‘Evil.’
Three: ‘I can’t look at them.’
One: ‘Take it away. He’s making that fudge turn in my tummy.’
Three: ‘Hey, I made that!’
One /Two: ‘I can’t stop eating it’/‘It’s delicious!’
The phone is returned to its owner.
Pause.
‘I have never once left Frederick in the car.’ Woman One.
‘Crazy thing to do.’ Woman Two.
‘Wouldn’t leave Dante even for a minute.’ Three.
As for me, I’ve had enough. I’ve almost escaped when Chloe’s English teacher accosts me at the door. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened. How’s Chloe?’
‘She’s holding up.’
‘If she needs more time off, we understand. I can get her the homework sheets.’
‘More time off?’
‘We can’t imagine how she must be feeling.’
‘She didn’t come in today?’
The English teacher blushes. ‘We assumed . . .’
‘I’ll have a word with her,’ I say, doubling her blush.
*
I admit I part-ruined my daughter by reacting the way I did four years ago. A good mother would have slapped her adulterous husband, yes, but then she would have cried into his arms, which he would have opened – what man wouldn’t open his arms to the crying wife he was just caught wronging? – and spoken softly of ‘our child’. ‘We should stay together for her,’ a good mother would have said. ‘She’s only ten. This will ruin her life! We have to get through this as a family.’
I know he’d have agreed. No matter how filthy and frequent the sex she was giving him, he would have said, ‘You’re right, Lex. I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?’ He probably would’ve kept screwing his mistress, but a good mother would have minded this less than destroying her child.
Instead I didn’t even give Chloe the chance to say goodbye to her father, I plonked her in an unfamiliar school and house to be badly fed by a mother who cried each evening into a wine glass.
If I had my time again, perhaps I would cry into Alistair’s chest instead, ignoring the stench of sex on the hairs there.
No, I could never ignore past betrayal and live with the worry that it would continue. I had to leave. The world changed when I found out Alistair had been lying to me. I changed. I wasn’t a best friend any more. I wasn’t the love of someone’s life any more. I wasn’t a wife. I wasn’t attractive or clever or witty or fun.
He changed, too: disappeared more like, up in smoke with all my happy memories. Who was this man I thought I couldn’t live without, the one I loved so hard in the early years, and more softly in the latter as is the way with love? Who was this man who had seemed to care about me and obviously didn’t?
But I had Chloe. And that, I told myself when I arrived in Australia with three suitcases and the £3,000 I’d withdrawn from our joint account, was all that mattered, and would never change.
I knock on her bedroom door and wait till she opens it.
‘You didn’t go to school today,’ I say, walking towards her bed and sitting on it. ‘Where were you?’
If I was a better mother, she’d be afraid of me, at least a little. She sits at her desk and types away on her laptop, not even looking at me.
‘Did you go to see your father?’
‘No.’
‘Where, then?’
‘Library.’
‘Why? Stop typing and look at me.’ She doesn’t. ‘Why?’ I almost yell.
‘I can leave home soon and look after myself so it’s none of your business what I do and where I go.’
Rage takes hold as I grab the laptop from her, yanking the plug out.
‘That’s my property!’ she screams. ‘I’m calling the police.’
She’s written a list of facts about Noah’s disappearance on a Word document: timeline, places, people, evidence, tweets, links to articles, quotes from news reports, Facebook posts.
‘I’m going to find out what happened to him,’ she explains, shaking in anger. ‘You watch.’
I shut the laptop lid and move towards her, guiding her trembling hand into mine. ‘It’s a good idea, writing things down,’
I say. ‘And I’ll support you with anything you think you can do to find Noah. But you have to tell me what you’re doing and if you want time off school, you have to ask me. Can that be a deal?’ Before I finish the sentence I scold myself. Can that be a deal? What a wimp of a mother I am. ‘That is the deal,’ I correct myself, turning our healing hand-hold into a sealing handshake.
15
ALEXANDRA
17 February
I take Chloe to the school gates and watch her walk up the steps. When I get home, I glue myself to the news. They’re about to make an appeal. Must be about a hundred journos at his mother’s house now. I pour myself a coffee and take my seat, almost excited, almost as if I’m at the movies and it’s gone dark and I’m about to be entertained.
The front door of his mother’s house opens. Joanna and Alistair walk out and stand on the veranda. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. They dangle heavily at her sides, then anchor themselves in the pockets of her jeans. Her face is white. Her eyes are not red. She’s not crying. She should. It looks wrong that she’s not. In fact, she looks cold and hard and not very likeable. She doesn’t usually look like this. She usually looks pretty and approachable, the type of girl I would have wanted to be mates with had she not fucked my husband and my life.
‘Our baby, Noah,’ Alistair says, using all the skills years in PR and politics taught him, ‘was taken from our car two days ago, 6.50 p.m., fifteenth of February. He was wearing a white Babygro. He has dark brown hair and brown eyes.’ I can tell Alistair is upset that his son has no other features that might help identify him. No birthmarks, like the star-shaped one on the right side of Alistair’s neck. Nothing. This baby looks like every other baby. And is wearing what every other baby wears. A white Babygro.
‘The police are continuing to look into the sightings of a white Ute and a man or woman dressed in a dark coloured Japara. Please, if anyone has any information that might help, contact the police immediately.’
The Cry Page 8