He holds the microphone for Joanna to take. She takes a while to get her hand out of her pocket and it shakes as she holds it.
‘Please, if you have seen our baby, or if you have our baby . . .’ She breaks off and glances at Alistair, who I notice is squeezing her elbow. ‘I mean Noah. If you know anything – about Noah – could you please contact the police. We just want . . .’ She again looks at Alistair, who is now sobbing like I’ve never seen him sob in his life. ‘I’m sorry,’ Joanna says, ‘I’m too distressed to talk.’ She almost jabs Alistair in the chest with the microphone then walks inside and slams the door. Alistair is visibly annoyed that she has done this. ‘My partner and I are in shock,’ he says to explain her behaviour. ‘Devastated.’ A tear falls down his cheek. ‘Please help us find Noah. Someone has taken him. Do not be distracted by ludicrous rumours that waste precious time. If you know anything, be brave, and come forward. If you have him, please bring him back to us.’ He gives the reporter to his left the microphone and walks inside, closing the door behind him.
*
My shift at the café starts at eleven. Two regulars from the hairdresser’s next door order coffees and yap loudly at the counter. I listen as I froth the milk.
‘Nah but it’s the dirt under his nails,’ the heavily made-up colourist called Tania says. ‘My friend Jan says her mate Gabe, Gabriel but they call him Gabe, which is a cool name I reckon, was one of the cops who first got there like, and Jan says Gabe says his partner totally saw dirt under that Alistair Robertson’s nails and they were just off the plane and why would there be dirt, there just wouldn’t be, and it’s not like he has a dirty fingernail kinda job, is it, and anyway he would have washed them before the flight.’
How this girl doesn’t need to take a very deep breath after this I will never know. I pour the milk into the coffee cups and sprinkle chocolate on top.
‘You reckon he did it?’ the (probably) gay hairdresser called Johan asks Tania.
‘Nah, but well I’m just sayin’, why would he have dirt under his nails unless he was like burying a kid in the ground or something? He says he fell over but I think it’s a crock of shit.’
‘That’s eight dollars forty, thanks,’ I say, putting the lids on the takeaway cups.
‘And also on the news she looked so out of it . . .’ She hands me ten dollars without pausing. ‘Like on drugs I reckon, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she was a junkie and maybe forgot . . . thanks . . .’ I’ve given her the change and they’re walking towards the door, coffees in hand. ‘. . . to feed him and so he goes and buries him and that’s why he’s got dirt under . . .’
My mobile rings as the door closes behind them. It’s Chloe’s school. She didn’t make it further than the top step. The café owner, Giuseppe, is a kind man, and he lets me go straight home.
She’s not there. I leave text and voice messages on her mobile then start phoning everyone I know who she knows. I’m about to scour the streets when she comes in and makes straight for her room.
‘Where were you? Chloe, come back here! I’ve been worried sick. Where have you been?’
‘At an internet café in Brunswick.’ She tries to shut her door but I grab it in time.
‘What did I tell you last night?’
She turns and looks at me. ‘Nothing useful. No one’s saying or doing anything useful. Tomorrow it’ll be too late. It’ll be too fucking late.’
It’s not the time to pick her up on the swearing. ‘What were you doing at the internet café?’
‘I set up a Twitter account and a Facebook page and put his photo and all the facts I know on them. A few people have already done blogs and pages and Twitter hashtags but they’re all idiots, their details are all wrong, full of bullshit. Someone who knows the facts should be doing it, someone who cares. So that’s what I did at the café this morning and you wouldn’t believe how many people have messaged me already. Point Lonsdale residents, the guy from the milk bar, and a cop, I reckon, although he or she would never admit it to me. After that I phoned the police in Geelong and spoke to Detective Phan who’s working on the case and I asked him exactly what they were doing.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me anything so I insisted on speaking to his boss, who’s called Elaine Larson, and she spoke all softly softly to me as if I was a five-year-old with learning difficulties. She said they were doing everything they could but she wouldn’t tell me exactly what and accused me of being rude. I asked if I could do an appeal on television and she said she’d have to ask you and Dad so I phoned Channel 10 and David Papadopoulos will be here with a cameraman any minute.’
It’s hard to be mad when you’re impressed. I need time to think this through, but a van’s parking in the drive already. ‘What are you going to say?’ I ask her as she changes into the T-shirt she somehow managed to get printed on the way home. FIND NOAH is in thick black lettering at the top. Underneath is a photo of her nondescript baby brother.
‘I’m just going to ask for help,’ she says, then heads back into the living room where David Papadopoulos and his cameraman are ready to go.
‘My name is Chloe Robertson,’ she says calmly into the camera. ‘My little brother Noah Robertson was last seen two days ago – at 6.50 p.m. on the fifteenth of February. He was in a baby car seat in the right-hand side of the back seat of a black 2010 Range Rover, Vogue model. It had a Victorian licence plate with blue characters on a white background, number VHA 538. The car was parked opposite the milk bar on Point Lonsdale Road on the outskirts of Point Lonsdale, twenty metres from the roundabout that joins the road with the Bellarine Highway. My father Alistair Robertson and Noah’s mother Joanna Lindsay were in the milk bar at 6.50 p.m., when they say he was taken from the unattended car. Please, if you have my brother, bring him home to his family. He’s just nine weeks old. He looks like this.’ She points to her T-shirt. ‘Like any other nine-week-old baby, you might think, but look how dark and thick his hair is. And he has beautiful long dark eyelashes. And big brown eyes. He was wearing a Marks & Spencer’s white Babygro, and he was wrapped in a square blue cotton blanket one metre by one metre, with a beige embroidered bunny in the middle about four inches long and two inches wide. He was wearing a Huggies newborn disposable nappy which has a picture of a teddy on the front and a light olive green border. I am begging you,’ she finishes, not tearful or even shaky, ‘if anyone saw anything that night, or knows anything, do the right thing and tell the police, or tell someone you know, or tell me on the Facebook page ‘Find Noah’ or DM me on Twitter @findnoah.’
I whisk her away after that last sentence and shut her bedroom door, my back against it as I make sure the two men leave. They pack and go quietly with a polite thank you.
‘You feel a lot for little Noah,’ I venture, surprised at her determination.
‘Of course I do.’
‘You want to talk about it?’
‘We have the same blood,’ she says. ‘We might have become really close one day. We might have done brother–sister stuff like holidays, I dunno. And someone stole him.’
Just like I stole you, I think.
‘Someone could be hurting him right now, killing him. Someone already could have. Of course I feel a lot. It’s natural, and my duty.’
‘You must be wanting time with your dad, no?’
She shrugs. ‘What does he see in that woman?’
‘I don’t know Chlo. I don’t know her.’ I don’t want to talk about Joanna, so I change the subject. ‘I’m proud of you. But from now on, there are rules. Anything you do, you have to do with me.’
‘Okay,’ she says.
*
After watching her plea on the 2 p.m. news bulletin, we sit down at the computer to go over the work she did online that morning. The Twitter account – @findnoah – already has 708 followers and her tweets look professional and clear. The Facebook page – also Find Noah – is similarly impressive with 1,278 likes and 76 shares. Messages are fl
ooding in already, some of them with details that have not been shown on the news: from a friend of the local police officer, the girlfriend of the shop assistant, the owner of Pasquini’s café.
I’m feeling full of pride when Alistair phones.
He’s yelling at me. What kind of mother am I, letting a fourteen-year-old go on television? Why didn’t I speak to him first? How could I have let her use the words ‘when they say he was taken from the unattended car’ as if . . . Can’t I see I am putting her in danger! Jeopardising the organised, careful and faultless work of the Victorian police force? How could I have let her set up Facebook and Twitter accounts? And phone the police! How—
I hang up on him.
Arsehole.
Arsehole with a point, damn it. Once again I have shown the world that I’m a shit shit shit mother. Another strike against me.
‘What was he yelling about?’ Chloe asks, sitting on the kitchen bench. I can sense she’s nervous, that she’s hoping her father is proud of her, like I was before he phoned.
‘You need to leave all this up to the police. I’m sorry, but I was wrong to let you do the broadcast. If you have any ideas, talk to me about it but you have to leave this to the grown-ups.’
‘That’s what he said?’
‘And he’s right.’
When she stands I notice she’s taller than me. Has she grown two inches in two days?
‘Fuck him,’ she says. ‘Fuck the police. And fuck you.’
When the front door slams, I don’t waste time pouring wine into a glass before drinking it.
*
I have to tread a fine line: being firm enough to keep Chloe safe – and the kind of mother who’d win a custody battle – but not so firm that she’d rather live with anyone than me. I devise an action plan and explain it when she comes home at 10 p.m., a little drunk maybe, don’t know for sure. I’ll need to tackle that later. I explain that together we will close her Twitter and Facebook accounts. I tell her I’ll ring the police every two days and report back to her about what’s happening. She can ring or visit her dad whenever she wants. And each evening – after school – we will plaster posters together. I print out the ‘Find Noah Plan’ I typed earlier, and we both sign it. I stick a copy in the scrapbook.
‘That scrapbook’s nuts, Mum,’ she mumbles.
‘Is it?’
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she gives me a hug and tells me she loves me.
My firmness level might just have hit the mark.
But when we withdraw from the hug I get a whiff of her breath and it’s confirmed – she’s been drinking.
*
It’s 1 a.m. The incidents which preceded my decision to be here are as follows:
Alistair’s phone call brought on the rage that turns me into an online stalker. I checked Joanna’s Facebook account. Deleted. I Googled them and zoomed in on the walk-in-the-Botanics shot the press have latched on to. I printed it out. I fizzed with fury as I stared at it, wondering why I let him yell at me on the phone like that, why I just took it, why I can’t get the fucking arsehole out of my head.
I checked Chloe was sound asleep, left her a note in case she woke before morning, got in the car, then got back out. I couldn’t leave Chloe for over two hours now, not with the hearing coming up. I paced the hall for a while, angrier with each step.
Fuck it. Fuck him.
I drove to Geelong.
And that’s why I’m sitting in a treehouse in the small park behind Elizabeth’s. I had planned to go in and give him a piece of my mind, but there was a security guard at the door, and at least three journalists on the nature strip. I chickened out, drove to the street behind, and climbed the tree.
Alistair and I used to smoke joints here when we visited during breaks from uni. I was fun back then. Now I’m nuts. And the ladder’s wobbly, and the boards are rotten. And I am a woman in a tree spying on her ex.
The window to Alistair’s bathroom is open. He’s sitting on the loo. I shouldn’t look.
I look. He’s crying. Howling. Groaning.
I drove here hoping another real-life viewing of him might cure me, but no, despite his despair, I feel rage.
She comes into the bathroom. I can only see her hand, on his shoulder. I need to move to the left to see her face. I lose my balance and reach for the top of the ladder . . .
And it falls. I try to grab it, my first thought being: Shit, they’ll hear me.
Not only do I fail to stop the ladder falling into the park with a loud first thud and a quieter second one, but I fail to realise that noise is not the big issue here.
I am a woman stuck in a tree.
*
Ninety minutes later I’m in Phil’s car, embarrassed.
He drives for a while before saying anything. ‘Y’know, it doesn’t make sense to forgive cancer, but it makes sense to try and avoid it.’
‘How?’
‘By not smoking, for example.’
‘You’re either being very clever or very dumb.’
‘By not seeking him out, Al. You seek him out. The Facebook, the Googling . . . Do you realise we haven’t had one conversation that he doesn’t enter into? Ever since you got back, you haven’t been able to stop yourself.’
I take this in for a minute, then open the glove box. He knows I’m a lolly addict, and usually has some for me if we’re driving somewhere together. Sure enough, there’s a huge packet of Allens Strawberries and Cream inside. When I rip open the wrapper, half of them fall on the floor.
‘Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘It’s from the poem I was talking about the other day. I think of it as my Ode to Al.’
‘Who wrote it?’
‘John Frederick Nims.’
‘Hmm . . . my poem, eh? About a clumsy idiot.’ I hand him a lolly.
‘It’s not about that really,’ he says.
‘Oh yeah, what’s it about?’
He hesitates. ‘Give me another one of those before I slap you.’
I hand him a second. ‘I’m still not sure which one you are,’ I say, chewing on mine.
‘What?’
‘Clever or dumb.’
He grabs another and smiles. ‘I bought Strawberries and Creams!’
16
JOANNA
15 February
Police Interview with Joanna Lindsay
Conducted by Detective Binh Phan
Geelong Police Station, 110 Mercer Street, Geelong,
VIC, 3220
9.16 p.m., 15 February 2011
Phan: What I’d like to do is start at the beginning.
Joanna: When was that?
Phan: When you left the holiday cottage. Tell me everything you remember after shutting the door.
Joanna: Alistair was carrying Noah , and the owner, Mrs Wilson, came to the drive and said hello. It was so hot. He was wearing a white Babygro and he was wrapped in a blue bunny blanket. Then he put him in the car.
Phan: Was he awake?
Joanna: No. We stopped at the milk bar on the edge of the town because we’d run out of wipes.
Phan: Just to go back a bit. When you were at the drive talking to the owner and when you got in the car and drove away, did you notice anyone hanging around your cottage? See anyone?
Joanna: No. The place was quiet, ’cause of the heat and fires. Just Mrs Wilson.
Phan: Noone else?
Joanna: Noone else.
Phan: And what time was it when you stopped at the milk bar?
Joanna: Um, I don’t remember... six-something? We parked, then Alistair went in. A couple of minutes later I remembered I needed to get something.
Phan: What?
Joanna: Tampons. When I came back out, he wasn’t in the car.
Phan: You had your period? Weren’t you breastfeeding?
Joanna: Um . . . They were for . . . um, discharge.
Phan: And before you went in, did you check on Noah?
Joanna: No. Um . . . I just jumped out.
Phan: Was he sleeping?
Joanna: He was silent.
Phan: And when you came back out, was the car door next to his seat open?
Joanna: No.
Phan: Any other doors open? Any sign of forced entry?
Joanna: No. No.
Phan: Had you left the doors open?
Joanna: Um, I must have.
Phan: Would you usually do that?
Joanna: No. I wasn’t thinking.
Phan: But you had the keys.
Joanna: No. Maybe Alistair had them.
Phan: When you came back out, did you notice anyone in the area, any cars?
Joanna: No.
Phan: Did you have a good look around?
Joanna: When I realised he was gone, I ran into the milk bar to get the guy to call the police then came back out and Alistair was looking. He was yelling Noah, No . . .
Phan: Are you okay? Would you like a glass of water?
Joanna: I’m okay.
Phan: When you were in the shop the first time, did you hear anything? A car? Voices? Noah crying?
Joanna: No.
Phan: Do you have any enemies Joanna? Anyone who might want to hurt you?
Joanna: No.
Phan: The exwife?
Joanna: Oh... No, I don’t think she’d hurt anyone.
Phan: Chloe?
Joanna: No!
Phan: Does Alistair have any enemies – political rivals, say?
Joanna: Not that I know of. He’s not important enough, is he?
Phan: How much money do you have?
Joanna: In my wallet?
Phan: No, altogether: bank accounts, property.
Joanna: Oh. I own a house in Glasgow worth about half a million. Alistair owns the flat in Edinburgh: it’s worth a bit more, I think, but he has a mortgage, not sure how much. It’s with Halifax, seven-fifty a month. Pounds. We have a joint account with around two thousand in it at the moment. And savings of twenty thousand. And I have a bank account of my own with another forty. That and the house was my inheritance – Mum had a business head.
The Cry Page 9