Joanna didn’t remember that.
‘When I walked along the aisle to my seat, you were holding him and just staring at him, smiling. I felt a bit sad when I saw you. I never had children. I’ve never been in love like that.’
‘Was I?’ Joanna started to cry again.
‘Yes! You were. You were a mother in love.’
It was a different cry now, Joanna’s body relaxing as she did.
‘When he woke you fed him. I could hear his noises from my seat. Gulping!’ She made the noise. Squelch squelch squelch. ‘I was surprised how loud he was. He was a noisy baby. After he was finished, you put him in the cot on the bulkhead and you sang to him while you checked his nappy.’
‘Did I? What did I sing?’
‘Because you’re gorgeous . . .’
Joanna finished it, ‘I’d do anything for you.’
‘He slept for about ten minutes then woke again. I admit he did cry a lot after that. You tried everything. I wish I could have made it easier for you. I feel really bad about that.’
‘I was hopeless.’
‘No. He cried for hours. You were stressed. I would’ve opened the emergency door and tossed him out. Not really, sorry. But that sound makes everyone, every woman in particular, want to do anything, anything to make it stop. It doesn’t have the same effect on men. It’s like someone else’s bad music to them. That man of yours didn’t help much.’
‘No?’
‘When the baby started crying again before we landed in Melbourne he only lasted about ten minutes before he dosed him up.’
It took a few seconds for Joanna to hear those last four words. Everything that had come before had been so comforting she wasn’t prepared to hear something that would change the world.
‘He dosed him up?’
‘Don’t feel bad about that. All the children on that plane were doped to the eyeballs.’
‘Alistair gave him medicine when I was asleep?’
‘Typical man, asks for all the help he can get immediately.’
‘He asked for help?’
‘He asked me to hold Noah while he gave it to him.’
‘Do you remember if he tasted it?’
‘The baby?’
‘Did Alistair taste the medicine first?’
‘He got the suitcase out of the overhead locker, took the bottle out, filled a spoon, and put it in Noah’s mouth while I held him.’
‘He didn’t taste it?’
‘Why?’
‘Tell me!’
‘He didn’t taste it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Alistair was wearing a grey T-shirt with a thin red trim around the neck and arms, and blue Diesel jeans, and white sports socks, and Nike Air runners. His bald patch was about four centimetres in diameter and he was very worried about people seeing it but thought they wouldn’t if he tussled what was left enough and he did that a lot. His phone was in his right pocket the entire trip. He finished a small bottle of red wine with every meal, even breakfast. He has a small star-shaped birthmark on the right side of his neck. He didn’t taste the medicine. I noticed that he didn’t and I noticed that you did. Are you okay? Joanna? Joanna. Let me hold on to you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Joanna . . .’
*
The radio was still on.
‘There’s been a sighting in the Noah Robertson case. The nine-week-old baby boy was taken from the family’s rental car nearly four weeks ago now and the reward raised by celebrities and donations is now at $750,000. Police say they’re doing everything they can to identify the man caught on CCTV camera in Bangkok two days ago . . .’
‘That’s not him,’ Joanna said, knowing she hadn’t quite got the words out right.
She heard a shh and a click. The radio was no longer on.
Ms Amery wouldn’t tell her to shh. She wasn’t a shh kind of woman. She’d say something else altogether. Joanna opened her eyes.
The gasp she took was so loud it scared Ms Amery, who was standing beside Alistair.
Joanna sat up.
‘Are you okay?’ Ms Amery asked. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I found Alistair’s number on your phone.’
Joanna looked out the window: pretty garden, rosella still on the lemon tree. She was on the sofa in Ms Amery’s kitchen.
‘Hey, missus, you fainted,’ Alistair said.
She was tempted to use the little breath she had to protest against the ‘missus’ but decided to conserve her energy for things less petty.
‘Must be the heat.’ Joanna sat up and took a sip of the water Ms Amery was offering. ‘I’m so sorry. I must have scared you.’
‘And all that bubbly! Shall we get you home, missus?’
Oh God, he’d said it twice, in the only two sentences he’d said since she woke. He’d never called her that before. Was this because she had now morphed into his once-downtrodden ex-wife? He now owned her? Her brain swayed. Thankfully her skull didn’t give it away by moving with it. ‘Yeah, sure.’
She hugged Ms Amery and took Alistair’s arm to be escorted to the car.
‘Take me to Geelong,’ she said, staring ahead as he pulled out of the parking spot. She longed to be on the road where Alistair had said, ‘I always taste it, Joanna. Do you?’ She longed to be on the road where he made her believe she had killed her baby. For now, getting to that road was all she could concentrate on.
She waited in the car as he collected their things and checked out of the hotel, and closed her eyes as they made their way to the West Gate Bridge, repeating these words in her head: I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill my baby.
Beautiful, soothing words. She bathed in them.
Once they passed over the bridge, and she saw the land opening out to a sea of flat empty land, the words subsided, relief slowly giving way.
Alistair had a round of questions which he recycled, gathering facts no doubt. Just how mad was his partner, this woman he was now bound to for life?
Are you feeling okay?
Would you like some water?
How’s that head?
When did you find your phone?
Why did you visit her? What were you talking about?
Are you feeling okay?
Why visit her?
Would you like some water?
What on earth were you two talking about?
Yes, no thanks, okay, don’t know, no . . . she answered, when required, although she may have forgotten to answer the last one because she recognised the spot. The embankment. Nothing Field. Burnt land in the distance.
‘Why are you so quiet?’ Alistair asked.
She turned and pressed her hands against the window as they zoomed past the embankment. She could almost see Alistair standing on the roof of their hire car, trying to get a signal, and herself, on the ground, pressing a tiny chest, saying, ‘One, two, three, four‚ five . . . One, two, three, four‚ five,’ over and over.
‘Oh come on, talk to me, Joanna,’ Alistair said.
The embankment and the mirage had gone. She turned and looked at the flat road ahead. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
A cross, to the left.
‘Tell you what?’ Alistair was enjoying the drive: seatbelt off, as usual, leaning back, one hand on the wheel.
‘You gave Noah another dose.’
He flinched and gripped the wheel more tightly with the one hand he was using to steer with, then tried to cover it up, loosening his grip again, tapping the wheel with his stumpy fingers. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you gave Noah another dose of medicine, before we landed in Melbourne, while I was asleep?’
Alistair tensed, straightened his back, upped the speed to a hundred and twenty kph. ‘Where’s this coming from?’
‘Ms Amery remembers.’
‘That old lady? You were asking her stuff like that? Jesus! What would she know?’ Two hands on the wheel now.
‘She knows. You didn’t taste it.’
He turne
d and gave her a stern look. ‘We’re really going through all this again?’ A hundred and twenty-five now.
She held his gaze with a sterner one. ‘And you didn’t tell me.’
A hundred and thirty. Face away from her and onto the road. Knuckles white, body leaning into wheel, like that first time they drove this way.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Foot down. A hundred and forty. Slight rocking of the torso and head. ‘See, this is why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d be like this. What are you doing talking to some old lady about this?’ He stamped on the accelerator. ‘FUCKING HELL!’
‘Admit you didn’t taste it.’
She waited through the long silence, but could almost hear his brain ticking with plans of attack.
His plan was to relax. ‘What if I didn’t?’
She was still looking at him, determined to get him to look back. ‘Then it’d be your fault, Alistair.’
A quick glance, then back at the road. ‘Did I ever blame you? Did I ever say it was your fault?’
‘But it wasn’t my fault!’ she yelled. ‘It was yours. And all this time you let me believe it was mine. You let me think I killed my son!’
‘I never said it was your fault.’
‘Oh that is so you, Alistair, so careful with your words. You never said it wasn’t. You made me believe it was. You know that’s true. You’ve lied so long you don’t know how to tell the truth. You didn’t see someone in a Japara that night, did you? You were thinking ahead. If it goes wrong, frame Alexandra.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
She didn’t know how fast he was driving now. Very.
‘The shit I have put up with, Joanna,’ he snarled. ‘The way you behave like a fucking nutcase. You’ve been bloody hard work since we got together, you know that? Worse and worse every single day. I’ve been on Joanna maintenance full fucking time for four fucking years. I feel this. No, I feel that. Oh I don’t know what I think or feel! And now I’m the bad guy here? It was a mistake. An accident. There’s nothing we can do about it. Our son is dead. What does it matter who did it?’
Alistair accompanied each of the words that followed with a stamp on the accelerator, causing Joanna’s head to thrust forward and lunge back with the movements of the car. ‘WHAT. THE. FUCK. DOES. IT. MATTER!’
She held her neck. The shouting, the whiplash, the speed, it didn’t scare her.
A signpost: EXIT TO AVALON AIRPORT, 2KM.
And suddenly it came to her that she knew how to get off the drama triangle.
In one swift movement, she grabbed the wheel.
It was magical, watching the triangle snap at the angles and break into three separate lines. They scattered out from the car, one of them cracking and separating into two on the way.
And so it was four lines, not three, that floated gently to the earth as the car careered towards the thick metal sign for Avalon.
Beautiful!
She smiled.
There would be two more crosses on the road to Geelong.
24
JOANNA
3 March
Joanna saw something.
She thought something: Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
She said something. ‘Tell me I’m dead.’
Two figures were standing over her. ‘You were in an accident,’ one of them said.
‘You’re a very lucky woman,’ said another.
‘No!’ she screamed, arched her back, ripped at the drip in her arm.
The two figures restrained her on the bed. They slowly came into focus: a female nurse, a female doctor.
‘It wasn’t an accident,’ Joanna muttered.
‘She’s delirious. Poor thing,’ the chubby nurse holding her legs said.
‘No, no no!’ She tried to wriggle free but couldn’t lose that doctor’s forearm which was weighing down on her chest.
‘Calm down. This is scary, I know, but you’re okay; everything’s okay.’
She stopped wriggling. The drug was moving into her now.
The doctor released her and checked the drip. ‘Joanna? Joanna? You’ve broken your arm and two ribs. The morphine will make you feel better.’
‘Listen to me . . .’
‘You can just press this button when you need more,’ the nurse said.
‘No, please!’ She tried to sit up, the pain stopping her. She shouted: ‘Please, I AM someone you should listen to!’
‘Do you know if there’s anyone we should call?’ one asked the other.
Joanna calmed herself, tried not to yell: ‘No, don’t ring anyone. Listen. It was no accident. I did it on purpose. I meant it. I meant to kill us both. Why am I alive!’
She began to sob. She was alive. And no one was listening to her.
‘Your seatbelt saved you.’ The doctor’s kind smile was so wrong here, take it away.
‘Seatbelt?’ She’d meant to take hers off. She’d forgotten.
The doctor took her hand off the morphine button and sat on the edge of the bed, all caring and worried.
‘Is he alive? Tell me. Is Alistair dead?’
Placing one of Joanna’s hands in hers, the doctor used her other to brush the hair away from her eyes as if she was someone she knew and loved. Joanna wanted to slap her, but she wanted information more.
After a few seconds, when she felt Joanna was sufficiently calm, the doctor nodded with textbook sympathy.
Joanna squeezed the doctor’s hand until it made her wince with pain.
‘Good.’
Part Three
THE CRY
25
ALEXANDRA
28 July
I’m in a rush. Chloe didn’t want to go to school today so after okaying it with her teachers I had to wait for Mum and Dad to arrive. She’s upset after being in court yesterday. Confused, too. Don’t know why they needed her to testify. Like so much else that’s happened, it’s so unfair on her.
I’m late: no time to get the tram.
‘Supreme Court, in Elizabeth Street,’ I say to the taxi driver.
‘You going to the Lindsay trial, by any chance?’ the taxi driver asks a few blocks later.
‘Um, yeah.’ Shit, I don’t want to talk to this guy about it.
‘Do you know her or something?’
‘No.’
‘You a reporter?’
‘No, just interested.’ I’m not going to engage. Stuff him.
He pauses, desperate to get something out of me. ‘I know a guy who worked with Alistair Robertson, some PR firm in St Kilda Road. Said he was a great man.’
‘Right at the next one, yeah?’
‘Right you are. You hear about the sighting?’
‘And then second left.’
‘Yeah, I know where it is. Some guy was in a garage holding a screaming baby – near Darwin. I have an uncle up there. Bloody hot, drinks a lot! Hard to see the man’s face on CCTV.’
‘Thanks. Here’s just fine.’
‘Hate to say it but the baby just looks like a baby to me. Just because he was crying doesn’t mean he was kidnapped, I mean he’d be – what now? – seven, eight months?’
I hand over a fifty and wait at his window while he counts the change as slowly as he can. ‘She’s mad as a snake though, eh?’
‘Thanks,’ I say, and run inside.
*
I join the coffee queue in the court café. A blonde woman with a Scottish accent is in the queue ahead of me. When she turns to leave I recognise her from my Facebook stalking days – Kirsty, Joanna’s best friend. She looks tired and drawn and her hair’s frizzy – nowhere near as pretty as in the photos she used to post. She smiles and holds my eyes for a moment. I think she must know who I am. She says ‘excuse me’ then heads off to court with her takeaway skinny cap. The smile I return her is a bit shamefaced. She’ll know why later, because I’ll be taking the stand. Chloe was much calmer than I am. She knew what she wanted to say, I suppose. I don’t have a clue.
Phil had been my
courtroom spy yesterday. Last night he'd told me what Ms Amery, Mrs Wilson and the trucker had said; how confident Chloe had seemed over the video link. In the afternoon an air stewardess had been called. She’d painted an ugly picture of Joanna, apparently, throwing her dirty looks as she relayed what happened on the plane: Joanna had flown off the handle when told the baby was upsetting the passengers, she explained. She’d accosted several passengers, held the baby as if he was ‘some unwanted rubbish’, and been aggressive towards Alistair.
I recognise the air hostess from Phil’s description (neat red bob, grey roots). She’s whispering to her friend as I make my way to the stand, proud of herself after yesterday’s fifteen minutes. I wish I hadn’t insisted that Phil stay away today. I need him.
‘Ms Lindsay came to see you the morning of the car accident?’ the defence lawyer begins. I look directly at him, careful not to see anyone else – especially Joanna, whose stare I can sense. Her lawyer has the kind of face I’d never tire of slapping: young, dapper, definitely private-schooled, Scotch College or Geelong Grammar, probably.
‘She did.’
‘Why?’
‘She said she wanted to check if Chloe was safe and happy with me.’
‘Did she say why?’
‘She said she didn’t want Alistair to take her. She said she was going to help me.’
‘And how would you describe her behaviour that morning?’
‘She seemed completely sane to me.’ I’m not saying this to hurt her. I’m telling the truth. I accidentally look at her, and notice that she’s smiling at me. She gives me a small nod.
The young Matthew Marks steps to his table and flicks some papers, pretending to look for something. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise; are you a qualified psychiatrist, Mrs Robertson?’
‘It’s Ms Donohue.’ I say.
He lifts his eyes to the judge, who responds as he wishes: ‘Strike that last comment please. Ms Donohue is not qualified to assess the defendant’s mental health.’
I’m not saying what I’m saying to help the prosecutor make sure that Joanna is punished as severely as possible. I’m saying what I’m saying because it’s the truth.
The Cry Page 20