by Brown, Honey
Bruce and I were preparing for the moment we would be taken away from our children. We were getting our fill of all the things that would soon be a part of a different life, our old life, the before. Memories were going to be important.
The day I returned to the office, prepared to put in a full day at work, a local police officer walked in the door.
‘Hi, Trudy. Do you mind if I come in and ask you a few questions?’
I knew him from Steven’s basketball games. He was one of the fathers. Alan. His eyes were watery, his nose was red, and there was a rasp to his voice. He was a heavy drinker. At the six p.m. games he was bright-eyed, talkative, high-fiving the children as they came off the court. Lubricated by six o’clock. He peaked early evening. It was ten a.m. now, probably the worst time of the day for him. He pulled a remorseful expression. ‘I’ve just come from the Four Seasons Inn. A young man living in one of your townhouses has been reported missing.’
Impossible for me to judge how I went answering his questions. Not only did I have my spoken responses to worry about, every facial expression had to be thought about as well. I can only imagine that I came across as false. If he suspected something, he noted it in private, maybe wrote it down on his jot pad, alongside times, days and dates. ‘So far I’ve got him last seen at the Four Seasons late on the Friday night. When did you last see him?’ I wondered, did police have a type of shorthand, a way to quickly indicate on paper when they thought a person was not telling the whole truth?
Wanting to appear forthcoming and easy with the facts, I explained that Sue had been at the office the last time I’d seen Finn. Then I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
‘Sue Murdoch from the school?’ he said without looking up.
‘She was sick with the flu. I think she’s back at work now.’
I prayed she wouldn’t mention the strange recording she’d received on her phone, and if she did, I hoped it would seem irrelevant. It was now a godsend that it had been deleted.
‘I’m afraid, Trudy, I’m going to have to ask … some of the staff at the Four Seasons suggested that Finn was more than friendly with you.’
‘Nothing like that,’ I said. ‘He called me and left messages, but it was …’
‘A one-sided thing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bruce know about it?’
I shook my head.
‘Do you have a spare set of keys for the townhouse?’
Concerned that my hand was trembling, I placed the townhouse keys down on the desk for Alan to pick up and take himself, and then sat back down with my hands curled together on my lap.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll return them as soon as I can.’ He looked at his watch, rubbing the face as he contemplated the time. His tongue ran slowly along his lips. He swallowed and I could hear the dryness in his mouth. ‘I might go round there now, before the parents get there.’
Alan smiled at me across the basketball court the following night. He cheered when Steven scored a basket. At halftime he came and stood beside me.
‘A few of his things are gone,’ he said, ‘from what his parents can see. They’re thinking he’ll turn up. He withdrew a fair whack of cash a few days before he disappeared. He’s got something of a record, too. I wouldn’t have him back in the townhouse if I were you. No convictions, but more than enough for me to suggest you distance yourself from him. I’ve checked all those emails he’s sent you and it’s clear you kept it professional; there’s no problem there. Sue Murdoch mentioned that he seemed out of line that day at your office. She said she could see he made you uncomfortable. I don’t want to put the wind up you or nothing, but if it was my wife some young guy like that was obsessing over, with a background like his – I’d be keeping an eye out.’
The game resumed.
‘I’ll drop the townhouse keys back to you in the morning,’ Alan said. ‘We’ll give it another a week or two, but if he still hasn’t turned up, I’ll talk to his parents about getting his gear moved out of there for you. Oh, and by the way, I forgot to say how great it is that Steven’s been picked to try out for the state team.’
‘Yes, we haven’t had much of a chance to think about it.’ The removalists came for Finn’s things two weeks later. I unlocked the townhouse and let them in. It was raining. The team of men laid down plastic sheeting to protect the carpet. They started in the spare room, packing up the exercise equipment, putting the weights in hessian sacks. An old battery-operated radio was put in the front hallway, against the skirting, and the talkback station was turned up loud. The topic of discussion was the obesity epidemic. ‘Is fat the new black?’ the shock jock put to the listeners. A stream of calls ensued. I walked around the house with a clipboard and a pen, pretending to do a condition report. The four men worked fast. They cleared the front room and started on the kitchen, working side by side. They had cardboard discs that they slipped between the plates and expandable cardboard tubes that they slid over the glass tumblers and wines glasses. They picked up the cutlery in bunches and wound tape around each tight cluster, and then they tossed the bundles in the bottom of a box. At midday they stopped and went into the garage. The roller door was open. They sipped their drinks and ate sandwiches and stared out at the rain.
The washing machine had been wrapped in a blanket. The water hoses were taped to the lid. The cupboard below the sink was open. With the sleeve of my jumper, I polished the steel on the edge of the sink with my cuff, and then rubbed each tap. There was a white speck of something resting against the sieved side of the plug in the sink. I leaned closer. It was a piece of broken tooth. I tried to wash it away, but it wouldn’t fit through the plug sides. It rattled against the stainless steel. I swallowed my gag reflex. Wincing with disgust, I pinched the bit of tooth between my fingertips, opened the back door and threw it out into the rain. I couldn’t get rid of it quickly enough. For the next few moments I concentrated on not vomiting, and not crying. As a way to distract myself, I ticked off on the form that the laundry was in good order.
The stains on the garage floor were faint, and could easily be mistaken for engine oil or radiator fluid, but there was some discolouration. An unfinished bottle of Pepsi stood beside the box one of the removalists had sat on during his break. I unscrewed the lid and put the bottle down beside the stains. Then, with my foot, I tipped it over. The dark fizz flowed over the floor. Doing it this way made it feel like it was an accident; I really had bumped it over. I wrote on the condition report: Discolouration on garage floor due to removalists.
In the cliff-house workshop, I’d been confronted with a lock and a heavy chain barring the door, yet had attempted to open it. Here I found myself again, willing reality to disintegrate.
26
Winter, the worst time of year to sell, and we put all our investment and rental properties on the market. We told the children it was the business we were getting out of. It was Delaney Bruce and I were thinking of exiting, though. Things had quietened down and Guy Grant’s suicide was no longer headline news, but during one online search I came across Finn’s picture on a missing person’s website, and in my response it became clear we’d have to rethink every aspect of our lives. In the photo, his eyes were filled with disquiet, as though he foresaw his untimely end. For weeks, since that night, I’d not braved a look at myself in the mirror. I’d been avoiding looking into my eyes, knowing what I’d see would only frighten and upset me. Looking into Finn’s eyes was like looking in a mirror. It was as if I’d absorbed Finn’s uneasiness. Panic overtook me. I began to wonder if some part of Reuben had also been transferred into me. Could I feel him all the time? Huddled on the study floor, I rubbed and clawed my head; it was like I was trapped inside my own mind with the two people of whom I was most terrified.
Bruce came in and found me like that, curled up on the carpet, the missing-person page up on the screen.
He helped me back into the office chair. One of the children dropped what sounded like an open pencil case in the hall
way, and they began picking up the contents. Bruce and I couldn’t leave the office until they’d gone. He kissed my temple and whispered for me not to cry. On the computer page, along with Finn and pictures of other missing Victorians, was James Ackerley. He was lounging in an armchair, looking smug, rich and evil. Not the man I was trapped inside my head with; the James Ackerley that haunted me was called Reuben, and he was not so much evil as sick and real and brutal.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Ackerley on a webpage. Since we’d known his real name, we’d found a lot online about him. His house designs were along the same vein as the cliff house, his art contained coloured glass, his woodwork was smooth and full of curves and limb shapes. He was often described as ‘media shy’. A talented artist and gifted architect who had achieved great success and garnered respect from his peers, while remaining a reclusive and mysterious figure. It was the first time that I’d seen him on the same page as Finn, though. It must have been the two of them together that caused me to break down. My body shook uncontrollably. Bruce spoke quietly and comforted me, saying we’d make a fresh start somewhere else. We’d get away.
Finn’s parents rang me, once. His mother sounded old and frail in her message. She was wondering if I had copies of Finn’s license, or any of his identification, to help her in sorting his affairs. I didn’t ring her back. How could I? But I wished I was able to talk to them about Finn, to discuss with them the reasons for his troubles, for them to help me better understand who he really was. I also wished I could tell them what had happened. My mind craved a cleaner outcome, and I knew that Finn’s parents would now live out their days yearning for the same. I longed for yin and yang, black and white, no grey in-between.
27
The day the For Sale sign went up out the front of our Mill Road home, Steven threw his basketball bag down the stairs. In an effort to soften the blow of moving, we’d told the children we were going to try the house on the market. The ambiguity of this statement had seemed to work, but the sight of the sign out by the letterbox hammered home the reality.
‘Just admit it!’ Steven shouted.
Bruce and Steven were due to fly to Canberra for the basketball camp. Bruce was at the bottom step, their packed overnight bags either side of him, the basketball bag at his feet, looking up at Steven. From further down the hallway, I could see the lower part of Steven’s legs, mid-thigh down. He was dressed in dark track pants and sneakers. He stayed at the top of the stairs, looking down at his father. Judging by the silence they were holding eye contact.
The shouted demand, the bag hurled down the stairs, was in keeping with the Steven I knew, but when he spoke his voice was suddenly calm, reasonable and restricted, man to man.
‘We know that chef is missing, Dad. Mrs Murdoch was talking about it at school. She said the police came to see her because she’d talked to him in our office. The girls know too. What are we meant to say if we’re ever asked?’
A soldier’s son must wonder what his father has done in battle. In bedrooms around the world, boys must lie awake – as I knew Steven had been lying awake, as I guessed Bruce had lain awake as a child – thinking of the things their military dads had seen and done. Good men exposed to the darkest actions and good boys exposed to the darkest thoughts. A hot ball of grief formed in my throat.
Seconds passed before Bruce answered. If he’d predicted this conversation and formulated answers, it didn’t show. His tone matched Steven’s.
‘Tell the truth. Always tell the truth.’
‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘Tell what you know to be true.’
‘Is that why you’re not going to tell us – so we don’t have to lie if we’re asked?’
Bruce picked up the overnight bags. ‘We can’t be late.’
‘We’re not going,’ Steven said. ‘You can’t be away from home. We can’t leave Mum.’
Tears spilled down my cheeks. I couldn’t know the kinds of conversations Bruce and Steven usually had in private; I doubted very much, though, that my son was always this grown-up and considered with his dad. We’d caused Steven to mature quicker than he perhaps would have on his own.
‘Your mum and I don’t want you to miss this opportunity.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We have to be home right now.’
‘But you have to go,’ Bruce said. ‘It’s all we want, for you kids to be all right.’
‘We’ll be all right if we’re together.’
‘Please,’ my husband begged, ‘you might not get another chance.’
‘It’s just basketball, Dad.’
Thinking back, it was the moment in the gallery when our tidy minds had been forced to open wide to grasp a new reality. That was when Bruce and I had lost all our commonsense, along with so much else. I’d realised my husband had been drugged, and, for Bruce, he’d come to and found himself tied to steel handrails either side of a sink. Our perception had been scuppered to the bottom of the cove. It took Steven to show us that. He walked to the bottom of the steps and collected his sport and overnight bags. He touched his father’s shoulder, and carried his bags back up to his room.
Renee was out by the stables, rubbing down her Bay mare. The ground around the stable door was muddy. Green grass was isolated to clumps. Renee lifted the horse’s hoof and used a metal pick to pry away the packed soil covering the horseshoe. The horse’s nose was buried in a bucket of chaff. Her nostrils flared and breathed inside the bucket.
‘We’ll make sure the new place has room for the horses,’ I told Renee.
Renee’s second horse was inside the stable, confined to its horsebox, pawing the fresh hay covering the floor, swinging its big neck and head up and down. Both animals wore halters. Leads were draped over the bottom half of the stable door. My daughter was wearing gumboots. There was mud smeared on her riding pants. She pressed the side of her face to the muscular flank of the horse as she lifted its rear hoof.
‘You probably need to talk to Summer more than me,’ she said. ‘Have you seen her bedroom? She thinks it’s her fault we’re moving. I think it’s probably good we go. It’s kind of hard to know what to say sometimes, I mean just in the family. It’s not the same any more. We miss what it was like. That’s all we want, Mum – we want to be a family again, the way we were before.’
Summer had packed up her bedroom. The bare minimum was left – her bed, neatly made with her favourite teddy bear against the pillow, her school dress hanging in the wardrobe, her school shoes beneath; only the top half of her chest of drawers was still in use. Her posters were off the walls, her ornaments were wrapped in newspaper and put in boxes, her collection of beaded and tasselled cushions were in black plastic bags, piled up in the corner, along with her soft toys. She avoided looking at me as I entered. In a box full of rubbish inside her door was a pile of old homework and school things. On the top was a school note I had signed, permission slip missing, hastily torn from the note. I leaned down and picked up the note. It detailed the excursion to the Four Seasons kitchen for the Year 7B cooking class. I must have signed the notice blindly, one of a never-ending stream of school notices. I’d probably not listened to Summer’s excited chatter about the visit.
‘I know you’re worried about Grandma and the move,’ I said. ‘We’re going to try to talk her into coming with us.’
‘Okay.’
A second box, sealed up with tape, was also at the door, destined for the bin. I pushed it with my foot. It was heavy, full of books.
‘Are these your cooking books?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Don’t throw them out, darling.’
I picked up the box and carried it to the far side of the room. I put it down with the boxes of the belongings she was keeping. Before leaving I kissed her forehead.
‘Dad and I are sorry, Summer. We’re so sorry.’
There was nothing else to say. My daughter wasn’t a pretender, not to others, and most of all not to herself.
Th
e Delaney townsfolk had differing opinions on the reason for our departure. Some believed the GFC had claimed us, or that we’d taken on one project too many; others wondered if our marriage was on shaky ground and we were liquefying our assets in preparation for a split. Cove Street sold for a packet. A consortium swooped in and bought all our rentals. Mill Road went to a wealthy couple from the city, who agreed to a quick thirty-day settlement.
At a cafe date with my girlfriends, I went some way toward explaining the real reason we were moving on.
‘Bruce and I don’t want to build houses any more. We’ve had enough of property developing. It doesn’t interest us – our heart’s not in it.’
‘Where will you go?’ Bonita asked.
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘A seachange?’ Jem suggested.
‘Probably not the sea.’
‘What about the kids?’
‘Adversity builds character,’ I told them. I thought about this a moment, and qualified it with, ‘In children.’
‘But not in adults,’ Nadine said. ‘Adversity in adults makes them pull up stumps and leave their hometowns.’
‘I suppose it does.’
My four friends fell quiet. The Finn Factor would not be broached. It hung in the air, a pall over my friendships. Nadine squirmed in her seat, desperate to bring up his disappearance. My coffee had gone cold and I hadn’t taken my handbag off my shoulder. Despite the awkwardness, I could see my friends didn’t believe the worst – they couldn’t make the leap. They were out having coffee, and after it they would be ducking into the supermarket for last-minute groceries, driving to the school, picking up kids, getting dinner, sitting down to their favourite TV show, having sex with their respective partners – or in Jem’s case, not having sex – and waking up to do it all again. Without a stranger breaking into those lives, swinging a wrecking ball through everything they held dear, they’d never truly believe we’d had a hand in Finn’s disappearance. My friends could not know how real the attack was proving to be with time – more real than coffee, and shopping, and sightseeing with your husband. Brutality somehow managed to make a mockery of everything that was not brutal.