‘Thanks, Bruce,’ Mum says. ‘It’s been a hard couple of months, but what can you do?’
When the car doors are shut, she mutters out of the corner of her mouth, ‘He gossips worse than an old woman.’
I look back at him, standing in his doorway. He keeps a steady gaze as if escorting us from the premises. We reverse into the street.
‘Rabbiting on about those foreign-currency farm loans going bad. Doesn’t mention he was the one spruiking them a few years back.’ Mum changes gears and accelerates up the main street. ‘Apparently the Cuttmores are in strife. He made a special point of telling me that.’ She turns her head and gives me a significant look.
I slump back on the seat. The Cuttmores took out that loan to pay for Tracey’s defence. They went with flash city lawyers who promised to do the impossible, but instead disappeared with their money.
‘How did it go with Bob? Have they made an offer?’
‘No.’ I keep my face turned away from her. ‘Letter said they consider the matter finalised.’
Mum swears, banging her hand against the steering wheel, and swears again. Then she is quiet but only for a block. ‘Terry’s depressed, sitting around doing nothing. He won’t go anywhere with me, not even down to the pub. Spends more and more time out at Mick’s. We just need cash for tools and material and Jan’s saying Bob can’t even see me for another two weeks. Stupid racing carnival.’
I wonder if I should mention Kim now, but decide against it.
She stops at the lights. ‘Grab my handbag.’
‘Do you want your cigarettes?’ I ask.
‘I’ve given up, remember,’ she lies. ‘Just pass it to me.’
I pull her battered brown bag out from behind my seat, one handle broken. Mum fishes through it and passes a magazine to me.
‘Girl from work found it at the dentist’s yesterday. Shoved it up her jumper so she could show me. Page seven.’
Dog-eared and ripped, it has Princess Diana on the cover. I don’t bother turning the pages. I’ve seen the article before. Marcus had shown it to me a couple of days before he was arrested.
The light changes from red to green. Mum guns the car through the intersection, turning left in front of the oncoming traffic she is supposed to give way to.
‘They’d have got good money for that.’ She jabs her finger down on top of SUPER JEWELLERY GIVE-AWAY in large white letters, but right next to it is the smaller yellow of EXCLUSIVE: A MOTHER’S GRIEF. The car begins to climb the hill towards the highway that cuts our town in two. ‘Not that they needed it. Go on, have a look.’
I leave it in my lap. I don’t want to see the grainy pictures of Mrs Parnell looking distraught, being shown where her daughter’s body was found. But even more than that I don’t want to see what the family was like before it happened. A mother smiling at her daughter, who was going to university to conquer the world.
‘Is this why you came to pick me up?’
‘The girls at work say they get proper make-up artists and hair stylists. Sometimes you get to keep the clothes. You could do that. Tell your side of the story.’
A long silence this time. We pass the real estate agent, the video store, and the place where the old Cook-a-Chook used to be. It burnt down a year ago, an insurance job according to Mum, and hasn’t been occupied since. She waits until the used car-yards that mark the end of the shops and the start of the houses.
‘So . . .?’
‘No.’
‘Everyone else is making money from it.’ Her mouth is taut with irritation.
‘Blood money.’
‘All very well to be high and mighty about it. Don’t see you getting a job to pay the bills.’
‘Her daughter is dead. Would you have preferred that happened to me so you can get a free shirt?’ I hurl the magazine into the back so that it hits the seat with a smack.
Mum slams on the brakes and there is an angry beep behind us. She pulls to the side of the road.
‘How can you say that? Have you got any idea what it was like for me when they called me up saying you had been rushed to hospital? Driving all that way with no idea what had happened to you?’
I sit there and say nothing, because the truth is I hadn’t thought about that.
She pulls out and heads to the highway, full of people passing through our town, not bothering to stop. Waiting for a break in the traffic, she says, ‘It’s not just the money. For once people would be on our side. After all we’ve been through.’
‘I don’t want to talk about this any more.’
‘You spend all day writing about it. You talk about it with Frank. Why don’t you want to talk about it with me? I know more from reading the papers than I do from my own daughter. Just talk to me. That’s all that I’m asking. Is that so hard?’
I look out the window and say nothing but she doesn’t stop trying until we reach home. I get out of the car, refusing to say goodbye, and she accelerates up the street as though she can’t leave me quickly enough.
I walk around the side of the house, to come in by the back door. Through the gate, down the footpath, I stop at my bedroom window. Terry is in there hunting through my clothes drawers. I stand back, peeping around the frame. He is searching for something, rummaging amongst my bras and undies, pulling out the next drawer, looking at my t-shirts. I make my way to the back door, slipping through it, walking silently up the hall until I am standing there, watching him kneeling on the floor.
‘What are you doing?’
He jumps, but recovers himself. He pushes in the last drawer like he has every right to be here. ‘You’re home early.’
‘What are you doing in my room?’
He gets to his feet. ‘Saw a mouse this morning. Your mother asked me to lay down some traps.’
Fucking trap you, I think, anger pouring out of me. ‘Get out.’
‘No need to be unpleasant.’ He smiles with his hungry mouth and steps towards me.
‘Just get out or else.’
‘Or else what . . .’ He lunges so quickly that I don’t have time to move, grabbing a fistful of my hair, pinning my arms, pushing me face down on the bed. He lies on top of me, pulling my head back so he can see my face. I have been too stupid and too slow to realise just how dangerous he is.
‘You’re too soft,’ Tracey had said.
‘Been talking to Julie Cuttmore about you.’ He breathes a mist of beer onto my skin. ‘Blames you, she does, for what happened to her sister. Reckons you should be in jail. Asked me to help her. I could do anything to you, and no one in this town would lift a finger, give me a medal more like.’ When I flinch, he runs his long red tongue along the side of my face and laughs. His groin presses down hard into the small of my back. I lie there immobilised. His weight shifts, and I tense, waiting for hard fingers pulling down my jeans or pushing up my top. I can’t move my head, but my eyes try to see what might be in arm’s reach. Something hard to crack his skull open.
But instead he gets off me. Confused, I try to stand, but he kicks my legs out from under me, and I fall, hitting my head on the bed frame.
‘Clumsy, clumsy.’
I scramble away on hands and knees until I am in the corner and can’t retreat further. I turn to watch him, ready to scratch his eyes or kick his balls if he moves closer. He stays well out of my reach.
‘I’m not going anywhere. If you don’t like that you can leave,’ he says, and he walks away, out of the room. His footsteps go down the hall but I don’t move until I hear the tap being turned on in the kitchen. I run to my door, close and lock it. My legs buckle out from under me, my body shaking.
I crawl over to the closet, holding the door carefully so it doesn’t make a tell-tale squeak, pulling it open. A pale ghost stares back at me from the mirror, a scar running across her forehead. I wipe his spit from my face and put my fingers to where I fell. Tender. But the bruise won’t be bad enough for Mum to believe me. There is a limit to how many fairytales she is prepared for me to ruin.
I’ll get him back all the same.
The closet is full of suitcases, boxes of lecture notes and shoes. I pull them out and place them on my bed, making as little noise as possible, so anyone standing at the door can’t hear what I am doing.
This is my hiding place.
Even the police missed it when they searched the entire house three years ago. It is a section of floorboard that runs along the wall, sitting in the groove, not nailed down. A minuscule crack hidden near the closet frame. Slowly, I lift the broken board, pull the pillowcase out. I brush away the grime and open it up. My book is still inside.
Safe.
‘Leave the gun in here,’ Tracey had whispered, the two of us huddled together, looking into the hole. I placed the tea-towel covered bundle in there and put the floorboard back over it, like the lid of a coffin.
‘What will we do?’ I whispered back.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll take it with me tomorrow.’
‘You’ll get rid it?’
‘I’ll take care of it. It’s my responsibility.’
And in a strange way she did. By the time the police found that gun, it was too late.
Chapter 15
It was a typical late autumn afternoon: small groups sitting in patchy sunshine that was about to disappear; boys kicking a football; students pretending to do some work before dinner but actually gossiping about how Emelia had written off her car on Saturday. She didn’t even break a nail. Joyce had abandoned Ulysses and was pretending to read another fat book with a serious black cover. Crime and Punishment. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw the title. Leiza was arguing about paint colours with a group of girls who were looking mutinously at a large bundle of white sheets.
To an outsider it would be a normal college scene. Yet to me, sitting at the far end of the courtyard, on a bench outside the laundry block, the change was obvious. None of the usual laughing or shouting, no one playing loud music. There was a feeling of unease, as if the college had collectively woken up from the party. Officially, nothing had been said about Rachel’s death, as if it was an embarrassing lapse of taste that could be ignored. Notices had gone up on each floor saying that the Murder Game was cancelled. Rachel was not mentioned but the connection was easy to make.
It had been three days since Rachel’s death and I had spent each one listening hard to what people were saying around me, and even harder to what they weren’t. All the time trying to act normal, whatever that meant in the circumstances. Today, I had decided, normal people did washing.
Toby was on one side of me, smoking a cigarette, and Kesh sat on the other.
‘Time?’ said Toby. He was in a tetchy mood.
I looked at my watch. ‘Still got twenty minutes.’ I gingerly stretched out my legs in front of me. My foot had been stitched carefully by the university doctor. ‘Nasty cut, but will heal,’ she said. I hoped the prognosis could be applied to the rest of me.
Stoner ambled towards us across the courtyard, carrying a large material bag with dark clothes poking out the top. He was wearing a faded black t-shirt with ‘Megadeth’ written on it in Nazi-style Gothic. I wondered if this was a deliberate choice given the mood or perhaps the only thing he owned that didn’t need washing.
‘Any machines free?’ he asked.
‘One’s broken, we’ve got four, Michael has the last one,’ said Toby.
Stoner looked at us as though this was too much information to absorb and then said, ‘But there’s only three of you.’
‘I separate my whites from my colours,’ Toby snapped. ‘Is that a problem?’
Stoner blinked and then almost smiled. ‘Don’t own any whites.’ As Stoner only ever seemed to be wearing black, I supposed there wasn’t much variety in the way of colours either.
‘I could put yours in after I’m finished.’ Toby became brisk and business-like. ‘But it’ll cost you.’ He mimicked smoking a joint.
Stoner shook his head. ‘No can do. Don’t have any.’
‘What the fuck, Stoner? First, the Marchies are supposedly out of the business and now you. I heard those bikers supply you and they are supposed to be awash with the stuff.’
‘Stop freaking out,’ said Stoner, who was doing a good job of beginning to look freaked himself. ‘It’s just a temporary hitch in the supply chain. I can do an IOU.’
‘Redeemable when?’
Stoner shrugged. ‘It’s complicated, you know.’
‘No hashee, no washee,’ said Toby. There was a hesitation before Stoner began laughing, as if his brain was on time delay and he had only just got the joke. But Toby wasn’t joking.
‘OK, OK. It’s cool. I’ll come back later then.’ Stoner picked up his bag, balanced it on his head, and strode away.
‘What was that about?’ I asked Toby, who dropped his cigarette and ground it viciously into the dirt.
‘Who knows? Stoner has been raking in the money from selling. What’s the bet he didn’t want to hand over a freebie, the tight bastard.’
The sun dropped behind the building and the wind picked up, pushing grey clouds overhead. The footballers nearly kicked a ball right on top of Leiza’s partly painted protest banner and her angry voice echoed around the courtyard. Looking sheepish, they decided to head to the oval. The girls tried to go inside because of the weather but Leiza wouldn’t let them and started collecting rocks to hold down the material.
I got up and walked around the brick laundry. My foot felt bruised with moments of sharp pain, but anything was better than just sitting there. I needed to keep busy.
‘Going to rain soon,’ I said, walking back. ‘Supposed to rain all week. What time are you leaving, Kesh?’
Rachel’s funeral was scheduled for Friday but I didn’t have the guts to attend and had used an essay that was due as an excuse. Toby had also refused to go, convinced that the small town wouldn’t welcome him for being Asian, gay or a future accountant. He didn’t say which. That had left Kesh travelling by herself with the Sub-Dean.
‘The Sub-Dean thinks if we leave at six a.m., we’ll be there in plenty of time.’ Her voice was hoarse.
‘Didn’t want to fork out for accommodation, the cheap-skate,’ said Toby.
The hum of dryers, the thuds and gushes from the washing machines covered up the lack of conversation.
Eventually Kesh turned to us, puffy-eyed from crying. ‘You don’t think Stoner gave those drugs to Rachel?’
‘Who knows?’ said Toby. ‘Remember how much stuff she was carrying. The Sub-Dean went through it yesterday in the RA meeting. There was LSD, amphetamines, coke, even some heroin. That’s serious shit. We’re not just talking a couple of Es and some dope. That would be like Stoner’s entire kit and then some.’
‘What if it was Stoner’s and that’s why he doesn’t have any now?’ asked Kesh.
‘How would Rachel have ended up with Stoner’s stash?’ Toby asked. ‘You think she nicked it?’ There was a pause where none of us said what we were thinking – that it sounded exactly like something Rachel would have done.
‘Do you think she was supplying, like Marcus said?’ I asked. I had been so sure he had made that up.
Toby looked uncertain. ‘She was talking a lot about drugs, saying there was a drug war happening right under our noses.’
‘War on drugs?’ Kesh asked, confused.
‘War for drugs, the way she told it,’ Toby said. ‘The Marchmains versus those bikers who supply Stoner. Like some commerce case study, all about market share and monopolies. Think about it, it would be worth heaps. Biggest single site for dealing in the city by a long way. Anyway, it’s over now. Once the Marchies lost Nico they fell apart and now those bikers are in charge.’
‘But what has that got to do with Rachel?’ asked Kesh.
Toby pushed his sunglasses up onto his head and I could see black circles under his eyes. ‘I don’t know. But she didn’t get warnings for drugs. We all knew when she got in trouble over smacking Joad but I never heard about any others. R
As are supposed to be told about that sort of stuff.’
‘You think Marcus was lying?’ I asked, thankful for someone else to be raising questions that had been bothering me.
‘Maybe he just doesn’t want to look clueless in front of the police.’
‘So many people are lying,’ said Kesh.
I tried to pretend that I wasn’t, and made a pathetic attempt at deflecting my guilt. ‘Including Rachel herself, I guess.’
Kesh took the bait. ‘I just don’t understand that. I mean, we were her friends, weren’t we? You tell your friends the truth.’ An unconscious echo of what Rachel had said to me that night.
The dead get summarised like an epitaph on a head-stone. Hero. Victim. Murderer. And according to most college people, Rachel’s would have been Liar. People had been angry when they found out the truth about her background, and pretended the two were connected. That if she hadn’t lied about who she was, she wouldn’t be dead. It was all her fault. While the hypocrisy of Rachel hiding her own background while trying to discover mine wasn’t lost on me, I didn’t have the energy to get angry about it. What did any of us really know about each other? I was busy reinventing myself at university. Most other people were as well, I guessed. All of us trying to present varnished versions of ourselves to the world. Rachel had gone a step further and reinvented her past.
‘Fuck it, Kesh, we all lie,’ Toby said, watching the movement in the courtyard. ‘When I go home, I take out my earring and put away the sparkly shorts. And when Mum asks me if I’ve met a nice girl yet, I smile and say “one day”.’
‘Did you know about Rachel’s background?’ I asked him.
When he turned to look at me, his eyes were liquid. ‘Maybe at some level I didn’t buy the international jet-setter life, but really I just didn’t care. She was a laugh. I mean, I know she lied, but you know she never belonged in some country shithole, not really.’ He pushed the sunglasses back down over his eyes but not quickly enough to cover the tear that had slipped out.
Guilt stuck in my throat like a fishbone. I had to find something else to do, something small and practical to get through this. I glanced at my watch, saying, ‘Washing nearly finished,’ then sat back down, grabbing Toby’s cigarettes and lighter. ‘You mind?’ He looked up, puzzled, but nodded all the same. I pulled one out, stuck it in my mouth, focusing on holding my hands around the lighter.
All These Perfect Strangers Page 15