Ballad for a Mad Girl

by Vikki Wakefield

  *

  The gully behind the Holt house is wide and steep with plenty of cover, the trees thick and tangled with a dense mat of grass and weeds underneath them. I come the long way, following a well-worn path along the top of the opposite side, hoping I’ll have a view of the backs of the houses on Davey Street. The path branches off about half a kilometre back. I follow my instinct, heading for the highest point, crossing over when I reach it. Dozens of tracks snake down the gully sides, and I stumble over sleds made from sheets of corrugated iron and rope, hidden in the grass. Kids.

  I work my way along the rear of the houses, occasionally peeping over the top of the fences. I must be getting close. I lean over a low gate and a dog launches without warning, nearly taking a piece of my face; I’m so unsettled by its vicious bark, I run, skidding down the side of the gully to the bottom. There, I sit on a warm rock in a dry creek bed to catch my breath. I’m overheated and sweaty. It’s secluded down here; quiet, but for the birds and the rustle of grass. A crested kite hovers overhead, searching for prey, and a blue-tongue lizard ambles past my feet, either unaware or unafraid.

  Cody would have loved this jungle—so many places to hide. We grew up roaming flat yellow paddocks, hardly a tree in sight.

  Did Hannah Holt play in this gully when she was a child?

  Why did he kill you?

  I survey the pattern of roofs above. From down here they look like Lego houses. I find it on my second pass—the distinctive peak of the Holt house. I’m directly below it. I remembered the tiles being grey, but they’re green, and the fence behind the yard is the only one unmarked by graffiti. Either it’s been painted over or the local vandals have a conscience.

  Where did he hide you?

  I travel in a straight line up the side of the gully. I’m not sure what I’m looking for—am I seeking hard evidence or chasing a feeling? And I’m walking a twenty-three-year-old crime scene—after so much time has passed, what could I find that hasn’t already been discovered?

  What do you want me to do?

  Twenty metres from the fence, I stop and hide behind a tree. Any closer and I risk being spotted lurking near the house. I can see through the kitchen window from here, but only a view of the upper cupboards and ceiling.

  My fingers drum a beat on the tree trunk: Why did he kill you—where did he hide you—what do you want me to do?

  A squalling breeze whistles through the gully. The sky to the north is red: the sign of a coming dust storm. I pluck strands of hair from my mouth and flick them away. My fingers are red, too. Sticky. I must be bleeding from somewhere. I lick my stinging lips—where my fingers have touched them, I taste the stickiness. But it isn’t coppery like blood. It tastes like maple syrup.

  Tree sap.

  I look up, trace the oozing drips of sap on the tree. Heavy, rusting bolts have been driven deep into the trunk. At head height, a few pieces of rotting wood about a ruler-length wide are still attached. Are they part of a makeshift ladder? Higher up, I see the remains of a large crate, perched in the broad fork of the tree. The crate looks like it’s been hacked apart with an axe—it’s a broken skeleton of a thing, but it might once have been a lookout.

  Or a crow’s nest.

  William Dean would have had the perfect vantage point from up there. From this side of the gully, and from the tree outside her room, he could have watched her without being seen. At the rear: the kitchen, dining area and lounge are visible through the windows. At the front: Hannah’s bedroom and bathroom.

  It’s too high for me to climb without footholds, but this place is clearly no secret: the tree trunk is scarred with engravings, old and fresh. I’m no closer to finding out what happened to Hannah Holt. I haven’t discovered anything new.

  I catch my breath and prepare myself for the long walk back through the gully. I’m parched and I didn’t bring any water. It occurs to me that I haven’t eaten today, or yesterday, and that probably accounts for the way I look and feel. Who forgets to eat? What kind of person frightens children on buses, ditches her friends, and lies to a grieving mother? For what? To exorcise a ghost who doesn’t exist, except in my mind?

  I feel stronger, more myself than I have in a long time, except for the pain. Suddenly everything hurts—the bruises, my lips, the hole in my side. My head pounds, as if the blood vessels are set to burst.

  I check the time: 12.30. I have less than fifteen minutes to catch the return bus, or I’ll have to wait over an hour for the next one. It’s a shorter route if I head back on this side of the gully, but it’s steeper, with more trees and a less defined path. The wind has swung around and now it’s coming from the north. I rub my watery eyes. Soon the dust storm will hit—they’re frequent and predictable, unlike public transport in this town. It’ll slow me down.

  I break into a jog, stumbling on the rocky path. Some of the fences are low enough—I could easily hop over one and cut through somebody’s yard. The sun breaks through the cloud, glinting on a metal post further ahead: a bike barricade, covered with twisting vines. I push through to discover a narrow alleyway between two houses, the ground deep in rubbish and dying leaves. Graffiti covers the fences on either side. It’s a public thoroughfare, but I still feel as if I’m doing something wrong.

  My phone pings. It’s Pete. Where are you?

  I don’t know. Where am I? I open Maps.

  The dust is here. It’s in my eyes, my pockets, my shoes; the alley sucks the wind like a straw. I scuff through the layer of leaves, bottles and cans, making such a racket I startle a flock of birds from the trees and set the neighbourhood dogs barking. Ahead, the alley opens onto a residential street. I wipe dust from my phone screen. According to my GPS, I’m standing at the end of Edward Court, three streets away from the Holt house. Number 22 Edward Court is one of the places of interest I’ve flagged in my folder of notes.

  Halfway up the road, I find it: a red-brick, singlestorey house with a tidy garden and two parking spaces, side by side. I get a whiff of wet paint and wood chips. Everything—paint, garden, gutters, downpipes—looks fresh and new.

  It’s the Dean house. And it’s for sale.

  I’ve missed the bus. I’m too self-conscious to be one of those people who run after it waving their arms, trying to chase it down. Dammit.

  I scrounge some coins from my pockets and buy a bottle of water from a service station. I guzzle the whole thing at the counter. Back on the main road, I pull up my hood and start walking. If I keep up a decent pace, I should be home in around forty minutes.

  I stride along the footpath, arms folded, muttering to myself. So, I’d rather feel pain than feel nothing at all. I’d rather be obsessed than bored. Would I rather be afraid than feel safe? Apparently, it’s a yes. Am I slightly mad, like Mum? I don’t think so—at least not in the same way. She knew Hannah Holt. But half the town probably knew her. Did my mother throw herself under a truck? No. I can’t prove it, but I will never believe that.

  There’s a car following me. It’s crawling along in the bike lane, just a few metres behind. I’m not sure how long it’s been there, or if it’s really following me at all. I can’t see past my hood without turning around, so I take a hard left at the next street and cross the side road. I’m facing into the wind; it’s sandblasting my face. I speed up, blinking away the grit, covering my nose and mouth with my hand. I think I hear my name, Graaa-aaace, before the sound is snatched away.

  I break into a sprint and try to cross the main road. A car beeps, passing close enough for me to see the shocked face of its driver. Then I’m yanked by the waist, pinned by my arms, lifted off my feet and spun around. I yell and kick out.

  ‘Grace, it’s me! Man, you’re jumpy. Why’d you run off?’ He lets me go. ‘I was calling you.’

  ‘Pete!’ I shove him hard in the chest and whip off my hood. ‘You idiot. I just lost ten years off my life!’

  He yells back. ‘Better ten years than all of it. You nearly ran in front of a car.’

  I place
my hand over my chest. ‘I need to get my breath back. What are you even doing here?’

  ‘I could ask you that,’ he says, scanning my face. ‘Jesus, you look like shit.’

  I shove him again.

  ‘Come on.’ He spits in the gutter. ‘Get in the car.’

  If I had turned around I would have seen Pete’s station wagon—it’s pretty distinctive.

  Automatically, I open the door and try to climb into the front seat, but there’s somebody in it. Gummer. There’s someone in the back, too.

  ‘Hey. What is this? An abduction?’

  ‘It’s an intervention,’ Kenzie says.

  ‘Annie saw you on the bus.’

  Kenzie’s eldest sister. Of course it was Annie.

  We’re sitting in Lumpy’s in our booth at the back. Pete’s got the CLOSED sign on the door and he’s making smoothies. Gummer’s helping. I suspect they’re both happy to leave Kenzie to play diplomat—it’s always been like this, any sign of ‘girl problems’ and the boys disappear.

  Kenzie’s trying hard not to stare at my face, and failing. ‘She said you looked strange. Like, off-your-head strange.’

  Kenzie looks different, too. Tired and softer around the edges. Older. She’s taken out her piercings. I think about what Pete said—is that what happens when you do it? Do you lose more than you bargained for?

  ‘Grace?’

  ‘Sorry. What?’

  She frowns. ‘Are you doing drugs?’

  It feels so good to laugh, but I go on for too long. I’ve hurt her feelings. ‘I’ve never taken anything stronger than codeine. You know that. I guess I’m just not taking care of myself.’

  ‘Well, you should. I think you need to talk to…’

  ‘Why did you come and get me?’ I interrupt.

  She looks away. ‘Because Gummer said we had to. He thought it was important. Is it? Or is it just you being the centre of attention again?’

  I slump back in the seat. ‘Right.’ I stare down at my fingers, twisting them in my lap.

  ‘I think you’re depressed,’ she says carefully.

  My gaze snaps back. ‘I think I’m possessed.’

  ‘Please, not that again.’ Her eyes fill with tears. ‘Look, you’re my best friend. Always will be. But I can’t be around you when you’re being like this. You make me feel angry and helpless and you used to make me laugh all the time, but now I’m anxious instead and I have this ball of, I don’t know…rage, and I can’t do it anymore. I can’t fix it. I can’t fix you. You need help, more than I can give.’

  ‘You can’t be around me?’ We glare at each other.

  Pete brings us both banana-berry smoothies. ‘Ladies. Need anything else?’ His head swivels from me to Kenzie, back again. He must sense we’re at a stand-off. ‘No? I guess that’s it then.’ He gives the table a brisk wipe and retreats.

  I lean forward. ‘Can we just be us for a little while? Just you and me? No Mitch. No Gummer or Pete?’

  ‘What about “no Amber”?’ she says. ‘I saw her yesterday. She seems happy.’

  ‘Amber’s changed sides.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I just see her trying to have a relationship with a guy without all of us shouting her down.’

  ‘She’s different,’ I say stubbornly. ‘I don’t trust her.’

  ‘You don’t trust anybody.’

  I change the subject. ‘Anyway, so if you’re not busy on the weekend we could go out. Catch up.’

  She fidgets with her straw. ‘Actually, I have something on.’

  ‘Oh? What?’

  ‘A party,’ she mumbles. ‘Just a stupid party.’

  ‘And I’m not invited. It’s okay. I get it. Kenzie, please stop staring at my face.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’ She blushes. ‘You haven’t touched your smoothie.’

  ‘I’m not thirsty.’ I push the smoothie over to her side. ‘You have it.’

  We run out of things to say.

  We can hear Gummer in the kitchen, making his own abomination of a pizza. Pete’s yelling at him for wasting toppings, saying the pizza is too loaded and the base will disintegrate before it has time to cook properly. Gummer’s telling him it will only be a waste if he doesn’t put it in the wood oven, followed by something about necessity being the mother of invention. He goes off on one of his tirades about the kook who discovered penicillin, the nut job who researched germ theory in a cesspit, and the wacko who first thought of using a pig’s aorta in a human heart. And then he backs out of the kitchen using a pizza tray as a shield, Pete is throwing dough at him, and Uncle Lumpy is swearing in Polish through the screen door.

  Oh yeah. We’re all mad here.

  I catch Kenzie in a wistful smile.

  She pushes the smoothie away and leans forward. ‘Do you remember when we told our parents we were sleeping at each other’s houses and we camped out behind the equipment shed on the school oval?’ she says. ‘I didn’t sleep all night. It wasn’t fun for me. I was so terrified we’d get caught, but you thought it was the biggest adventure. That’s the difference between me and you. You always liked being scared.’

  My first instinct is to tell her she’s wrong, but it’s true. I did like being scared. But it’s different now. It’s easy being scared when you have the choice to make it stop: turn off the movie, turn on the light, say you’re not playing anymore.

  Gummer comes out of the kitchen, covered in flour. ‘Pete says he has to open up in five minutes.’

  There’s someone banging at the front door of the shop.

  ‘Wow. Impatient, much?’ I turn around, expecting a hungry customer, but it’s Dad. He’s peering through the gaps in the broken blinds, hitting the glass with the flat of his hand. There’s only one reason he’d be here. ‘Kenzie?’

  ‘I called him,’ Kenzie says, looking fierce. ‘I’m sorry, Grace. I didn’t know what else to do.’

  In slow motion, I get up to open the door.

  Kenzie’s crying. Gummer has his arm around her shoulder.

  I don’t feel sorry for her.

  ‘There’s more than one difference between you and me,’ I tell her. ‘I would never ditch you because I couldn’t fix you. And I would never, ever think you needed fixing.’

  Dad is surprisingly gentle with me as he leads me to the truck. He doesn’t seem angry. Just sad. He gives me a leg-up into the cab, making sure my foot is out of the way before he closes the door.

  The dust storm has passed. The street is eerily quiet.

  ‘I’m going to grab us a coffee,’ he says. ‘Wait here.’ He crosses the road and goes into JoJo’s Cafe on the opposite corner.

  The truck is in dire need of a good clean. The dashboard’s coated in a thick layer of red dust and dozens of empty takeaway containers and coffee cups are stuffed behind the seats.

  Dad’s not taking care of himself, either.

  I remember when the truck was brand new and smelled of vinyl and rubber. Mum said Dad had a new woman in his life and her name was Gina—I didn’t speak to him for a week before I realised she meant the truck. When I was eight, he took me with him to Sydney, a three-day round trip; we lived on chips and gravy and glass bottles of ginger beer, driving through the night, counting how many rabbits and foxes ran in front of the headlights. I thought the ginger beer made me drunk. I think I was just deliriously happy.

  I flip down the passenger visor. More dust. I can hardly see my face in the mirror. There’s a photo tucked behind it. I pull it out. It’s Mum: young, pretty, serious, with an arm around her shoulder. The photo has been cut in half. I’ve never seen this picture before. On Dad’s side, tucked under an elastic band, there are individual photos of Mum, Cody and me. Mum’s in fancy dress, wearing a slinky catsuit and holding a glass of champagne. She’s laughing. Cody’s about seven, smiling proudly, astride his first trail bike. Mine’s a Grade Five school photo: my hair’s pulled back in a severe bun and my ears stick out. Mum did it so Kenzie and I could be matching. Everyone made fun of us but we di
dn’t care. A few days later, Kenzie and I had a massive fight about something stupid—Mum told me there was nothing that couldn’t be fixed between two people, as long as one person was willing to be the first to give ground.

  I think of all the times Mum said she wanted to live in a ‘civilised’ house, with a proper garden where flowers didn’t curl up and die. She wanted a car that didn’t constantly break down in the middle of nowhere, reliable phone reception, and good company, other than the cows and the sheep. She didn’t love the farm like we did. She wasn’t born there, like we were.

  How much ground did she give? More than she could bear?

  Dad’s back, holding two extra-large cups. Quickly, I flip the visor back up. He gets in and hands me a cup. I take a sip—mine is hot chocolate, not coffee. I sigh.

  ‘I need to price a job at the Morgan place,’ he says. ‘Want to come for a ride?’

  The Morgans are rich, like Gummer’s parents. They can afford to ride out a few bad seasons; they would never have to give up their family home to strangers.

  It’s not like I have a choice. I shrug. Dad takes it as a yes and does a five-point turn, stopping traffic. The Morgan property is about forty kilometres north of Swanston. This is going to take a couple of hours, at least.

  ‘How’s school?’

  ‘It’s the holidays, remember?’

  He grunts. ‘I mean, in general. Are you staying on top of things? Study?’

  ‘It’s fine, Dad. Everything’s fine.’ I stare out the window, focusing on the telegraph lines, flashing past.

  He adds his empty coffee cup to the pile in the back and clears his throat. ‘Cody told me what he said to you about your mum, and he’s sorry. It’s not something you need to be worrying about right now.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’ I lift my chin.

  ‘I want us to get you a referral so you can start seeing Dr Nichols again—if you won’t talk to me then you need to talk to somebody.’

  ‘No, it’s okay because I don’t believe any of it. Mum wouldn’t do that.’ I hunch down in the seat.

  ‘We’ll never know,’ he says. ‘And it wouldn’t change anything if we did. We have to move on.’