Ballad for a Mad Girl

by Vikki Wakefield

  But one testimonial stands out:

  Saoirse brought my beloved son back to me for a last goodbye. I was stuck for so long, hanging on too tightly to his memory. He couldn’t pass over. She told me things only he could know—she showed me how to find peace so that he could let go.

  Bullshit, Cody would say.

  But that doesn’t stop me.

  The house is quiet. Dad and Cody are sleeping. I’m sitting on the window seat, laptop open, a rolled-up towel stuffed into the gap under my bedroom door, waiting.

  An hour ago, I went downstairs and took Dad’s debit card from his wallet to pay for a Skype tarot reading with the Amazing Saoirse Dunhill. I texted the number on the website, and I received a reply text to confirm my reading at ten-thirty—nine o’clock in the west.

  I want her to be the real thing. If she turns out to be like that claw-fingered caricature on her home page, wearing a headscarf and strings of coloured beads, rubbing her crystal ball, I think I might start crying and never stop—I desperately need someone who believes to show me how to let go.

  Outside, the wind is howling, the estate roofs glimmering with rain.

  When the call comes, I nearly jump out of my skin. I make sure the volume is turned down low and adjust the screen.

  ‘Hello?’ I get a grey, fuzzy image.

  ‘Oh. Are you there, Grace?’ Her voice is deep, with a slight lisp.

  I can’t see her. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Sorry, let me fix this…’

  The image moves and sharpens. She’s wearing a soft grey jumper. No tacky beads—no headscarf. She has dark hair, like mine, twisted up in a simple knot. Her eyes are blue and kind.

  ‘Do you see me now?’

  I see her. My mouth is instantly dry. It’s like my heart is being squeezed by an invisible fist. A rash of goosebumps travels along my arms.

  She’s the real thing.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello, Grace. Where are you from?’ She looks away and reaches over to one side.

  ‘East coast.’ My tongue feels twice its normal size.

  Liar, liar, Cody’s voice chants in my head.

  ‘It must be pretty late there.’

  ‘It is, but it’s school holidays.’

  She moves so close I can see a chip in her tooth.

  ‘You’ve paid for a full tarot reading. What kinds of answers are you looking for?’

  Shonk, Cody would say. If she was a clairvoyant she’d know why you were calling. She’d know where you’re from.

  ‘I…’ I can’t speak.

  She leans back and opens a pack of cards. ‘It’s okay. Take your time. Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself while I get organised.’

  I shift, turning around so the window is behind me. ‘I’m in my final year at school. It’s not going so well. It’s been hard—my mum died two years ago.’

  ‘Oh, honey.’ She closes her eyes for a second. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. Let’s see if I can help you. Is there a specific question or outcome you’re looking for during this reading?’

  The moment I picked up that Skype call, everything changed. It’s not about Mum now. I have different questions—specific ones.

  ‘I want to find somebody who’s missing.’

  She shakes her head. ‘The tarot reading will only…’

  ‘Her name was Hannah Holt.’

  Silence.

  Her blue eyes dart away. Eventually, she says, ‘Where did you say you were calling from?’

  ‘Swanston.’ I let that sink in. ‘Take your time,’ I add, and there’s a sarcastic note to it.

  Her mouth pinches. ‘Look, I think I should refund your money. I can’t help you. Thank you for your—’ She reaches towards the screen.

  ‘Please don’t hang up.’

  ‘This isn’t…’ She stands. Her face disappears, then her body, as she moves away.

  ‘Hannah.’

  She’s out of shot. The room is tidy but cheerful. Matching watercolour paintings on the wall: a pair of blue wrens on a branch, and a galah sitting on a fence post. On the bookshelf behind her screen there are photos of three children, two boys and a girl, but they’re too far away to see the faces.

  ‘Saoirse. Your name means freedom. My heart is a room with an unwelcome visitor—every song is a ballad to her. You are her. Please don’t hang up.’

  She speaks softly, off camera. ‘He promised.’

  ‘He kept his promise.’

  ‘You’re too young—you couldn’t have known him. How is this possible? How did you find me if he was the only person who knew?’

  Was. Past tense. So Hannah knew William had died, and she probably knew he’d been accused of her murder—and still she never came forward to clear his name. She’s sobbing, still out of sight. I thought I’d be the one crying, but now that I’m over the shock of seeing her—alive, twenty-three years older—I’m dry-eyed and clear-headed. And angry.

  When she reappears, her eyes are red and her make-up has been rubbed away. She sits down and readjusts the screen. She looks like her mother, except for the colour of her hair. Her face is slightly asymmetrical, as if one side smiles more easily than the other.

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asks again.

  I shake my head. ‘You first. Why did you disappear? Why didn’t you tell anybody?’

  She sighs, folding her hands in her lap. ‘I’ll tell you what I remember, but it won’t change anything.’

  ‘It might,’ I say. ‘For a lot of people. For William. For me.’

  She nods. ‘William and I were friends when we were young. It was around the time my dad left, when I was nine. We used to play in the gully behind my house together. We would hide in the fort when things got rough for me at home and he drew pictures and wrote songs and poems. He was such a romantic.’ That lopsided smile again. ‘But when my mother enrolled me at Sacred Heart we grew up and just drifted apart. I fell in with a new crowd. It wasn’t that we weren’t friends anymore, it was just…well, it was complicated.’

  She won’t say it, but I know what she means. William was odd. Different. And the two schools probably had similar unwritten rules about consorting with the enemy, even back then.

  ‘He never stopped looking out for me, though,’ she says. ‘He was always watching, only I didn’t know it until one night when my mother threw me down the stairs. She left me there and went to buy milk. Can you believe that?’

  I believe it. I think of the way Susannah Holt tore her room apart—the way she spoke to me. I can’t stand a liar.

  ‘I saw William in the fort. I knew he knew. He always knew. He left me a note that night—he climbed the tree and stuck it to my window. It just said: I’m here. And that was enough to get me through for a while, but the last time, that woman nearly killed me over a packet of Dunhills. She found them on the ledge outside my room and woke me up by shoving the rest of the packet down my throat until I choked. Eat them, she said. Swallow the whole lot and you’ll never light another one.’ She smirks. ‘Dunhill—get it? William and I had a good laugh about that.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell someone?’

  She gives a dry laugh. ‘Who would have believed me? My mother was on the board of the local council. She clocked twenty volunteer hours a week at Sacred Heart, for years, just to get me on a scholarship. She was very careful—very charming.’

  I don’t mention that I’ve met Susannah Holt. Something tells me Hannah—Saoirse—wouldn’t be shocked to know her mother still washes her clothes trying to get the bloodstains out.

  ‘My mother was scared,’ she says. ‘I think she might have spotted William outside my bedroom window, watching, and she was worried about what he’d seen. I told her she was crazy—I said if she started spreading stories about a boy in the tree everyone else would know she was crazy, too. One night she hit me with a broom handle. I didn’t wake up for three hours. When I did, one side of my face had dropped. See?’ She touches a finger to one corner of her mouth. ‘I waited
another month. William, he had a box of money stashed in the tree. He said when it was time to go, I should take it—if I needed him, he’d come. I was only three months off my eighteenth birthday, but I didn’t last that long. I thought I’d be carried out in a box if I waited, so I told William I was ready. I knew she’d come after me if she had any clue where I was. I went to bed that night, waited until she was asleep, and crawled out the window. I hid in the boot of William’s car until we got fifty kays out of Swanston, just to be sure, and then I got into the back seat. I fell asleep, and he drove all night. In the morning, I told him to get some sleep and go home. I knew if we stayed together any longer, it would make it harder to completely disappear.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  She waves her hand. ‘A hostel. A train. Another hostel. I went as far as I could before I ran out of William’s money. I ended up here and never left.’

  ‘You left him without an alibi.’ I stare at her hard, through the screen.

  She stares back at me. ‘It didn’t occur to me that my mother wouldn’t tell everyone I had just run away. She gave me a million reasons to leave. Maybe she did know—she must have known. And William—I knew he loved me, but I was so messed up. I told him to wait a year before he tried to find me, but he never did.’ The tears start again. ‘Local news like that wasn’t a click away back then. I had moved on, and I didn’t go looking until years later. By the time I found out he had killed himself, it was too late.’

  I watch her cry. I’m torn between anger and pity, but I can’t tell her that William didn’t jump until I have proof. Hannah was just a girl—she couldn’t have known that her ‘disappearance’ would set off a chain of tragedy, beginning with William and ending with my mother. Did she remember my mother, or was she just another face in an old school photo? Is there any point to any of this—any way out, any way back? How could Hannah even begin to comprehend how far the poison had spread after the night she climbed out of her bedroom window?

  Maybe Dominic Aloisi would still have been a killer—only his victims might have been different people. That’s the part I can’t let go.

  ‘I need to know—how did you find me?’ She startles me out of silence.

  ‘A piece of paper in William’s jacket. Cryptic. Nothing anyone would notice,’ I say flatly.

  ‘That old thing. How did you get it?’

  ‘A garage sale,’ I lie.

  ‘You seem like a very intuitive, together young lady. I only wish I was like that when I was young.’

  ‘I think you might be the first person ever to say that.’

  ‘I suppose they’ll come looking for me now.’ She sighs. ‘It won’t change anything. You know that, don’t you?’ She’s begging, or praying, her hands pressed together like the night I dreamed about her.

  I almost hate her then.

  When Cody comes out of his room the next morning, he finds me on the couch, laptop open on my thighs. Dad has already left for work and Diesel is lying next to me.

  I haven’t slept. I couldn’t.

  William Dean took the secret of Hannah Holt’s whereabouts to the grave, where it has been buried under dirt—and lies—for twenty-two years. Now that I hold the key, what will I do with it?

  ‘What’s going on?’ Cody says. ‘You okay? Have you been here all night?’

  ‘I’m great.’ I close my laptop. ‘Are you working today?’ I sound too perky.

  ‘No.’ He’s suspicious. ‘I was thinking I’d hang around here.’

  ‘You don’t have to babysit me all the time.’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘I know.’

  I tuck my laptop under my arm. Cody switches the kettle on and mooches around in the kitchen, waiting for it to boil.

  ‘Cody?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘If I show you something, will you promise not to tell?’ He never could resist a secret.

  But he frowns. ‘That’s not fair. You know I can’t promise you that.’ He pours himself a coffee and places it on a coaster on the table.

  ‘Fine. Then I can’t show you.’

  He’s dying to know. It takes him less than ten seconds to change his mind. ‘Okay, but if I think you’re in trouble, I might have to break my promise.’

  ‘I’m not in any trouble.’ I move to the kitchen table and open my laptop. Cody sits next to me. ‘This is a Skype call I recorded last night. I’m talking to a clairvoyant called Saoirse Dunhill.’

  Cody rears back. ‘Jesus, Grace.’

  ‘Wait. Listen to what she has to say.’ I start Quick-Time. ‘Are you ready?’

  He nods, and I press Play.

  When I log off, Cody is silent for a full minute. ‘Are you sure it’s her? She’s not just some crackpot?’

  ‘How much more proof do you need? You saw her. You heard.’

  ‘It’s old news. She’s an adult now.’

  ‘Yes. The same age Mum would be if she was still here.’

  He flinches, as if I’ve caused him physical pain. Sometimes I forget how much he misses her, too.

  ‘Okay.’ He’s thinking. ‘Let’s wait a few days. It’s not like it’ll change anything.’

  A loud thud makes Cody spin around. ‘Something just hit the kitchen window!’

  ‘A bird,’ I say. ‘It’s probably just a bird.’

  I’m on my way home from my weekly session with Dr Nichols. These July days are short and freezing. It’s already getting dark. The Celica’s windows are fogging up in the back and, even though Cody has worked his mechanical voodoo, she keeps stalling when the engine’s cold.

  Kenzie texted earlier to ask if I want to meet her, Mitch, Pete and Gummer at Lumpy’s at six, so I have an hour and a half to kill. I drive around for a while, avoiding the one place my intuition is telling me I should go.

  I haven’t made up my mind whether to contact the police myself, tell Dad, or let Cody take the decision out of my hands. I should be elated, but I’m feeling flat and tired. Finding Hannah Holt hasn’t changed anything. The only thing it proves is that William Dean is no murderer; it doesn’t prove he was murdered, or that my mother didn’t step out in front of a truck. It sure as hell doesn’t prove that I haven’t lost my mind.

  Rational explanations are easier to come by, and harder to refute.

  I fill up with petrol and park outside the cemetery. I want to go inside—and I don’t. I’m constantly caught between doing what’s right and doing what feels right.

  The cemetery is deserted. At five o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, I suppose that’s normal. What is normal anyway? The goalposts keep shifting—it’s like kicking with my left leg, trying to aim for the space between a pair of chopsticks, set an inch apart. And everyone notices when I miss.

  I get out of the car, pulling a beanie low over my ears to keep out the cold. The lampposts dotted around the cemetery flicker and light up.

  I was wrong. There’s one other person here—a gaunt, broad-shouldered man wearing a hooded blue raincoat—but he’s on his way out. We brush shoulders as we move through the gate; he steps aside, muttering an apology.

  I follow the path towards the memorial garden, running my hand over the wings of Maria’s angel as I pass. The pock-marked stone is surprisingly warm, like the star I have clasped in my other hand. It doesn’t matter if it’s the original star or it isn’t—I figure there’s more sentiment in that knobbly piece of plastic than there would be in any expensive bunch of flowers.

  But first, I want to say goodbye to William.

  William’s old grave is occupied and freshly filled. A shiny black headstone stands perfectly upright, and a matching marble slab covers the trench.

  I have mixed emotions. Sadness, anger, loss—but mostly a growing sense of peace. He didn’t belong here. I’m glad his family didn’t leave him behind. I can’t feel him anymore—it’s like Hannah was the last thread, and now that she’s found, he’s lost to me.

  He doesn’t need me now.

  Mum’s memorial is well tended, surroun
ded by glittery rocks and native grasses. There’s a single rose, fresh and white, in a plastic vase on a spike—Dad must have visited today, or Cody.

  I bury the star next to the rock with Mum’s plaque, covering it with dirt and a clump of bright moss. I take the folded tissue from my pocket and sprinkle the tiniest bit of ash from her scarf among the grasses.

  Mum isn’t here either. I know I’d have more chance of her listening if I shouted into the wind, or called out to her in my dreams.

  The Celica’s engine has cooled and it struggles to start. I must have taken longer at the cemetery than I thought. I pump the accelerator and end up flooding the carburettor, so I text Kenzie to say I’ll be running a bit late. I search through Mum’s CDs in the glove box—Cody said he’d replace the ancient stereo, but I don’t want a new one. I change the CD and flick the visor down. The photo of Mum wearing the catsuit is tacked to the inside; I blow on my hands and my cold breath curls around her face.

  When the engine finally kicks over, I reverse out of the park and sit in the bus lane, revving, until I think she’s warmed up enough. After a few more minutes, I pull out into traffic, take a right and head for Lumpy’s. But, when I try to turn left at the end of Reginald Street, there’s a council crew setting up a road block for night-works. Dammit. Ten minutes earlier and I wouldn’t have to take the long way around.

  Then I realise: the detour isn’t necessary. It’s just habit.

  I do a U-turn and take the next right. Trimmer Road will bring me out at the corner of Waites and Blaine, and save me a trip through the dark, semi-industrial estate. I’ll shoot through the intersection and hang left.

  I won’t look at the shrine.

  The traffic lights are red—someone is crossing at the pedestrian lights. I brake hard and pull up. There are no other cars waiting. Mum’s photo slips from the visor and flutters to land in the footwell underneath the accelerator pedal. The engine sputters and stalls. Swearing, I duck down and fumble around under my feet, trying to restart the engine at the same time. There’s no slope, so I can’t get a roll happening and drop the clutch.