The Banksia Bay Beach Shack

by Sandie Docker

  Mrs Duncan was up and sitting by the bay window looking out onto a rose garden. She’d always been an early riser, thanks to a lifetime in the service of a wealthy, often demanding, family. Around the room were photos of Lillian as a young child, of Laura’s dad at various ages, of Laura. Mrs Duncan had never had children of her own, widowed before she took her post with the Woodhouses. This was her family.

  Back at home, there were baby pictures of Laura’s grandmother in the photo albums, black-and-white vignettes of an impeccably dressed little Lillian with her thick dark hair. But nothing from her teenage years. Laura had asked her once about the gap in her pictorial history and she’d brushed it aside, mumbling something about them being lost in a move.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Duncan.’ Laura sat on the padded bench under the window. ‘What a beautiful day.’

  Mrs Duncan blinked – her way of saying hello. They sat in silence and drank the tea Laura had made them, Mrs Duncan taking slow sips.

  ‘Mrs Duncan,’ Laura said, pulling the photo out of the envelope, ‘can I ask you something?’

  Mrs Duncan looked at the picture and her hands began to shake.

  Laura placed it on Mrs Duncan’s lap. ‘Do you know who Gigi is? Do you know Banksia Bay?’

  Mrs Duncan brushed the photo off her lap, letting it fall to the ground.

  ‘Is she important? This Gigi?’ Laura picked up the photo and went to hand it back to Mrs Duncan. The old woman growled at Laura, an indecipherable sound from somewhere deep within. Somewhere dark.

  Tears fell down Mrs Duncan’s cheeks. ‘No. No. No.’

  Laura had never seen Mrs Duncan cry. Not once.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m sorry.’ She hugged Mrs Duncan, smoothing her hair. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  As she pulled away, Mrs Duncan grabbed her hand. She nodded to her dresser in the corner of the room. Over the past few years Laura had learned to read the 98-year-old’s physical cues – a wink of her left eye when she was cold and needed a blanket, her thin lips turning slightly up when she wanted Laura to fluff her pillow, a certain tilt of the head, a particular hand movement, a frown.

  The nod towards the dresser now to let her know she wanted her hair brushed. Laura walked across the room and picked up the tortoiseshell brush. As she reached for it, she knocked a tiny silver jewellery box sitting next to it. She’d never noticed it before.

  A short grunt.

  ‘What is it, Mrs Duncan?’ Laura spun round, her hand knocking the lid off the small trinket box.

  A groan.

  ‘I’m so sorry. It’s okay. I didn’t break it.’ She looked inside as she returned the lid and saw a stunning pendant. Or rather, a half pendant. It looked like a delicate silver wing, each tiny feather that swept in an arc perfectly defined. Down one feather that draped to the tip of the wing were six blue sapphires. Laura may not have been interested in jewellery herself – she only owned one pair of very practical stud earrings, no necklaces, no rings – but you didn’t grow up in a family like hers and not know the value of an antique. This piece was stunning. At the top of the rounded edge of the wing, near the first gem, the shiny silver was jagged, as if something had snapped off. Was there once another wing? Laura ran her fingers over the metal, from smooth to rough. Yes, there was definitely something missing here.

  ‘This is beautiful. Did your husband give it to you? Or a long-lost lover, perhaps?’ Laura found the thought of Mrs Duncan having a secret romantic past rather intriguing. She took the pendant over to her and Mrs Duncan started shaking her head.

  ‘Mrs Duncan? Is everything okay?’

  The old lady started rocking back and forth, her gaze on the photo of Lily and Gigi lying on the bay window bench seat.

  Laura took a stab in the dark. ‘Is it Nan’s?’

  She rocked harder.

  ‘Does it have something to do with this?’ She held up the photo.

  Mrs Duncan closed her eyes, her shaking turning into convulsions. Laura called for a nurse and cradled Mrs Duncan in her arms. Laura rocked back and forth, whispering calming words, as much to settle herself as Mrs Duncan. She’d never seen her like this before and Laura fought to keep her worry pushed deep down inside.

  Laura stared out the window of the newspaper office as the sun hit its midday peak, unable to concentrate on her article.

  It had taken the nurse half an hour to calm Mrs Duncan down, and in the end she’d had to resort to using a sedative. Laura couldn’t get the image of her seizure out of her mind. She’d rung three times since getting to work to check on her and had been assured that Mrs Duncan was now settled and resting well.

  She would pop in on the way home just to check for herself.

  Laura stared at the words on her laptop screen and tried to write her conclusion. She’d never missed a deadline. Never even cut it this close before. Maher would understand, of course. He knew how much Lillian meant to Laura and had suggested she take some time off to deal with her passing. But Laura had insisted she needed to keep busy. Taking yesterday off for the funeral was enough.

  Except her fingers refused to move across the keyboard and her eyes kept dropping to her handbag, where the photo and the pendant were ensconced. She hadn’t stolen Mrs Duncan’s pendant. She’d merely borrowed it. For research purposes.

  She’d tried to dismiss the photo as just some random black-and-white print capturing an unimportant moment in time, but she couldn’t dismiss Mrs Duncan’s reaction to it. Maher’s third rule of journalism was always trust your instincts, and Laura’s instincts were telling her it wasn’t a random moment and it was anything but unimportant.

  She’d tried to chalk up Mrs Duncan’s reaction to the photo and then the pendant as mere coincidence. A sick old woman in her late nineties was bound to have turns. But rule number six, there is no such thing as coincidence, was at the forefront of her mind.

  Words. Laura needed words. Any words to finish this article. She started to type. Who? What? Where?

  Well, technically they were words. Just not the right ones.

  Focus, Laura.

  She took a sip of the strong black coffee she’d brewed. How hard could this be? She knew this piece inside out. Countless hours of research and undercover investigation had gone into it. All she needed was one magic line to tie it all together.

  Think.

  Lillian hated the beach, yet she looked so happy in the old photograph.

  And that pendant. Her gut was telling her it wasn’t just some trinket.

  Focus.

  An hour later, her deadline came and went and the words still failed her.

  ‘Prescott.’ Maher’s deep baritone rang through the office. ‘Come in for a minute.’

  Laura drew in a deep breath and walked into her editor’s office.

  She sat opposite Stanley Maher in the green leather chair she’d first sat in as a cadet five years ago, so happy to have landed a job with the best news editor in the country. He’d treated her almost like family ever since she started at the paper, and he’d taught her everything she knew about being a reporter, about research, about protecting sources. He was the closest thing she had to a father-figure.

  ‘It’s nearly done,’ she said. ‘Really, it’s all there. I just need to finish it off somehow.’

  ‘Show me what you have.’

  As he read through her article, he sat there and tapped his desk, once at the beginning, once somewhere in the middle. A tap was high praise from Maher.

  ‘You’re right. It needs something at the end. You’re usually spot-on bringing these things home.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just . . .’

  He raised his hand. ‘I know, Prescott. You have every reason not to be on your game. That’s why I told you to take some time off. Lord knows you’ve got plenty of leave owing. When was your last holiday?’

  Never. Laura hadn’t taken a single day of leave since she’d started with the paper. She took in a sharp breath.

  ‘Look. We could hav
e pushed this back to next week. But now we’re holding space for it.’

  ‘Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll get it done.’

  He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Code for, Do it now, don’t let me down.

  Laura went back to her desk and read the last paragraph of her article, wishing the words would fill her mind. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. Never once had she failed to turn in an article. And she wasn’t about to start now.

  She opened her eyes and her fingers raced across the keyboard. Done. She saved the file to her laptop, backed it up on a USB like she always did, and printed out a hard copy, just to be on the safe side. No one else at the newspaper kept paper copies of their articles and stories, but Laura was nothing if not meticulous about backing up her work. Rule number five, always back up your files.

  Maher stepped out of his office and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Go home. That’s an order.’

  Laura packed up her computer and put away her notes. She liked to start each morning with a clear desk and never left at the end of the day without tidying it. Outside the office she hailed a taxi, unable to face the press of an overcrowded bus.

  She stopped by Mrs Duncan on her way home to find her sleeping. Laura stayed by her bed, reading the news on her phone. Usually she trawled through the pages of every major paper and network twice a day. But with the funeral she’d neglected to stay abreast of what was happening in the world.

  An hour later a nurse insisted it was time for her to go home, that Mrs Duncan would be fine and they’d call if there was need.

  Another taxi ride later and Laura kicked off her shoes as she entered the grand hall of Lillian’s house. She fixed herself a quick dinner of cheese on toast and pulled out the photo and the pendant, turning each one over in her hands, studying every detail. She got her notebook out and started jotting down questions. Sometimes it helped her think better, to scrawl ink across paper.

  Who was Gigi? Where is Banksia Bay? Why did the pendant cause Mrs Duncan to have a turn?

  Perhaps there were other photos of this Gigi girl Laura had simply never paid attention to before. She went into the lounge room and pulled out the photo albums from a drawer in the heavy wooden coffee table. She flipped through page after page of Lillian’s early life, the photo of the girls on the beach in her hand for comparison. There was no sign of anyone resembling Gigi.

  At the back of the second album, Laura realised there were some pages missing. They had been cut out very carefully. So carefully that, unless you looked really closely, you would never have noticed. That was strange. She turned back to the last few pictures on the previous page. Lillian looked about twelve in them. She compared them to the picture Donna had given her. She was much older in this mysterious photo. Why were there no photos of Lillian in her teenage years, except this one? The one that had caused Mrs Duncan to have a turn. Hmm. Rule number six. No such thing as a coincidence.

  Laura stood up and stretched her arms into the air. The base of her neck tingled, just as it always did before she chased down a story.

  Yawning, she piled up the photo albums neatly on the coffee table. She would look through them again tomorrow. It had been a long few days. A long few weeks since Lillian’s health had begun to deteriorate so rapidly.

  With the ‘Sisters of Summer’ photo and the wing pendant in her pocket Laura passed Lillian’s bedroom and paused at the door. The sage-green and white striped wallpaper hadn’t changed in all Laura’s life. Everything in the room was the way it had always been.

  Everything except the tousled corner of the pink rose-petal bedspread where Lillian had collapsed.

  That wouldn’t do. Lillian always had perfectly pleated corners on her bedspread – it was Mrs Duncan’s first job after breakfast. And once they’d lost her service to ill health, the maid Lillian had hired – or rather, series of maids, as none of them ever quite measured up and were fired after a few months on the job – had been schooled in how to make a bed properly. Laura had given the latest young maid time off since Lillian died. Had she left the bed like this?

  Laura tucked the corner in exactly as she’d seen Mrs Duncan do it a million times and, as she did, her toe kicked something under the bed. She knelt down and pulled out an old shoebox, the corners of which had been eaten away by whatever little critter liked to munch on cardboard.

  Opening the faded lid, Laura’s hand began to shake. She looked at the keepsakes inside: a black-and-white postcard from Banksia Bay – she gasped and read the back, just two words, ‘Forgive me’; a movie ticket stub for The Musician; a handkerchief with the initials R P, Richard Prescott, her grandfather, embroidered in the corner in navy blue. Underneath the handkerchief was a photo. Laura pulled it out. It was a wedding picture of her grandparents. She’d never seen a photo of their wedding before – another loss from the move. Supposedly. Lillian looked the picture of serenity in her white gown beside a very proud-looking Richard. Laura noticed something around Lillian’s neck.

  With the photo in her hand she ran into the kitchen and pulled out the magnifying glass she knew Mrs Duncan used to keep in the drawer. She pulled the silver wing out of her pocket and examined it. In the photo, the pendant around Lillian’s neck was a heart shape. She moved the magnifying glass. A heart made of two wings: the right side an arc of sweeping feathers leading to a tip from which a dark teardrop-shaped gem hung; the left wing a mirror image but with six tiny sapphires embedded in one feather. Laura drew in a deep breath; there was no mistaking it. The pendant around Lillian’s neck and the half in her hand were the same.

  Laura stood by the side of the road at what was supposed to be the interchange for the bus to Banksia Bay. This particular stretch of coastal road looked exactly the same as the rest of the fifty-odd kilometres she’d been travelling on since leaving the highway an hour ago. Just more patchy bitumen lined with gum trees. The only difference was the extraordinarily large tree stump that looked like it had been smoothed by many years of travellers resting on it. She sat down on its flat surface. There was no bus stop sign, no shelter, no timetable posted anywhere nearby. Nothing. Just Laura, her suitcase and the tree stump.

  The afternoon sun beat down on her back as she sat there waiting for – what had the bus driver from Sydney called it? – the Bronte Bus? No. Bronte was a beach in Sydney. Oh, why hadn’t she paid more attention? Something to do with surfing? Or a movie? Well done, Laura. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, at what may or may not be a bus stop, destined for a town she’d never heard of, waiting for a bus she couldn’t remember the name of.

  This was what happened when you abandoned all reason and didn’t do your research properly. Rule number four, always know what you’re getting into. Her sense had, apparently, taken a vacation. Is that what grief did? Take away your ability to think straight?

  She pulled out her phone and snapped a selfie to send Maher. At least he would get a kick out of seeing Laura so far out of her comfort zone. As she went to send it, she realised there was no reception.

  If she ended up in a ditch somewhere, it would be all his fault. He was the one who’d insisted she make the trip. Three days of subpar work from her, unable to focus or concentrate with so many questions running through her mind, and he’d called her into his office. ‘Take a break, Prescott, and come back your usual self.’

  She took in a deep breath. She wouldn’t really end up in a ditch. Would she? Panic was not Laura’s default mode. Panic was a waste of energy and completely unproductive. The driver who had brought her here had assured her that this was indeed the right place for her to change buses. What reason would he have to leave her anywhere else? Well . . . Laura’s imagination began to tick over – setting her up to be robbed or, worse, the base of operations for a human-smuggling ring. She’d done a story on one of those early in her career.

  Stop it. You’re a journalist, not an author.

  Stick to the facts. Rule number one, and the most important of them all.

  A
nd the facts were simple. She was at the right bus stop according to the driver and, according to the schedule the agent had given her over the phone, the bus to Banksia Bay would be along in half an hour.

  Half an hour was a long time to pass alone, especially with no phone reception. She pulled out the novel she had in her backpack. A story about a woman who goes missing in the bush wasn’t the best choice of travelling companion, it turned out. After fifteen minutes, Laura stood and stretched her legs. No other vehicle had come past since she’d arrived, so she left her suitcase by the stump and strode down a little way into the tree line. It certainly was peaceful here. There was a whipping sound coming from somewhere deep in the bushland. If she’d had internet access she would have looked up what sort of bird made such an intriguing call.

  A rustle in the leaves just off to her left made her jump back. Laura had no idea what sort of animals lived in a place like this. In the inner city there were no snakes or goannas or wombats, or any of the wildlife she knew was common in other parts of Australia. The wildest animal she’d ever seen was a possum (well, heard more than seen), or a huntsman spider hiding in the corner of the ceiling, which was no match for her extra-strength Mortein. She wished now she’d researched the area more. While she couldn’t find much on Banksia Bay itself – just a few real estate listings, a holiday rental – surely if she’d looked harder she’d have found something on a neighbouring town. Breaking rule number four was never a good idea. Going into a situation blind and unprepared never ended well, yet here she was. Grief had a lot to answer for.

  The rustling stopped, but she wasn’t about to take any chances, so she headed back to wait on the stump. Before sitting down, she checked for any visible creepy-crawlies. Satisfied, she sat back down and waited.

  Turning her face to the sky, Laura closed her eyes and breathed deeply, holding each breath for three seconds before exhaling.