This I Would Kill For

by Anne Buist

  It took Natalie a few seconds to process this. ‘What do you mean: more or less?’

  Jan looked abashed. ‘You know your uncle.’

  Natalie stared. Suddenly it became obvious. ‘Vince.’

  Jan nodded.

  Natalie’s head started to spin. Vince, who had offered to give the band their first gig, who had kept them on as regulars from the start. Who had found the warehouse for her and who gave her unasked-for fatherly—or rather avuncular—advice.

  It wasn’t just Vince. She knew her cousins. Benny with his pink mohawk and Adrianna and her biker husband and…

  Natalie stared at her mother. ‘He’s not dead.’

  Jan sighed. ‘No, he’s not dead.’

  Nick. Vince’s brother who led the back-up singers at Adrianna’s wedding. Who had a not-bad singing voice; who had danced with her. She started to shake, tears rolling down her cheeks. Pulled her mother into her.

  Then she caught sight of someone else in the doorway. ‘Hello Craig,’ she said between sobs. And then something she had never been able to say before. ‘Hello Dad.’

  Liam had texted to say he was coming. She thought about asking her mother to get her a sexy black nightie and then thought better of it. If Liam and she were going to make it, then it would have to be warts and all. She flicked the television on to try and distract herself as she waited. The weekly media wrap-up was on—and this week’s guests were Mark La Brooy and Katlego Okeke.

  ‘Can you explain why you defended Mark, why you asked the Herald Sun to reinstate him?’

  Defended? What the…?

  ‘Of course.’ Okeke looked magnificent in warrior red. ‘I was defending the integrity of the vilification law, not him.’ She flashed a look at La Brooy, pasty, overweight, leaning back with shirt half-hanging out and pencil end in his mouth where a cigarette might otherwise have propped. ‘For it to be an offence, I have to be offended. I wasn’t. For that I’d have to respect his opinion. Takes more than what he’s got to get under my black skin.’

  La Brooy’s anger looked entirely counterfeit.

  Natalie hit the off button. Okeke might not have been offended. But Natalie was, by both of them. They were revelling in the drama, the confrontation. She doubted either of them had ever given a shit about Malik, Jenna, Chelsea or Chris. Not really.

  At least she was off the hook with the College. Declan had phoned to say that in the light of the news coverage of the case—largely with a positive spin on her involvement—and her medical crisis, Rankin had put the complaint aside. Subject to continued monitoring by Declan.

  ‘It didn’t hurt,’ added Declan, ‘that, reading between the lines, Boreman thinks one of his nurses might be your @KidsReallyMatter. He told Rankin he might have overreacted.’

  Then Liam was there.

  He stood in the doorway and they just looked at each other. He still seemed tired but there was something different, Natalie thought. A calm that hadn’t been there before. And he was still the sexiest man she had ever met.

  ‘You’d be wanting a visitor, would you?’ he finally said.

  ‘Depends.’ On whether…whether it was the right thing.

  Pushing him away, she’d been acting out her childhood guilt and inability to trust herself. And it was herself she needed to trust. Through everything, she had never wavered in how she had felt about him.

  ‘Depends on you being quiet and listening,’ said Liam. He pulled the chair closer to her bed. ‘While you were gallivanting around in my Lotus…’

  Natalie winced. ‘About that—’

  Liam’s look stopped her. ‘I was in a mediation session with Lauren.’

  She had forgotten that—she’d had a few other things on her mind. She turned to the monitor, watched the line that said the bean was holding steady, for now.

  ‘I did what you told me,’ he went on. ‘Said she was right.’ Liam watched Natalie’s expression and leaned in. ‘I told her she was right that our children mattered more than anything. I told her I trusted her to know that us both being happy, with or without partners, was going to make them happier in the long run too.’

  Natalie opened her mouth to speak, but he pushed on. ‘I saw someone last week. They offered us counselling through the Royal Commission and after Michael killed himself, I needed to get some stuff off my chest. Your advice, I recall. I haven’t had a drink in a week. I want it to stop being a problem before it’s a bigger one.’ He took a breath. ‘They repeated something you’d told me. I was being driven by guilt.’

  As her mother had been. As Natalie had been—guilt buried in her childhood that had shaped her, just as it had shaped Jenna.

  ‘I don’t want you to have to choose between them and me, Liam.’

  ‘And I would never want you to choose between the bean’—they both paused awkwardly, looking at the line on the monitor—‘and any children we might have together.’ He saw her expression. ‘If you, we, want them, okay? We should both choose to do what’s right for our kids—but not because of guilt.’

  ‘It won’t be easy.’

  ‘No, it won’t. But working less will help.’

  Like Declan had said—letting go of the least important things.

  ‘You can’t leave the Royal Commission, Liam.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’ He smiled. ‘But I can leave the Office of Public Prosecutions.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Too late. I put my resignation in.’

  ‘But…what will you do?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘Take time out, sell the Lotus, live off the proceeds. Grow olives. Maybe even do defence law. I can try and live among all your…ah…collections of stuff… if that’s where you want to be. Just…we do it together. All the way.’

  She thought of her father, her mother and Craig. Another pattern repeating. But maybe with improvements gained through insight. She was a psychiatrist after all—it had to count for something.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘Do you have a moment?’

  Natalie turned around, recognising the voice. Jenna. Standing in her waiting room without an appointment.

  She didn’t, but she’d find one.

  ‘I’ve come to say thank you.’

  ‘For what, Jenna?’ Natalie watched her patient wrestle with all she was dealing with, deciding how best to answer. Thanks for lying—or at least not telling the whole truth? Or thank you for making me face my inner demon at last, and maybe save my daughter? Natalie had referred Jenna to a therapist, and there was enough material there to keep her in work for a few years to come.

  ‘I came to you because I didn’t want my children taken off me.’ She shrugged. ‘I have them, and Malik won’t get them.’

  Natalie sighed.

  ‘He may not have been abusing Chelsea, but he still thought he owned them,’ said Jenna. ‘I’d have always wondered, every access, whether I would ever see them again.’

  ‘Were you planning on killing him?’

  Jenna looked at Natalie hard. ‘If I had to, yes.’

  ‘You were going to hope they’d accept self-defence?’

  Jenna gave a fleeting smile. ‘As it was, I had to save you.’

  ‘You could have gone to jail.’

  ‘Yes, but better that than leaving my child…’ She stopped, blinked away a tear. ‘I’m still coming to terms with…I’ve had dreams for years, but now…Now I remember. Perhaps I always did, but was too scared to face it.’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘I will never forgive myself…how could I have not…have faced it? For my daughter?’

  ‘Be kind to yourself Jenna. You’re facing it now. It will take time, and your children need you.’

  ‘He left, you know. My father,’ said Jenna quietly. ‘Thailand, the police think. He had an escape plan…went to the airport as soon as the police called him in for questioning. My mother moved in to help me. It’s too late to heal all the scars, but we’re trying.’ She looked at Natalie. ‘I want this to stop here, this generation. Thank you…for finding the therap
ist. She’s been great with us all. Even helping me deal with Chris.’

  When she left, Natalie watched her go to the car where Mickie and Chelsea were waiting. Three generations of traumatised women…finding strength together.

  She never had to sing ‘Ave Maria’ at Beverley’s wedding, which was just as well. She probably couldn’t have done it with a straight face. Liam had told her he’d record it and play it every time they had an argument. They weren’t having many, though. She’d even cleaned up the living area. More or less.

  She was in the last verse of ‘Amazing Grace’, which had been hard enough—Beverley and Jack with their arms around each other, looking slightly nauseating but, dare she admit, strangely sweet and very happy—when her waters broke.

  Still too early. But despite the partial tear, her placenta had managed to get the bean through to thirty-six weeks, and that would be enough. The paediatrician could manage it from there.

  When Sienna—dark brown tuft on her head like her dad’s—opened her eyes and looked directly at her mother, for the first time in Natalie’s life, she felt free of her past. And in the same moment, she knew what it was like to love someone so much, so overwhelmingly, that she would do anything, anything, without limits, to protect her.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This story draws on a lot of the difficult work done by Protective Services, the Children’s Court Clinic and Children’s Court, with whom I work. Though they are often not loved by the clients who find themselves there, they try to do, as far as is possible, what is best for the child, as do the clinicians who do the ongoing work with these families. While it isn’t possible always to get the outcomes we would like, every little bit of insight and support that can be given to a parent may help their child.

  The idea for this book had its first incarnation in a manuscript called Kate and Cathie, written twenty-five years ago when my children were young, one page a day for a year until I had something I could edit. It got some encouraging feedback (it is still my mother’s favourite, at least prior to Two Steps Forward) and some interest from publishers but never got over the line. I have used the concept here in a grittier, more real way than I did then. Back then I spent time with my friend Janine’s daughter Annabelle to flesh the child character out—but Chelsea has benefited from experience with my own daughter Dominique, and niece Samantha (who gave me the modern-day answer to what an eight-year-old would like if she had three wishes).

  My early readers need to be thanked—heaps and heaps. Erina Reddan and Tania Chandler, both wonderful writers themselves, gave me invaluable feedback. Some got Version One with a very different ‘father’ conclusion, some readers got this version, and I apologise if I’ve omitted any of you: Sue Hughes, Janifer Willis and his Honour Graham McDonald. My children Daniel and Dominique both gave their thoughts—Daniel’s particularly useful because he was doing a placement at the Children’s Court Clinic at the time.

  Thanks also to Michael Heyward and the great team at Text who had to help me juggle the publication of two books in six months: Mandy (editor extraordinaire), W. H. Chong and Jess Horrocks for the cover designs, Jane Finemore, Kate Sloggett and Lucy Ballantyne.

  Finally, as always, my thanks to Graeme, who is along on the journey of each book with me; on plot (‘Noooo… not the Mafia…’), character (‘Noooo…she’s meant to be a psychiatrist not an action hero…’ and ‘No, Liam would not let Damian into the delivery room…’), when I’m stuck (‘What happened to the plan?’) and then first reader, last reader and chief cheerleader. The whole process is so much richer and more enjoyable (and has a better outcome, of course) having you there.

  ALSO BY ANNE BUIST

  Natalie King, forensic psychiatrist:

  Medea’s Curse

  Dangerous to Know

  With Graeme Simsion:

  Two Steps Forward

  Anne Buist is the Chair of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. She works with protective services and the legal system in cases of abuse, kidnapping, infanticide and murder.

  annebuist.com

  facebook.com/anneebuist

  @anneebuist

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

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  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © 2018 by Anne Buist

  The moral right of Anne Buist to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in 2018 by The Text Publishing Company

  Book design by Text

  Cover image by Anna Mutwil/Arcangel

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  ISBN: 9781925603231 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781925626285 (ebook)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia