by Pamela Cook
Josh leaned over, picked up the letter and sat beside her, the paper taut between his hands. ‘Jesus.’
Somewhere outside a garbage truck rumbled, the bang and clatter of bins reverberating like a set of cymbals. Tess coiled back in on herself as the noise ebbed away.
‘What happened?’ Josh’s voice was muffled, as if he was speaking from a distance. ‘Tess, when did you last talk to her?’
She shook her head and let out a long, slow breath. ‘I’m not sure. Six months … longer maybe.’ It was July now. Had it been this year or last when she and Skye had spoken? ‘She wrote to me, a while ago.’ But was that letter before or after the Christmas card? The one she’d replied to with a promise to visit soon. The same promise she’d been making for the last eight years. Her stomach plummeted.
Josh moved closer and tried to draw her into his embrace. She pulled herself upright, and he settled for resting his arm across her shoulders. ‘I’m really sorry. I know how much you cared about her.’
Did he know? Really know? How could he when Josh had only met her friend once, when she had barely mentioned Skye in the entire time they’d been together. Not talking about her didn’t mean she didn’t think about Skye, though. Her memory hurdled over the intervening years back to earlier days, a series of disconnected images flickering like an old home-movie reel to a soundtrack of childhood laughter. Those dark spiral curls, the pale, freckled face, eyes that shifted like the sea on a hot summer afternoon—clear and blue one minute, grey and stormy the next.
‘Guess you’ll have to call them first thing. The letter’s dated almost a week ago.’
The letter. She clenched her teeth until her jaw ached. If he’d bothered to tell her about it on the phone, she might have asked him to open it then and there. She jerked at her shoulder, forcing his arm to fall away.
‘So what will you say?’
‘I’m sure you have some suggestions.’ The words came out in a hiss and Josh sprang from the bed, the towel around his waist slipping to his knees. He secured it back into place, hooking one thumb into the fold below his hip. ‘Well, I mean you’ll have to tell them we can’t do it.’ He was floundering now, flapping the letter around in the air, but a sharper, more defiant edge had crept into his voice. ‘You either do that over the phone or go in and see this person. End of story.’
He’d already made up his mind. Presumed she agreed. That piece of paper in his hand was asking about her intentions in regard to Grace, asking if she would be honouring the agreement she had made to be the child’s legal guardian. Skye was dead; her daughter was now Tess’s responsibility. This was her decision.
She pushed herself up from the bed. They were almost exactly the same height when she wasn’t in heels, making it easy to stare him down. ‘So we’re not even going to discuss it?’
‘Tess, come on.’ He dipped his head, raked a hand through his hair and snorted—actually snorted—as if this was some kind of joke. ‘There’s no way we can take on someone else’s kid.’
‘It’s not just someone. It’s Skye.’
‘No, it’s not Skye. It’s her daughter. Shit, the kid is ten years old. When was the last time you even saw her?’
She couldn’t look at him anymore. Couldn’t stand that I-know-better-than-you jut of his chin and the tell-me-I’m-wrong tone in his voice. She covered her bare breasts with one arm and bit down hard on the inside of her mouth. The last time she’d seen Grace the little girl had been a pre-schooler, but so what? It didn’t change the facts. ‘That’s not the point. I signed the papers when she was born.’
‘Well, that was your first mistake.’ And right on cue, there it was, the pointing finger. ‘You should have thought it through more carefully in the first place. That was a legal document.’
‘Skye didn’t have anyone else.’
‘A simple no would have worked.’
His same old attitude, everything black and white. She was the one who’d signed the papers, made the promise, not Josh. This was not his call to make. She wanted to grab a handful of that dripping hair and yank it out of his stupid fucking head. Not that it would change anything. Josh had total tunnel vision when it came to his life plan, and right now he was on track to corporate stardom. Nothing—and no one—would be getting in his way. She whipped her top off the bed and pulled it on, shoving past him as she stalked to the window.
The padding of feet on carpet signalled his retreat to the ensuite. Tess folded her arms and peered down at the street. People were out there as if nothing had changed. Women in coats and scarves braced against the winter wind. Men in smart suits striding along the pavement, mobiles to their ears, brows furrowed as if the future of the world depended on their every word. All of them going about their lives, oblivious to what had happened. Skye was dead and yet everything outside was completely normal.
Across the road Rocco, her favourite barista, popped up an umbrella out the front of his cafe. A young woman in a short denim skirt, black top, fishnet tights and Docs pulled up a chair. Rocco tossed his head and laughed at whatever joke passed between them, before he gave an exaggerated bow and ambled back inside, leaving the girl to her phone. A peacock tattoo covered the bare skin of her upper chest. Her short-cropped hair was dyed the darkest shade of black. Boots and tats. Almost a replica of Tess’s own teenage self. Light years ago, well before Skye had asked her to be Grace’s guardian. The request had seemed so lovely at the time, but she’d never considered it legally binding. Could she actually turn around now, a decade later and change her mind? Apparently, Josh thought that was perfectly fine. From the sounds of the opening and closing of drawers in the room behind her, he’d already moved on with his day. She turned to watch him do up his tie in the full-length mirror inside the wardrobe door.
Almost fully dressed now, he stuffed his wallet into the back pocket of his perfectly pressed pants and shrugged on his suit jacket. ‘Tess. I get that you’re upset, but you need to be practical. We both work crazy hours, live in an apartment, don’t have any children of our own. There’s no way we’re equipped to look after a kid we don’t know, who doesn’t know us. I’ve never even laid eyes on her.’
She edged back towards the window, let his words percolate through the layers of emotion the letter had exposed. Was it stupid to even be entertaining the idea? She’d really only seen Grace a few times herself: when Skye came down to the city to buy her first lot of school supplies, briefly as a toddler at Skye’s grandmother’s funeral service, and before that in those early weeks of her life as a newborn. A tiny baby with fresh pink skin and that puzzled where-am-I expression. Totally helpless and completely dependent on her mother. Who could she depend on now if Tess didn’t step up? ‘She’s going to be fostered out to total strangers.’
‘Babe, to her, we are total strangers.’ The cloying scent of his Armani aftershave was suddenly too strong, too close, but at least he was smart enough not to attempt to touch her. ‘Don’t you think she’d be better off with a real family? People who actually know what they’re doing.’
Tess closed her eyes as the shrapnel from his ‘real family’ grenade cut deep. Kids had never been on his agenda. He’d made that perfectly clear the minute they’d become engaged. He didn’t want to risk creating another broken home, he’d said, like the one he’d come from, and it had suited her at the time, when the concept of bringing innocent children into the world had made her insides quiver. They hadn’t discussed it since, had rolled their eyes and changed the subject when others had brought up the b-word, but never seriously talked about it again. So when she’d married him, hadn’t she implicitly agreed to the no-kids deal? Anyway, they were a pair of workaholics who had hardly any free time and lived in the inner city with designer furniture and white walls. None of it was conducive to raising a child, and if it didn’t work out it wouldn’t be fair to dump Grace back into foster care, would it?
Across the street the peacock girl’s perfectly gelled hair gleamed in the winter sunlight. In ten years�
� time she might regret that tattoo, or other choices she’d made. People’s lives can take such different directions to what they’d imagined. The Tess who’d signed the guardianship papers had been living out some kind of Disney godmother fantasy, but now that bubble had well and truly burst, leaving behind the cold, hard stain of reality.
‘I’ll call the woman …’ She cleared her throat. ‘Tell her to make other arrangements.’
‘I am sorry about Skye.’ He squeezed her shoulder, as if that was supposed to make her feel better. ‘Maybe they can tell you more about what happened with her when you call. It would be good for you to have some closure.’
Closure. Psycho-babble for ‘The End’. Everything all neatly packed up in a box, stored away and forgotten, exactly how Josh liked it. The bedside clock clicked over. Seven-thirty. Time was slipping away. Josh needed to get moving, and she needed space. ‘You’d better go.’
He pressed a kiss to her cheek and was gone, no further urging required. In an instant the room, the whole apartment, was quiet, the kind of quiet she imagined that followed the felling of an ancient tree in a forest or the deafening seconds of silence that come after a raging, calamitous storm.
Or perhaps before.
She made her way to the bathroom. Only ten hours ago, she’d stepped into the same shower and scrubbed away the exhaustion of the flight. Now it was something much deeper she needed to remove, something no amount of body wash or exfoliant could cleanse. How was it possible that someone was here on the earth one moment and gone the next? Skye. The letter didn’t even give the cause of death. A razor-sharp pain pierced her chest, swelling into a lump stuck deep in the base of her throat. She opened her mouth, tried to sluice it away, but it refused to budge. She’d always meant to get in touch, meant to check in on her friend and see if she was doing okay. Plan an actual visit. Now it was too late.
Hunched over, naked and dripping, she watched the water swirl around the drain and disappear. A sob broke from her mouth, echoing against the tiles. There was only one thing she could do: rip off the Band-Aid, the faster the better. The FACS office from where the letter was sent was in Redfern, which wasn’t far away. She would call in before her scheduled meeting and see the caseworker. Explain the situation.
And find out what happened to Skye.
Jabbing away at the traffic button wouldn’t make the lights change any quicker, but it was vaguely satisfying. Cleveland Street, as usual, was a virtual car park. A bus lurched past, spewing out a stream of black vapour, making Tess’s stomach roll. Most days she could handle the noise and fumes—it was part of the fabric of the suburb. Chaotic. Loud. Colourful. One big noisy carnival. Surry Hills was so far removed from her childhood in southern Sydney, it was like another planet. As far away from suburbia as you could get. That word, ‘suburbia’, was as bland as the notion, and thankfully she and Josh had been on the same page about where they’d wanted to live. Granted, the craziness wasn’t for everyone. Certainly not Skye. Her idea of heaven was the total opposite: sustainable living on an isolated country property, homeschooling her daughter, sculpting and painting, making just enough money from her artwork to survive.
Two completely different worlds. Was it any wonder she and Skye had drifted apart?
Tess pressed a hand against the ache in her chest. ‘Drifted apart’ was such a handy euphemism. Made it all sound so gentle, so inevitable. So okay.
The beep of the walk signal jolted her forward and across the intersection through the throng of pedestrians. On the corner, a wolfish-looking dog lay sprawled on the footpath beside his owner, who was scraping a squeegee across the windscreen of a car. People rushed past, heads down, absorbed in whatever was flashing on the screens of their phones. Worker bees, all part of the Sydney hive.
She stopped outside a nondescript building, number 219. It was already after nine am, so the FACS office should be open. She pulled the letter from her bag, ignoring the contents as she searched for the name of the person she needed to see. Regina Martin. A woman—a stranger—who had been appointed by a government department to supervise custody arrangements for Skye’s only child, who was now an orphan. Like her mother. History repeating itself in some sick, cruel joke. Skye’s grandmother had loved her like she was her own, but it couldn’t possibly be the same. Tess’s thumb throbbed. She pulled it away from her mouth, wincing at the blistered skin, and wriggled it to get the blood circulating. Where would Grace be right now? Probably stuck in some awful orphanage, or had she already been placed in foster care? All those stories you heard on the news about kids being shoved from one home to the next, at the mercy of people who only wanted to collect a payout … or worse.
Under the cool silk of her long-sleeved shirt, the fine hairs on her forearms stood on end. Surely there were good, honest people out there who did want to do the right thing? People who genuinely wanted to provide a stable, loving family; care for a homeless child. People who were better equipped for parenting than she and Josh were. Of course those people existed. Procrastinating wouldn’t help anyone, certainly not Grace.
Slipping through the automatic doors, Tess checked the directory and made her way up in the elevator, the folded document pulsing like a heartbeat against her palm.
The woman at the reception desk gave a tight-lipped smile. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I need to speak to Regina Martin.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No … no, I don’t.’
‘I can make one for you if you like.’ Her fingers skipped over the keys as she scanned the screen. ‘I can get you in to see her next Tuesday at three forty-five pm.’
Tuesday was four days away. Far too much time to consider her options. Reconsider.
‘I need to see her urgently. It’s in regard to a guardianship case.’ She handed the document across to the receptionist.
A few flyaway hairs sprang from the woman’s centre part as she bowed her head to read, frowning behind her thick-lensed glasses. ‘And you are the guardian named here? Tessa De Santis?’
‘Yes.’
‘Take a seat.’ She rose from her chair and disappeared, the letter still in her hand.
Tess settled back against the hard plastic seat. The waiting room was too warm and reeked of disinfectant. Photos of children of various ages lined the walls, some holding hands with an adult, all of them looking happy and contented. Were they real kids who had been placed in homes, or idealised versions the department wanted the public to see? A door opened and closed along the hall and the receptionist returned, resuming her seat without a word.
‘Ms De Santis?’ A second woman appeared in the waiting room. ‘I’m Regina Martin. Please come in.’ She had a faint accent, maybe Spanish, a lusciously thick set of dark brows, and an air of absolute authority. A bright-orange scarf was wound around her neck and her ripped jeans, definitely not traditional work wear, were a sharp contrast to the tailored charcoal of Tess’s business suit.
The caseworker led the way to her office and waved Tess into a chair. ‘I thought we might have heard from you sooner.’
Snippy, but probably best not to fight fire with fire. Tess put her bag on the floor, took a breath and pasted on her best conciliatory smile. ‘I’m so sorry, but I’ve been overseas for work.’ Considering the gravity of the situation, it was hardly surprising the woman would be questioning her tardiness. ‘I only got back late last night.’
‘We did try to contact you on the phone number found at Ms Whittaker’s house, multiple times.’
Those few missed calls while she’d been in LA, the voicemail she hadn’t bothered listening to. Tess cringed inwardly. No wonder the woman was snaky. Regina Martin leaned forward and shuffled through a pile of manila folders, slid one out and flicked it open. A computer and a wooden carving of an elephant were the only decorations on the desk. Tess plucked away a piece of white fluff caught in the weave of her skirt while the woman read through paperwork, probably re-familiarising herself with the case. She look
ed drawn, slightly harried. It couldn’t be easy dealing with such fraught situations day after day. Eventually she looked up, rested her elbows on the desk and balanced her chin on the arch of her clasped hands. ‘So, you are Grace Whittaker’s legal guardian.’
Was she asking a question or stating a fact? Either way the answer was yes. ‘That’s right.’
‘There’s no father involved?’
‘No. Skye fell pregnant when she was travelling. It was an accident, but she wanted to have the baby.’
‘And when is the last time you saw Grace?’
Tess shrank back into the chair, shifting again as it creaked. The heat in her cheeks was a dead giveaway. She’d read somewhere that if you acknowledged the blush it would subside. And yet her face remained on fire.
‘Ms De Santis?’
‘About five years ago, I think.’
‘You think?’
The incredulity was well warranted. ‘No, it was. I mean … I know it was. In Sydney.’
Regina Martin sat back in her chair. ‘And you haven’t seen her since? Haven’t visited? They didn’t visit you?’
‘No.’
The caseworker tipped her head to the side and frowned. ‘So, I’m curious as to why Grace’s mother would leave her in your care.’
‘We were friends, close friends.’ Tess sucked in a breath. The explanation sounded totally lame, considering the length of time since they’d actually seen each other. ‘Skye had an aversion to the city and I’ve … well … I have a very busy job.’
‘I see.’ Regina Martin pursed her lips as she considered the documents in front of her. ‘It’s my job to make sure that the child is placed with the right people.’ She glanced at Tess’s hand. ‘You’re married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have any children?’
‘No.’
She was noting down every word. ‘And what is it you do for a living?’