by Anna Romer
‘You still haven’t told me what you and your mum talked about.’
I shut my eyes, and when I opened them again, the world was still there; odd, I’d have sworn it had rocked off kilter for a moment. I felt woozy, cold. My fingers tightened around the rail.
‘Mum told me Jamie’s death wasn’t accidental.’
Rob shifted beside me. ‘I don’t understand. I thought you said she fell.’
I stared out across the dark sea. ‘There was an investigation,’ I said quietly. ‘Jamie’s injuries weren’t consistent with a fall, but the police never found any evidence of a third party. Apparently the only ones on the rocks that day were Jamie . . . and me.’
There was a stillness. I imagined I could hear Rob’s brain ticking over; it made a sound like a typewriter dashing out sentences, the clackety-clack of keys increasing in speed until his assessment of what I’d just said was fully formed.
‘Christ,’ he said softly. ‘Now I get your mood. Ruby, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said too quickly.
Rob ran his hand up my spine, rubbing gently between my shoulder blades ‘Seeing your mum again really put a spin on things, didn’t it?’ he said gently.
‘I guess.’
The wind picked up, and he slid his arm around me, tucking me close against his warmth. ‘You know, babe, I hate to say this, but maybe you and Margaret aren’t meant to be friends.’
I looked at him and frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe it’s time to let her go.’
Breaking from him, I stared into his face. He was striking in the starlight, a man carved from granite rather than flesh and blood. All-wise, all-understanding. From the moment I met him three years ago, I had the sense that I’d known him forever; yet he still had the ability to take me by surprise.
‘You mean never see her again?’ I asked softly. ‘Cut all ties with her . . . just like that?’
Rob nodded.
I turned my gaze to the sea. Beyond the jetty lights, it was a vast dark nothingness. Muttonbird Island had been swallowed by the night, and the waves were present in sound only, lapping the invisible shore with their wet sighing-song. The wind tasted of salt and seaweed and waterlogged wood; smells I’d grown accustomed to in the eleven years I’d lived here. Sharp, vigorous smells that had seeped into me and changed me, made me forget the subtle fragrance of the arid western slopes where I’d grown up.
When Mum sold Lyrebird Hill in 1996 and moved us to Armidale, I hadn’t coped with the change. The sprawling university town was in the heart of the New England tablelands of northern New South Wales and its pace was laid-back – but to a girl who’d spent the last six years on a remote property, it was overwhelming. I’d cried for weeks, unable to adjust to life away from my beloved bushland. Away from the river, from the wild-flowers and the freedom. Away from my memories of Jamie. But as the months rolled away, so did my anxiety. Slowly, I came to love Armidale’s leafy tree-lined streets and hustle-bustle of cars and pedestrians and whizzing bicycles. In many ways, the change had done me good.
And yet I’d never been able to shake the feeling of not belonging. Mum and I argued frequently; Jamie’s absence hung heavily between us. The minute I turned eighteen, I packed my bags and escaped to the coast. I got a job in a bookshop, and discovered I was good at it; I worked hard, learned the ropes, and slowly built a life for myself.
A cat wailed in the street beneath us, and in the distance a truck changed gears as it ground uphill on the highway. From the corner of my eye I could see through the patio doors to the white wall where Rob had hung my mother’s darkly colourful painting. A lot of love had gone into rendering that old Singer in such fastidious detail; talent, too, and years of practice. But mostly love.
Could Rob be right? Could it be time to close that chapter of my life and move on? And if so, could I really bear to cut ties with my mother, despite our ragged history?
Beside me, Rob shifted. ‘It’s getting cold, hon. You want to call it a night?’
When he slipped his arm around my shoulders and steered me back inside, I didn’t resist. It was only when we passed the painting that I hesitated. My toes dug into the shagpile rug, anchoring me in place as I studied it. It was a fragment plucked from a world that no longer existed for me; an echo of happy times, a tenuous thread to my childhood. Logic said that Rob was right. Mum and I were in each other’s too-hard basket. We were only making one another unhappy.
It was time to let go.
I tried to back away from the picture, but my toes wouldn’t unclench their grip on the carpet. So I stood there, wishing for a quiet place out of earshot of the sighing waves; a place where I could curl up, shut out the world, and let my thoughts unravel.
Rob drew me back against his chest and pressed his lips into my hair.
I closed my eyes. Into the darkness came our old farmhouse. I could hear a swishing sound. Mum was sweeping the kitchen floor. I was standing in the doorway, thirteen again. The back of my neck prickled, and I kept rolling my head from side to side, trying to get used to the lightness that had replaced my long hair.
I narrowed my eyes at my mother.
I hate you, I said. I hate you for cutting my hair. Jamie loved to braid it, her fingerprints still would’ve been on it. Now it’s gone and I’ll never have it back because you’re sweeping it away. I hate you.
Mum looked over and saw me standing there. She put her broom aside, and stepped over the pile of dusty hair, came towards me. I stood my ground. I wasn’t afraid of her. I knew she hadn’t heard the words I’d said. Only I’d heard, because I’d said them in my heart.
‘Oh, Ruby.’ Gathering me into her arms, she started to cry, hugging me tight, like she used to do when I was small. ‘My sweet little girl, what have I done?’ Her tears scalded my skin. She was soft and smelled like bottled apricots and honey. Once, I would have hugged her back, surprised and glad for the attention. But now I just stood there, listening as she sobbed my name over and over, as if she had lost not only Jamie, but me as well.
Rob left at dawn the following morning to catch a flight to Melbourne for five days of book promotion. I headed home to Sawtell, stopping by the supermarket on the way to grab some supplies. Despite it being Sunday, the shops were crammed with people and I was glad to escape back to the car.
My old Corolla chugged along at ninety, rattling and groaning and occasionally letting out a pop. She’d seen better days, and Rob was always warning about the perils of driving a relic four years older than I was. To my way of thinking, buying a new car seemed somehow disloyal. This old girl had been a faithful friend, and while she still had some life in her, I’d never dream of upgrading.
Pulling into my driveway, I climbed the stairs to the verandah. An enormous fluffy white cat was sunning herself in a patch of early light. She must have detected the contents of my grocery bag, because she curled around my legs, squeaking in excitement.
‘Hello there, Sissy.’
She belonged to Earle Bradley, the retiree who helped me at the shop. Earle had returned home a couple of days ago, after the successful removal of a malignant sunspot. Sissy’s appearance on my doorstep meant that Earle was out and about. He lived a few doors up the street, and I’d only seen him briefly since his return from Sydney, and was looking forward to catching up.
Hoisting Sissy onto my hip, I unlocked the door and went inside. The house was musty after being closed up overnight, so I put Sissy on the floor and walked through the house, opening windows. Kicking off my shoes, I retrieved my thongs from under the dining table, and took my groceries out to the kitchen.
Soon the aroma of sizzling bacon and fried tomato, melted cheese, eggs and toast filled my small cosmos. I collected a plate for myself, and one for the cat, and stacked them with bacon, then added cheese and tomato and a handful of wilted dandelion greens to mine. I was just about to retire to the patio when someone knocked on the back door.
‘Yoo-hoo, Ruby, are you de
cent?’
‘Come in, Earle,’ I called, grabbing a third plate. ‘We’re in the kitchen. Hope you’re hungry.’
A stooped man in a wide-brimmed hat and oversized tartan shorts shuffled in bearing an armload of pink roses. Earle was in his seventies, an ex-florist who had in retirement discovered a passion for books – which was how he’d ended up working part-time in the Busy Bookworm.
‘How are you today, Earle?’
‘Fighting fit, old girl.’ Placing his flowers on the table, he grabbed Sissy and lifted her with some effort into his arms, rubbing her generous belly.
‘What’s this, Sis? You’re skin and bone.’ He kissed her pink nose, then eased her back onto the floor. ‘Hurry up with that breakfast, Ruby. Poor old Sis looks like she’s about to fade away to nothing.’
Sissy let out a yowl and ran to my legs.
‘Stop teasing her, Earle. You’ll give her a complex.’
Earle chuckled. ‘Dear old Sis, I love her to bits no matter her size. She was my wife’s cat. Did you know that, Ruby?’
I nodded. Earle’s wife had died five years ago. He often talked about her with great affection, and I knew he missed her terribly. ‘It must be good to have a link to her.’
‘It is, old girl. Indeed it is.’
Rummaging under the sink, Earle located a vase and filled it with water. By the time I’d topped his plate with bacon and eggs, he’d arranged the roses into a delightful spray and given them pride of place on the kitchen table.
‘They’re gorgeous,’ I said, passing his plate. ‘You really are a gem, Earle.’
We adjourned to the patio, Sissy quick on our heels, meowing for her bacon. Earle wedged himself at the small picnic table that took up most of the limited space, while I pulled my chair into the only patch of shade.
Earle tucked into his eggs with relish. ‘You look peaky, old thing. Been sleeping okay?’
I pulled a face. ‘Not really.’
‘You worry too much.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘How’s your young fella, is he behaving himself?’
I scraped my toast corner through a smear of egg yolk, and faked a bright smile. ‘He’s fine. On his way to Melbourne as we speak, promoting his book.’
‘How long this time?’
Peeling off a bacon rind, I dropped it onto Sissy’s plate. ‘All week.’
Earle muttered something I didn’t catch, then asked, ‘How’s the shop? Any of my customers complaining that they never see me?’
‘They all miss you. Even that grouchy Mrs Altman.’
Earle rolled his eyes, and forked up a mushy tomato. ‘I’ll have to watch that one. I think she’s taken a bit of a shine to me.’
‘Oh Earle, I’m really glad the op was a success.’ I lifted my tea cup. ‘I propose a toast. To new skin. And new beginnings.’
‘Hear, hear.’
We clinked, then ate for a while in silence. Sissy began her wash, the warm sea breeze ruffling her long hair. Earle mopped his plate with a bread crust, then sat back. His hat – which he rarely removed – shadowed his eyes, but I could sense his gaze on my face.
I feigned interest in the ocean but Rob’s words continued to haunt me.
Maybe you and Margaret aren’t meant to be friends.
In the dazzling morning light, with the sun bleaching the colour from the sky and the waves crashing on the beach below, his advice seemed rational, the logical ending to a relationship that had been fraught with conflict and resentment. But in the quiet darkness inside me, I ached with fear. Without her, I’d be cast adrift; a nobody, a nothing. A ghost. Anything was better than that. Even being in my mother’s too-hard basket was preferable to being out of her life altogether.
‘You all right, old girl?’ Earle asked, watching me.
‘Yeah,’ I said, too brightly. Then I slumped. ‘Well, no actually. I’m a bit out of sorts.’
‘Thought so. Boyfriend trouble?’
I hadn’t told Earle about the bra; I knew he didn’t really approve of Rob, and I wanted to avoid a lecture, so I just shrugged.
‘Not really.’ I sighed.
‘Then it can only be your mum.’
‘Rob thinks I should cut ties with her.’
Earle sat back. ‘Cut ties? That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t know my mum.’
‘I know you, and you’re all right. Whoever raised you can’t be that much of a dragon.’
I stared out to sea. A flock of gulls swarmed overhead and then dissipated in a squall of cries. Taking a deep breath, I told Earle about the conversations with Esther Hillard, and then my mother, and how they had left me feeling so unsettled.
Earle listened intently. When I finished speaking, he looked directly into my eyes and asked quietly, ‘They think your sister was murdered?’
I hadn’t heard those words spoken aloud until now. I searched Earle’s face, terrified that he would join the dots and arrive at the same conclusion my mother had apparently come to all those years ago.
Did you have a fight? What did you do to her?
But Earle only shook his head and gave a low whistle. ‘That puts a spin on things, doesn’t it? What about suspects? Didn’t the forensics crew find anything?’
‘Mum said it rained that day, and any evidence was washed away.’
‘Which means that the police would have given you and your mother the third degree. Do you remember being questioned?’
I shook my head. ‘That whole year is a blank. At least, it was until recently.’
‘You’ve remembered something?’
I nodded, and before I could change my mind I shared the awful memory that had returned: Mum and me, the hair scissors. Any resemblance I shared with my sister, gone. Cut away.
Sissy must have heard the tremor in my voice because she rubbed against my legs and started up her purr engines. Reaching down, I dragged her onto my lap and buried my face in the soft fur of her neck. Only then did I find the courage to go on. ‘I think Mum believes I was the one who hurt Jamie.’
Earle studied my face, his frown scaring me. But his eyes were kind, and when he finally spoke his voice was gentle.
‘And you’ve been carrying that burden all your life, haven’t you, old girl.’
I hunched into myself, digging my fingertips into my ribs. The question burned, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. ‘What if it was my fault she died? What if I was the one who killed her?’
Earle collected the dishes and piled them in the centre of the table, then made a tower out of our tea cups. Resting his elbows on the table, he steepled his fingers against his mouth and regarded me.
‘Seems to me like you have some remembering to do.’
‘Rob says digging up the past is dangerous for some people.’
‘Poppycock.’
‘But he says—’
‘Living in the past is dangerous, old thing. But in my humble view, remembering can be a way to heal. Especially when your wounds run deep.’
‘But what if I remembered that I’m responsible for my sister’s death?’
Earle examined my face a long while before speaking. ‘Then you’d have to face the music and deal with it. But you can’t pass judgement on yourself until you know the facts. Innocent until proven guilty, right?’
Below on the beach, the waves rushed along the shore, smoothing the tracks made by dog walkers and joggers and the lone man with his metal detector. They all seemed a world away from the bubble of confusion and fear in which I suddenly found myself.
‘I wouldn’t know where to begin,’ I said.
Sissy head-butted me, then curled against my chest and began to settle in for a nap. She’d grown heavy and my legs had pins and needles.
Earle adjusted the tower of plates. ‘Everything you need to know is locked away inside your old noggin. All you have to do is find the right key.’
‘You make it sound easy.’
‘If it was me,’ Earle said, �
��I’d be talking to that neighbour of yours, the one you ran into at the gallery.’
I shifted uncomfortably, trying to rearrange my legs under Sissy’s tremendous weight. ‘She did invite me to visit. She even suggested I stay a few days.’
‘Then what are you waiting for?’
I slumped, still daunted by the idea of returning to my old home. ‘Maybe for my courage to kick in?’
‘Courage is overrated, old girl.’
‘Not when you don’t have any.’
Earle sighed. ‘Ruby, do you want to spend the rest of eternity torturing yourself over what you may or may not have done? Don’t waste your young life worrying about events you can’t change. Just make the decision, take the first step, and then see what happens from there. You’ll find a way to cope, I promise.’
Despite myself, I laughed. ‘You sound like Rob.’
Earle shook his head and grimaced. ‘Lord help me.’
The following Friday I pulled up outside Coffs Harbour airport. Rob was due back early that morning because he had a ten o’clock session in the clinic. What better way to welcome him home than with a healthy deli breakfast and a surprise pick-up from the airport?
I arrived right on eight. The terminal was small, which meant there were limited flights in and out every day. A plane had just come in from Sydney, and newly disembarked passengers were making their way across the tarmac. The single arrival-and-departure lounge faced the airstrip, and had a view beyond to grassy flatlands. I searched the stream of people but Rob wasn’t among them.
Back in my car, I wondered if I’d got the day wrong.
Then again, maybe he’d arrived last night?
I drove back to the link road and followed it into Coffs, turning at the roundabout and heading east to the jetty. I found a park along an embankment of garden, and hurried up the street to Rob’s apartment building. It was a balmy autumn day, the air from the ocean salty and fresh. Inside the building, I climbed the stairs and pressed Rob’s buzzer, pleased when the intercom crackled to life and Rob answered.