Crimson Dawn

by Fleur McDonald

  ‘And I got nervous, so that makes us a good pair, I guess.’ He gave a short laugh.

  Laura grinned. ‘Yeah, I guess it does.’

  ‘So, do you want to catch up?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Right.’

  She knew she owed him an explanation. Each time she closed her eyes, she could see Catherine’s email—the letters large and written in red: ‘GET OVER YOURSELF!’

  ‘Tim, I’m sorry. You don’t know everything that happened between Josh and me, but that’s why I’m not keen to get involved with anyone. I don’t want to get hurt again. I can’t get hurt again.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Laura. What I want to be is the man who helps you open your heart again. Let me know when you decide. But don’t wait too long.’ It was Tim who hung up.

  Laura remained sitting on the ground, thinking about what he’d said. Eventually, she glanced down at her watch. It was time to get a wriggle on. The girls would be back from Mangalow very soon.

  Climbing up into the tractor again, she started it up. She hit the hydraulics to make the arms fold out, then opened up the armrest to get out the instruction booklet for the spray rig.

  Inside, there was the pouch she’d seen in the ute a few weeks before. Staring at it, Laura suddenly realised what the smell earlier had been. Allie had been smoking weed while driving the tractor. Here was the cause of all her mistakes.

  Laura breathed out and leaned back in her seat. Finally she reached for the pouch and opened it. Inside was some leafy green material. It was exactly as she’d expected.

  ‘Oh, Allie,’ she whispered.

  Chapter 31

  2008

  ‘Tim, it’s Laura,’ she said quietly into the phone.

  There was a silence.

  ‘How are you going?’

  Laura considered what he could be thinking. ‘I, uh.’ She stopped but Tim didn’t say anything and she had a feeling he would wait her out. ‘I need some help.’

  ‘What kind of help?’

  ‘It’s Allie,’ she said. ‘She’s doing drugs and . . .’

  ‘Allie? One of your students?’ Tim’s voice rose a notch.

  ‘Yeah. I found some weed in the tractor today.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just . . .’ Frustrated, she ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I guess I needed someone to talk to. Catherine’s overseas and Dad’s at work. You’re grounded and sensible.’

  She couldn’t mistake his sarcasm when he answered. ‘Well, that must make me attractive, then.’

  There was silence again.

  ‘Could you come out?’ Laura ventured.

  ‘You know I can. See you soon.’

  ‘This could damage your reputation, your school, everything. Come on!’ Tim urged.

  ‘I know, I know. But I don’t feel comfortable going through Allie’s things without her permission.’

  They stood on the stairs leading up to the students’ quarters. Laura swung between anger and anxiety. Going through a student’s personal space had never entered her head before. But when Tim arrived he’d confirmed that the green leaves were definitely not tobacco.

  ‘She won’t have left anything behind,’ Laura argued. ‘Allie’s gone for the weekend. Surely she’d take her supply with her.’

  ‘But we might find other evidence to give you ammunition to deal with this.’ Tim stood firm. ‘Come on. You asked for help. You wanted my advice. This is it! Let’s go.’ He propelled her towards the door.

  Laura knew he was right. Everything she’d worked for was at risk. Her school, her farm—her family’s farm!—her livelihood and everything she’d achieved in her life. No student was going to put that in jeopardy.

  Laura opened the door purposefully and strode inside. She stopped. The place looked like a bomb had hit it. There was food on the bench, clothes all over the floor and empty Ruski bottles on the table.

  Tim bumped into her.

  ‘What the—?’ Laura couldn’t finish.

  Tim looked around silently.

  ‘The other girls have anything to do with this?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Laura answered certainly. ‘Not in a million years.’

  ‘But they left after Allie?’

  Laura was silent.

  ‘Laura?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Would you have expected them to clean it up?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Laura said slowly, making her way through the mess to where she knew Robyn slept.

  She opened the door and looked into a neat and tidy room which smelt faintly of the deodorant Robyn used. The bed was made and clothes hung in the wardrobe.

  Next she looked into Tegan’s room and found the same thing.

  She gathered up some of the clothes on the floor in the living area and examined them. They were Allie’s.

  ‘You know what I think?’ She turned to Tim, who was looking in the fridge.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I think they’re sick of looking out for her. Trying to help her. Hiding the problem. These are all Allie’s things.’ She swept her arm around, indicating the mess. ‘Look in their rooms. They’re spick and span. Respected. Maybe they hoped I’d come in here, or maybe they’re so sick of doing it all themselves, they’ve left it for her to clean up when she gets back. Tough love, sort of thing.’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Tim agreed.

  Slowly they started picking through the mess.

  ‘I don’t really know what I’m looking for,’ Laura confessed, straightening up.

  ‘Me either. Anything that appears out of place, I guess.’

  ‘You know what? I’m going to start in her bedroom. The more I think about this, the more I’m sure she doesn’t know the girls are on to her and Allie is still trying to hide her addiction.’ She stopped and looked around, shaking her head. ‘It’s gotta be an addiction, doesn’t it, Tim?’

  He considered for a moment then nodded. ‘I can only speculate, but it certainly looks that way.’

  Laura closed her eyes. What a god-awful state of affairs. ‘How do people end up like this?’ she said. But she realised there wasn’t a simple answer. From newspaper articles and current affairs shows she knew it happened all the time. Without warning. To ‘good’ families who walked with their kids every step of their childhood, and to families who didn’t. To kids who had been offered everything, and to kids who’d been given nothing.

  In Allie’s room, Laura had to fight the urge to hold a hand over her nose. The unclean odour was powerful. Thick dust covered the dressing table and windowsill. The grimy sheets showed that the slide hadn’t happened overnight. It had been going on for a long while. Photos on the dresser had fallen over and Allie hadn’t even bothered to stand them up.

  Gingerly, Laura pulled open a drawer in the dresser. Knickers and bras had been thrown in haphazardly, but a quick rifle through showed nothing out of the ordinary. The next drawer down was full of shirts but, again, there was nothing unusual. The wardrobe also held nothing of interest.

  Laura turned to the bedside table. The first drawer contained cough mixture and a codeine-based painkiller, plenty of used tissues, pens, paper and a mobile phone charger. Something else caught her eye. She pulled out what looked like a grandfather’s pipe. She sniffed at it. There was the unmistakable smell of marijuana.

  She bent over and looked in between the table and the bed, and spotted the corner of an iPad sticking out from underneath the pillow. Reaching for it, she realised it was actually an iPod.

  She called out to Tim, telling him what she’d found. ‘But why would Allie have left it behind? Don’t kids live their lives on these things?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe she’s got more than one,’ he yelled from the other room. ‘My thirteen-year-old niece has a really small one that she just keeps music on and another that looks more like a phone that she uses for watching movies and taking photos.’

  Laura hadn’
t known he had a niece. She opened her mouth to say so, but looked instead at the device in her hand. She pressed the round button. The iPod lit up.

  Laura’s mouth fell open. On the screen was a photo of a topless Allie lying back on a bed, her lips in a sultry pout as she stared right at the camera. One arm was outstretched and partly out of frame. Her other hand rested on the curly hair of a man who lay across her body. His nose was on the dip between her breasts, a finger pressed to one nostril. There appeared to be something white on Allie’s skin just where the man’s nose was.

  Laura zoomed in and gasped. Was he sniffing cocaine? She started to shake. Pressing the button again, she found where the photos were stored and tapped on the screen to open the files.

  In another photo, Allie was leaning over a bed; Laura could only see part of her face. The same man was behind her, his groin pressed up against Allie’s bottom, his hands on her waist. He wore dark sunglasses, with what looked like a joint hanging from his mouth.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Laura muttered, appalled.

  ‘What’s up?’ Tim appeared in the doorway.

  Wordlessly, Laura held the worst photo out to him. Tim looked at it for a long time then whistled as he came to the same conclusion.

  ‘Sex parties and selfies,’ he said with certainty.

  ‘I won’t ask how you know that.’ Laura turned away, so he couldn’t see the look on her face. She’d been right to keep Tim at a distance, she decided. Obviously, if he knew about these sorts of things, he couldn’t be trusted.

  He gently grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. ‘But I’ll tell you, anyway. Just so you don’t get the wrong idea. You have a habit of jumping to conclusions or lumping everyone into the same category, Laura Murphy. Are you listening?’ He tugged softly at her ear. ‘I’ve heard rumours of these parties involving, ah, how should I say it? Some of the younger people in the district. Everyone throws their knickers and jocks into the bowl and takes their pick. Then, so I hear, they get more adventurous. Taking photos, and other things. Pretty revolting stuff, really. Like I say, only rumours until now, but this pretty much confirms it. Believe me now?’

  ‘How do you hear this stuff?’

  Tim shrugged. ‘You know how people like to talk in country towns. I see a lot of people. Hear a lot of things. Never repeat any of it, because you just don’t know. I’m not about to ruin my business by spreading rumours.’

  ‘I have never heard of anything like this. This shit happens in America, not here!’ Laura was astonished and repelled at the same time.

  ‘Laura, one thing I’ve learned by living in a country town is that anything and everything can happen. The wildest fiction is likely to be truth in the country.’ Tim shook his head. ‘So, sex and selfies. Not a good mix. She must have been out of it to do that!’

  ‘Selfies?’ Laura asked.

  ‘You know—taking photos of yourself. It’s all the rage these days with the kids. They post them onto Facebook or Instagram.’

  He tapped at the screen. ‘Do you know this bloke?’

  ‘No.’ She grimaced. ‘So you’re telling me that Allie isn’t only doing drugs, she’s somehow caught up in this sex party thing? Is it local, like really local?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t heard anything about it for quite a few months—almost a year, probably—so I’d actually forgotten all about it. I’m pretty sure this is local, though. Even though the guy that Allie is uh, with, isn’t. Look, here’s another one. How many couples can you count here and how many do you know?’ He held the device out to her. Laura took it with trepidation and scrutinised the photo. There, in the dark, she could make out two people. One was the slim figure of one of the local nurses she knew by sight. The other was a man. He was visible only from behind, and yet Laura couldn’t help thinking the long legs and silhouette were familiar.

  Laura’s throat felt dry and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Wanting to be rid of the filthy photo, she pressed the button on the iPod again and took a breath. ‘We’d better get on,’ she mumbled, not looking at Tim. ‘In fact, I just want to get outta here. Bloody hell.’

  ‘Before we go, did you find anything else?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Oh yeah. This.’ She opened the drawer into the bedside table and held up the pipe. ‘And cough syrup and painkillers.’

  Tim frowned. He picked up the prescription drugs and read the labels.

  Deciding she couldn’t give up the search now, Laura moved to the small table that served as a makeshift desk. It was covered with books and dirty clothes. She began to methodically sort through everything.

  ‘Laura,’ Tim said urgently.

  She turned.

  ‘You know what she’s doing here?’ He held up the painkillers and the bottle of cough syrup.

  Laura felt numb. ‘I don’t think anything will surprise me now.’

  ‘She’s making her own drugs. Codeine, cough mixture and alcohol get you high. It’s cheap and easy. There’s scotch down here.’ He held up a bottle that he’d found under the bed. ‘She drinks it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Laura couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘She had a cold a couple of weeks ago,’ she began weakly, but stopped as he shook his head.

  Sighing, she went back to the job at hand. Soon she’d cleared the desk, but for some cigarette papers and the lid of a jam jar containing some type of small seed. ‘Shit. Tim?’ She handed him the jar lid.

  Tim pressed his finger onto a seed and held it up to eye level.

  ‘Marijuana,’ he confirmed.

  Laura then held up the cigarette papers. ‘For rolling joints.’

  ‘Far out, there are plenty of problems in this room, aren’t there?’ She shook her head, suddenly feeling an overwhelming sadness. ‘Damn it, Allie was such a good kid.’

  ‘She’s going to have to go, Laura,’ he said gently, confirming what Laura was already thinking. ‘And I’m serious. This isn’t good.’

  ‘I know.’ Laura’s heart ached for the girl, and she thumped her fist on the table. ‘What could have gone wrong in her life to make her turn to this? There was no indication when she came for her interview. Something must have changed.’

  Tim reached out to hold her but Laura pulled away. She had to fix this.

  ‘Right. I’ll phone Allie and ask her to come in on Monday morning for a meeting. She can pack her things up and leave by lunchtime.’

  ‘Good plan.’

  They stood silently, Laura feeling a myriad of emotions. Betrayed, sad, angry, worried. This room was the final sign of a life that was self-destructing.

  ‘I know what she’s doing,’ Laura said abruptly. ‘These photos. They’ve not fallen over, she’s turned them face down.’ She picked up one of the frames. Laura recognised the elderly couple as Allie’s grandparents. They were smiling proudly at the camera and in between them stood Allie, dressed in a school uniform. She was holding a prefect’s badge.

  ‘A year-twelve office holder,’ Laura said as she handed the photo to Tim. She grabbed the next one. Allie with her sisters and mother on a beach. Three girls, young, lithe, carefree and covered in sand, beside their smiling mum. ‘Do you see? She’s embarrassed about what she’s doing. She doesn’t even want the photos of her family to see it. Look at her mum. So proud! And I know she raised those girls all by herself.’

  It was sad, but it gave Laura some hope: if Allie knew what she was doing was stupid, if she’d just got mixed up in the wrong crowd, surely she could find a way back.

  Desperate for clean air, Laura put the photo face down on the dresser again and headed for the front door.

  ‘Jacob Collins,’ Tim said, following her outside.

  Caught up in her own thoughts Laura jumped at the sound of his voice. ‘What?’

  ‘Jacob Collins. You know, the Mount Gambier footy player. Do you remember, it was all over the local news for a while. So successful that he became the captain of the team. Won a heap of medals and accolade after accolade. But he still stuffed up. Hung o
ut with the wrong crowd and got on to drugs. He lost everything for a time—the footy club said he couldn’t play, then he lost his job. He went into rehab, then swore he was clean when he came out. Everyone gave him a second chance and he buggered that up too. He’s got the most supportive family in the world and yet they haven’t been able to help him.’

  Laura nodded and turned to look at Tim. She noticed he was holding an envelope in his hand. ‘What have you got there?’ she asked.

  Tim didn’t say anything for a moment, just batted it against his other hand. He responded with his own question. ‘Do you think it could have been Allie who drugged Random?’

  ‘No.’ Laura allowed herself a small laugh. ‘That is ridiculous, Tim. No matter what’s happened to her, I’m sure she wouldn’t hurt me.’

  ‘This might change your mind.’ He handed her the envelope.

  Slowly she lifted the flap, took out the piece of paper inside, unfolded it and glanced at the handwritten words.

  Here’s what you need for the Adelaide show. Just crush it up and put it in one of the feed troughs.

  Chapter 32

  2008

  Laura was at her desk updating the farm books, when she heard a car pull up. Rip started to bark.

  ‘Yep, it’s him,’ she said to the excited dog.

  They both walked out to the verandah just in time to see Tim unfold his long frame from his dual-cab ute.

  Laura watched as his face split into a large grin and her stomach flip-flopped. She smiled back. She still marvelled at how this handsome man, who had been such a gangly teenager with braces and pimples, had this effect on her.

  Laura knew she wouldn’t have managed the last couple of weeks without his friendship. Which was all they shared, although she was aware he wanted more. He’d said as much the night before, when they’d eaten dinner together. She’d said something about everything being open to change and he’d responded that he was well and truly hoping that was the case.

  Laura had kicked him under the table, but enjoyed the feeling of goosebumps on her skin when he touched her hand.

  ‘Hey, good lookin’.’ Tim opened the back of his ute and pulled out a bag of dog food.