Sixty Seconds

by Jesse Blackadder

  I looked at my watch. ‘Gotta meet Laura back at school in an hour.’

  ‘Laura?’ He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Girlfriend.’ I said.

  Tom grinned. ‘Let’s go then.’

  We did. We ran and we ran and we ran.

  FINN

  The plane banked in a sweeping curve, tilting so Finn saw the sun glint off the harbour, silhouetting the spindly span of the bridge against its brilliance. He shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the window. A headache pinched the base of his neck and his eyelids felt scraped.

  Edmund had called at seven-thirty, after Jarrah left for school and before Bridget woke. He had a Sydney barrister friend – owed him a favour – who could fit in an emergency appointment that day and would work with the local solicitor. Edmund even booked the flight. All Finn had to do was throw a change of clothes into a bag, leave a note on the fridge and call a taxi to the airport. It was a relief to escape before Bridget woke. Before he had to ask where she’d been all night. And with whom.

  And then he’d go on, Finn decided, down to Hobart to see his father. Needed to hear his voice. Needed to hold him. Needed to counter the fear that Conor’s words had sent shooting through his body, no matter that his brother said to stay away.

  The bump on the tarmac jolted Finn back to the present and he opened his eyes as the plane’s brakes went on and his body, animal-like, braced. Was it a copout to run without waking Bridget? Was he a coward for not wanting to know how she’d spent her night?

  Three options Finn could figure: she’d been alone, with Meredith, or with Chen. She didn’t know anyone else up there well enough. He didn’t want to think about the third option. Had no right to be suspicious. He was probably way off track. If Bridget thought he’d been worrying about her fidelity she’d be even more furious. He couldn’t ask her. Shouldn’t even be thinking it. What was wrong with him?

  It was a relief to see Edmund waiting at the gate. When he gave Finn a hug and thumped his back, Finn fought back the urge to hang on for too long, and stepped back, swallowing hard.

  ‘Fucking hell, Finn,’ Edmund said. ‘Not fair. Not on top of everything.’

  Finn spread his hands helplessly. ‘That solicitor you got reckons it won’t go far.’

  Edmund nodded. ‘Hope he’s right. Let’s go. My mate said to come straight to his office.’

  Sydney. Loud, hot, concrete, metallic. Traffic streamed. Horns blared. Doors slammed. An assault, and yet welcome. Something, in the place of the awful silence at their house, broken by the hideous on and off schedule of the pool pump. The radio shouted at him. Finn had time to register his name before Edmund flicked it off.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Talkback. Everyone’s got an opinion. You don’t need to hear it. Skip the papers too, and be glad you’re not into social media.’

  Finn shook his head, dazed. He was being discussed on public radio. His private, secret choice to protect Bridget was spinning out of control.

  It was forty excruciating minutes before Jack Ferguson QC could see them, and there was nothing reassuring in his manner. He grilled Finn on everything that had happened, then sat back in his chair thoughtfully, scanning his notes.

  ‘The solicitor said it wouldn’t go anywhere.’ Finn had repeated this to himself during the night until it felt like solid truth.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Jack flipped through some papers and extracted a document. ‘Testing a new law will get attention. This coronial joint inquest into toddler drownings recommended the charge be introduced, and they’ve been waiting to try it in court.’

  ‘But Jack, I’ve looked at that report,’ Edmund interjected. ‘The coroner said none of the parents in the eight deaths he examined would have been subject to such a charge.’

  ‘True.’ Jack found the page he was looking for and read aloud. ‘The existence of such a criminal charge would however emphasise the importance to the community in general of taking matters, such as the maintenance of pool fencing and gates, seriously, and the public condemnation of the failure to do so when a life is lost as a result.’

  He lowered the paper. ‘The aim is to reduce deaths by making pool owners aware of how serious their obligation is, and to remind them this can happen to anyone. There’s been one charge of manslaughter in relation to this, which didn’t proceed, so they’re still waiting for a test case. While the judge will be cognisant of your loss, Mr Brennan, it doesn’t mean he or she won’t make an example of you for the greater good.’

  ‘And what would that mean?’ Edmund asked. ‘Are we talking jail?’

  Finn flinched. However hard he tried, he just couldn’t catch up. He still barely understood he’d been arrested. Hadn’t even thought ahead to a court case, let alone jail. Don’t worry, the solicitor had told him. Don’t worry.

  ‘It’s a very serious charge,’ Jack said. ‘A criminal conviction and a custodial sentence are certainly potential outcomes. We’ll put up a strong case for the committal hearing in the Local Court. That’s where the magistrate decides if it will go on to a full trial. Obviously we’ll be trying to get the charges dropped. That’s what’s happened in other comparable cases.’

  ‘Right,’ Finn said.

  ‘Your local solicitor will do a lot of the legwork and I’ll consult with him from this point onwards,’ Jack said. ‘There’ll be a mention in the Local Court this week or next to set down the date for the committal hearing.’

  ‘How long’s this going to take?’ Finn asked.

  Jack shrugged slightly. ‘A committal hearing – up to six months. If it does go to trial – well, we’d be looking at a year or two. Maybe more.’

  ‘Um, right.’ Finn still couldn’t take it in. ‘A year, did you say? How much will it cost?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now,’ Edmund interrupted. ‘We’ve taken enough of Jack’s time this morning.’

  Moments later Finn found himself outside on the street, cars roaring past, pedestrians pushing and shuffling around them.

  Edmund took his elbow. ‘Lunch.’

  They set off, winding through the crowds. It was too busy to walk side by side, and Finn fell behind, watching the back of Edmund’s head to keep oriented. He had a bald spot developing there. Had Bridget ever grasped his hair the way she used to grasp Finn’s, during sex? He hadn’t thought about the two of them together for years. Ancient history. A short fling two decades earlier, way before Finn was on the scene. Bridget had introduced them and Edmund had become his agent – as a favour to her, Finn presumed. Edmund had always been starry-eyed about Bridget. All Finn could see now was Bridget with Edmund, in horrible clear images. Maybe that was easier than imagining where she might have been all night?

  Edmund led him into a pub and through to a beer garden. Left Finn alone for a few minutes and came back with beer and salt and vinegar chips.

  ‘It’s in between breakfast and lunch. Start with this.’

  Finn took a long swallow. The cool slip of beer and the chips’ sharp salt on his tongue were things to focus on. ‘I need to know about the cost,’ he said.

  ‘Cost doesn’t matter. You’ve got to fight this. With any luck you’ll win at the committal and it won’t go to trial. And here’s the thing: Jack wants a sculpture, so you can pay this first part of his fees in kind.’

  ‘What kind of sculpture?’

  ‘Something in your steampunk style. That will take care of the committal hearing.’

  Finn put down his beer. ‘If there’s a trial and this goes on for two years, what kind of money am I looking at?’

  ‘Being straight: a lot. But let’s go one step at a time.’

  A myna landed on the back of the chair next to Finn, looking at the half-finished chips spilling from their packet on the table. Head tilted to one side, bright black eye weighing up risk and opportunity. The sounds around Finn rolled heavily, like a slowed-down soundtrack.

  ‘We’ve sold the house,’ he said at last. ‘Terrible price, but I guess there�
��ll be some money from that we can use.’

  ‘Already?’ Edmund raised his drink. ‘First, the committal. Finish the first commission and do the sculpture for Jack. Let’s reassess after that. I can help you out. It’ll be OK.’

  Finn took a deep breath, and a second one. His heart was thudding so hard it hurt and his stomach was turning over and over. The beer shifted in his gut, a swallow away from hurtling back up.

  ‘How’s Bridget doing?’ Edmund asked.

  ‘They’ve sent her out on fieldwork, get her away from the office. That woman from the foundation has been around a bit, I think that helps her.’

  ‘Is she with you on this? Do you need me to talk to her?’

  ‘She’s with me.’ Finn picked up his glass again, glancing casually at Edmund and then away. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He’d become scared of the thing. Scared of its silence. Scared of the fact that he didn’t know how to call Bridget and tell her he might end up in jail.

  He fumbled it out. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Finn, it’s Angela. I saw the papers. Are you OK?’

  Finn nodded numbly. ‘I’m in Sydney. Just saw a barrister.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Finn, I know this is a terrible time, but the sale’s fallen over. They saw the news. They were teetering and that pushed them over the edge. It’s off.’

  Nothing had changed around him. The myna was still considering a pounce on the chips. The three women at the next table laughed uproariously. Over in the corner, an old guy drank by himself. The world went on. Finn had enough presence of mind to swipe and end the call. He laid the phone carefully on the table.

  ‘The buyer pulled out,’ he whispered.

  They sat in silence. The myna darted forwards, snatched a crinkled chip, fluttered out of reach.

  ‘Come and stay,’ Edmund said suddenly. ‘All of you. You’ve got to get out of there. You can leave the house on the market or rent it out, whatever. We can find somewhere for Jarrah to go to school, and Bridge can start looking for a job.’

  Maybe Edmund was right, Finn thought. Nothing good could come of that place. Maybe once they got the hell out things would change. Maybe he’d find some path to Bridget again, draw her back before the gulf between them went too wide and too deep.

  ‘I can stay with a friend and give you the place to yourselves,’ Edmund urged. ‘Call Bridget now. Tell her and Jarrah to pack and fly down. You don’t even need to go back.’

  Finn raised a wry eyebrow. ‘I’m not game for that, not without talking to her. Anyway, I want to fly on to Hobart. I need to see Dad.’

  ‘Some advice,’ Edmund said. ‘Stay here tonight. Tomorrow, go back north. Talk to Bridget, get organised, get out of there. You could be back here by the weekend. Visit Hobart once you’ve sorted this.’

  Finn sat back. Would Bridget come around? What would Jarrah feel about it? It was gut-wrenching to realise he had no idea.

  BRIDGET

  Rain drums on the window as you wake slowly, trying to hold the first moment between rising out of sleep and actual awareness. The most precious moment of the day.

  The second moment is the one that takes you out. When you remember, and the movie begins reeling behind your eyes, the unravelling of that day, the reliving. And then, the testing. Today, what level of pain? What resources have you marshalled – if any – through the night to help you? Will the day knock you to your knees or will you be able to stagger through it?

  All this before you open your eyes.

  It feels late. It was daylight by the time you fell into bed, and amazingly you dozed off. You lift yourself a little, force your eyes open and peer at the bedside clock. It’s ten-seventeen. Against the odds, you’ve managed a few hours’ sleep.

  It’s a work day. Chen will also have had just a few hours’ sleep, if that. He said to text him if you wanted to work and he’d pick you up. It’s too early to know if you can. It’s a one-step-at-a-time day. Think no further than the next action. First, open your eyes. Second, move your body from the bed. Third, shower.

  The house is echoingly empty. Jarrah will have gone to school, of course. But you sense Finn’s absence from the studio even before you find the sticky note on the fridge.

  Gone to Sydney. Edmund’s organised a barrister. Then seeing Dad in Hobart. Back on the weekend.

  You stare at it stupidly. Finn was arrested yesterday, you remember. Once upon a time it would have been the biggest problem you’d faced.

  Next step: breakfast. You can do this. Toasted muesli and milk, the simplest possible meal to prepare. You pour muesli into a bowl and open the fridge. It’s stuffed with leftovers and dropoffs and handouts, people’s kindnesses, most now seeping in their plastic, furred with mould. Still you can’t manage the simple act of scraping the offerings into the bin. You find the milk, shut the door on the whole mess of it, and tilt the carton. A glob falls onto your muesli. How milk could possibly go off in your fridge at the rate Jarrah drinks it you don’t know, but that’s breakfast ruined. You fight the urge to heave the whole lot at the wall, smash the bowl, let it all run down to the floor.

  You can’t go to work today, that much is clear. You abandon breakfast, settle for a cup of black tea, carry it outside and sit on the verandah. The rain hasn’t slowed. Steady, soaking, grey. The smell of mould rises from the cushion beneath you, straight up into your sinuses, turbo-charging your headache.

  What made you come here?

  The job, you’d say straight off. Of course it was the job. An opportunity to get out of academia and use your skills in the real world again. If it hadn’t popped up just at the height of your fury with Finn and Sandra, just days after you discovered they’d been fooling around, you might never have considered it. But there it was, blinking in your inbox. The perfect way to get your family out of there, leave your ex-best friend in the backwash, escape the claustrophobia of Finn’s family and the university and Hobart’s relentless cold. And, if you were being honest, a perfect punishment for Finn.

  You couldn’t stay in Hobart once you worked out what was going on. No matter how Finn protested that they hadn’t gone the whole way, no matter how Sandra wept and begged for forgiveness, the betrayal had gone too deep for that. Best friend and husband. Double betrayal, no matter how you read it. You were a modern woman, but not that fucking modern.

  You weren’t leaving only to punish them. Deep in your bones you yearned for heat, light and fecundity. And there was one more thing. A feeling you couldn’t define when you looked at your oldest son and saw a pinched look on his face. You had some instinct to get him out of there.

  You made sure you burned the bridges, selling the house and cutting Sandra out of your life. But instinct was wrong. It told you to bring them here, then turned on you and wrecked your lives.

  You check your mobile, wondering if Finn has called. A slew of texts shrieks for attention. You pick Chen’s.

 

  You’ve become adept at avoiding the news – especially the local news outlets, where you starred horribly for a week after Toby died. You check the computer. Your own face, there on the front page of one of the national papers. Your private moment, looking into the pool, displayed. The photographer’s trophy.

  You get to your feet. You can’t go to work, but neither can you sit.

  *

  At the nursing home’s front desk the receptionist looks at you and blushes. Looks away, looks up again. She slides a newspaper out of sight.

  ‘Your mother’s good today,’ she says. ‘She’ll be pleased to see you.’

  A slip in the deception would be easy enough with that kind of thing lying around. You gesture with your chin. ‘I hope she hasn’t seen it.’

  ‘Of course not,’ the woman says with a wan smile.

  Your mother is up, dressed and in her armchair. She turns and smiles when you enter and her gaze is frighteningly lucid.

  ‘Darling,’ she says. ‘I’ve missed you. Where have you been?’
<
br />   You kiss her on the cheek. ‘It’s been crazy at work. But you remember I was here last week, don’t you?’

  She nods. ‘You haven’t brought the boys for so long.’

  You stiffen. What boys does she mean? Jarrah and Finn? Jarrah and Toby? The cousins from her Irish childhood, who are weirdly clear in her mind now?

  ‘I’ll bring them later in the week.’

  You settle into the visitor’s chair. Conversation with a person who has dementia is a new art. You can’t ask your mother what she’s been doing lately. There are no future plans to refer to. And your secret throbs and gives off heat.

  ‘They grow up so fast,’ she says musingly. Turns her gaze to you. ‘You’re looking dreadfully old.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ you say. ‘Would you like a walk?’

  ‘I’d like a cup of tea,’ she says firmly.

  ‘I’ll find one,’ you say.

  You flag down the nurse pushing the tea trolley and he makes you two cups, extra sugar in your mother’s. You set them down, make sure she can reach hers, pick yours up.

  ‘I’m going swimming with Toby later on,’ you say, as you take a sip. She’s the only one you can say it to.

  ‘He’s such a good little swimmer, isn’t he!’ she says. ‘Like a fish.’

  *

  The rest of the day alone at home is interminable. How has it come to this, that you have no friends? There’s no word from Finn in Sydney. You’re not sure where Jarrah is. He’s rarely home in the afternoons any more. Will he be home for dinner? Where is he spending this time?

  When the gate finally clicks in the late afternoon you snap to alert, feeling a rush of anger at Jarrah for disappearing. As footsteps clatter on the verandah and the screen door scrapes, you rise up out of your chair.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  Two people follow Jarrah inside, halting you.

  ‘Mum, this is Laura and her mother, Mrs Fieldman,’ Jarrah says, and you can tell your stridency has embarrassed him.

  Laura. You remember now, the girl Jarrah had the hopeless crush on. Standing here in your kitchen larger than life, prettier than you vaguely remember from seeing her behind the pizza counter. A girl out of his league, but here nevertheless, smiling a little nervously at you. You pull yourself together, hold out your hand.