A best friend would have told you what she thought. If it was your fault, or Finn’s, or no one’s, or everyone’s. You would have believed a best friend.
You stand. ‘I’d better go.’
She looks up at you. ‘It’s not personal. If you didn’t blame him yourself, Bridget, you’d be fighting for him right now. You wouldn’t even be talking to me.’
‘What happened to your husband?’ you ask.
‘Just what you’d expect.’ She puts her sunglasses back on. ‘Two more children with his new wife. All safely grown up now.’
FINN
When Finn pulled on a pair of trousers Monday morning, the button was tight around his waist. He placed a hand on his belly. Bridget was noticeably losing weight, but the opposite was happening for him. It was true: when things were bad he headed for the fridge. Eating helped, for a moment. Who cared if he was fatter?
Bridget had waited until they went to bed on Sunday night to tackle him about the charge. She’d had no idea he might go to jail, she said. Why hadn’t he warned her? She was angry about that too. She needed the full story. She was coming with him the next day to see the solicitor. She’d take the morning off work.
It didn’t help the sick feeling in his gut. He fell asleep anyway. It was wrong: Bridget awake and starving. Him asleep and overfed. But he couldn’t help it. His stomach demanded food, and his brain shoved him into sleep when he lay down.
At ten am, the secretary ushered Finn and Bridget into Malcolm’s office. Bridget took charge.
‘Run us through it,’ she said to Malcolm, forgoing the niceties. ‘Assume we know nothing.’
Malcolm wasn’t so confident this time. He seemed fidgety and nervous as he told them he’d consulted with their barrister. ‘This case hinges on the prosecution demonstrating gross negligence,’ he said. ‘That means negligence to a level showing abandonment of moral and lawful standards. It’s a very high standard of proof required from the prosecution and my opinion is they will struggle to make it stick.
‘The first thing is the mention in the Local Court this Wednesday, which starts the process moving. It just takes a few minutes for the magistrate to set a date for a committal hearing. That’s our first focus – getting the case dismissed at the committal. We’re looking at maybe three to six months until that hearing. With any luck that will be the end of it.’
‘If it’s not?’ Bridget asked.
‘If it’s not dismissed, it will go on to full trial in the District Court or Supreme Court. It could be eighteen months or two years before that happens.’
‘What will it cost?’
‘Well, you’ve got a barrister. If one or both of you is or are working, you probably won’t qualify for legal aid. So for the committal – probably between thirty and fifty.’
Finn felt sick and Bridget physically slumped in the chair beside him. He wanted to reach for her hand, but didn’t dare.
‘Thirty and fifty thousand?’ Bridget said. ‘And what about a full trial?’
‘Could be up to three hundred. I very much hope it won’t come to that.’
Bridget took a sharp in-breath. ‘Three hundred thousand? And he could still end up in jail?’
‘It’s possible. It depends on the judge. If he’s found guilty – and that’s a big if – he might get a good behaviour bond. He might get a suspended sentence. A jail term would be the worst case.’
‘How long? Worst case?’
‘You’ll hear this mentioned, so I’ll tell you now. The maximum penalty for manslaughter is twenty-five years. But that’s not going to happen.’
He might as well have not been there, Finn thought, as they discussed his life. There was a long moment of silence.
‘I know that’s a lot to take in,’ Malcolm said. ‘Could we discuss some details of the day in question?’
Finn felt a twinge of fear. ‘I don’t want to put my wife through that again.’ He turned to Bridget. ‘You go on to work. I’ll see you tonight.’
She hesitated.
‘Please,’ Finn said.
Bridget nodded. Made her farewells, left the room.
Malcolm picked up his coffee. ‘Look, there’s another thing. DI Evans has an axe to grind. She investigated a case a few years ago in Armidale where a child drowned in a neighbour’s neglected pool. The thing was derelict, the fence had fallen down, the water was stagnant. The pool owner was charged with manslaughter, but it was thrown out at committal. I hope that’s what will happen this time, but she’ll be fighting hard. Let’s run through your version of events again.’
Finn felt overwhelmed with weariness. ‘Nothing’s changed. It’s just what I told the police. There’s nothing to add.’
‘Let me ask you some questions then. Who was responsible for Toby at the time he entered the pool area?’
‘I was.’
‘And where were you?’
Finn paused, his mind racing. ‘In the studio.’
‘And Toby was in the house with your wife?’
‘Um … yes.’
‘So she was responsible for him?’
‘Look,’ Finn said. ‘It was incredibly traumatic. Neither of us can remember the exact details. I think Bridget thought I was watching Toby, and maybe I thought she was, I can’t be certain now, but whatever, I went across to the studio and the gate malfunctioned and didn’t close properly behind me.’
‘Your original police statement says you’d been in the studio for fifteen or twenty minutes before Toby disappeared.’
Finn stared at the floor. ‘Isn’t the whole point of this trial that I was in the wrong by installing a mechanism for the gate that wasn’t reliable?’
‘The point of the trial is to determine exactly what happened and whether there was negligence involved,’ Malcolm said. ‘You must tell the truth.’
Finn stood up. ‘I need to use the bathroom.’ At the door he turned. ‘Will I end up in jail?’
Malcolm shrugged. ‘In my opinion – for what it’s worth – the chance of your going to jail is about … oh, say, fifteen per cent. Those are odds very much worth fighting for.’
‘We don’t have three hundred thousand dollars.’
‘Don’t think about that now. You’ve got an excellent barrister and we’ll push very hard to get this thrown out at the committal. If that doesn’t happen, we’ll make a new game plan. We’ll have negotiating power, given your bereavement. This is just the first stage.’
Finn put his hand on the doorknob.
‘While you’re out there, think carefully,’ Malcolm said. ‘Your story doesn’t add up. Bridget left Toby unsupervised for several minutes, didn’t she?’
‘No,’ Finn said. ‘That’s not how it happened.’
He pushed the door shut behind him. The receptionist pointed the way to the toilets. Finn locked himself in a stall and wept in strangled silence.
JARRAH
‘You just don’t get it, Jarrah!’
I felt stupid. She was right. I didn’t get it. She couldn’t be crying for Toby. Had she been crying so hard because she was sorry for me?
The whole thing was getting weird. Expected all along I was going to be dropped. But she hadn’t dropped me. She’d started acting like she was my girlfriend.
Laura had been waiting for me before school and she suggested we sneak off to the forest. When we sat down on the damp grass by the creek she started crying and I had no idea what she needed. Put my arm around her shoulder, but she held herself stiff underneath it. Wanted to take it away again, but I reckoned that’d make things worse, so I left it there and pretended it wasn’t part of me. Did she want me to kiss her? Didn’t feel like it but what did I know? Maybe she had her period or something. Didn’t know much about that either, but knew it could make girls emotional.
‘You only met Toby once.’
It was the wrong thing to say. She pulled away from me and I had to take my arm back or leave it hanging in the air.
I tried to backpedal. ‘I mean, it’s
nice of you—’
‘You don’t know anything about nice!’ she snapped.
‘That’s right, I’m just an idiot.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh fuck you.’
It shocked me. Not the word, but coming from her. She wasn’t a swearer. The whole thing was turning to crap. All I’d done was ask her why she was crying and now we were stuck in some argument I didn’t understand.
Did she like me? Today, no. Obviously. But she didn’t just get up and walk away. She said fuck you, not fuck off. She wanted something from me, but I didn’t know what it was. My guts were churning. Is that what love was meant to feel like? At least it meant I didn’t think about Toby so much.
‘I had an abortion. All right?’
That jolted me back. Didn’t dare move.
‘No one knows. I don’t have any ashes or any grave; I can’t even cry about it. You’re lucky, Jazz. At least you can be sad.’
Lucky wasn’t how I’d thought of myself lately, but tears were rolling down her face. Somehow knew it was the right moment to hold out my arm and she came close and leaned against me.
‘When?’ Safest thing I could think to ask.
‘Start of the year. Lucky it was after my birthday, so didn’t have to tell my parents. They thought I was staying over with a friend. I went to a clinic on the Gold Coast and stayed in a hotel after.’
A month ago I couldn’t have imagined that. But it was something like what happened to me. You’re suddenly not a kid any more. Your parents can’t help you and you have to grow up fast. Doesn’t mean you know much, but you know you’ve got to find a way through. Do things like tell your aunt on the phone that your brother has drowned, or work out how you can have an abortion without anyone finding out.
It all started to make sense. She didn’t just pick me up to be the centre of attention. I’d got it wrong. She picked me up because maybe I’d understand her.
‘What about the guy?’ I asked.
‘He doesn’t know. We’d already broken up. He was a dick.’
She started crying again, softly. She was warm against me, and I had a feeling I hadn’t had since … well, it was a feeling I got sometimes with Toby. Like a nearly overwhelming kind of love. I guess that was it. I squeezed her gently. I could feel she needed a big howling cry, but I didn’t know if I could handle it. Might just set me off too. How could two people be so sad?
She lifted her face up to mine and I kissed her. Knew that was what she wanted, even covered with snot and tears, her mascara running. We kissed softly. When I drew back, a tear hung in her eyelashes. Wiped it off with my finger. I felt like I’d grown up about ten years.
‘Do you wish you hadn’t done it?’
‘Wish I didn’t have to do it. I hated it. When I woke up, I was already crying. Like, even through the anaesthetic, I knew what I’d done. I knew I’d killed it. I never want to do that again.’
She turned to me. ‘Thing is, Jazz, I like sex. I really like it.’
I was a bit shocked. Not that she liked sex, but that she said it, just like that. She saw something in my face.
‘Oh, I get it.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘Any girl who likes sex is a slut, right?’
‘No!’ I protested.
‘I thought you were different. You’ve been through something. You’re not a kid. And neither am I. Not like everyone else at school. They’ve got no idea.’
I’d never thought about Laura being an outsider before.
‘I killed someone,’ she said softly. ‘Not that it was someone yet, but it would have been.’
She started to cry again. ‘And you hear all these stories of women who have abortions when they’re young and when they want to have babies later they can’t get pregnant. Like they’re getting payback.’
I put both arms around her and rocked her, and for once, I got it right. I knew what to do. She softened into me, like all the muscles of her body had kind of melted. Holding her like that, I knew the two of us could make everything all right. We could make a baby that would stop us being these broken people and let us know the world could be OK. We were teenagers but we weren’t kids. We’d been through more than lots of adults. We could fix things.
Laura felt it too. She shifted her weight around and eased back, pulling me with her, so we were lying on the ground, and I was half on top of her. She put her hand on the back of my head, pulled me in.
I knew what she wanted. Her whole body was telling me, her arms, her legs, her mouth, her skin, all drawing me closer. She put my hand on her breast and pressed my fingers so I was squeezing and made a sound like a sob, but I knew it was a wanting sound. I could tell it wasn’t just an idea she had, liking sex. It was strong in her.
She was breathing hard. So was I. She pulled my hand down and slid it into her underpants. I had the brief feeling of her crisp hair. I thought I should stop there – wasn’t there something about foreplay and girls needing a lot more time than boys to be ready for sex? It was all mysterious down there, I could feel heat and slipperiness, she was making that sound again. I hesitated and she took my hand, tilted her hips and pushed my first two fingers all the way inside her.
I’d never imagined I could make a girl feel the way Laura was feeling, clutching my arms, her body moving against mine, making that sound. It was incredible. I kissed her again, wetly and deeply, and I realised how fast this could happen, how it could go from sitting next to each other one moment to actually having sex, just like that. We were going to have sex. We were going to make a baby. We were going to make the world all right.
She reached down and put her hand on my penis, through my pants. That was a kid’s word for it, but hell, I’d been a kid until a month ago. She squeezed and I felt a rush of feeling so strong that I gasped.
Then suddenly, nothing. I’d gone limp in her hand. Everything had disappeared.
She opened her eyes. ‘Jarrah?’
It was all wrong. It wasn’t going to bring Toby back. It wasn’t going to bring her baby back. It wasn’t even my brain thinking this. My body just switched off. Couldn’t do it.
‘What?’
I drew my fingers out of her. She gasped, like it hurt. I pulled her skirt down. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You fucking bastard.’ She scrambled to her feet.
‘Laura—’
‘No, fuck you, Jarrah Brennan! Fuck you and your dead brother and go to hell!’
It was like being hit in the face. She turned, scooped up her bag and was gone before I could move to stop her, crashing through the bush, setting off all the birds, disappearing. I knew she wasn’t coming back.
I wanted to cry. I rolled over so my face was against the leaves and I said Toby’s name, just once, clawing at the dirt so it jammed under my nails, hoping it would set me off. But my eyes stayed dry. What was wrong with me?
Time after Toby: twenty-one days.
BRIDGET
You’ve lost Toby. Nothing else should be shocking. But this morning’s revelations have left you reeling. The possibility of Finn in jail. A legal bill that could swallow whatever home you might own. A nightmare that could drag on for the next two years.
Because of your late start, you arranged to meet Chen in the office. You walk in past the glances of your co-workers, who smile and nod, and you feel their relief at not having to see you daily. As you halt in your cubicle, you hear the murmur of conversation and a laugh across the room.
It’s him; you know his voice. You glance across the open plan and spot him at the far end by the kitchen. He’s talking to someone who has her back to you. He hasn’t seen you, and you observe, with a sinking in your belly, the expression on his face. When the woman he’s talking to says something and he laughs, easily and openly, you realise in a moment what it must cost him to buffer you from the world.
She’s young. You can’t recall her name; she’s not in the same section as you and Chen. But she’s unmarked by pain. She’s whole. Not like you. She leans in close and he’s still smiling at her
and you wonder at the nature of his interest.
You have absolutely no right to be jealous. You repeat this fact to yourself and sit down to break your line of sight. You have no right. But it doesn’t stop the burn of it in your veins, following the pain pathways seared into your being. As if pain is all you will ever feel now.
He comes to the door while you’re rummaging, his face adjusted to the calm, accepting expression you’d thought natural on his features.
‘Ready?’ he asks gently.
You can’t stand it. ‘Look, I really need a day in the office. I’ve got emails banking up and a bit of research to do. Why don’t we head out again tomorrow?’
He tilts his head slightly. Oh, he knows you all right. You turn your own head away from him and back to the fascination of the filing drawer, and you won’t let him catch your eye.
‘Sure,’ he says at last. ‘I could do with some admin time too.’
You scrabble, shuffle, crinkle.
‘Everything OK?’
You nod, not trusting your voice. You won’t cry.
‘Do you want a coffee or something?’
‘Maybe later.’
He stands watching you.
‘Chen,’ you say, ‘go away.’
‘You know I’d do anything for you, Bridget Brennan,’ he says. ‘You just have to ask.’
He doesn’t wait for you to reply. He turns quickly and walks off. Damn him. Because you’d like to run after him, wrench him around, batter him or weep or hold him or fuck him or something.
There’s only one place you can be where there’s any peace, and there are many hours before you can get back to it.
*
You wait for Finn to fall asleep. Even through all this he can still do it. Within minutes his muscles start twitching and he’s gone. You wait until his snores rip the air apart, and you slide out as softly and secretly as a woman going to her lover.
Finn’s return to your bed wasn’t negotiable, but you don’t care much. Your being has narrowed its focus to these hours in the night when you lower yourself into the cool water. The more time you spend in there, the stronger the feeling gets. At first it was just a sense of Toby, a flash here and there, a feeling. Now, you’re becoming convinced, there’s something more. Like an essence of Toby is in that pool. Like – you can hardly believe you would even think this – your son is haunting the water.
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