Dad watched us from the deckchair, and I remember looking up at him and he had this big goofy grin on his face, like life was so fucking fantastic, and I guess it was, right then, though I didn’t know it.
It was his fault, he said. Dad’s invention left the gate open and Toby got through the gate. Mum left Toby alone for a minute. Dad had his back turned. Mum found Toby in the pool. Dad was arrested. I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
I shut my eyes. It was hot. My leg sweated under the plaster. I could smell my underarms and I thought I could smell the water, the green soup it had turned into. It was creepy. You couldn’t see into it. There could be a dead body down there and you wouldn’t know.
I still couldn’t picture what Toby looked like dead.
One of those moments hit. It was like a huge wave, coming out of nowhere and slamming into me. I held on to the chair with both hands and clenched my teeth together, and when that didn’t work I screwed my face up. A whimper came out of me. I was alive, and I guess I was glad, but it didn’t mean I’d ever get over Toby.
After a while I kind of got control again. I let go of the chair. Wiped my face on my T-shirt. Wished it wasn’t so hot.
I could never remember if I’d said goodbye to Toby on the morning he died. Maybe trying to remember it in a different place would help. I shut my eyes. I’d been about to go to school and Mum had told me to put on deodorant and I’d gone back to the bathroom. I tried to watch it like a movie in my head. I could see myself reading to Toby, flipping through the pages. I picked him up and put him into the highchair. Buckled the little belt that held him in there. Mum came in from her swim and asked me about how to make breakfast. I ate breakfast. Then there was a blank. Deodorant. Blank again, and then I was walking across the grass towards the shed to get my bike. As I wheeled it out Dad was pushing the bin to the gutter for the garbage collection, and he came back in the gate before I went out. Clapped me on the shoulder to say goodbye, and I remember hoping he wouldn’t kiss me, like he sometimes did in public, forgetting I was nearly sixteen. I pushed the bike through the gate and closed it.
Something nagged at me.
Again: I turned as I closed the gate behind me and saw Dad heading to the studio. Because he’d put the garbage out, he wasn’t near the pool gate. He was headed to the back door of the studio, the one he hardly ever used.
Walked through it again like it was a film set. Heard the parrots making a racket, remembered it was hot and sunny, just like now. Heard the click click click of the bike. I’d been thinking about those boys in the year above me, the ones from the pizza parlour, and working out how I was going to avoid them at school, and what I was going to do if I couldn’t avoid them, and thinking there was a good chance I’d be called Little Mummy all over school and that would be the end of my invisibility. That’s what I was thinking. And Dad was walking to the back door of the studio, and back in the house Mum was finishing breakfast with wet hair, and the gate clicked behind me and I put my foot on the pedal and pushed off, swinging my leg over the bike and leaving that world behind me forever.
I think maybe I got it, finally. What Dad was doing.
BRIDGET
You don’t like Malcolm. It’s not personal. Or maybe it is, maybe you wouldn’t have liked him even meeting him at a party or as a colleague. There’s something about him – some whiff of profiting from the misfortune of others, something you can’t quite put your finger on.
Plus he’s always catching you on the back foot.
‘Let’s get the small matters out of the way first,’ he says. ‘The house sale. You need to have some agreement about what happens to the money if your husband does end up with a custodial sentence. You both need your interests protected. You may want to consider appointing your own solicitor.’
He doesn’t like you either, you surmise. ‘I’ll consider it. But I’m here to talk about the case.’
He closes the house sale folder with exaggerated patience and you bite the jagged place inside your lower lip that keeps you calm. He opens the next, much bigger folder.
‘I feel your husband rushed into the decision to plead guilty. Did you discuss it?’
‘No. He decided the morning after our son’s accident. There was no chance to discuss it.’
‘Do you agree with his decision?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I think, does it? It’s done.’
‘Your attitude matters. You’ll still need to give evidence in the sentencing hearing in Lismore next Tuesday – I suppose Finn told you that? You should argue that you son needs his father. It all contributes to the judge’s decision about a sentence. All helps keep him out of jail.’
It’s been calmer since Finn left for Hobart. Without him around, your fury has abated. You and Jarrah coexist in an orbit of loss, but somehow, you think, you’re managing. You focus on Jarrah and your pond. The truth is, you don’t want Finn to come back, not just now. Jail might not be the worst outcome. Though you can’t tell this to his solicitor. And it makes you not only a bad wife, but a bad mother, because of course a boy needs his father.
You give yourself a jolt, sit up straighter. There’s no one in the world, with the possible exception of Meredith and DI Evans, who thinks Finn should be in jail. You’ll have to help him with this.
‘We should go through your police statement,’ Malcolm says. ‘You’ll be cross-examined and we can discuss our strategies and predict what questions they might ask. It would help to get evidence from your son. Finn says he doesn’t want him in court, though I’ve advised him it could be helpful. If he’s not going to give evidence, we should get that psychological assessment. Can you organise that? We can give you a list of court-approved psychologists.’
‘Tick,’ you say, though you can’t imagine how this will fit with concealing Jarrah’s suicide attempt.
He takes his glasses off. ‘I’m going to presume we’re all on the same side here, trying to keep your husband out of jail. You can sort out any differences much more easily afterwards, if he’s a free man.’
‘Differences?’ you say.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs Brennan,’ he says, closing the file. ‘Don’t think I’m not. I can barely imagine what you’ve gone through. But I have a good idea of what’s coming up. A lot of people pin their hopes on court. They think someone will be punished, and they think they’ll have closure. But it’s not like that. Don’t think court will make anything better.’
*
‘You smell,’ your mother says, waving her hand in front of her nose.
‘It’s the cakes, silly.’ You open the paper bag, slide out the cardboard box. ‘Chocolate brownies. Fresh. Your favourite.’
She checks out your offering suspiciously. ‘Who’s that for?’
‘One for you, one for me, one for—’
‘Toby.’
‘Jarrah,’ you say at the same moment, speaking over the top of her.
‘Toby loves his chocolate.’
‘It’s too rich for him. He can have a banana. But don’t tell him, OK?’
These conversations with your mother should be devastating, but you find a strange comfort in them. For a moment you can almost pretend none of it’s happened and Toby is at home with Finn, ready to throw a tantrum over a chocolate brownie.
You cut one of the brownies in half and hand it to her in a napkin. She sinks her teeth in, closing her eyes in pleasure, chews noisily, bites again. While she’s occupied, you slide the remainder into the bag and put it out of her sight. She tends to forget she’s eaten and wants more. When she finishes, you take the napkin and wipe the chocolate from the corner of her mouth.
‘Something still smells,’ she says.
‘I can’t smell anything.’
‘Fish. I can smell fish.’
You busy yourself, carrying the napkin over to the bin and taking your time to pop the lid and drop it in and look out the window into the garden. You put your hands into the pool before you came here. Hoping for so
me development in the ecosystem. Hoping for Toby. It’s true, your hands smelled fishy afterwards, but you scrubbed them. Surely that’s not it?
‘Have I seen Toby lately?’
The question takes you by surprise and you turn. You have no idea, at any given moment, if a question is coming from an opening of lucidity or the fog. This one sounds lucid and she’s looking at you steadily.
‘Not for a while,’ you say softly.
‘I miss him.’ Tears form in her eyes.
Your own tears threaten and you’re sick of lying to her, sickened by pretence. ‘He’s gone, Mum.’
You have the sense of her in there somewhere, peering out through the thickets that have formed in her mind, catching sight of you in the world for once, knowing you, hearing you.
‘Don’t say that!’ she cries and presses her hands to her mouth.
You’re already regretting the words, wishing you could snatch them back, hoping they’ll find no purchase in her tangled brain, nothing to catch them and hold them.
‘He’s gone with Finn to Hobart,’ you say, forcing a smile. ‘To visit the family. I’ll bring him in when they get home.’
‘Can we go to Hobart too?’
‘Do you want to go back?’
She nods vigorously.
‘Sure.’ You’re under control again and you move to her side, rest your hand on her thin shoulder.
‘I’m packed,’ she says. ‘Let’s go now.’
‘OK,’ you say and squeeze her shoulder. ‘I’ll go and bring the car around. Wait here.’
It’s simplest this way, you’ve learned. You step out of her room. Use the toilet, wash your hands, flinch at your gaunt face in the mirror. Only days until Finn’s sentence hearing and it still seems unreal.
‘You should start preparing yourself,’ he said last night when you answered the phone. ‘I’ll organise Tom to help you pack up the house if it’s needed. Malcolm’s drawn up some things you need to sign. I’ve asked Conor to be my power of attorney.’
That, more than anything, said how far apart you were. He didn’t trust you.
‘Shouldn’t we talk before the hearing?’ you said. ‘About strategy or something?’
‘Nothing’s changed. Just tell your story and we’ll let the judge decide what’s right. And make sure Jarrah’s not there.’
‘When are you coming back?’
He hesitated. ‘I’ll stay in Sydney the night before and fly up early on the trial day.’
‘You’re not even going to see Jarrah?’
‘It’s too damned hard, Bridget. I’ll just see you in there on the day, OK?’
You hung up, not understanding any of it.
You envy your mother for her ability to live in the present, relatively unaffected by past and future. You run your fingers through your hair and step out of the toilet. The sun slants into the hallway window and onto the patterned carpet. You wait another few moments, breathing deeply. Head up, back in the door, as if arriving.
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Why, hello dear,’ she says. ‘Lovely to see you.’ Then wrinkles her brow. ‘What’s that smell?’
JARRAH
Time after Toby: thirty-four days. Dad said it was best this way. It wouldn’t be hanging over us for the next two years. He said it’d be hard no matter when it happened and it was best to get it over with.
‘But won’t I see you before court?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer for a while. ‘Jarrah, I miss you more than you can imagine,’ he said at last. ‘I hope you’ll understand. I can’t come back early. It’s too hard. The three of us will have coffee before the court case. Then Eddie is going to take you home and wait with you. OK?’
‘But …’ I didn’t understand. ‘Is that when we’ll say goodbye?’
‘I think this is best for all of us. And it might go well, and then I’ll be home.’
‘But Dad, I remembered something.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Jarrah,’ he snapped, so fast I was shocked.
‘But you didn’t go through—’
‘It doesn’t matter!’ His voice rose. ‘This case is about one thing only, Jarrah, and that’s how I modified the gate and that contributed to Toby drowning. That’s it.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Now, try not to think about it, OK? I don’t want you worrying about it. It’s nothing to do with you.’
I thought I was on to something and the disappointment rushed over me. ‘Nothing to do with me if you don’t come home for two years!’
‘Stop,’ he said, and his voice was weirdly calm. ‘I don’t want you there. I don’t want you to hear it all again. You can’t change the outcome.’
I wanted to hang up on him, but I forced myself not to.
‘When you do something wrong, you’ve got to pay for it. And this will do some good. It might stop someone else out there from putting some stupid thing on their pool gate or forgetting to close it. It might save some kid’s life.’
‘You sound like that Meredith woman.’
‘Yeah, well.’
‘So you won’t even come up the night before?’
I heard a sound in his throat before he answered. ‘If I do that I’ll never be able to walk into court.’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘You will, one day.’
‘But in the meantime you can’t be bothered to see us?’
I suppose I was hoping he’d snap, but he just didn’t react. He was quiet for a minute and then he said, ‘Jarrah, I love you more than any other thing on this whole planet, all right? It seems hard, but I’m trying to do the right thing for all of us. Can you trust me?’
I stared out into the night. All I could feel was him leaving. ‘I don’t know, Dad,’ I said.
FINN
The worlds he now inhabited that he’d known so little of before. The hospital. The police. The courts. This morning, in a hungry jostle outside the court building, the media. And perhaps, from this day onwards, jail.
The day: jagged, disconnected, unreal.
Flying in – the view from the banking plane – that mountain, the warning, at the head of its winding river valley.
Meeting Bridget and Jarrah in a café around the corner from the courthouse. Like two strangers. He was already shutting down, moving away from them, preparing.
The cameras and microphones shoved at him outside the courthouse, questions shouted at him, and Edmund trying to clear a path for them to get inside.
The faces of the people waiting for it to begin. Some familiar. Angela and Tom. Bridget’s workmate, who looked away. Meredith, who wouldn’t look away. Some of the police he remembered. Strangers staring, or carefully not staring.
Waiting in the small conference room at the side of the court’s entrance. Realising Bridget would have to stay outside the courtroom until she was called as a witness.
Being led into the court and across to the dock. Understanding he would sit on that exposed seat for the entire proceedings, unless standing to answer questions or when the judge entered or left. The architecture of blame and scrutiny.
Seeing Jarrah levering his way into the front row and sitting down next to Conor and Edmund, his face a blur of defiance and entreaty.
Three knocks on the wood to signify the judge was ready. The all-rise and the bowing, the vivid red robe and the grey wig, the white collar and ruffle, her considered gaze upon him. The Crown Prosecutor, the learned friend, the low voices, the lack of windows, the fear permeating the carpet and the chair and the wooden bench in front of him. The whole human world, and every possible deed within it, held inside that room. The guilty and not guilty feet that had stood where his were waiting. The lives decided. The ‘How say you?’
The legalese, more intimate than he’d imagined. The standing. The deep breath. The oath.
‘Tell us the circumstances of that morning.’
His walk through the gate, his preoccupation, his failure to check the device had closed the gate behind him. The lie, early and strong. An
d he was back there, in the studio. The acrid smell of ozone burning the insides of his nostrils. The stink of his trade, the metallic taste of it. He was working with welding torch and hands, he was creating that piece, assembling it, watching it grow, watching something emerge from a pile of junk and his own imagination. He’d lost that, forgotten the feeling, and there it was in his memory, the strange joy of art, now the armature of truth upon which his story hung.
‘And when did you realise something was wrong?’
He was absorbed in the pleasure of welding, the sound ringing in his ears, the glow and spit of the slag, the safety mask blacking out the world. The last perfect moment. Then the faint noise, the muffled sound he couldn’t identify that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. The noise of something wrong, the noise that called to him with its distant desperation. And as he flicked off the torch and lifted his mask, it roared into his hearing. A howl that burned its way down inside him.
‘What did you do?’
Turned around into a new, maleficent world. Tore off the mask, ran – tripping, scrambling, propelled – and wrenched open the sliding door. Hurtled headlong into the pool and fought the water like an enemy to get to her. Fought the water, which had rendered his living son into this limp, lolling thing.
Inarticulate animal sounds of horror.
A gap in his memory that he couldn’t fill in.
Next, Toby lying on the ground. Bridget kneeling over him, her fingers exhuming foam from his mouth. Her frantic demand, pointing: The instructions!
They were nailed to the fence. Faded, unread. He ran to them, placed both hands on the plastic, leaned in, tried to focus.
Clear the airways.
‘Take your time, Mr Brennan. We have time. You read out the instructions to your wife and then what happened?’
WHAT NEXT? Bridget had screamed at him.
He had tried to focus. The words and pictures shifted and moved and he couldn’t hold on to them. Tried to instruct Bridget without shrieking.
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