The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

by Kimberley Starr

  The repetition didn’t convince me. “It’s different.” I sat closer to her and stuck my chin out, ready for the argument. “I came here because my father doesn’t want me. But Rebecca wants Andrew.”

  Jackie turned her face to one side. “I don’t think that’s really true about your father. Anyway, Andrew doesn’t belong to Rebecca.”

  “People don’t belong to each other.” I let my own cup fall the last few centimetres to the table, pleased by the clattering sound, the suggestion of a splash. What did Jackie know about my father? I suddenly felt my collection of unread letters from him weighing on my mind like a guilty conscience.

  Jackie leaned back further into the sofa, crossing her hands in her lap and closing her eyes. “You’re too young to understand.” As if at the end of a royal audience, she seemed to think she was dismissing me.

  “I understand family,” I insisted. “And I think that Andrew understands yours pretty well, too.”

  This was throwing down the gauntlet, I thought, as I stood. Jackie refused to be provoked. She closed her eyes again and said serenely, “He’ll certainly understand after he comes to live with us.”

  I stalked past her and out the front door, disappointed that Jackie couldn’t see how angry I was. Not that it would make much difference. She didn’t think I was important enough to make a difference.

  From the Colemans’ veranda, the street stretched out before me. Jacarandas carved purple shadows into the eucalypt landscape. It seemed that everything ended in tragedy; even the street looked beautiful and empty, like life. A few doors down, Cameron Seymour’s parents waited anxiously for news, dreading hearing that his body had been found, although by now they must know he is dead. Cameron had been missing for more than two weeks.

  There were footsteps behind me. I looked around. “Andrew!”

  He wiped a lock of light brown hair from his eyes. “Are you going home?”

  “I planned to work on one of my paintings.” Did he want me to go somewhere else? “Do you want to come?” I’d decided to try painting the river from near my grandma’s house. I wouldn’t be able to capture the precise atmosphere I wanted, but at least I could practise capturing the angled growth of mangroves, the surprisingly sharp tips of otherwise soft grasses, without being too close to Kevin Mathers.

  Andrew followed and sat beside me as I pulled my sketching things and a couple of apples from my bag. “You want one?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I hate fruit.”

  “Aren’t athletes meant to eat healthy food?”

  Andrew grinned. “Maybe that’s why I hate them. What have you got there?”

  “Nothing much. Just some sketches.” Flipping through the pages of my previous drawings, I was proud of the impressed noises he made.

  “Jackie really wants you to go, then?” I asked in a small voice, after he’d seen them all.

  “I’m not going,” Andrew said. “I don’t want to talk about it now. Let’s just sit here for a while.” He leant back and plucked at a strand of grass. “It’s nice here. You’re lucky to have this spot.”

  “There’s plenty of room in your own yard,” I said. “Would you like a smoke?”

  Andrew looked at the open packet and grinned. “But we don’t have a shed to hide behind,” he said. “Actually, I can do better than that. I thought I’d return the favour.”

  From the pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a snap-lock bag half-full of pot. “You want some?”

  Of course I did. We rolled a joint each, sitting there in silence for a few minutes.

  “You were good with Kevin Mathers,” I said after a while.

  “Hmmm.” Andrew brushed long fingers through his dark blond hair. “You and Brigid shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.”

  “I know.”

  Another long, awkward silence. Then I slid a glance in his direction, and saw that Andrew was watching me.

  “You know, you’re very pretty,” he said, exhaling. The smoke made a little private world around us, excluding everything else. A little private, hazy, green-summery world. I leant closer and brushed my lips against his. He passed his joint from one hand to the other. His eyes were the same grey-blue colour as the sky through the smoky haze. My whole body tingled. I liked it.

  Suddenly Rebecca was there. Her blue-clad legs stood too close by and I heard the heavy, quick intake of shocked breath.

  “Andrew!” she exclaimed loudly. My senses were heightened. I thought I could feel the pulse of his blood through his veins. Rebecca’s firm voice pierced my awareness like an arrow. “Andrew,” she said again. “Did Madeleine give you that?”

  My blood pulsed more loudly still. This was the angriest I’d been since I realised that my mother was going to die no matter how much I needed her. I stood and stamped on the little stub of my joint. “I did not!”

  “Maddy, I’m not talking to you.” Rebecca sounded ominously calm.

  “You’ve misunderstood things a bit, Rebecca,” Andrew said. He sighed, looking down at me. “Let’s meet here again,” he said. “Tomorrow, okay?”

  Rebecca’s flushed cheeks made it look like she might have something to say about that. But I nodded. The kiss fizzed on my lips like sherbet. Of course it was okay to meet tomorrow. Anything he did was okay.

  As Rebecca turned, Andrew passed me the little snap-lock bag with one hand and opened his eyes wide, as if to say, “Look after this for me, won’t you?”

  The path to my grandma’s house was like a thick cloud, sticky with desire and expectation. Andrew wanted to meet me again. Rebecca didn’t matter. Even though she was a cop, she couldn’t arrest me or anything, could she? Not without getting Andrew in a lot of trouble as well. She wouldn’t want to do that. For the time being, I thought I was pretty safe.

  Five

  On my mobile phone Lachlan’s voice is high-pitched, sharp with anxiety.

  “Mum?” he says. “Mum? Is that you? Are you there?”

  My chest tightens even more than it did when I first saw the number on call display and realised it was him. I nod, turning my face from the police officers who crowd around the office.

  “Of course it’s me, Lachie. I told you that you could call any time. Is something wrong?”

  “Yes!” He hiccoughs. There’s a banging noise behind him and some rustling. When he next speaks, it’s a whisper. “It’s Nikky, Mum. Nicole, I mean. I hate her.”

  I’ve forgotten where I am. The world is a void apart from the voice on the other end of the line. My mind is too full of the terrible things I know can happen to a child away from the care of people who love him. How awful it is to be so young, to have no control over your own life.

  “What’s happened?” I demand.

  Ken Richardson is still beside me. I feel him stiffen. I can’t meet his eye. I know his profession has shown him terrible things, too. The longing to be with my son is cruel. I don’t even know what to say to him.

  Lachlan is sobbing on the other end of the line.

  “Lachie! What’s she done?”

  “She kissed me!” Lachlan gasps. “She says she loves me! You’re my only mum, aren’t you, Mum?”

  My fingers feel like breaking. I have one hand around the phone, the other grips the nearest chair-back. I raise my eyes to meet Ken Richardson’s and try to force my lips into a smile. I’m tempted to break into hysterical laughter, but the smile won’t come. “Yes, Lachie, I’m your only mum.”

  Ken pries my fingers free of the chair and turns it around so I can sit. He looks concerned.

  “And you’ll be coming home soon?” Lachlan continues. “I saw on TV they found the killer. That means they don’t need you any more, right?”

  I’m dumbfounded by the way he knows exactly how to get to me. He doesn’t do it deliberately. But what his mind can’t comprehend, his emotions understand. Instinctively, he has spoken the truth. The police don’t need me. The window of opportunity for someone to make a difference to the man they call Bradley Fe
rris closed long ago. The world out there, I imagine, is full of people I could make a difference to right now. I don’t know where any of them are. Except Lachlan.

  “I’ll be home soon,” I say. “Please Lachie, don’t worry too much about Nicole. I’m sure she didn’t realise you’d be upset. Besides, you can’t really blame her, you know. You’re very lovable.”

  After a few more reassurances, I hang up. “Well, it’s time for me to go,” I say, turning. But there’s a commotion at the end of the room. The inspector seems to be looking for me. A few of the detectives point and wave papers in my direction.

  “We’ve had a child psychologist try to get more info from Kyle Wilson,” he says, approaching.

  “The boy who escaped,” Ken adds.

  The inspector casts him an annoyed look. “We all know who he is,” he says, returning to me. “But the psych can’t get much out of him. Little bugger’s frozen up. Won’t speak even to his mother. Reckon you could have a go at him?”

  I shake my head and turn away. Have a go? I think of Nicole and her efforts to talk to Lachlan. No matter how much I remember of my own childhood, I can’t find a way to really communicate with my own child. It’s not simply because I’ve grown up; I’m the same person I was then, still quick-tempered, nosy. Maybe the barrier is related to power and control. I’m responsible for Lachlan now. Only time will prove if that can be overcome.

  “If you won’t talk to Kyle, maybe you can talk to the people who’ve seen him?” Ken suggests.

  I shrug. Ken passes me a folder of case notes and photographs, and I flip it open, then quickly close it again, revolted.

  “Anything you could say might be helpful,” Ken says.

  “I’m not really good with children, you know. It’s not my field.”

  “I know.” He moves until he is standing too close. I step away. He sighs and backs off.

  “Working with children can be difficult, especially when you have children of your own,” I say.

  He nods. “It’s even worse when they’re the same age as the victim.”

  “Or when you’re pregnant,” I add. I’m thinking of Lachlan, who is the same age as the boy in the nearby children’s hospital, the one who will no longer talk about his capture and escape. For a moment I’m tempted to see him, if only so that I can stop imagining that it is Lachlan lying there. But it wouldn’t be fair to the other child and I’m never comfortable with victims.

  “Reckon you can help us, then?” the inspector asks. I shake my head and he tuts as if he expected my wilfulness. “Well, stick around a bit anyway. One of the prosecutors is coming in. He wants to talk to you.”

  He strides away, and I turn back to Ken, who gives me a strange look.

  “What is it?” I glance down to see if all my buttons are fastened, that I haven’t dripped sauce or coffee down the front of my blouse.

  He clears his throat. “I’m feeling awkward. In my own less than subtle way I was trying to ask if you were …”

  “What? If I’m pregnant?” I’d like to add something light, maybe something about it needing to be another immaculate conception, but that seems too personal, too. “No, I’m not. Why would you think so?”

  “Your appointment on Wickham Terrace …”

  “It’s not just obstetricians who have offices there.”

  “Ahhh.” He doesn’t look awkward. I wonder if he now imagines I’ve been there to see a lawyer or look for a place in a school for Lachlan, or if he imagines anything at all.

  “You want to ask me about this boy?” I ask.

  “He says he doesn’t remember what happened to him while he was held. Is that possible?”

  “Well, that’s a loaded question. We’ve been arguing about repressed memories for quite some time now in my profession.”

  “I don’t really understand why he first remembered more than he does now.”

  “He’s been traumatised, Ken. You said yourself, he’s just a boy. The child psychologist can tell you a lot more than me.”

  “I’m asking for a second opinion. This just seems weird to me. I mean, nothing very bad happened when I was a kid. Just the normal things, you know. Fights and other stuff. But I remember it all perfectly.”

  “As I said, we spend years coming to terms with our childhood. You know, Ken, my specialty is offender profiling.”

  “I do know that, yes. We’ll be waiting for your report.” He sinks into a desk chair and taps a pencil against his teeth. “Have you any preliminary ideas?”

  I’ve been keeping notes all along, of course. Eventually, this case will go to trial. I shake the doubt out of my head and reach into my bag, withdrawing the spiral notebook I’ve been using. “What exactly do you want to know?”

  “Well, do you really believe he’s responsible for all the cases?”

  I nod. “Yes. I think he is.”

  “Do you know why?”

  I shrug. This is the main reason I don’t want to take the stand. In most cases like this my attempt to find a reason would be couched in psychological terms. I’d speculate that certain types of pedophiles love children as projections of themselves, or because children don’t make them feel inadequate the way grown women can. Bradley Ferris is lonely, shy, I could say. That fits this type. In the back of my mind, I hear a different story. I hear the words coming from Ferris’s own mouth. I don’t want to hear, and close my eyes.

  Now that I’ve had a chance to form my own opinion about Bradley Ferris, I’ve been given some of his earlier psychological reports to examine. While he was in prison, he told a story about the mirrors in his old home. “It was like they were all turned into portraits,” he said. “Portraits of my mother. People say I look like her, you know. The same wiry hair.”

  I tell Ken about that now, and he looks sceptical. “You aren’t about to say he heard voices, his mother telling him to do this?”

  I laugh dryly. “Nothing’s ever as simple as that. I don’t think he hears voices, and I don’t agree with mothers being blamed for everything that goes wrong in people’s lives.”

  “Of course you don’t. You are a mother.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “I know you are. So, what is this thing about his mother?”

  “I’m not sure. We have to avoid being too simplistic.”

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of that. I can’t get a handle on this, any way I look at it. I’d like you to help me with that. If you can.”

  I wonder if I can tell him the truth. Whenever I try to think of cause and effect, of what turned Bradley Ferris into the man he is, I hear the clattering sound of pebbles, flying and falling. When I try the words out in my mind, they sound foolish; worse, they sound like words that could only be an introduction to a confession that, twenty years later, I still don’t have the courage to make.

  “The crimes have been repeated. It’s some sort of ritual. Something happened to him. Something that interrupted him in the pursuit of a fantasy, perhaps,” I say. “He feels condemned, again and again, to repeat it.”

  “Trying to get it right?” Ken asks.

  I nod, dumbly. And lean forward in my chair, head slumped into my hands. I’ve reached a decision I think I always knew was coming. I have to go to Bradley Ferris and tell him what I did, how it’s partly my fault that he’s here, that he became the man he is.

  My grandma was waiting for me in the kitchen, standing over a pile of washing-up. Apparently I’d been gone for longer than expected.

  She turned when I came in. “Madeleine.”

  “Yes, Grandma?” I was too happy about Andrew’s kiss to stomp off to my room as usual. Instead, I opened the fridge, reaching for some strips of carrot and cubes of cheese. I was hungry.

  Grandma peeled off her rubber gloves and seemed to forget about the washing-up. “Maddy?” She walked closer and peered into my eyes. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  The cheese must have masked the scent of smoke on
my breath, because nothing riled her. I could guess how she felt about pot. She’d been a teenager long before there was such a concept as cool. She might not even realise that if she caught me with it, she was supposed to pretend to be angry, then laugh afterwards. The way I was sure Rebecca would eventually laugh with Andrew.

  “Hmmm. We have to talk.” She stood there, hands on hips, looking at me. “It’s time we started making allowances for each other, and for having to live in the same house. Maddy, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I took another lump of cheese and nodded. For a moment, I was almost happy enough to do the washing-up. “You want me to help around the house. Seems simple enough.”

  She took a deep breath. I could tell this was something that had been bothering her for a while. “I’m trying to do the best I can for you,” she began. “You do believe that, don’t you?”

  The cheese began to taste sour. I wished I hadn’t taken it. I didn’t know what I believed, except that she was being unreasonable. It wasn’t like I’d asked to come here. I spat the cheese into my hand and dumped it into the bin before walking back to the room I slept in. Grandma returned to the dishes, her attack on them causing a furious clattering.

  Lying on the bed, comfy in my own old quilt — brought from home, reminiscent of my mother — I curled into a ball. My grandma had no place in my space. Instead, I dreamed about Andrew and me, about the grassy spot behind the shed in the late afternoon. I wondered what the texture of his fingertips would be like against my skin and if he would try to put his hand inside my bra. I wondered if I would have told my mother about him and how he made me feel. I touched my own breasts experimentally. My breasts were new, developing as if to replace what my mother lost. But nothing could ever replace her.

  I was sitting on the damp behind-the-shed soil — Brisbane had rained down one of its quick summer storms that afternoon — smoking the rest of the joint Rebecca had interrupted, when I realised he wasn’t coming. Deep within my belly, dread grew from a small suspicion to an invasive certainty.