For a long moment I was quiet, wishing I’d never been Brigid’s friend at all, wishing I was still a loner new girl that other kids were nice to because my mother had just died. It didn’t feel like my mother had just died. It felt like she’d been dead for ever. Sometimes I could hardly remember what she looked like.
“Your grandmother didn’t know where you were,” Brigid continued. “Mum said it’s not safe to keep secrets, Maddy. Especially after Cameron …”
The bus still hadn’t come. Brigid kept right on at me, while I felt my blood rising like the river at high tide.
“Mum wanted you to tell your grandmother about the drugs. She could have had you arrested … What are you doing?”
I picked up her schoolbag and turned it over, emptying its contents into the wet gutter. Brigid gawped. Pens, pencils, lunch box, drink bottle, books, all toppled damply over one another in the slow-flowing water.
Brigid took it pretty well, considering. Silently crouching, she picked up her books and shook off the water, wiping her lunch box against the grass. I could only tell that she was angry because her lips became a thin whitening line. She didn’t put her bag down again but heaved it over her shoulder and turned away.
This was unbearable. She should have cried. At the very least, complained. I stepped closer and poked her in the back. She took a couple of steps forward.
But what to do next? Brigid was a tiny little thing. I was much taller and stronger and could easily push her over, probably right in the way of the bus when it came. Or just now, while it was still safe … I imagined her sitting in the gutter, wiping water off her skirt, rubbing dirt off her knees. Perhaps that would make her cry.
While I was daydreaming, the bus pulled around the corner. Brigid was saved — for that morning at least.
I followed her onto the bus and chose a seat as far from her as possible. Daggy Sally Green came to sit next to me. I stared out the window, but girls like Sally Green aren’t put off that easily.
“Hello, Madeleine!” she said in her too-bright voice. “Are you all right?”
I shrugged, kicking resentfully at my schoolbag.
“Did you read the paper this morning?” she persisted.
What? Read the paper? Just because everything Sally Green did was daggy was no reason for her to think the same of me. I scowled, miserable and cranky. I hadn’t slept at all the night before, tossing in bed, thinking of Rebecca who didn’t like me any more, and of the look on Andrew’s face as he followed her out of the house.
“Well, did you?” Sally demanded. “My dad gets it delivered,” she added.
I looked away again. “Well, bully for him.”
“There’s a whole article about our neighbourhood,” Sally continued. “The journalist must have spoken to just about everyone.”
“No one spoke to me.”
“Well, me either,” she admitted. “Just the grown-ups. There’s a photo of my mum and dad in the paper. Isn’t that exciting?”
I looked at her carefully. Exciting?
“Wouldn’t the article have been about Cameron Seymour?” I asked pointedly.
Sally nodded, evidently without realising what I was getting at.
“So what’s exciting about that?” I asked, even though I used such terms myself. “It’s tragic.”
Sally nodded and stared ahead. In her hand she held a scrap of newspaper, apparently torn from that morning’s edition. I took it, to see if my grandma or I had been mentioned.
We hadn’t. I glanced at the photograph of the Greens. Sally’s mother — responsible, I supposed, for those tight plaits — was as plain as Sally herself. I read once that if you want to know what a girl will look like in middle-age, you look at her mother. Sally Green was unattractive now and didn’t have much to look forward to. Mr Green was ugly too. The top of his totally bald head only reached his wife’s shoulder, while the base of his lowest chin grazed the bottom of the photo.
“They don’t think Cameron ever left our neighbourhood,” Sally whispered, confidentially. “That’s what it says in the paper. That he never left our street, that he was killed here. Isn’t that scary? There’s a killer in our neighbourhood.”
It was scary. She was right about that. I leant back against the seat and returned Sally’s article without another word.
Andrew disappeared that day. He finished swimming practice in the morning and one of Rebecca’s colleagues dropped him off at school in a marked police car. That caused a lot of excitement, even for kids like me, who knew that to be excited was the uncoolest thing you could possibly be.
“Have you been arrested, Andrew?” asked one of the senior girls. Andrew shrugged and said he might as well have been, because that was his mother. The other kids laughed.
At lunch, Andrew said he was going home to pick up something he’d forgotten. Then he walked out of the school gate and right off the face of the planet.
Another River Pocket boy going missing was national news. Rebecca was off the Cameron Seymour case. She was a wreck.
When I got off the bus a few days later I saw that the Colemans’ front door was open. Music floated out from one of the back rooms and I stood on the footpath for a moment, listening, then heaved my schoolbag onto my shoulder and walked the few steps to my grandma’s house.
In the kitchen my grandma was silent. I dropped my bag onto the linoleum floor and reached for the cheese cubes and apples she thought were healthy. The way she watched me lately, without speaking, was unbearably irritating. She was so old, I thought, what could she possibly know about what was good for me? I put the cheese and apples down again.
I was bored and restless and unhappy, and desperately anxious about Andrew. I couldn’t let myself think that the person who had taken Cameron Seymour had taken him, as the rest of the country seemed to think, as the television news hinted. Andrew was nothing like Cameron Seymour. He was tall and strong. He was an athlete. Cameron Seymour, from pictures I had seen, had been a scrawny little kid. But the murderer would have a very different victim to deal with in Andrew Coleman. The disappearances couldn’t be related.
Once or twice over the next few days my grandma tried to talk to me, her face sad and serious.
“Being a teenager is difficult,” she said. “I want you to know I realise that. I’ve been there, too.”
At school, my friendlessness was highlighted now that I couldn’t even talk to Brigid in the afternoons. Really highlighted, stroked through in vivid green and red that marked me out from the other kids as a loner, a drifter, a no-hoper. Even Sally Green gave up on me.
Andrew was featured on the front pages of the Courier-Mail and the Australian. In the photos, Rebecca looked old and haggard. She was described as a widow, and as Andrew’s stepmother. Although Cameron Seymour’s parents were still married, a radio reporter managed to imply that things like this always happened to kids from broken homes.
Over the next week, the news darkened. Every recent child death anywhere in Brisbane was dragged up and analysed in relation to Cameron’s. The idea of a serial killer was so thrilling that the papers soon forgot about stepmothers. Other news was pushed to the side in everyone’s excitement. One day there was a human-interest story about a mysterious hero who pulled a child from the waves at a storm-tossed Sydney beach, the sort of piece that normally gets photos, sidebars, everything. It was just a column on page eight.
In those newspapers and on radio and TV, Andrew’s life was ripped to shreds. Reporters were obsessed by his swimming talent, and eulogised his appearance in tragic terms as if he was certainly dead. I curled up in my room and held the small packet of dope he had left me, not daring to smoke it until I knew I would see him again.
Then came the afternoon when I decided to do something. Stepping off the bus, I faced the cluster of television cameras gathered outside the Colemans’ house. A group of journalists sat in the gutter swapping jokes. I hoisted my bag more firmly onto my shoulder, ignoring them. I was sick of suffering on my own. I
was going in.
There were odd looks and frank stares as I walked past. A blue-suited woman looked me over and asked the man next to her to film me.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“What’s yours?” I asked, equally rude.
The photographer wore a television logo on his pocket. He looked at me and then at Ms Blue-Suit, smirking. Evidently I was supposed to know who she was, without asking.
“Jillian Smith,” she said in a stiff voice, raising a pen over her open notebook.
“Pleased to meet you, Ms Smith,” I said, pushing past. Who did these people think they were?
There was a policewoman at the doorway. One of Rebecca’s colleagues, perhaps? Someone stationed there to keep people out? I didn’t know. I decided it was worth being a little more polite.
“I’m Madeleine Jefferys,” I said. “A friend of Brigid’s. From next door.”
The policewoman consulted some sort of list. I could tell from her expression that my name wasn’t on it.
“Brigid probably forgot about me. It’s a tough time.” I tried to look honest. “Can you just ask them if I’m welcome, please?”
The woman gave me a careful, appraising look. She had mild, cow-brown eyes. But she smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”
As she walked down the hall behind me, a flash went off, quickly followed by a couple more. Perhaps they were taking photographs on the off-chance that I was someone significant. I stepped into the cover of the Colemans’ entryway.
Everything looked strange — from the high white ceilings to the dark polished floorboards — as if I was seeing them for the first time. There were different smells in the air. The ghost of Daniel’s aftershave was gone. This was a house of women now.
Brigid’s red head poked around the corner. She looked at me and nodded slightly, then vanished again. More quiet conversation followed before the policewoman returned, nodding. “You can go through.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe I’d been forgiven. The kitchen was a mess and, further on, so was the family room. Rebecca and Brigid occupied one sofa each, glancing through magazines while music played and the television flickered in the corner. Its volume was turned right down.
Rebecca glanced up first. She seemed tired as well as old. I had never seen her without make-up before, not even when her husband died.
“Hello, Madeleine,” she said. “I’m glad you came round.” She didn’t look glad.
“Hello, Mrs Coleman,” I said. Should I drag over a chair? Or was I was only allowed through for a quick hello? I looked at Brigid. She would have to decide if I was welcome to stay — if she had forgiven me for the bus-stop tantrum.
“Hello, Brigid,” I said.
“Hello, Maddy.”
She looked at me without smiling. Perhaps she couldn’t be bothered continuing our feud. I reached for one of the kitchen chairs.
“How’re you going?” I asked.
Rebecca shrugged. Brigid seemed a bit friendlier. “Surviving. It’s hard.”
“I bet it is. Look, Brigid, I’m sorry about the other day.”
She looked up at me, confused. She must have heard so many sorries since her father died. I would need to explain.
“About your bag,” I said quickly. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Brigid waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
Rebecca looked at me, apparently remembering something. “The police plan to talk to you sometime today.” She swallowed. “My colleagues …” she paused again “… want to talk to anyone who knew Andrew or places he likes to go.”
“I told them you’re his girlfriend,” Brigid said. She looked stricken. I guessed this was why I was suddenly back in favour. “Perhaps I should have told them earlier. I thought someone else would.”
“I wish I did know something, but …” I had to let them down. For a moment I hated them again, even though they weren’t a family any more.
“Andrew always said he wouldn’t go out with anyone if it interfered with his training,” said Brigid. “That there would be plenty of time after his career.”
Rebecca curved her lips upward, very faintly. “I never really believed him,” she said. “He’s a fifteen-year-old boy. Of course he wants to go out with girls.”
I nodded. I didn’t quite understand the significance of it, though. It didn’t occur to me until later that Andrew’s interest in me, like the drugs, like the over-training, was a sign that he was going through a crisis. That he wasn’t handling his father’s death as well as it seemed.
“I wish there was something I could tell you,” I said.
Rebecca raised her hand as if she was stopping traffic. “Look, Madeleine, about the other day …”
I nodded. Andrew was gone, vanished, perhaps dead. What worse could happen now?
“I think we probably overreacted,” Rebecca said. “I know lots of kids experiment with drugs, and it was only dope … Brigid” — looking at her — “don’t think this means I don’t take it seriously. But Madeleine, if there’s anything you can say about Andrew or that you know, please don’t keep quiet just to avoid trouble. There won’t be any, I promise.”
Should I tell her about our visit to Kevin Mathers? I shook my head at Rebecca. “I wish I could think of something,” I said. “Have you spoken to Kevin Mathers?”
Rebecca tilted her head. “Why? Do you think we should?”
“I think he’s strange, that’s all,” I said.
Rebecca looked at her daughter. “Brigid said something similar. I hope you two haven’t been causing trouble.”
Brigid and I shook our heads, exchanging glances. “I just wondered about him,” I said.
“He’s just a sad loner,” Rebecca said. “It’s probably best for you to keep away from him. The police would have spoken to him, anyway. They’ve spoken to all the neighbours.”
“And found nothing?” I asked.
Rebecca shook her head.
Six
“He’ll grow up to be seriously unbalanced,” my husband tells me over the telephone.
I cover the mouthpiece with my hand. Ken Richardson is sitting across the cafeteria table from me. A couple of hours have passed since I asked to see Bradley Ferris one more time, and we’re having lunch before the newly scheduled interview. “My ex,” I mouth to Ken, pointing at the phone.
He nods and starts to stand, but I shake my head. It’s all right for him to stay here.
“I’ll be home tonight,” I say into the telephone. “Lachlan called me about Nicole. You should be able to guess how he feels. You had a stepmother, too. I think Nicole might just have overwhelmed him a bit.”
There’s silence, as if Flip is thinking. Ken stands and walks away after all.
“I suppose Nicole can be a bit overwhelming,” Flip concedes eventually.
Maybe this should be the point where things change between us; where my husband expresses his regret, sorrow for the way things have turned out, his ultimate disappointment with the woman he left me for. His desire to reconcile. Instead, this is reality. Nicole might be “a bit overwhelming”, but that doesn’t mean he’s willing to trade in her pert little butt for mine. I have become as much a part of his past as my grandma’s River Pocket house is part of mine. Only Lachlan exists between us now, the embodied memory of a marriage that has passed on.
“I’m glad you called, though. We do need to talk,” I say.
This time the silence is taut with my husband’s fears and expectations. What happened? The question fizzles on the phone line between us, this time unsaid. I’ve asked it often enough already. No answer ever really satisfies.
“About custody,” I explain, although I don’t know why I’m the one who has to be quick to reassure. “Did Nicole mean what she said? About applying for custody?”
“Sometimes Nicole speaks too quickly. She gets angry, you know. You used to be a bit like that.”
I consider responding that my anger is turned to more producti
ve purposes these days. Only there doesn’t seem to be much point in lying.
“This weekend away is very important to her,” Flip says, “We’re sort of celebrating our engagement, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” I echo, mildly. “You’d better sign those divorce papers then, hadn’t you?”
“I’ll do it tomorrow.”
I’ve heard that before. But it’s time for me to be assertive. This whole separation thing has happened without my consent or complicity. I’ve been out of control of my own life ever since Nicole entered it, as young and infatuated as I once was. My husband loves infatuation, loves the attention, the adoration of it. Nicole makes him feel special again. On the surface I understand this — or try to. Although I hate her the way I once hated all families, for having something that I had lost.
“We need to formalise our custody arrangements, too,” I say. “Lachlan needs that.”
I trail off, trying to find a way to tell him that I don’t want his lover interfering even more than she already has without making things difficult myself. In some ways, it would be easier if he’d been a bad father. Then I would at least know what to do. But he loves Lachlan as much as I do.
“I think I know what you mean.” His voice sounds stiff. “Look, we’ll talk about it all later. How are things going there?”
“Weird,” I reply. About as weird as this conversation. If we were together, I could reassure him. I could tell him that it’s okay, I understand his parents’ divorce hurt him and that he feels guilty for hurting Lachlan. That things will get better once the whole situation seems less strange, and they’ll get back to the loving relationship they used to have.
“I don’t know how to frame my report. You know who this guy is? Hey, you can still keep a secret, can’t you?”
“I’m the same person I’ve always been.”
“Well, I’ll tell you anyway. You might not believe this. It’s Kevin Mathers.”
“Fucking hell.”
“You can’t keep a secret, can you?” Ken Richardson asks when I hang up. He’d come back just in time to hear the last couple of minutes of our conversation.
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