‘That cute little tyke is seventeen going on twenty-five,’ Jennifer replied. ‘A straight A student at school, she dropped out to go and live with some creep. He’s filled her head with nonsense about the corruption of the capitalist system, which of course puts me in the realm of the public enemy.’
‘Sounds like a throwback to the sixties,’ Roger commented.
‘Worse,’ said Jennifer.
‘Apparently, though, Carly doesn’t mind earning cash from the very capitalist business of modelling,’ Meg added.
‘What makes my blood boil,’ Jennifer confided, ‘is she’s giving most of her money to radical groups suggested by Rory. It seems it’s okay to use capitalist income to help further socialist causes.’
Kaplan grunted. ‘How did this happen?’
‘I don’t think I was a very good mother.’
‘Rubbish!’
‘Perhaps we should change the subject,’ Meg suggested. ‘After all, this dinner is supposed to help us all forget our worries for a while.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Roger agreed and he raised his glass. The others followed his lead.
Jennifer smiled weakly. No one would agree for a moment that she’d been a bad mother and over the years she’d certainly never thought of herself that way.
She felt differently now.
On reflection, she knew she hadn’t been there enough for her daughter.
From the time Kaplan loaned her the money to set up Wishing Pool Fashions she’d directed most of her energy to her work. Later, when the insurance money from Brian’s policy had finally been paid, she’d repaid the loan and bought out Kaplan’s share in the business.
He was happy to let her have total ownership of the company to which she was so devoted. She had named the business Wishing Pool Fashions, in memory of Brian and the quaint little wishing pool rockery at the old house. She felt that a part of Brian - of the life they’d never had together - was the legacy of her company.
Such a stupid damn notion, she realised now.
I had Carly. She was the legacy of Brian and myself. I should’ve been spending more time with her. Oh, she had everything she ever needed - clothes, dolls, friends, nannies - she just didn’t see enough of her mother.
There were so many nights when Jennifer had been away on business - cocktail party functions; fashion shows; late nights at the factory when they’d had huge orders to fill. As a child, Carly never complained.
On those occasions when they’d been together, Jennifer had always felt close to her daughter. Looking back now, she remembered the plaintive expression in Carly’s eyes when she’d told her she’d be home late that night.
‘Can I wait up for you, Mummy?’
‘Of course, dear. But I’m going to be very, very late tonight.’
‘I can stay awake!’
She never did.
Jennifer’s own mother had been the same. Her father had been a solicitor, her mother a sales manageress for a cosmetics company - a career woman in an age before it became fashionable. Loving parents who were always so busy, too busy.
Kaplan had drifted into small talk with Roger and Meg. They were startled when Jennifer suddenly announced out loud, cutting across their conversation, ‘I was never there for Carly.’
Kaplan and Roger looked bewildered.
Meg understood that Jennifer was still fighting a flood of memories. She reached across, took Jennifer’s hand in hers, and gave it an affectionate squeeze.
Henry and Roger had each taken their own cars to Eduardo’s. As Jennifer had caught a cab from her office to the restaurant, Roger jumped in first and offered to drive her back to her office car-space.
‘I still think about you often,’ he said as he drove. He was glad for the chance to have a few minutes alone with her. ‘I sometimes wonder how things might have been.’
‘You shouldn’t. It was a long time ago.’
‘You ever wonder? About us?’
‘It’s in the past, Roger. We’ve both moved on.’
‘You’re right, of course. You always would’ve thought of me first as Brian’s best friend.’
‘And you always would’ve seen me as Brian’s widow. Brian meant too much to both of us for it to have been any different.’
‘Did you ever come close to marrying again?’
‘No. Not close. You?’
‘The same.’ He drove on for a short while in silence. ‘I’ve had some good relationships. But there’s a point in every romance where you have to be prepared to …’ he searched for the right words, ‘… make a deeper commitment. I always seem to go wandering off around that time.’
‘I can’t criticise you on that. I’ve been exactly the same.’
Roger parked the car outside her office block. ‘I meant what I said earlier. About helping.’
‘I know.’ Jennifer touched his arm to register her thanks.
‘When Brian disappeared and you really needed help, well, it was Dad who stepped in, took command, did everything. As usual I was left trailing behind. But I really wished I could’ve done something.’
‘You did. You were a friend to me as much as you’d been to Brian. So don’t sweat it, okay?’
‘Okay.’ He smiled awkwardly and they embraced.
‘If there’s anything you can do to help I’ll let you know,’ she assured him before saying good-night and stepping from the car.
Driving home in her own vehicle, Jennifer thought back to the months following Brian’s disappearance. Roger, like his father, phoned regularly to see how she was coping. He’d met her for coffee once or twice a week and they’d gone to dinner once a fortnight.
At first they’d discussed every possible aspect of the disappearance and the failure by police and private investigators to unearth any leads. As time progressed, they began to speak of themselves and what the future held - Jennifer with her pregnancy and her fashion world ambitions; Roger with the pressures facing him in the family empire.
After Carly’s birth Roger had become serious, revealing the depth of his growing feelings for Jennifer.
Initially, Jennifer responded in a positive way to Roger’s overtures. He had a sensitive side to him. They had a shared grief over Brian. But before long she realised her attraction to Roger was based more on familiarity and friendship than it was on anything deeply spiritual or physical.
They’d almost made love once, if you could call it that - an awkward tumbling about, the necessary spark failing to ignite for either of them.
Jennifer told him that whilst they’d always be friends they’d never be lovers. That it would be best if they saw a little less of each other and sought romance elsewhere. Sheepishly, he’d agreed.
Poor, sweet Roger. Still lost. Thought of in some quarters as the wealthy, aimless playboy but that wasn’t totally fair. He wasn’t as lazy or as arrogant now as he had been when younger. He’d never be the dynamic leader his father had wanted him to be. But at the same time, Roger had a quiet, caring quality that was quite different to anything she’d ever seen in Henry Kaplan.
And, for the first time, she did wonder what it might have been like if things had turned out differently between her and Roger.
SEVEN
It was two months since he’d first suspected he was free of the shadows.
Over the years the jogger had become sensitive to the fact he was being watched whenever he was out and about. Although he rarely saw the watchers, he knew they were there. They’d never gone away. A long time ago he’d become adept at noting the figures following him in a crowd, or driving behind him at a discreet distance. If he dined at a restaurant, or went to a movie, he usually had a reasonable idea who the watchers were.
Of course, he could never be certain. There was never a familiar face, never a give-away look in the eye; and while he was suspicious of large, powerfully built men, that was no guarantee.
Once, many years before, he’d attempted to draw these shadowy figures out. He drove to a lonely bus
h setting in the early morning, left his car by the side of the road and hid in the bush with binoculars. He trained his sights on the road. A car stopped further back, within sight of his own vehicle. There were two men in that car. Waiting. Watching.
Who the hell were these people? Clearly their mission was to stop him from killing. They had succeeded at that, but they left him free to go about his business. His only release in inflicting pain came with the prostitutes who visited him each month. Always a different girl, always with the faceless, nameless minders waiting outside the door.
Even when the jogger had travelled interstate or overseas, or changed address, the watchers were there.
This had been going on for eighteen years. In the early days he thought it would drive him mad. How had they known about him? If they wanted him stopped, why didn’t they turn him in to the authorities? Surely that made more sense than running a twenty-four hour, seven-day-a week surveillance. Who, or what, could do such a thing?
He tried to bribe the prostitutes and their minders. Tell me who sent you? Tell me why?
The men outside never spoke. The girls too could never be budged on the subject, they never told him anything at all.
The jogger’s next step was to hire a private detective, six months after the surveillance had begun. He sought out a seedy character from Sydney’s notorious Kings Cross district. Carstairs was an ex-cop with underworld connections. His assignment was to find out who the people trailing the jogger were.
The jogger didn’t tell Carstairs about his own dark secret. There was no need for that.
A week after Carstairs commenced work, he vanished. The jogger went back after seven days to find that the private detective had closed his run-down office and left town. Had he been scared away? Or paid off?
The jogger wondered if he was part of some obscure criminal justice experiment? From time to time he tried to research that subject, but he never found anything remotely like the situation he was experiencing.
No, this wasn’t some bizarre experiment.
The strange thing was that the jogger began to reluctantly accept his predicament. After all, what could he do? He couldn’t risk going to the police. As the months turned into years he grew accustomed to the invisible surveillance, as a prisoner gets used to the confines of his cell. He stopped looking for victims; stopped stalking the streets in the lonely, quiet hours.
He still jogged, he had come to enjoy it, but only for fitness.
Perhaps, if he lived like a saint, then the strange vigil would end. Month after month, year after year, he hoped the watchmen would decide he was cured and leave him alone. He went as far as playing it straight with the prostitutes. Eventually, he realised the ploy wasn’t going to work. Five years had passed and the shadows remained. He started treating the girls rough again. It was the only satisfaction he could get.
It wasn’t enough - there were times when he felt sure the frustration would tear him apart. There was even one dark, prolonged period when he considered suicide.
In time, all of that passed. He learned to live with the frustration; with the watchers; with the maddening curiosity of who they were and how they managed to maintain their endless vigil.
Life went on.
When the jogger first suspected the watchers had left him, he did nothing. After all, it was just a feeling. He sensed the eyes were no longer upon him. He hadn’t picked up the now familiar signs of a follower in the crowd, or a car always just within view.
It must be my imagination.
It was a funny kind of delusion to get after all these years. But this sense that something had changed persisted.
He decided to put his feelings to the test. Why not? He had nothing to lose.
He rose early and drove to a long stretch of road in a country area. He remembered having done this once before, many years ago. He found a vantage point in the bush and scanned the road with binoculars. He’d suspected all the way out that no one had followed him but he couldn’t be certain. The watchers were brilliant at staying out of sight, moving as though they were part of the surrounding landscape.
No car. He stood and watched for half an hour, swinging the sights of the binoculars in every direction. No lurking cars. No followers.
No one watching, waiting.
The electric surge of excitement began then. The desire exploded violently inside him; fantasies filled his mind.
He drove home and wondered about returning to his old ways. The thought was delicious. It can begin again, he thought. At long last. Fulfilment. Real fulfilment.
Later, he worried that he was getting carried away too soon. What if it was some kind of trick? An attempt to draw him out one last time so he could be caught red-handed by police.
Why? Why do that after all this time?
He decided the best course of action was to play it safe. Another three weeks passed. Every day and every night the jogger’s head was filled with his vicious dreams. The thrill of it; how he had missed the savagery, the all-powerful sensation of exerting command over life and death.
Twenty-seven year old Trish Van Helegen was a second generation Australian, the daughter of Dutch parents who had settled in Sydney in the late 1970s. She always woke instantly when the pre-set radio alarm clock switched on at 5.45. This morning she opened her eyes to the solid rock beat and melodic swirls of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous. She sat up, stretched, and then elbowed her slumbering boyfriend in the side. ‘Today’s the day, lover,’ she said.
The young man mumbled and shifted position. Trish smiled to herself. All his talk of getting up and jogging with her in the mornings, all his promises. He never budged. This time, though, they had a bet. She was going to make sure she went through with it, partly for fun, and partly to teach him a lesson about making promises and not keeping them.
She placed her hands on his shoulders and shook him vigorously. ‘Today’s the day,’ she repeated, ‘the day you leap out of bed and join me on the run.’
‘Not today, hon,’ he drawled, still half asleep.
‘Don’t forget our little wager,’ Trish reminded him. ‘If you don’t jog with me today, no sex for a week. Remember?’
‘Hmm.’ He rolled over, buried his face deeper into the pillow.
‘You don’t think I’ll make you do without, do you?’
‘Not today, honey. Tomorrow. I promise.’
‘Last chance. Get up.’ She slapped his backside through the blanket. ‘Come on. Or no slap’n’tickle for seven whole days and nights.’
There was no response.
‘Trent!’
He stirred slightly. ‘Tomorrow, hon.’
Trish laughed to herself as she went through to the shower. The hot needlepoint of the water sprayed over her. She could barely wait to feel the brisk, dawn breeze lift her sandy hair as she jogged around the narrow path of the nearby reserve.
The funny thing was she’d started her period the night before, so sex was out anyway for the next week, or near enough to it. She wouldn’t tell Trent, not for a few days at least. She would keep up the pretence. It would teach him a lesson - and hopefully result in his joining her for the runs. She would love to have Trent jogging alongside her, sharing the exhilaration and the freedom.
She stepped from the shower recess, towelled herself dry, slipped into shorts, tee shirt and running shoes. She would need another shower - a proper one - when she got back, but she always loved that initial, brief burst of water rushing over her when she first woke. With any luck, she thought, I’ll be able to drag Trent into the shower with me when he finally starts getting up earlier. Then she thought, maybe that’s not such a good idea. She giggled, imagining those long, loose limbs, sinewy and sleek. She wouldn’t get any jogging done if she started the day in the shower with Trent.
It was a four-minute drive to the reserve, a large, leafy stretch of green at the far end of the semi-rural suburb.
She had lived in the apartment with Trent for the past two months and so far i
t was working out well. From the moment she’d met Trent at a party six months before she had the suspicion that, finally, she’d met the right man.
Trish parked by the side of the reserve. The path ran the full perimeter of the park and was ideal for joggers. In total, it was a run of two kilometres. One lap was just right for Trish. It kept her body trim, her muscles nicely toned, without wearing her down to the point of exhaustion.
She started out slowly, as she always did, building momentum as she went. It was early spring, and over the past few days she had noticed a considerable warming. This morning there was a stunning blue sky. The sun was already hot, unseasonably so, nature’s preview of the not too distant summer.
Trish loved this parkland. The air was always fresh and clean here, even though she could sometimes see a brown haze lingering over the city skyline in the distance. It was the main reason she liked living outside the suburbia of Sydney, away from the smog.
She’d been jogging for fifteen minutes when she saw the other runner on the path ahead of her. A man, dressed in a blue tracksuit with white trim. He was also wearing a cap. It occurred to her that he was still dressed for the colder weather and moving slower than her. It wasn’t long before she passed him on the narrow track.
‘You’ll work up quite a sweat in that outfit,’ she called out as she glided by.
His face, looking down as he ran, was mostly hidden, the cap pushed down low on his forehead. It had a long, broad brim. She caught the flash of a grin as he waved in response. If he said anything Trish didn’t catch it as she sped by. She was really moving now. She felt energised.
Up ahead was a familiar curve in the path, a spot where the surrounding trees and hedges of bush obscured the path from view. Trish slowed down as she rounded the bend.
Never return to the scene of the crime. That was how the old saying went. It amused the jogger that he’d returned here, even though this wasn’t actually the scene of any crime. It was the scene of the crime that never was. The first time the watchers had appeared and foiled his plan; a day he would never forget.
He wondered what kind of life his intended victim had lived over the past eighteen years. He recalled that she was a fair-haired, plump young woman. She’d been so close to death, the thought excited him. So close. Had she any idea how lucky she was to be saved? Wherever she was now, did she ever think of that morning, so long ago?
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