Well, after a bit, things started to die down. Novels aren’t the most exciting thing in the world and there was an election coming up and more stuff about police corruption, and it all sort of quietened down. Luisa’s publisher sold the US rights to Pretty Maids All In A Row for some enormous amount of money, but nobody except Luisa really cared.
Belinda still used to make comments about Luisa, but more out of habit than anything else. She was editing a book of poems to come out during the Mardi Gras, and that was taking up a lot of her time. Jacquie was busy, too. And I was worried about Mark, who hardly ever seemed to be home these days, and who always seemed really tired. I wanted him to ease off on the extra work but he said he was really starting to get somewhere with the sports physio and he didn’t have the time to ease off. He didn’t seem happy, and I had this feeling that our marriage was going through a bad patch, so I was trying as hard as I could to be there as much as possible.
But tonight he was out, so I was cutting onions for a curry in Jacquie and Belinda’s kitchen when Belinda walked in and handed me this magazine. There was a photo of Louise on the cover and the blurb said, ‘Luisa Mayfield tells: My secret lesbian lover.’
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It was me.
There were two pictures. One was at that party where we’d met again, and there I was, looking pretty drunk, actually, with Luisa giving me a big hug, and some man dressed in feathers in the background. It was the other that really shocked me, though, because it was a photo of me at the beach, lying on my front with my bikini straps all undone and sort of laughing up at the camera. You could see about a mile of cleavage and I was looking awfully relaxed and happy. Of course, the implication was that I was looking at Luisa, only of course I hadn’t been. I’d been looking at Mark.
I just saw red. How dare she? I didn’t know what was worse, coming around and stealing my photos, or telling these terrible lies about me. I didn’t even put the onion knife down, I just walked straight across the landing to her flat.
It’s exactly the same as Jacquie and Belinda’s flat, only a mirror image. You walk straight in and turn left and there you are in the kitchen. She wasn’t in the kitchen and I was so upset that I didn’t even stop to wonder what Mark’s distressed leather jacket was doing hanging over that chair, it was such a familiar jacket, and the kitchen was so familiar, that it all seemed perfectly natural. In fact, it wasn’t until I went down the passage and into the bedroom that I realised. A lot of things. Suddenly. Why Mark was always so tired, why he was out so late, why Luisa used to nip off as soon as I turned up anywhere, how she had got my photo for that filthy magazine article.
And now I’ve got blood all over my work clothes.
Christina Lee
First Prize Trophy, 1996
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~ * ~
Divine Intervention
Jiminy, it’s hot. I’ve got the whole oval to cross. I’m gonna get to Mum’s work first; I’ve just gotta beat Petie and Paulie. They know, too, but not as much as me. I’m supposed to wait for them after school, but crikey, what can happen to them? It’s only a bloody oval and the bridge. I told them old men live under the bridge and wait for you to cross by yourself and then they drag you under it and suck your blood. But I made that up, so it can’t be true. They’re sooks, Petie and Paulie.
I say a rhyme to make the time go faster. It always works. One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, then I let it go again. Why did you let it go? Because it bit my finger so. Which finger did it bite? This little pinkie on my right. I’m only a millionth, trillionth, gillionth of the way there. I say it ten more times and run as fast as I can while I’m saying it. I’m nearly there, so I count pink elephants. Each pink elephant takes one second to say. Longer, if you say it really, really, really slowly. I’m up to twenty pink elephants. I can’t run any more. So I walk fast. I’ve got to save my breath to get across the bridge, then around past the flats, then five pink elephants and I’m at the shops.
I’m up the stairs and along the corridor past Doctor Baume’s surgery, then in the door to Mum’s salon. Mrs McDarmid’s there having her blow-dry. Once I called it a blow job by mistake and Dad laughed, but Mum roused at him and told me to forget it. I haven’t, though, and one day I’ll find out what the joke is.
Mum’s up to the teasing bit. She’s doing up Mrs McDarmid like Helen Shapiro from Bandstand.
“What are you doing here so early, Fi Fi?” she says. “Where are the boys?”
I say I couldn’t find them, that I thought they’d left already.
I was going to drag out telling her, but I can’t help myself. It just comes out, all in a rush.
“Miss Steven’s dead. Something hit her on the head, real hard, at lunchtime. Geraldine found her. She bawled so much, they called the doctor. I wish I was the one who found her, I wouldn’t have been a cry baby. The cops are there; Dad, too. Ten police cars, at least, and an ambulance. It must have been murder. Geraldine’s at home and her mum won’t let me see her. So I don’t know all the facts. I bet there was a lot of blood, but we weren’t allowed back in. I couldn’t even get my bag. The whole of the school had to go into the church and say Hail Marys and then we got questioned, one by one. Dad asked me, did I see anyone unusual? Of course I didn’t. I would’ve said straight away, if I had.”
All the time I’m telling Mum and Mrs McDarmid, I don’t tell them I know who did it. I didn’t tell Dad and I won’t tell Mum. They won’t believe me and they’ll stop me getting the evidence. And I’m going to get the evidence! He won’t get away with this. He’ll hang, like Ronald Ryan, even though my family’s against capital punishment. Even my Dad, he says he doesn’t want to ever be responsible for someone dying and, anyway, what if you find out ten years later that the person didn’t do it?
But Garran Darby will hang for this. I can’t be held responsible. He did it, and I know it.
My Dad is a copper. I’m allowed to call him that, except when his boss comes round, then he’s a police officer. Dad’s a Detective Inspector. That makes him eighty-eighth in line for the top job and he’s only young, he says, so you never know. One day he’ll be famous and influential. My Dad says I’m a bit of a detective myself. I always find the chocolate biscuits every week, wherever he hides them. He gives me clues, but hard ones. And, twice now I’ve found all the Christmas presents: once in the ceiling and once in the boot of the car. But I didn’t tell anyone.
My Mum asks heaps of questions. So does Mrs McDarmid. If I know the answer, I tell them and sometimes I have to guess. That’s called ‘deduction’ and it’s alright for a detective to deduce things, as long as you don’t do it too much and keep an open mind.
But I don’t tell them about Garran Darby. That’s because I haven’t yet got all the facts.
I know the motive: that means I know why he did it. Miss Steven didn’t like him any more. She used to joke around with him, a bit at first. She likes me and Leo Maloney, and some of the others, but mostly me and Leo. But she had some kids she hated right from the start and you didn’t want to be one of those. And Garran had gone from being a favourite to one of those. He wasn’t the sick bucket monitor any more; that was Eddie Zabinski now, and, believe it or not, Garran liked being the sick bucket monitor. He always made a joke out of it to make Miss Steven laugh. Someone would spew and she would say, ‘Go on, Garran, do your stuff’. He’d go out and come back with his hankie tied around his face, like a sheriff, and the bucket and mop. Then he’d clean it up and she’d make a bit more of a fuss of him. Sometimes she let him clean her car for money. But then something happened, I’m not sure what, and he wasn’t a favourite any more.
You can always tell with Miss Steven if you are a favourite or not. I’m a favourite and Miss Steven especially likes my go-go dancing. Every Friday just our class has a concert and Miss Steven is the judge and the rest of the class is the audience and all the kids have to do something. I’m t
he leader of the go-go dancers so I get to pick who is in my group. I’m the leader because my sister, Sharon, is a real go-go dancer with The Union Jack. So is Danila Parda’s sister, but my Mum makes Sharon and everyone’s costumes, so I get to be the boss.
Leo Maloney’s in charge of the singers. They do, in order of my favourites, ‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’ by Herman’s Hermits, ‘Georgie Girl’ by The Seekers—they’re Australian, in case you don’t know. And, I like ‘Que Sera Sera’ by Normie Rowe. He’s Australian, too, but que sera sera means something Italian.
If Miss Steven picks your act as the best on the day, you get to do it again. Me and Leo usually get to do it again. We are both top of the class, too; me of the girls and he of the boys. We fight about who is top between us two, but not really. We’re equal top, most of the time.
Last week Miss Steven made Garran Darby and Phil Hourigan cry into the tear bottle all play lunch. She roused on them and then they started sooking.
“There’s a drought, you know,” she said, “so we can’t have you two turning on the tears and wasting water. Go and get the tear bottle, if you’re going to be sissies, then you can at least do something useful. If that’s not full when I get back after play lunch, there’ll be trouble,” she told them.
She always makes the boys do that, if they cry. She’d forgotten about it after play lunch, though. But Garran didn’t. After school he nicked all her hub-caps. At least that’s what Miss Steven and Sister Dominic said the next day. But Garran Darby stuck to his story and said he didn’t and they couldn’t prove it.
What I know, that nobody else knows, is that Garran Darby went inside today at lunch time. We’re not allowed inside, unless it’s raining. I only went in myself to get my copy of Top of the Hit Parade from my bag because Danila Parda wouldn’t believe me when I said The Seekers were Number 1. My sister gets me a copy every week because she works at The Groove Record Shop every Friday night and Saturday morning.
But I couldn’t get it because Sister Immaculata was going crook at Garran in the corridor.
“You’re a naughty, disobedient boy, Garran. Get outside now and I won’t tell Sister Dominic this time. You know the penalty for disobedience, don’t you? Six of the best with the Fluffy Duster,” she said.
I didn’t want that, either, so I went outside before she saw me. Garran Darby came out just after me, so he must’ve killed Miss Steven before Sister Immaculata caught him in the corridor. I’m going to find out for sure, though, before I tell anyone.
I remember the other important bit of information I have for Mum.
“Sister Dominic says there’s no school tomorrow on account of Miss Steven dying,” I tell her.
“Oh, fiddle-sticks,” says Mum, “what am I supposed to do? You can tell none of those bloody nuns have kids of their own to worry about. Can you do us a favour, Sue, and mind the kids?” she says to Mrs McDarmid. “Today’s set’s on the house and we’ll call it quits.”
“Alright,” says Mrs McDarmid, “send them round in the morning.”
“There goes today’s profits,” Mum says.
The boys arrive and try to tell Mum about it all over again, but I tell them they’re too late, she knows all about it from me and, anyway, I know more than they do put together. I give Paulie a Chinese burn, because he deserves it, then Mum gives us some money to buy coke spiders at Mr Sheedy’s milkbar downstairs, except I buy a lime one. Mum cleans up the place and we all go home together. Dad’s there and he tells Mum more, except he makes me go outside so I can’t hear. Then it’s dinner and a bit of telly, then bed.
If Dad’s home he always tucks us in. I’ve got my own room because I’m the only pint-sized girl in my family. Sharon’s got a sleep-out in the backyard and the boys share the second-biggest bedroom inside after Mum and Dad’s.
Dad always does me last. He sits on the bed and pulls the blankets right up to my chin. Then we just talk about any old thing. But tonight I have to ask him something. I know he won’t tell me anything about the Miss Steven case, because he always says that we can’t ask him about work and we have to respect that. If there’s something he needs to tell us, he will, he says, and he does sometimes. We talk for a bit, just about anything. He says I’m not to worry too much about what’s happened, that everything will be alright in the end. Then I ask him what I need to know.
“If someone knows someone has murdered someone, should they tell someone, even if they don’t know absolutely, positively for sure?”
“No,” says Dad, “they shouldn’t tell someone and they should stop thinking about it and leave it up to the police and go to sleep.”
I knew he’d say something like that and it’s what I wanted to hear, because that someone is me and now I don’t have to tell anyone anything until I can prove it. I want to be a detective like my Dad, but Miss Steven told Mum once that she reckoned I’d make a good journalist.
“Fiona has a very vivid imagination, Mrs Corrigan, and she’s very liberal with the truth. She’ll make a good journalist one day,” she said.
I know exactly what she said because I learned it off by heart. So now I’m not sure whether to be a journalist, because that’s what Miss Steven would like, or a detective, which I’m going to be anyway just as soon as I solve this murder for Dad. They’ll have to make me an honorary one, like they did to Cubby and Annette on the Mickey Mouse Club.
Mum always says it’s a good idea to keep your options open, but I decide right then and there that I’m going to be a journalist, in honour of Miss Steven, or maybe a teacher, but Mum reckons who’d want to teach snotty-nosed kids like us all day? But I think I’d like it a lot, and I would be all the nice things about Miss Steven, but not so mean.
I wake up early then remember there’s no school and that Miss Steven is dead. I get a bit sad about her being in Purgatory. I don’t think she’s been good enough to go straight to heaven. Purgatory’s almost as bad as Hell, just not for quite as long. Except, Sister Dominic says it may as well be like Hell, because it’s so terrible that one second feels like ten years in Earth time. You might have only five minutes’ penance to do in Purgatory and it would be like an eternity of horribleness. That’s because you go to see God before you go to Purgatory, and he’s so brilliant that you can’t bear to have to leave Heaven, even for five minutes. But I cheer up a bit because I remember that all us kids said trillions of Hail Marys yesterday and that takes time off for the souls in Purgatory. I still have a bit of a cry, though, and end up back asleep.
Then Mum wakes me up. She’s always in a hurry and cranky as anything in the mornings. My Dad says its best to keep out of her way, but somehow I always manage to be in the wrong place. I have to take the boys with me today, but that’s alright because I’ll have the gang, too. It’s good like that because some of the others have little kids they have to look after, too. Mum gives me the money to mind for a treat for us three. But we always share with the others. Petie and Paulie complain about it, but we still do. It’s my rule.
We go round to the McDarmid’s. Jamie has to ask if we can go to the Maloney’s, because it’s his mum and he’s her favourite because he’s the baby of the family. Mrs McDarmid says we have to be back by one o’clock and that us big kids have to look after the little kids or she’ll murder us. She always says that. Then we go to the Maloney’s, then the Parda’s, then past the McMahon’s. Usually there’s five of them and that makes the gang twelve.
But today, no one’s outside. I’m the one that has to knock on the door because I’m Geraldine’s friend. But Mr McMahon says the kids can’t come out to play because Geraldine’s still too upset. I want to ask her lots of questions but that’s not going to happen today and, anyway, Garran Darby’s the one I really want to talk to.
Garran’s gang usually hangs round the old tip. I don’t want to tell the others I’m looking for him, so I say we should go to the old tip just to muck around. All the little kids start whingeing that it’s too far, but the others agree with me, especi
ally after I tell them you can sometimes find things and sell them. Petie says we never made any money the last time we did this, but I tell the others we’ve got some money even if we don’t find anything valuable, but I won’t share it unless they come to the tip first.
We’re really close to the tip in the bush, between it and the back of the houses, when we hear them. They’re not really Garran Darby’s gang. He’s too much of a der-brain to be the leader, even of that bunch of spazzos. It’s Eddie Zabinski’s gang and Garran’s his second in command. Eddie Zabinski’s fat and stupid and takes up too much of the seat when you have to sit next to him in class. He picks his nose and chews it and looks as though he really likes it.
We all hit the dirt, even the little kids. They’re good like that; they know what they have to do, but they’re not much good in a fight, though. We crawl up to the edge of the tip, where we can see them, but they can’t see us. They’re all down there, about eight of them. There’s seven of us, but we’re a better gang. We’re smarter and stronger and faster and braver, like Magellan and Columbus and Vasco Da Gama who we just finished reading about in social studies. I did a project on Vasco Da Gama. It was really great, with a map of the world showing where he went. I shaded in all around the continents and islands with green on the land side and blue for the sea. We’re doing Australian explorers next term.
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