The gallery is to the south of the parklands. I have to catch the number 12 into the city and then another bus out again, past the gardens where couples marry in the spring, taking their vows by the pavilion before posing for photographs on the bridge that spans this section of the river. In winter the parklands are green, in summer they are burnt to a brown dust, with only patches surviving the heat, the constant watering of a few spots ensuring a smattering of green in the thick brown belt that encircles this city.
During the day, people stroll through these parklands.
In the early evening they are empty.
They are not a place where you would want to be. Not at night. Not on your own.
And I stare into them from the safety of the bus window. Trying to see in there, right in there, where it is only black before my eyes.
The gallery is in the first suburb beyond the city centre.
When I arrive, I can hear the opening before I turn the corner and see it. People spill out the door and on to the street and I do not know why she said she wanted me to come.
I am about to turn around and make my escape, I am about to disappear without even saying hello, when I catch her eye, and it is too late. She is leaning against the door, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She is leaning close to a man I recognise from the theatre. An actor who was in a play last season. She is laughing loudly at something he has said, and I am about to keep walking, thinking she has not seen me, when she calls out my name, high and clear, from across the street.
Elise, and she moves through the crowd towards me, unsteady on the heels she has borrowed for the occasion. Elise, and she hugs me, her coat warm against my cheek, the sweet smell of beer on her breath.
I did not expect to see you, she says, and she leads me back through the crush of people towards the entrance. It is not as crowded as it looks, she says. It is just that everyone comes outside to smoke, and she lights another cigarette herself.
The man she had been talking to nods briefly at me and I nod back at him.
Go inside and tell me what you think, Jocelyn urges me. I’d really like to know.
As I step into the brightness of the gallery, I hear her telling him that I am someone she works with. On the box office, she says.
Jocelyn’s work skirts the edge of the room, and I follow it, walking from piece to piece by myself. In the harsh light, I feel self-conscious. I am aware of my solitude. I hold my program tight in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. I am staring at each nude intently, without really seeing any of them at all.
Do you like it? Jocelyn asks me when I have come full circle.
I tell her that I do, but I would like to see it again.
She is drunk now and she squeezes my hand. She asks me if I have heard from Martin and I tell her I haven’t. I can see she is about to offer me some words of encouragement, some words to spur me on to do what she knows I should do, and I do not want to hear them. She leans close to me in an attempt to be heard above the noise that surrounds us and tells me she is still happy to help. We can put your stuff in my ute, she says and I thank her, but she has already been distracted by someone else who is congratulating her as he leaves.
I, too, turn to the door, but she stops me.
You’re not leaving already are you? and she clutches my arm. You’ve met Marissa? and she puts her other hand on the sleeve of the woman standing next to her.
We look at each other.
I would not have recognised her.
I doubt she would have recognised me.
We both smile and say that yes we have, we have met before, and turn back to Jocelyn for help, but she is talking to someone else.
How are you? Marissa asks, and I tell her I am well.
And Martin? You are still with Martin?
I am about to say yes I am. I am about to say he is well too, but I find I can’t. I do not know what to say.
He is away, I tell her. We are having a break.
She smiles, and I do not think she has heard me. Well, nice to see you again, she says, and she reaches for Jocelyn across the crowd of people that now separates us.
I have to go too, I tell her, mouthing the words as she makes her way back towards us.
She asks me how I am getting home and when I tell her the bus, she turns to Marissa.
I know what is coming next and I am dreading it.
Aren’t you staying at the beach? Jocelyn asks and, as I had feared, Marissa says she is, in the next suburb along; of course she can take me. No trouble at all.
Marissa drives an old black Volkswagen.
She throws papers and clothes onto the back seat in an attempt to clear a space for me in the chaos that seems to fill the car.
The heater doesn’t work, she tells me as she puts on gloves and a scarf. Nor does the demister, and she opens the window to let in the chill of the night. Our breath is frosty in this small space, and I watch the icy puffs that accompany each of her words.
We talk briefly about Jocelyn’s work, and she tells me that she found it slightly immature.
But that’s Jocelyn, she says.
I ask her about her own paintings.
She tells me she has had a difficult time. She is no longer living with Robert and she has been deciding whether she should leave the house. It makes it difficult to paint, she tells me, and I nod in sympathy as she talks.
She speaks more quickly than I remembered, her words tumbling out in long rapid sentences as she tells me it has been a time of reassessing her life. She had wanted a child, she says, and he had told her that he couldn’t. Not yet. But now he is, she laughs, with his new girlfriend. You think you have it all, and she rubs at the windscreen with her sleeve, and then it is remarkable how quickly it can all disintegrate.
She asks me again how Martin is and this time I do not hesitate. I think we are splitting up, I say and she laughs.
What do you mean? Believe me, when you’re splitting up, you know, and she looks across at me. But she is not really interested. She just keeps talking, wanting to tell me all of it, everything; her words do not stop, punctuated only by her continual wiping of the windscreen, fogging in the cold.
She is not the person I remembered.
I had once wanted to be like her. Just like her. But she is not the person I remembered.
I am sorry, she says as we pull up outside Dorothy’s house. I haven’t shut up. It has just been hard.
She is looking down at her lap as she speaks, picking at a loose thread in her gloves.
It will be okay, I say, wanting to comfort her but not knowing how.
I know, and she starts up the engine again, revving on the accelerator, uncomfortable in the silence that has descended. Good to see you, and she waves at me out the window. She is anxious to get going. Send my love to Martin, and she toots the horn as she pulls back out into the darkness of this street and drives off.
I am left with one hand on the back gate, and as I look at the beds I have prepared, I remember the Marissa who had shown me her garden. All those years ago.
You think you have it all.
And I had thought she had. I remember.
Tomorrow I will plant, I tell myself. I will plant because it is something I have always wanted. Just for me. And I must keep going.
36
It is, as I had hoped, a perfect morning.
I have spread out the pots of lettuces, spinach and herbs across the pebbles in front of me, and I am watering them, squinting in the dazzle of clear morning light that makes the spray from the hose glitter before my eyes, when John Mills arrives.
I look up in surprise when I hear the rusty squeak of the gate as it swings shut behind him.
He is earlier than usual.
He asks me whether there has been any improvement, unsure of how to phrase the question, but I understand what it is he wants to know. He wants to know whether Dorothy is now talking to me.
Last night, when I came in from the gallery, I was
hed her down in the way he had told me. I sponged her with warm soapy water, across the blotched softness of her skin, neither of us able to look at each other. She did not speak and I did not try. We simply performed the task that had to be done, trying to pretend that that was all it was, a task, and not an intimacy that felt all the more uncomfortable in the silence that enclosed us.
No, there has not been any improvement, I say, hating the fact I am using his words.
He is awkward. She is not talking?
No, I tell him, not a word.
I take her breakfast into her while he waits in the kitchen. She is propped up in the bed, her hair loose around her shoulders, and I brush it quickly for her, untangling the ends before twisting it on top of her head.
When I come back, he is sitting at the table as I left him. Have you asked her why she is doing this?
I tell him there is no point. Apart from the fact that she would not answer me, I already know the reason. I know why.
Perhaps if you told her you found it upsetting? he suggests.
He knows her well, but he does not seem to know her in the way I do.
I watch him as he traces a circle on the table with his finger and, for a man who is usually so calm and measured, it is an action of agitation.
I’ll go and chat to her, he says, and he sees the alarm on my face. Don’t worry, he reassures me, I will be careful.
I tell him there is no need. It will be all right eventually, although, in my heart, I fear it is conceivable that this silence could continue indefinitely. I cannot imagine how it could break, but I do not say this out loud.
I am going to check on her anyway, he says, and he takes his cup of tea with him.
I listen as he knocks on her door, tapping gently before pushing it open. I hear him go in and I do not want to hear any more.
Out in the yard, I do not want to think about Dorothy. I do not want to think about him and the photograph that is still unmentioned. I do not want to think about any of them. I water the beds I have made, slowly, thoroughly, letting the water soak into the rich brown soil, and I plan where I will position each of my plants. I am lost in rows of sunflowers and foxgloves, and I do not hear him as he comes out on to the back steps and across the pebbles towards me.
She says she is tired, and I know he has not talked to her in the way he wanted.
In his hand, he is carrying a brown envelope. I brought these to show you, he says. I developed them last night, and he hands the envelope to me.
My fingers are damp and I wipe them on the edge of my shirt.
Perhaps we should sit on the steps, he suggests.
I want to plant while it is still cool, before the winter sun rises high overhead, but I do not say this to him. I follow him without a word.
I haven’t used the darkroom for months, he says.
I did not know he even had one.
He tells me he set it up in his doctor’s surgery after he retired. I packed up the room and locked the door behind me. I remember thinking it was yet another room I would not use now that Ingrid had died. And the thought depressed me.
The envelope is unsealed. I lift the flap and feel the prints inside. Cool and glossy beneath my fingers.
It was Will who suggested it. We laughed about how dark and gloomy the room was and he suggested putting it to use. So we stacked all the files in the corner and remodelled the rest. A doctor’s surgery no more.
I lay the prints out on the step in front of me, his words only half heard as I look down at them, and it is not easy, at first, to see what they are.
The stripe of washed-up seaweed. Both fascinating and repulsive; I hear those words as he spoke them then, that grey Sunday morning. A black and oily stripe across harsh white sand.
I do not know why he is showing them to me.
They are good, I tell him, and I move slightly, edging myself up and back to the planting, catching his eye accidentally.
He is, as I had anticipated, about to speak, and I do not know if I want to hear.
I pick up the pot of herbs closest to my feet. I want to plant it in the bed that borders the side fence, near the back door.
Please, he says, we need to talk, and he rubs the side of his face with the palm of his hand, looking down at the steps.
Do you remember, he asks me, do you remember that night? That night you came and got me? The night she disappeared?
I do, and I nod my head in silence as I begin to make a small hole in the bed at my feet.
I remember it well, and I am afraid of what is going to come next.
37
The house is empty.
I know it before we even reach the back door.
A light burns, yellow and harsh, in the kitchen. We can see it from the gate. But it is only the light we left on before we went to the police and it does not fool either of us. Because the rest of the house is dark. Completely dark, and we know she is not home.
I stare up at the sky while Dorothy searches for her key. The night is clear and I can see stars. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, shimmering above me. Some of them are so far away that they do not exist anymore. All we are seeing is their light from years ago, Frances once said and I had not understood. I still don’t.
And there are so many of them that it is possible that one of them is an exact duplication of our life here. There is another city just like this one and in that city there is another beach the same as this and another house identical to ours and in that house there is another bedroom that belongs to two girls who are another Frances and Elise. Just like us.
Just like us.
Dorothy opens the back door and I wonder whether the other Dorothy is doing exactly the same.
Do they look exactly like we look?
Exactly.
Are they doing exactly what we are doing now?
Exactly.
Even asking the same question that I am asking, only they are asking it about us, right now?
I cannot comprehend the enormity of it. I wonder whether the other Frances is also missing and wanted. Somewhere on that other planet, leaving that other Dorothy and Elise unsure of what to do or how to react. If I knew where the other Frances was then it would all be solved.
The kitchen smells of our dinner. Chop fat and soggy vegetables. I smell it as soon as Dorothy opens the door.
In that other kitchen, light years away, there is the same smell and that other Dorothy and Elise also stand, quiet and alone, looking at the dishes and pans in the sink and the red light of the clock on the windowsill.
Dorothy turns the water on. She turns the taps too far and it rushes out, splashing and spraying as it hits the stack of plates and glasses, roaring against the metal sink. Louder than I can bear. But she does not seem to notice. She just stands there, plug in hand as the spray dances around her, until eventually she realises, and she takes the dishes out of the sink, putting the plug in and letting it fill, soap bubbles rising, white and frothy, to the surface.
That other Dorothy also does not turn and look at her daughter. Not once. She just washes dishes, all her concentration now on the task in front of her, and she stacks the washed plates in the rack next to the sink. Today’s dishes on top of yesterday’s dishes.
I can see Frances’s cereal bowl from breakfast, Frances’s glass, her spoon, and I want to tell Dorothy to stop, to leave them, but I don’t. Because it wouldn’t make any sense. One by one they are plunged into the soapy water, and they emerge, no trace of Frances left.
It is late on the other planet. The clock in that kitchen near that beach in that city shows 10.45. Electric numbers like mean little red eyes. It is past the time the other Elise goes to bed and she is tired. But she does not want to go to her room. Not on her own. She waits near that other door and looks down that other corridor. It is dark in that other house. She wants to ask the other Dorothy to come with her and put her to bed.
Good night, I say.
Good night, the other Elise says in unison.
And together we head, frightened, for the room at the end of the hall, leaving the two Dorothys alone in their kitchens.
The door is closed. As I left it this afternoon. I try to shake the other Elise from my mind so that I alone can concentrate on what is happening here, now, in this world. I open the door and stand, in the darkness, trying to see.
My side of the room and Frances’s side of the room. Mess on the floor and an unmade bed. I feel my way over, through the clothes, magazines and towels, twisted and strewn with no respect for the boundary we drew up, my eyes gradually becoming acclimatised to the dark.
Scared of the dark. But more scared of turning the light on and finding the bed is, as I expected, empty.
I sit on the floor and close my eyes until there is nothing but smell, and that smell is Frances; it is in the clothes that surround me, the unmade bed, the shoes tossed in the corner, all Frances. The Frances here, of this world. The Frances who is not here. I do not understand.
For Frances to sneak out is not unusual.
For Frances to be late is not unusual.
For Frances to be in trouble is not unusual.
But this. This is different.
There is not even an attempt to look as though she is keeping the rules. She has not come home at all. She has not done anything she was supposed to do.
And far away on that other planet, the other bed is also empty.
From the other end of the house, there is a smash.
I open my eyes.
It is just a plate dropping, clattering hard on the kitchen floor, but I sit upright, all senses on alert, and wait for what will follow. A momentary silence, followed by another crash. Louder this time. No accident.
I stand slowly, each limb alien and heavy, as I walk, pressed close to the wall, down the corridor and to the kitchen. Not wanting to witness what I know I will witness. And pressed tight against the doorframe, small and invisible, I see her. This Dorothy. Wild and furious. Wild as she has not been wild for years. Flinging plates, hurtling them, throwing them, across the kitchen to the wall. And they smash. Shatter. Fly out in a thousand china daggers.
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