Heidi closed the screen, leaned against the bathroom sink and watched him through the frosted glass. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Don’t leave me.’
‘It’s okay. I won’t leave you alone. I promise.’
thirty
The sun melted over the steelworks and cast the sky a sickly yellow pallor. Despite the sleeping pills, Andrew had woken from nightmares throughout the night. Now, as they left Wollongong, Heidi gave him more sleeping pills and lay beside him on the mattress. The last thing he saw, before sleep swallowed him, was a huge Buddhist temple on a hillside, and he thought how strangely out of place it was on the highway outside of Wollongong.
He woke with a start, out of breath and disorientated. He’d dreamt that he was at an extravagant banquet dinner, everyone feasting themselves on Marcus’s body, fighting each other and tearing at him with their bare hands.
‘Are you okay?’ Heidi asked.
He sat up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘Where are we?’
She shrugged. ‘An hour or two south.’
Andrew forced himself to stay awake. He watched the ocean flashing between the trees on one side, and a low mountain range thrumming by on the other. The highway snaked past surf beaches, dairy farms, rocky bays and eucalypt-covered headlands. They passed surf clubs, football fields and cemeteries. Heidi’s hand felt good on his back. He focused on it and drifted towards sleep.
He was bumped awake and looked up to see that they were edging along a sand track surrounded by thick bush. The suspension creaked and groaned and branches scraped along the sides of the bus. Andrew yawned and turned to Heidi. ‘Where are we?’
‘Not sure. Tim turned off the highway somewhere near the border.’
They jolted along for another ten minutes before the track opened into a secluded clearing. Tim parked the bus and they got out to stretch. There wasn’t a tremor of wind and, after being on the road for most of the day, everything seemed eerily still. In the distance, a kangaroo looked up, its ears twitching. There was a narrow track through dunes leading to the beach and, behind them, thick eucalypt scrub.
‘Do you think anyone followed us?’ he asked Tim.
‘There’s no way anyone followed us.’
Andrew caught the kelpy smell of the ocean on the breeze. ‘Are you sure?’
‘What’s wrong with you, man? You’re getting all paranoid.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Stop worrying. The roads were pretty much deserted after we turned off the highway.’
‘So we’re in the clear?’
He nodded.
Andrew watched Heidi and Jade wandering towards the beach, towels slung over their shoulders—it was as though they’d completely forgotten what had happened in Tamworth. He marvelled at their talent for blocking out the past.
‘We picked this up at a service station while you were asleep.’ Tim passed him a folded newspaper and tapped his finger on one of the articles. ‘The girls didn’t want me to show you—but I figure you’d rather know now than later.’
He scanned the article. Authorities were on the hunt for the culprit of a vicious bashing in Wollongong. The victim had been stabilised but was in a critical condition. It was suspected to be a drug-related crime. There was a number for Crime Stoppers at the bottom, asking anyone with information to come forward.
Andrew nodded and passed the newspaper back to Tim. What if Phil got caught and dragged him back into the whole mess? Or even blamed him for it? What if Marcus described him to the cops? He thought of calling his mum. He thought of calling Benny, too. Benny always found humour and lightness in heavy situations. Andrew reached into his pocket for his phone. But his pocket was empty.
He clambered onto the bus and searched everywhere. Then he remembered his phone was still on the charger in the hostel in Wollongong. That meant he only had three numbers of people outside of this bus: his mum, his dad and Benny. And he’d cut ties with all of them.
Tim collected wood and started a campfire while Heidi and Andrew chopped vegetables for a curry. In the distance, Jade was talking on her mobile and pacing back and forth, while she explained to Sam what had gone wrong. She was still on the phone when the other three sat down to eat. The fire whistled and popped, and a bright swirl of splinters rose into the night. Andrew realised that his drama in Wollongong had won him a partial reprieve for Tamworth. Jade ended her call and came to sit with them by the fire.
‘What did Sam say?’ Tim asked, his face flickering in the light.
‘He doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s been trying to contact Phil, but Phil’s not answering his phone.’
‘And what’s going to happen?’ Andrew asked.
‘To Phil?’ she replied.
‘Yeah.’
Jade stared into the fire. ‘He didn’t say—but Sam’s just a runner. There’re guys higher up who decide.’
‘What do you mean: decide?’
‘I don’t know. Decide what to do with him.’
That night, Heidi offered to sleep beside Andrew in the bus. Lying with her in his arms, it almost felt like old times in Byron. He thought that if he could kiss her, their problems would dissolve, they’d end up forgiving each other—and everything would return to how it was, how he wanted it to be. Tentatively, he kissed her neck and inhaled her familiar scent. He kissed her cheek and tried for her lips but she pulled away and shook her head. He rolled onto his back and they lay for a long time without talking. He almost started crying, but steadied his breath and held back the tears. Heidi adjusted herself beside him and stroked his hair. ‘Do you want to talk about what happened?’
He remembered the wet crack of the gun against Marcus’s face. ‘I just can’t believe that someone could actually do that to another person.’
She continued stroking his hair. ‘At least it didn’t happen to someone close to you—someone you love.’ She hesitated. ‘After Mum’s accident, all I wanted was to have someone to hold me. We couldn’t contact Dad because he refused to carry a mobile, so all we could do was leave messages on the home phone. My aunty and one of my cousins got there eventually. But for a long time, I was alone in the Emergency waiting room. There was this woman. I don’t know who she was, or what she was doing there, but she sat beside me and let me rest my head on her lap. And she stroked my hair. I can still remember the smell of her wet woollen jumper, and I can remember closing my eyes and listening to her soft voice repeating to me over and over again, “Everything’s going to be all right…it’s all going to be all right.”’
‘And was everything all right?’
‘No.’ She paused. ‘But I knew that I could bear it— just so long as I had someone to hold me and comfort me like that.’
‘Heidi?’
‘Yeah?’
He drew a breath. ‘We’re still planning to go to Adelaide, aren’t we?’ He couldn’t make out her expression in the dark.
‘As long as everything works out in Melbourne,’ she said.
‘With the drugs?’
‘Yeah.’
She yawned, rolled over and was asleep within a few minutes. Andrew lay awake listening to the sound of eucalypts creaking in the wind, waves crashing on the shore, and the irregular rhythm of Heidi’s breathing.
thirty-one
Andrew woke before dawn to the sound of magpies cawckling in the trees. Heidi was snoring lightly beside him with her hand on his chest. He drifted back to sleep and woke a few hours later, alone and sweating in the mid-morning heat. He sat up and glimpsed Heidi walking towards the beach in her bikini.
She was at the water’s edge by the time he’d changed into his shorts and caught up to her. His skin prickled and tightened when he dived in.
‘God! It’s freezing,’ Heidi said, when she surfaced beside him. ‘How are you? Better?’
‘Kind of,’ he said, ignoring the tingling nervousness in his guts. ‘A bit anxious.’
‘You’ll be okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve go
t a big fat joint waiting for you on the beach.’
Ten minutes later, they were sitting on Heidi’s towel and the joint was almost down to the roach when Tim appeared at the edge of the dunes.
He wandered over, stopped beside them and stretched his arms above his head. ‘Either of you want to go fishing?’
Heidi groaned. ‘Nope.’
‘Yeah,’ Tim looked out over the ocean. ‘But you’ll eat the fish I catch, won’t you?’
She laughed. ‘Assuming you catch anything.’
Andrew watched the smoke leave his mouth. ‘I’ll go.’
Heidi glanced at him, bemused. ‘Since when did you like fishing?’
‘C’mon,’ Tim said. ‘Let’s go.’
Andrew stood, passed Heidi the joint and brushed the sand off his shorts. This was just what he needed to help him relax.
Andrew and Tim twisted their feet into the wet sand until the pippie shells rubbed against their soles. They dug up the shells and dumped them into a plastic shopping bag. As soon as they had enough bait, they walked towards the headland, fishing rods tucked under their arms. The effect of the pot had intensified and Andrew felt jumpy, his thoughts cascading in unpredictable ways. Maybe Tim was taking him out here to give him bad news. And the girls were in on it too. Perhaps they were sick of him and had decided to kick him off the bus. He imagined how Tim would tell him. Kind of matter-of-factly, as though there was nothing he could do about it. Andrew shook his head, tried to clear his mind.
They weaved between the rock pools at the base of a cliff that had been lashed by ocean and weather, found a flat rock shelf at the water’s edge and set themselves up. Andrew squatted and smacked a pippie with a rock the way he’d seen Tim do it, then he stood and stared at the fractured shell and its splattered innards. He looked over the chopped surface of the ocean, picked up his rod and cast his line without any bait. Tim looked at him like he was an idiot, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want the excitement of catching a fish; all he wanted was to feel the sun’s warmth on his shoulders and the breeze rippling his shirt. Again and again, however, his thoughts turned in on themselves. When he finally opened his mouth, it felt like neither of them had spoken for hours.
‘What’s the thing you’ve been meaning to tell me about Heidi?’ he asked.
‘Huh?’ Tim said.
‘In Sydney—you were going to tell me something.’
‘Oh, that.’ Tim squinted against the glare and exhaled heavily. ‘Well, it wasn’t that I’d fucked Heidi, obviously.’
‘So what was it?’
‘I wish I’d never organised that acid for her.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about it. That morning in bed…she was talking about her mum’s accident, then she got all upset about the guy who ran her down.’
‘Cabritzi.’
‘Yeah, Cabritzi. Then she just snapped out of it and asked me if my dad could get her liquid acid. The whole conversation was just so…weird. I’ve asked her some details about the job. How much she’s selling for, how she knows the guy, whether she wants me nearby in case anything goes wrong…’
‘And?’
‘She won’t tell me anything.’
‘So?’
‘So…Heidi doesn’t know anyone in Melbourne.’
Andrew shook his head.
‘Are you two still going to Adelaide?’ Tim asked.
‘Yeah, that’s the plan.’ He was dreading it. ‘We’re going to visit her mum—to give her the song.’
Tim turned to face him. ‘What about your parents?’ Andrew was desperate to tell him everything—about his mum, Heidi and Cabritzi—but he, he couldn’t trust Tim not to tell Heidi. ‘I haven’t decided whether to go and see them yet. There are still problems. We’ll probably just visit Heidi’s mum, hang around for a few days then fly back up to Byron.’
‘Nah, man. You’ve got to see your parents.’
‘Why?’
‘Because one day they’ll be dead—like my mum, or half dead like Heidi’s mum and you’ll wish you had gone to see them.’
Andrew’s thoughts squirmed. ‘It’s complicated. You don’t understand the situation.’
Tim shrugged. ‘I don’t need to.’
Tim’s rod jerked. He yanked it and started reeling and, after a minute-long fight, he pulled in a big, beautiful silver fish. It hung suspended in the air, its tail thrashing frantically and water drooling from its body. Tim landed it on the rocks and it flapped for a few seconds, before stopping, its mouth opening and closing.
Tim stepped on its side then pulled the hook from its mouth. ‘No need to let it suffer.’ He picked up a rock the size of a fist and caved in its head.
Andrew looked at the fish’s blood and scales on the rocks and remembered the blood on Phil’s shirt and knuckles. The sound of the ocean pressing and sucking at the rock ledge reminded him of Marcus gasping for breath.
‘I don’t feel like fishing,’ he said. He put down his rod and began walking across the rocks towards the beach.
‘C’mon, Andy!’ Tim called after him. ‘You’re just jealous I caught the first fish, aren’t ya!’
Andrew rushed across the wet sand towards Heidi, sidestepping thick piles of kelp that resembled knotted animal entrails. He remembered what Heidi had said after nearly drowning—about life and death being so sudden, about the power buried within the smallest moments. And how, clinging to the tree in the river, she’d wanted to let go. He thought of the punch of steel that blindsided Heidi’s mum, of Cabritzi, of Tim smashing the fish’s skull… He stopped beside Heidi and Jade, his body casting an elongated shadow across the backs of their thighs.
‘Heidi?’ He was unable to catch his breath.
‘Yeah?’ She rolled over and sat up. ‘Shit. What’s wrong? Are you okay?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know what to do, I can’t—’
She put on her bikini top. ‘I think you’re having a panic attack.’
She wrapped an arm around him and led him across the long stretch of sand to the dunes and the camp area. As they walked, she held his hand and reassured him that everything was fine, that he was going to be okay. When they reached the bus, she led him on board and sat him on the mattress, while she searched through her toiletries bag.
He looked at the white pill she placed in his hand, A2 printed in tiny letters on one side. ‘What is it?’
‘Xanax. It’ll calm you down.’
He swallowed the pill and waited.
‘This will pass,’ she said, holding his hand. ‘I promise.’
thirty-two
They left first thing the next morning. The bush and the highway seemed to go forever. Andrew strained to focus on beautiful things—the cloudless sky, or a flock of galahs shattering from a tree and taking flight. Then he saw a truck stacked with tree trunks shoot past in the other direction and he noticed the butchered eucalypt forest on either side and, further along, a dead kangaroo twisted and bloody on the verge. Everything seemed potent with meaning.
Andrew caught Heidi deep in thought, her expression abstracted. It worried him that Tim had said Heidi didn’t have a contact to sell the acid in Melbourne. And he was anxious about going to Adelaide—what if she insisted on meeting his parents? When he looked at her again, she was asleep. She must have taken more sleeping pills.
Towns slid past. He focused on other details. A pack of bikers hauling north. P-platers doing circle work in a cloud of dust on a dirt backroad. Harvest-stubbled wheat fields and rusting silos. A colliery. Soon they were in the industrial outskirts of Melbourne.
Andrew decided to call Benny as soon as they arrived. He trusted the people around him less and less.
He needed to reconnect with his old life.
‘Heidi,’ Andrew said and squeezed her shoulder. ‘We’re here.’
She drew a sharp breath and sat up startled.
‘Tim found a hostel,’ he said.
‘Is it the one I booked?’<
br />
‘No, I don’t—’
Before he could finish, she rushed to the front of the bus. ‘We’re not staying here.’
Tim shouldered his backpack and threw up his hands. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘Look,’ she said, getting in his face now. ‘I’ve booked a hostel and I want to stay there. Not here. And not anywhere else.’
‘Heidi?’ Jade started. ‘Are you—’
‘Tim,’ Heidi cut her off. ‘Kashala—if you don’t take this bus to the hostel I booked, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do something so fucking crazy you’ll spend the rest of your life wishing you’d taken me there.’
‘All right!’ Tim studied her a moment. ‘All right.
Let’s go then.’
Heidi’s hostel was a two-storey backpackers on Victoria Street at the north-western edge of the city. There was a kitsch Aussie-themed pub downstairs that smelled of stale beer and vomit, and next to it was the hostel common area, where World Cup cricket, Australia vs India, was on the plasma screen.
They’d just settled into a dorm upstairs when Heidi began filling her backpack.
‘Where are you going?’ Andrew asked.
‘For a look around.’
‘Can I come with you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to go by myself.’
Andrew paused. ‘Why?’
‘I want to find a good place to do the deal tomorrow. And I want to do it alone.’
Andrew searched her face. ‘I can come to the deal with you, if you want? Just in case something goes wrong.’
She zipped her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. ‘What? So you can have another panic attack?’
He flinched. ‘If you don’t want me to come, you should at least take Tim.’
‘No. I want to do it by myself.’
‘At least tell me where you’re going to do it.’
‘Probably the markets across the road. The busier the place, the less likely anyone will take any notice.’ She ruffled his hair and held his gaze with unusual intensity.
The Byron Journals Page 19