Mallory Fisher.
The girl he took instead of me.
2
THEN
The Mid Coast Times | Archives
Section: News
Date: 13 January 2008
GREENWILLOW, NSW – A missing child alert has been issued for six-year-old Mallory Fisher.
Local authorities say Mallory went missing from Greenwillow on the New South Wales mid north coast on Saturday, 12 January. She attended the Greenwillow Carnival on Summit Road with her parents, Daniel and Annabel Fisher, of Port Bellamy. Mallory became separated from her eight-year-old brother, Morgan, outside the public amenities building at the southern end of the carnival site shortly after 2 pm.
A search of the site was conducted by Mallory’s parents and carnival staff before police were called at approximately 2.45 pm. The search was extended on Saturday evening into surrounding rural properties and nearby bushland.
Mallory is described as an outgoing and inquisitive kindergartner who may have wandered off and become disorientated. She was last seen wearing a yellow and white chequered sundress, a pink short-sleeved cardigan and white canvas shoes. She is approximately 112 cm tall and is described as Caucasian with shoulder-length blonde hair and blue eyes.
If you have any information about Mallory Fisher’s whereabouts, contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
3
NOW
If you google images of Mallory Fisher, the same three pictures turn up over and over again: her kindergarten photo, a snapshot with her brother at a campground and a cropped section of a blurry family Christmas photo. The first two were released to the press by her parents and graced the short-lived circulation of MISSING posters. The Christmas photo was probably supplied by some well-meaning relative who’d been doorstepped by a pushy reporter.
Perhaps if she hadn’t been found alive there would be dozens more. Mallory as a baby, Mallory’s sixth birthday party, Mallory riding the Greenwillow carousel. There may have been photographic renderings of how she’d look older – as a ten year old, as a tween, as a pretty teenager. Her age-progressed image might be circulating Facebook as we speak.
Instead Mallory Fisher stumbled out of a hiking trail, filthy and dehydrated, her scalp bleeding in raw patches where her blonde hair had been torn out in chunks. Mallory Fisher disappeared for seven days and when she resurfaced, the once-chatty six year old never spoke another word. The MISSING posters came down and the Fishers left Port Bellamy, seemingly for good.
The general consensus among locals is that Mallory had been abducted, most likely from Old Meadow Lane, the first road she’d come upon after wandering away from the carnival. A crime of opportunity people called it – someone had taken Mallory on a whim, then got scared or bored or grew a conscience, eventually dumping her in Barrington Tops National Park to fend for herself. Newspapers reported that suspects had been questioned but no arrests were ever made. Leads were followed up and eliminated, and unreliable witness statements were debunked.
Including mine.
It makes me cringe when I think about what I told the police I saw that day. It had all seemed so real at the time.
“Who’s that?”
I slam the laptop closed and Mallory’s images are swallowed up in one jarring bite. My brother Tim peers around my bedroom doorway, craning to see what had my attention.
“Hey. What’s doin’, Timber?”
He slumps against the doorframe and picks at an old paint drip. “Mum wants her laptop back. And you’re not allowed to call me that.”
“Call you what, Timber?”
“Stop it,” he says with a flash of nine-year-old surliness. “Mum says you’re not allowed to call me that any more.”
“Yeah, well, Mum says I’m not allowed to do pretty much anything. So maybe you can cut me some slack in the nickname department.”
Tim considers this for a moment, then shrugs his approval. He can’t work out why the name is suddenly banned either. When he was a baby learning how to walk, he’d plop onto his backside and I’d call out “Timberrr!” like he was a tree falling in a forest. He’d giggle every time, so the nickname stuck. It was perfectly acceptable until two weeks ago when Tim tried his new skateboard for the first time.
“Don’t call out Timber whenever he falls over, Natasha,” Mum scolded. “You’re drawing attention to his failings. It will scar him psychologically.”
Which basically translates as: “One child in this family with issues is plenty, thanks very much.”
Not issues, Dr Ingrid would remind her. Challenges.
“What were you looking at?” Tim asks, glancing past me at the laptop. I roll my chair in front of it and his eyebrows dip in suspicion. “Who was–?”
“Hey, what are Mum and Dad bickering about?” I usher him back into the hallway, slipping the laptop under my arm. Our long-haired tabby, Mouse, springs off my bed and pads after us.
“Dunno,” Tim says, his hand going for the computer. I’m too quick for him and hold it above my head. “They were okay before Dad’s phone call.”
We pause at the top of the stairs. “What phone call?”
“I answered it – she asked for Dad. She said it was Aunty Ally.” Tim glances up, all big blue eyes and tiny freckles. He has a narrow, refined face like Mum, nothing like my pudgy cheeks and deep dimples. “Do we have an Aunty Ally?”
“Yeah–” I chew the inside of my lip, “–we do.”
His eyebrows lift. “Are you sure? I’ve never heard of her. Is she, like, really old? Like a granny? Or a rich person?”
I chuckle quietly, keeping one ear trained on the voices below. No wonder my parents are arguing. It’s what happens when Ally drops into their lives, like a grenade in a goldfish pond.
We tiptoe halfway downstairs and plop ourselves on the listening step. From here you can watch TV, eavesdrop on the kitchen and spy on the front yard, all without being seen.
“Aunty Ally’s four years younger than Dad,” I whisper to Tim. “So she’s not old. And definitely not rich.”
“Dad’s sort of old.”
“He’s forty-nine, T.”
“He’s got grey hair,” Tim whispers, indignant. “No one else in my class has a dad with grey hair. No one else’s dad is nearly fifty.” He shakes his head like he can’t believe this escaped my notice.
“Well, you were a surprise, you know that. Mum and Dad thought their baby-making days were over. Maybe Dad was so shocked it turned his hair grey.”
I bug my eyes at Tim and his mouth drops open. He touches light fingertips to his sun-kissed hair. “Can that happen? How scared do you have to be?”
He tickles Mouse’s ears absently as his mind wanders, and I wish I could crawl inside his head and see the scenarios playing out in his mind. A broken Xbox, the angry dog next door, Mum smothering his hair with goop to eradicate head lice. Sweet, innocent nine-year-old stuff – the sort of thing kids’ fears should be made of.
Mum’s voice drifts into the hallway below.
“You said she was in Byron Bay until February. Christ, Richard! There goes our element of surprise.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dad replies. “Showing her a real estate appraisal won’t sway her in the least. She won’t budge.”
“I know she won’t budge, Richard.” She mutters Dad’s name like it’s a dirty word. “The whole point of getting the property valuation done while she was away was so the estate agent could get through the door. Francine Tan said your sister threw a bucket of water at her!”
Beside me Tim slaps a hand across his mouth to stifle a giggle. He’s probably thinking whoever this old and penniless aunt is, she sounds quirky enough to be cool! And I suppose Ally is cool in her bohemian art-hippy kind of way. Last time I saw her she’d shaved her head and planned to paint a huge wall mural down the middle of her house. Only problem is, Willow Creek House is technically not just hers – it belongs to both Ally and my dad. Grandma left them the old Colonial Georgian farmhouse when s
he passed away ten years ago, and Dad’s been wanting to sell it ever since.
“She’s on her way over,” Dad mumbles. “Let’s try to sit down and discuss it rationally.”
“What? She’s coming here?”
“She was in the Hunter Valley this morning, so she’s calling in on her way home.”
Tim blinks at me, his mouth a small o. It’s never occurred to me that we don’t talk about Ally in front of him. The odd few Christmases Ally’s dropped in here, Tim’s been too young to remember it. One year Ally got so drunk she kicked the Christmas tree over and passed out in her car. Another time, she called Dad a condescending bastard and threw a drink in his face. Needless to say, Mum’s stopped inviting her over.
Within minutes there’s the low rumble of Ally’s Ford F100 in our driveway. The brakes screech as the old truck judders to a halt and promptly backfires. Dad will be cringing – he loves that brown ute with its chrome grille and 1970s pinstriping. It must be tormenting to see it in such bad shape. It belonged to Gran, and since Dad used it to make deliveries for her antiques business, it was a no-brainer he’d inherit it. Then Ally reappeared from some backpacking trip or other and claimed it for herself.
Dad opens the door while his sister is marching up the garden path, and she walks inside without hesitation.
“Richard,” she says curtly, fluffing her wavy chestnut hair with both hands. It’s halfway down her back now, bringing home how many years have passed since I last saw her. Her figure is slender in an earthy-toned sundress, arms crowded with beads and leather bracelets.
“Bring one of your boyfriends to intimidate me?” Dad says, nodding at the truck. “That loser PJ? Or maybe Klaus the German meathead?” He lets the screen door clatter closed and I duck my head to peer through the window. I spy the outline of someone smoking in the truck’s cab.
“Oh, sure, Rich,” Ally says, “that’s so my style. Like I need a man to fight my battles for me. Are you that threatened by a woman asserting herself?”
“I don’t know. Are you going to throw a bucket of water at me?”
“I don’t know. Will I need to?”
There’s a subtle playfulness to their exchange that reminds me they shared the same house growing up, the same mealtimes and favourite TV shows. If there wasn’t so much resentment between them, they’d probably be as thick as thieves. But if I’ve learned anything it’s that the closer you are to someone, the deeper their criticisms cut. Their distrust of you feels like panic; their disappointment in you, like poison.
“Hello, Ally.” Mum’s voice is tight. “What can we do for you?” No invitation to sit down. No offer of coffee.
“Well, it’s more about what you can stop doing, Elaine. Like sending snooty little bitches up to my house with keys to let themselves in.”
Beside me Tim fights to hide his pleasure at the swearword. I frown a warning and press a finger to my lips.
“Francine Tan is a real estate agent,” Mum says carefully, as though explaining to a small child. “We thought you were up at Byron and we wanted to–”
“I’m well aware of what you wanted to do,” Ally says. “Which is why I’m here for my other set of keys. Hand them over.”
“Your keys?” Mum says.
“That’s my private space,” Ally continues. “No one is welcome in my house without my permission.”
“Why? What have you got to hide?”
There’s a pause after Mum’s question, riddled with pins and wrapped in barbed wire. I think of my summer at Ally’s nine years ago, the off-limits rooms and locked doors, the damp steps down into the cellar like the black throat of a beast intent on swallowing me whole. I can almost smell the chalky decay of the window frames, almost hear the clicks and snaps of the old house cracking its joints. If I let myself, I could probably feel the sensation of my socks snagging on nail heads in the floorboards as I’m dragged from one room to another.
My thudding pulse warns me not to let myself.
“Give me the keys, Rich,” Ally says.
“You’re not having my set. I own half the house, remember?”
“And you’re determined to sell it out from under me.”
Dad sighs. “We’re not trying to force you out. You know I’ve been wanting to sell my half for years. You can’t afford to buy me out so we need to talk about this.”
“What was all that crap about getting it heritage-listed if you just want to sell it?”
“I’ve been approached by Gloucester Shire Council,” Dad says. “They’re keen to buy it and have some good ideas about how the building could be used.”
“It is being used. By me!”
“It’s crumbling around you and neither of us are in a position to restore it,” Dad says. “We need to sell it to someone who can.”
“It’s been standing since 1820, Rich. It’s hardly going to topple over tomorrow.”
“Look, I’ve given you a decade–”
“So what’s the rush now all of a sudden?”
“Tash is starting university next year,” Dad says. “There’ll be fees to pay, and we’ll also try to help her out with a car when the time comes.”
My brother glances up at me and I give him a shrug. I had no idea Mum and Dad want to help pay my uni tuition. I just figured I’d get a part-time waitressing job and defer my fees like everybody else. I guess that’ll be the case anyway since my parents won’t be anticipating the cost of student housing somewhere like Sydney or Melbourne. They’re expecting a Newcastle campus I can commute to from here. A way of keeping me close at hand.
A way of monitoring.
“How is Tash?” Ally says, her voice shifting from defensive to curious. My body goes rigid and Tim elbows me in the ribs. “She’s what? Sixteen now?”
“Seventeen,” Dad says.
Another awkward pause, this time laden with the obvious politeness of what everybody’s not saying.
“And she’s … okay?”
“She’s fine,” Mum snaps. “So is your nephew too, if you’re interested.”
“Of course I’m interested. You’re the ones who won’t bring him up to Willow Creek. He’d love it there with the bush at the back door and running around with Benny.”
Tim touches my arm. I whisper “Her dog” and he smiles with delight.
“What about Tash?” Ally says. “Is she still taking photos? She might like a change of scenery to help get her creativity flowing. She’s welcome anytime up at the family home.”
“This is her family home,” Mum says. “And I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“Oh, come on, Elaine. You’re not still coddling her? She’s practically a woman now.”
“Will you keep your voice down!” Mum hisses. “Please keep your opinions to yourself. You have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to that girl.”
That girl.
I’m usually only that girl when Mum is complaining to Dad behind closed doors about not knowing what to do with me.
“Why don’t you ask Tash what she wants?” Ally says. “Maybe she’d like a couple of weeks’ break from your criticism and judgement. God knows I would.”
Mum makes an exasperated noise and mumbles something under her breath. Beside me Tim’s smile has slipped as he tries to decipher what any of this means.
I feel a strange mix of gratitude and suspicion at Ally’s words. I want to believe there’s some kind of kinship between us, an understanding of how it feels to be kept at arm’s length from your family. It’s like she understands how it is for me and yet … she barely knows me.
“Okay,” Dad says. “I think we’re done here. I’ll email you regarding the house.”
“What about my keys?”
“They’re my keys,” he says. “The real estate agent still has them.”
“I want them back, Rich. And no more drop-ins to fix leaky showerheads. I know you’re just doing that to spy on me.”
Dad shakes his head as he marches into the hall. H
e stands with one hand on his hip, the other gesturing towards the door like a bouncer escorting a troublemaker from a nightclub. He looks worn-out in his faded tracksuit, his salt-and-pepper hair in need of a trim.
In contrast, Ally sweeps through the hallway in a rush of tinkling beads and swishing skirt, her hair whipping behind her like fury. “I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure, big bro, but that would be a stretch.”
“No?” He feigns shock. “Ya think?”
If I squint they could be teenagers.
Mouse decides the open door is an invitation to bolt for the front yard. She springs from Tim’s lap, scratching a claw across his knee and causing him to cry out. Dad and Ally turn at once to discover us perched on the stairs, and Dad slides a guilty look towards the kitchen as though their mentions of me are lingering like the whiff of burnt toast.
Ally’s eyes lock with mine. I’m suspended in a look of solidarity. It’s like she knows–
“It will be our little secret, Tash”
–exactly what I’m thinking.
Tim moves to stand and I slip a protective arm around his shoulders, scooping him back to my side. I’m not sure why I do it. I’m not sure why I need him to remain untouched by Ally and Willow Creek. After all, it was me who created problems there.
Mum strides into the hall and my aunt’s connection with me severs. As Ally slips out of the house, the screen door thwacking shut behind her, Mum discovers Tim and me watching from our vantage point. She’ll no doubt gloss over what just happened, or perhaps chastise us for eavesdropping.
In the end she does neither. She simply holds out her hand. “Laptop, please.”
I lean over the banister and hand it to her, realising too late that I forgot to clear Mallory Fisher’s pictures from the web browser.
4
THEN
4 MARCH 2008
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE OFFICE OF DR INGRID BALLANTINE, PHD CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY, NEWCASTLE CHILDREN’S CLINIC
PATIENT: NATASHA CARMODY, 8 YEARS OLD
IB: Hi, Natasha. It’s good to see you again. I met you a couple of weeks ago with your mum. Do you remember?
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