The Making of Christina

by Meredith Jaffe

  ‘Clemen-tay,’ she corrected from long habit.

  ‘Clemente, sorry.’ DS Rushmore waved her security pass across the scanner and led her on a twisting route down cinder brick corridors, pausing to grab coffees from a machine in the hall.

  Another officer waited for them in the interview room. He was dressed like an investment banker: dark suit, paisley tie and shiny black brogues. He fiddled with the recording equipment whilst DS Rushmore checked her handwritten notes. Somewhere close by, water plinked into a metal bucket. There was no sign of Bianca. Why had they brought her here?

  When DS Rushmore looked at her, Christina was startled to see irises so dark the emotion was impossible to read. She pulled her jacket tighter.

  ‘Do you prefer Chris or Christina?’ began the detective.

  Christina shrugged.

  The detective smiled. ‘I’ll stick with Christina then. As you know, Christina, we interviewed Bianca this morning.’

  ‘Where is she now? I want it on the record that I am deeply unhappy I was not present.’

  The detective tilted her head. ‘Bianca chose to have one of our social workers sit with her. Her teacher,’ she checked her notes, ‘a Mrs Dalrymple, accompanied her here.’ She gave Christina a reassuring smile. ‘It was not a formal interview. Nor is this. But in order for us to progress, we need your assistance.’

  ‘But I don’t know anything.’ Trapped in every word was a long night of recriminations and the reminder Bianca had not confided in her.

  DS Rushmore’s expression did not alter. ‘Perhaps if I put it into context for you? The law considers any person under the age of sixteen incapable of consenting to sexual acts, so should Bianca choose to file a complaint, your partner will have a case to answer. It’s our job to ascertain whether those charges will stand up to examination.’

  ‘But he did it, didn’t he?’ Christina glanced from one detective to the other. Surely Jackson’s guilt was not the question here.

  The detective ignored her question. ‘The point is that in most sexual assault cases there’s little or no evidence. It’s Bianca’s word against his.’

  Christina thought of all the DNA evidence that had been lost because of Bianca’s silence. How much easier this would have been if Bianca had spoken out earlier. Better still if Bianca had no need to speak out at all.

  ‘The cold hard reality is that the DPP won’t consider prosecuting this case unless they believe Bianca will convince a jury.’ The detective fixed Christina with the bottomless well of her stare. ‘Your corroborating evidence could be crucial.’

  ‘Me? But I told you before, I don’t know anything.’

  Too late, Christina realised how defensive she sounded. She pressed her thumbs hard into her eye sockets to relieve the pressure building in her head. The dripping water beat an incessant rhythm.

  ‘In thirteen years you must have noticed something.’ The detective’s voice remained low and hypnotic.

  ‘No! Of course not.’ Slick sweat glued Christina to the vinyl chair. She’d spent the long hours of the night asking herself exactly this question. Going over her life with a fine toothcomb looking for clues. Anger mixed with the bitter brew of the coffee and Christina burst out. ‘What are you trying to say? Jackson was raping my daughter in front of me and I ignored it?’

  ‘Some women do.’

  She recoiled. ‘What? I saw the signs but didn’t care enough about my daughter to ask her what was wrong?’ Because that was a valid question, wasn’t it? Had she seen the signs? Had she ignored them?

  The detective blinked so slowly it was as if she were remembering how to do it. Neither officer said a word.

  ‘Or maybe you think Jackson and I were in this together? That I encouraged him and told Bianca that being a grown man’s sexual plaything was normal?’ Christina’s hand flew out and knocked her cup to the floor. She bent to pick it up but the detective shook her head. Christina dropped her weight back in the chair.

  DS Rushmore continued with the same tranquillising tone. ‘We believe you can help corroborate her evidence.’

  Christina stared at the concrete floor, her head too heavy to lift. ‘How can I be a witness to something I knew nothing about until last night?’

  DS Rushmore pushed her notes to one side. She leaned forward as if about to share a confidence. ‘I understand how responsible you must feel, Christina, but that is not the purpose of today’s interview. Our number one priority is to support Bianca, but for us to be effective, she needs to decide whether she is going to press charges.’

  Christina thought back to the hysterical Bianca of last night. ‘She’s very distraught. I don’t want her any more upset than she already is.’

  Again the slow, unsettling blink. ‘There’s also the issue of your safety.’

  Her head snapped up. ‘Why would you say that? Jackson’s not violent. He’d never hurt us.’

  The senior detective’s voice was as flat as her gaze. ‘He already has, Christina.’

  A mountain of white beads on the interview table was all that remained of the styrofoam cup. The bitter instant coffee had left a nasty chemical coating on Christina’s tongue. The detective and her colleague waited for her to speak.

  Christina owed it to Bianca to work with DS Rushmore. It might be the best way of repairing the damage done to their relationship. Revealing her own truths was nothing compared to the hurt inflicted on Bianca.

  ‘What does TBK stand for?’ DS Rushmore glanced up from her note-taking.

  Christina sighed. ‘The Big Kahuna.’

  The detective looked blank.

  Della had figured it out before Christina. ‘How’s the Big Kahuna?’ she’d asked over a Friday red wine.

  Back when Christina had first started work on the Plummer project, she’d gush about Jackson and, in those early days, Della hadn’t minded.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Isn’t that what TBK stands for? You know, as in, Jackson is The Big Kahuna. It’s surf talk, CC. C’mon, get with the lingo!’ Della had mimed riding a board.

  Christina had laughed. ‘Since when do Greek girls from Marrickville know anything about surfing, Della?’

  ‘When they have a brother-in-law who lives at Lennox.’

  Friday nights at Della’s were from a lifetime ago. What Christina would give to be back there now. She looked at the detectives. ‘It’s what they used to call the best surfer in those cheesy beach-party movies from the fifties and sixties. Kahuna means high priest or sorcerer in Hawaiian. It’s supposed to be a joke.’

  Neither detective smiled.

  And so it went. How had they met? What was her role at Peterson Partners? Was she always so hands-on with a project? Dull details far removed from the reason they sat here today. She needed the bathroom and wondered whether the detective would call a toilet break or whether she should interrupt the flow of questions and ask.

  ‘How long after that did you become lovers?’ DS Rushmore asked.

  ‘Pardon?’ The question came from nowhere.

  ‘I asked how long into the building project did you and Jackson Plummer start a sexual relationship?’

  It was a phrase bent into the shape of a barb. The inference was clear. On DS Rushmore’s left hand was a thin sliver of gold. Christina found it hard to imagine the detective’s head flung back in giddy passion.

  She cleared her throat. ‘A few months into the project.’

  ‘How exactly did it start, Christina?’ Anne Rushmore persisted.

  How this was relevant to Bianca’s case, she had no idea but, wary of sounding defensive, she said, ‘We went out for lunch mid-project . . .’

  ‘Just the two of you?’

  ‘Yes, but it was a business lunch.’

  ‘So where was his wife then? What’s her name?’

  Christina watched as Anne Rushmore noted dow
n Sarah’s details.

  ‘So you took a valuable client to lunch. I’m assuming you paid, did you?’

  Christina blushed and shook her head.

  ‘I see. Yet you knew he was married to Sarah and they had children. How did those facts impact on your decision to form a sexual relationship with Jackson Plummer?’

  Christina’s bladder pressed into her back. She shifted position to ease the discomfort. Before she had a chance to formulate a response to the detective’s question, Anne Rushmore continued, ‘What I am trying to figure out, Christina, is if there was anything about Jackson Plummer’s behaviour in those early days that now strikes you as inexplicable or out of the ordinary?’

  Christina pressed her fingertips hard into her temples, running her memories through this new filter. A thought sprang out at her but it was such an insignificant detail. It had never occurred to her to see it as anything more than flattering. ‘When Jackson rang my boss Oscar to say he was giving Peterson Partners the contract, he said it was on the proviso that I manage the project.’

  If Christina’s revelation intrigued Anne Rushmore, she didn’t show it. ‘Why was that, do you think?’

  Maybe Christina was reading too much into it. It was way before they had started their affair. But then she thought of Bianca and the effect of thirteen years of assumptions. ‘It’s so long ago. Most decisions are made without a particularly good reason. I’m sure this was no different.’

  The detective’s large brown eyes refused to let go of her. ‘But why did he want you, Christina?’

  She studied her nails. The cuticles were shredded. At Peterson Partners, her hands were always neat and clean, ready to point to a colour swatch or a detail on the client’s plans.

  ‘Christina?’

  She spoke to the table. ‘Because he’d already decided he wanted a relationship with me?’

  ‘He deliberately targeted you,’ confirmed DS Rushmore.

  Christina’s head snapped up. ‘Of course he didn’t. How could he have? He didn’t even know me then.’

  Anne Rushmore leaned forward, forcing Christina’s focus onto her. She said, ‘How long until he knew you had a daughter?’

  Christina sawed her thumbnail across her teeth. The coffee had gone straight through her. She desperately needed the bathroom. They couldn’t stop her leaving. She wasn’t under arrest.

  ‘Well?’ The detective’s voice rang out in the silence.

  Christina struggled to speak. Rearranging the words changed their meaning, changed the past. How was it possible that it could all come down to one simple, stupid decision? The words escaped in a whisper. ‘When I brought her with me to a site meeting. Her father hadn’t turned up, so I took her with me. Bianca was thirsty and Jackson gave her a shoulder ride up to the house.’

  Christina returned to Bartholomews Run in the afternoon. Following the gravel side path, she threaded her way through the beds of perennials, deadheading the flowers as she went. The garden was not at its best in late June. Fighting frost, biting winds and dumps of snow, it was bedraggled and beaten.

  She walked up past the house to the paddocks. Licorice nickered and trotted along the fence line. He was lonely now Sugar was gone. Christina scratched behind his ears until his muzzle touched the frosty grass. She opened the gate and the horse followed her down to the stables, not needing a lead rope to walk at her shoulder. She threw another rug over him and fetched a net of hay. He had not been fed since last night and began devouring the hay. Christina stayed, listening to his contented grinding until the dark drove her down to the house.

  There were no welcoming lights. No one had been here since she rushed to the school the previous day. She had forgotten to call Stan. Christina stood there palpitating the edges of her new agony.

  She fumbled for the light switch and warmth flooded the room. A blackout then. Christina put her car keys, her mobile phone and her wallet on the kitchen bench next to the letter from the Heritage Council. The stag heads sneered down their snouts at her as she passed them on her way to the kitchen.

  The answering machine displayed four messages. At least one of them would be Jackson. She put a tub of minestrone in the microwave, watched the lazy spin of the container, waited for the three shrill beeps and for the digital display to flash END. Christina put a bowl and a spoon on the bench but decided it would only make washing up and put the bowl back in the cupboard. The tub of soup had a frozen mass in its centre but she ate it anyway, standing at the bench with her back turned to the blinking machine. When she had finished, she put the tub and spoon in the dishwasher, wiped down the bench, dried her hands on the tea towel, folded it in half and hung it over the oven door. Then she reached over and pressed play.

  Jackson’s voice boomed, ‘Hi, honey it’s me calling from Hanoi . . .’

  Christina hit erase. In the sudden silence, her heart thumped in her ears.

  Jackson was her best friend. Whether they returned from a gala day at the pony club in a blaze of glory or the Heritage Council threw another roadblock in her path, he was there. She loved his charisma and charm, admired his business brain and his refusal to be intimidated by anyone. Jackson faced life without fear, and with him in her corner she’d felt safe. Christina had trusted him and relied upon him. She loved him and he had betrayed her. What he did to Bianca was unspeakable.

  Christina took the phone from its cradle. She felt a desperate urge to talk to someone, but Della, her mother, Mary-Lou all had to be explained to. And what words would she use to tell them that she had allowed her daughter to become the victim of an unspeakable crime? Where would she begin? Without even dialling a number, Christina could already taste their unspoken criticism. The truth was she had left her old life behind, and up here on the mountain there was no one to turn to. She had moved here hating the isolation of Bartholomews Run and had grown to love the solitude. Now it scared her.

  The phone rang out in the empty room. She yelped, dropping the handset as if it had bitten her.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Are you there, Ms Clemente?’

  Christina picked up the phone and pressed it to her chest. She drew a steadying breath. It was the detective from this morning. Massaging the tension in her forehead, Christina hoped she was not planning a repeat of this morning’s interrogation.

  Christina pressed the phone to her ear. ‘DS Rushmore.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ said the detective. ‘I thought I heard the phone drop.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Christina moved around the kitchen bench and began reordering the fridge magnets from largest to smallest.

  ‘I’d like to come out and see you tomorrow morning if I may.’

  ‘I’ll come down to the station.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. I want to look over the property. Get a sense of the place.’

  Christina sawed her thumbnail across her teeth, calculating a plausible way she could prevent DS Rushmore from coming. ‘I wasn’t planning to be here,’ which was no lie. She needed to see Bianca.

  The detective didn’t miss a beat. ‘I’d appreciate you changing your plans for me.’

  Christina sagged against the bench. ‘What time?’

  ‘About nine. I’ll bring the coffees. Black, no sugar. Right? See you in the morning then.’

  Christina stared at the telephone. The detective remembered how she took her coffee? Then again, more than one coffee had fuelled this morning’s conversation with DS Rushmore.

  Christina spied on DS Rushmore from the vegetable garden. Peering through the withered beanstalks, she watched the detective place a cardboard container of coffees on the roof of the car, wrestle her handbag out of the passenger footwell and balance a paper bag in the other hand. The detective left them all on the roof of the car and wandered towards where Christina hid as she buttoned her coat against the cold. DS Rushmore pulled a green and gold beanie from her pocket and jammed
it over her ears. Surveying the immediate surrounds, she stomped to higher ground, removed a digital camera from her pocket and started photographing the property.

  Alarmed, Christina snuck around the garden shed, pushing a wheelbarrow to legitimise her entrance. ‘Oh hello, DS Rushmore. I didn’t realise you were here already.’

  ‘Good morning, Christina. How are you feeling today?’ Anne Rushmore slipped the camera into her pocket and offered her hand.

  Christina shook it but not before explaining, ‘Sorry I’m a bit grubby. I’ve been weeding the vegetable garden.’

  Anne Rushmore smiled. ‘Occupational therapy. I use it myself.’ She gestured towards the terraced beds. ‘There’s plenty here to keep you out of mischief, isn’t there? I don’t know how you keep on top of it all.’ The detective turned to take in the view.

  Once Christina would have been happy to show off her home. She had poured her heart and soul into every nook and cranny, a fact that now made her mute with shame. Everything was tainted, as surely as if coated in fine black fingerprint powder.

  DS Rushmore continued, oblivious to Christina’s torment. ‘I’ve heard about this place but I’ve never had a reason to come here. Do you have open days?’

  ‘No we don’t. Jackson doesn’t like intruders – I mean, he values his privacy. Shall we drink those coffees before they’re stone cold?’ Christina grabbed the tray of coffees and the paper bag from the roof of the car and loped towards the house. She’d hardly slept again last night and already she was too tired to think.

  The paper bag contained a raspberry Danish. Christina fussed with plates and cut generous slices, passing a piece to the detective. Anne Rushmore bit into it with relish. Her face screwed up with pleasure as she savoured the sour fruit, custard and flaky pastry. Wiping the corners of her mouth with her little finger, she said, ‘Have you spoken to Bianca this morning?’

  Christina bit her lip. This was only the second time they’d met and already Anne Rushmore was proving she had a knack for finding a person’s weak spots. Trying not to sound defensive, she said, ‘I tried. I think she was in class or her phone’s flat. Bianca’s always forgetting to charge it.’ At least she assumed it was forgetting. Since yesterday, she’d lost all conviction she knew anything about her daughter.