Christina gasps. The past ricochets and hits her in the chest. ‘But . . . you . . . you’re only eighteen.’
‘Nineteen in March,’ Bianca reminds her, rubbing small circles around her middle.
Neither of them mentions what is right there in front of them. A night three years ago, another pregnancy, a different father.
‘Why?’ Christina flounders helplessly in a sea of questions she knows she will never ask.
Bianca crosses her arms. ‘I was wrong then. Obviously.’
‘Obviously?’
Bianca shakes her head in irritation, her beads clack and snap. ‘Well obviously because I could never have been pregnant to him.’
Christina has no idea what she’s talking about.
Bianca’s bottom lip drops. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she says, squatting in front of her. ‘I thought you knew.’ She rests her hands on Christina’s knees. ‘I spent years being terrified that I would fall pregnant, never realising that it was impossible.’
Christina shakes her head. She cannot comprehend Bianca’s words.
‘Mum. You must know. It all came out later.’
‘What came out later?’
‘At the trial. Didn’t anyone tell you? It’s in the transcript.’
Which is buried under the detritus of Christina’s life on the chest of drawers.
Bianca keeps talking, ‘When I was old enough to realise the risk of pregnancy, I begged him to let me go on the pill or for him to wear a condom but he refused. He’d laugh, saying I was worrying about something that could never happen. He knew it frightened me because we both knew that if I did fall pregnant you would find out. It was all part of his power trip.’ She squeezes Christina’s hands. ‘He’d had the snip, Mum.’
Christina strokes her beautiful daughter’s cheek. ‘But why are you having a baby now, Bianca? You’re so young.’
Bianca rocks back on her heels. ‘Not so young, Mum, no. In fact, if anything I’d say I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes.’
Christina reels from the smack of Bianca’s words. Thinks how her childhood was cut short. ‘What does Gijs think?’
Bianca unfolds herself. She towers over Christina, the sun lighting up the snakes of hair writhing around her once sweet face. ‘Gijs is thrilled. So’s his mum. She’s a midwife. We’re going to live with his parents on their farm. Manon will help with the baby so I can learn Dutch, go to uni. I’ll have family around me, Mum. I’ll be safe.’
The screen door wheezes and Izzy is standing there. ‘There you are, Bee. Your nanna wants to know when you’re coming in for lunch. She said to tell you she’s made Baby Jesus’ Pillows, whatever that means.’
‘Coming Izzy,’ Bianca responds brightly, the anger and pain evaporating in the afternoon sunshine. She takes the steps two at a time, past Christina, up into the house. She laughs, wrapping an arm around her friend, saying, ‘Izzy, I have news.’
The screen door wheezes shut behind them. The girls are gone. Across the other side of the valley, Christina can see young children playing on the trampoline they got for Christmas. Their dad is assembling something. Their mum sits on the deck patting the dog, laughing and cheering them on. It is Christmas Day, everyone is happy.
Christina feels empty. She has been yearning for Bianca’s safe return for so long and now she is here it is as if a weight has gone. Whilst Bianca nurtures her baby on the other side of the world, what will she be doing? Christina thinks of the unsigned deed of settlement. She is sure Mary-Lou will figure out a way to appease Jackson’s lawyer. With that kind of money, maybe she and Rosa could fly over for the birth, maybe even detour via Italy and lay some ghosts to rest.
From the kitchen window, Rosa calls, ‘Tina, I can’t find the cream.’
Her mother sounds vibrant, invigorated by the guests and the return of her granddaughter, ignorant of how little time she has left before Bianca will be gone. In a day or so they will wave her off in her little hippie van, the father of her child at her side as they depart for a future rosy with promise. Christina remembers that feeling, the excitement of heading towards castles in the sky, everything so perfect she believed she was untouchable. Being young brings such capacity for joy.
She goes into the cool of the house, filled with chatter and laughter, the clink of cutlery and the smell of delicious food. Christina looks around the table, sees all the shiny faces and feels a rush of gratitude. This is her family. These are her friends, Bianca’s friends. They are not alone.
When she wakes in the morning, Christina has a singular thought. She shoves her feet into her old sneakers and takes the transcript from its spot on the chest of drawers. It leaves a clean rectangle amongst the dust. The house is quiet, the sun hasn’t even peeked over the horizon although the birds carol its imminent arrival. Christina carefully slides back the glass lounge-room doors. Here is where the young people sleep on an assortment of blow-up and foam mattresses. Bianca has one arm flung above her head, Gijs sleeps with his head on her chest. They look so peaceful, Christina hates to wake them.
‘Bee,’ she whispers, stroking her hand down her daughter’s thigh.
Bianca stirs, rolls over and frowns sleepily. ‘What’s up?’
‘I need you to get up. There’s something we have to do.’ Now, she wants to add, as if what she plans is urgent. It is to Christina but it’s the privacy she craves more.
Bianca rolls over onto the floor and lifts a hand to ask for Christina’s help. She hauls her to her feet and passes Bianca a cardigan draped over the back of a chair. ‘Come with me,’ she says, crooking her finger.
Bianca, who is too sleepy to protest, follows Christina down the hall and out the back door. Christina finds her a pair of gumboots. Bianca puts them on grumbling, ‘Where are we going?’
They thread their way through the vegetable garden, past the compost heap and a stack of logs and stop in front of the incinerator.
Bianca blinks at her mother.
Christina draws a deep breath. She has been rehearsing what she wants to say since she woke in the wee hours of the morning. ‘I think we should burn the transcript.’
Bianca seems surprised, as if she has only just noticed the box in her mother’s arms. ‘Why have you got that?’
Christina nods. ‘After the sentencing hearing, when you left in such a hurry, I thought I’d lost you forever. That Costa Rica was just an excuse never to come home.’
Bianca has the good grace to look a little sheepish and Christina feels some relief that not all her fears were groundless.
‘I thought if I read the transcript, it would fill in the gaps in my knowledge, let me see the trial in its entirety. And I thought that knowledge would bring me a better understanding of your experience. That it would somehow help me bring you back.’
Bianca says nothing, feathers her lips with her hair, but Christina can tell she is listening and for that she is grateful. ‘But you came back anyway.’ Christina puts the box on the ground, feels around in her pocket for the matches. ‘Do you need me to read this?’
Bianca studies the box, shakes her head.
Christina holds out the matches. ‘Do you want to do the honours?’
Bianca takes the matches. Christina lifts the first wad of paper and unties the red ribbon. Opening the lid of the incinerator, she fans the paper which twirls to the bottom. ‘It will burn faster that way,’ she says to Bianca.
Bianca bends over and picks up another ream of paper, throws it on top of the first. When they are all in, Christina and Bianca stand back at the overflowing tide of white paper covered in the black scrawl of their history. From the kitchen comes the sound of people awakening. The smell of coffee drifts out. They both sense the urgency. Bianca takes out a match, strikes it against the box and tilts it until the flame grows large. She lights a corner of paper, then another and another until the match has burned down. She flicks it into t
he flames and holds out the matchbox to Christina. ‘Your turn.’
Christina takes them but not before she holds Bianca’s eye. Those lovely grey eyes that have weathered the storm, seen more than they ever should have. Christina can see a tiny version of herself reflected in them. She blinks back tears. Now is not the time to feel sorry for herself. Now or ever again. She strikes the match and flicks it into the flames. Grey ash dances above the fire and drifts over the garden.
Christina wraps an arm around Bianca, feels the solid warmth of her daughter as she leans into her.
Christina thinks of the appeal. Now Bianca will be living on the other side of the world, does it matter what happens? A year or two longer or shorter will make little difference.
She is burdened with a lifetime of poor choices. Her list of sins is long as a woman choosing the soft cushions of dependency rather than the stiff-backed chair of independence. She has failed as a mother, as a daughter, as a human being. Here is where her choices have brought her. This is where she deserves to be.
The last time she saw Anne Rushmore, the detective reached across the table in the coffee shop and, clasping Christina’s blistered hands in hers, said, ‘You need to go back to the beginning.’
And here they are, Christina and Bianca, at some sort of beginning.
Bianca moves away from her. ‘Hey Mum, did I tell you Josh Plummer sent me an email?’
Christina thinks of Sarah’s visit. She will be dead before Jackson sees freedom. Her son might well have died too were it not for his mother. ‘What did he want?’
‘He wanted to know if it was worth it.’ Bianca gestures at the incinerator.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said being believed was the only thing that could set me free. So yes, it was worth it.’
Bianca picked up a stick and poked at the ashes, stirring the fire back to life. ‘I caught up with him when we were in Sydney. He’s decided to press charges. He kept diaries, his case should be simpler than mine.’ Bianca smiles at Christina.
Two precious days. Days to talk, to laugh and cry, to find a way to be together again. They fly by. In the end she had been wrong when she told Rosa, she had no gift. On their final morning together, she surprises Bianca with it. A little soiled and sad but unmistakably Bluey Baa-Baa. ‘I thought the baby might like it,’ she said and held Bianca as she sobbed in her arms.
It is inevitable that Christina finds herself on the steps of the verandah, watching Bianca drive off into the future whilst she stays anchored here. Christina knows there is no absolution for sins such as hers. She knows that guilt will always be her burden to bear. But as she waves and cries and watches the painted van disappear in its cloud of dust, she also knows that she has raised a magnificent, resilient child. Life will not destroy Bianca. She feels Rosa’s hand reach out and grip hers. Life will not destroy any of them.
acknowledgements
It takes a writer to write a novel but a team to make a book. With thanks always to my fantastic team at Pan Macmillan, headed by my publisher Cate Paterson, and my super agent Tara Wynne from Curtis Brown.
The Making of Christina represents nine and a half years of my life. It has been written, rewritten, thrown out and started again. Thanks in particular to Danielle Walker and Julia Stiles for a rigorous structural and copy edit and helping it be the best story it could be.
However, along the way, many other people had a direct or indirect influence on shaping this version of the story. First of all, thanks to Wendy Harmer who said to show her the first two thousand words and then said keep writing.
To the crew at the Northern Beaches Writers Group for camaraderie, critique and encouragement in the early drafts. A massive thank you to Gillian Clive for her insights and indefatigable reading of many drafts. Ditto Susanna Freymark. A bet to finish the novel or pay for dinner certainly galvanised us both to finish our manuscripts! I owe literary agent Virginia Lloyd a huge debt of gratitude for proving a densely packed email of feedback on the first version. Thanks to her, I threw it out and rewrote the whole novel. (That was a good thing!)
To my friend and first reader, Catherine Szentkuti, who gave it a yes. To my friends Michelle Barraclough and Neeta Mody for putting up with me. And especially to Carol Baxter, non-fiction writer extraordinaire, for not only putting up with me but introducing me to Tara Wynne. You changed my life.
The Making of Christina could not have happened without tonnes of research. Unfortunately, I have been through three computers in the writing of this novel and have lost many of the bookmarks et cetera that formed the factual basis for the novel. Well before the Child Sex Abuse Royal Commission was established in 2013, there were, and remain, numerous professionals in the judicial system, the police force, the law, medicine, community services and academia, working hard to reform how cases of sexual abuse are dealt with in the courts. Their aim is to improve both the experience and the outcomes for victims, especially vulnerable victims, such as children.
These include, but are not limited to, the work of the Australian Law Reform Commission and various state-based judicial reform groups. The work of Dr Anne Cossins was particularly valuable, including The Hearsay Rule and Delayed Complaints of Child Sexual Abuse: The Law and the Evidence (2002) and the multi-disciplinary report written by Dr Cossins, Report of the National Child Sexual Assault Reform Committee (2010). But there were many, many more papers that added to my understanding of this complex realm of predatory sexual behaviour, the psychology of narcissism, forensic evidence and the way these crimes go on undetected and under reported. It goes without saying that all the technical mistakes are mine and mine alone. Creative license has ruled over reality in certain aspects, such as the timeline of the case.
Last but by no means least, thank you to my husband Paul and my children for years of faith and gentle nudging. Being surrounded by a loving family is the perfect antidote to writing a novel on such a difficult subject.
To you the reader, thank you so much for picking up this book. Readers are the lifeline of writers. Your generous support does not go unnoticed.
About Meredith Jaffé
Meredith Jaffé is the author of The Fence, a presenter and facilitator. For four years she wrote the weekly literary column ‘The Bookshelf’ for the online women’s magazine The Hoopla. Her reviews, author interviews, feature articles and op-ed pieces have appeared in The Hoopla, Australian Author, the Guardian Australia and The Huffington Post.
Meredith regularly facilitates events at writers’ festivals, including Sydney, Newcastle and St Albans Writers’ Festival. As a keen believer in the power of literacy, she volunteers at The Footpath Library where she manages their annual EPIC! writing competition for schoolchildren. She is currently working on her next novel in between riding her horses and enjoying farm life with her family on the beautiful NSW south coast.
The Making of Christina is her second novel. Find out more about Meredith Jaffé at www.meredithjaffe.com
Also by Meredith Jaffé
The Fence
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.
First published in 2017 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Meredith Jaffé 2017
The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the
publisher.
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available
from the National Library of Australia
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
EPUB format: 9781760555108
The author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders for material used in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked should contact the publisher.
Typeset by Post Pre-Press Australia
Love talking about books?
Find Pan Macmillan Australia online to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.
The Making of Christina Page 33