by TJ Hamilton
‘All yours, Laz,’ he said, walking back past the drug cook. ‘Can we get this finished up by tomorrow night so that we can get the hell out of here again? The cops will notice the different cars around town so we need to get in and out quickly.’
‘I don’t want to speed up the process, Hayden. It will compromise the quality. You know what your brother’s like. He hates moving shit gear.’
Hayden glanced back at Larry, who was stirring the white bucket. The fizz of the mixture was clearly visible on the surface of the bucket’s rim.
‘Laz, just get it done before we get noticed. No doubt we’ll be back here again in a few weeks if it’s anything like the last lot that came out of here.’
Larry waved Hayden away and continued the procedures he had perfected over the past twenty years as a suburban pharmacist turned professional drug cook.
Hayden got back into his car and pulled off the mask, shoving it under his driver’s seat. He drove back into town and pulled up at the front of Clayton’s Chicken Shop. It was finally safe to turn his phone back on and he went straight to the photos, scrolling back past the recent photos of late nights in darkened clubs, binge drinking and people who never quite felt like friends. When he found the last photo he had of him and Leila together, he stopped. He had his arm around her, kissing the side of her temple as she smiled so hard her eyes almost squinted shut. There was a blur of colour in the background and it took him straight back to that night at the local carnival, when they were happy together. Right before everything went wrong.
Chapter Five
Leila turned the music up in her modest two-bedroom home, trying anything to drown out the unwanted thoughts of Hayden. She yearned to see Hayden for longer than the twenty minutes they’d spent together, so even the driving beat couldn’t quell her anxious tummy. The morning’s boxing session and group breakfast with Brayden and the other kids in the justice program had done its best to keep her mind from wandering too far, but it was the time at home alone that Leila feared most. She needed to stop thinking about Hayden. The bass to ‘Rebel Girl’ by Bikini Kill caused the old windows of her fibro house to rattle. She smiled and started dancing to the heavy drumbeat. This was exactly what she needed; her favourite punk music. Listening to this, she felt far from the straight-laced officer she tried to be at the station. There would always be something inside her that needed to break the bounds of her conformity and rage against the colleagues she felt so separate from, and feminist punk music did the trick.
Dancing in her living room, Leila began folding the pile of washing she’d ignored for the past three days. When she was finished she wrote her list of groceries needed to entertain Ben and Toby later that night. She was nervous about having her best friend’s boyfriend over at her house, knowing the pair had only just reconciled after their rocky past.
Hayden’s mum, Sue, was working in the deli department when Leila arrived to order the necessary items to make her favourite grazing platter. She had discovered the joy of a platter at the Academy, when the girls in her dorm made several of them during a marathon Netflix night. It was a lightbulb moment for Leila. To anyone else, grazing platters meant nothing, but to Leila they were what real grown-ups did—and something her family never would.
‘I’ll have two hundred grams of prosciutto, thanks Aunt Sue,’ Leila said with a broad smile.
Sue’s eyes ignited. ‘Are you making one of those fancy platters of yours for anyone special?’
Leila knew Sue was referring to Hayden, and noticed the instant disappointment in her eyes when she told her, ‘Yeah, Ben and Toby are coming over. Netflix and a cheese board with friends, what more could you want?’
Sue shrugged once. ‘You kids these days. We never had none of this Netflix stuff or cheese platter thingies.’
‘Maybe things would have been different if there were?’ Leila couldn’t stop from spewing the cynicism of her childhood.
Sue looked at Leila through the glass display cabinet, disapproval in her eyes. She had only started ordering in this particular cured Italian meat when Leila came back home. Not many people in town either knew or cared for such delicacies. Measuring two hundred grams, Sue wrapped up the sliced meat and handed the parcel over.
‘No amount of Netflix would’ve stopped our good times, kiddo. We’re just not those kind of people. Could you imagine your old man and Mick sitting down to watch movies together?’ Sue said.
A light flush stained Leila’s cheeks and she smiled. ‘I guess not.’
Leila wanted to avoid talking about Hayden, but Sue was having none of it. ‘Hayden said you came by the house in uniform. He’s very proud of you, you know. It just takes people a little getting used to seeing you in the blue. You know that. But I told him it’s still the same girl underneath the badge.’
Nodding, Leila replied, ‘I didn’t expect him to come home so soon.’
Sue’s arched eyebrows screamed I told you so. Leila knew deep down he’d come home as soon as he found out she was here.
‘Are you coming past your mum’s tomorrow night? She’s going to get a few roast chooks from the shop and I’ll bring a potato bake. You should bring one of these fancy platters,’ Sue asked before Leila said her farewell.
Leila didn’t often wish she were on duty, but she did now. She already had an invitation, but was trying to avoid it altogether. How could Sue sound so pleasant when she talked about their families’ version of dinner together? Her mum’s idea of cooking was to buy roast chicken from the takeaway shop, and the rest of the night would be ruled by booze, a bonfire in the back yard, and an evening-ending fight; verbal or physical. Dinner was always a mask for the rest of the night’s proceedings. Cath had other priorities—the end of the bottle. Leila had dodged going to her parents’ place ‘for dinner’ for the past year, and was grateful to all the other guys in the station for taking the call-out to her house whenever there was a disturbance and she was on duty. But Leila knew there was more she could do to help her family’s struggle with alcoholism. She was an only child, so it was up to her to change the future of the family name. It was only a matter of time before she had to accept that responsibility completely.
‘I’ll see how I go. I’ve got a few things I need to do tomorrow. I’ll pop over if I have time,’ Leila sidestepped.
Sue smirked. They both knew Leila was lying and had nothing else to do.
‘It would be nice for your mum if you came over, love. She said she doesn’t get to see you much, even though you’re less than five kilometres away now.’
Leila contemplated replying with a comment about the effect her parents had on her policing career or the effort they’d made to see her when she lived in the city, but she knew the consequences, so she let her rebuttal go.
‘I’ll do what I can to come past,’ she replied.
Leaving the supermarket, Leila was grateful to make it to the car without running into anyone else she knew. As she drove through Main Street, all the little things in town reminded her of Hayden, drifting in and out of her mind like a montage. She was adamant she could fill the place with new memories, but who was she kidding? Everything she knew about Echo Springs included Hayden in it.
Driving past the bowling club, a memory flashed of the blue-light discos the police used to run once a month. It was the place where she and Hayden had shared their first kiss—right in the middle of ‘Promiscuous’ by Nelly Furtado, at the end of the night. All the kids in town would count down the days until the next blue-light disco. It provided the same type of escapism that the Cooee Hotel brought to the working class on a weekend.
Leila needed to look into why the discos had stopped. It had been something so positive when she was growing up, and she could really sink her teeth into a new project. Anyone growing up in Echo Springs these days had little choice for social outlets other than skipping school to hang out at the brand-new skate park or driving out to the pools at Echo Springs … if someone had a car. Smiling to herself, Leila knew this w
as part of why she had needed to come back here, to help the next generation flourish. She couldn’t bring herself to see more kids like Brayden end up part of the system just because they thought they had no other option.
With her hands full of groceries, Leila carried her keys between her teeth. Walking up the ramp to her front door, she tried to navigate the bags and keys but it took her a solid four minutes of looping her hands through all fifteen-odd bags of shopping to carry it all at once, so she was hesitant to put down either handful. Pausing at her front door, Leila sighed and conceded defeat, ready to drop one handful of groceries.
‘You look like you could do with an extra set of hands?’ She instantly recognised Hayden’s voice, and a flush threatened her cheeks.
How convenient. Hayden delicately took the keys from her mouth, and she obliged without objection. She couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye; not after thinking about him constantly all day.
‘It’s the gold key … and thanks,’ she said, only focusing on the keys in his hands—his big, strong hands.
Not that she was totally surprised, but where had Hayden suddenly appeared from? She watched him covertly, blissfully, while he picked out the gold key to unlock her front door. Excitement swirled through her body. This was exactly what Leila had been avoiding all day.
Chapter Six
Hayden offered to take some bags from Leila, but she pulled away stubbornly and continued through the opened front door. He followed her, amused at the sight of her strung with plastic bags.
‘Mum said you moved into old man Walker’s place,’ he said.
Leila’s pride in her house was everywhere, from the colourful rugs and the mismatched orange and brown couches, to the retro paintings of wildlife on the walls. This was not the old Leila, and he was confronted by how much she’d matured and evolved. It was demoralising yet captivating, and Hayden couldn’t work out which Leila he preferred.
Following her into the kitchen where she dumped the shopping onto the chequered red and white linoleum floor, Hayden wanted to offer help, but didn’t want to be rejected again, so he stood back, feeling unnatural as he tried for casual. Her long dark hair draped loosely around her shoulders like it always had, and Hayden craved running his fingers through it. She wore little denim shorts and a black singlet peeking out from an unbuttoned red and black men’s flannelette shirt, and Hayden couldn’t avoid staring at the curves of her body. She’d always drawn his touch and their absence had only intensified his need. But where did he start when there was so much that hadn’t been said?
Leila rummaged through the shopping, pulling out the contents from the plastic bags and placing them across the original yellow laminate benchtops of her retro kitchen.
‘Wow, this kitchen hasn’t changed since I sold old man Walker some chocolates for the school fete when I was about ten,’ Hayden laughed. ‘I used all the money I earned in fundraising that year to buy lunch at school for the next month. How did I think I was ever going to get away with that?’
Leila looked up at him for the first time since he’d walked up to her front door. ‘Did you really spend school fundraising money on canteen food?’
‘Yeah, don’t you remember I was banned from school camp the year our class went to the gold fields?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘I thought you were there for the gold fields camp?’
‘Nope.’ Hayden also shook his head. ‘I spent about sixty dollars that was supposed to go towards the school, and my parents had to cover the cost of the four boxes of chocolates I’d sold.’
How could she not remember? These were pivotal parts of his childhood, parts that shaped him to be the person he was today: the person who knew better than to get caught.
‘You expecting company tonight, or do you still eat enough to feed a third-world country?’ Hayden eyed off Leila’s haul of food.
It was a smart-ass comment and he wanted to stop himself, but there was so much he wanted to know about the new Leila. How else was he to react, now that Leila had materialised back into his life?
‘I’ve got friends coming over tonight for a Netflix night.’
‘Cool,’ he said as nonchalantly as possible. Who were the friends?
‘Are you going to Mum’s tomorrow night?’ She changed the subject.
Hayden shrugged. ‘Apparently I have no choice.’
‘Me either,’ Leila chuckled.
Finally, there was a sliver of hope; they were still the same people, despite their different paths in life. ‘Those two will never change. Mum and Cath will do anything to get us together in the same room.’ Leila laughed, and he liked it so he continued. ‘Remember the year when we weren’t talking because I got caught smoking at school and you hated me for it?’
‘I didn’t hate you for getting caught smoking. I was mad when you gave up football to hang out with your brother’s loser friends.’
Everyone in school knew they could buy pot from Hayden’s older brother, Jayden, and Leila always hated him for it. When Hayden started hanging in Jayden’s crowd, she was repulsed by the sight of him.
‘It was the same time you were hanging around with that scrag, Michelle Carpenter.’
‘Is that really why you weren’t talking to me? You know, nothing ever happened between me and Michelle? She was only ever a friend.’ Hayden dared a smile.
‘Well I heard something very different. I heard she was your first.’ Leila slammed the bottle of green olives on the countertop so hard the glass jar cracked in her hand. The juice spilled out over the floor, along with droplets of her blood.
Hayden moved in to help but Leila glared at him with intense fury, her eyes vivid green. He didn’t understand what she was so mad about; she was the one who left him. She wanted nothing to do with him. Now it was her who had come back to Echo Springs to live her life when he was just managing to get on with his, without her in it. He should be the one who was angry.
‘Just go, Hayden,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’ve come here for anyway. Just go—leave me alone. This town is too small for us both to be back here. I can’t even go out with my friends in town, knowing you’re here.’
‘Fine.’ He would leave. He didn’t know why he was here either. ‘Have it your way. You always have. I’ll be staying far away from the shithole pubs in this town, don’t worry. This is a joke. I don’t know why I bothered.’
Chapter Seven
Leila’s chest tightened when she looked at the deep cut on her palm. A pool of thick blood formed and then cascaded over either side of her hand as her heart pumped faster. Shit. She wrapped her hand with a tea towel that Ben had given her with the quote ‘I use the smoke alarm as a timer’ written across it in black; a housewarming gift from five months earlier. She immediately regretted soiling it, but it was the first thing she had to hand. Getting into her car, she rushed to get to the doctor’s surgery on Main Street before they closed.
The receptionist greeted her with a warm smile. Her full cheeks rounded like inflating balloons on either side of her grin and her pale blue eyes had an instant kindness to them that steadied anyone who walked through the clinic’s doors in a crisis. Mrs Carpenter glanced at the blood-soaked cloth Leila was cradling and hastily buzzed the intercom for the doctor’s room, and Leila was immediately drowned in guilt knowing her injury was caused by anger at this pleasant, helpful woman’s daughter.
‘Sorry to interrupt, doctor. I have Miss Leila Mayne in Surgery Room One as soon as you can see her.’
Mrs Carpenter came around from her reception desk and assisted Leila into the surgery room to the left of the small foyer. The doctor walked through a door opposite at the same time.
‘Miss Mayne, what have you done to yourself?’ Doctor Evans, the same doctor who delivered Leila, eyed off the blood-stained tea towel wrapped around her hand.
‘Just a flesh wound, Doc,’ she casually replied. ‘I don’t know my own Hulk strength sometimes.’
‘Sit up on the bed and we
’ll take a look at the damage.’ The doctor waved towards the tall consultation bed while he grabbed a trolley of medical equipment. ‘Why do police in this town always seem to hurt themselves more when they’re off duty?’
As the doctor unwrapped the tea towel, Leila’s head spun and she felt the colour drain from her face.
‘How about we get you laying back?’ the doc said and guided her back on the bed before unravelling the final bit of tea towel. ‘Yep, you’ve got yourself good, Leila. I’ll have to give you a local and make sure it’s properly cleaned out before I stitch you back up.’
Leila’s head spun with wooziness, but she hated being vulnerable, so she covered her eyes with her arm. ‘Yeah, whatever you need to do.’
She felt four pin pricks and blessed numbness in her hand as the anaesthetic worked its magic. ‘So how are you enjoying being back in town?’ Dr Evans asked.
‘It’s good to be home, but it’s hard. I wonder why I bothered ever coming back here when it was easier to just stay away from the place.’