Trip of a Lifetime

by Liz Byrski

  ‘Let’s do something together,’ Adam said when he got back from delivering Daisy. ‘Like you said on the phone, the way we used to do.’

  ‘I was just going to make a cake,’ she’d said, reaching up for the flour which was, surprisingly, in its proper place, where it hadn’t been for a long time. ‘We don’t have any.’

  He came over to her, picked up the flour jar and put it back on the shelf. ‘Jill,’ he repeated, ‘let’s do something together.’ It was disconcerting, this new-old assertiveness that she vaguely recalled from their early, child-free days. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  The narrow path was bordered by steep grassy banks dense with trees. The afternoon sun sent light dancing in corkscrews through the branches. Adam walked a few steps ahead, holding back the occasional overhanging branch for her.

  ‘Adam,’ she said, catching her breath in the tension. ‘I know what happened, I know about the abortion.’

  He stopped and turned to her, shock written across his face.

  ‘Heather told me. She came to see me while I was away. She told me all about it.’

  Adam swayed slightly and sat down abruptly on the grassy edge of the bank. ‘I was trying to think of a way to tell you.’

  ‘Well, now you don’t have to.’ Jill sat down beside him and he moved along to make room for her. ‘Heather told me everything,’ she went on. ‘She knew the silence was a problem for us, you and me, and that you didn’t want to break your promise to her.’

  Adam leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, clasping his hands between his knees. ‘How much did she tell you?’

  ‘Everything,’ Jill said. ‘How she leaned on you to help her against your better judgment, how you got the money, how you looked after her; and how terribly hard it was for you because at the time it was the absolute antithesis of everything you believed in.’

  He nodded, seeming unable to speak or look at her.

  ‘Can I ask you something about it?’ Jill ventured. ‘I do understand why it was so hard for you. You were there for Heather when she was in the worst possible trouble and you stood by her and did what she asked, although you believed it was unforgivable. What I don’t understand is why, when you did all that sort of religious housecleaning a few years later, you weren’t able to get this whole thing into some different sort of perspective.’

  He nodded, still not speaking, staring at the ground, and she saw him swallow hard several times before he straightened up and looked at her, and began to explain about his father.

  ‘That was a cruel thing he did to you,’ she said later, ‘a cruel burden to put on a little boy’s shoulders.’

  ‘Perhaps, but it was all he knew, the same stuff he’d got from Granddad. While you were away I talked to Barbara, I told her. She asked me something . . .’

  ‘Why you pawned the cello?’

  ‘Yes. It was like she’d pushed the release button. I don’t think she knew what hit her that weekend.’

  ‘She would have been glad,’ Jill said. ‘Glad to see you release yourself from all that. Heather too, it releases her as well.’

  They got up and walked on, hand in hand now the path was wider, past the marshy edge of the lake where tall rushes brushed their arms and a pair of ibis stalked through the shallow, muddy water.

  ‘So I suppose the fact that Heather talked to you means she’s confronted Ellis about it,’ Adam said.

  ‘Confronted Ellis?’ Jill asked. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly what I said. She must have dealt with all this with Ellis, or is she still putting that off?’

  Jill hesitated. ‘I don’t know. She didn’t say anything much about Ellis. Does he even know? I sort of assumed he’d already left by the time she realised she was pregnant.’

  Adam shook his head. ‘So she didn’t tell you everything, after all. She gave you the edited version.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Adam turned to face her. ‘Ellis was there, Jill. He didn’t dump her before she realised she was pregnant, he did it because she told him she was pregnant. She needed his help and support and he’d promised her many times that he’d leave his wife, but of course there was always a reason why the time wasn’t right. When she told him about the pregnancy she thought it might be the thing that would make him keep his promise. She certainly thought he would be there for her. But when she told him, he . . .’ Adam paused, as though, Jill thought, it made him feel physically sick to say it. ‘He asked what proof she had that it was his child. Heather was nineteen – eighteen, when she met him – it was her first sexual relationship. She was in love, or infatuated, with Ellis, who knows which? He told her that he wasn’t going to be caught out by the oldest trick in the book, and he sent her away.’

  Adam stopped, drawing breath, shaking his head again. ‘She was a total emotional wreck even before she had the termination. Ellis never called, never wrote, he never spoke to her or saw her again, and three weeks later she heard he was taking a job in Adelaide and moving there with his family. He’d known about it for several months and never told her. That’s why I hate Ellis Hargreaves, Jill, hate him with a passion. And it’s why I still can’t understand why Heather would consider speaking to him, let alone getting into this relationship with him. That’s why I find it so hard to be civil to him, and it’s why this is going to cripple my relationship with my sister if it goes on.’

  Shaun had just brought up his breakfast. Grasping the toilet bowl to steady himself, he dragged himself to his feet and grabbed the doorjamb, edging his way out of the cubicle, his body pressed against the wall to keep himself upright. The white tiled walls of the men’s room swayed and undulated, and the sweat that he’d broken into as he thrust his way between the tables to get there crawled down his neck and dripped from his eyebrows. The door swung open.

  ‘You all right, Shaun?’ Alex called. ‘Christ, mate, you look bloody awful.’ He tried to steer Shaun to a slatted bench but Shaun shook off his hand, grasped the side of the washbasin and turned on the tap. Gripping the basin with both hands he pushed his head under the stream of cold water, letting it cascade over his face and neck. Alex handed him a handful of rough paper towels and he buried his face in them, holding on to them over his closed eyes until the dizziness eased.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve got a signed statement from one Kevin James, associate of Danny Muswell, who was ready to tell us everything in the hope that I’ll put in a word with the judge.’

  Shaun leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes and slid slowly down to sit on the tiled floor. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said, as Alex joined him on the floor. ‘Danny was shot with his own weapon by some dealer further up the food chain who he’d been ripping off?’

  ‘Right,’ Alex said.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Heather asked, sticking her head around the door.

  ‘Sure,’ Alex nodded, ‘there’s only us in here and I don’t think Shaun can move yet.’

  She crossed the tiles and sat down on the other side of Shaun. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m getting there. So,’ he began again, ‘Danny and this Kevin ran into Charlene in the pub, and Danny started hassling her?’

  ‘Yep. Kevin says she told him to get lost, that she was waiting for you but you were still at the office. He’d been using and was totally off the planet, and so Kevin and another mate got him out of the pub and into the back of the car, and Danny insisted on paying you a visit. Kevin insists they didn’t know he had a weapon but I’m not sure I believe that.’

  Shaun rested his head against the wall. ‘So they drove to the office and parked, and that’s when Danny stuck the gun in the back of Kevin’s neck?’

  ‘That’s right. They saw a few people come out of the office and drive off, and then you and Heather came out and you were messing about with the door.’

  ‘I set the alarm and then locked it.’

  ‘Yes, and Heather was waiting for you and so was
Danny. He lined you up at the top of the steps but, just as he fired, Heather moved in front of you.’

  ‘I tripped,’ Heather said, ‘I remember it clearly. I caught my shoe on an irregular tile at the edge of the top step, and I grabbed your arm to save myself.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Alex cut in. ‘And in the split second you did that you caught the bullet that was meant for Shaun, and Kevin put his foot down and they took off out of the car park.’

  Shaun turned to look at Heather. ‘Remember I said that night that I didn’t think anyone was trying to kill you? But I thought it was random, I never imagined . . .’

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘Of course not, Shaun, how could you.’

  ‘Apparently, Danny was saying later that he just wanted to scare you but who knows?’ Alex said. ‘Ice is deadly, Danny was psychotic. But that bullet had your name on it, Shaun, and if Heather hadn’t tripped on the steps you could be pushing up the daisies right now.’

  ‘So you didn’t tell him about Charlene?’ Diane asked, hugely relieved that her suspicions about Gerry were unfounded, although knowing that Shaun had been the target intensified her fears for her daughter.

  Heather shook her head. ‘No, Shaun and I discussed this on the way here. We still feel it’s best to keep quiet. They have a lot of evidence on Danny anyway, and now they’re getting together a case that will pin down the guy that shot him. They’re treating the shooting as macho stuff, jealousy fuelled by drugs.’

  ‘Like I said before,’ Shaun said, ‘I’ll talk to Alex alone if it looks dodgy. He won’t be happy but I think he’ll understand.’

  Heather and Shaun had turned up at Barbara’s place an hour or so earlier and at the sight of them in the open doorway, Diane had felt faint with shock, and with the anticipation that they were bringing really bad news.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Heather had reassured her, taking her arm and steering her into Barbara’s lounge room. ‘It’s fine, that’s why we’re here, but we need to look after Shaun. He wanted to come with me but he’s not feeling too good.’

  Diane thought he looked like death, grey-faced and distraught, and it was soon clear why. ‘I don’t know what to say to either of you,’ she said. ‘Sorry sounds ridiculous but you’re both in this situation because of my daughter –’

  ‘Don’t, Diane,’ Heather said. ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t start feeling guilty for the actions of a small-time drug dealer who was off his head.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Shaun said. He was clutching a mug of very strong tea that Barbara had given him, and looked marginally better than when he’d arrived. ‘Absolutely right. It’s just so hard to get your head around it, isn’t it? After all this time.’

  ‘I don’t understand why the police didn’t think about it before,’ Diane said. ‘Did they even consider the possibility that Heather wasn’t the target?’

  ‘No,’ Heather said. ‘As Alex said – with some embarrassment, I might add – if it had been two other people coming out of an office they would naturally think it might be either, but one being a fairly controversial member of parliament they went for the obvious.’

  ‘They did have a look at me, apparently,’ Shaun said, ‘checked my record in case I might have been involved. But of course they didn’t find anything suspicious. Somehow, although they seem to have known about Danny for months, they didn’t actually make the connection to Charlene and then to me. Alex’s boss is apparently not impressed.’

  ‘It’s a terrible shock for you, Shaun,’ Barbara said, ‘but what about you, Heather? It must be such a relief.’

  ‘At the moment I don’t feel anything,’ Heather said. ‘I was beside myself waiting for Alex to arrive, and then when he told us I just felt flat – and, of course, worried about Shaun. I keep telling myself it’s over, that it was never about me, but I can’t actually feel that yet. Not relief, not happiness, not anything, just flat.’ She saw them looking at her and knew how strange it must sound. For months she had been saying that everything would be all right once they had found the perpetrator, and now here she was discussing it almost as though she weren’t involved.

  George got up and walked to the door. ‘I’m going next door to get my bottle of brandy,’ he said. ‘You two both look as though you need something stronger than tea.’

  Heather lay on the settee watching the SBS news but not listening to it. She wasn’t listening to anything else either. She was just there, or at least that’s how it felt, just there wondering what it all meant, why she wasn’t out celebrating, what she was supposed to feel. Everything had changed so suddenly. She’d been waiting for Alex, unable to eat her breakfast because of the anticipation, and then nothing, absolutely nothing at all, except amazement and a feeling that something had been taken away from her, something that had become a part of her. She had so often imagined how it would feel to know that it was all over – the relief, the liberation of it – but it didn’t feel that way at all.

  Ellis had been wonderful when she’d called to tell him. He alone seemed to understand why rather than celebrating she felt more as though she were in mourning.

  ‘There’s a sort of nobility to being attacked for your beliefs,’ he said, ‘especially attacked in such a cowardly and brutal way. You could feel proud of it, although you may not have been aware of that. That’s what’s been taken away. Now you know you were shot by mistake it’s as though you went through all the pain and fear for no real purpose, no cause that you can be proud of. Of course you feel terrible.’

  He was right. Remembering that first morning in the hospital when she watched herself on television, listened to her colleagues, gazed in amazement at the cards and flowers that kept coming, she saw a brief cameo as a heroic survivor. She was headlines until another story came along. But it had given meaning to what had happened and now that meaning had been ripped away. Ellis had cut to the heart of it in a way that no one else had done, just as he had in their first few days together. She could see now that her own prejudice had closed her mind to his remarkable talent for understanding and made her sceptical of his plans for life-coaching.

  ‘I’m going to hang up now and see if I can find a flight down tonight from Ballina or maybe the Gold Coast, so I can be with you soon,’ Ellis had said. ‘I’ll call you back in a few minutes.’

  Heather divided her gaze between the television screen and the telephone, wishing he were with her now. She envied Shaun, who had not had to live with the injury, and who knew the attacker was dead, while she was stuck with the appalling reality that tripping on a step could make you the victim of violent crime. She knew it now in a way that no one who had not experienced it could ever know.

  Diane had taken Shaun home with her. Heather suspected she needed to mother him to expiate the guilt she seemed to feel about the fact that he’d been targeted because of Charlene. Perhaps they needed each other. But Heather needed time alone, although now, more than at any time since the shooting, alone seemed agonisingly lonely. How ironic that she had so often told herself that it was okay to live without someone for whom you came first, had even joked about her own ability to piss off potential candidates. Well, now she did have someone but he was miles away, and so often when he was close, she was on the defensive, never really willing to take that final dangerous step towards real intimacy.

  ‘There’s nothing,’ Ellis said when he called back. ‘Nothing until just before midday tomorrow.’ Heather’s heart sank, and she felt the tears welling in her eyes, like a child who has been promised a toy and then had the promise withdrawn. ‘But listen,’ he went on, ‘I want to be there with you, Heather. I was planning to drive down at the end of the week anyway, so we’d have more time together over Christmas. So how about I put some things in a bag and head down there now? I can be with you in a few hours. Leave a key for me. I’m going to look after you. We’ll have two weeks together, darling, or as long as you need. Trust me, Heather, I’ll be with you before you know it and everything is going to be absolutely fine.’<
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  TWENTY

  Daisy was making Christmas cards on the kitchen table. She had her paint box, glue, coloured pencils and felt tips, glitter, even some ribbons and sequins that Jill had discovered when, inspired by Adam’s recent blitz, she had sorted out her sewing cupboard. And she had a pile of old magazines from which she was cutting pictures to stick on the cards. Each card would also be a bookmark with a piece of ribbon attached to it, so that it would drape over the top of the book. Daisy had designed each one to reflect something special about the person. It was a big job because she was determined that everyone who was to be at Heather’s place for Christmas would have one.

  She’d thought at first that it would just be the family, and then she kept discovering that various other people were going to be there. Shaun she’d met a few times, and she thought she’d do guns on his because he was the one who was supposed to have been shot. Then there was Diane, whom she’d met at the party. She’d told Daisy she used to be a hairdresser, so perhaps she would draw some scissors and a comb and put glue on the drawing and sprinkle glitter, so they were all sparkly. Barbara and George were easy, they had pictures of bicycles, and George had a Chinese mandarin, and Barbara a picture of a Chinese man wearing a khaki cap with a red star on it and holding a tiny red book. It had the words Mao Tse Tung underneath. Heather had the Houses of Parliament in England and a drawing of a gun with a big red cross through it to show that it wasn’t meant for her. For Adam, of course, Daisy had drawn a cello with musical notes coming out of it, and for Jill a picture of a woman peeling potatoes in the kitchen. She was left now with Ellis, the only problem.

  ‘I haven’t a clue, darling,’ Jill had said. ‘But he does live in Byron Bay if that’s any help.’