The problem we are now facing is that Mrs Hooper’s sixteen-year-old son has become catatonic, and an accusation is being levelled at Mum, that she hypnotised him during a healing session or gave him some herbal brew that has had a traumatic effect on the kid. He’s been in some kind of mentally altered state since he saw Mum, just staring into space, totally unresponsive.
‘They took him to the hospital,’ Mum explains as I sit beside her and put my arm around her bony shoulders. ‘The doctors initially thought it was a schizophrenic episode but none of the tests are conclusive and there’s no family history.’
‘And they think you’re responsible?’
‘I don’t understand why.’
I sigh. It does seem quite implausible but I wonder if Isaiah had some existing condition that Mum might have triggered without realising it and certainly without any malicious intent.
‘But he did go behind his mother’s back and seek you out for an appointment?’ I say, trying to remain calm and rational. ‘And you did some hypnotherapy on him or crystal work? Is that what you did? What was he seeing you for?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’ She sniffles. ‘It’s a doctor–patient confidentiality thing.’
‘Mum,’ I caution. ‘You aren’t a doctor and it’s not the same. You are a hypnotherapist with a piece of paper from some online college. This is a kid who goes to my school, catches my bus. Don’t you dare try to hide behind that confidentiality rubbish. Answer me. I want you to tell me everything. Now.’
I stand up in front of her with my hands on my hips, frowning down at her like a cross school principal. I’m not angry, just concerned. She blows her nose loudly and sits up straight, her mascara running down beneath the blue glasses. Mum takes them off and places them onto the coffee table.
‘Okay.’ She nods, looking up at me. ‘Everything on the table. Isaiah Hooper made an appointment with me the day before yesterday and I saw him after school. In the healing room.’
Behind the small shopfront of Hex and Heal is a room where my mother does things like chakra balancing, soul spring-cleaning, crystal healings and tarot and tea-leaf readings. I can’t imagine why the Hooper kid, who is a year below me at school, would go to see the local new-age healer behind his mother’s back when his mother calls her the Bundanoon witch. My mother doesn’t mind a bit and actually quite likes the title. I listen as Mum explains.
‘He was very nervous,’ she says, leaning forward, willing me to believe her, and I do. I always believe my mother because she never lies. She is incapable of it. I just think sometimes her view of the truth is skewed through her rose-coloured glasses, or, in her specific case, blue. ‘He told me that he was having problems at home and was feeling a great deal of tension when around his parents, which, knowing them, is extremely understandable. The boy was a mess. Full of repressed anger.’
When I think of Isaiah Hooper I think of a meerkat, all eyes and nerves. His movements are jerky, and when he walks his hands are firmly pressed against his sides and he looks at his feet. He doesn’t hang out with the other kids at the hall or the park. He’s a bit of a loner and spends his lunchtimes in the library. Isaiah is like a presence in the town and school but nobody takes much notice of him. I don’t know if I’ve ever even heard him speak.
‘I did a light-guided meditation with him to put him at ease, lit some incense and put a small carnelian crystal on his chest,’ she tells me. ‘Carnelian can calm anger and stress and the boy had a lot of anger toward his parents. He resents them for stifling and over-disciplining him. Then I merely chanted over him to help balance his energy. I gave him the carnelian to hold onto when he’s upset.’
‘Carnelian is a rock, Mum,’ I say. ‘I know you believe they have power but really there is no scientific evidence to support that. I’m sorry, Mum. But there’s not. There is something definitely wrong with the boy, now, and his family are saying you were the last one to see him before he started acting this way. This is really serious.’
She does that little thing with her mouth that tells me she is letting my negativity wash over her rather than through her.
‘This has been sent to strengthen me,’ she says, shutting her eyes. ‘It’s the Mercury Retrograde. Constable Amy says his parents want to press charges. There are two detectives coming here tonight to talk to me and look at the shop. She says they have to take the accusation seriously. But of course, no one knows what is actually wrong with the boy or what to charge me with!’
‘Detectives? Seriously? But you haven’t actually been charged with anything, have you, Mum? Mum?’
‘No. It’s just a stupid accusation at this stage. But …’
‘Why do they think it was something you did? Maybe he hit his head on the way home or something?’ I ask, trying to wrap my own head around this. ‘Why?’
‘Well, apparently,’ Mum says, swallowing hard, ‘when asked what happened to him, the boy just begins to chant my name: Kirsten McLeod, Kirsten McLeod. Nothing else.’
I stare at her in disbelief. Why has she waited this long to tell me this snippet of information?
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘It’s the Hooper woman,’ she moans. ‘She’s said or done something to him, told him something about me or just plain put him up to a total melodramatic act to cast me in a bad light, though that sounds far-fetched even for her.’
Mrs Hooper isn’t someone we have much to do with. She’s a busybody, a troublemaker and we steer well clear, but I agree with Mum. It seems a stretch to think she is capable of sinking that low.
‘Did he seem unhinged when you spoke to him?’ I ask carefully, trying to shuffle these bizarre accusations into a rational explanation. ‘Perhaps he was on the verge of a breakdown of some sort.’
‘No,’ Mum answers, thoughtfully. ‘I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary. He was very quiet. Perhaps he drifted into a light sleep and dreamed something. Perhaps it was a nightmare. I can’t think of anything. Nothing at all.’
‘You’d better get a lawyer because you’re going to need one,’ I tell her. ‘Now, before you speak to the detectives. You know you shouldn’t have even given any kind of statement.’
My mother waves a hand in the air as if she is the queen in a cavalcade parade. ‘I know my rights, Paise.’ She smiles. ‘I said very little at all apart from denying it unequivocally. But just to be safe, I have called your father and he is on his way from the city. He’s the best criminal defence lawyer in the country.’
My father is coming to see us in our little cottage? My mouth goes dry and I feel a pounding thud in my chest like a punch.
‘He’s giving you legal advice?’ I ask. ‘Really? But I got the impression he doesn’t want anything to do with us.’
My mother shakes her head. ‘He’s just a strange one, your father,’ she says, brightening up a little. ‘But that’s all in the past.’
She isn’t asking me how I feel about this, seeing my father in my house after a few years of not seeing him at all. I feel a rising panic. Mum is right. I’ve never felt close to him at all. When I used to visit him, we would rarely talk. I would watch movies on his huge television or lie by the pool and read a book while he paced around on the telephone talking to clients all weekend. He’d order in gourmet takeaway and we’d eat it sprinkled with small talk about current affairs and politics, subjects I knew little about, other than what I’d picked up on social media. I don’t know how I feel about seeing him again, now, tonight, in these bizarre and disturbing circumstances.
Actually I’m feeling a bit angry, to be honest. He hasn’t tried at all to have a relationship with me. Not properly. Not outside of whatever court arrangement there was. I haven’t seen him for ages. Not since he married and had another baby. I feel a bit like a used jacket that he got bored with. I don’t like to admit that it hurts, but it does. I haven’t thought about him for ages and here I am feeling the
sting of tears behind my eyes. I change the subject as a form of self-defence.
‘The whole town will be talking about this, you know,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to go to school tomorrow and deal with it. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s quite serious if the detectives are coming here.’
Mum gives me a sad look and nods her head.
I want to go to my bedroom and shut the door, turn off the lights and hide under my doona. This feels like a nightmare in those last desperate minutes before you wake in a cold sweat, heart hammering with the sudden relief you feel when you realise it had been a dream. But I can’t walk away and leave my mother with this. I can’t be so cruel. She is still in shock, I think.
‘Can I get you anything? A drink? Something to eat?’ I ask her, but she just shakes her head.
My father arrives at the same time as two detectives in dark suits. I ignore them and lock eyes with my father. Tall, blond and greying about the temples. Paul Muller, Swedish-born with the icicles of an accent still clinging to his precise words. I see myself in his face but the similarities stop there. His smile is stiff, his jaw set.
‘Paisley.’ He nods and crosses the room to give me a hard embrace. ‘You’ve changed your hair.’
I wonder if perhaps I cut and dyed it so I would look less like this cold man. I didn’t manage to emulate my father’s height, so my ear rests against his chest as he hugs me. I can hear the dull throb of his heartbeat. I am trying to be strong and cool. It’s easier to be formal with the two detectives in the room.
‘Kirsten.’ He nods over my head to my mother, then turns to the detectives. ‘Gentlemen. I believe there has simply been some misunderstanding here. The boy in question is having an emotional episode and there is nothing to suggest that my client is responsible.’
‘We just want to establish what took place during the counselling session with the boy. Are you a registered practitioner, Ms McLeod?’
Mum looks to Dad helplessly and I feel sick. He’d better do the right thing by her. He owes her that much.
I slip away from the adults as they assemble themselves into a conference in our living room, a room filled with the scent of ylang-ylang and decorated in hippy chic. They don’t ask me to leave but they don’t invite me to stay and I don’t think it is a meeting that anyone really wants me around for. I retreat and close my door with a slow and careful turn of the old brass knob.
I lie on my bed and begin to breathe deeply: counting in for four, holding for four, breathing out for four, resting for four. I do this repeatedly, emptying my head of all thoughts. My mother, the Hoopers, the police, my father and Ben Digby all coil from my mind. My mother taught me to meditate and that is one of the few lessons from her that I’ve appreciated. It calms and centres me, creating an oasis from the madness.
I wake up and realise I have drifted into sleep. I am momentarily disoriented. I hear voices from the other room and realise that my father is still out there. His voice is loud. I roll off the bed, go to the door and open it just enough to peek into the room. The detectives have gone so I must have been asleep for a while.
‘You put yourself in this ridiculous predicament, Kirsten,’ he says, standing upright, his arms folded like a stern professor. ‘If it goes to court you’ll be ruined, even if you come out of it well, because this stuff sticks. I can see a hundred ways to get this thrown out before it gets that far, but in a small town like this? Well? It will be hard for you and Paisley, I think. Why don’t you move back to Sydney?’
‘I like the Highlands.’ Mum pouts. ‘It has a real energy, a powerful energy.’
My father breathes in through his nose, raising his brow into a horizontal furrow.
‘Places don’t have energy or vibes or any of that mumbo jumbo,’ he snaps. ‘I hope you’re not filling our daughter’s head with silly notions like that.’
‘I didn’t think you’d care one jot for what I fill her head with,’ my mother says softly. ‘You haven’t exactly been much of a father to her.’
‘She pushed me away,’ he says and sits on the recliner opposite Mum. ‘I was just giving her that space. I always pay her maintenance, always and very generously. And about Oliver and Antoinette … well …’ his voice fades away as if deciding to abandon the sentence.
He is right to a certain extent. I did drift away from him. But he is impossible to get close to. He seems so alien to me, lacking in warmth. I can’t imagine how he is with his toddler. I hadn’t even remembered the baby’s name until he mentioned it. My little half-brother, who I’ve only seen once, maybe twice.
‘I’ve got to get back,’ he says, looking at his watch. ‘We’ll do a phone hook-up from the station if they take you back in for more questioning.’
‘I swear, Paul,’ my mother says from the sofa, watching as my father packs papers into his briefcase. ‘There was nothing unusual about the healing session with that young boy. I feel terribly sorry that he has been drawn into his parents’ issue with me but I did not hypnotise him or give him any sort of ingestive. We talked. That’s all. He talked. I talked. I was just trying to be helpful.’
My father gives her a curt nod and leaves through the side door. I hear the engine of his car rumble to life and decide to go back to bed and sleep, leaving Mum to her thoughts.
My father didn’t even bother knocking on my door to say goodnight.
VERONICA
BAMBERG, FRANCONIA, 1628
We scrambled back into the pine grove and, from its cool shadows, we watched as the quartet of dark-cloaked men clattered down the road, urging their steeds over the gravel. As they passed our cart, they all slowed, heads turning toward it. Spur stood a little way across the field, ignorantly chewing at the grasses, swishing his tail to scatter the last of the summer flies.
I heard one man call out a halt command in a booming voice. He reined in his beast as the others did the same. The horses, legs hot from travel, loosened them by marching lightly on the spot. There was some gesturing and pointing at our little wagon. Loud voices argued, the words of which were tossed and scrambled on the gentle breeze so as to render them unintelligible by the time they reached our ears.
I was almost certain that the man who appeared to be directing the others to investigate the cart and horse was Bishop Friedrich Forner himself, the right-hand man of the terrible Hexenbischof, a man whose very name made me tremble. Papa told us, before they took my mutti, that the Hexenbischof had been responsible for approving the burning of over one thousand poor souls. My father had dared to suppose, in the quietude and privacy of our own home, that many, if not all, had been innocent of the charges against them.
‘Stay back and quiet,’ I shushed my little brother who was straining to see what we had hurried away from.
‘Are they the men who took Papa and …’ his voice trailed away, and I knew it was still too painful for him to say her name.
I felt a pain in my chest. ‘Perhaps,’ I whispered to him but tried to sound cheerful enough so as not to frighten him.
I watched as the men dismounted from their steeds and led them toward the cart. Spur whinnied and looked them up and down as the other haughty horses did the same but with a distinct air of disdain and superiority. The men’s horses were as sleek and black as the men’s attire and their manes were neatly plaited. I stepped back further into the shadows, pressing Hans behind me. I did not know whether it was best to confront them directly, explaining with due innocence that we were picking berries, or to run deep into the woods and away from their prying questions and curiosity. I knew these men were dangerous. Perhaps already, specifically, in pursuit of us, having found our home vacant.
One man took the reins of the other horses and stood with them, stroking their long faces, one after the other. I watched the other men peck about the cart. They stopped to inspect the horse, patting Spur. Then I bristled as one man, with the largest hat, climbe
d into the back of the cart. My heart thudded in my chest and my throat constricted as I waited to see if he would bother to inspect our belongings or merely tax some sausage and bread and leave, with a surety that some traveller was simply off fetching water from a stream. He was in there for some time.
Hans began to tug at my loose pockets and coat. I squeezed his hand tightly beneath mine to stop him as I saw the man with the hat jump to the grass and call sharply to his cohort. I could not hear the words exchanged but glimpsed a dark book in his hand and the flutter of what looked like a white handkerchief in his other. In a snap, like I had been struck by an open palm across the face, I realised he was waving the letter from my father, the one addressed directly to me. The men were now actively scanning the meadow and casting their eyes toward the wide stretch of pines that sheltered us.
‘Come on,’ I said, pulling Hans along. ‘We must away as deep into the woods as we can and stay quiet, very quiet.’
‘But, but, Spur …’ he stammered.
There was no time to think of our horse. Spur would either roam wild and free or be picked up by the first person who stumbled upon him, who might then turn him into dog meat. The poor old sack of bones. He had been a faithful horse but was good for little more than that.
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