by Ilsa Evans
‘Well, they weren’t exactly scattered –’
‘At least not before Mum found them, anyway,’ added Lucy.
Sharon frowned, but before she could inquire further, the shop phone rang. She moved away to answer it. I took Lucy by the elbow and steered her towards Historical Romance. ‘Have you rung Jasper?’
‘I told you, Mum, there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘And I told you, I think you’re wrong.’
The shop bell rang and a young woman came in, pulling a stroller behind her. The plump, curly-haired occupant clung to the sides as if not entirely confident in the navigational skills on offer. I turned back to Lucy and instantly recognised the expression on her face. My eyes widened. ‘You’re not sure.’
She blinked. ‘Of course I am.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘I am!’ She was starting to sound cross. ‘You always think you know everything, but you don’t!’
‘Actually, you’re completely wrong there. It’s more like the opposite.’
‘Whatever.’ She gave me a disdainful look and then flounced away, not an easy achievement when one is heavily pregnant.
I watched her go, still taken aback by that expression. I remembered it well. An almost palpable mix of wonder and anticipation, with the only difference being that, in Lucy’s case, it had been tinged with wistfulness. Or maybe the latter was just me, projecting.
*
All thoughts of Lucy were pushed to one side with the arrival of my book group after lunch. This eclectic mix of women paid a nominal fee to meet every Monday afternoon, spending about twenty minutes discussing the chosen text before moving on to an hour and a half of themed show and tell. If the genre of that week’s book had been supernatural, then the discussion would be about séances, and poltergeists, and the widely-held belief that the recently deceased Edward Given was now haunting the stairwell of Kata House. If the genre was historical, then the conversation would turn to genealogy and family trees and how wonderful it would have been to live in Jane Austen’s time, while if the genre was romance, then the sharing would be of romantic gestures, and proposals, and that fellow who had all the affairs and then ended up leaving his wife and five daughters. At which point it would be realised that the fellow was my ex-husband, and the wife was me. Then would come the obligatory awkward silence, broken only by shuffling feet and old Betty Rawlings plaintively asking, ‘What? What happened? Why has everyone gone quiet?’
The nominated book today was The Best Man by Di Blacklock. It must have struck a chord because, even though the public holiday meant we had a substantially smaller group than usual, a lively discussion had ensued before everybody was even seated. I peeled the cling wrap from a platter of pastries supplied by the cafe and then made myself a coffee from the urn. Lyn Russo came up to stand by me. A cloud of musky perfume came with her.
‘Oh, Nell, how traumatic for you! How absolutely dreadful!’
‘It’s only coffee,’ I replied wittily. ‘I’m sure I’ll survive.’
‘No, I mean the skeleton! In your backyard!’
‘If you’re going to dig up something,’ said Kat Caldwell, ‘you should make it buried treasure or something like that. Bones really aren’t terribly useful.’
‘I imagine the original owner would disagree there,’ commented Sally Roddom. ‘Speaking of whom, do they know who it is?’
‘It’ll be an old gold prospector,’ said Rita Hurley, already ensconced in a chair. I was a little surprised to see her there, as she was not a regular. Probably because of the wobbly relationship she had with my mother, and the somewhat less wobbly one between my mother and Rita’s husband. It was no secret that Jim Hurley, my Uncle Jim, adored my mother and had done for many years, and it was also no secret that the Hurley marriage was not overly happy. None of which added up to a situation where the two women, despite living next door to each other, would deliberately seek each other out.
I shook my head. ‘Could be, but I haven’t heard anything.’
Betty Rawlings was waving her book. ‘Are we going to talk about this? I read it this week!’
‘Let me guess, nicely nuanced characterisation,’ muttered Kat, following me over to the circle of chairs.
I sat down, nursing my coffee, and smiled at Betty. She was a plump mound of a woman, with breast, waist and thighs all seemingly symmetrical. She also appeared to have her dove-grey shirt on inside out. ‘So what did you think?’
‘Well, to sum up: nicely nuanced characterisation, realistic dialogue, multi-layered yet accessible plot. I give it a four out of five.’
This review would have been quite impressive if not for the fact Betty used the same words to describe every book that she actually finished, which was about one in three. After which she would sit nodding sagely for about thirty minutes until she fell asleep. She was the only person I knew who was literally able to nod off.
‘That’s wonderful. Glad you enjoyed it.’
‘So did I,’ put in Sally. ‘Thoroughly enjoyable read.’
Rita was nodding, although she was the only one without the book in her hands. ‘Ditto.’
Grace June Rae came bustling in, two plastic shopping bags bumping awkwardly against her walking stick. She lowered herself into a spare chair beside Betty Rawlings. ‘Hello, everyone! Sorry I’m late. Betty, you’ve got your shirt on backwards.’
‘I have? How?’
‘But I have a very good reason,’ continued Grace, beaming proudly. ‘I popped around to listen to the press conference about Nell’s bones. Well, not yours personally, Nell, just those ones you found.’
‘Thanks for clearing that up,’ I replied. ‘And first I heard about any press conference.’
‘My cousin told me. Her boy works for the local paper. It was at your house, you know. Well, next to it, on that vacant block. Are those éclairs over there?’
‘So what did they say?’ asked Lyn Russo, leaning forward. ‘Any news?’
‘Real whipped cream or that mock rubbish?’
Kat laughed. ‘Real. And tell you what, I’ll get you an éclair and a cup of tea if you fill us in.’
‘Deal. Betty, what are you doing?’
‘Fixing my shirt, of course,’ replied Betty crossly. She was undoing buttons, displaying pouchy folds of a surprisingly lacy brassiere. In one smooth movement, she slipped the shirt off altogether and then took her time turning it around the right way. Her skin was pale and plump. Muffled laughter greeted her efforts.
‘Good god, Betty,’ said Grace June Rae, examining her friend critically. ‘That’s a good sight more of you than I figured on seeing today.’
‘Or any day,’ said Rita. She winked at me.
Kat brought over a cup of milky tea and a serviette-enfolded éclair. ‘Okay, Grace, moving on from the floorshow, you need to fulfil your end of the deal. Any news on Nell’s bones?’
I took a sip of my coffee, pretending nonchalance. In reality, even greater than my considerable curiosity was a sense of annoyance that the press conference should have been held beside my house without notification. This, I was quite sure, wouldn’t have happened had Ashley been in charge.
‘All done,’ announced Betty, adjusting her re-buttoned shirt. It was still inside out.
‘Well, firstly, the detective in charge is a ruddy unfortunate-looking man,’ said Grace. ‘Face like cut glass. Squinty little eyes.’
‘Yes, but what did he say?’ asked Lyn Russo.
‘That they’re nearly done with Nell’s backyard. Which should be good news for her.’ Grace sent me a smile and then took a slow sip of her tea, stretching out her moment. ‘Ah, delicious. Thank you, Kat. Now where was I? Oh yes, and he also mentioned that the bones belonged to a woman. A blonde. Late twenties.’
Lyn Russo put a protective hand up to her own tresses. ‘A blonde!’
‘Not to worry, Lyn,’ said Kat. ‘Different age bracket. Grace, do they know how she died?’
‘No details, but definitely
suspicious. Murder, most likely. Oh, and she had a yellow handbag.’
Rita was staring at her. ‘A yellow handbag?’
‘Eww,’ said Lyn. ‘Yellow?’
I was still trying to reconcile the idea of the handbag with someone from Petar Majic’s time. It didn’t fit. ‘Ah, do they have an idea of timing?’
‘Yep. They’re waiting on official confirmation, but apparently the contents of the handbag don’t just tell them the year, they tell them the exact date. The only thing they don’t tell them is the woman’s identity. That’s why they held the press conference – they’re hoping someone will come forward and tell them who she is.’
‘And the timing?’ I prompted, holding grimly to my nonchalance.
‘Oh, yes. Hang on, I wrote it down.’ Grace passed her tea to Sally Roddom and then began to rummage through one of the shopping bags. ‘I know I wasn’t terribly surprised. One of those swingers, I’m guessing.’ She finally emerged holding a cardboard box of tissues. On the underside was scribbled a date. ‘Here we go! The twenty-fifth of April 1970.’
Everyone except Betty, who had fallen asleep, began firing questions at Grace. How could they not know who she was? Didn’t the handbag hold her purse? What was she wearing? I heard the questions bounce around the room like little missiles, but I was unable to move beyond the date. It was caught in my throat, pulsing, narrowing my breath. 25 April 1970. I remembered very few dates from my childhood but this one I was able to place into context immediately. I knew the story, and its timeline, off by heart. After a month of relentlessly hard work (her words), my mother had opened Renaissance on Monday 27 April 1970. This was the same day my father had left the country forever, winging his way over to Merry Olde England and a new life. And it was two days after he had closed the doors of his butcher shop, situated at the end of Sheridan Lane, aka Nell Forrest Close, and locked them for the final time. On Saturday 25 April 1970.
Chapter Five
I have read your column for five weeks now and enclose the following verse (Titus 2:3–5) not in judgement, but that you may use it as a scorecard for life. ‘Older women likewise are to be reverent in behaviour, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their husbands.’ I ask you, in all honesty, how do you rate?
‘They’ll need to speak to him, you know,’ said Petra.
‘Yes.’ I tilted my goblet, catching the ruby rays of the setting sun, and watched Yen through the tinted glass. This impromptu session of after-work drinks had been Petra’s idea, a dual-purpose initiative aimed at providing company for our mother when she heard the news, and then extracting information while her defences were down. Which meant that I was finishing the day at the same place I started, sitting outside the hotel at the corner of my road. The January warmth was sliding smoothly into a balmy evening and, with almost every other table occupied, conversations rose and fell like background music.
Despite the pleasant ambience, however, so far neither of our objectives was proving successful. The information about the blonde woman, along with her yellow handbag, delivered about twenty minutes ago, had been greeted with a silence that clouded around Yen like a force field.
‘Might even be speaking to him right now.’
‘Yes.’
‘It must have been the magazine that did it. It’s the only thing in her handbag that could’ve had a date. But that doesn’t leave much room to argue. A woman gets buried in the backyard of his shop on the last day of occupation, and then two days later he leaves the country for good.’
I kept my eyes on Yen. ‘They may even ask him to come back for a bit.’
‘To help with their inquiries,’ added Petra.
Yen took a sip of her scotch and then sighed, a soft, regretful sound that surprised me.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked gently. ‘This all must come as a terrible shock.’
She gave a slight shrug. Silence fell for a few more moments and then she looked up. ‘I could have gone with him, you know. He asked me to.’
I exchanged a glance with Petra. Our mother rarely spoke of her marriage and, if she did, it was in an impersonal tone. I was nearly forty-eight years old and all I knew was that the union had, apparently, ‘run its course’. She spoke of it as she would a secretarial qualification. Been there, done that, got the certificate to prove it.
‘Why didn’t you?’ asked Petra.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. With all the work I’d put into the shop? And on the eve of opening?’
‘But why did he have to leave then?’ I asked the million-dollar question. No doubt the same one my father was either already being asked, or was soon about to be. ‘Why not a year before, or a year later? Why that weekend?’
‘It just worked out that way,’ said Yen crossly. ‘One weekend’s the same as another.’
‘Not when your business closes on the Saturday! And your wife is about to open a brand-new one on Monday!’
Yen shook her head. ‘Your father’s business didn’t close on the Saturday. It closed on the Friday. The twenty-fifth of April is Anzac Day. That’s a public holiday in this country. Nice to see you’re both so patriotic that you forgot the one day each year we pay respect to those who have fought for this nation. Paid the ultimate sacrifice. Lest we forget? Remember?’
‘Yes, of course we do,’ I snapped. ‘It just got temporarily overshadowed by the news that a body was buried on my father’s watch. So don’t try to change the subject.’
Petra was nodding. ‘Besides, that just makes it worse. A busy weekend becomes even busier. He closes his shop on Friday, joins the Anzac commemorations on Saturday, has a day of rest on Sunday before Monday sees you open a new business and him flit off into the wide blue yonder.’
‘Abandoning his two pre-schoolers along the way,’ I added.
‘I don’t think England qualifies as the wide blue yonder,’ replied Yen. ‘Besides, it was one pre-schooler. You’d already started prep.’
‘Oh, well that’s entirely different. I’m surprised I was still living at home.’
Petra lifted her hand before Yen could respond. ‘So if that’s your standard weekend, then no wonder the marriage ran out of steam. He probably needed a break.’
Yen’s eyes narrowed. Instead of responding, however, she just kept her gaze fixed until Petra flushed and looked away. She had used the same tactic when we were small, with the same success. A steady gaze from my mother could shrivel your soul.
Laughter erupted from a table on our left, occupied by some young tradies. One of them had moulded a bread roll into the shape of a ball and they were tossing it around. A couple of sparrows danced along the kerb, watching the proceedings with bright, hungry eyes.
‘I won, you know,’ said Petra abruptly, turning to me. ‘It was forty-three years and I came closest with my seventy. You owe me chocolate.’
Yen frowned. ‘Please do not tell me that you bet on the murder of that poor woman.’
‘Okay,’ said Petra quickly, clearly regretting her contribution.
‘Well, I have to say that you never fail to plumb the depths of my expectations.’
‘Yen?’ I knew that she didn’t really care if we had bet on the bones or not; she just wanted to shift the focus away from herself. ‘You have to acknowledge that all this sounds very odd.’
‘I don’t have to do anything of the sort.’
‘Then can you at least answer one question? The blonde woman with the yellow handbag: does she ring any bells? Did anybody go missing around that time?’
‘Nobody,’ she answered, rather quickly.
I frowned, watching as she took another sip of scotch. A few long moments passed and then she sent me a challenging look. But something else shifted behind, a shadow of knowledge, huddling protectively. My eyes widened. ‘You know who it is.’
She folded her arms and looked away, towards the laneway. After a moment her eyebrows rose. ‘Nell Forrest Close? Really?’
/> Petra had followed her gaze. She started laughing. ‘Oh my god.’
‘I’m not sure I think that’s a good idea,’ continued Yen. ‘With your propensity for getting into trouble, do you really need to draw attention to your whereabouts?’
Petra was still laughing. ‘It sounds like a stalker alert. Take precautions, Nell Forrest Close.’
‘Deb’s taking care of it,’ I said shortly. ‘It’ll be changed soon. Now – who is she?’
‘No idea.’
I leant forward, trying to force eye contact. ‘You know. I know you know.’
‘No, you think you know that I know.’ She rose, plucking her bag from the table. ‘And as fascinating as a discussion about your knowledge always is, unfortunately I shall have to forgo the remainder. I am going home.’
‘But Yen –’
‘Goodbye.’
I watched her slim, straight-backed figure wind its way through the tables and out onto the footpath. As soon as she rounded the corner back towards Renaissance and her car, I turned to Petra. ‘She knows.’
‘I know.’
‘This is not looking good.’
Petra drew in a deep breath and then let it out, her shoulders dropping. ‘He has to be involved. There’re too many coincidences otherwise. Do you think she’ll call him?’
I thought of Darcy, now settled with a new partner and a new child, and what I would do under the circumstances. ‘Yes.’
The bread ball bounced onto our table and rolled to a stop by my wine. It was now a mottled grey colour. One of the young tradies rushed over to retrieve it, very apologetically. His pants hung from snake hips, with jellybean patterned boxers puckering above.
‘I don’t really remember him,’ said Petra, as soon as the young guy had left. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought …’
‘Me neither.’
The sun was now directly behind the new street sign, with Nell Forrest Close framed by claret rays. We remained silent, each lost in memories that were born mainly from black-and-white photographs of forty-odd years ago. Sitting on his lap, riding high on his shoulders, secure in the knowledge he was simply there. Until one day he wasn’t.