Water under the Bridge

by Lily Malone

  He was shaking too, tremors she could feel where her chin tucked into his collarbone, where her cheek rested on the hard bone of his shoulder and his t-shirt felt so smooth under her ear, and the foggy feeling that had numbed her brain for weeks was lifting.

  Up, up, up. Like a curtain.

  * * *

  People, people, everywhere, and they all wanted a slice of Ella, but none of them wanted Ella the way he did.

  Tonight, Jake wasn’t letting her out of his sight.

  He stayed with her through the round of media photos and speeches. He stayed close by as she stood on the stage in the hall at the bowling club and read out lists of sponsors and donations while the mirror ball spun silver bubbles across the ceiling and through Ella’s hair.

  He dodged silver and gold balloons later, as he spun her on the dance floor, chasing silver bubbles and streamers with Ella in his arms.

  Once Tynan Kennedy cut in on him, tapping him on the shoulder, and he’d had to let Ella go. Tynan was embarrassed about it, and apologised to Jake. ‘The missus won’t let me leave until I ask Ella if she’ll come and tell us what she thinks our house is worth. Two of them got talking at the school the other day about enrolling our kids in swimming lessons apparently, and she comes home and tells me how nice this Ella is, and I know I won’t get any peace till I ask …’

  Jake relinquished Ella, and watched as she and Tynan stood on the dance floor, not dancing, for five minutes, with Ella’s eyes all intent and serious and listening and Tynan talking at her and nodding.

  Somewhere in all that, Irene and Perry Loveday danced by and bumped him where he was playing wallflower, and Irene leaned in to whisper-shout over the music, ‘Your young Ella looks smashing tonight, doesn’t she, Jake?’

  ‘She does.’

  Irene and Perry danced away—Irene managing very well on that dodgy knee—and Ella appeared at his side.

  ‘I think I need some fresh air,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you’d never ask.’ He drew her with him out the club’s double doors.

  Kids ran amok across the bowling green, playing hide and seek and chase, some of them carting balloons or streamers they’d stolen from inside. There were people everywhere, crammed into the same ramp from which Sam had threatened to jump his BMX bike in the summer. Most were from the older crew and Jake could hear lots of grumbling about ‘how loud the music is’ and ‘how hot it is inside’ and ‘how much nicer it is out here’.

  ‘It’s bloody cold out here,’ Ella said, rubbing at her arms.

  He wasn’t cold. How could he be cold? Being with Ella had him on constant burn.

  ‘Come take a look at the pool,’ Ella said. ‘Have you seen it since they got the roof on?’

  He hadn’t. He hadn’t come up here once. Lester Huxtable made all the deliveries because Jake hadn’t wanted to set foot in the place without Ella.

  She took his hand and pulled him through the mass of people, all of whom wanted to greet her, speak with her and kiss her cheek, so it took for-bloody-ever, but finally they got down the ramp and around the corner, where the noise of the music and the kids and the people faded.

  The new pool building was lit up like a beacon. The glass walls were in, and the new roof shone on top.

  Ella tried the door; it wasn’t locked—people had been coming up to check out the progress all evening. But it was empty now, as the crowd filled the bowling club.

  Jake and Ella had it to themselves.

  She gave him the royal tour in those hot pink boots that got him hotter and hotter, talking about what still had to be done, and he listened with his mind on her, and her earrings, and the squiggles in the material of that crazy dress and the boots. He didn’t hear a word about the pool, and if there was a test on all this later, he was fucked.

  ‘Okay, Ella. That’s all great. Now sit down here for a second.’

  Jake sat on the lowest tier of three concrete bleachers that ran the length of the pool. Space for parents to watch the action, and space for kit bags and kids’ towels. He pulled her across his thighs and Ella sat, with the pink boots kicked out to one side like she rode him side-saddle.

  Jake stroked her chin, and he couldn’t stop there; he had to remember how soft she felt. He trailed his index finger across her top lip, then the fatter bottom one. Then he finally, finally, got to kiss her, and God, if there’d been any water in the pool they would have steamed all that new glass right up.

  Jake shifted Ella’s weight on his lap.

  ‘Can you feel how much I want you, Ella? Can you feel what you do to me?’ he murmured into her hair. ‘I want you like you wouldn’t believe. Can you come home with me?’

  Even as he said it, he knew he was an idiot. She had Sam.

  ‘I’ve got Sam,’ she said, and she sighed in a way that let him know how she was tempted. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Can we get a babysitter?’

  Ella giggled. ‘We can’t get a babysitter for an hour. It’s not like stopping in at a hotel.’

  ‘I want the babysitter for longer than a fucking hour,’ Jake said into her hair, only half joking.

  Ella lowered her forehead to meet his. ‘I can’t, not tonight. It’s hard to be spontaneous when you have a kid.’

  ‘Yeah. When is Erik coming down next? Or is Sam going up to Perth to spend any time with his dad soon?’

  Ella stiffened on his lap. That took him a bit longer than normal to notice, only because there was a lot of stiffness going on in his lap at the time.

  Her arms unwrapped from his neck, leaving him suddenly cold, and she disentangled herself from his thighs and stood up, facing him.

  ‘Jake?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I have to tell you something important, about Erik and Sam. I almost told you weeks ago, the day we were at the dam.’

  ‘You’re not getting back with him,’ he blurted, before he could think.

  ‘No, no, nothing like that.’ She swung away, scanning the building for listening ears. ‘It’s about Sam.’

  ‘What, Ella. What about Sam?’ Suddenly, he could have sworn she’d gone paler than the fluorescent lights bouncing off concrete, cement and tile. ‘Honey, you’re scaring me.’

  ‘Erik isn’t Sam’s biological father. Erik isn’t his real dad.’

  ‘Okay.’ What did that mean? What he thought it meant? Or something else. ‘Biological father? As in, like, birth father?’

  ‘Erik was with me when Sam was born, but he isn’t his real dad.’

  ‘Does Sam know?’ Jake stood, because his heart was thumping so hard he couldn’t sit anymore, and because Ella wouldn’t meet his gaze. She was looking everywhere, rather than at him. Eventually, Jake caught her shoulder. She trembled under his fingers. ‘Does Sam know, Ella?’

  ‘He knows Erik isn’t his real dad. He doesn’t know who his real dad is.’

  ‘Do you?’

  That got a reaction. Ella’s gaze was like a stab. ‘Of course I do.’

  Maybe the bloke had no idea. Maybe Sam’s dad was as much in the dark as Jake had been with Cassidy. Maybe the decisions got made without him.

  All the hairs rose on the back of his neck. ‘What did you tell Sam?’

  ‘We told him that his biological father lived a long way away. Very far away. And that Erik was the one who wanted to live with us.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jake muttered, and then he couldn’t not ask. ‘Does the real father know?’

  Ella wouldn’t answer.

  The question lodged in Jake’s throat, and he had to swallow hard to get around it. ‘Did you tell Sam’s real dad, Ella?’

  She licked her lips and her eyes slid away.

  ‘Ella!’

  ‘I tried, okay. He didn’t want a bar of me after … after we were together. He said terrible things.’

  The words worked through Jake’s clenched teeth. ‘Did. He. Know. About. Sam?’ He had a right to know. All fathers had a right.

  ‘I don’t know!’ She wrung her hands
. ‘I don’t know, okay? I wrote to him when I found out I was pregnant, and I got the most awful letter back from his swim coach telling me, telling me … never mind. And I wrote when Sam was born, and nothing came back. Then I— Erik was in my life after that. I never wrote to Sam’s father again. I hated even thinking about him.’

  ‘His swim coach?’ Jake said. ‘Sam’s real dad is another swimmer?’

  Ella’s face drained of everything: colour, structure, hope. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Who is he?’ Jake said, not certain he wanted to know the answer. Did it matter?

  The glass entrance doors burst open, and they heard running feet slapping concrete. Jake forced himself to release Ella’s shoulder; his fingers had dug in—he hadn’t even known he was doing it—and it took something to unclench and let the grip go.

  ‘There you are!’

  It was Ollie, out of breath. The shirt that had been so neatly tucked in three hours ago now hung loosely, grass clippings all over his good shoes.

  ‘What’s up, Ollie?’ Jake said.

  ‘Have you seen Sam? Mum said he could have a sleepover at our place tonight if Ella isn’t ready to go home yet. Mum said he had to come and ask you. Someone said they saw you guys coming up here. Did he ask you? Is it okay if he comes home with us?’

  Jake glanced at Ella. She was on her feet, one foot first, another pink boot to follow it, moving stiff as a puppet. ‘I haven’t seen Sam, Ollie,’ she said.

  ‘He came here. I saw him. I could see him all the way from down at the club rooms—he was crouched down across there.’ Ollie pointed to the shadowed edge of the bleachers. ‘And now he’s not there. But he didn’t come back yet.’

  ‘Jake,’ Ella said, stretching her hand to grab his wrist. ‘If Sam was here … then he heard …’

  ‘Ollie, go tell your mum that we can’t find Sam, and we need to find him, okay? Come on, Ella.’ He changed the angle of his arm so that instead of grabbing his wrist, he had her hand. ‘We’ll find him. Let’s go.’

  CHAPTER

  30

  ‘Where would he go, do you think? If he was upset and running?’ Jake asked as they ran for his car.

  ‘I think he’d just go home. At least, I hope he would.’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ Jake said again, and they climbed into his four-wheel-drive and reversed out of the parking space.

  How strange that the lights and music danced all around them, and people laughed and flirted and drank, yet Ella’s heart was all iced up, iced over.

  They rolled from the bowling club, picking up speed, but not so fast they’d miss a small boy hunched behind a tree or in the front garden of one of the brick homes.

  Streetlights lit the way. Jake’s spotlights swept a wide arc across the roads.

  Ella peered into every nook and cranny, and couldn’t see Sam.

  Out onto the T-junction with the highway.

  ‘Left or right?’ Jake asked, paused in the intersection.

  Left went through town and the lights. Right led towards Mount Barker, all of it dark and cold and lonely and please, Sammy, don’t go there.

  ‘Left,’ she said.

  Jake steered into town.

  They couldn’t see a small boy anywhere on the street. Not out the front of the Post Office, or sitting on the front steps of Begg & Robertson or the bakery. He wasn’t in front of the secondhand shop, chicken shop, or the general store.

  He wasn’t at Honeychurch Timber and Hardware.

  ‘He’ll be okay, Ella. We’ll find him,’ Jake said for the third time, and Ella realised she had a death grip on the seat and forced herself to relax.

  ‘Chalk Hill Bridge Road or your place?’ Jake said when they reached the end of the shops and ran out of other options.

  ‘I think he’d go home … but, I don’t know, Jake. Something tells me maybe the bridge road.’

  ‘You don’t think he’d hide out at Nanna’s house?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Her voice trailed away. She didn’t know. Oh, Sammy. Where are you?

  Jake drove left into Chalk Hill Bridge Road.

  They followed the streetlights all the way to Irma’s house. Lights shone over the narrow bridge where the water had begun to flow after soaking autumn rains.

  Jake parked the car on Irma’s verge and left the headlights shining. ‘I’m taking a quick look under the bridge.’

  ‘He wouldn’t go under there, surely,’ Ella said, heart in her throat.

  ‘Doesn’t hurt to look. I ran away once and hid under the bridge where I thought no one would ever find me. Then I went to Nanna’s place when I got hungry.’

  Ella ran towards Cutters’ Creek while Jake grabbed a torch from the Landcruiser’s rear. Diana Ross sang I’m Coming Out, clear as day in the thin night air, the sound carrying all the way from the bowling club.

  Ella hummed to it, too scared to do anything else.

  As she got nearer the bridge, the sound of running water obliterated Diana. Ella stopped humming when she couldn’t hear the music, and seconds later she heard a murmur that stopped her pulse.

  A sob.

  ‘Sam?’

  It was so dark under all the willow trees. She couldn’t see a thing.

  ‘Sam?’ Ella shouted into the murky black beneath the bridge. ‘Jake, I heard something. I think he’s here.’

  Then Jake was there, shining the torch, and the light picked out the crown of Sam’s blond head, grubby face staring up at them, tears streaming cleaner cracks through the mess.

  Ella went to get him, pink high heels and all, and she nearly slipped herself—would have gone all the way into the water; Jake’s hand just about pulled her arm out of its socket as he hauled her back.

  ‘Wait here. I’ll get him.’

  Jake in his boots, sure-footed as a mountain goat, picked his way down the dewy grass towards her boy. Thank God it hadn’t rained tonight.

  ‘Are you hurt, mate?’ Jake called.

  ‘I hurt my arm,’ Sam cried, his voice very small.

  ‘How bad, Sammy?’ Ella called.

  Jake was almost there. It took forever. Why didn’t he go faster? Why didn’t Sam get up? What was going on?

  All Ella could hear was Jake’s voice, a deep rumble, as he spoke to Sam. Then she could see the pair of them: dark head and light; big and so very small.

  Jake shepherded Sam in front of him up the steepest part, then picked him up like a sheep over his shoulder and carried her boy to her.

  * * *

  Jake had a coat in the car and they put that around Sam’s freezing shoulders and sat him on the back seat with the interior light on and Jake’s torch travelling slowly up and down Sam’s left arm.

  Ella had started to ask, and discarded, so many questions. Sam wouldn’t look at her and she felt useless.

  What was the point of asking questions she knew the answer to? Like, ‘Why did you run away, Sam?’ or ‘What were you thinking, Sam? Worrying me like that!’

  He’d run because he’d heard her tell Jake about his real dad. He’d run because she’d been too selfish to tell Sam about Marshall. She should have done it years ago.

  Jake talked for both of them. Big, solid Jake who examined Sam’s arm; it was swollen and bruised just above the wrist—even Ella could see that—and now Jake’s firm fingers pressed gently along Sam’s skinny forearm.

  ‘Ow. That’s where it hurts,’ Sam said, sinking into the seat, pushing Jake away with his good arm.

  ‘We need a sling,’ Jake said, heading back towards the rear of his car. ‘Look around for a stick. Something straight.’

  Ella scouted the ground near the car, then thought about the amount of building going on at the Honeychurch house. There was bound to be some timber offcuts in the skip bin, so she took Jake’s torch and ran over there.

  I should have told Sam about Marshall years ago.

  What type of mother kept a truth like that from her child?

  A crap one. A useless one.

 
Ella splayed the torch light over a skip filled with heavy-duty plastic wrap, lunch wrappers, old brick, old tin, remnant insulation bats, iced coffee cartons, soft drink cans and, thank heavens, timber offcuts.

  She snatched one off the pile, tugging it out from larger planks.

  Jake waited with bandages and scissors, and Ella gave him the piece of timber. He wrapped the splint against Sam’s forearm, then lifted and tied the sling around Sam’s neck.

  ‘I think it’s a hospital visit for you, young man,’ Jake said, leaning further into the vehicle to clip Sam’s seatbelt before he looked at Ella. ‘You want to ride in the back with him?’

  ‘I don’t want her,’ Sam burst out before Ella could speak.

  His words left Ella’s insides stripped out, as if he’d laid them bare on the grass beside the car. They shredded her heart and stuffed it under the lunch wrappers and the bricks in the skip bin, with the other rubbish nobody wanted.

  She didn’t argue with him.

  Jake didn’t argue either.

  ‘Let me call Ollie’s mum and dad and let them know we’ve found him and to pass it on. Just in case anyone else is looking.’

  He made the call, then he and Ella strapped in, and Jake drove.

  It was a forty-minute drive between Chalk Hill and Mount Barker, and Ella didn’t say a word. She stared out the front windscreen as Jake drove, watching the headlight beams hold back the trees, wondering about all the things she could have done differently. Done better.

  She could have bought a plane ticket in those years after Sam was born and taken him to Sydney to find Marshall. Made her own personal picket line outside his training centre, and woe to any pushy swim coach who blocked her way.

  ‘Tell us what happened, mate?’ Jake asked Sam, and Ella felt like she was hearing the story from under ten feet of water.

  Sam had run from the bowling club, but he hadn’t gone down the road. He’d cut across a bush lot that linked through to the walking path along the creek, and got to the bridge that way.

  All that way in the dark with a steep slide to the water just metres away … he could have slipped and drowned.

  Ella put her hand in her mouth and bit her knuckles. She had to fill her mouth with something because she wanted to throw back her head and howl all the guilt and hurt from her body.