Froggy stared at a man in a double-breasted suit with a walrus moustache. He really wasn’t interested in Nan’s side of the family, but it seemed rude to say so.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked, pointing to another photograph.
‘Your great-grandfather James. He helped Grandpa and me buy our first home.’
‘Here in Balgowlah?’
‘No.’ Nan looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘No, our first home was in Strathfield. But after Grandpa retired, quite out of the blue he said he wanted to live near the sea. So we looked around, but nothing seemed to satisfy him until one night he had a dream, or so he said.’
‘What did he dream?’ Froggy interjected, wondering if Tad had had anything to do with it.
‘Nothing he would talk about really,’ Nan admitted. ‘He told me there was a place called Balgowlah. Neither of us had even heard of it. We had to find it on the map. After that we just haunted the real estate agents until Grandpa found a place that he said … fitted.’
‘Fitted?’ Froggy’s mother raised one eyebrow in disbelief. ‘Fitted what?’
‘Just fitted.’ Nan looked annoyed.
‘Did you ever live here, Dad?’ Froggy wondered suddenly why he’d hardly ever visited his grandparents here before coming to live with Nan. For some reason Nan and Grandpa had always come over to visit them.
‘No.’ His father pulled a face at Froggy. ‘No. Your mother and I were already married when Nan and Grandpa moved here. To be honest, Fred, I’ve never really liked this place all that much. I … don’t feel comfortable here.’
Nan and Froggy’s mother exchanged hostile glances. ‘I mean, I don’t feel comfortable living in Balgowlah,’ his father explained hastily. ‘I know it sounds crazy, but there’s just something about the sea that I …’
A man came here. He looked like us but he was a lot older. I’m sure he saw me, but he ignored me. And he never came back.
Froggy remembered Tad’s words and stared at his father curiously. Was he the one? Should he tell him about Tad? Watch his reaction?
No. Froggy answered his own question. Why would he believe me if he wouldn’t believe in Tad, even when he saw him?
Froggy sighed. Every step he took seemed to bring a set of new questions. It was all very complicated. Then he patted the photographs in his pocket, feeling their stiff shape through the cotton. At least he had those. Tad would be rapt!
Suddenly it was Friday. Froggy didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. He wondered if Cassie had any regrets. She still ignored him at school, but at least she’d kept silent about Tad. As far as Froggy knew, she hadn’t told anyone they were going to the disco together, either.
His mother had looked pleased when he’d announced he was meeting Cassie at the blue light disco. He asked her to drop him off a block away, and she seemed to understand for she smiled a little and told him to have a good time. ‘Mrs Gibbs says she’ll give you a lift home. Make sure you don’t keep her waiting!’ And with a cheerful wave, she was gone.
Froggy found Cassie hanging around near the entrance, looking for him.
‘Quick!’ she gasped. ‘Let’s get going before they make us go inside.’
It was a long hike through Manly to North Head and both of them were breathless by the time they’d hauled up the last hill to the gates of the Quarantine Station. Froggy felt a bit shaky. He sneaked a look at Cassie and was glad to see she looked frightened, too.
‘I’ve brought a torch,’ she told him.
‘Oh.’ Froggy felt foolish. ‘I didn’t even think of that.’
‘I won’t use it till we get down to the offices. Someone might see.’
‘Who?’ Froggy asked.
‘The National Parks officers in residence here.’ She gave him an impatient nudge. ‘Didn’t you listen to anything the other day?’
‘Sorry.’ Froggy felt like an even bigger fool. They set off towards the old office block, taking care to keep to the shadows. As expected, the building was locked.
‘What’ll we do?’ whispered Froggy, but Cassie was already moving around towards the back.
‘Let’s break a window,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Here, take the torch. Shine it over here.’ Froggy looked around nervously.
‘If they see lights, they might just think it’s a ghost!’ Cassie joked as they inspected the window.
It was an old-fashioned wooden sash-window, the two halves locked in position halfway up.
Froggy could just reach the lock. ‘We might not have to break the glass,’ he said, fumbling in his pocket, glad that he’d thought to bring his pocket knife. Cautiously, he slipped it in between the two layers of glass and twisted it, trying to open the lock.
‘Hurry up!’ Cassie whispered, the torchlight wavering as she jigged around impatiently.
Froggy felt the lock give. He folded away the knife then, holding his breath, he yanked up the bottom half of the window. It ground upwards with a protesting shriek and they froze in the shadows, their hearts pounding in fright. But silence lay like a shroud over the building.
‘Let’s go.’ Froggy gave Cassie a leg-up and she scrambled over the sill, holding out her hand to yank Froggy up when it was his turn. At last they were ready to begin their search.
‘Is Tad here?’ Cassie looked around.
‘No.’ Froggy was sorry he wasn’t. He had the photographs to show Tad. The knife was for extra bargaining power if Tad still refused to hand over the rabbit. ‘We’ll have to find the stuff ourselves. Where’s the light switch, anyway?’
‘Don’t switch on the lights, dummy! Someone might see,’ Cassie hissed. She shone the torch around the room, its thin golden light dancing like a firefly over a row of filing cabinets.
‘This is going to take all night,’ Froggy groaned.
‘No, it won’t. Look!’ She pointed to a box file, one of many piled along a row of shelves. The thin line of light illuminated the title: ‘ENTRIES TO QUARANTINE STATION.’
Froggy opened it, flicking the pages over quickly. ‘Going back to the time we want! Well done, Cassie!’
‘I’ll hold the torch. You write them all down.’
‘Why? We’ve already got them.’
‘Not the complete list. You’d better write them all out, just to make sure. Go back a bit. When did Tad’s family arrive?’
‘June. June 1881.’
‘Okay, why don’t you start back in April and go through to say, December? Put down everything there is about the people who came in, Froggy. The date of their arrival, their age and all that, just in case there’s something we missed.’
Froggy was getting tired of being told what to do, but he had to admit that Cassie’s advice made sense. He started to scribble furiously. But there were no new surprises.
They found the death register in the next file on the shelf. There weren’t nearly as many names on it, and they quickly traced Charles and Mary-Anne Dearborne. Tad’s father had been forty-one when he died, and Mary-Anne only twenty-five. They’d both died on the same day. And so had Joseph, aged two. Froggy scanned the list quickly, but there was no Thaddeus Fisher listed. Nor was Thaddeus Dearborne. Whatever had happened to Tad at the Quarantine Station, his death had gone unrecorded.
Froggy frowned and checked again. Apart from Charles Dearborne, there was a man who had died of gangrene. The rest had died of smallpox. So what had happened to Tad? ‘There must be another lot of records.’ He turned to Cassie. ‘We’ve seen a list of who’s come and who’s died. Shouldn’t there be a list somewhere of who’s been let out again?’
‘I guess.’ Cassie looked doubtful. She picked up another register. It contained records detailing provisions supplied to the Quarantine Station in the nineteenth century. She scanned it quickly, but it told her nothing. Froggy opened an official-looking book bound in red leather. It turned out to be a copy of a report by a Royal Commission into the Quarantine Station and the hulk, Faraway. It was dated 1882, the year after Tad’s family arrived. Froggy stared at it wi
th interest, noting that it dealt with the smallpox outbreak in Sydney, starting in June 1881. He flipped through the pages, wondering if the Dearbornes were mentioned, and why there’d had to be a Royal Commission. Tad had told him very little about the time he’d spent at the Quarantine Station, he realised as he began to read.
‘Froggy! Over here! People discharged from the Quarantine Station!’ Cassie held up a rust-coloured ledger, turning its pages back to the dates they were interested in. ‘No Thaddeus Dearborne again,’ she commented.
‘No Thaddeus Fisher either.’
‘So what happened to Tad then?’
‘He told me he died of smallpox,’ said Froggy, ‘but he’s definitely not in the death register, nor is he here. So what happened to him? And why did he lie to us?’
‘Maybe the records got messed up.’ Cassie was trying to be fair. It seemed mean to call someone a liar when she’d never even seen him.
Froggy had no such scruples. ‘He’s trying to hide something from me, I’m sure of it. Why did he say he died here? He’s been stuck over at Dobroyd up until the other day! What’s so special about Dobroyd? He told me he was there so he could save me from drowning, but you know what? I don’t believe him.’
‘It sounds funny to me, too. Froggy, I’m not sure you should trust Tad.’
‘I don’t,’ Froggy said grimly.
‘Do you remember …’ Cassie clutched his arm. ‘You told Tad you saw his father on the beach.’
Froggy shivered. How could he forget?
‘Try it again!’ Cassie urged. ‘Maybe you don’t need Tad to solve the mystery. Maybe you can solve it yourself by looking back into the past. Go on, try!’
It was the last thing Froggy felt like doing, but how could he tell Cassie that the thought absolutely terrified him?
He closed his eyes and the two of them stood quietly. Froggy heard a child begin to cry. He whirled around quickly, but only Cassie was there. In the candlelight she looked white and frightened. He caught his breath as the wails gained in volume, ending on a high-pitched scream: ‘Mama!’
Froggy breathed through his mouth, trying to block out the stench of excreta, of illness and death, of carbolic acid, of onion. Onion? There was a raw, peeled onion lying on the bed beside a dead woman. She might have been pretty once, but now her skin was ravaged by weeping, crusty sores.
‘Mary-Anne.’ Froggy’s lips formed the words. He turned away quickly and met the eyes of a woman sitting on a chair on the other side of the bed. Tears ran down her face, unchecked, and she sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. In her arms was a small boy. His face was contorted, he kicked furiously as he tried to get to the dead woman.
‘Joseph?’
At the sound of his name, the boy quietened instantly, his face turned hopefully towards Froggy. He saw the glint of gold as the child’s hand reached out. But the child looked right through Froggy, searching desperately around the room, and then he burst into sobs once more. It was the most desolate sound Froggy had ever heard.
‘Joseph,’ he whispered again, feeling his eyes fill with tears, and then Cassie’s hand gripped his arm and shook him back into the present.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she whispered urgently. ‘You saw something, didn’t you?’
Froggy nodded, exhausted. He wished he was back at home, fast asleep in bed, dreaming.
Dreaming! Drowning dreams! Froggy’s eyes opened, the past forgotten.
‘Damn right!’ he exclaimed. ‘I knew I couldn’t trust him! Listen, Cassie.’ And he related to her what he’d seen. Then he told her about the nightmares, confessed how he’d been chased into the sea, as well as everything he’d found out about his family and Tad’s.
‘I’ve proved Tad and I are related, that we have a link in common,’ he said. ‘I can actually see the things Tad told me, and even some things he doesn’t know. Because he wasn’t with Joseph after Mary-Anne died!’ Froggy said heatedly. ‘He wasn’t anywhere at all. He vanished. And do you know what I think, Cassie?’ He rushed on without waiting for her answer. ‘I think he ran away after he found out about his father and Mary-Anne, and that’s why he’s stuck at Dobroyd and not at the Quarantine Station. That’s why he didn’t want us to look through these old records. He didn’t want us to know what a coward he is, that he ran away and left Joseph!’
Froggy stopped abruptly. He felt cold, heard the sea rush down on him, tasted salt water. He gasped for air … and found that he could breathe.
‘Tad drowned,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s what happened to him. And that’s why I’ve been having nightmares, I’m sure of it. I’ve picked up the memory of it from him, just as I’ve picked up his memory of the Quarantine Station.’
‘But you told me you nearly drowned the other day after those boys chased you into the sea,’ Cassie pointed out. ‘Perhaps that’s what you’re dreaming.’
‘The dreams started before that.’
‘If you can see into the past, maybe you can see into the future, too. Maybe you were dreaming the future.’
Cassie wasn’t sure why she was defending Tad when she had only just agreed with Froggy that he couldn’t be trusted.
‘Mmm. Maybe.’ Froggy wasn’t convinced.
‘I think you should confront him. Ask him for an explanation.’
Cassie was telling him what to do again, Froggy thought, aware that she was still holding his arm. But he felt cold and shivery and didn’t really want her to let go. Nor did he want to argue with her.
‘I’d better write down these entries so we’ve got something to show Tad, to make him talk.’
As he fumbled for his pen, Cassie let go of his arm and leaned over his shoulder, breathing hard in his ear as she held the torch over the page in front of them.
Intent on their task, they missed the faint clink of footsteps kicking pebbles along the rough path. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ The faint cry alerted them and they jerked back in alarm. Quickly, Cassie snapped off the torch light, while Froggy slipped the precious piece of paper into his pocket.
‘Door,’ Froggy breathed in Cassie’s ear and at once she began to sidle around the edge of the room. Froggy followed her.
The footsteps came to a halt and they heard the rattle of a key in the lock, followed by a muffled exclamation as a National Parks officer flung open the door, saw the open window and rushed towards it.
‘Run!’ Froggy whispered, and they slipped around the door and raced off up the path.
A high-pitched cry followed them, echoing through the night sky, but they ran on, exhilarated by the danger and their sense of freedom.
‘Whew!’ Froggy gasped as they staggered at last through the old stone arch that guarded the entrance to the North Head scenic drive. Below them, to the left, was Manly Hospital, still alight and busy at this time of night. St Patrick’s seminary, like an illuminated fairy castle, lay to their right, keeping watch over the sleeping suburb far below, with its necklaces of diamond lights.
‘I’m stuffed!’ Froggy panted as he collapsed against the rough stone wall that ran down the side of the road. ‘How’re ya going, Cassie?’
‘Don’t ask!’ Cassie was bent over, gasping, clutching the stitch in her side. ‘I may never walk again!’ she choked, flopping down onto the pavement beside Froggy.
They sat side by side for a minute, breathing hard, watching people pass the lighted windows of the hospital opposite. They felt wonderfully detached from it all, until Froggy looked at his watch and gave a gasp of despair. ‘Never mind not walking again. We have to run!’ He jumped up, pulling Cassie to her feet before starting off down the road. ‘Your mum’s going to be at the disco in exactly three minutes!’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘You’d better think up a good excuse, unless you think she’d believe our story about Tad and everything.’
‘Not a ghost of a chance!’ cried Cassie, and her peal of laughter followed Froggy down the road.
They found Cassie’s mother standing impatiently by the side of the car loo
king at her watch. Froggy stole a look at Cassie. Her face was flushed, her plait starting to unravel so that her face was framed by curling golden snails. Froggy thought she looked great.
‘Sorry, Mum!’ she panted. ‘We were dancing and we just forgot the time.’
‘The music stopped ten minutes ago,’ said Mrs Gibbs, adding drily: ‘It was playing over there,’ and she pointed in the opposite direction from where they’d come.
‘Yeah, we were just talking to some of the guys from school,’ Cassie explained. ‘Then we went for a walk while we waited for you.’
Mrs Gibbs’ lips twitched, and Froggy felt hot all over as he realised what she thought. ‘Don’t keep me waiting again,’ she said, climbing back into the car and unlocking the back door for Cassie and Froggy.
Cassie scrambled in and, embarrassed, Froggy followed her. Cassie winked at him and Froggy relaxed, thinking there were far worse things to do than ride around with Cassie Gibbs. He smiled to himself. No-one at school would believe it! But then, he thought, no-one at school was likely to find out.
‘Are you going to see Tad tomorrow?’ Cassie whispered.
Froggy nodded. ‘Some time this weekend. Want to come, too?’
‘You bet! Ring me when you know what time you’re going.’ She flashed him a conspiratorial smile, then looked innocently out of the window, leaving Froggy trying to answer Mrs Gibbs’ questions about the disco, as they drove home.
12
‘I’ve got something for you,’ Froggy greeted Tad as he and Cassie hurried down the path towards the rock ledge.
Tad leapt up, his bad mood apparently forgotten. ‘My mother’s locket?’ He held out a hand eagerly.
‘No.’ Froggy shook his head and watched Tad’s face fall dejectedly.
He really cares about it, Froggy thought, feeling sorry for Tad. But he knew he couldn’t steal his mother’s locket. She’d miss it instantly. The police would be called in. There’d be one helluva row.
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