The neighbour’s dog started to bark, a succession of quick yaps, like gunfire. He crossed the room and stood by the window, looking out. The old man next door was in his backyard, his dog sitting a short distance away under the washing line. The dog was a small spaniel, long-haired and overweight, legs barely visible under a barrel-like body. Nathan watched as the dog ran to the fence and back three times. Each time it reached the fence it did a fast three-sixty degree spin, elatedly, a frenzied canine dance. Kneeling down the old man talked to it softly, the way someone might talk to a person. Then a voice called from the house and they went back inside, man and dog—the dog bounding over the doorstep and disappearing into the cocoon of light that fanned out from the doorway.
Nathan closed his curtains. They didn’t quite meet; a piece of the night remained trapped in the middle. On his desk was an economics assignment, due on Friday—this Friday. Nathan flipped it over so it was face down. Sitting on the bed he finished cleaning his camera, using the cotton swab to wipe down the lens. Then he began to reassemble the pieces, one by one.
‘If a tree falls in the forest, and no one’s around to hear it, will it make a sound?’ Scott was standing in the doorway that led to the row of glass-doored offices, one hand on the doorknob, one thumb looped through his belt. On his tie a pattern of lemons, embarrassingly bright. He looked at Rachel, eyebrows raised.
‘I guess,’ she said.
He smiled a pleased smile. ‘But how do you know sound exists if no one is around to hear it?’
‘I don’t know.’
Rachel watched him turn and walk back down the hallway, disappearing behind a glass door. She went back to her Monday morning routine, switching on the computer, monitor, printer. Standing up, she took the files from the pigeonhole behind her desk and laid them out in front of her. The sliding glass doors across from her desk opened a fraction. Rachel looked up but there was no one there. It must have been the wind. She watched them close again, coming together with a sucking sound. One door said City and the other Council. To Rachel it was back to front: .
Sitting back down, Rachel lined up the files, placing a coloured sticker to the top right hand corner of each manila folder. ‘Abandoned Vehicles’ said the top folder in black vivid. Rachel put it on the bottom of the pile. She felt about her job the same way she felt about her weight—knowing it was unlikely to vary greatly around a given point, no matter how much effort she put in. She’d worked at the Council ever since Seventh Form but had plans to leave, maybe go somewhere different.
The doors opened again. Rachel stood up, as if to meet the invisible person coming through. She walked outside. A square of mown lawn led to a car park ringed with chain-linked rope; beyond that a corrugated iron fence marked the outer perimeter of a primary school where occasionally a line of small faces appeared, staring over at the Council building, hoping for a glimpse of something. Every day at morning tea and lunchtime Rachel would hear them shrieking and shouting. Even during the school holidays, if she listened very carefully. It was as if the sounds were trapped there, like echoes, bouncing back and forth.
She could still remember her first day at school—not the time she spent at school, but coming home. She could remember the smell of the house as she opened the front door. Linseed and floor polish. The feel of the textured wallpaper as she reached out to touch the hallway wall. Clanging pipes. Running water. Her mother was standing at the sink rinsing something in a bowl, an apron tied around her waist. Her hair was in a messy bun and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Veins stood out on the side of her throat. Nathan was on the far side of the kitchen holding himself upright using a cupboard handle. He was wearing cloth nappies and nothing else, a rim of yellow shit around his left thigh. Rachel could remember feeling outside of the immediate scene, like a stranger looking in. As she watched, Nathan let out a scream.
Her mother turned around and stood there, leaning back against the bench, arms slack by her sides. ‘I don’t think I can,’ she said. Then she held her hand up to her throat and made a faint gulping sound, her lips parting and sucking in air. Cupping her hands around her neck she massaged up and down with her thumbs. Behind her the water ran up and over the bowl, a trickle escaping across the bench, moving outwards like a finger.
Nathan started to cry. Her mother walked over to him but didn’t pick him up as Rachel had expected. Instead she just stood there, behind her the water still running, sliding down the cupboard door and pooling on the lino.
‘I’m making a coffee if you want one.’ Scott was standing in the foyer, looking at her through the glass.
Rachel went back inside, crossing the floor to her desk. ‘No thanks.’ Her mouse had frozen. When she looked up he was disappearing back down the corridor.
‘But thank you.’ She leant over her desk and looked at the place he’d been standing, her blouse catching on the folder on top of the pile. ‘Thanks for asking me.’
Louise was making breakfast when Nathan emerged from his bedroom. National Radio was on; the presenter was talking about a series of bomb blasts in London. Three bombs had gone off on the Underground, and one on a bus. Hundreds of people had been injured, some killed.
‘Early lecture today?’ said Nathan.
‘Yip.’ She was wearing leggings, a cardigan and a beret, all in black. The beret looked like it was about to slip from her head.
Nathan had been in love with her when they first became flatmates. Now he found her mildly irritating, the way family members were irritating, not necessarily for their personalities but their proximity. They existed together in a kind of easy uneasiness.
‘I’ve got ecology.’
Nathan nodded and walked over to the cupboard. He took out his enamel mug, the one he’d bought from a tramping store.
‘We’re going on a field trip to Brighton Beach. You been there before?’
Nathan refilled the jug, watching the water rise to the midway mark. It overfilled, a drip of water trickled over the rim and down the side.
‘Nathan?’
He turned off the tap. ‘Yip?’
‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter.’ She turned back to the newspaper, spreading it out across the table, an unopened letter in the crook of her arm.
Nathan took a banana from the fruit basket and peeled it, cutting segments into a bowl. The knife was blunt; he tested the edge against his thumb.
The neighbour’s dog began barking. Nathan could hear the old man’s voice—coaxing with a morning edge to it. ‘Did you do a poo?’ he was saying. ‘Harry, did you do a poo?’
Louise left the room. Nathan could hear her moving around, her soft footsteps. The sound of a zip being unzipped then zipped up again. She reappeared in the doorway, a cloth bag slung over her shoulder. ‘What are you up to Saturday?’
‘Saturday?’ Nathan rubbed his elbow. ‘Saturday,’ he said again.
‘Aaron’s having a party.’ She shrugged, the cloth bag rising and falling with the movement of her shoulder. ‘You’re welcome to come if you haven’t got anything on.’
Aaron was Louise’s boyfriend. Nathan had met him twice. He was a small, nervy guy, and clever, with that aura of anticipated power clever people sometimes have. The first time he came to the flat he’d shown Nathan a picture of a fossil, a small cluster of petrified bones stuck to rock. ‘Imagine if this was still alive,’ he’d said, excitedly. ‘It would be like meeting a real live ancestor, half as old as time.’
Nathan had nodded and smiled, hoping he looked interested.
Louise tapped the doorframe. ‘Nathan?’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I’ll see.’
‘Yeah, well, whatever.’ She turned to go. ‘I was just putting it out there.’ Her footsteps down the hallway. The door opened and closed.
Nathan sat back and sighed with the relief of it. Alone again, finally.
Rachel left work early. She never usually took sick leave but she’d had a headache all morning, nestled behind her forehead, stuck there. After sending an em
ail to her manager she tidied her desk, aligning the stack of paper in her in-tray. Closing down her computer, she watched it whirr its way to sleep.
‘Home already, eh?’ Scott was standing in the doorway to his office as she walked by, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. ‘Big weekend was it?’ He grinned.
‘No, I’ve got a headache.’
It wasn’t until she reached the door that she realised he might have been trying to make a joke. Outside the heat was overpowering, all the surfaces inside the car too hot to touch. Winding down the windows she waited for the space around her to cool. Kids going home from school crowded the streets, walking in small groups or biking. A circle of adults stood outside the gate to the primary school at the end of Rachel’s street, a tall island amongst the running, jumping kids. She stopped at a zebra crossing. Three little boys ran across, one after the other.
‘Slowly!’ shouted a woman wearing an orange vest. The boys slowed to a skip, the difficulty of such a pace visible in their jerky steps, knees bent, ready to take off again. They looked like a line of puppets waiting for the strings to snap back to life.
‘Wait right there, Simon,’ said the woman to a boy edging out of the school gate. ‘Wait right there!’ She held her arms up, palms forward, as if holding back an overpowering crowd. ‘You’re not leaving until your mother comes to get you.’
Five months after their mother left, Nathan had been in a school play. Rachel couldn’t remember now what part he’d had, or even what play it was, but she could distinctly remember him reading over the script in the long weeks beforehand, mouthing each word soundlessly.
‘Do you want me to help you?’ she’d asked, looking for something to do. ‘I could be one of the other characters.’
Their father had asked as well, hovering in the background, smiling encouragingly. He still had a dazed look, like he’d just been given a job above his capability and was desperately trying to prove his competence.
‘No,’ Nathan always said. ‘I like doing it in my head.’
After the opening night, Rachel waited with her father in the foyer to the school hall. Around them the audience streamed out in intact family groups: two children, three children, four children—each set had two parents. The drama teacher broke free from the crowd and came towards them. She was large-eyed, thin—the look of a smoker who had long ago given up and turned the nervous energy into rapid, twitchy movements. Rachel had never taken drama. As she watched, the drama teacher grabbed hold of her father’s hand—women did this since her mother had left, she’d noticed; sometimes they hugged him too, hanging off his shoulders, grabbing his arms, as if his body was no longer his own.
‘Wasn’t Nathan great?’ said the drama teacher, holding Rachel’s father’s hand and stroking it, almost absentmindedly, like she was stroking a cat.
Rachel turned away from them and focused on the people moving by. She was half-expecting her mother to emerge from the crowd.
Louise was already gone when Nathan got up on Wednesday morning. He only had one lecture on Wednesday and it wasn’t until three o’clock. Next year he’d probably do something else, or quit university and get a job. Maybe go overseas. Nathan tuned the radio to a rock station then sat at the table, waiting for his body to orientate itself. A piece of notepaper was stuck to the fridge with a magnet: Your dad called at 9 and 9.30—call him back!
Nathan headed to the public library at eleven. He preferred to study there when he had an assignment due—it was quieter and close to his flat. A resident homeless woman was outside on the curb; she didn’t look that old, perhaps in her mid-forties. As Nathan neared the entrance the woman began to wave. Nathan moved his backpack to his left shoulder, edging closer to the road.
‘Hello.’ Her face was twisted to one side, red and acne-scarred.
‘Hi,’ said Nathan.
Lunging forward, she grabbed his hand. The contact ran through him like an electric shock. Her skin was cool and unexpectedly smooth.
‘Do you know where Susan is? Do you know where Roland is?’
Nathan withdrew his hand. ‘No, sorry.’ He left the woman and walked quickly through the library entrance. The sliding doors shut behind him, sealing out the street noise.
He found a slot beneath a hooded reading lamp. The study booths were largely unused. A discarded newspaper was lying in the neighbouring booth. Nathan picked it up to check the crossword. It was already filled in. Six letters down: a kind of necklace. ‘Diadem’ was pencilled in, each letter overlaid in ballpoint pen. Nathan wouldn’t have known that one. He opened the pages to the news section. The title of one of the small segments on the back of the first page caught his eye.
Missing Man—Aspiring National Park.
It was a Friday. Nathan had returned home late, soccer having gone until five. His father and Rachel were sitting in the lounge. They looked up at him as he came in. His father was holding a photograph of Nathan’s mother inside a clear plastic envelope. It was one taken a year earlier at Christmas. She was wearing a party hat in the photograph and smiling at the camera.
‘Her suitcase was gone when we got home,’ said Rachel, coming to stand by Nathan. ‘She left a note.’
Nathan looked back at his father; he was sitting quite still, one arm over the back of the couch, the other holding a pillow in his lap. ‘Where’s she gone?’
‘The note didn’t say.’ Reaching up, Rachel ran her finger along the windowsill and looked at it. Rubbing her thumb and forefinger together she wiped her hand on her jeans. ‘All it says is she doesn’t want us to try and find her.’ She looked back at him. ‘It was written in purple pen.’
‘Purple?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why purple?’
Rachel looked at him blankly, her eyebrows rose then fell. ‘Why would I know? Maybe the only pen she could find was purple.’ Turning, she left the room. The sound of her footsteps heading away down the hall.
‘Nathan?’ His father’s face was anxious but contained. As he walked towards Nathan he scanned the room. He reminded Nathan of a migratory bird getting its bearings. ‘Where did Rachel go?’
‘To the kitchen,’ said Nathan. ‘To make dinner.’
‘All better?’ Scott’s face, smiling, watched her from the corridor. Rachel sat up. She hadn’t seen him come in.
‘Fine. I took Wednesday off just to make sure.’
Through the sliding doors the car park was empty, apart from two cars parked at opposite ends.
‘I’ve got another one for you.’ Scott adjusted his tie. ‘Imagine a cat inside a steel box. There are two other things in the box. A vial of hydrocyanic acid—got that?’ His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘And a radioactive substance. If a single atom of the radioactive substance decays, it will trip a hammer which will break open the vial of acid and kill the cat.’
‘Okay,’ said Rachel.
‘So how do you know if the cat is dead or not?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Exactly.’ He smiled and licked his lips. ‘It could be both. Schrōdinger’s cat. Have you not heard of it?’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, think about it.’
She watched him turn to leave, his slow saunter down the corridor.
At lunchtime Rachel went for a walk to the park. Small children were digging in the sandpit and swinging back and forth on the swings. A little girl climbed up the slide the wrong way, clinging to the sides, her feet slipping on the smooth metal. Halfway up she changed her mind and slid backwards, feet-first, belly pressed against the slide.
Heretaunga Street was busy. A man walked by in gumboots and overalls stained with splatters of orange paint. A woman pushed a buggy with two toddlers, a boy and a girl, looking out in opposite directions. Rachel stopped at a shop window to peer inside, cupping her hands around the glass. As she stepped back a reflection caught her eye—a woman disappearing into the driver’s seat of a car. It was the top she was wearing; a rose-patterned
blouse, tucked in. It was exactly like a top her mother used to own.
They had heard from her twice. The first time was nine months after she’d left. On the back of a postcard from Perth, she’d scribbled in blue ballpoint that she had found a place to live, she was learning to swim, and she owned a dog. The picture on the front of the postcard was of Wave Rock. A person was sitting at the part where the rock face curved up and over, a dot in the background, like an ant.
Three months after that, she sent a photograph of her dog, a black-and-white fox terrier. Rachel’s father and Nathan weren’t interested in the photograph, so Rachel took it, keeping it in her top drawer, under her T-shirts and knickers. It wasn’t the picture of the dog she kept it for, but the fragments of her mother in the background: a hand resting on the dog’s head just behind its right ear, the index finger in full view, and a foot, in the corner by the dog’s left paw, wearing a sandal.
The car door shut. As the car drove past Rachel caught a glimpse of the woman side-on—greyish hair, middle-aged.
Her phone was ringing when she got back to the office. She didn’t need to check the number. ‘Hi Dad.’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘I’m fine.’ Her voice sounded higher than normal. Or perhaps it always sounded this way? ‘Anything new?’ As she spoke she inspected a mole beside her elbow, it was heart-shaped, one side a shade darker than the other.
He coughed. ‘No.’ The sound of something being dropped into the sink.
The Red Queen Page 14