by Sarah Bailey
‘Were you there when Jacob died?’
‘No. He went there alone.’
I don’t tell him that I’ve seen Jacob’s broken body at least a thousand times in my mind. These days, I know death and I now know how he would have looked after he fell, so over the years the image I summon has changed from a cartoon-like puddle on the ground to a more fully formed version of the boy I loved. The scene crowds my thoughts and I try to blink it away but he’s there whether my eyes are open or shut.
‘He had lots of things he was dealing with, I think. He was really artistic, he could be moody sometimes, get lost in a project, so I knew a little bit of it but I’m not sure I realised quite how bad things were. Or if I did, I didn’t really want to know.’
‘Do you think that’s why you became a cop?’ Felix asks.
‘Partly, maybe.’ I can’t figure out how to explain that I didn’t really have another choice. I needed so badly to work in a world that made binary sense of things. A place where there was good and bad, right and wrong, and where I was in charge of making sure there was more good than bad.
‘Was it when you were still in school?’
‘Just after our final exams. It was actually ten years ago last week.’
‘Fuck, Gem.’ Felix fills our wineglasses and takes a long sip from his. ‘I’m guessing that having a boyfriend die like that is pretty hard to deal with. Especially on top of your mum.’
I feel tears building. I picture Dad coming into my room, his face grey and old as he sits on my bed, softly sobbing into his hands before he manages to tell me what has happened, tells me what Jacob has done. I see the dam breaking around us, crashing into the room and carrying us away. Dad and I had an unspoken agreement to never really talk about Mum, and with Jacob it was the same. We would sit side by side on the couch in solidarity, his arm around me and my head on his chest as I listened desperately to the steady beat of his heart. I was so terrified it would stop.
‘It was very hard. Very surreal. No one knew what to say to me.’ I let out a strange little laugh. ‘I don’t really know what I wanted them to say to me.’
I don’t tell Felix that it was even harder because I’d already lost Jacob. That he’d already chosen to be with her over me.
I think suddenly about the note, remembering how I traced the words with my fingers before folding the crisp paper and smoothing down the edges. I wonder where Jacob put it. I always assumed he destroyed it, threw it away. I could so easily get lost in layers of memories. Jacob, Rosalind. The small lonely version of myself from back then who had no idea how to deal with the world or the people in it.
The past is seeping through my pores and my skin starts to crawl with it. I shake my head and say brightly, ‘Anyway, that’s how I know Rodney. It was just the two of them. I’m not sure why there was such a big age gap between them but I got the sense that maybe Donna had miscarriages. She was very intense. Their dad left when Rodney was a baby and she raised the two boys by herself after that. I’m not sure she liked me that much.’
Felix has more wine. ‘He seemed like an odd kid. Rodney.’
A flash of protest courses through my body.
‘Do you think so? I always thought he was really sweet.’
‘C’mon, Gem. That was ten years ago. He’s almost an adult now.’
‘I guess.’ I want Rodney’s face to get out of my head. And Jacob’s. Both their faces. So similar. I want to stop thinking about them.
Blocking the soft lamplight with my body, I pull myself onto Felix and straddle him. I hold his face as I watch the vivid green of his irises pool with black. I rub my chest against his.
It has the desired effect.
‘Come here,’ he says gruffly, grabbing my hips and pulling me down onto him.
Chapter Fourteen
three weeks earlier
‘I was going to ask you to marry me on New Year’s Eve.’
I froze. The egg I’d just cracked leaked clear glue into the bowl. I forced my hands together slightly and the shell broke even more, collapsing into a sticky mess.
‘That probably seems like a strange thing to say.’ Scott was uncharacteristically all worked up and pacing like a lion.
I glanced at Ben; he was alternating between colouring in a rainbow with his new crayons and eating spoons of cereal. ‘I guess,’ I said.
‘We used to talk about it. I thought you wanted to get married.’
I shrugged. I got a fork and started to whisk the eggs. The yellow mixed with the translucent grey. It looked like mucus. I coughed, aware of Scott’s eyes on me. I felt ill and impatient, like I’d forgotten to do something important. ‘Do you want some eggs?’ I said, wanting the conversation to go away.
‘I can’t believe you’re trying to change the subject of marriage with fucking scrambled eggs.’
‘Language,’ I warned automatically.
‘Oh, Gem. Don’t start me on parenting. Your head is barely ever in the present. You’re so vague it’s like you’re sleepwalking half the time.’
I shoved the bowl across the bench and the sharp sound clanged through the room. I flicked on the gas and stared into the blue flame.
‘Well, isn’t it lucky we decided to raise Ben together then. The flakiness of me is counterbalanced by the reliability and general perfection of you.’
I almost forgot to put in the milk. I poured some in and it immediately looked like those geography maps in high school that show the different layers of land mass.
‘Gemma, you’re a good mother. C’mon, that’s not what I meant. Please don’t turn this into something that it isn’t.’
I pushed my hair behind my ears. Heat rose above the empty pan and formed an invisible wall between us. I sloshed in the egg mixture and it sizzled; the sound was calming. ‘You were the one who started trying to talk to me about marriage at seven in the morning. You were the one who commented on my ability to be present. Not ideal when you’re about to walk out the door,’ I said.
‘Okay, okay.’ His hands were up high around his face in surrender. ‘Gem, I just … Look, we can talk about this later, but I just feel like …’ He trailed off, looking lost.
A stab of guilt hit me. Scott was so sure of his life before he met me. A planner. The guy who followed instructions. He keeps the manuals for the dishwasher and the microwave and remembers where they are. He does long division manually. He’s punctual. He knows what happens next.
‘I guess I just feel like we need to do something. It’s one month away from a new year. I don’t want another year of drifting. I want to feel like we’re going somewhere. Together.’ His hands fluttered uselessly at his sides. ‘I want you to be my wife.’
‘Isn’t Ben enough?’ It was all I had to divert the focus away from me.
We both glanced at our son. He looked up and smiled at us, a heartbreaking smile, as he tapped the end of his spoon on the table and flicked milk onto his face.
‘Ben is everything to me. You know that. But this is about you and me. Gemma, I’d want to marry you even if Ben wasn’t here. Don’t you get that?’
The eggs stuck to the bottom of the pan. All the moisture had disappeared. I turned the gas off and prodded at the yellow mass unenthusiastically.
‘I’m not sure what I want.’
Scott flicked his eyes at the clock on the wall. I was making him late.
‘So if I ask you, will you say no?’
‘Scott!’
‘Fuck, Gem! I’m trying here, okay? I really don’t know what you want from me. I really don’t. I want to make things work with us.’ He raked his hand through his hair and looked at his watch. ‘And now I’ve got to go. We’ll talk later, okay?’
He kissed me on the cheek. A press of lips I barely felt. He wrapped Ben in a large hug and planted kisses up and down the side of his face until Ben screamed with laughter.
‘Bye-bye, baby man.’ Scott looked at me. ‘See ya.’
I tipped the pile of overcooked eggs onto my plate as
he walked out.
‘I just want you to leave me alone,’ I said to the closed door.
Chapter Fifteen
Monday, 14 December, 11.03 pm
I pull into the driveway behind Scott’s car. I flick the lights off as I look at the house. I don’t want to go inside.
It’s dark but the moonlight catches on the white skin of the gum trees, making them glow. It’s incredibly still: nothing moves. I breathe deeply but I’m not sure if I’m trying to calm down from seeing Felix or readying myself to see Scott. I can still feel Felix’s hands all over me. I bite my lip. He’s a drug; I have some and immediately want more. I close my eyes and will time to rewind so I can have a few more hours alone with him. I have never wanted time to go slower than when we are together.
A dog barks sharply and I jump so suddenly that the seatbelt catches and pins me in place. I click it open. The bedroom light is still on inside. Hopefully Scott won’t want to talk; my eyes are grainy with sleep. I’m all talked out. Rosalind’s death has set something off inside me. I feel reckless. Wild. Like things could suddenly just come tumbling out. I told Felix a lot tonight, more than I’ve ever really told anyone. And I almost told him more. All of those bricks that I’ve carefully stacked and built into a sturdy wall feel like they are coming loose. The floodgates of my mind have been prised open and thoughts are swirling out unchecked. It’s wearing me down.
I grab my bag and get out of the car. There’s a rustle in the bushes near the letterbox and I startle again. I walk briskly to the front veranda. The pull of sleep is so strong.
In a beat I freeze. There is something on the porch, a dark mass in the shadowy corner. I quickly run the options of what it might be through my mind but nothing fits. It’s in my nature to assume the worst, and I think of Ben asleep in his cot only metres away: uncovered because of the heat, the fan doing lazy laps above his head, shifting the warm air around his little body. I peer over the bricks and decide that whatever it is isn’t moving. I can’t hear anything. Stepping carefully, I round the corner and make my way towards the mysterious shape. I’m about two metres away when my brain catches up with my eyes, and I realise I’m looking at a large bouquet of long-stemmed red roses, tucked inside the softest, blackest blanket of tissue paper.
Chapter Sixteen
Tuesday, 15 December, 7.39 am
‘I thought they were from you for a second.’ Felix and I are at our favourite breakfast place, Reggie’s. They do half-decent coffee, plus no one else from the station ever comes here. ‘Too highbrow,’ Keith Blight is fond of saying, though I don’t think he really knows what that means. Everyone else goes across the car park to the cafeteria, which does greasy bacon and egg rolls for three dollars fifty with a bitter, watery coffee for an extra dollar.
Felix is shovelling muesli into his mouth at an alarming rate, only pausing every now and then to wash a mouthful down with coffee. I find myself getting distracted by his mouth. I notice a tiny freckle to the right of his top lip that I’m sure I’ve never seen before. ‘From me?’ he says.
‘Well, I only thought that for a second. Then I realised that you’re not really a flowers kind of guy and that, even if you were, you would never have them delivered to my house.’
‘Yeah, well, no, of course not.’ He swallows the last of his coffee. ‘Jeez, Gem, it’s not good.’
‘It was pretty freaky.’ After I realised what they were, I’d got a plastic bag from the car, gathered up the flowers and put them in the boot. All I could think about were the roses that had bobbed around Rosalind’s body when she was in the water. Limp from the heat, the scent of the fresh flowers formed a cloud around my face. It followed me into the house, where I quickly downed two shots of whisky, scrubbed my teeth until my gums smarted and mumbled goodnight to Scott before tumbling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I found the note this morning, which was a blessing. If I had seen it the night before I’m not sure I would have slept nearly as soundly. A small white satiny card with the words Beautiful things are hard to keep alive printed neatly inside. The handwriting was deliberately simple, large inconsistent block letters printed in dark ink.
Ben clutched my legs, peering into the boot and spying the blooms.
‘Ooooh, pret-ty! Mummy, look!’
‘Fingers,’ I said, yanking him away and pushing the boot closed.
‘Are you going to tell Jonesy?’ says Felix.
‘Not sure. Do you think I should?’
Felix looks at me. He toys with a teaspoon, flipping it over and over between his fingers. ‘Well, probably. It’s either someone having a pretty weird joke or it’s from the person who murdered Rosalind Ryan. Either way you should get it looked at.’
‘I know.’ I am angry. This type of thing is such a distraction. I just want to get on with the investigation. If we tell Jonesy about this, then suddenly it’s all about me. He might even pull me off the case.
‘And this person knows where you live, Gem.’
‘Obviously,’ I say, and I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. ‘But then, this is Smithson. Lots of people know where I live. Or can easily find out.’
‘Well, I think you should tell him. I’m worried about you.’
I sigh heavily. ‘Okay, how about I get one of the uniforms to look into it? Check out the florists and that kind of thing.’
‘And Jonesy? You’ll tell him?
‘I will. Just not today, alright? I want to do the check-in and then the other teacher interviews. Maybe some of the kids. We need to keep things moving. Okay?’
‘Sure.’ Felix waves his hand, making it clear he knows it’s not up to him anyway.
I kick off the check-in at precisely 8 am. The uniforms look at Felix and me like baby birds all vying for attention. A short, slightly buck-toothed girl reports that Rosalind joined a gym in July but only went five times since.
‘Pretty normal behaviour then,’ remarks one of the other guys. ‘I basically donate money to my local gym.’
‘Check it out anyway,’ says Felix. ‘Maybe she was getting hassled by someone there and didn’t feel comfortable going anymore.’
‘Her doctor wasn’t very helpful,’ reports a man with a sunglasses tan. ‘She was on pretty standard meds for anxiety and depression. The same stuff that you guys found at her place.’ He looks around earnestly. ‘Apparently it’s all really common.’
‘Keep looking. See whether you can find out if she was seeing other doctors. She might have been doctor shopping. And find out whether she was seeing a shrink.’ I push my hair out of my eyes. ‘Same goes for church. Find out whether she ever went. She might have confided in someone she trusted.’
‘I interviewed an old boyfriend,’ volunteers another. ‘Seems like he’s the only guy she’s ever really gone out with seriously but I think he’s clear. Lives interstate. Reckons he’s bisexual. An actor type. That’s how they met.’
‘What was their relationship like? Did he say why they broke up?’ It seems important to know what Rosalind was like unchecked, what she was like in love.
The uniform blushes lightly. ‘He said that she was fun. Beautiful. Said that going out with her was kind of strange because people were always looking at her. He said they had a good time together but that she had an undercurrent of sadness.’
‘What does that mean?’ Felix looks impatient and I can tell he wants to get going. He finds the station room stifling sometimes. He says it makes his bones itch.
‘I asked him, but I’m not exactly sure. The guy was a bit weird. Very dramatic. He used lots of quotes from plays and movies. He said that Rosalind was a lovely girl but that he thought she felt trapped or something. He reckons she was lonely and that she had a weird relationship with her family.’
I think about Rosalind’s little cottage with the movie posters and the art on its walls, so dramatic compared to the plain reality of her existence, and I swallow past a lump in my throat.
‘Okay, everyone, good. The ex might be worth ano
ther chat. See if she ever fought with her brothers or father in front of him. Find out if she felt scared of them. Listen out for any gossip about her relationships with teachers, students, local guys.’ I stand up. ‘We don’t have anything concrete yet so let’s make today a big one. See you all back here later.’
They leave and we’re alone. The quiet that follows their pulsing energy is uncomfortable and obvious.
‘Should we get going too?’ Felix asks.
‘Yeah, just hang on a sec. I’ll meet you at the car.’
Felix walks over to his desk and I go into the female locker room to find Karly, one of the uniforms, still there. ‘Karly.’
‘Detective.’ Her broad face is flushed as she stands up from tying her laces.
‘Karly, I want your help with something.’
‘Of course.’
‘I want you to see if you can help me work out where some flowers were bought from.’
Chapter Seventeen
Tuesday, 15 December, 10.07 am
Sam Blackstone can’t believe it.
Trudy Fisher can’t believe it.
Millie Janz can’t believe it.
Neither can Paula Desmond, Troy Shooter or Izzy Mealor.
The teachers have pulled their office chairs into a circle and are sitting together, crying and staring at the floor, as we enter the staffroom. Just like the year twelves yesterday, I think, but less tanned and without the trendy haircuts.
They can’t believe that Rosalind is dead and that she was murdered. They saw her on Friday! It just can’t be true. They all got along well. Rosalind was quiet but friendly. A sweet girl. Sometimes she picked wildflowers and put them in an old jar on the communal table near the kettle to brighten up the staffroom. She didn’t talk much about her family or friends but she always had a smile for everyone.