by Jaye Ford
Five months ago, when Tilda suggested the living arrangements, it had been four years since Jax had visited. The house was too big for one person, Tilda told her. The downstairs area had been converted to a flat for a nurse back when Archie, her third husband, was dying of cancer. Jax and Zoe could move in, Tilda said. Have their own space while Jax decided what to do with the rest of their lives. And Tilda could use the time – however long it took – to think about moving somewhere smaller.
Jax and Zoe had come up for a trial run: two nights downstairs, visiting schools and supermarkets, cafes and the beach. That was three months ago – and now Jax was here for a second time … to stay.
Tilda sat her at the table, delivered a bowl of curry and a neat Scotch, and said, ‘Eat, drink and let me get Zoe ready for bed.’
When they were gone, Jax let her eyes wander around the room. She was keyed up and numb, her head ached and there was something wobbly inside her – and she wanted to be home. Her own home. The one she’d made with Nick.
Half an hour later, Jax had kissed Zoe goodnight, stood in a steaming shower and scrubbed at the grit from the motorway and the stink of fear. She wanted to sleep but her blood felt like a white-water course charging through her – way too wired to even lie down. Needing company, padding back upstairs, she was rising from the stairwell when Tilda saw her and switched off the television. Jax nodded at the blank TV screen. ‘What are they saying?’
‘The traffic’s banked up for almost ten kilometres,’ Tilda told her, avoiding the real story as she held the phone out to her. ‘Russell called again while you were downstairs. He’s worried about you.’
‘Was he at home?’
‘I don’t know.’
Tilda dropped ice cubes into two cut-glass tumblers as Jax stood by the windows, fiddling with buttons until she found the last number on the call register: the newsroom. ‘Hey, it’s me.’
‘Fuck, Jax. Are you okay?’ He’d been Nick’s best friend for years, her self-appointed sergeant-at-arms since his death. It felt bloody good to hear his voice.
‘Shaken up, freaked out, mostly just happy to be alive to tell someone about it.’
‘Have you seen the coverage?’
She took the fresh Scotch from Tilda, smiled her thanks. ‘Not yet. Are they still running it?’
‘Nine had a chopper in the air when the police reports started coming in. It got there just after the cops. They went live during the news and they’ve been running the vision every half hour since. It’s on again now.’
Picking up the remote from the coffee table, Jax hit power and flicked around the channels until she found it. ‘Oh my God.’
The picture was grainy and shaky from distance, but it was clear enough – the pull-over zone shot from above, two figures with guns. Aiden Hawke’s arms were an arrow pointing straight ahead as he paced slowly towards her. She was loose and swaying, head turning one way then the other. Then her gun was on the ground and Aiden was patting her down, holding her up, half-carrying, half-dragging her to his car with the help of someone in uniform. It’d felt different to that. Slower, stranger. Less American reality cop show, more bad dream. The sight of it made her bones feel too tight.
‘What about the crash?’ Jax asked. ‘Are they showing the crash? He’s dead, Russell. The guy from my car is dead. He ran into the traffic right in front of me.’
His voice softened. ‘We know that now but it took a while for the information to come through. I don’t think even the cops knew what had happened for a while.’ He paused. ‘Jax, do you want to say something?’
He wasn’t waiting for her to go on. She knew what he meant. They’d been news reporters together once. The four of them: Nick, Russell, his wife Deanne and Jax. Russell was now features editor at the paper and Jax hadn’t put ‘news’ or ‘reporter’ on her business card in a few years but this was a big story, it was why he was still in the office at 9 pm on a Monday. He was the go-to guy for a quote from her – and he knew how hard it’d been having Nick’s story rehashed over and over during the past year.
‘I can’t do an interview tonight. I can’t think straight, I can barely string words together. And I’m already on my second Scotch.’ She took a gulp, swirled the ice in the glass beside the phone so he’d hear it.
Another pause from him. She knew he wanted the scoop – who wouldn’t? – but they’d been here before. She didn’t want to be the story anymore, and it’d been his advice twelve months ago to let someone handle it for her.
‘What about a statement?’ he asked.
‘Can you do it?’
‘Spokesperson for Miranda Jack?’
‘No, it sounds like I’ve walked off the motorway and hired PR. Make it “family friend”.’
‘What do you want?’
She perched on the edge of the sofa, trying to think. ‘Say he got in the car in Wahroonga. He had a gun and wanted me to drive north.’ She stood again and walked back to the windows, thinking about Brendan’s break with reality, remembering what it was like to have other people discuss Nick. ‘Say he seemed frightened and desperate and he wanted to get to his family.’
‘What about you?’
She watched the reflection of herself in the glass, remembered the look in her eyes when she’d seen herself in the cafe restroom. ‘You can say I was fucking scared.’
‘Hard to put in a headline.’
‘True. How about I was scared but I’m okay now. Saddened by the tragic outcome and my heart goes out to his family.’ Bare bones but all true. ‘You can pretty it up.’
‘You want to see it before it goes out?’
‘No, I want to …’ Be someone else. ‘… sleep.’
‘You sure you’re okay?’
‘I’m too tired to know what I am. Before you go?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you dig out a story for me? Brendan, the man in the car … he thought I’d interviewed him once, but I don’t remember. There was a feature about five years ago, April or May I think. Double-page, soldiers leaving for Afghanistan, headline was something about tears and fears and goodbyes.’
‘So it wasn’t random?’
‘Yes, it was. He didn’t know who I was until I started talking to him.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Just stuff, anything I could think of. I was trying to calm him down. It didn’t work very well but he asked about my husband, wanted to know where he was.’
Don’t lie!
She squeezed her eyes shut as Brendan’s voice charged through her head. ‘He wanted to know how my husband died, then figured out it was Nick and that I was, well, me.’
‘Can I use that?’
She sipped on the Scotch, stared at the TV: a reporter was doing a stand-up with the crash site in the background. ‘You can say I interviewed him before but keep Nick out of it. He’s had enough said about him.’
‘Sure. And if I find the feature, I’ll email it to you.’
‘Will you look tonight?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Thanks. Now get to work so you can go home and tell your wife you love her.’ Like Brendan had wanted to.
As she disconnected, Tilda picked up the remote and aimed it at the television.
‘Leave it on,’ Jax told her. ‘It makes it feel real. I’ve barely got a scratch on me. I just feel like I’ve had an injection of adrenaline.’ She perched on the arm of the sofa again, sipped Scotch as she listened to the sketchy details in the voice-over: gunman confirmed dead after being hit by a vehicle heading north as he tried to escape police; three passengers from the minibus and the driver of the Ford injured in the crash, none listed as serious; no details on where Miranda Jack was heading when the man got in her car; confirmation the carjacker worked in private security, was living in Sydney but had recently relocated from Newcastle.
He was in private security? An armed guard, a bouncer … or a bodyguard? Had he been guarding someone today? Someone who had people after them?
<
br /> ‘You look fearless,’ Tilda said, nodding at the TV.
‘You think?’ Jax watched the scene in the pull-over zone again, muscles clenched as she tried to connect the images with her memories.
‘Like you got up in the morning ready for action.’
She’d got up this morning to pack the remains of a life she’d loved into boxes that were now in police custody. ‘If I’d known I was going to be on national television, I might’ve chosen something else to wear.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Leggings and a singlet are perfect for a carjacking.’
Tilda would’ve added beads and bracelets. ‘You think?’
‘Sure. It’ll be called carjack couture next week.’
Jax huffed a short laugh, lifted her glass in a toast. ‘Here’s to being a fashion statement.’
Tilda patted the seat of the sofa. ‘Why don’t you try to relax?’
She glanced at it from her spot on the armrest. She probably should. She’d never sleep if she didn’t loosen up, but the thought of relaxing made her tense. Made her want to be ready to bolt if she needed to. ‘No, I’m okay. I’m … I don’t know.’ She closed her eyes, pushed a hand into her hair. ‘Christ, what am I doing, Tilda?’
Her aunt shifted along the sofa, curled a comforting hand around Jax’s knee. ‘You’re trying to cope.’
‘I thought coming here was the best thing to do, then I almost got killed on the way. What does that mean?’
‘It means life is heartless sometimes and sometimes we have to say “fuck you”.’
It hadn’t helped in the past year. ‘I love it when you get eloquent.’
‘I rather like it too.’
Chuckling a little, Jax let her eyes shift around the room again. The furniture was updated, the kitchen renovated and Tilda’s artworks – her own and her collection – had been renewed since Jax’s days here as a teenager. The past was still there, though. Jax could feel it.
‘Will you take Zoe if I die?’ she asked.
Other issues had to be taken into account before that decision could be made – Nick’s parents and brothers at the very least – but Tilda took her hand, said, ‘Of course.’
Jax was grateful her aunt didn’t try to rewrite history and tell her it wouldn’t happen. She’d lost her mother and father in the one devastating fire, Zoe was down one parent already and Tilda had buried two husbands. They both knew the different ways life could be heartless – Jax just wondered whether it was satisfied with what it’d achieved so far or whether it was only warming up.
13
When Jax finally closed her eyes in the quiet of her new bedroom, images ran behind her lids like a confusing, drug-induced seventies movie. Brendan Walsh with a gun aimed at her face. Aiden Hawke with a gun aimed at her face. The motorway, the crash. Yelling, screaming. Then it got mixed up with Nick’s crime scene – the one she’d visited, with a bloodstain enclosed by blue-and-white police tape, and the one in photos, with his body under a sheet.
A little before 4 am, she woke crying. Tears streaming, breath catching, a name on her lips – she wasn’t sure which one when consciousness finally took hold. Wiping her eyes, she reached a hand automatically over the side of the bed, felt around for a moment before realising the document box that was always there had been stacked with the packing cartons around the walls of her room. She flipped a lamp on and got up, found it among the larger containers, sat cross-legged on the mattress and lifted the lid. Just walking her fingers along the familiar edges of the hanging files was enough to settle the anxious restlessness of her nightmare. Like an addict preparing a fix.
It was two nights since she’d read from one – not that it mattered where she left off, she knew them all word-for-word. She started from the front again, pulling the first manila folder onto her lap and opening the cover. The words blurred and shimmered in the dim light. She pulled the lamp closer, rubbed at her eyes, at the centre of her forehead where her headache had settled, gave it a minute or two then went in search of painkillers.
None in the boxes in her room or the ones in the hallway so she tiptoed upstairs and tried Tilda’s kitchen cupboard, the one above the stove – same place she’d always kept them. Jax downed two, was on her way back to the stairs when the lights of the city outside pulled her in a new direction. On the deck, a gentle, balmy breeze tugged at her hair as she rested her elbows on the railing. She breathed it in, told herself this was what she was here for. To relax, to let go, to find a way to heal the gaping, bleeding hole in her life.
For a year, she’d asked questions and searched for answers. The only thing she’d got was an obsession that turned her wound toxic. It took time away from Zoe, made friends keep their distance and filled Jax with endless circling thoughts. This morning’s gasping wrench from sleep was the first time in twelve months she hadn’t woken with the sweating, quaking horror that Nick’s death might never be explained. Brendan Walsh had scared the hell out of her but maybe he’d shoved a wedge into the spinning, thundering wheels of her frustration.
She closed her eyes, told herself another man’s death might break the cycle.
You don’t want to know anything I know. I don’t want to know what I know.
Had PTSD done that to Brendan? How awful did a memory have to be to make a person lose touch with reality? Maybe it took more than one terrible event to make the brain struggle under its burden: the first opening a crack and each one that followed pushing it wider. Or was the damage caused by making yourself front up for more? Soldiers going back into battle, police officers to their jobs, emergency workers to another accident scene.
Jax had suffered overwhelming grief and loss twice in her life and the psychological toll each time had felt like an injury. But she hadn’t witnessed the fire that took her parents or the incident that killed her husband. Would she have been pushed over the edge if those images were caught in her brain?
Brendan had scrubbed at his scalp like he wanted to break it open and tear out his thoughts. How much of what had been stuck in his brain was memory – and how much was delusion?
Walking back through the darkened lounge room, Jax opened a laptop on a desk in the corner. She had studied for final school exams on the antique walnut unit and her aunt had run the specs of the slimline computer past Nick before buying it. Jax brushed those memories aside as she accessed her email account.
She’d checked it from her phone before leaving the house yesterday, sitting in the shade on the front step, needing a reason to linger. Christ, if she’d left five minutes earlier, Brendan would have got in someone else’s car. She brushed that aside, too, and skimmed over the dozen or so new emails, not interested in replying to reporters yet, stopping at Russell’s name.
His note was brief: Good memory. You were close on headline and date. It was the first weekend in May. Call me if you need anything.
Pulse picking up, Jax clicked on the article and read the headline: ‘The long kiss goodbye: Tears and fears for families and soldiers’. Scrolling quickly through the first paragraphs, recognising her style more than the words of a story written five years ago, she paused at the first photo – a tear-jerker shot, a soldier snuggling into the chubby cheeks of a babe-in-arms. Not Brendan. Skimming and pausing through a few hundred words of copy, Jax stopped again at a group shot. It was a casual line-up of about fifteen soldiers in fatigues, back row standing, the rest sitting or kneeling on the floor. She zoomed in on the caption, searched the names and ranks.
Second-last mention: Private Brendan Walsh.
Enlarging the photo, she slid it across the screen, scanned the faces, her eyes stopping at the bottom right-hand corner, second one in. And her lungs caught on a gasp. He was different – younger, beefier, happier, saner – but there was no mistaking him. Brendan Walsh: dark hair little more than stubble, intense eyes gazing straight down the lens of the camera as though he was staring at her. A tingle rippled across her scalp.
‘You were there,’ she said aloud. ‘That was
real.’
What about the quote? Got me some kudos for a bit, he’d said. She typed in a search for his name, but the only reference that came up was the one she’d already found in the caption.
Focus drifting away from the monitor, she sifted through her memories of the hours she’d spent at the airbase. Not an in-and-out job, not just grabbing a couple of interviews and leaving the photographer to finish up with the pics. She’d wanted to ignore the rhetoric about the war and clichés of soldiers flying to foreign lands, and try to understand what it was like to live that moment, both for the ones in uniform and those being left behind. It takes time to do that, to make people comfortable enough to talk, to trust the person with the pen and paper, to get them past the bluster of meeting a reporter. It was what she liked most about the job, what she did best.
She’d sipped takeaway coffee with wives, cooing over a newborn and swapping labour ward stories; she’d cursed fluently with the soldiers so that her nice skirt and heels didn’t mark her as straight-laced; and she’d stood around with fit, muscular, well-trained people of rank feeling podgy and strangely civilian. Then she’d singled out a few for interviews – a private who’d seemed introspective and articulate, a woman whose accountant husband was barely holding back the emotion, a weathered forty-year-old leaving for his fourth tour, a wife with three children under five. Not Brendan.
She scrolled back to the group photo, recalling the joking and cajoling it’d taken to pull that shot together. As the photographer had snapped, she’d called out lighthearted questions to keep them entertained and in place: What food will you miss the most? What’s the worst army meal? What won’t you miss? What won’t you leave home without?
Jax wound through the story again to the couple of paragraphs she’d written on their answers. No names, just a representation of their answers, things readers could relate to: liquorice all-sorts, vodka shots, cauliflower in cheese sauce, shitty nappies, wedding ring, suncream. She stopped at the last sentence, the one direct quote: ‘Pride,’ one soldier shouted. ‘I want my wife and son to be proud of me.’