by Jaye Ford
Then she Googled PTSD, the war in Afghanistan, returned soldiers, contract security work and Secure Force, the company that had employed Brendan … keeping up the momentum, feeling in control, assertive, calmer. She told herself it wasn’t about the questions and answers this time. That it was enough to get her thoughts in order, to make some sense of the information she had. That she wasn’t letting anyone down if she didn’t find the answers.
Strident music jerked her from sleep. She bashed the laptop as she fumbled around the sheets for her mobile, swiped the screen, squinted through one eye – seven-sixteen – and croaked, ‘Yep.’
‘Is that Miranda Jack?’ The voice was female, vaguely familiar and tremulous.
Apprehension made her sit up, clear her throat. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Kate Walsh.’ She said nothing more, her words thick with emotion. Crying or trying not to.
Was it grief or something else? ‘Are you okay?’
‘Can you come back?’
Now? Did she mean now? Did she need the police there too? ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Has something happened?’
‘I want to know. I want you to tell me all of it.’
Jax squatted in front of Zoe outside Kate Walsh’s gate. ‘Remember, Zoe, the people in the house are sad today. You know what that’s like, don’t you?’
Zoe nodded sagely.
‘So try to be … I don’t know …’
‘Nice?’ Zoe said.
‘Yes, baby. Nice is perfect.’
Jax had thought about asking Tilda to keep Zoe with her again. Then remembered Tilda taught an all-day art class on Thursdays and that paint, nude models and six-year-olds just didn’t belong together. And Kate had insisted Jax bring Zoe.
Without a car, they’d walked the steps down the hill hand-in-hand, Jax’s feet too sore to fit into anything but thongs, her calves and thighs feeling like they’d been pummelled. The memory of the chase made her glance up and down the street again before opening the gate.
The leathery man was at the front door. Eyes peered out of wrinkled folds at Jax and then down at Zoe, who gave him a toothy smile. He didn’t return it.
‘She’s in the kitchen,’ he said, and stood aside to let them into the hallway.
Zoe’s little fingers crawled inside Jax’s palm as they followed him to the end of the corridor this time, into a sunny room the width of the house. The kitchen took up one side, a family area the other, and big windows and glass sliding doors looked out to a neat, square garden.
Kate Walsh was on the kitchen side of a breakfast bar. The small upturn of her lips as they walked in seemed to communicate sadness, exhaustion, appreciation. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said.
Jax nodded, understanding the concoction of emotions. ‘This is my daughter, Zoe.’
Kate’s face softened with the kind of expression that came from finding something sweet in the midst of sorrow. ‘Hey, Zoe. I’m making a banana milkshake for Scotty. Would you like one?’
‘Yes, please.’ Zoe tried out her toothy grin again. Kate smiled back and Jax wondered if her daughter might provide more comfort than she was about to.
‘Mummy, there’s a swing.’ Zoe pointed to the windows.
A play set sat in a back corner of the yard. Closer to the house, a couple of big yellow toy trucks were idle on a mound of sand where a small boy had his head down, digging a hole with a spade.
‘You can have a go, if you like,’ Kate said. ‘That’s Scotty out there. I’m sure he’ll give you a push.’
Jax gave her daughter a gentle nudge. ‘Go and meet Scotty and have a nice time.’
Zoe made big eyes, her kid’s version of got-it. As the leathery man slid open the back door for her, Scotty lifted his head and Brendan Walsh whispered in Jax’s ear.
He looks just like me at that age.
He looked plenty like his father had three days ago. Not the craziness but the dark hair and eyes, and something about the way the boy cast a sideways glance at the door sent both a chill and a great wave of sorrow through Jax.
Kate must have seen her reaction. ‘He looks like Brendan, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does Zoe look like her father?’
The unexpected reminder of Nick made Jax stiffen.
‘Sorry,’ Kate said. ‘I just wondered if the physical reminder was going to be a comfort or a source of pain.’
‘It’s okay. Zoe looks like her dad but she’s more like me. I guess the reminder is both painful and a comfort. That probably doesn’t help much.’
Kate flicked a glance at the leathery man, who was standing by the door watching the children, and lowered her voice. ‘Actually, it’s good to have someone who’ll talk about it.’ She lifted a coffee plunger. ‘I need more caffeine. Join me?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Jock?’ Kate called across the room. Leathery Man turned his head. ‘I’m okay here. I think you should go to bowls with Marilyn.’
He cast suspicious eyes at Jax. ‘If you’re sure.’
‘I am. Thanks, Jock. And Hugh Talbotson is on his way back from Sydney. He’ll be here in a little while. You guys need some time off.’ Kate waited until Jock had dithered and grumbled for a couple of moments before disappearing out the back door and around the house.
‘He’s my neighbour,’ Kate explained. ‘He and his wife Marilyn have been great. They’ve hardly been home since … since it happened. This morning, he didn’t want to leave until someone was here with me. I don’t know what he thinks is going to happen. He’s a tough old bugger, but it’s nice.’ She cocked her head. ‘Nice to have some time off from them, too.’
Kate talked as she made coffee and blended milkshakes, her voice tight but not the broken, tear-filled one from the phone, giving Jax a brisk update as though she’d asked to be filled in. Kate’s parents were in Europe on holiday and wouldn’t be back for another couple of days. She had a sister in Queensland who would come down for the funeral. There was no date yet because there had to be an autopsy and the police hadn’t confirmed when the body would be released. She hoped the service was held before she had to be back at her teaching job, and she was glad Scotty was on school holidays and the other kids wouldn’t be asking about his dad.
Jax ‘mmm’d’ and nodded through it, wondering if Kate was avoiding the elephant in the room until she could sit down with coffee in hand, or whether she needed to get all the small stuff off her mind before she could concentrate. When she finally fell silent, the children were drinking their milkshakes in the shade outside, and Kate and Jax were sitting in matching sofas. Brendan’s wife held a steaming mug between her palms, her eyes focused on the liquid inside, lips a tight line.
Jax mirrored her pose, in no hurry to tell the story again knowing it would hurt someone this time. Her thoughts wandered to the lists in the notebook that was in her handbag and the questions they were prompting. She hadn’t come to ask them, had just wanted to help staunch Kate Walsh’s bleeding wound, but now Jax was here, she hoped time and opportunity might give her an opening.
‘You’ve got bruises on your legs,’ Kate said softly. ‘Did Brendan do that?’
Jax glanced at the splotches of colour below the hemline of her three-quarter trousers. ‘Not intentionally. He made me get out of the car through the passenger door. I hit the gearstick a few times as he … helped me across.’
‘God.’ Kate squeezed her eyes shut, took a gulp of coffee before opening them. ‘Tell me. Just tell me.’
If Kate was having a hard time with bruises, Jax thought, she might need a doctor by the time she heard the rest. ‘It’s not great. He scared me, threatened to kill me and did a lot of crazy talking. How much do you want to know?’
‘Sorry. It must be difficult for you to talk about.’
‘No, it’s okay. I can tell you but I don’t want to upset you.’
On the other side of the coffee table, Kate put her mug down and lifted her chin – pride or courage, possibly both. ‘For years, I
wanted to understand what was going on with Brendan. He tried to explain it to me. We went to the counselling. I watched him suffer through awful nightmares.’ She stopped, pressed her lips together, started again. ‘I thought he was getting better. He thought he was getting better. And then … this.’ The word was said through clenched teeth, infused with anger and frustration and powerlessness. ‘He had problems but I loved him. I want to know why this happened, why my husband is dead. The police won’t tell me the details so I’m asking you. I’m already upset, Miranda. I just want to understand. Does that make sense?’
As far as Jax was concerned, her logic was perfect. ‘Yes.’
‘Then help me. Please.’
27
Jax told the story again. Not the way she’d done it for either Aiden or Russell, but focusing on Brendan’s reactions, his moods, what pre-empted the anger and tears, trying to summarise the rambling into something more coherent. As she talked, she watched Kate for a reaction – shock, recognition, surprise, anything that might reveal something of his reality. But Kate didn’t speak and barely moved, sitting with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, eyes lowered, braced for the worst.
Jax imagined herself in the same place, hearing ugly truths about Nick three days after he was run down. She would’ve interrupted with questions and demands and denials. Now, though, after everything, maybe she’d be exactly like Kate Walsh, ready to hear anything as long as it was an explanation.
When she was done, Jax waited for Kate to speak. She didn’t. She didn’t move at all. ‘Kate?’
There were tears brimming in her eyes when she lifted her head.
Jax tried to make her voice gentle. ‘You don’t seem shocked by any of that.’
Twin droplets tumbled over Kate’s lashes. ‘I don’t know what I feel. Numb. Sick. I was hoping it would be better but I thought it could have been worse.’
‘You thought it might come to that?’
‘For a long time I was worried he might try to kill himself, but never like this. And not for months. When I spoke to him on Saturday afternoon, he was tired, he’d just finished a long job. But he seemed …’ She stopped, closed her eyes, held them shut for a long moment. ‘I was mad at him. I wanted him to come home for what was left of the weekend. He wanted to take an extra shift.’
Jax felt a stab of empathy. An awful last conversation to remember. ‘Was he angry?’
‘No. Apologetic. He wanted me to understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘That earning some good money made him feel better about … everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘About the PTSD, about not working, about Afghanistan. Everything that made him feel less of a man.’
Yeah, look, sorry about all this. Brendan had apologised to Jax, too. It’s just … you know. Then he’d gone crazy over people wanting to pick him off. Maybe that was what he’d been like. Apologetic one moment, angry the next. Maybe he’d lost his temper after Kate hung up. ‘Was Brendan erratic? Aggressive?’
The shake of her head was sad, cynical, weary. ‘Not when I met him. Not before Afghanistan. Back then he was this cool, fun guy wandering through life, having a good time – everyone’s mate, you know?’ Kate picked up her mug again, just nursed it in her hands. ‘His older sister drowned in a boating accident when he was fifteen. He’d decided it was his job to have a good time for her as well. He was an electrician and basically working and partying. He used to joke that I nagged him into the army but it wasn’t like that. He’d always wanted to do it, used to talk about it and never did anything. So finally I told him I didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t follow through, and he went out the next day and got the paperwork.’
Kate turned her face to the window, eyes angled to where Scotty and Zoe were sitting in the sandpit, waving their hands around and singing. Jax watched too, trying to align this younger, fun version of Brendan with the one who’d got in her car.
‘He loved the army,’ Kate said. ‘He loved the guys and the training and the whole doing-something-for-his-country thing. It made him feel like a better person, fed his sense of duty.’ She turned to Jax, grief and anger filling her eyes and her voice. ‘And Afghanistan ruined him. He used to tell people I was the best thing that happened to him but I ruined him, too. I wish I could take back my words and tell him that not following through was fine, perfect, the best thing for both of us.’ She pressed a hand to her face, then pulled it away, clenching it into a fist. ‘That fucking war is responsible for what happened to him. For what’s happening to Scotty and me.’ She pointed at the bruises on Jax’s shins. ‘For what happened to you.’
Jax felt as though the Afghan desert had risen up and thrown sand in her face. She’d only been touched by the war briefly and from a distance. When Nick was researching his big story, she’d read some of his notes, transcribed interviews, run her eyes over the outline of the book he’d started before he died. He’d spent a week over there talking to soldiers and was kept well away from the action, but the photos she’d seen of him in a helmet and bulletproof vest had made her stomach churn. She imagined it was nothing to what Kate and others felt for loved ones who were over there to face the firepower. Even working in the media, Jax had avoided more than a fleeting professional connection. By the time the war started, she was a features writer – her speciality was human interest, not politics, and her single story on the soldiers leaving amounted to the only words she’d penned about Afghanistan or Iraq. She’d had her own opinion, had argued the case at dinner parties when the troops began heading out, had felt shock and sadness and fury at the fatalities. Now she felt tarnished by it.
And sitting on Brendan’s sofa, she wanted to be more than his storyteller. She wanted to rail with Kate, console her, give her someone to cry with. She also wanted to pull the notebook from her bag and launch a thousand questions.
After a career built on drawing people out and a year struggling with sadness and frustration, she knew being restrained in a chair didn’t get the same results as having something to do while you talked about the hard stuff. She shifted to the edge of her seat, said, ‘How about more coffee?’
She suggested they make it together and asked for directions around the kitchen. While she filled the kettle and found coffee grounds, she started on questions that might give Kate’s heartache a rest – and possibly fill in a few gaps on the Real/Not Real ledger. ‘Brendan said you’re a teacher. What do you teach?’
Kate pulled fresh mugs from a cupboard. ‘Primary. I’ve got my own class for the first time this term. Year Three.’
‘So you haven’t been teaching for long?’
‘Ten years on and off, but I’ve only ever had casual placements. You can’t get anything else when you’re being posted around with the army, then it took us a while to decide where we wanted to stay. We’ve been in Newcastle almost three years and it’s taken that long to get this position.’
Jax poured boiling water. ‘Does Scotty go to your school?’
‘Yes, which makes mornings and afternoons easier. I put in a big effort to get a place there for that reason. Made a real nuisance of myself until they started giving me casual classes. Although Scotty’ll probably hate it eventually. It’s not much fun having your mum around when you’re trying to be cool.’
‘Brendan said Scotty was pretty smart. That he could read before he started school.’
Kate smiled a little. ‘Brendan used to think it was going to make him a Rhodes Scholar or something. Scotty always loved books and we spent so much time together when Brendan was away, and with the PTSD, and … well, I’m a teacher and I suppose I didn’t have anyone else to teach.’
Jax understood that – she asked questions whether she had a job or not. ‘What was Brendan like when he got back from Afghanistan?’
Kate kept her attention on the fruit she was slicing for such a long, silent moment that Jax wondered if she was deciding she didn’t want to talk about bad days.
&nb
sp; ‘When he came home the first time,’ she finally said, ‘he slept on the floor. He’d go to bed with me and I’d wake up alone and he’d be on the floor by the door.’
Jax rested a hip against the counter. ‘Was he guarding the room?’
‘He said he got used to it and found it more comfortable, but I mean, it wasn’t next to the bed, it was by the door. And there were nightmares. He’d wake up shouting and on his feet, ready to take off somewhere.’
‘Dreaming about what happened over there?’
‘He said he couldn’t remember. He tried to pretend there was nothing wrong but he spent days just sitting around as though he didn’t have the energy to move. Then other times, he’d be anxious and restless, keyed up and short tempered. It was really hard for Scotty to understand.’
‘For you too, I imagine.’
Kate put the knife down, lifted the plate, didn’t get any further. ‘Yeah.’ Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper, and her eyes drifted to the window. Eventually, she pulled in a long, unsteady breath. ‘Let’s sit outside.’
Jax followed her through the back door into the late-morning heat, her interest piqued but discomfort prickling the back of her neck. She liked Kate. Yes, a psychologist would probably tell her there were myriad reasons why she’d want to find a connection with Kate Walsh: Brendan, Nick, death by vehicle, undelivered messages, unanswered questions, and so on. But Jax thought there was more to it. Kate was smart and determined. She worked for what she wanted, tried to look beneath the surface of her life for its truth, and she bought good coffee. Jax liked all of that, told herself she was there to help heal Kate’s wound, not probe it with a sharp instrument.
Kate put the plate on a table in the shade and, like heat-seeking missiles, Scotty and Zoe were next to her five seconds later, eyeing off the food.
‘Do you like strawberries?’ Zoe asked him.
‘Uh-huh. Do you?’
‘They’re my favourite, aren’t they, Mummy?’