by Tim Buckley
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I had to see her, I had to know. You have a daughter, you must understand?”
She nodded.
“And I know what it looks like, but I wasn’t abandoning her,” she said quickly, suddenly aware that I’d seen her leave her child alone in the flat. “I was going to the twenty-four-hour mini-market up the road. We need milk.”
“Don’t worry about it. And I’ll get you some milk. I’ll leave it outside. Do you need anything else?”
She shook her head.
“By the way,” I said, remembering my conversation with Carlton, “the pharmacist downstairs thinks there might be something up. He checked with the doctor you went to when you filled the prescription.”
“Shit,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I knew he was looking at her funny, I knew there was something wrong. Shit!”
Now that I knew the truth, I was deeply sorry for this woman. She must have been desperate to go on the run like that, desperate to get away from the monster that had done that to her arms and had done who knew what else. She must have felt like everybody was potentially the one who would give her away. I took a card out of my wallet and handed it to her.
“This is my number,” I said, “and my email. If you think I can help… well, you know.”
She took it and nodded.
“Thanks,” she said, without looking at it. “You better go now.”
54
I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a coffee and a book I’ve picked up off the shelf. It’s a local history that I bought when we arrived and I was determined to be a local in my new home. That lasted about a week, until I realised that not much had happened for the previous three hundred years and that what had happened wasn’t very interesting. Still, I figured I picked enough fragments of information to get the odd joke and to at least be able to avoid the clumsy faux pas that can trip up a newcomer.
Emily comes down while I’m making another coffee.
“Hey there,” she says, and she almost sounds shy, like she’s bumped into an early morning parent in her boyfriend’s house. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Yeah, really well, thanks. Coffee?”
“Mmm, please,” she says, putting on some toast.
“So have you spoken with the estate agents at all,” I ask, “about putting this place on the market?”
That’s the real reason I’m here and I’ve been thinking about it all morning, trying to decide how best to broach the subject. When it’s out there it seems like a natural question to ask and I’m surprised how matter-of-fact it sounds.
She hesitates, concentrating hard on buttering the toast to avoid looking at me.
“Actually,” she says slowly, “I wanted to talk to you about that…”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah… I was thinking that… maybe… we might not sell?”
I stop what I’m doing and look at her, processing the words.
“I don’t understand…”
“Well, I was thinking that… maybe I could buy you out? And I could stay here? It’s just that I’ve… we’ve put so much work into the vines and some of them have only really just come of age. It seems such a shame to let them go now. And whoever buys it might not want them, might let them go to ruin. Or take them out altogether.”
I can feel that familiar grumble of frustration in my gut. We’ve been through this, we worked it out, we came to a decision… and now it’s all up for grabs, again?
I speak slowly to keep myself in check, trying hard not to rush headlong to any conclusions.
“But we need the money, Emily. At least I need the money. Where are you going to get enough cash for half of this?”
She shrugs her shoulders.
“I’ll go to the bank,” she says, matter-of-factly, “get a loan.”
“Have you talked to them about it?”
“No, but it’ll be fine.”
I can’t keep it in check anymore.
“Jesus, Emily,” I say and I can hear the anger in my own voice, “who’s going to give you a loan? You don’t have a job and you’ve only got this place as security. And let’s face it, no bank’s going to want this.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m some sort of idiot, Wilde,” she bristles. “There are lots of places I can go. I saw an ad in the paper only last Sunday, and I know Bill Morris got a loan for his new tractor.”
“For a tractor, Emily. A tractor. Bill Morris has an established vineyard with a brand and contracts and a track record. You need enough cash for a half of all of this. Nobody is going to lend you that kind of money.” I shake my head. “We need to sell up. We might not want to, but we have no choice.”
“But I can’t sell it, Wilde, I just can’t!”
“Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you…!” I’m shouting now and I catch myself in time, but it’s already too late.
“Fuck you, Wilde!” She slams her mug on the counter and it slops coffee all over the floor. “Fuck you!”
She runs to the door and slams it hard before I hear her car engine fire up and she skids away.
I stand still in the kitchen, there isn’t a sound in the house. I blow out my cheeks and let out a long sigh. So here we are, I think. Here we are again… Slowly and without really thinking I start to mop up the coffee on the floor with some kitchen towel and gather up the crumbs from the countertop, tossing them into the sink and running the tap to sweep everything down the drain. Which is precisely where this is going. All I want to do is get in the car and drive away, anywhere. Leave all of this behind like the bad dream it was always going to become. Start again, again. But I can’t, there’s no way I can leave this in her hands. I should have known better than to think she had come round, that she finally agreed with me that selling the place was our best – only – option. So I can’t drive away. I can’t stay here, that much is clear. But the sooner the place is cleared out the sooner I can get the estate agents in to look it over and the sooner we can get it on the market. No matter what Emily thinks, no matter what tantrums she throws, that’s just how it has to be. We have no choice. So I pick up the rubbish bags and head for the clusterfuck that is the garage.
The big old double garage is, naturally, where we tossed most of the junk from the closed chapters of our story. It was out of sight and cavernous so we could put off deciding what to throw away and what to keep for as long as the rubbish pile hadn’t reached the rafters. We started off putting things in labelled boxes, neatly packed and stacked and filed. Over time, of course, we got impatient and started to throw things in any available space. The old cardboard boxes rotted and burst, nostalgia oozing out onto the concrete floor. I know there’s little point really in sorting through it all, we haven’t missed anything from these boxes in years and nothing is going to become suddenly indispensable. If we got a mulcher and tossed the whole lot in we wouldn’t miss a thing, but I’ll never bring myself to do that and so I settle into the first box.
I’ve been dreading the filth and the tedium of sorting through years’ worth of our forgotten stuff. I’ve been dreading, too, the memories and the reminders, the tracks and traces of good times startled and flown away. And it is a crap job, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t help but smile from time to time at a flashback or a reminder of better times. Trinkets from holidays spent sitting on the beach, drinking cocktails at sunset. Souvenirs of cities and people that scratched their stories on the etching boards of our minds. Photographs of us smiling and joking and taking the piss. Happy. I remember that blue dress that she wore and how I always joked that it made her look like an air stewardess.
“Could I have another packet of peanuts, please?” I’d say whenever she put it on. “And tell me again, where are the emergency exits?”
Then she’d throw something lethal and I’d duck and then tackle her and we’d roll aroun
d on the bed, laughing.
I work through boxes of our past until I’ve run out of rubbish bags and so I go back into the house to get some more. I check the kitchen and the study for any sign that she’s come back but I’d have heard the car so I know she hasn’t. So I get the bags and I go to the door that leads outside but I stop, my hand on the door handle. I stand there for a long moment and it’s as though I’m listening to some unseen figure talking to me from across the room. I take a deep breath, turn around and head instead for the stairs.
The room is small, maybe three of my steps wide by three or four long. The blind is closed so it’s dark and I turn on the light, the moon and stars twinkling from the lightshade that turns slowly, casting shadows on the walls. The little Oregon pine cot sits in the corner. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, painted on the wall, peer into the cot as though they’re looking for her, but she’s not there. I follow the footsteps across the floor and rest a hand on the cot’s headboard. The mobile from that Christmas hangs over it, the fairies and angels floating aimlessly on a draught from I don’t know where. Her menagerie of stuffed animals is camped out on the bed, waiting. I catch my breath when I see it, sitting amongst the others. The monkey. Not so crazy now, he looks up at me with his big, round, sad eyes. They all, bears and monkeys and figures painted on the walls, seem stuck in a suspended state, unsure what’s happening, unsure what to do next. A bit like me.
I know I should really make a start on the part of the job that’s been on my mind since we decided to sell the farm, but I’m not ready. The garage was an excuse, a diversion, and it might be better to start this on my own, without Emily in the room. But not now, I’m just not ready yet. I brush the pillow with my fingertips, pause and then turn around. I switch off the light and gently shut the door.
Back downstairs, I go to the wine cellar and take a bottle of red from the rack. It’s a big one, a sun-soaked South Australian and, right now, it’s exactly what I need. I find a corkscrew in the drawer, take a wine glass from the cupboard and head out onto the stoop. It’s only early afternoon – too early for drinking – and the sun is high in the sky. The canopy over the stoop provides shelter, there’s a light breeze rippling the trees and it’s a beautiful day for… for doing what? For doing anything else but this? I pour myself a large one and settle back in the lounger.
What would Eoin think of this, I wonder to myself? Drinking in the middle of the day with a thousand things still to be done before the day was over. He’d have his list out, counting off what had to be ticked off before he could put away the tools and he could change his clothes for dinner. He wouldn’t let me sit and drink wine, that’s for sure. He wouldn’t let me wallow. Eoin wasn’t a drinker. He might have a bottle of stout if he found himself in the pub, or he might have one in the house after a long day and if there was a good film on. But he didn’t trust it or himself with it. He’d seen what it could do to my father, he’d heard my parents screaming at each other, I suppose. I had heard them myself from his side of the house when they went at it. I don’t know if it was the fighting that drove my father to the bottle or the bottle that started the fighting, but there was always a drink not too far away from the eye of the storm. There were nights when Eoin had to go down to the pub to bring my father home. I saw them, sometimes, from my hiding place at the top of the stairs. I watched Eoin hauling my father in through the front door and sitting him down at the kitchen table, talking to him in a low murmur and hushing him lest he wake the house that was already wide awake. He’d try to pour coffee into him, or just take off his shoes and lay him out on the couch until he was sure he was asleep. Then he’d shake his head wearily and turn off the lights. When Cathal, eyes blazing in the solicitor’s office, had blamed my father for his own father’s death, he wasn’t talking only about the crash that killed him – maybe he wasn’t talking about that at all. Yes, Eoin had had to carry him, but he knew how much my father had struggled to balance keeping his promise to my mother and fulfilling his responsibilities to Eoin and the farm. It might even have been what killed them both in the end.
“Well, lock up your daughters, look who the wind’s blown back into town!”
The voice behind me makes me jump out of my skin and I knock over my wine glass so that it smashes on the deck.
“Jesus Christ, Bobby!” I stumble to my feet, wiping red wine off my jeans. “You scared the shit out of me!”
“Good to see you too, dickhead!”
She picks her way round the broken glass and hugs me. It’s good to see her. I hold on to her a moment before letting her go and I brush dust off a lounger.
“Here you go, have a pew, I’ll just get this shit cleaned up. Glass of wine?”
“Won’t say no. Bit early in the day though, eh?” She looks at the bottle on the table. “And you’ve been at it a while, I take it? Celebrating, or…?”
I roll my eyes.
“Long story. Let me get another bottle.”
After I’ve swept up the broken glass and mopped up the spillage, I sit back down and set about opening another bottle.
“Look, sorry I haven’t been in touch,” I say, cranking up the corkscrew.
“Don’t worry about it. Millie told me you were in town, I guessed you probably needed a bit of time.”
“Millie?”
“Yeah, she works in the café. She’s Karl’s girlfriend, she recognised you from that photo at the Callumba swim.”
“Karl’s girlfriend, eh? Seems like a nice girl.”
“She is, she’s lovely. He doesn’t deserve her but if she messes him around I’ll skin her alive with a butter knife!”
I pour her a glass of wine and we clink glasses.
“So, how are you doing?” I ask her.
“Oh, you know. Same old, same old. Nothing much changes around here. Kids are still a pain in the ass, there’s never enough money and always too much work – but I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Is Walter Gretz behaving himself?”
“Haven’t seen that much of him, to be honest. Maybe he’s grown out of The Pantry, I don’t know. But I don’t miss him, that’s for sure.”
“And Karl? How’s he doing?”
“He got a job in Perth, working with computers for an estate agency up there. He’s told me exactly what he does but I don’t really understand it to be honest. But he loves it. The pay is pretty crap, but at least it’s something.”
“You must miss having him around?”
She nods.
“I do. I really do. But don’t ever tell him I said that!”
“And Mitch?”
She rolls her eyes.
“Mitch hasn’t been around much, not since you left actually. Maybe he missed that bromance you two cooked up!”
I smile.
“Misses Karl, more like?” I say.
“Maybe. He’s in Melbourne at the minute, coaching at a school, for however long that lasts.”
I know exactly why Mitch is staying clear of Clovelly, and it has nothing to do with Karl, but I can hardly tell Bobby that.
“So,” she says, “what’s up with you?”
I let out a long sigh, shaking my head.
“It’s all gone a bit shit, to be honest. I got here yesterday and it all seemed fine. We got to work, packing everything up, and it was all good – no fighting, no sniping at each other. We cleared out one of the spare rooms and it was all a bit awkward, I suppose, but, to be honest, not too bad. I’d booked into The Ship but she said no, I should stay here. So we had dinner and… well, it was all good.”
“But…”
“But… the whole point of coming back was to get the place ready to sell. We talked about it on the phone last week and we agreed that it was the only thing to do. But this morning I started talking about getting the agents in and getting the place on the market, and it turns out Emily’s had a change of heart. Tu
rns out, now, she wants to hang on to it. Wants to get a loan so she can buy me out.”
“A loan? Where’s she going to get a loan for that kind of money?”
“She’s not, there’s no way. I told her that and she lost her temper, stormed out. I haven’t seen her all day. And there’s still a ton of crap to sort out, we’ve hardly made a dent.”
Bobby looks at me, and I guess she’s choosing her words. She never wants to get caught in the middle of our arguments nor does she ever want to appear overtly partisan, even if I’m pretty sure she’s on my side.
“I’m sorry, Wilde, sorry it’s all so hard. Is there anything I can do?”
I shake my head.
“Thanks, Bobby, but it’s all right. I’ll just get through as much of my shit as I can and hopefully she’ll be back tonight and we can get this finished in a couple of days. I’m just not sure what happens then. Can I force her to sell? How long will it take if she does try to buy me out? I just have a feeling the only ones to win out of this will be the solicitors.”
I top up our wine glasses and hand hers back.
“And I went up to Cara’s room this afternoon.”
She says nothing, just nods.
“I tried to make a start, but… Nothing’s moved. Walking through the door, it’s like walking into a world that still has her in it. It’s as though, through that door, time has just stood still.”
“Shit, Wilde, I can’t even imagine. That’s going to be tough, eh?”
I stare into my glass.
“Yeah. That’s going to be tough.”
55
Everything had happened so quickly from Napier’s call to going to see Carlton to finding Faye Hall, or whatever her name was, that I hadn’t really had time to think about the enormity of what was unfolding. The alignment of events and circumstances meant that it was entirely conceivable that Cara might have been in that flat over the pharmacy. For a couple of minutes, standing arguing with her outside the front door, I really believed that she was. I really did. More than at any point since she disappeared, more than with any of the other leads I’d chased down, I really believed for an instant that I’d found her. It was only when I got to the apartment after a slow drive back from Perth that I realised how exhausted I was. It was partly because I’d only had a few fitful hours’ sleep in the driver’s seat of the car, but I was emotionally drained too from the roller coaster of the previous twenty-four hours.