Pretty Girls

by Pretty Girls (retail) (epub)

  Nothing for a moment. Perhaps he didn’t recognise her voice, or himself at all - something about her words and their tone had startled him.

  She could hear her breath and she tried to control it. In and out, three counts. In and out. Three counts.

  Still nothing.

  The door separated them. Nothing more than three to four centimetres of wood lay between them. Two aggressors now — on opposing sides, both lashing out at their memories. Not even of each other, but of a shared history. Of this place. Of violence.

  Evie quieted her breathing now, so she could hear his. Ragged, lost.

  She knew how this worked. Get them on the back foot, then charge forward. The victim has to become the aggressor, otherwise you’re just a victim, always. And she wasn’t a victim. She wouldn’t let her daughter see her be a victim, not now not ever.

  “Get the fuck of my property, dickhead, before I call the police.”

  She could smell him now. He was that close. A mixture of alcohol, sweat, and fear. Yeah, it was thick in the air.

  “I’m calling now. They’ll be here in a few minutes. Get the fuck away before they turn up.”

  His breathing was hard, like he was recovering from having had the wind knocked out of him.

  Hit him while he’s down.

  “Get the fuck away now!”

  That word – it was a signal all right in this bastard of a place. It made you like them. More than them. Braver. And that’s how you had to be – to stay alive.

  She could hear his heavy, drunk footsteps as he reversed away from the door.

  “That’s right, keep walking. You better run, boy,” she yelled.

  More footsteps. And then silence.

  She waited. Breathe. In and out. Three counts. Breathe. In and out. Three counts.

  He was gone.

  Suddenly she sensed someone behind her. His presence had been replaced with another. Tilley.

  Her face was white.

  “Is he gone?” she managed.

  “Yeah, he’s gone.”

  Tilley’s eyes were fixed on something she was holding. Evie looked down. The knife. Clasped in her hand ready for attack.

  “He’s gone baby,” she said quietly now, resuming her normal stance. “Let me put this down.”

  She headed down the corridor and clasped Tilley with her free hand, her tiny blonde head pressed hard against her stomach terrified.

  “He’s gone sweetheart, don’t worry.” She murmured.

  “Mummy, will you call the police to make sure?”

  Tilley’s blue eyes found hers. Round. Scared.

  “No darling. Mummy’s got it sorted.”

  You didn’t call the police. Not in these parts. Old habits die hard.

  Not at all.

  6

  The cops

  (1997, Redfern)

  Her dad was in a mood. She could tell. They all could tell. He was quiet when he got into those dark moods. But belligerent. He would come home from work wearing his standard white t-shirt and worn pants looking dusty and tired. He smelled of violence with a faint tang of despair. He would never admit to it though.

  Usually he got into those moods after work but sometimes they simply came on, thick and fast, for no particular reason. At the weekend, or in the morning, or on a rostered day off.

  They had come to expect them. Unheralded. Lacking in warning. It meant you had to be on edge all the time, waiting for them to occur. Knowing that the next one was just around the corner.

  When he got into those moods everything changed. They all became a muted version of themselves. Like they had turned the audio down on their personalities. They tip-toed around him, knowing that a single word or action could slope him over the edge – and it was hard to decipher what exactly that thing would be.

  His mind was a mystery to them. Even their mother, who had known him intimately for the better part of twenty years didn’t know what would make him crack.

  But crack he would, most definitely, and it was almost always when he was in that dark place.

  So they, Evie, Ben and their mum, became quiet. They retreated into the background. They made themselves small. Hoping that it wouldn’t be them that he noticed. It turned them against each other, because better someone else than you. Better Ben be smashed against the wall, or have his face jammed against the kitchen bench. Better her mum be choked, or pinched. Anything was better than it being you. Because it hurt. It made your eyes well up with tears and the metallic taste of blood spill into your mouth. Worse than the physical pain was the degradation. In the face of violence, you were nothing. You were shit. The stuff that came out of dog’s arses, and sometimes got smeared against your shoes.

  Nobody wanted to feel that way.

  That afternoon was one of those days. Evie had arrived home from school, changed out of her uniform and started helping her mother in the kitchen. She was making apricot chicken. It was a Thursday, and Thursday was always apricot chicken. That is, when her mum wasn’t in bed and wearing the fluffy blue robe she always wore when she was down. Her mum had absently asked her about her day and she had made some passing, dull comments. She was close with her mum, but they were no longer confidantes like they’d once been. Evie was sixteen now, she was wearing makeup, dating boys, sleeping with them too. But, it was more than that Evie had realised that her mum was a pushover. Someone that should have walked away from their father years ago.

  She couldn’t forgive her for that. Not at all.

  Neither could Ben.

  Ben hated their mum for it. More than Evie did. He was in his room. Maybe smoking some pot. Maybe lying in bed. Maybe listening to music. Listless. Ben didn’t give a shit about any of this anymore.

  Then her dad had arrived. Greg had turned up.

  His mood had been black. She could tell simply from his presence. His shoulders were turned downwards and his fists clenched. His face — unreadable. He’d avoided eye contact. Like that would somehow break the violent spell. He didn’t want that. He relished in it somehow. In the power over them. In making them feel small.

  He had cracked a beer and sat down on the couch and started to watch television. Cricket.

  They had started to tiptoe in the background. Their conversation dried up. Their movements became quieter. They had stopped being.

  Evie felt like she had stopped being a long time ago.

  She was just a shadow of herself, especially around her dad — but somehow that flimsy, smoky quality had bled everywhere. She was no-one, in the school yard, on the street, in her room ... everywhere.

  She was simply defined by men ... and boys.

  That’s when the banging on the front-door had started.

  A few knocks - and she could feel the sound reverberating through her chest. That would set him off-. That right there. Stop fucking knocking! Didn’t they realise there was a ticking timebomb in the house?

  And then the words ...

  “Police!” yelled loudly.

  Her blue eyes had met her mother's in alarm. This was going to be bad. She turned on her heels and headed to the door. She had to get it. She had to contain the fire before it became wild. Unfeasible. Reckless. Her mother wouldn’t be able to mute this sort of energy.

  She followed the tiny terrace corridor, her bare feet virtually soundless against the creaky floorboards. A lesson learnt over time.

  Small. Unnoticeable. Quiet.

  She threw the door open and smiled. The way she knew the boys’ liked. They were police. Men. Just like the rest. She armed herself with her only ammunition.

  Two young guys. Instantly, she could tell the blonde one on the left was taken by her. His eyes widened slightly. He wasn’t expecting this sort of beauty. Not in a terrace in Redfern. Not in a fucking housing commission.

  The one on the right remained impenetrable.

  “We’re looking for Greg King. Is he here?”

  Her dad. Her mind flicked over what it could be about and stuck to weed. He’d given
Ben Molly to sell on the streets. To make a few extra dollars.

  “Ummmm ....”

  She knew enough about police to know it wasn’t a good idea to lie. Just hold them back. Until the rest had time to prepare.

  “He your dad?” the blonde one asked, his voice softer. The human-type pig.

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen, we’re going to have to come through and see if he’s about,” back to the straight talker.

  She didn’t respond. The floor boards felt cool under her feet. For a second she enjoyed the texture. All hell was about to break loose. If only she could crystalise and stop time at this exact moment. Before.

  She stepped aside for them.

  She watched them as they walked down the corridor. So big in that tiny walkway. There was no space left for anything else.

  In the kitchen she could hear a commotion already beginning. Like a terrible symphony, gaining horrendous momentum. She could hear her dad starting up with her mum. He knew they were coming.

  “Mr. King?” she heard the blonde officer say. Funny, how you could know someone’s voice having heard so few words uttered from them. She didn’t wait to hear the response. Instead, she scooted into her brothers’ bedroom, and closed the door tightly behind her.

  He sat upright in bed like her intrusion had electrified him. He was fully clothed. Stoned as shit. His bloodshot eyes vacant.

  “Cops?” he rubbed his forehead.

  “Yeah, what the fuck did you do?” she demanded. The room stunk like pot. She flew to the window and pulled it open, like the subtle breeze would somehow clear out the evidence.

  “Nothing, calm your tits.”

  In the background, she could hear a scramble, and her mother yelp.

  “Get the fuck out now, before they get you.”

  She grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him towards the window. He was older than her, and taller, but skinny. Reed thin. Junkie thin. He always had been, even before he was a junkie. It was like pushing around a toddler.

  “I was just selling his weed,” he muttered.

  “Yeah, you know him. He’s going to put it on you.”

  “And?”

  She shoved his caked head out of the window. All he had to do was duck out, scoot across the yard and over the back fence. He’d be on Phillip street then and he knew the backstreets and alley ways of Redfern like the back of his hand. He’d be gone before they were in the room.

  “And? Just get the hell out you dickhead.”

  “You think I’m afraid of them?” The bravado. They were all tough guys weren’t they? On the outside.

  “No, you’re off your chop. Get out now.”

  She could hear them in the corridor now. The noise must have switched the dial on his senses. He stuck one scrawny leg over the fence, and then a second. By the time they had opened the door he was gone.

  She turned around.

  Four faces greeted her. The police officers, who looked pissed (even the blonde one). Her father, red-faced, fecund with ferocity. Her mother – petrified. She had a red mark on her face which looked fresh.

  “Did you warn ‘im?” her dad.

  She shook her head. Her throat felt tight.

  “She bloody told him. Fucking bitch. She’s tight with her brother probably been taken a cut from this weed he’s been selling.”

  He gestured wildly at her.

  “Do you know where your brother is?” The straight talker.

  She shook her head again. Muted. She had a strange ringing sound in her ears, like what she imagined tinnitus to feel like.

  “Fucking cunt.” Her dad.

  She stared at his brutal face.

  She counted. One, two, three. Breathe in and out.

  He was about to come for her.

  7

  The hospice ... and him

  (2017, Bronte)

  It was hot. The sky was stretched taunt, a pristine blue, like the backdrop on a stage. The weather didn’t reflect her mood. It was out of kilter. Today should have been a grey day. Storm clouds should have been stitched across the horizon, moody, oppressive. This weather made a joke of how she felt. It made Evie feel small. Like none of this mattered anyway. Like she wasn’t at the centre of all things. Not at all. Like the universe had no concern about how she felt. It would keep on, keeping on, regardless.

  It wasn’t a feeling – it was real.

  It was Saturday. Today, she had decided they would go and see Greg. Her and Tilley. They would go and visit the old bastard.

  She had been here a week and now it was the first day of the weekend. It was unavoidable. A duty. Why else had she come back if not to see the crook? She was the last one that could. The rest were... well, the rest were gone.

  She drove out to the hospice with Tilley mid-morning under that cracking blue sky. They wove a path from the inner city to the eastern suburbs, to Bronte, where the hospice was nestled. High up on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Pitched against that cerulean backdrop. He didn’t deserve that view. Not at all.

  She didn’t speak in the car. Her mood was bleak. Tilley sat in the passenger seat oblivious. Humming a tiny ditty to herself and clutching her iPad, eyes glued to the latest Incredibles movie.

  In the car park, Evie hesitated. She stared up at the sky waiting for some sort of sign. An omen. Something which told her to turn back, to forget about this altogether. To get in the car and start driving. All the way back to Melbourne. To forget that he was sick, or that he might die.

  Forget him altogether, that’s what she should have done a decade ago when she had skipped out of Sydney.

  But she hadn’t. He was like some sort of terrible cancer. It attached itself to you, and metastasised. No matter how far away from him you were, he still found a way to reach into your chest and touch your heart. Coldly.

  “Mummy, why don’t we just go to the beach?” Tilley said next to her.

  It was a good plan, Evie thought.

  “We have to see grandad,” she said instead, ignoring the thought.

  “Why? It’s so nice and hot. We could go swimming, and make sandcastles ... And get an icecream!”

  Tilley loved the beach. She had begged to go to the beach in Melbourne every summer. But Melbourne beaches were unfamiliar places to Evie. Blustery – always windy, with ice-cold water fresh from the Bass Strait. Not like Sydney. Evie had grown up on the beaches in Sydney. The thought of them made her think of sunburn and laughter. Sydney beaches were filled with memories of Ben.

  “Tomorrow we can go to the beach,” she told Tilley.

  “Nawwww,” Tilley made a whingey sound.

  “Come on’,” Evie said grasping Tilley by the hand. “Let’s go see him.”

  Tilley sighed loudly, but complied.

  Inside, the place smelled of disinfectant and old dying people. It was grey in here, and the ocean was a memory.

  They approached the front desk where a rounded woman sat with thick glasses. She was focused on her computer screen, a frown heavy on her forehead.

  She looked up at Evie, “Can I help you?” Ambivalent in tone.

  “I’m here ....” She faltered for a second and then continued.

  “I’m here to see Greg King.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m his daughter,” she added. She wasn’t quite sure why she had said those words. They were hardly relevant. She could have simply been a visitor. No-one would have known otherwise. Somehow the words had found themselves to her lips and toppled out.

  “I see. He’s been asking after you,” the woman said. The frown persisted.

  Evie didn’t respond.

  “He’s in room 12, just down the corridor on the left,” she flapped an arm in that direction. “You can go on and see him, he’s awake.”

  Evie nodded and took Tilley’s hand again. It was like an amulet, a form of protection. They walked down the corridor slowly. Evie could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She hadn’t seen her dad in years, not since her mother’s funeral.
She had a vision of him suddenly, standing stoically in the front pew at the church – like he had been a good husband. Like he had loved her.

  She stopped at the door.

  Like he hadn’t put her in an early grave.

  It was like being on the precipice. On this side of the door everything was fine. On the other side she would be falling

  But she had to step across, and she wasn’t even quite sure why. She felt compelled.

  On the other side ...

  There he was. So small now, stretched out in the bed. Consumed by that disease. She peered at him. Time stood still. His skin yellow. His cheeks sunken. His face and body skeletal, except for that terribly bloated belly. He looked like he was full term.

  His eyes were closed. Stretched taunt like that blue sky. She approached him with trepidation. For a moment she thought he might be dead. Truly, she hoped that he was dead.

  His eyes blinked open. Those blue, languid eyes. Just like her own. It was like looking into a horrifying mirror.

  He stared at her for a moment, and she could feel the panic rising in her chest. Constricting. Making breathing virtually impossible.

  “So you’ve turned up, have you?” His voice was sharp and broken at the same time. Ragged. Like he had swallowed shards of glass.

  She didn’t respond. He kept those eyes fastened on her. His expression dour. The look he gave right before he delivered a stinging backhander.

  He’d been asking for her alright. So he could torture her one final time.

  She stepped back from him, expecting the blow. Instinctively her cheek stung, and her hand reached up to her nose to check if it were bleeding. The action so terribly familiar still.

  He hadn’t hit her at all. Not this time. Not at all.

  He caught the fear in her eye and for a second, she saw him relish it. People like him enjoyed fear. They got a rush from it. It made them feel powerful.

  “Afraid of me are you, Evelyn?” he rasped.

  “No, not even close.” Never admit to fear.

  “Wouldn’t make sense to be afraid of me now. I’m a piece of toast.”