Riptides Read online

  I glare at her. ‘Jesus, Abby. I don’t want that in the Memory Box.’

  ‘It’s my memory. I’m putting it in.’

  ‘It’s always been good things before.’

  ‘You can’t vet my memories. What did you write?’

  I read my memory. ‘When I was sick, Mum sat on my bed and ran her fingers through my hair. Feeling her hand on my sweaty scalp and the cool air on my skin made me relax and feel better.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know we were going gothic this year.’

  There are noises I find comforting because they were part of the backdrop to my childhood. One of those noises is the opener to the ABC Radio news bulletins. I’ve been hearing that a lot lately; Abby and Mark keep the radio on all day in the kitchen. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be a deterrent to thieves or if they think it’s disrespectful to shut the machine off when someone’s mid-sentence.

  A cloud mass is gathering over the Arafura Sea, and the weather bureau says it’s becoming a cyclone. They say it’s nothing to worry about because it’s miles off the coast, and will hit land way up north where nobody lives. It’s an enjoyable act of displacement to listen to someone else’s drama though.

  The whirring sound that comes before every warning bulletin is playing as we sit down to dinner. I’m glad for the noise, since Dad is stubbornly silent over our meal of sausages, green salad and baked potatoes. The kids have eaten early so there are only adults at the table. We take it in turns to cheer Dad by introducing topics he’d usually find interesting. Mark mentions that it’s Friday the thirteenth and says we seem to have gotten off scot-free. Abby and I avoid one another’s gaze. I’m sure lying to a cop on Friday the thirteenth is asking for trouble.

  ‘Charlie,’ Mark says. ‘Here’s something you probably didn’t hear in Bali: colour television’s only a few months away. It’ll revolutionise the medium.’

  Dad doesn’t bat an eyelid. It’s unlike him to ignore a moment that’s begging for historical context or a meaningful quote about change. We discuss colour TV without him.

  ‘The Two Ronnies is on in an hour, if anybody’s interested,’ Abby says.

  ‘It’s goodnight from me, and it’s goodnight from him,’ Mark adds, looking to Dad for a reaction.

  When Dad doesn’t take whatever that strange bait was, I change the topic. ‘Sarah’s stoked about Christmas. You know she wants a unicorn?’

  Mark and Abby smile. I’m not sure it’ll be funny on Christmas morning.

  ‘All right, listen,’ Dad says.

  Abby’s mouth is open, the fork hovering by her chin. Mark ignores the glass he was about to lift. I let my hand drop slowly from my itchy scalp to my lap, as if a sudden movement might spook Dad back into silence.

  ‘You lot are doing my head in. The woman I love has died. I don’t give a fig about television or Christmas or anything else. As for bad luck, well I don’t know what you think qualifies if not this.’ He slides his plate away angrily. ‘You don’t seem to care.’

  ‘Dad –’ Abby starts, as Dad raises his voice and ploughs ahead.

  ‘Skye was pregnant. Pregnant with my child. Do you understand?’

  ‘Dad, you’ve told us that,’ she says. ‘And we do care.’

  ‘She has a son.’

  ‘No,’ Abby whispers.

  ‘That’s the “him” you were talking about? The guy?’ I say.

  ‘She has a child?’ Mark says. ‘You do mean a living boy, not that she was pregnant with –’

  Dad nods brusquely. ‘Yes, a living boy. Beau, five years old.’

  Mark folds his arms on the table. ‘Where is he, John?’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Saturday 14 December 1974

  Abby

  I wake early, again. My brain has spent hours with the same wild and raggedy thoughts, like a greyhound chasing a track rabbit. I wake terrified.

  As quietly as I can, I leave the bedroom and pad through the house, moving couch cushions back to where they should be, straightening the tea towel that hangs from the oven door, rearranging the photos on the kitchen sideboard.

  I check on the twins then go to Sarah’s room, lift the mosquito netting that drapes her bed and sit inside her little cocoon, cross-legged near the footboard. I smile at her uninhibited sprawl, her parted lips, her halo of hair, the Holly Hobbie bedspread she so badly wanted.

  Skye had a son. I wonder if the boy knows his mother is dead. I wonder, like Mark does, where he is. Dad stormed off to his room after dropping his bombshell, unwilling to offer any more information.

  There’d been no sign that any child other than my own had ever been at the farm – no drawings, no toys. Perhaps she’d put him up for adoption as a baby. Or into an institution. Is that what Dad wanted to tell us that weekend – that he was engaged to a pregnant woman with a damaged son? Perhaps the woman drove off the road intentionally, because she couldn’t stand the grief of it. Maybe Charlie didn’t cause the accident at all. I can almost see my thoughts bouncing off the walls. I really need sleep.

  Sarah rolls over, further twisting her nightie around her, as though she’s wringing herself out. I tug the fabric, to smooth it, where it stretches across her hip. I catch myself thinking it might not be bad were she to wake up and steal me from my thoughts.

  A warm wind pushes between the pink cotton curtains. They lift and drop, as graceful as a dancer taking a bow. Through the gap, softened by a veil of netting, I see a full moon. Frogs croak beneath the window.

  I walk back to my own bed then lie on my side, close to Mark, and silently chant, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  Before sunrise, I slide out of bed as quietly as I can, find shorts, a t-shirt, sandals. I need to be out of the house, to think and also to not think. I leave Mark a note on the kitchen bench saying that Woof was whining for a walk and I’ll be back soon. In the living room, I pat Woof to wake him, try to coax him off the couch using increasingly dramatic expressions and gestures to indicate to him how exciting it will be to leave his comfy spot and come outside. He lifts his eyebrows, then lets his lids drop closed again. ‘Come on,’ I whisper. I push him close enough to the edge that gravity does the rest of my job. He jumps back up on the couch. I push him down again, more easily this time, and he gives in.

  Once we’re outside, Woof peps up. We walk down the street in the early light. The air holds a hint of tea-tree and the coming day’s warmth. Magpies offer warbles and trills. We walk, Woof in front of me, his rump swaying in a slow wag, down the hill to the side of the playing field where large rocks make a bridge across the creek.

  Woof plods through the mud into the creek, snout down. He regards the trickle of water with curiosity then laps at it. I stand and watch him, and the gentle flow, until he jerks his head back. His wag quickens. He’s seen something that excites him. He makes a low growl that I know will end in a string of barks. He prances on the spot. A cluster of brown tadpoles wriggles downstream. Woof fixes his eyes on them, makes two, three short barks until I cut him off. ‘Woof!’ I click my fingers for added effect. He looks at me and appears to instantly forget about the tadpoles. What bliss such a short memory must be.

  I make my way across the rocks to the other side of the creek and Woof plods through the water, eyes up now in search of fun, until we’re both standing on the edge of the field.

  Woof runs off because he can, because the field is large and wide and empty. I wander to the closest tree, a towering ghost gum that appears to glow pink and cream in the dawn light. I touch the trunk. Long strips of grey bark are peeling off, draped and drooping like swathes of fabric. As I stand with the tree, the sun rises and elbows the darkness to the fringes.

  How will I be able to stand in a courtroom and fight for justice after what I’ve done? So many indefensible choices. I’ve turned my back on everything I value, on life itself.

  As Woof and I lope back to the house, I go over the encounter with Sergeant Doyle, trying to figure ou
t what information he could have gleaned from our inconsistent responses. I think about why he’d been interested in how Dad met Skye and in her life before that. Perhaps he’s exploring whether someone who knew her forced her off the road, or whether someone from her past had been in the car. Maybe there’s something about Skye that the sergeant knows and Dad doesn’t. Or something they both know. Who was this woman before she met my father?

  I’d forgotten we were going to dinner at Jim and Karen’s this evening. Jim is a uni friend of Mark’s, a robust, athletic man with a booming voice and strong opinions on politics, movies and architecture, especially the architecture for which he is responsible. His wife, Karen, is thin, stylish and of impeccable pedigree. When she’s given the space to speak, Karen is articulate and erudite, but in the presence of her husband she is most often silent.

  I have no wish to sit at their table tonight and listen to Jim wax lyrical about Mark’s attributes and achievements. I have no wish to hear him tell me, again, what a lucky woman I am to have caught Mark. And the thought of playing audience with Karen, fighting to inject myself into the men’s conversation, makes me slump.

  ‘I barely slept – my head’s all over the place,’ I say to Mark. ‘If you hadn’t pointed this out –’ I gesture towards the label that indicates I’ve put my t-shirt on inside out.

  ‘You would’ve noticed sooner or later. And that’s not a reason to cancel dinner. Why can’t you sleep anyway? Kids were good last night.’

  I take my shirt off, move it about like seaweed in a wave, and put it back on so the label is where it should be.

  ‘I don’t know. Dad, Christmas, Charlie. Is that enough?’

  ‘Glad I didn’t hear my name in that list.’ He walks to the end of the bed and gives me a kiss. ‘I won’t be too long.’

  It’s strange and unexpected that he’s become so handy in the past year. I’m not sure what sparked it, but the kids are going to help him build a cubbyhouse and that, evidently, involves many runs to the hardware store.

  We walk down the hallway, and at the point where we’d take different directions – left and down to the front door, right to the kitchen – he groans. ‘Jojo,’ he says, then steps aside so I can see. Joanne is standing next to Woof and holding a bottle of red food colouring in her alarmingly stained fingers. Woof, mercifully lying on the tiles, a foot away from the carpet, is covered with red blotches.

  ‘Leopard,’ Joanne says.

  ‘Ah,’ I reply, thinking that at least she’d remembered something from the documentary on Africa we watched last night.

  ‘Do you want me to –?’ Mark begins.

  ‘No, I’ll do it,’ I say.

  Only last week, a visiting plumber had commented on Woof’s thick golden coat. And his gait. ‘You could train him up to show standard,’ he’d said. ‘Still young.’ I’d told him I had no time for a hobby, though I was sure Woof appreciated his compliment. The plumber had seemed more offended that I thought showing dogs was a hobby than I was at his suggestion that a mother of three had time for training a dog.

  ‘Can I have a hand with the sheets?’

  ‘After the news,’ Mark calls back.

  By the time he shows up, I’ve stripped the twins’ beds and ours, and am tucking a clean sheet under Joanne’s mattress.

  ‘Had to call Geoff,’ he says, picking the pile of discarded sheets off the floor. ‘This is the big one, Abby. This cyclone’s stronger than Wanda. Geoff’s putting the Bureau’s advice out as often as he can get airtime, but none of the other networks are picking up on it.’

  I walk to our bedroom and he follows me, throwing the twins’ bedding in the laundry basket, obsessing about the weather as I unfurl a fitted sheet and let it drop onto our mattress like a massive shower cap. I point to the corner of the bed.

  ‘It’s making its way to the coast. Geoff’s been telling them for days, it’s building up to hammer them, and we’re sitting here doing nothing.’

  ‘Who’s them?’

  ‘Darwin.’

  ‘Darwin? How many people live there? Anyway, the world can’t jump whenever Geoff has a panic attack.’

  I shake the top sheet so it billows out. Mark grabs one edge and pulls it down.

  ‘Abby, he knew how bad the flood would be before anybody else did, remember?’

  ‘Would you tuck the ends in?’ I check his handiwork. ‘What’s the point of saying you’ll help and doing such a bad job I have to do it over again?’

  ‘No point, Abby. None at all.’ He stares at me, hands on his hips. ‘You know, if you want to be a good lawyer you need to be ready for what’s coming, you need to pre-empt it.’

  ‘I’m ready. I’m the one who makes sure there’s food for dinner, clothes to wear, candles for blackouts.’

  ‘I meant you need to think about what’s happening outside the walls of this house.’

  I wish I could tell him it’s not that simple, that the air from outside flows through this house, poisoning it, that I think about what’s coming all the time. The wave that’s heading our way grows bigger every day – because, despite what I say to Charlie, I know that no secret stays locked away forever, no matter how hard you try.

  I wear my most fashionable outfit to dinner: a pantsuit with stripes of ginger, yellow and maroon, and a white shell top. The swoosh of the wide legs as I walk usually makes me feel peppy, but it’s not enough to lift my mood tonight. Before Karen has served the prawn cocktails, my jaw is clench-sore.

  Mark adores Jim and Karen, and they adore Mark. And there is my problem. Jim is enthusiastically vocal about the things he finds impressive, and I am not one of them. I’m not famous or accomplished, have no unusual skills or knowledge. Mark, however, impresses him. And he’s on TV. In the glow of their approval, he shines even brighter, while I shrink back, small as a mouse, furious as a lion.

  The first time I met Jim, before he knew Karen, one warm afternoon on the downstairs veranda of the Regatta Hotel, I stood and listened while he and Mark talked about Keynes, whose writing they were both studying at uni. I knew nothing about Keynes. For the first few minutes I smiled, tipped my head this way and that, tried to steer the topic towards something I might join in with, to no avail. I’d watched the boats on the river, the traffic on Coronation Drive, gone to the bathroom, fetched another round of drinks and still – still! – they discussed Keynes. Jim was oblivious to my discomfort, but he didn’t matter to me. I’d hoped I’d never see him again. But Mark, who’d been attentive right until Jim had arrived – how was he not noticing how comprehensively they’d excluded me with their arcane topic, their precocious debate? When we’d finally parted company, and I found myself alone with Mark on the footpath, waiting for a taxi, I was livid. Without the right words to explain why.

  Some version of that encounter played out every time we met Jim, and none of my efforts at changing the dynamic had made a scrap of difference. In fact, now that there was another woman involved, even the most cursory attempt at inclusion vanished. Both Jim and Mark seemed relieved to be able to sink into the velvety depths of whatever subject they settled on, knowing the women had one another.

  Tonight, though, is the first time we’ve seen Jim and Karen since I decided to go back to uni. Tonight, I have a chance at impressing Jim and letting him see the relaxed, confident me.

  But the evening takes its usual path without me finding an opening. Jim talks about himself, his work, Mark, Mark’s work, the glory of them separately and the glory of them together.

  ‘And blow me if he didn’t say yes,’ Jim roars.

  ‘We had him in a corner,’ Mark says with a smile. ‘He couldn’t deny it anymore.’

  Jim hits the table in glee, making his plate jump. ‘Classic. Incredible piece of reporting. Four Corners should be showering you with gratitude – booze and broads. No offence, Abby.’

  They relax back, spent, at the end of each anecdote, and guzzle beer while Karen and I bring out food, fill glasses, and talk about the smalls of life.r />
  Mark tells Jim he’s investigating where the traffickers are getting their drugs. ‘Every illegal club, brothel and gambling joint is selling dope. Every legal club is selling it. And the police are turning a blind eye, must be getting kickbacks. But I want to know where it’s coming from.’

  Jim nods energetically. ‘Exactly, mate. Where’s it coming from?’

  In the kitchen, while Karen is scraping steak bones into the bin, I say, ‘It’s like being Alice in Wonderland, isn’t it? Your Mogs can be the Cheshire Cat.’ I point to Karen’s tawny cat, who is rubbing himself against her legs. ‘All this talk of blood and slaying has put me off my tea.’

  Karen straightens up. ‘They put you off your food?’

  ‘It’s from the story.’

  She frowns slightly and counts out four dessert plates and spoons. ‘I made a pavlova.’

  ‘Of course you did.’

  She winces, confused by my words, by me.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be delicious,’ I say. ‘I wish I could cook even half as well as you do.’

  By way of apology, I compliment her remodelled kitchen with its orange cupboard doors and gumleaf-patterned tiles.

  ‘Finally made use of my engineering degree.’ She looks around the room and smiles. ‘It felt good.’

  ‘You have an engineering –’

  ‘Melbourne Uni. Can you bring the plates?’

  Karen carries the pavlova into the dining room as though it were a crown on a cushion and places it in front of Jim.

  ‘What’s this then?’ he says, one hand squeezing her bum through her skirt.

  He and Mark marvel over Karen’s culinary skills then return to their conversation. Jim is prodding Mark to share insider information about how he’d managed to get one of the watch-house staff who’d been in the room with John Stuart to talk about the faked confession, how the TV voice-disguise works so you can’t tell who it is, what’s likely to happen next, and shushes Karen when she raises the serving spoon and asks if anyone would like more dessert.