chapter forty-seven
‘There’s no butter,’ announced Isabel. ‘No margarine either.’
She turned from the fridge and looked at her mother expectantly.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Cecilia. How could that have happened? She never forgot a staple. Her system was foolproof. Her refrigerator and pantry were always perfectly stocked. Sometimes John-Paul rang on his way home and asked if she needed him to ‘pick up milk or anything’ and she’d always reply, ‘Uh, no?’
‘But aren’t we having hot cross buns?’ said Esther. ‘We always have hot cross buns for breakfast on Good Friday.’
‘We can still have them,’ said John-Paul. He brushed his fingers automatically across Cecilia’s lower back as he walked past her to the kitchen table. ‘Your mother’s hot cross buns are so good they don’t need butter.’
Cecilia watched him. He was pale and a little shaky, as if he was recovering from the flu, and he seemed in a tremulous, tender mood.
She found herself waiting for something to happen – the shrill ring of the phone, a heavy knock on the door – but the day continued to be cloaked in soft safe silence. Nothing would happen on a Good Friday. Good Friday was in its own protective little bubble.
‘We always have our hot cross buns with lots and lots of butter,’ said Polly, who was sitting at the kitchen table in her pink flannelette pyjamas, her black hair rumpled, her cheeks flushed with sleep. ‘It’s a family tradition. Just go to the shop, Mum, and get some butter.’
‘Don’t speak to your mother like that. She’s not your slave,’ said John-Paul, at the same time as Esther glanced up from her library book and said, ‘The shops are closed, stupid.’
‘Whatever,’ sighed Isabel. ‘I’m going to go Skype with –’
‘No you’re not,’ said Cecilia. ‘We’re all going to eat some porridge, and then we’re all going to walk up to the school oval.’
‘Walk?’ said Polly disdainfully.
‘Yes, walk. It’s turned into a beautiful day. Or ride your bikes. We’ll take the soccer ball.’
‘I’m on Dad’s team,’ said Isabel.
‘And then on the way back we’ll stop by at the BP service station and pick up some butter, and we’ll have hot cross buns when we get home.’
‘Perfect,’ said John-Paul. ‘That sounds perfect.’
‘Did you know that some people wish the Berlin Wall never come down?’ said Esther. ‘That’s weird, isn’t it? Why would you want to be stuck behind a wall?’
‘Well, that was lovely, but I really should go,’ said Rachel. She placed her mug back down on the coffee table. Her duty was done. She shifted herself forward and took a breath. It was another one of those impossibly low couches. Could she stand up on her own? Lauren would get there first if she saw she was having difficulty. Rob was always just a moment too late.
‘What are you doing for the rest of the day?’ asked Lauren.
‘I’ll just potter about,’ said Rachel. I’ll just count the minutes. She held out a hand to Rob. ‘Give me a hand will you, love?’
As Rob went to help her, Jacob toddled over with a framed photo he’d picked up from the bookcase and brought it over to Rachel. ‘Daddy,’ he said, pointing.
‘That’s right,’ said Rachel. It was a photo of Rob and Janie on a camping holiday they’d taken on the south coast the year before Janie died. They were standing in front of a tent, and Rob was holding his fingers up like rabbit ears behind Janie’s head. Why did children insist on doing that?
Rob came and stood next to them and pointed at his sister. ‘And who’s that, buddy?’
‘Auntie Janie,’ said Jacob clearly.
Rachel caught her breath. She’d never heard him say ‘Auntie Janie’ before, although she and Rob had been pointing her out in photos to him since he was a tiny baby.
‘Clever boy.’ She ruffled his hair. ‘Your Aunt Janie would have loved you.’
Although, in truth, Janie had never been particularly interested in children. She’d preferred constructing cities with Rob’s Lego to playing with dolls.
Jacob gave her a cynical look, as if he knew this, and wandered off with the photo frame swinging precariously between his fingertips. Rachel put her hand in Rob’s and he helped her to her feet.
‘Well, thank you so much, Lauren –’ she began, and was disconcerted to see that Lauren was staring at the floor with a fixed expression, as if she was pretending not to be there.
‘Sorry,’ she gave them a watery smile. ‘It was just hearing Jacob say “Auntie Janie” for the first time. I don’t know how you get through this day, Rachel, every year, I really don’t. I just wish I could do something.’
You could not take my grandson to New York, thought Rachel. You could stay here and have another baby. But she just smiled politely and said, ‘Thank you, darling. I’m perfectly all right.’
Lauren stood. ‘I wish I’d known her. My sister-in-law. I always wanted a sister.’ Her face was pink and soft. Rachel looked away. She couldn’t bear it. She didn’t want to see evidence of Lauren’s vulnerability.
‘I’m sure she would have loved you.’ Rachel sounded perfunctory, even to her own ears that she coughed, embarrassed. ‘Well. I’ll be off. Thank you for coming to the park with me today. It meant a lot to me. I’ll look forward to seeing you on Sunday. At your parents’ house!’
She tried her best to inject some enthusiasm into her voice, but Lauren had closed her face back up and recovered her poise.
‘Lovely,’ she said coolly, and leaned forward to brush her lips against her cheek. ‘By the way, Rachel, Rob said he told you to bring a pavlova, but that’s really not necessary.’
‘It’s no trouble at all, Lauren,’ said Rachel.
She thought she heard Rob sigh.
‘So, now Will is going to make an appearance?’ Lucy leaned heavily on Tess’s arm as they stood on the front porch watching Felicity’s taxi turn the corner at the end of the street. Liam had disappeared inside somewhere. ‘This is like a play. Evil mistress exits stage right. Enter chastened husband.’
‘She’s not really an evil mistress,’ said Tess. ‘She said she’s been in love with him for years.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Lucy. ‘Silly girl. Plenty of fish in the sea! Why must she want your fish?’
‘He’s a pretty good fish, I guess.’
‘Do I take it you forgive him then?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if I can. I feel like he’s only choosing me because of Liam. I feel like he’s settling for me. For second best.’
The thought of seeing Will filled her with almost unbearable confusion. Would she cry? Yell? Fall into his arms? Slap him across the face? Offer him a hot cross bun? He loved hot cross buns. Obviously he didn’t deserve one. ‘You’re not getting a bun, babe.’ That was the thing. It was just Will. It was impossible to imagine how she’d maintain the level of drama and gravitas the situation required. Especially with Liam there. But then again, he wasn’t Will, because the real Will would never have allowed this to happen. So this was a stranger.
Her mother studied her. Tess waited for a wise, loving comment.
‘I assume you’re not going to see him in those raggedy old pyjamas are you, darling? And you are going to give your hair a good brush, I hope?’
Tess rolled her eyes. ‘He’s my husband. He knows what I look like first thing in the morning. And if he’s that superficial, then I don’t want him.’
‘Yes, you’re right of course,’ said Lucy. She tapped her lower lip. ‘Gosh, Felicity was looking particularly lovely today, wasn’t she?’
Tess laughed. Maybe she would feel more resilient if she was dressed. ‘Fine, Mum, I’ll go put a ribbon in my hair and pinch my cheeks. Come on, cripple, I don’t know why you had to come outside to see her off.’
‘I didn’t want to miss any of the action.’
‘They never did sleep together, you know,’ whispered Tess as she held the screen door with one hand and her mother’s elbow with the other.
‘Seriously?’ said Lucy. ‘How peculiar. In my day infidelity was a much raunchier affair.’
‘I’m ready!’ Liam came running down the hallway.
‘For what?’ said Tess.
‘To go fly a kite with that teacher. Mr Whatby or whatever his name is.’
‘Connor,’ breathed Tess, and nearly lost hold of her mother. ‘Shit. What time is it? I’d forgotten.’
Rachel’s mobile rang just as she got to the end of Rob and Lauren’s street. She pulled the car over to answer it. It was probably Marla, ringing for Janie’s anniversary. Rachel was happy to talk to her. She felt like complaining about Lauren’s perfectly toasted hot cross buns.
‘Mrs Crowley?’ It wasn’t Marla. It was a woman’s voice. She sounded like a snooty doctor’s receptionist: nasal and self-important. ‘This is Detective-Sergeant Strout from the Homicide Squad. I meant to call you last night, but I ran out of time, so I thought I would try and catch you this morning.’
Rachel’s heart leapt. The video. She was calling on a Good Friday. A public holiday. It had to be good news.
‘Hello,’ she said warmly. ‘Thank you for calling.’
‘Well. I wanted to let you know that we received the video from Sergeant Bellach and we have, er, reviewed it.’ Detective-Sergeant Strout was younger than she first sounded. She was putting on her best professional voice for the call. ‘Mrs Crowley, I understand you may have had high expectations, that you even thought this might have been something of a breakthrough. So I’m sorry if this is disappointing news, but I have to tell you that at this stage we won’t be questioning Connor Whitby again. We don’t think the video justifies it.’
‘But it’s his motive,’ said Rachel desperately. She looked through the car windscreen at a magnificent gold-leafed tree soaring up to the sky. ‘Can’t you see that?’ She watched a single gold leaf detach itself and begin to fall, circling rapidly through the air.
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Crowley. At this stage there’s really nothing further we can do.’ There was sympathy there, yes, but Rachel could also hear a young professional’s condescension towards an elderly layperson. The victim’s mother. Obviously far too emotional to be objective. Didn’t understand police procedure. Part of the job to try and soothe her.
Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. The leaf vanished from sight.
‘If you’d like me to come around and talk to you after the Easter break,’ said Detective-Sergeant Strout, ‘I’d be happy to make a time that suits.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Rachel icily. ‘Thank you for the call.’
She hung up and threw the phone so that it landed on the floor in front of the passenger seat.
‘Useless, patronising, miserable little . . .’ Her throat closed up. She turned the keys in the ignition.
‘Look at that man’s kite!’ said Isabel.
Cecilia looked up to see a man on the crest of the hill carrying an enormous kite in the shape of a tropical fish. He was letting it bob about behind him like a balloon.
‘It’s like he’s taking his fish for a walk,’ huffed John-Paul. He was leaned over almost double, pushing Polly on her bike, because she’d just complained that her legs had turned to jelly. Polly was sitting upright, wearing a glittery pink helmet and plastic rock-star sunglasses with star-shaped lenses. As Cecilia watched she leaned forward to drink cordial from the purple water bottle she’d packed for herself in the white mesh basket.
‘Fish can’t walk,’ said Esther without looking up from her book. She had a remarkable ability to walk and read at the same time.
‘You could at least pedal a bit, Princess Polly,’ said Cecilia.
‘My legs still feel like jelly,’ said Polly delicately.
John-Paul grinned at Cecilia. ‘It’s okay. Good workout for me.’
Cecilia breathed in deeply. There was something comical and wonderful about the sight of the fish-shaped kite swimming jauntily through the air behind the man in front of them. The air smelled sweet. The sun was warm on her back. Isabel was pulling tiny yellow dandelions from hedges and sticking them in between the strands of Esther’s plait. It reminded Cecilia of something. A book or a movie from her childhood. Something to do with a little girl who lived in the mountains and wore flowers in her braid. Heidi?
‘Beautiful day!’ called out a man who was sitting on his front porch drinking tea. Cecilia knew his face vaguely from church.
‘Gorgeous!’ she called back warmly.
The man ahead of them with the kite stopped. He pulled a phone from his pocket and held it to his ear.
‘That’s not a man.’ Polly straightened. ‘That’s Mr Whitby!’
Rachel drove robotically towards home, trying to keep her mind completely empty of thoughts.
She stopped at a red light and looked at the time on the dashboard clock. It was ten o’clock. At this time twenty-eight years ago, Janie would have been at school and Rachel was probably ironing her dress for her appointment with Toby Murphy. The bloody dress that Marla had convinced her to buy because it showed off her legs.
Just seven minutes late. It probably made no difference. She would never know.
‘We won’t be taking any further action.’ She heard again the prim voice of Detective-Sergeant Strout. She saw Connor Whitby’s frozen face when she paused the video. She thought of the unmistakable guilt in his eyes.
He did it.
She screamed. An ugly, blood-curdling scream that reverberated around the car. She beat her fists just once on the steering wheel. It both frightened and embarrassed her.
The lights changed. She put her foot on the accelerator. Was today the worst anniversary yet, or was it always this bad? It was probably always this bad. It was so easy to forget how bad things were. Like winter. Like the flu. Like childbirth.
She could feel the sun on her face. It was a beautiful day, like the day Janie died. The streets were deserted. Nobody appeared to be about. What did people do on Good Friday?
Rachel’s mother used to do the Stations of the Cross. Would Janie have stayed a Catholic? Probably not.
Don’t think about the woman Janie would have been.
Think nothing. Think nothing. Think nothing.
When they took Jacob to New York, there would be nothing. It would be like death. Every day would feel as bad as this. Don’t think about Jacob either.
Her eyes followed a squall of fluttering red leaves like tiny frantic birds.
Marla said she always thought of Janie whenever she saw a rainbow. And Rachel said, ‘Why?’
The empty road unfurled in front of her and the sun brightened. She squinted and lowered the sun visor. She always forgot her sunglasses.
There was somebody out and about after all.
She grabbed hold of the distraction. It was a man. He was standing on the sidewalk holding a brightly coloured balloon. It looked like a fish. Like the fish in Finding Nemo. Jacob would love that balloon.
The man was talking on a mobile phone, looking up at his balloon.
It wasn’t a balloon. It was a kite.
‘I’m sorry. We can’t meet you after all,’ said Tess.
‘That’s all right,’ said Connor. ‘Another time.’ The reception was crystal clear. She could hear the very weight and timbre of his voice, deeper than in person, a bit gravelly. She pressed the phone to her ear, as if she could wrap his voice around her.
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Standing on a footpath carrying a fish kite.’
She felt a flood of regret, and also plain, childlike disappointment, as if she’d missed a birthday party because of a piano lesson. She wanted to sleep with him one more time. She didn’t want to sit in her mother’s chilly house having a complicated, painful conversation with her husband. She wanted to run around her old school oval in the sunshine with a fish kite. She wanted to be falling in love, not trying to fix a broken relationship. She wanted to be someone’s first choice, not their second.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
‘You don’t need to be sorry.’
There was a pause.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘My husband is on his way here.’
‘Ah.’
‘Apparently he and Felicity are over before it’s even begun.’
‘So I guess we are too.’ He didn’t make it sound like a question.
She could see Liam playing in the front garden. She’d told him that Will was on his way. He was racing back and forth across the yard, tipping first the hedge and then the fence, as if he was in training for some life and death event.
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s just that, with Liam, you see, I have to at least try. At least give it a go.’ She thought of Will and Felicity sitting on the plane from Melbourne, hands gripped, faces stoic. For f*ck’s sake.
‘Of course you do.’ He sounded so warm and lovely. ‘You don’t need to explain.’
‘I should never have –’
‘Please don’t regret it.’
‘Okay.’
‘Tell him if he treats you bad again, I’ll break his knees.’
‘Yes.’
‘Seriously, Tess. Don’t give him any more chances.’
‘No.’
‘And if things don’t work out. Well. You know. Keep my application on file.’
‘Connor, someone will –’
‘Don’t do that,’ he said sharply. He tried to soften his voice. ‘No worries. I told you, I’ve got chicks lining the streets for me.’
She laughed.
‘I should let you go,’ he said, ‘if this bloke of yours is on his way.’
She could hear his disappointment so clearly now. It made him sound abrupt, almost aggressive, and part of her wanted to keep him on the line, to flirt with him, to make sure that the last thing he said was gentle and sexy, and then she could be the one to put an end to the conversation, so that she could file these last few days away in her memory under the category that suited her. (What was that category? ‘Fun flings where nobody got hurt’?)
But he was entitled to be abrupt, and she’d already exploited him enough.
‘Okay. Well. Bye.’
‘Bye, Tess. Take care.’
‘Mr Whitby!’ shouted Polly.
‘Oh, my god. Mum, make her stop!’ Isabel lowered her head and hid her eyes.
‘Mr Whitby!’ screeched Polly.
‘He’s too far away to hear you,’ sighed Isabel.
‘Darling, leave him alone. He’s talking on the phone,’ said Cecilia.
‘Mr Whitby! It’s me! Hello! Hello!’
‘It’s out of his work hours,’ commented Esther. ‘He’s not obliged to talk to you.’
‘He likes talking to me!’ Polly grabbed hold of her handlebars and pedalled away from her father’s grasp, her wheels wobbling precariously along the footpath. ‘Mr Whitby!’
‘Looks like her legs have recovered.’ John-Paul massaged his lower back.
‘Poor man,’ said Cecilia. ‘Enjoying his Good Friday and he’s accosted by a student.’
‘I guess it’s an occupational hazard if he chooses to live in the same area,’ said John-Paul.
‘Mr Whitby!’ Polly gained ground. Her legs pumped. Her pink wheels spun.
‘At least she’s getting some exercise,’ said John-Paul.
‘This is so embarrassing,’ said Isabel. She hung back and kicked at someone’s fence. ‘I’m waiting here.’
Cecilia stopped and looked back at her. ‘Come on. We’re not going to let her bother him for long. Stop kicking that fence.’
‘Why are you embarrassed, Isabel?’ asked Esther. ‘Are you in love with Mr Whitby too?’
‘No, I am not! Don’t be disgusting!’ Isabel turned purple. John-Paul and Cecilia exchanged looks.
‘Why is this guy so special anyway?’ asked John-Paul. He nudged Cecilia. ‘Are you in love with him too?’
‘Mothers can’t be in love,’ said Esther. ‘They’re too old.’
‘Thanks very much,’ said Cecilia. ‘Come on, Isabel.’
She turned to look back at Polly, just as Connor Whitby stepped off the footpath and onto the road, the kite floating above him.
Polly swung her bike down a steep driveway towards the road.
‘Polly!’ Cecilia called, at the same time as John-Paul yelled, ‘Stop right there, Polly!’