‘With Daddy?’
A beat goes by. I was imagining Felix and I somehow escaping to a cosy cabin, or perhaps a stormy beach house, with Ben in tow. Away from the heat and the rest of the world. Ridiculous. He has three teenage daughters, and a wife for good measure. Plus, he’s not even talking to me right now. Our life together is a fantasy, one that I need to put a lid on. ‘Sure, Daddy will come.’
‘I like holidays.’
‘Good. Maybe we’ll go somewhere cold. That might be nice, huh?’
‘Like snow?’
‘Well, maybe not snow.’
Paris, England, Vancouver. All these places that I was supposed to see but haven’t. My mother used to tell me about skiing: the feeling of trusting your feet, the feeling of flying. I look at Ben and imagine his tiny body whipping down a mountain. I imagine all the things he will do, far, far away from Smithson. And suddenly there’s a lump in my throat and I’m jumping back to my feet, wiping my soles on the grass.
‘Look at you. You’re like a little vampire.’ I yank some Wet Ones from my bag and dab the berry juice off Ben’s mouth. He squeals and squirms away.
After the blueberries are gone and the strawberries are nothing more than green, tuft-like weeds, we go for a walk. Ben wants to pick flowers. We assemble a ragged-looking posy of wildflowers and bracken that is appealing in a home-cooked kind of way.
‘Look at this!’ I fasten them together with a hair tie. ‘They’re beautiful, Ben. Should we take them home and put them in a vase?’
‘I want to give them to Daddy.’
I block out the sun with my hand. I can’t seem to get away from it.
‘That’s a nice idea. He’ll love them.’
The cicada chorus kicks up a notch. Shrill, the noise bores into the air as I help Ben into the car and start down the mountain, along the familiar curves, back into Smithson.
Chapter Sixty-five
Thursday, 31 December, 8.24 am
Candy’s article details everything: from the time of Ben’s kidnapping to him being found in our backyard a few hours later. The kidnapper is described as a middle-aged woman who claimed to be Ben’s grandmother. There’s even a quote from Madeleine at the day-care centre and a reference to a piece of evidence linked strongly to the Rosalind Ryan murder case.
Propelled into Jonesy’s office by a force beyond my control, I’m in such a rage I can’t even feel my face.
‘What the fuck is this?’ I throw the paper onto his desk.
He looks up at me and I can tell he’s already seen it.
I read from the paper, ‘“The question that we should really be asking ourselves is whether or not Detective Woodstock should keep working on this case. It seems impossible for her to remain impartial now that there is such a clear threat to her family.” I mean, what is this? Do we have a leak?’
Jonesy pushes his chair away from his desk and stands up. He looks tired and old. A stain on his shirt sneaks out from behind his jacket.
My phone is going ballistic in my pocket. I don’t even want to look at it. Scott, my dad, Aunt Megan. Everyone will be wanting something from me. Blaming me. How could I let this happen to my son?
‘Do you need to get that?’ Jonesy says, jerking his head towards my buzzing pocket.
‘No. What I need to be doing is getting on with my job. But that seems kind of fucking impossible right now, doesn’t it?’
I spin on my heel and storm out, leaving an open-mouthed Jonesy in my wake.
I spend the next few hours brooding around the station like a thunder cloud. My fists clench involuntarily and I manage to drop a full cup of takeaway coffee on my shoes. I want to kill Candy, watch her eyes bug out of her head as I strangle her, but somehow I refrain from calling her office. Honestly, I’m mainly afraid of what I might say.
Scott is looking after Ben today. He’s not working again until mid-January. Everyone else from the worksite has gone away for summer. It’s only us who have nowhere to go. I don’t call him; I just can’t deal with it right now.
In the end I’m sick of my own company and I call Dad back, pacing manically in front of the park bench behind the station, listening as he wonders how this could have happened and how I could have kept it from him. His voice is rough-edged, the anger unfamiliar and sharp.
‘Gemma, help me understand why you didn’t tell me about this.’ ‘Dad, I’m working a murder case. I know you don’t really understand what that means but there is procedure. I can’t tell you everything. Does that make sense?’ I choke back a sob. ‘Plus, we didn’t want to upset you.’
Dad doesn’t speak for a moment. At last he says, ‘Gemma, I understand how important your job is, but this is about our Ben—not some fact about a clue.’
‘He’s not “our Ben”, he’s mine!’ I click the phone off and shove it in my pocket, which is nowhere near as satisfying as throwing it on the ground like I want to do. Instead, I try to calm down, watching as a blowfly stuck in the sticky strands of a web tries desperately to break free, its tormented buzzing loud in my ears.
Chapter Sixty-six
Thursday, 31 December, 2.37 pm
I get into a patrol car and head to Gowran. My argument with Dad has upset me and I grip the wheel and grit through tears that I refuse to unleash. I haven’t told Jonesy where I’m going, which is not the smartest idea, but I simply can’t deal with having to explain myself right now. For the briefest moment I wonder what Felix is doing, but that line of thinking will get me even more worked up than I am already, so I focus on driving, staring at the reliable horizon and taking the kind of deep breaths that I was taught the one time I tried meditation. Paddocks flick past with cows huddled around the fence posts. Rows and rows of fruit trees reach up to the sun.
The drive takes about an hour, and by the time I arrive I’m feeling anxious and remember why I never went back to that meditation class.