Gretchen suddenly flashed the other girl a conspiratorial smile and made a spectacularly bitchy comment about one of Ellie’s former friends. There was a pregnant pause, then Ellie gave a small snort of laughter. Gretchen sealed the deal by passing around her own cigarettes. A space was made for her on the park bench, that night and every Saturday night for the next year.
“Jesus, she’s the human equivalent of bubble bath,” Ellie whispered to Aaron one evening shortly after, but she couldn’t hide the tiny smile as she spoke. They’d all been laughing at Gretchen’s story of an older boy who’d asked her out by carving words into crops and ruined his father’s whole field in the process. Now she and Luke were deep in conversation, heads so close they were nearly touching. Gretchen gave a playful laugh and cast her eyes down as Luke murmured something Aaron didn’t catch. He turned back to Ellie.
“You and I could go somewhere else if she’s annoying you,” Aaron said. “We don’t have to hang around here.”
Ellie regarded him through a veil of smoke for a moment, then shook her head. “No. She’s OK,” she said. “Bit of an airhead. But she’s harmless.”
“Fair enough.” Aaron sighed silently and took the cigarette she offered him. He turned to light it and saw Luke slip his arm around Gretchen’s shoulders and lean in for a quick kiss. As Luke sat back, he glanced over the top of Gretchen’s head in their direction. Ellie, who was examining the lit tip of her cigarette with a faraway look in her eye, didn’t react.
It was there and gone in a flash, but Aaron saw the frown flit across his friend’s face. It occurred to him that he wasn’t the only one a little put out that the girls seemed to be getting on so well.
15
Falk leaned against the rock tree, staring down at the dusty river. The Hadlers’ place and his car were down the path to his left. To his right, the hint of a forgotten trail led away from the river and deeper into the bushland. It had all but disappeared over the past twenty years, but to Falk it was a tattoo on the landscape. He had walked it a thousand times. He stood for a long time, arguing with himself. Finally, he stepped to the right. A thousand times. Once more couldn’t hurt.
It took only a few minutes to reach the end of the trail, but when Falk emerged from the trees the sky was already a deep indigo. Across a field, a family farmhouse shone gray in the twilight. Falk cut straight over the field, like he always had. His pace slowed as he got closer, until he came to a halt about twenty meters from the building. He stared at what had been his childhood home.
The porch door that used to be yellow was now an insipid shade of blue, he noted with something like indignation. It had pockmarks where the paint was peeling. He could see flashes of yellow underneath, gaping through like fatty scars. The wooden steps where he’d sat fiddling with toys and football cards now sagged with age. Underneath, a beer can nestled in the flaxen grass.
He fought the sudden urge to pick it up and find a rubbish bin. To paint the wood. Fix the steps. Instead, he stayed where he was. The windows were all unlit but one, which glowed with a television blue.
Falk felt a sharp pang of longing for what might have been. He could see his father standing at the screen door in the evenings, a tall figure framed with the glow of light from the house. Calling him to leave his games and come in. Time for dinner, Aaron. Bath, bed. In you come, son. Time to come home. His dad rarely spoke of Aaron’s mother, but when Aaron was younger he’d like to pretend he could feel her in the house. He had run his fingers over things he knew she would have touched—the kitchen taps, the bathroom fittings, the curtains—and imagined her in the same spot.
They’d been happy there once, Falk knew. He and his father, at least. Looking at the house now, it was like a line in his life. A marker at the cusp of before and after. A surge of anger fizzed, directed at least partly at himself. He didn’t know why he’d come. He took a step back. It was just another building in need of repair. There was nothing of him or his dad left there.
He was turning to leave when the screen door screeched open. A woman stepped out, her squashy figure backlit by the television glow. Dull chestnut hair was scraped back in a limp ponytail, and her hips spilled over the top of her waistband. Her face was the purple-red of a woman whose drinking was crossing the line from social to serious. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, staring at Falk in cold-eyed silence.
“Help you, mate?” She exhaled, her eyes narrowing into slits as the smoke drifted across her face.
“No, I—” He stopped, mentally kicking himself. He should have thought of something. Some excuse for lurking outside a stranger’s door as night fell. He studied her expression. There was suspicion, but not recognition. She didn’t know who he was. That helped. He considered and rejected telling her the truth in a single moment. He could always flash the badge. He would if he had to. But Falk the cop was embarrassed to find himself there.
“Sorry,” he said. “I used to know the people who lived here.”
The woman said nothing, took another drag from the cigarette. With her spare hand she reached behind and thoughtfully plucked the seat of her shorts from between her buttocks. She never took her narrowed eyes off Falk.
“Me and my hubby are the only ones here. Been here five years. And the place was his mum’s for fifteen or so before that.”
“It’s been about that long,” Falk said. “The people before her.”
“They’re gone,” she said, with the tone of someone forced to state the obvious. She dabbed her index finger and thumb to her tongue and removed a piece of tobacco.
“I know.”
“So?”
It was a good question. Falk wasn’t sure of the answer himself. The woman twisted around at a noise from inside the house. She opened the screen door wide enough to poke her head back indoors.
“Yeah, love,” Falk heard her say. “I’m sorting it. It’s fine. No one. Go back in. No, just—go back in, will you?” The woman waited a moment then reemerged, red-faced and scowling. She turned back to Falk and stepped off the porch toward him. Stopped a few meters away.
“You’d better leave right now, if you know what’s good for you.” Her voice was quiet but hostile. “He’s had a few, and he’s not going to be happy if he has to come out here, right? We’ve got bugger all to do with any of that stuff that happened back then. Understand? Never have. His mum neither. So you can take your bloody press pass or spray paint or bag of dog shit or whatever you’re here for and piss off, all right?”
“Look, I’m sorry.” Falk took a big step back, showed her his palms. Unthreatening. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Either of you.”
“Yeah, well, you have. This is our home, right? Bought and paid for. And I’m buggered if we’re going to be harassed. It’s been twenty years. Aren’t you dickheads bored of it by now?”
“Look, fair enough. I’ll go—”