At the very bottom of the backpack was another item, wrapped twenty years ago in a raincoat to protect it as she packed. He took it out and held it in his hands for a long while. It was tattered and curled around the edges, but the writing beneath the hard-backed cover was there to read, in black and white. Ellie Deacon’s diary.
He called her by her mum’s name the first time he hit her. She could see in her dad’s cloudy eyes that the word had just slid out, as slippery as oil, as his fist slammed into her shoulder. He was drunk, and she was fourteen, with looks that were on the turn from child to woman. Her mum’s photo had long been removed from the mantelpiece, but the woman’s distinctive features were returning to the farmhouse each day as Ellie Deacon grew older.
He hit her once, then after a long while it happened again. Then again. And again. She tried watering down the booze. Her father realized from his first sip, and she never made that mistake again. At home she wore tops that showed her bruises, but her cousin Grant just turned on the TV and told her to stop winding up her old man. Her schoolwork deteriorated. If the teachers noticed, it was with a sharp comment about her lack of attention. They never asked why.
Ellie began to speak less and discover more what both her parents liked so much about bringing a bottle to their lips. The girls she thought were friends looked at her strangely and whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear. They had enough problems of their own, with their skin and weight and boys, without Ellie making them look even more out of place. A few teenage tactical moves later and Ellie found herself out in the cold.
She’d been on her own in Centenary Park on a Saturday night with a bottle in her bag and nowhere else to be when she’d heard the two familiar figures laughing in low voices from the bench. Aaron and Luke. Ellie Deacon felt a flutter, like finding something she’d forgotten but once held close.
It took them all a little getting used to. The boys looked at her like they had never seen her before. But she liked it. Having two people in her life doing as she said rather than telling her what to do suited her fine.
When they were much younger, she had preferred Luke’s exhilaration and bravado, but now she found herself more drawn to Aaron’s subtle thoughtfulness. Luke was nothing like her dad and cousin, she knew that, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that hidden deep in his fabric there was a small part of him not completely unlike them either. It was almost a relief when Gretchen turned his head at least part of the way with her radiant siren call.
For a while it was good. More time with her friends meant less time at home. She got a part-time job and learned the hard way to hide her money from her cash-strapped dad and cousin.
She was happier, but it made her careless and cocky around her dad. It wasn’t long before her sixteen-year-old face, with a smart mouth shaped so much like her mother’s, was forced against a couch cushion until she thought she would pass out.
A month later, a filthy tea towel was pulled across her nose and mouth while she clawed at her dad’s hands. When at last he let go, her frantic first intake of air smelled like the booze on his breath. That was the day Ellie Deacon stopped drinking. Because that was the day she decided she would run. Not immediately, and not from one bad situation to something worse. But soon. And for that, she would need a clear head. Before it was too late.
The catalyst came in the middle of a dark night, as she awoke in her room to find his weight on top of her and his jabbing fingers everywhere. A stab of pain and his soused voice slurring her mother’s name in her ear. Finally, mercifully, she was able to push him off, and as he left he shoved her hard, sending her head snapping backward and connecting with a crack against her bedpost. In the morning light, she ran her finger over the dent in the wood and groggily scrubbed the spot of blood from the pink carpet. Her head was aching. She felt the sting of tears. She didn’t know where she hurt most.
When Aaron discovered the gap in the rock tree the next afternoon it was like a sign from above. Run. It was hidden, secret, and big enough to conceal a bag. It was perfect. Filled with a tentative spark of hope, she had looked at Aaron’s face and let herself realize for the first time how much she would miss him.
When they’d kissed, it made her feel better than she thought she could, until his hand reached up and touched her sore head. She’d jerked away in pain. She looked up and saw the dismayed look on Aaron’s face, and at that moment hated her dad almost as much as she ever had.
She wanted so badly to tell Aaron. More than once. But of all the emotions surging through Ellie Deacon’s body, the most acute was fear.
She knew she wasn’t the only person frightened of her father. His payback for any slight, real or perceived, was swift and brutal. She had seen him issue his threats then carry them out. Hoard favors, poison fields, run over dogs. In a community struggling to survive, people had to pick their battles. When every card was on the table, Ellie Deacon knew there was not one person in Kiewarra she could truly rely on to stand up to him.
So she made her plan. She took her saved-up money, and she quietly packed a bag. She hid it by the river, in the place where she knew it wouldn’t be found. Waiting for her when she was ready. She booked a room in an anonymous motel three towns away. They asked for a name for the reservation, and she automatically said the only one that made her feel safe. Falk.
On a piece of notepaper, she scribbled his name and the date she had chosen and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans. A talisman for luck. A reminder not to back out. She had to run, but she only had one chance. If my dad finds out, he will kill me.
They were the last words she wrote in her diary.
There was no smell of dinner in the air when Mal Deacon let himself into the farmhouse, and he felt a hot flash of irritation. He kicked Grant’s boots off the couch and his nephew opened one eye.
“No bloody tea on yet?”
“Ellie’s not back from school.”
Deacon snapped a beer from the six-pack by Grant’s side and went through to the rear of the home. He stood at his daughter’s bedroom door and took a swig from the can. It wasn’t his first of the day. Or his second.
His eyes flicked to the white bedpost, with the dent in the wood and the mark on the pink carpet below, and he frowned. Deacon felt a cold spot form in his chest, like a tiny ball bearing. Something bad had happened there. He stared at the dent, and a grotesque memory threatened to emerge. He took a long drink until it slid back silently beneath the shadowy surface. Instead, he allowed the alcohol to carry the first tendrils of anger through his veins.