After the Fall (35 page)

I’d almost reached the house when I stopped dead, turning my face up to the spreading branches of the walnut. A fantail swooped and dived around my feet. Seconds later I’d spun around and was running. The wooden door crashed into the wall as I threw myself on the floor. Gripping the paint tin, I scrabbled under teabags and crisp packets.

Light bulbs. Not broken, but tampered with. Their screw parts had been pulled out, leaving only the bowls. The white frosting had somehow been removed so that the glass was very clear. Too clear. And someone had wrapped duct tape around the tops, as though they’d been attached to something else.

I paced around the hut, looking now with different eyes. In the drawers— nothing. In the suitcases, in the toilet’s cistern—nothing. I turned around and around, trying to imagine where I would hide a secret treasure. I was kneeling by the stove, my hand shoved up the metal flue like a deranged midwife, when my fingers brushed something snagged on a rivet. Closing the stove behind me—ludicrous, the need we have for order— I carried my find outside into the light.

The fantail whirled around my head, spreading his tail, wittering his merry tune. I shall always be grateful to that little fellow. He was my only companion at one of the most shattering moments of my life.

Just a silly little bit of plastic; a tiny snap-lock bag perhaps an inch square. When I held it to the light, its contents ran to one corner. White crystals, like ground glass. Pretty, really.

Suddenly the world seemed almost psychedelically miscoloured. Giant pungas moved in a weird slow motion, vast spider webs against the glazed emptiness of the sky. Even the sunlight felt pitiless. What had been good and pure was sordid now. My beautiful daughter had another life: a foul, degenerate life. She had betrayed us.

I sank onto the ground a few steps away from the hut. Sheep grazed nearby as though the world was still intact, and my fantail flew off home. Images swirled, twisted and fell together into an unbearable whole: cameras, watch, milk jug. Money, gone from tins and wallets and beloved piggybanks. A burglary. Great-Aunt Sibella. Sacha, lifting a broken bulb to her face and inhaling the poison.

I was still sitting there as the horizon deepened to a rich seam of orange. A blackbird trilled in the trees, and I longed for Dad’s garden in the English summer rain. That was when Sacha came trudging up the track and walked straight past without seeing me.

She stopped dead at the sight of the open door, her face ghostly in the half-light. There was complete stillness for several heartbeats. Then she strode into the hut. With a sense of immense sadness I heard the stove’s door creak. I pushed myself to my feet and stood in the doorway. She was on her knees, her head inside the stove, peering in.

‘It’s not there,’ I said.

She swung round, her voice childish with fright. ‘Mum?’

‘How long did you think you could go on?’

She got up and stood facing me. Ash spangled her hair, and there was a smear of soot down one cheek. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

I held up the bag. She looked at it, then at me. ‘You don’t think that’s mine, do you?’ And then I was baffled, because she laughed aloud. She picked up a lighter and lit the candles, glancing in disgust at my hand. ‘Frick’s sake. That isn’t
mine
! Whadya think I am? Mental?’

‘I don’t know what you are, Sacha. I wish I did.’

‘Jeez!’ She sounded genuinely indignant, and my resolve faltered. She jerked her chin towards the bag. ‘Tip that out. Be my guest. It belongs to a guy who crashed my party, a total penis head called Ed. We didn’t even invite him, he just tagged along with one of the girls. What a creep.’

‘You knew it was in the stove.’

‘Sit down.’ She was patting the sofa as though I was the child and she the parent. ‘Yes, I did. Someone sent me a text. Said Ed had left his stash. I was about to chuck it down the pan.’

I so wanted to believe her. ‘Sacha, please. No more lies.’

‘For God’s sake! You know I’d never touch anything like that. I’ve seen what hard drugs can do to people, they showed us a video at school and I totally despise it. Shit like this is for losers. Ed’s completely fucked up.’

I began to feel a little hope. I was trying to think, trying to fit her explanation into the jigsaw puzzle. I held up the bag. ‘So what
is
this?’

‘How would I know? It’s something that should be flushed down the U-bend.’

‘Let’s take it to the police. What’s this Ed’s surname?’

‘Very bad idea.’

‘Very good idea. I’ll phone Robert Andrews right now.’

There was a flash, deep in the tawny eyes. ‘Are you
nuts
? They might nick me—for being in possession of . . . well, of whatever it is. And what happens if you or I or any of us is convicted of an offence?’

‘What?’

‘Game over.’ She drew her finger across her throat. ‘Bang go our visas. We’re not citizens, remember? We’re here on sufferance. One false move and the McNamara family will be on the first plane home.’ I sat stunned as she pressed her advantage. ‘I’ve a feeling Kit might have a word or two to say on the subject.’

‘But this stuff isn’t ours.’

‘Ed will say it is.’ Sacha sighed. ‘Mud sticks. You want to get deported? Well, go ahead. Be my guest.’

Her story made sense, if you were desperate enough. And besides, I knew Sacha wouldn’t let thieves into our house. She just wouldn’t. ‘So you swear you haven’t touched this?’

She crossed herself. ‘Guide’s honour. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

‘And you never, ever will?’

‘I swear on my little brothers’ lives. I’m really sorry we let that dildo crash the party.’

Snuffing the candles, we left the hut and began to make our way up the track.

‘Stupid jerk,’ Sacha was saying as we stepped into the light from the kitchen windows. ‘I’d have thrown him out if I’d known he was using P.’

‘Using . . .’ I stopped short. ‘So you
do
know what it is.’

Her eyes flickered towards the bag in my hand. ‘Well, someone told me . . .’ She put up two forefingers in a cross, to ward off evil. ‘You won’t tell Kit, will you?’

I wasn’t listening. I was thinking. ‘Light bulbs,’ I muttered. She didn’t seem to hear, just kept walking. I caught up in three fast strides, put a hand on her arm and spun her around. ‘Just a minute. Why is there no light bulb in the smoko hut?’

‘Stupid things kept blowing. And I like candlelight. It’s romantic.’

‘Where are the bulbs, then?’

She looked at me as though I’d gone mad. ‘How the hell would I know? In the landfill, I should think.’

‘Oh Sacha,’ I whispered. ‘You’re a good liar. I’ve seen them.’

‘You went through my
bin
? How sick is that?’ She whirled away and slammed into the kitchen.

Kit was reading the paper at the table, and looked up in almost comic surprise at the hurricane that had blown in. ‘Girls, girls,’ he said, looking faintly amused. His gaze travelled from my face to Sacha’s, and then to the tiny bag I was holding up.

‘What’s that?’ he asked quietly. It was slightly sinister, because the smile was still on his lips.

Sacha’s eyes met mine. In the electric light I saw that her pupils were enlarged, taking up most of the iris; it had a demonic effect. For one last moment, I wondered whether I should cover up for her. She would never be so stupid as to dabble in drugs again. End of story, and nobody the wiser. Kit wouldn’t even
want
to know.

‘It’s rat poison,’ she lied, smoothly but implausibly. ‘Would you believe it, Kit? Mum’s making a fuss because the smoko hut’s got rats.’

Kit reached for the bag, and there was another nasty silence while he held it under the light. ‘Right. Who’s going to do the talking?’

‘Why should I bother?’ raged Sacha, making for the door. ‘Nobody believes me.’

I took her wrist. ‘Where’s your flute?’

‘At school.’

‘Shall I phone your dean and ask her to check?’

My daughter looked as though she’d like to strangle me. Her face was a mask of fury, the pupils still eerily dilated. I was afraid of her. This demon wasn’t my Sacha. ‘
Fuck
you,’ she hissed, thrusting me into the dresser. I heard her footsteps pounding up the stairs, and the house shivered as her bedroom door smashed shut.

I nodded at the miniature bag in Kit’s hand. ‘I think that’s this stuff they call P.’

‘Jesus. I do hope you’re wrong.’

I told him about Tama’s warning and my search. Once I’d described the light bulbs, he stood up. ‘C’mon. Know your enemy.’

The sitting room was warm and bright. Kit had lit the fire, tidied up and turned on all the lamps—poor man, I realised dimly that he’d been trying to make amends for the previous evening’s binge. He was drinking ginger beer. He’d even made a casserole. I flung myself into a chair while he bent down to the desktop, his face reflecting the blue screen.

‘Times like this I long for broadband,’ he said. ‘What shall we try? Pure meth . . . P.’ He typed, clicked, waited, then whistled incredulously. ‘Will you look at that? There’s a whole industry.’

Indeed there was. I was aboard my magic hearthrug again, but this time it was flying me somewhere I didn’t want to go. Over the next hour we gave ourselves a crash course. To its many friends around the world the drug is known by fluffy nicknames—Tina, crystal, ice, glass. And, only in New Zealand, P.

Per capita, New Zealand has the highest addiction rates to Methamphetamine
in the world. The crystal form is the most pure.

‘One hundred per cent pure New Zealand,’ breathed Kit.

Methamphetamine is a Class A drug. It is a very powerful psychostimulant,
uniquely addictive and destructive. About ninety per cent of people who
try methamphetamine just once continue to use it.

Facts leaped off the page and clouted me between the eyes. I found myself mesmerised, in a ghastly way. This was relevant to me, to my family.

‘Sacha can’t be using this,’ I said, reading a list of side-effects—including stroke and death—that made my breath stick in my throat. ‘She just can’t be.’

Kit was clicking and typing. ‘Bingo,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll have to give it a few minutes to download.’

Highly educational, is YouTube: a grainy, sordid little home video, showing us exactly how to make a meth pipe out of a light bulb, then heat crystals over a flame and inhale the vapours. Things I’d seen in the smoko hut— apparently innocent—became horribly significant. The bulb was the star of the show, but also in the cast were the pliers, the duct tape, the empty biro tube, the lighter and the top part of a plastic drink bottle like the ones in the bin. There was even salt, to sandblast the frosting off the bulb. It was all done in a lonely, godforsaken silence. You never saw more than the addict’s mouth, but you could hear his heavy breathing. It was an intensely sleazy experience. I felt dirty just watching. It was repulsive, yet at the same time almost erotic, like a peepshow in the back streets of Amsterdam.

‘For crying out loud.’ Kit sounded shaken. ‘Let’s go to the police. Right now. Tonight.’

‘We can’t.’

‘This is poison, Martha! They’ll give Sacha a warning and put the fear of God into her.’

I reached for his hand, lifted it off the mouse and traced my finger down the familiar lines on his palm. ‘If Sacha’s in trouble, we’re all in trouble. We have to be of
good character
. Remember all those police checks before we got our visas? I don’t know, but using a Class A drug doesn’t sound like good character to me.’

Kit understood immediately, and banged his other hand onto the desk. ‘Hell.’

The video started itself up again. We watched the process with fascinated revulsion. The bulb filled with white vapour, swirling and thickening. It was all obscenely matter-of-fact, as though this degradation was normal and everyday; a
Blue Peter
presenter showing how to make a pencil case out of a shoebox and sticky-backed plastic . . .
And here’s one I’ve made
already!
The anonymous lips closed caressingly around the tube, and the addict inhaled deeply. Then he murmured something. His tone was that of a lover, whispering in his beloved’s ear.

‘I’ve seen enough,’ said Kit abruptly.

We climbed the stairs together. Sacha’s door was locked.

‘Sacha.’ Kit gave the panels a hefty kick. ‘Let us in or—so help me—I’ll walk down these stairs and phone the police. You can take your chances.’

The door swung open and she stood with her hand on the handle, mocking. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

It struck me—with sickening force—how my dazzling girl had changed. How could such horrors have slipped beneath my radar? This creature was thin, sallow, sad, with sores on her face and arms. Her hair was dirty, her eyes deadened. The signs had been there to see.

She was in trouble
, sneered Mum.
But you were too busy with your work
and your twins and your lovely new life.

The room was a bombsite, with the rancid smell I’d noticed the night before. Sacha used to be organised, tidy, fussy about hygiene. She threw herself full-length on the bed. ‘Okay, okay. I tried it. I’ll never touch it again. Happy?’