All These Perfect Strangers (19 page)

‘Doesn't fit me.' I wasn't going to wear that dress ever again.

‘Well, you're going to get a new one. Everyone needs a keep-out-of-jail outfit. I'll tell Ros to give it to you on account.'

Ros is Bob's wife. She owns a clothing shop, or rather a ‘boutique', the most expensive one in town. She looks down her nose at all of Bob's clients but she's quite happy to clothe them for a fee. She chose the dress last time. Bob tries to keep as much of the money as possible in the family.

I went through this process three years ago and I never want to do it again. Crossing my arms, I stare at the poster, doing my best impression of immovability.

‘You want to get back to university, don't you?' Bob leans back in his chair, chin disappearing into folds of skin. ‘Then you will do what needs to be done, which includes looking the part. I'll get the other side to pay for it. Put it down as disbursements on the bill. Photocopying.'

‘Can't I buy a suit this time?' I ask. ‘People take you more seriously in a suit.'

‘We don't want a professional ball breaker. We need you looking innocent and traumatised, something that only a very big cheque is going to fix. I'd dress you in a school uniform if I thought I'd get away with it.'

It's almost lunchtime and Bob is losing interest. Scrabbling around in his in-tray, he extricates a form guide. There's the usual bulge of betting slips in his top pocket.

‘Now, Jan tells me your mother wants an appointment. What's that about?'

‘Power of attorney for my grandfather.'

Bob looks up. His eyes are red-rimmed and I can see the broken capillaries around his nose. ‘Trying to get her hands on the house again. Jan says there's some layabout sniffing around.'

I nod.

‘And Grandpa? Compos mentis?'

I haven't visited him in a long time. ‘Depends on the day,' I guess.

Bob hunts around for a pen to start circling today's top tips.

‘Powers of attorney take some work. Might have to petition the court. Busy this time of year. Reckon you've got three months. Enough time to get rid of the parasite?'

I think about Terry's self-satisfied smirk. ‘Don't know.'

‘A girl of your abilities,' and he waves me out of his office.

As I walk past Jan talking on the phone, she gestures for me to wait.

‘Only appointment available is Friday. No, not this week. The following . . . Yep . . . you want morning. He's no good to anyone after lunch on a Friday . . . See you then.' Putting down the phone, she points towards the window. ‘Shirley's here to pick you up. Waiting outside.'

I look down and see our car parked nose to the footpath. Mum is supposed to be at work.

‘Bob talked to you about her?' Jan asks.

‘Thanks for telling him about Terry.'

Jan sniffs as though it was nothing. ‘Saw him down at the pub on the weekend. Seemed very pally with the girls on Julie Cuttmore's hen night. He was talking to her for a long time and all. Cuddling up to that Kim Stephens, though he must be twice her age. I reckon they left together.'

I think of dumpy Kim enjoying her night out, forgetting about having two kids, trying to find someone to replace Lee.

‘Have you said anything to Mum?'

Jan squawks, her earrings flapping. ‘Do I look stupid?'

It looks like it is down to me to break the bad news.

I find Mum chatting to the red-faced stock agent in a striped shirt, standing in the doorway of his empty shop.

‘Hi, Mum. Hi, Mr Phillamey.'

‘Here's my girl,' she says. ‘Finished at last. Hop in. I'll give you a lift home before my lunch-break's over.'

‘Take care, Shirley,' says Mr Phillamey. ‘Sorry to hear about what happened to you, Pen.' But he doesn't look sorry. Another person who thinks I had it coming to me.

‘Thanks, Bruce,' Mum says. ‘It's been a hard couple of months, but what can you do?'

When the car doors are shut, she mutters out of the corner of her mouth, ‘He gossips worse than an old woman.'

I look back at him, standing in his doorway. He keeps a steady gaze as if escorting us from the premises. We reverse into the street.

‘Rabbiting on about those foreign-currency farm loans going bad. Doesn't mention he was the one spruiking them a few years back.' Mum changes gears and accelerates up the main street. ‘Apparently the Cuttmores are in strife. He made a special point of telling me that.' She turns her head and gives me a significant look.

I slump back on the seat. The Cuttmores took out that loan to pay for Tracey's defence. They went with flash city lawyers who promised to do the impossible, but instead disappeared with their money.

‘How did it go with Bob? Have they made an offer?'

‘No.' I keep my face turned away from her. ‘Letter said they consider the matter finalised.'

Mum swears, banging her hand against the steering wheel, and swears again. Then she is quiet but only for a block. ‘Terry's depressed, sitting around doing nothing. He won't go anywhere with me, not even down to the pub. Spends more and more time out at Mick's. We just need cash for tools and material and Jan's saying Bob can't even see me for another two weeks. Stupid racing carnival.'

I wonder if I should mention Kim now, but decide against it.

She stops at the lights. ‘Grab my handbag.'

‘Do you want your cigarettes?' I ask.

‘I've given up, remember,' she lies. ‘Just pass it to me.'

I pull her battered brown bag out from behind my seat, one handle broken. Mum fishes through it and passes a magazine to me.

‘Girl from work found it at the dentist's yesterday. Shoved it up her jumper so she could show me. Page seven.'

Dog-eared and ripped, it has Princess Diana on the cover. I don't bother turning the pages. I've seen the article before. Marcus had shown it to me a couple of days before he was arrested.

The light changes from red to green. Mum guns the car through the intersection, turning left in front of the oncoming traffic she is supposed to give way to.

‘They'd have got good money for that.' She jabs her finger down on top of SUPER JEWELLERY GIVE-AWAY in large white letters, but right next to it is the smaller yellow of
EXCLUSIVE: A MOTHER'S GRIEF.
The car begins to climb the hill towards the highway that cuts our town in two. ‘Not that they needed it. Go on, have a look.'

I leave it in my lap. I don't want to see the grainy pictures of Mrs Parnell looking distraught, being shown where her daughter's body was found. But even more than that I don't want to see what the family was like before it happened. A mother smiling at her daughter, who was going to university to conquer the world.

‘Is this why you came to pick me up?'

‘The girls at work say they get proper make-up artists and hair stylists. Sometimes you get to keep the clothes. You could do that. Tell your side of the story.'

A long silence this time. We pass the real estate agent, the video store, and the place where the old Cook-a-Chook used to be. It burnt down a year ago, an insurance job according to Mum, and hasn't been occupied since. She waits until the used car-yards that mark the end of the shops and the start of the houses.

‘So . . .?'

‘No.'

‘Everyone else is making money from it.' Her mouth is taut with irritation.

‘Blood money.'

‘All very well to be high and mighty about it. Don't see you getting a job to pay the bills.'

‘Her daughter is dead. Would you have preferred that happened to me so you can get a free shirt?' I hurl the magazine into the back so that it hits the seat with a smack.

Mum slams on the brakes and there is an angry beep behind us. She pulls to the side of the road.

‘How can you say that? Have you got any idea what it was like for me when they called me up saying you had been rushed to hospital? Driving all that way with no idea what had happened to you?'

I sit there and say nothing, because the truth is I hadn't thought about that.

She pulls out and heads to the highway, full of people passing through our town, not bothering to stop. Waiting for a break in the traffic, she says, ‘It's not just the money. For once people would be on our side. After all we've been through.'

‘I don't want to talk about this any more.'

‘You spend all day writing about it. You talk about it with Frank. Why don't you want to talk about it with me? I know more from reading the papers than I do from my own daughter. Just talk to me. That's all that I'm asking. Is that so hard?'

I look out the window and say nothing but she doesn't stop trying until we reach home. I get out of the car, refusing to say goodbye, and she accelerates up the street as though she can't leave me quickly enough.

I walk around the side of the house, to come in by the back door. Through the gate, down the footpath, I stop at my bedroom window. Terry is in there hunting through my clothes drawers. I stand back, peeping around the frame. He is searching for something, rummaging amongst my bras and undies, pulling out the next drawer, looking at my t-shirts. I make my way to the back door, slipping through it, walking silently up the hall until I am standing there, watching him kneeling on the floor.

‘What are you doing?'

He jumps, but recovers himself. He pushes in the last drawer like he has every right to be here. ‘You're home early.'

‘What are you doing in my room?'

He gets to his feet. ‘Saw a mouse this morning. Your mother asked me to lay down some traps.'

Fucking trap you, I think, anger pouring out of me. ‘Get out.'

‘No need to be unpleasant.' He smiles with his hungry mouth and steps towards me.

‘Just get out or else.'

‘Or else what . . .' He lunges so quickly that I don't have time to move, grabbing a fistful of my hair, pinning my arms, pushing me face down on the bed. He lies on top of me, pulling my head back so he can see my face. I have been too stupid and too slow to realise just how dangerous he is.

‘You're too soft,'
Tracey had said.

‘Been talking to Julie Cuttmore about you.' He breathes a mist of beer onto my skin. ‘Blames you, she does, for what happened to her sister. Reckons you should be in jail. Asked me to help her. I could do anything to you, and no one in this town would lift a finger, give me a medal more like.' When I flinch, he runs his long red tongue along the side of my face and laughs. His groin presses down hard into the small of my back. I lie there immobilised. His weight shifts, and I tense, waiting for hard fingers pulling down my jeans or pushing up my top. I can't move my head, but my eyes try to see what might be in arm's reach. Something hard to crack his skull open.

But instead he gets off me. Confused, I try to stand, but he kicks my legs out from under me, and I fall, hitting my head on the bed frame.

‘Clumsy, clumsy.'

I scramble away on hands and knees until I am in the corner and can't retreat further. I turn to watch him, ready to scratch his eyes or kick his balls if he moves closer. He stays well out of my reach.

‘I'm not going anywhere. If you don't like that you can leave,' he says, and he walks away, out of the room. His footsteps go down the hall but I don't move until I hear the tap being turned on in the kitchen. I run to my door, close and lock it. My legs buckle out from under me, my body shaking.

I crawl over to the closet, holding the door carefully so it doesn't make a tell-tale squeak, pulling it open. A pale ghost stares back at me from the mirror, a scar running across her forehead. I wipe his spit from my face and put my fingers to where I fell. Tender. But the bruise won't be bad enough for Mum to believe me. There is a limit to how many fairytales she is prepared for me to ruin. I'll get him back all the same.

The closet is full of suitcases, boxes of lecture notes and shoes. I pull them out and place them on my bed, making as little noise as possible, so anyone standing at the door can't hear what I am doing.

This is my hiding place.

Even the police missed it when they searched the entire house three years ago. It is a section of floorboard that runs along the wall, sitting in the groove, not nailed down. A minuscule crack hidden near the closet frame. Slowly, I lift the broken board, pull the pillowcase out. I brush away the grime and open it up. My book is still inside.

Safe.

‘Leave the gun in here,' Tracey had whispered, the two of us huddled together, looking into the hole. I placed the tea-towel covered bundle in there and put the floorboard back over it, like the lid of a coffin.

‘What will we do?' I whispered back.

‘Don't worry. I'll take it with me tomorrow.'

‘You'll get rid it?'

‘I'll take care of it. It's my responsibility.'

And in a strange way she did. By the time the police found that gun, it was too late.

It was a typical late autumn afternoon: small groups sitting in patchy sunshine that was about to disappear; boys kicking a football; students pretending to do some work before dinner but actually gossiping about how Emelia had written off her car on Saturday. She didn't even break a nail. Joyce had abandoned
Ulysses
and was pretending to read another fat book with a serious black cover.
Crime and Punishment
. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw the title. Leiza was arguing about paint colours with a group of girls who were looking mutinously at a large bundle of white sheets.

To an outsider it would be a normal college scene. Yet to me, sitting at the far end of the courtyard, on a bench outside the laundry block, the change was obvious. None of the usual laughing or shouting, no one playing loud music. There was a feeling of unease, as if the college had collectively woken up from the party. Officially, nothing had been said about Rachel's death, as if it was an embarrassing lapse of taste that could be ignored. Notices had gone up on each floor saying that the Murder Game was cancelled. Rachel was not mentioned but the connection was easy to make.