Broken (34 page)

Hannah took a deep breath. ‘To be honest, I think the real reason I rang him was to alleviate some of my own guilt.'

‘Your
guilt?'

‘Yes.' Hannah flicked her plait forward and started to separate the strands at the end. ‘See, I was thinking last night about how I reacted when I found out you'd left him. How I gave you a hard time at Mum's and all.'

‘Yes?' prompted Mattie, interested.

‘And I think a part of me
wanted
it to be your fault. Which is why I was so eager to believe it was. And don't ask me why –' Hannah finally looked at her sister and grimaced – ‘because I'm no Freud. It's probably a sister thing.'

‘You told me I needed help.' Mattie smiled to take the accusing edge off her words, but the smile did not quite reach her eyes.

‘Don't remind me. Although . . .' Hannah grinned back. ‘I probably did have a point. Just not in the way I meant. Which reminds me, has Liz rung?'

‘No, why?'

‘Just thinking about your friends.' Hannah shrugged. ‘So what's the game-plan?'

Mattie's smile vanished and she wiped her hands down her pants. ‘Well, first I need to talk to him. Reiterate that it's over, work out some property details, money. Stuff like that.'

‘What about the kids? Are you going to stick with this shared care arrangement?'

‘For now.'

Hannah finished her water and got up, putting the empty glass by the sink. She looked out the window. ‘Do you think you'll end up with enough money to be able to move out of this dump?'

‘Excuse me!' Mattie pretended to take offence. ‘This dump is my
home!
'

‘I didn't mean it like that,' Hannah turned around and leant against the sink. ‘In fact, I think you've done wonders with the place while you've been here. But you have to admit it's a bit cramped. And that carpet . . .'

‘True.'

‘So if you're able to buy after it's all sorted, then that'll set you up nicely Hey, have you still got that money Mum gave us after she sold the house?'

‘Yes.' Mattie nodded. ‘It's in a term deposit with the rest of our savings. So when we go halves, I should have enough to put a good-sized deposit down anyway, and some to back me up till I get a job. Probably next year when everything's been sorted.'

‘Then there's the sale of the house too.'

‘Yes, but I'm not counting on that for a while. I think Jake'll probably try to keep it and pay me out. And that'll take some time.'

Hannah looked thoughtful and then pointed at her. ‘Why don't
you
keep it? Then you don't have to worry about house-hunting or anything. And the kids are already settled there.'

‘No,' Mattie answered without hesitation. ‘I want to start again. Not there.'

Hannah nodded slowly. ‘Okay I understand.'

Mattie's snide little voice popped up again to say:
Oh no you don't, you've got
no
idea
. But she smiled even more to hide the fact that she was even listening to it. Hannah gave her a strange look and then plucked her handbag off the floor.

‘I'm really glad you've been thinking about all this stuff. I know it sounds mercenary, but you've got two kids to consider. And your future.'

‘I know' Mattie got up from her chair and pushed it in under the table.

‘Good.' Hannah nodded approvingly. ‘And now I'd better get moving. I just wanted to see how things were going.'

‘Check up on me, you mean.'

‘Well – yes.' Hannah leant forward as if she was going to kiss Mattie, but then drew back again and smiled, slightly embarrassed. ‘But only in the nicest possible way.'

Mattie followed Hannah through to the front door. She opened it and walked out onto the porch, staring at the blue cloud-studded sky.

‘Your bruises are just about gone anyway,' said Hannah, looking at Mattie's neck.

‘Yes. Doesn't take long.' Mattie turned to her sister. ‘Look, thanks for dropping by. I really appreciate it.'

‘No problem. Now we're going away this weekend but if you need me, just ring on my mobile. And I'll drop in on Monday. See how you're going.'

‘Okay' Mattie smiled at her concern. Then Hilda rounded the corner at the end of the unit and headed towards them. She too was very casually dressed, back in the slacks and grey-checked windcheater jacket that she had been wearing the first day Mattie had met her.

‘Hello, Hannah. Lovely to see you here.'

‘I was just leaving.'

‘And I was just visiting.' Hilda smiled genially at both of them. ‘Got time for a coffee, Mattie?'

Mattie nodded, amused. ‘This is like the changing of the guards, isn't it?'

Both Hannah and Hilda laughed, and then Hannah went over to her car, unlocking the driver-side door and climbing in. The electric window on the passenger seat wound down and Hannah leant over. ‘Look after yourself. And ring if you need me!'

‘I will.' Mattie waved, and watched as Hannah reversed out of the driveway. After her sister had driven off down the road, Mattie turned and followed Hilda into the unit. One down, one to go. But at least it passed the time.

Saturday limped past like an old man with a walking frame, but Sunday finally arrived and Mattie woke with a buoyancy born of the knowledge that today her children were being returned. Today she would be able to shake off that feeling of vague, impotent anxiety that she felt whenever they were not with her, and she
knew
they were safe and secure.

Motivated by her anticipation, after breakfast Mattie cleaned the unit from top to bottom, spending much of her time in the children's bedroom where she tidied, changed sheets and rearranged the bookshelves. In the lounge-room she straightened the framed photographs, with Max's now minus the glass, and vacuumed. It was only when she moved the couch out from the wall and saw the glass stem from the wineglass that she remembered throwing it behind there the previous Sunday night. She smiled grimly when she recalled how she'd thought she might be protecting herself, in case Jake got any ideas of using it as a weapon. But he didn't need weapons, not when he had his hands, and his feet.

It was mid-afternoon by the time she finished, and getting close to the earliest she could expect the children home. So Mattie took the library book on budgeting and curled up on the couch to read until they arrived. At teatime, she tossed a salad together and left it in a bowl on the bench. Then she defrosted a couple of chicken fillets and marinated them in honey, mustard and wine. She herself wasn't hungry although she was sure the children would be when they arrived. She returned to the lounge-room but left the budgeting book lying on the floor and turned on the television instead. And every time she heard a car approach, she glanced quickly towards the window and waited, tensely, to see if it pulled into the driveway None did.

As the evening crept by, Mattie started reminding herself about how late they had been dropped off the week before. And she recognised this was probably even deliberate, to string her out as long as possible and disrupt her life. Finally, she covered the salad and the marinating chicken and put them both in the fridge. Then she made herself a bowl of cereal and ate it standing up by the window, counting cars.

At nine o'clock, headlights lit the room as a car pulled into the driveway and Mattie breathed a huge sigh of relief, finally admitting to herself that she'd been starting to suspect they weren't coming back at all. But
instead of stopping, the car continued on towards one of the rear units where the engine was switched off and, in the ensuing silence, Mattie was left with her now acknowledged fear. She sat down on the couch armrest and stared blankly at the floor, feeling sick. Where were they?

Fifteen minutes later, she stood up and walked stiffly into the kitchen to dial Jake's home number. It answered on the third ring.

‘Hello?'

‘Jake. This is Mattie.'

‘Yes?'

‘Where are the kids?'

‘In bed.'

Mattie was struck dumb. Even though this was the exact suspicion she had been wrestling with, confirmation still came as a shock. She stared at the wall near the phone blankly, trying to compute and move on from what he'd said. They were in bed. There.

‘Was that it?'

‘No, hang on,' Mattie said in a high-pitched rush. ‘
Why
are they in bed? They're supposed to be here! You were dropping them off!'

‘I changed my mind,' replied Jake smoothly, politely. ‘Now, if that's it?'

‘No!' cried Mattie. But he had hung up.

She cradled the phone in her hand and tried to think. But it was hard, very hard. Her face seemed to have frozen, and something hurt dully at the back of her eyes. As well as that her stomach was surging so that her throat actually felt obstructed, and for the first time in days started to hurt again.
Think
, her mind said urgently,
you must think. Quickly
. But it was like the message lines had been severed, and her body was partially paralysed. It could move and it could breathe, but it couldn't react.

Mattie fumbled behind her back and pulled out a chair, letting herself fold backwards until she was sitting down. She was still holding the phone and the cord stretched from the wall, the spirals extended. Then, suddenly, anger started to seep in and this seemed to act as a stimulant.
How dare he! How
dare
he!
Mattie jumped up again, slapped the phone back into its cradle and then jerked it out once more. Then, fired by adrenalin, she dialled the same number.

‘Hello?'

‘I'm coming around to get them. Now.'

‘You're going to wake two children up from their sleep just to make yourself happy?' Jake chuckled, almost cheerfully ‘This is a new low, even for you.'

‘I'm still doing it.'

‘I wouldn't bother, sweetheart, because remember our friendly police? I'll ring them the moment you pull into the driveway.'

‘You wouldn't.'

‘Try me. And if you're thinking you'd still have time to get in before they came, think again, because you don't have any keys. Now, have a lovely night, you hear?'

And then Mattie was listening to the engaged signal again. She wrenched the phone away from her ear and threw it at the wall, where it bounced off the plaster, leaving a crescent-shaped dint, and then swung to-and-fro on its stretched lead, just above the floor. But Mattie had already left the room, running into the lounge-room to grab her handbag. She unzipped it and then scrabbled inside it, swearing futilely as she searched until she finally just upended all the contents onto the couch. Her purse, some spare coins, a tiny vial of perfume, a packet of mints, a few tissues, and finally her key-ring with the rectangular gold tag that read
Matilda
in raised silver lettering. Mattie snatched it up and started fumbling through the different keys. The unit front door key, back door key, her car keys – no house keys. Both the copper front door key and the elongated silver back door key were gone. And so was the small security door key All gone.

Mattie dropped the keys on the carpet and sat down on the couch, staring blankly ahead. He had taken her keys. Not that she cared about them per se – in fact she didn't much care if she never had access to their house again – but she
did
care about the children and she
did
care about what he'd done. Deeply She also cared about the fact that he was probably sitting there, right now, having a smug, self-satisfied laugh at her expense.
Christ, she's a fool. Too easy. Sucker
. And it just wasn't bloody fair. She felt robbed, cheated, violated. Bereft. And now she had to spend the evening alone, worrying about them until she saw them tomorrow. Conjuring up questions that couldn't be answered. Were
they upset? What had he told them? Had he washed their uniforms? Made their lunches?

And why had it never occurred to her that he might try something like this? In retrospect, it was so very like him. Checkmate with a twist. The trouble was that she kept allowing her fervent desire for a happy resolution to colour her thinking. She had to stop that, right now, because it wasn't doing her any favours. She had to think like him and play like him, otherwise it wasn't just the house or the property or even the marriage on the line, but the children. Because he was going to go for what would hurt her most and he was going to go for it with a vengeance. She had to keep up, or give up. Simple as that.

 

S
trangely, when Max was a baby, Jake never used him as a pawn against Mattie during an argument. Maybe that was because the arguments were still fairly rare then, or maybe the potency of such a weapon simply never occurred to him. But all that changed when Courtney came along. During her first year, Jake discovered and then steadily improved on the perfect punishment. Often, after a few drinks, he would draw a line halfway down the passage and demand Mattie stay on one side, where she had free run of the dining room, the family room and the sliding door through to the backyard if she needed to go to the toilet. The rest of the house was his. And the baby was out of bounds
.