Disappear (7 page)

The waiter arrived to take the dinner orders. He scribbled down the ladies’ orders first. Then, as he turned to Kaplan and Roger, Meg directed her attention to Jennifer. Both sipped their wine. ‘You’re holding up well,’ Meg observed.

‘Being out with you lot helps. I don’t know how I’ll be later. I was feeling a little … weird … last night.’

‘You sounded strained when you phoned.’

‘Trying to take it in, make some sense of it. I was stunned.’

‘You can’t let it get to you, Jen. It was a long time ago, another life for you. For both of us, actually.’

‘I know. I remember that day, after Brian vanished. You were waiting by the house when I got home from the police station.’

‘Was I?’ Meg squinted her eyes and made a face, trying to remember.

‘You stayed with me, made lots of pots of tea, and a few strong scotches, while I cried.’

‘That’s right. That was the day you told me you thought you were pregnant.’

‘How is Carly?’ asked Roger.

‘Rebellious, obnoxious and incredibly beautiful.’

‘Still the same, huh. She must be … what? … seventeen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Still shacked up with that guy?’ Meg wondered. ‘Willy? Wally?’

‘Rory.’

‘Right. Rory.’

‘She’s still with him. Still doing a spot of modelling.’

‘And still hanging around with Rory’s radical, weirdo, socialist friends?’ Meg supposed.

Jennifer took another sip of wine and frowned. A hint of resignation crept into her voice. ‘I really don’t know what to do about that.’

She had mental flashes of the years spent as a single mother.

It hadn’t been easy, raising a daughter alone. She’d had to work to support them, and her burgeoning fashion career offered her the best opportunities. The downside had been the countless times she’d left Carly with babysitters and relatives. Too many nights and weekends when a mother should’ve been with her daughter.

There’d been so many times when Jennifer’s own feelings were reflected in Carly’s sad little eyes, watching her leave the house.

I didn’t put motherhood first, Jennifer thought.

But Carly had been a good child. It wasn’t until the teenage years that she’d become increasingly difficult.

‘You’re talking about Carly?’ Kaplan wondered out loud, interjecting after the waiter had left with the orders.

Jennifer nodded.

‘The last time I saw her she was this high,’ Henry Kaplan said, using the outstretched flat palm of his hand to indicate the height. ‘A cute little tyke with braces and pigtails.’

‘That cute little tyke is seventeen going on twenty-five,’ Jennifer replied. ‘A straight A student at school, she dropped out to go and live with some creep. He’s filled her head with nonsense about the corruption of the capitalist system, which of course puts me in the realm of the public enemy.’

‘Sounds like a throwback to the sixties,’ Roger commented.

‘Worse,’ said Jennifer.

‘Apparently, though, Carly doesn’t mind earning cash from the very capitalist business of modelling,’ Meg added.

‘What makes my blood boil,’ Jennifer confided, ‘is she’s giving most of her money to radical groups suggested by Rory. It seems it’s okay to use capitalist income to help further socialist causes.’

Kaplan grunted. ‘How did this happen?’

‘I don’t think I was a very good mother.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘Perhaps we should change the subject,’ Meg suggested. ‘After all, this dinner is supposed to help us all forget our worries for a while.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Roger agreed and he raised his glass. The others followed his lead.

Jennifer smiled weakly. No one would agree for a moment that she’d been a bad mother and over the years she’d certainly never thought of herself that way.

She felt differently now.

On reflection, she knew she hadn’t been there enough for her daughter.

From the time Kaplan loaned her the money to set up Wishing Pool Fashions she’d directed most of her energy to her work. Later, when the insurance money from Brian’s policy had finally been paid, she’d repaid the loan and bought out Kaplan’s share in the business.

He was happy to let her have total ownership of the company to which she was so devoted. She had named the business Wishing Pool Fashions, in memory of Brian and the quaint little wishing pool rockery at the old house. She felt that a part of Brian - of the life they’d never had together - was the legacy of her company.

Such a stupid damn notion, she realised now.

I had Carly. She was the legacy of Brian and myself. I should’ve been spending more time with her. Oh, she had everything she ever needed - clothes, dolls, friends, nannies - she just didn’t see enough of her mother.

There were so many nights when Jennifer had been away on business - cocktail party functions; fashion shows; late nights at the factory when they’d had huge orders to fill. As a child, Carly never complained.

On those occasions when they’d been together, Jennifer had always felt close to her daughter. Looking back now, she remembered the plaintive expression in Carly’s eyes when she’d told her she’d be home late that night.

‘Can I wait up for you, Mummy?’

‘Of course, dear. But I’m going to be very, very late tonight.’

‘I can stay awake!’

She never did.

Jennifer’s own mother had been the same. Her father had been a solicitor, her mother a sales manageress for a cosmetics company - a career woman in an age before it became fashionable. Loving parents who were always so busy, too busy.

Kaplan had drifted into small talk with Roger and Meg. They were startled when Jennifer suddenly announced out loud, cutting across their conversation, ‘I was never there for Carly.’

Kaplan and Roger looked bewildered.

Meg understood that Jennifer was still fighting a flood of memories. She reached across, took Jennifer’s hand in hers, and gave it an affectionate squeeze.

Henry and Roger had each taken their own cars to Eduardo’s. As Jennifer had caught a cab from her office to the restaurant, Roger jumped in first and offered to drive her back to her office car-space.

‘I still think about you often,’ he said as he drove. He was glad for the chance to have a few minutes alone with her. ‘I sometimes wonder how things might have been.’

‘You shouldn’t. It was a long time ago.’

‘You ever wonder? About us?’

‘It’s in the past, Roger. We’ve both moved on.’

‘You’re right, of course. You always would’ve thought of me first as Brian’s best friend.’

‘And you always would’ve seen me as Brian’s widow. Brian meant too much to both of us for it to have been any different.’

‘Did you ever come close to marrying again?’

‘No. Not close. You?’

‘The same.’ He drove on for a short while in silence. ‘I’ve had some good relationships. But there’s a point in every romance where you have to be prepared to …’ he searched for the right words, ‘… make a deeper commitment. I always seem to go wandering off around that time.’

‘I can’t criticise you on that. I’ve been exactly the same.’

Roger parked the car outside her office block. ‘I meant what I said earlier. About helping.’

‘I know.’ Jennifer touched his arm to register her thanks.

‘When Brian disappeared and you really needed help, well, it was Dad who stepped in, took command, did everything. As usual I was left trailing behind. But I really wished I could’ve done something.’

‘You did. You were a friend to me as much as you’d been to Brian. So don’t sweat it, okay?’

‘Okay.’ He smiled awkwardly and they embraced.

‘If there’s anything you can do to help I’ll let you know,’ she assured him before saying good-night and stepping from the car.

Driving home in her own vehicle, Jennifer thought back to the months following Brian’s disappearance. Roger, like his father, phoned regularly to see how she was coping. He’d met her for coffee once or twice a week and they’d gone to dinner once a fortnight.

At first they’d discussed every possible aspect of the disappearance and the failure by police and private investigators to unearth any leads. As time progressed, they began to speak of themselves and what the future held - Jennifer with her pregnancy and her fashion world ambitions; Roger with the pressures facing him in the family empire.

After Carly’s birth Roger had become serious, revealing the depth of his growing feelings for Jennifer.

Initially, Jennifer responded in a positive way to Roger’s overtures. He had a sensitive side to him. They had a shared grief over Brian. But before long she realised her attraction to Roger was based more on familiarity and friendship than it was on anything deeply spiritual or physical.

They’d almost made love once, if you could call it that - an awkward tumbling about, the necessary spark failing to ignite for either of them.

Jennifer told him that whilst they’d always be friends they’d never be lovers. That it would be best if they saw a little less of each other and sought romance elsewhere. Sheepishly, he’d agreed.

Poor, sweet Roger. Still lost. Thought of in some quarters as the wealthy, aimless playboy but that wasn’t totally fair. He wasn’t as lazy or as arrogant now as he had been when younger. He’d never be the dynamic leader his father had wanted him to be. But at the same time, Roger had a quiet, caring quality that was quite different to anything she’d ever seen in Henry Kaplan.

And, for the first time, she did wonder what it might have been like if things had turned out differently between her and Roger.

It was two months since he’d first suspected he was free of the shadows.

Over the years the jogger had become sensitive to the fact he was being watched whenever he was out and about. Although he rarely saw the watchers, he knew they were there. They’d never gone away. A long time ago he’d become adept at noting the figures following him in a crowd, or driving behind him at a discreet distance. If he dined at a restaurant, or went to a movie, he usually had a reasonable idea who the watchers were.

Of course, he could never be certain. There was never a familiar face, never a give-away look in the eye; and while he was suspicious of large, powerfully built men, that was no guarantee.

Once, many years before, he’d attempted to draw these shadowy figures out. He drove to a lonely bush setting in the early morning, left his car by the side of the road and hid in the bush with binoculars. He trained his sights on the road. A car stopped further back, within sight of his own vehicle. There were two men in that car. Waiting. Watching.

Who the hell were these people? Clearly their mission was to stop him from killing. They had succeeded at that, but they left him free to go about his business. His only release in inflicting pain came with the prostitutes who visited him each month. Always a different girl, always with the faceless, nameless minders waiting outside the door.

Even when the jogger had travelled interstate or overseas, or changed address, the watchers were there.

This had been going on for eighteen years. In the early days he thought it would drive him mad. How had they known about him? If they wanted him stopped, why didn’t they turn him in to the authorities? Surely that made more sense than running a twenty-four hour, seven-day-a week surveillance. Who, or what, could do such a thing?

He tried to bribe the prostitutes and their minders. Tell me who sent you? Tell me why?

The men outside never spoke. The girls too could never be budged on the subject, they never told him anything at all.

The jogger’s next step was to hire a private detective, six months after the surveillance had begun. He sought out a seedy character from Sydney’s notorious Kings Cross district. Carstairs was an ex-cop with underworld connections. His assignment was to find out who the people trailing the jogger were.

The jogger didn’t tell Carstairs about his own dark secret. There was no need for that.

A week after Carstairs commenced work, he vanished. The jogger went back after seven days to find that the private detective had closed his run-down office and left town. Had he been scared away? Or paid off?

The jogger wondered if he was part of some obscure criminal justice experiment? From time to time he tried to research that subject, but he never found anything remotely like the situation he was experiencing.

No, this wasn’t some bizarre experiment.

The strange thing was that the jogger began to reluctantly accept his predicament. After all, what could he do? He couldn’t risk going to the police. As the months turned into years he grew accustomed to the invisible surveillance, as a prisoner gets used to the confines of his cell. He stopped looking for victims; stopped stalking the streets in the lonely, quiet hours.

He still jogged, he had come to enjoy it, but only for fitness.

Perhaps, if he lived like a saint, then the strange vigil would end. Month after month, year after year, he hoped the watchmen would decide he was cured and leave him alone. He went as far as playing it straight with the prostitutes. Eventually, he realised the ploy wasn’t going to work. Five years had passed and the shadows remained. He started treating the girls rough again. It was the only satisfaction he could get.

It wasn’t enough - there were times when he felt sure the frustration would tear him apart. There was even one dark, prolonged period when he considered suicide.

In time, all of that passed. He learned to live with the frustration; with the watchers; with the maddening curiosity of who they were and how they managed to maintain their endless vigil.

Life went on.

When the jogger first suspected the watchers had left him, he did nothing. After all, it was just a feeling. He sensed the eyes were no longer upon him. He hadn’t picked up the now familiar signs of a follower in the crowd, or a car always just within view.

It must be my imagination.

It was a funny kind of delusion to get after all these years. But this sense that something had changed persisted.

He decided to put his feelings to the test. Why not? He had nothing to lose.