Saving Jazz (10 page)

Jack and Tommy had also been kept home by their parents. They were facing a range of sex charges. By all accounts they were both being cooperative and both had admitted their guilt, but this was where the rift occurred in Greenhead. Two camps sprang up. The first camp saw Tommy and Jack as criminals in their own right, but also as the embodiment of a generation gone crazy, a generation seeking approval through social media, engaging in lewd and illegal activities, creators and consumers of pornography. This camp, led by the likes of Mr Maitland (who'd tell anyone who cared to listen that he'd identified this trait in Jack as a ten-year-old boy — ‘If you can easily kill a fish then this is to be expected'), wanted the book thrown at them (which highlighted the generational differences — more likely throw an iPad at them). The other camp was
marked by the war cry ‘They're just boys'. Those in this camp were incensed by the criminal charges against ‘kids having fun', ‘a prank', ‘boys being boys'.

The effect was a major schism down the town's centre, the bristling animosity of a town divided. People closed ranks, became secretive and suspicious of one another. As for me, Jazz Lovely — at this point I wasn't even on the town radar.

My father didn't actually speak to me until two days after the principal's office. He purposefully avoided me. If I heard him moving around in the kitchen, when I walked in I'd see the swinging door he'd exited through. Mum and Dad weren't sitting me down for concerned parental chats, they weren't offering me support and unconditional love. In fact, I think it's fair to say in those first weeks they had stopped loving me and when all the details emerged (yes, there are more revelations to come) Dad retreated further from me. His revulsion for me was palpable; he couldn't bear to be in the same room with me. My fear of how he'd speak to me was totally unfounded. He actually had no intention of speaking to me at all. Mum was a bit more involved.
She would speak to me, even make eye contact for as long as she could, then glance away blinking madly, as if a bug or something had flown into her eye. Before the trials started I moved to my Aunty Jane's in Perth. It made sense anyway — that way I could get to court easily and they wouldn't have to look at the subject of their shame daily.

But I'm jumping ahead. I was a prisoner in my room, tethered to my laptop and phone as my only connections to the real world, yet too frightened to communicate through them. I couldn't comment or message anyone. I just watched the world on Facebook. Isolated and alone.

Then Dad knocked on my door. ‘Jasmine.' The sound of his voice made me want to cry. My heart leapt and I actually started trembling. He had come to talk to me.

‘Yes,' I jumped from my bed and faced the door. I'd never been particularly close to my dad, he wasn't really hands-on. He was really just a constant figure in my life, but over the last two days I had missed him so much. Missed his approval of me. He opened the door and his frame filled the doorway.

‘The police are here,' he spoke coldly to my
Chinese waving-cat on the window ledge. ‘They want to speak to you.' Then he turned around and walked away. I felt like vomiting. Dad wasn't going to support me — I heard the office door shut. He was going to leave me to face the cops on my own. At that moment, despite everything I'd done, I actually hated my father.

Mum was in the lounge room with the two police officers when I entered. She was seated, they were standing. The female cop had a notebook in her hands.

‘We have a few questions to ask you,' the policeman said. I nodded. ‘We have had Thomas and Jack assisting in our enquiries but there is something neither of them can answer. There is a disparity in the photographs that circulated after the incident.' He held two photographs in front of me. I took them and placed them on the table. It was like those puzzles in the paper —
Can you find ten differences?
The two images were both of Annie lying on the bed. In one she was fully dressed, permanent marker visible on parts of her body (clearly taken after all the abuse), the blanket bunched over her feet (not over her, as I had left it — was this
Callum's photo?). In the other she was naked and there was no blanket, the permanent marker clearly visible all over her body. I blinked back tears as I looked again at the images. I kept staring at both photographs, feeling like I had found about nine differences — where was the tenth?

‘Here,' the cop said, circling some of the writing on her naked body, ‘and then here,' he circled the corresponding area on the dressed one. Bingo! The tenth difference — so obvious, so apparent. ‘Who did that?' he asked.

I looked at the images.
JACK WAS HERE
and an arrow, then the other one:
WAS HERE
and an arrow. I felt cold. I looked at my mother, who looked away, rubbing at the insect in her eye. ‘Me,' I said pathetically.

It was enough for them to take me to the police station for further questioning. They advised my mum to get me a lawyer and said there was no doubt I was going to face charges. They listed indecent assault, concealing a crime, conspiracy. That day was terrifying, in so many ways. The crimes were not going to go unpunished. We would pay for what we'd done.

I was never detained by the police. I was questioned, at length. They were trying to see what part I had played in the sexual assault on Annie, whether I had been there during it, if I had contributed to it and why I had covered up for Jack. They believed me when I said I hadn't known about the assault when I erased Jack's name, that I had unintentionally covered up his crime (if not for all the visual footage). For my part I would face the judge in the Children's Court and my lawyer advised me I wouldn't be incarcerated.

‘Community service, possible fine, bit of a slap on the wrist,' he said comfortingly. At that stage he was pretty much the only comfort I got. Dad had zero tolerance for me and Mum was merely a physical
presence, to take me to the cops or my lawyer. She was probably more relieved than anyone when I moved to Aunty Jane's.

I couldn't stand living in a tomb, with two people who clearly hated me, in a town of people who all hated me. When my involvement became known around town — after Mrs Weaver next door saw the cops escort me from my house — no one was divided over my actions, as they had been about Tommy and Jack. I wasn't considered a prankster or ‘just being a girl'. No, I was considered abnormal, base, depraved — what kind of girl would do that to her best friend? I was seen as a freak — a scourge. If it had been Plymouth or Salem in the 1600s they would have branded a gigantic red A (not for adultery, but assault) across my chest. I was a social pariah.

I had to get out, and suicide was not going to be an option. Aunty Jane knew the sugar-coated details from Mum, so when I rang her in desperation asking if I could stay for a bit her reply was, ‘As long as you need,' and within a couple of hours she picked me up.

I sat in the front seat of her battered VW van as
she drove too fast from Greenhead. I didn't feel any sorrow leaving the town behind. In fact, as I watched it disappear in the side mirror a lot of the tension and stress fell away. I wasn't out of it yet, but at least I was out of there.

Aunty Jane was always a bit of a hippy, burning foul incense and doing yoga. She was married to my dad's brother, but the polar opposite of Mum, who was so fucking uptight and stymied by appearances. I think that was the worst part of it for Mum — what the neighbours thought. Like who'd give a shit about Mrs Weaver's opinion anyway — the woman thought her bespoke bronze nude statue, urinating into her pond, was the height of class.

Aunty Jane and my Uncle Rob were a lot younger than my mum and dad, who had always seemed much older than everyone else's parents anyway. There were about twelve years between Dad and Rob, his brother, and Rob had always lived in Australia, whereas Dad had grown up in Johannesburg. When I'd look at Rob I'd see the family resemblance, but even his posture was relaxed and chilled. I guess Aunty Jane just had that effect on everyone. She ran an online homemade
craft business, everything from macrame pot holders (‘I'm bringing back all things retro,' she'd say with a piece of twine between her teeth as she fashioned a new design) to homemade kasundi. She was even trialling a range of teas (because ‘a lot of the tea franchises are ethically corrupt'). She glanced over at me as we neared Joondalup. She had slowed from a hundred and thirty to about ninety, only twenty over the speed limit.

‘How are you travelling?' she asked finally.

I shrugged. ‘Okay. I can't thank you enough for rescuing me.' As I spoke the words thickened. I was teetering close to the edge and Aunty Jane was the first person to show me an inch of compassion.

‘Not a drama, kid,' she said and even her voice, so soft and Australian, seemed gentler than my mother's clipped words. ‘Do you want to fill me in?'

I nodded. ‘I'll tell you everything, but I'm afraid you are going to hate me when you hear the real details instead of my mother's sanitised version.' I was trying not to panic, but what if Aunty Jane didn't like what she heard, turned the car around and took me back there? I wouldn't survive in that town. To my horror, she swerved off the road and banged the
VW up over the kerb, onto the nature strip.

She turned to face me. ‘Okay. These are the rules. It's about honesty and trust. From what I've been told, you fucked up. But what you don't know is that we all fuck up, to varying degrees, at some stage. I'm here because you need me. And I'll do what I can to help you through this and get over it. That's what you need to know.'

‘Why?' I asked through tears. Why would my aunt, who was only related to me by marriage, offer me the things my parents wouldn't?

‘Because that's what family does,' Aunty Jane said. ‘Relax.' She pulled her sleeve up and showed me her tattoo —
breathe
. ‘I have it here to remind me, all the time, to slow down and just breathe. Okay?'

I nodded and inhaled deeply. ‘Okay. This is what happened …' And I was still talking when we pulled up in front of her house right on the edge of Perth city.

The house was an old federation style — dark-red brick, white window trims and worn weathered floorboards. Aunty Jane opened the front door to a sight that was worlds away from my mother's pristine place. ‘This is why we have Christmas at
your folks',' she said, kicking a kid's toy out the way. ‘I don't think Meghan can handle the clutter.'

Clutter was polite. The house looked like a tornado of eight-year-olds had swept through and dropped every toy currently in stock at Kmart on the floor. In the kitchen the dishes were piled high. ‘Dishwasher broke down and today is …' Aunty Jane looked at the roster on the fridge, ‘Louie's turn. Hang on a sec. Louie?' she bellowed down another hallway. Within minutes my twelve-year-old cousin Louie — one half of the monozygotes, the other being Charlie — emerged scratching his belly.

‘Wassup mum?' he asked. Despite the fact it was after lunch, it was clear Louie had just woken up. He saw me. ‘Hey Jazzy, wassup?'

‘Hey Louie,' I gave him a wooden hug. Never having had a sibling, I found myself supremely awkward.

‘Dishes,' Aunty Jane said, nodding to the kitchen sink. Louie nodded and loped over. ‘Jazz is coming to stay with us for a while.'

‘Cool,' Louie said and started washing up.

‘Come on, I'll show you your room.' Aunty Jane led me through the house and out into the back
garden. It was a big block — not by Greenhead standards, but in the inner city it was the kind of place people bought, bulldozed and subdivided into three or more townhouses. ‘I won't hear of demolition talk,' Aunty Jane told me, ‘it's a crime to knock down these old places. A part of our Australian history. And that tree,' she pointed to an enormous gum tree, ‘is about two hundred years old. It's a piece of living history.' I'd been to Aunty Jane's a handful of times in my life. It was true that family gatherings were always at my parents' place, no doubt because Mum's nerves couldn't handle the ramshackle approach to domestic duties at Aunty Jane's. But I never remembered the little timber cabin that sat nestled in the back corner of the garden.

‘Is that new?' I asked pointing to it. It was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. It was bright blue with white wooden French windows and doors, a verandah and a wide timber deck.

‘Yes,' Aunty Jane nodded and produced a key. ‘It was finished last week. Fortuitous, really, because I wouldn't want you having to share with Bernie — or heaven forbid Bernie and Jake having to share.'

Bernie and Jake were the two younger twins, nine years old. Aunty Jane said she had a knack for producing duplicate children. ‘A backup plan, if the first one goes rotten,' she said with a laugh. A house full of boys. I wondered what it would be like. The inside of the cabin had polished timber floors, a double bed, a wardrobe, dresser and an air con. It was pretty and tidy. ‘Once you're settled we can get stuff to personalise it — make it yours.'