Sliver Moon Bay: The Looking (9 page)

We eat alone. Afterwards, I
clear the plates off the table. Lilian starts on the dishes. She’s
happy to do them, happy for me to go inhabit my space, behind the
other partition. She wants me to do my homework and listen to music
through the headphones while I’m doing it.

Okay, Lilian, I get it. I’ll
get out of your way.

28

‘Who told you that? Detective
Martin?’

‘No. Josh told me. They’ve
known about it for a long time.’

‘And nobody kept an eye?’

‘Lilian. The man did his
time.’

‘So? You always said you didn’t
trust him.’

‘That was for a different
reason altogether. He left my mother and me when we needed him
most.’

‘Well, he went to jail, didn’t
he? It’s not like he could have helped that.’

‘Sure. Whatever… Lil, you need
to— ’

—

God, this is going to go on…
Fairy, please come. Starling, please, show up, do something. Put me
out of my misery. I really can’t stand any more of this. But on and
on it goes, on their side of the caravan, under the covers, this
evil whispering.

‘Lil’, listen to me. They think
Drake killed her, put her in the ocean. That’s why we haven’t found
her.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Lil’… He might have. It makes
sense.’

‘No, he didn’t put her in the
ocean. Sarah goes every day. She knows Starling is not in the
water. She knows the beach.’

‘Lil’…

‘No. She’s not in the
water
—This is all your fault, Chris! I hate you! I HATE
you!’

Her voice is rising, from a
nothing whisper to thunder whisper. Our Lilian’s finally coming
into her own; like that bird, that Phoenix who overcame his own
death. And she’s getting stronger.

‘You brought us here! If it
weren’t for you…’

Lilian is gathering pace. She’s
roaring. ‘I HATE YOU!’

Oh, Lord. Where are you when I
need you? —Exactly. I’m going to have to hear this.

‘You said, you PROMISED we
we’re going to be safe, SAFE, here! And now my child is gone! Our
child is gone! Because of YOU!’

Yes, her child is gone because
of him. So finally we’re getting to the truth. But Chris is silent.
For a bit. He takes a few breaths, seven elephants’ worth, and then
he sobs. The man
sobs
, for Christ’s sakes.

29

It’s been three weeks. The only
news is that they’ve figured out the fire started in the kitchen.
In the wood stove with the faulty latch. The log left in there to
die fell out on the floor and rolled to the kitchen cupboard where
it stopped. The log still had some life in it and it set the
cupboard on fire.

Well, it is what it is. It’s
grim. Depressing. For all of us. Course, we’d rather have had the
fire started outside. We could have gone on believing somebody
other than Chris and Lilian was responsible. I think it’s more
Chris’s fault. Lilian had mentioned her concerns. She found it
difficult to close the stove door. She wanted the latch fixed. But
Chris could never find the time. He was always too busy with his
bullshit, whatever that was, at the time. So he fobbed her off.
Told her the latch was brand new and it only needed time to
‘settle’, told her the kitchen had been made over before we moved
in. And who made it over? —Exactly. Another thing you can hate
Drake for. But I don’t hate him. Lilian does. She imagines all
sorts of torturous scenarios in her vacuous head. All I can do is
cry with her, on occasion. Cause it is fucking sad what she’s going
through. She’s a mother of a missing child. It hurts. I am the
sister of a missing child. I know.

Chris goes back to work. The
weather’s shit and they need extra hands on the trawler so Chris
goes. He seems relieved, rejuvenated even, by the possibilities
this move offers. He might get swept overboard. He might even jump
cause he has a death wish. We all do. But we go about it in
different ways. Lilian drinks. Takes her magic pills at the same
time. Chris drives around like mental. He’s bound to run himself
into a ditch. Or a tree. Whichever comes first. And that will just
leave me. Or not. I’m doing my best not to be left behind. So I
dream. One day this too might kill me. And so what? —Exactly.

Detective Martin comes by
before Chris leaves. Questions his past. Relationship with Drake.
His present. Relationship with Lilian. And me. He’s noticed I call
my parents by their Christian names. He’s reading into it, citing
family dysfunction. Chris pretty much tells him to fuck off. He has
one child left and he’s fighting to keep that one. Alive. So why
don’t you fuck off, detective?

Detective Martin fucks off. He
leaves us with a warning not to leave town.

Seriously, dude? Our little
birdie hasn’t been found and we’re leaving here? Seriously, why
don’t
you fuck off, detective?

I’m proud of Chris, completely
proud and completely surprised. Yeah, Dad’s right. It is high time
Detective Martin fucked off cause he has been fuck all useful with
his expert ideas on locating missing children.

The scene has been refreshing.
Chris hugs Lilian, Lilian hugs me, Chris, Lilian and me hug each
other in the space between the kitchen table and their bedroom
partition. It’s a tight fit. We’re crying, obviously, about
Starling and where we’re at, but a huge weight has just been lifted
off of our shoulders. We know it’s up to us to find her. Together
and separately. We’ll do our bit. Fuck ‘em.

Chris hugs us, kisses us,
leaves. So it’s just me and Lilian for the rest of the week.

We spend it spending time,
looking out, for Starling, for each other. We decide that Starling
is definitely not on the beach. There’s no proof she ever came down
this way, no traces of her, except for Sleepy Bear and that’s only
because Drake put it there, decides Lilian. She’s convinced me. I
never thought Starling came down to the beach. She’d never. She’d
never have found it at night, we reason, though the fire was pretty
big. And the Moon was up. The beach, just an elephant herd down the
path. But still. She’d never. So that’s that.

We decide to move on from the
beach. Tomorrow we’ll go over the dunes. The shrubs next. The
bushes, the trees, all of that, behind our yard, and Drake’s, and
where the little birdies feed the cuckoo, there as well cause
Starling liked to look at them. Every day we’ll go, do a comb
through, thoroughly, bit by bit. And we will find her.

30

Detective Martin is not taking
us seriously. He’s back, twenty-four hours after Chris leaves, with
a specially trained cadaver dog and his handler. Just arrived, from
the big city. Okay, I do get a little excited. Apprehensive. What
if, hey? What if they do find her and it’s too much? For me, for
Lilian; especially for Lilian. And I’m not even thinking about
Chris. Why even go there? —Exactly.

He calls at the end of the day.
Lilian tells him about the dog, the handler, the no progress.

There’s a silence on Chris’s
end. One elephant, two elephant—Chris gets himself together. Ah
well, it is what it is, Chris sighs. Gathers his wits about him. We
have to stop relying on other people. They don’t know us. They
don’t know anything about us, Chris tells Lilian, reassuring her.
She’s got him on speaker, and now she tells him that.

‘You’re on speaker, Chris,’ she
says, with a side glance at me.

Okay, Lilian, I get it. Chris
should be aware that I am in the room.

‘Hi, Chris!’

‘Hi, Sarah. How are you
feeling, honey?’

‘I’m okay. They haven’t found
anything.’

‘I know. It’s gonna be okay,
honey. I’ll be home soon.’

‘Okay. Stay safe.’

‘I will. You too. Look after
Mum.’

‘Okay. I will.’

Click. He’s off the grid,
again. Lilian shrugs, gives me a smile. Wow! It’s only a little one
but it’s something. And that’s not all the good news. Lilian
suggests that we watch a movie tonight. Not a romance. Something I
want. Okay, then. I choose an adventure. It turns out good. A
couple of friends climb a real high, snow covered mountain and one
of them falls into a deep crack and breaks his leg and then he
climbs out, against all odds, and makes it back down, catches up
with his friend and all ends well. It’s a really good film. We both
like it. Afterwards, we curl up in Lilian’s bed. For once, I’m not
asking Fairy to come. She can have the night off. So can
Starling.

31

Of course, the good times don’t
last. The next day, the cadaver dog is back, sniffing about the
other side of ours and Drake’s properties. It’s not pleasant. It’s
obvious that the mood has shifted. Okay, I get it. They’re covering
all bases, exploring all possibilities. But it’s not helpful.
Lilian’s upped her medication. She’s gone back to happy pills,
straight after breakfast. So she doesn’t hear the dog, the handler,
the whole fucking sad deal going on around us. I keep the door to
the caravan shut, the blinds down. I don’t want to see these
people, or the dog. At the end of the day, they’ve gone. They won’t
be back. Not here, anyway. Meanwhile, the dog is needed elsewhere.
Seriously? That dog is needed somewhere else? What could possibly
top this assignment? —Exactly.

Well, it’s just another cog in
the wheel, isn’t it? We have started watching the news again, now
that everyone’s attention is officially SOMEWHERE ELSE. After all,
it has been almost a month. We shouldn’t be expecting anything now.
It’s not been said, out loud, of course. But it’s there. Everywhere
you have to go. Cause, obviously, you have to go places. Shops,
school, fill up the motorbike. You don’t want to but you have to
drag yourself about out there, just to survive. And you see it. In
the looks, in the manner of. They’re telling you:
You gotta
understand. Things happen. Life goes on. Even here.
That’s what
people are saying.

So I’m watching the news. But
I’m not learning anything new. Same shit’s gone down around the
world while ours stopped. Go figure.

32

That night I dreamt about
Starling. She was still inside Lilian but she was already smiling
at me. I’m coming, Salah, leady or not! Of course, I was ready.
Lilian, on the other hand, was taken by surprise. Anyway, it was
all quick and it went well. I came home from school and there she
was, in the bed, next to Lilian and a nurse was with them checking
her over, cause Lilian had given birth at home, very quickly and
totally unexpectedly as she was still two weeks off her due date.
Here’s your little sister, darling, Lilian said, and I got to hold
her for the first time. I told Lilian that she was the most
beautiful baby in the whole wide world and I meant every word. The
baby was beautiful. She opened her eyes and I swear she looked at
me like she knew who I was, and she had the most soulful
expression.

I got to name her. Lilian told
me they, her and Chris, really wished for me to pick her name and
even though I knew it was only Lilian’s idea—I heard them arguing
about it in their room one night and Chris wasn’t on board at all—I
was really pleased. I knew Lilian really had to fight for me cause
Chris argued that he alone had the right to name this child cause
Lilian had named me and this was his last chance as they were
hardly likely to have any more. But Lilian pleaded with him,
explaining that it would be good for all of us because if I chose
the baby’s name, I would bond with her, and so he relented. So I
got to name the baby, and I named her Starling. Lilian fell in love
with it straightaway, and even Chris liked it even though he had
wanted to name our little girl Barbara. Lilian got quite upset when
he first mentioned it and she asked him why such an ugly name
should be given to the most beautiful baby in the world but Chris
didn’t have a proper answer; he just said he liked it. We didn’t
believe him; we suspected there must have been something to it as
nobody in their right mind would name their baby daughter who was
such a darling, such a bright shining star, Barbara. But we let it
slide. We had our Starling.

A month later, Lilian went back
to work. She had to cause Chris wasn’t getting that many shifts at
the spoon factory and we couldn’t keep up with the rent and the
bills so Lilian really had no choice. She went back to the salon
part-time, helping out with the sweeping, the coffee and the phone.
She did well there; she was good with customers and had such a
gentle touch that soon she was washing hair and giving head
massages before the real hairdressers took over. The first few
months worked out all right cause they, Lilian and Chris, were able
to juggle their work hours so one of them was always home with
Starling, and we had money as well. But then things went south
again; Chris had to have a root canal done and I had a school
excursion and a school camp in the same term so that basically did
away with all the extra, and we were back to square one, in the
poor house, despite all their efforts. I was then just nine so I
wasn’t able to get a job at all, not even a paper run cause that
had to be supervised and neither Lilian nor Chris could spare the
time so it really was up to them to provide. They began to argue a
lot more around this time, and always about money now, and then
Chris got lucky and got himself a truck driving job on a six-month
contract which paid good money but it took him out of town for
weeks on end. He took it straightaway but he wasn’t happy to be
leaving us. He worried about Lilian and Starling, and me cause I
was too young to be left in charge but what could he do?
—Exactly.

He promised that he would call
every few days and left. I was okay with it, kind of happy if I’m
to tell the truth, about it but Lilian cried and she was worried
how we were going to cope with the baby just the two of us so I
told her that everything would be fine, and it was.