Sunlit Shadow Dance (29 page)

“
So now I ask that you hear what
he has to say first then allow me to tell of me and what has
brought me here.”

David and Anne both nodded and Cathy
invited the man to join them. His words were simple, “I have done
your friend great wrong, in what I wrote and spoke. One day I will
apologize to her myself. But today my apology is for you, her
friend who has walked in her shoes and suffered along with
her.”

Anne took his hand, “I thank you, I cannot
speak for her but what you have said is enough for me, the past is
the past and cannot be undone. The future is what we can
change.”

He nodded and said, “Thank you.”

David held out his hand to shake, “She
speaks for me too.”

So they sat and told the stories that they
both held.

Cathy told the story of her three years of
living a simple hidden life as an old woman who cleaned around the
town and how she had befriended Vic’s mother, thus hearing of the
wedding.

Anne told the story of the diary, the parts
in it that Mark had written about Cathy, telling of her early life
and its pain, parts that the inquest had deliberately withheld,
even from her parents lest they cause further harm.

She said, “I know what your uncle did to you
as a child and why you fled. I also know your uncle has been
missing for three years now. It is unknown if he has gone into
hiding or if it is something else. But he is missing too. Because
of what he has done we chose not to tell that part of the
story.”

Anne asked if she could ring Cathy’s parents
to tell them of meeting her.

Cathy shook her head. “Soon I hope, but
not now. I need to know fully about my Uncle first. I cannot see my
parents and tell them this until I know the truth about him,
whether he is hiding or he is dead.

“
Before I knew what you have
told me about him being missing I had decided to confront him with
Jacob present. I would have asked him to admit to what he had done,
to give him the choice to go and tell it to my parents and the
police or I would do if for him.

“
Now it seems we cannot do that.
So now we must try to find him for ourselves. If he is out there I
may be able to reach him when others cannot. Jacob has the skills
and contacts of an investigative journalist to help in
this.

“
If we locate him it will be as
I have said. We will give him a choice to turn himself in and admit
publicly to what he has done. If he does not then Jacob will write
and publish his story for the whole world to read. That is the only
way I can see for real justice to be done.”

So David and Anne agreed to help in this
quest. They offered money, but Cathy said she had more than enough.
Instead they arranged an introduction to Alan who was dealing with
the English Police in the search for this man.

Cathy said that armed with this
information they would conduct their own search for him. If he was
hiding somewhere there must be others that knew, and she would try
and find a way to reach him through people who knew. It may take
some months but that is what she and Jacob would do. She said she
would give it six months and then, if no trace was found, she would
contact her parents.

Two days later Anne and David met with
Cathy and Jacob in Darwin at the police station. Information was
exchanged along with the promise that should anything be found
Jacob and Cathy would let both the English and Australian police
know.

Two days later they were on a plane bound
for Iraq.

Beck and Ross were together again in
Darwin, after a wonderful weekend in Brisbane when they had crossed
the bridge from friends to lovers. Beck was very busy sorting out
the arrangements for the pardon, doing briefs to all and sundry.
The need to keep them in the strictest confidence was a
challenge.

Ross was now very cautious about what he
said about this whole thing, following the cautionary tale about
the leaking and consequences. They knew there were others who could
also be the source of something getting out. He and Beck both
waited in trepidation lest the journalist from London spring a
discovery of Susan’s location, but all remained silent.

Finally it was all done, the
pardon had been signed and delivered, the wedding had occurred and
Susan and Vic had flown away. Of Jacob nothing was heard, he seemed
to have faded away without sign
. Both Beck and Ross breathed a sigh of
relief as their day to day lives continued.

A few days later
Alan came on the
phone to Beck, saying, “The word is around town that you have a new
man. Sandy and I would like to invite you both out to dinner with a
dear friend of ours, Charlie, otherwise known to friends as the
real Crocodile Man. His wife is making her legendary catfish curry
this Friday night and she told us to bring any extras we can find.
So I thought of you, particularly as I hear that you and that
Queensland doctor who saw Susan are now an item. I thought you
might like to meet a few of the locals and hear a bit of the back
story about how this all unfolded.”

Beck had no hesitation in accepting. Alan
and Sandy were good company and it was great to be out in the open
with Ross. This relationship somehow felt different from her
previous one night stands and she wanted the whole world to know
about them.

They drove to the address given, carrying
beer and wine in their arms. Charlie greeted them at the door. She
had seen him from a distance at the previous legal proceedings but
had never spoken to him.

His eyes twinkled as he met them. “Aha, more
friends of the girl with the crocodile stone.”

Beck look puzzled. Alan came over to bring
join the welcome and he explained. “Charlie means ‘Susan’, I
suppose you could call us all the ‘Save Susan Committee’, not that
she knows about us. But now you have played your part of helping
her and now she is on her way to the other side of the world so we
wanted to welcome you to our group.”

Alan brought them over and introduced them
to two others who Beck also knew by sight, the flaming English
redhead, Anne, now becoming a significant TV celebrity and her drop
dead gorgeous boyfriend, David. Beck knew he had been engaged to
Susan before, and was now hooked up with her best friend. He was
also something of a TV celebrity with all the publicity.

At first she felt a bit
overawed with all these people. However
, in the course of drinks and plate
of curry the ice was soon broken. Within an hour they felt like
they had been friends forever.

As they talked, Alan told of
the wedding
,
a week ago now and how the journalist Jake had waited outside the
church with camera and microphone in hand for them to come out. He
said that Vic had dropped him with some well directed punches and
some other nameless people, had warned him off and then left him
nursing a cut face on the edge of the street, then how the girl,
Cathy, long lost, had found him, taken him in hand and led him
away. She and Ross listened in trepidation and then relief as it
the story emerged from Anne and David that Jacob would trouble
Susan no more.

It felt to Beck like a stone of fear was
lifted off her heart and she said a silent prayer of thanks for
this deliverance.

As they sat there in a loose
circle
,
talking, Charlie came over, asked Beck to put out her open hand.
Into it he placed a flat round item which rested neatly in the palm
of her hand. It was cool and heavy and felt like a
stone.

She asked, “What is it?”

“
What you think,” said
Charlie.

She closed her hand over it and closed her
eyes. It was clearly a stone and yet it was more, it seemed to be
imbued with something, a presence. Keeping her mind clear she tried
to focus on this presence and slowly it sharpened into something
more distinct, an ancient presence of places such are rivers, deep
water. She could not see its shape, just a sense of being inside
and looking out into a watery world.

Sandy came over, by herself and took
Beck’s hand. Now it was like there was a link formed between their
minds, Sandy could see and feel what she felt and she could see and
feel what Sandy felt.

She asked Sandy, curiously, “Why is this,
what it this thing that makes us connected, I can sense its
presence but I cannot see its shape. I only know it is a creature
of the water, a giant fish or turtle perhaps.”

Then it came to her, as if an
insight from inside Sandy’s mind.
“I know, it is a stone which belongs to a
crocodile, infused with a crocodile’s spirit. It sits inside a
crocodile. It allows one to look out, as if with the eyes of a
crocodile.”

Sandy nodded, “I suppose you could call it
a crocodile spirit stone. It is a stone taken from the stomach of a
crocodile where it sat for many years, becoming infused with its
presence. A part of it lingers still. Only some can see and feel
it, most cannot. Susan could, I can, you can. I guess that makes us
all crocodile sisters.

When Susan sat in jail, in her moments of
terror and she thought the bad crocodile spirit of Mark would
overwhelm her, she would hold this stone, keep it touching her
skin. And when she did, the crocodile spirit within this stone
would free her from other outside spirits trying to invade her
mind. She must have let some parts of them in on that fateful first
day there.

But as the madness seized her,
she did not want to hold this anymore. Then I feared
th
at other
spirits, bad spirits of crocodiles at that waterhole, would
overwhelm her, draw her to them and consume her.

Now I hope and pray she has escaped their
hold. But that thing you saw on the video, Alan told me of that. It
means that part of a bad crocodile spirit lurks somewhere deep
inside her and still has the power to tear at her soul. So we have
to help her be safe in whatever way we can.

It may be something you can do to help her
in return for what you have done. I have seen your secret in your
mind and know it too. I am not one to judge, none of us are. But
should she have need of us, then we are her kin. We will help her
in the way sisters do. Anne is her best friend and that is a
powerful bond. But only you and I share her sisterhood.

Vic was pleased with the
positive change in Jane
as the family settled into the routines of the
Scottish hill farm. She seemed to pick up where she had left off
her life as a 12 year old girl when last she remembered being
here.

She had even taken to using her original
names of Emily and Susan again some of the time. These were what
her grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins called her without
thinking, mostly Em, or Emily, the name of her later childhood, but
sometimes Susan, her small girl name and the name which connected
her memories to the past.

S
he told Vic, one day, that, now that she
had his surname of Campbell as her married name and she was getting
used to the names of Susan and Emily again, she did not mind him
using these names for her too if he wanted. He found that all three
names were now connected in his brain and he could use them all and
move between them without effort, though more and more she became
Susan again to him in his mind.

One day Jane asked Vic if he thought she
should change her name back. He said he did not mind if she added
back the old names but he did not want her to lose the name he had
rediscovered her under. There was a sweet and innocent part of her
that was still Jane to him.

Now her aunt and parents mostly
called her Emily, her grandparents mostly called her Susan and he
called her
all three as the mood took him, sometimes all together,
Susan-Emily-Jane. They were all one fused person and he loved them
equally. Their children of course just called her Mummy so it did
not matter to them.

Vic could sense this
place
, with
its quiet and peaceful routines, was good for healing her spirit
and mind. He was pleased it was so.

There was also an endless flow of people
wanting to meet the children, cousins, friends of cousins, village
neighbors.

Tom and Elinor
s
aid they
could stay for the first two weeks. The children were rarely out of
their grandparents’ sight and sometimes would make their own visits
to Great Gran and Great Pa and tell them their stories of the
day.

Vic worked alongside the farm
manager
most
days to have an outlet for all his energy. He found he needed to
spend time outdoors or he could feel restlessness grow inside him
like a caged animal.

Jane seemed content to spend
hours inside with her
grandparents, parents, aunts and cousins chatting
and drinking cups of tea. He loved her dearly and he found
satisfaction in the stability she seemed to have gained. But
sometimes he wished she had a bit of the fire that burned inside
the old Susan, the ferocity and anger as well as the gentle
softness. But he knew that trying to bring that person back was
fraught with danger and he did not want to risk opening up any
cracks to her missing years.