The Cry (16 page)

She woke when Alistair opened the front door to leave. ‘Where are you going? Alistair, come here. Alistair!’

‘I’m going to Melbourne to see Phil.’ He was obviously still furious with her. His face looked different. She recognised the expression, but couldn’t place it.

‘I’ll be back this afternoon. Why don’t you go for a walk? You’ve not been out since it happened, it’ll do you good. I’ve left a hat and glasses on the hall table – not much of a disguise, but it might stop you getting hounded. Maybe you could go to the shops and get some ingredients and cook something.’ He walked over, kissed her on the forehead, and then left.

As the car engine started, she recognised the feeling in her stomach. It was related to the expression she’d just seen on Alistair’s face. A faint nausea. And then it came to her. That was his cheating face, the one he always had when he phoned his wife from their two-star hotel rooms. Not blinking, lips just managing to suppress an expression: a fearful tremble, or a smile? ‘Work’s been a nightmare!’ he’d tell Alexandra as Joanna lay silent on the bed. ‘Has your day been okay? Did Chloe go to dancing?’

God, she was totally paranoid. She should do what he suggested. It was a good, kind idea. She showered, dressed, waved Elizabeth off to whatever pointless Noah-hunting expedition she was going out on today, grabbed the sunglasses and baseball cap Alistair had given her, and stepped outside for the first time
since.

‘Morning, Ms Lindsay,’ the security guard on the front veranda said.

‘Morning.’

‘Ms Lindsay! Ms Lindsay!’ One of the two die-hard journalists camped on the pavement said.

She started running.

The greengrocer at the end of the street didn’t sell Lilly Pilly berries and recognised her. ‘Are you holding up?’ the middle-aged man asked.

‘Not really,’ she said, pulling her cap as far down as it would go.

She began walking into town. She’d only walked one block when she saw her baby’s face above the word
MISSING
.

She ran towards the pole and ripped the poster off, tearing it into pieces and tossing it in a nearby bin. She ran towards Geelong for a few metres, turned back and pulled the ripped sheet out of the bin – her baby’s face! She couldn’t rip her baby’s face to pieces and leave it in a bin! Torn pieces of the missing poster now in her pocket, Joanna ran two kilometres, without looking higher than knee level, all the way into the town centre. She was so out of condition, it was more of a stagger than a run.

The house was still empty when she got back. After getting her breath, she taped the ‘Missing’ poster back together, flattened it with her hand, and kissed what she could make out of her baby’s face. This she put in her hiding place under the mattress. The letters she’d hidden were still there. The police must have left them there. She Googled the jam recipe and set to: washing and boiling the berries, draining the misty pink juice through muslin, adding sugar and lemon, boiling, removing scum, waiting for it to set.

The process didn’t calm her as she’d hoped, probably because she was supposed to make this while Noah was jumping on a trampoline in the garden, not pinned to street lights below the word
MISSING
. She had to stop herself from going outside again to tear down every poster she could find.

She stared out the window and began to obsess about Alistair. It wasn’t paranoia. She knew he hadn’t gone to see Phil. Kirsty had warned her that she might never trust him. Not a great foundation for a new relationship, she’d said, to know how good he is at lying. At the time Joanna felt annoyed at Kirsty for not giving the poor fellow – the love of her life! – a chance. She and Kirsty drifted apart for a while and began gently repairing the friendship when Joanna announced her pregnancy. But Kirsty still didn’t like him, it was obvious. She made sure to visit when Alistair was away at conferences (‘That way I get you all to myself!’) and couldn’t help but make the occasional dig: Do you trust him when he’s away? / Do you two laugh a lot? / He doesn’t expect you to give up work, does he? / Will he be a hands-on dad, do you think? / Did he put you on a diet? / Are you happy Jo? Really happy?

The first spoonful of the jam was bitter and she was glad that it almost hurt to eat it. She stood at the living room window looking through a small gap in the curtains at the tree, devouring spoonful after spoonful, wincing each time until the jar was empty.

She’d hoped to feel something other than sick, but she didn’t. She lay in bed and eventually the nausea gave way to sleep.

The doorbell rang at the same time as the phone. She gestured for Detective Phan to come in as she spoke on the phone to Justin someone from
60 Minutes
. ‘Just want to say we’re thrilled you’ve agreed to do the interview,’ Justin said.

Joanna gritted her teeth. He’d agreed to it already, the arsehole. ‘I’m very sorry, I’ll have to call you back.’

‘Everything all right?’ Phan asked.

‘Fine, just a Channel 9 thing. Not sure we’re up to it.’

‘You should think about it. Keeps people aware, you know. In fact, that’s why I’m here. I don’t know how to say this . . .’

‘Just say it.’

‘We’ve sent the volunteers home, closed the hall in Point Lonsdale. It’s not that we’ve stopped the search, it’s just that after the initial one, we wait for leads before going at it again. A search isn’t a linear thing, I hope you understand. We’ll still do everything we can. But that’s why it’s important for you and Alistair to keep it in the public eye. You should think about the Channel 9 gig.’

She said she would and sent him on his way as fast as she could, furious at Alistair for saying yes behind her back, but relieved that the good people of Point Lonsdale were no longer spending their free time looking for Noah.

When she looked out the window to check he’d gone, she noticed the security guard had gone too, and that one last journalist was packing up his van.

When Elizabeth arrived home in the evening, Joanna got up, mortified to have left the kitchen in such a state.

‘No, let me clean up,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’ll get you something proper to eat.’

Half an hour later, a plate of lamb chops and veggies appeared in front of her. Joanna apologised for not being able to eat it.

‘That’s okay,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’m off to bed now. You should get some sleep too.’

It was after ten when Alistair arrived home.

‘How was Phil?’ Joanna asked.

‘Hello to you too. Did you go for a walk?’

‘Where did you meet him?’

‘Town.’

‘For lunch
and
dinner?’

‘Why are you being so aggressive?’

‘
60 Minutes
phoned. They’re so pleased you agreed to do the interview.’

‘Oh . . . Listen . . . I’m sorry. But think about it. No innocent parent would refuse. I’ll do the talking. You just hold my hand.’

She couldn’t even be bothered discussing it. Whatever. ‘Just promise me you won’t do the book.’

‘Can we talk about that later?’

‘No. Promise me now.’

‘I promise.’

What a worthless thing, an Alistair-promise. ‘You didn’t meet Phil, did you? Was it Bethany? I’ve Googled her. She’s hot. Do you think she’s hot?’

‘What? Jesus!’

‘Why don’t you just answer my question?’

‘Why don’t you just stop with the paranoia?’ Alistair bashed his way around the kitchen, re-heating the plate his mother left for him, then turned the television on. After finishing one mouthful, he sighed. ‘Please trust me. I saw Phil.’

Joanna dug her arms into the side of the sofa to maximise her distance from him. There were four feet between them, she calculated. The television in front of them was four feet from her, and four from him. Joanna, Alistair, TV: an equilateral triangle.

She realised why she had been hallucinating about triangles in the bedroom now. The counsellor. The drama triangle.

‘Have you heard of the drama triangle?’ the counsellor had asked, and was surprised when Joanna said no. She set about drawing one on a piece of A4 paper: ‘There are three positions, each at one point of the triangle.’

Victim

    Rescuer                 Persecutor

‘In some relationships, each person takes a position. You, for example, might have felt that you were saving Alistair when you got together: from a dull marriage, a difficult wife, a routine life, a sexless relationship. So he might have been the Victim, and you the Rescuer.’

Joanna was tempted to grab the sheet of paper and shove it down the counsellor’s throat. Six sessions, she’d had, each less helpful than the last. After each one, she left hating herself more than when she arrived. She always came with a very specific need. The first two: to be told it was okay to have a lover who was married. The third and fourth: to be told it would not hurt anyone as long as she kept it a secret. Five: she wanted to know how to get out. She’d had enough of being a liar. It was no longer fun. She’d tried to end it, and failed, and Joanna had never failed at anything. There must be something obvious she was doing wrong that she could do right. Telling him it was over only led to tears that led to sex that led to loving him more. Changing her telephone number and blocking him on email and Facebook and avoiding their usual haunts only led to him seeking her out or creating a new email or Twitter or Facebook account from which he’d deliver beautiful speeches, which led to her believing he loved her more than anyone could ever love anyone, which led to her not leaving him, which led to the making of a sixth counselling session.

‘Just tell me how to leave him!’ Joanna begged, but the counsellor ignored her, and held up her diagram.

‘What happens is this. Some people, some couples, get caught on this triangle. You change roles, again and again, moving from one point of the triangle to another, but you are never able to get out. Soon after the affair started, you, for example, may have changed from the Rescuer to the Victim. He made you lie. He made you cheat. He turned you into someone you did not recognise or like. You might have been thinking: I was a good person before you. You have ruined me! So you moved to another point on the triangle to be the Victim. And he, the Persecutor.

‘Next he might have taken his stand as the Victim. My wife is unhappy, and now my lover is unhappy. I am unhappy. All I want is to be happy. Poor me. Victim.’

Joanna had paid another thirty-five pounds for this session and she had twenty minutes to go according to the square silver clock behind the velour sofa. The counsellor was not going to help her. She would never come again. She started doing her shopping list in her head.

‘Couples on this triangle are dysfunctional,’ the woman said, putting the drawing down on the coffee table between them. ‘They’re stuck, only ever moving from one to two to three, corner to corner to corner.’

The clock ticked loudly. Joanna was supposed to meet him at a bar in town in an hour. She had hoped to go armed with the ammunition to end it, once and for all. They’d been together nine months now. Fifteen minutes to go. She should get eggs at the supermarket too, and try and eat one for breakfast.

‘Where are you now‚ Joanna?’

‘What?’

‘On the triangle.’ The counsellor banged the tip of her pen on the diagram on the coffee table, annoyed that her client was distracted. ‘Where do you think you are right now?’

‘Um, actually, I need to be somewhere else. Sorry, I have to get going.’

She didn’t make another appointment.

Two hours later Joanna found herself with Alistair in the back lane behind a bar in town. After, she promised him: ‘Yes, I will save you from her. We will be together.’ She was on a triangle. The Rescuer, at that particular moment, one with cum on her chin.

Alexandra caught them the following week and she forgot all about the triangle.

But it came back when she was delirious.

Sitting on the sofa watching the carefully selected television that did not involve the news and therefore them, she realised he was forcing her to be someone she hated – again.

She wanted to tell the truth, she wanted this lie to end. Victim.

‘You’re a good person,’ he’d say. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’ Rescuer.

They’d assume new positions any moment. She knew that now. She’d be watching to see when it happened.

She felt like ringing her counsellor and thanking her for the diagram.

She felt like wringing her counsellor’s neck for not telling her how to get off the diagram.

She
was
going mad. She needed more than antidepressants. The line that connected her to him stuck to her like a shadow, stretching, holding her, then banging her off to her next position.

Alistair was at his end of the couch watching – you guessed it –
60 Minutes
. He’d manage it, you know. His ability to look normal astonished her. He’d made mistakes right enough, but had played his part to perfection, searching the streets for days, yelling at the police to try harder, tweeting and Facebooking and creating a website and even a fund for donations, latching himself to that Bethany. He was so good at it that Joanna wondered if he was human. She looked back on his behaviour during the affair – lying had come to him with similar ease. It didn’t trouble him. Since the incident, he had cried in her arms sometimes at night. He sobbed in the bath too – she heard him. But not enough. He didn’t need tranquillisers. He didn’t hear cries. He wasn’t suffering from post-traumatic stress. He didn’t want to confess or kill himself. He wasn’t tortured enough.

Joanna went to the toilet and sat with her head in her hands. As with the affair, this had started with one lie. Someone has taken my baby. She sat on the toilet and tried to take Alistair’s advice – that she could do this, that this was only one lie. Just as she’d done when she told Kirsty that Alistair Robertson was just a friend. Only one lie.

But it wasn’t. Now, as then, one lie turned to two.

I just popped into the shop for a minute.