The Ottoman Motel (13 page)

Audrey had not moved from where Simon had left her. She'd drawn her knees up to her chin, peering at the world from underneath her uneven fringe. Simon guessed that memories of her mother—the not being able to know—made up that part of her that swung and bobbed against what people normally did. Her strange behaviour was a protest, perhaps. She saw Simon and Ned coming; her eyes mined the ground for some hidden meaning. Simon noticed Gin, some way out in the water.

‘Mind if we join you?' Ned sat down in front of her on the grass. Audrey stayed silent. ‘Simon told me about what happened.'

‘So what?' Audrey puffed out her cheeks.

‘I told him why you might be upset.'

‘How would you know why I'd be upset?'

‘I'm sorry I called you a name,' said Simon. ‘It wasn't nice. And I'm sorry about your mother.'

Audrey's eyes shot up. ‘What about her?'

Ned put his hand on Audrey's arm. ‘I told Simon about how your mum disappeared. I thought he'd like to know that we've all been through the same thing.'

Audrey formed a fist around her right index finger. She said, ‘That wasn't why I was upset,' but it didn't sound like even she believed it.

‘It helped,' said Simon, ‘to know about the gridlines.'

Audrey's mouth wavered. ‘Really?'

‘Yes. It's good to have you helping.'

Audrey sat up straighter, shook her hair back. ‘Thank you, Simon.'

Ned cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps you could apologise, Audrey, for the untrue things you said about his parents?'

Audrey stood up and put a hand on Simon's shoulder. ‘I apologise, Simon.' She screwed her mouth up, like she was thinking. ‘I shouldn't have said those things.' She stuck out her left hand. ‘Friends?'

Simon took her hand, which was soft and cold. ‘Friends.' They shook, and Simon was glad he had washed the blood off his fingers already. The bleeding had stopped.

‘All right,' said Ned, ‘I'm going to get the thermos from the car. Does anyone want a drink or something to eat?'

Simon waited for Audrey's answer.

‘No thank you,' she said. ‘Simon and I have something to discuss.'

‘Yes, I'm fine,' Simon agreed.

‘Okay then.' Ned got up and dusted off the back of his jeans. ‘Back soon.'

Audrey walked to the water's edge. She climbed a small rock and jumped off it; her layered dress made her look a bit like a bat, flying in the daytime. Simon met her where she landed.

‘It was different, you know,' she said.

‘What was?'

‘When my mum went missing.'

‘Your dad told me.'

‘There was a sniffer-dog down at the beach. Gin wanted it to catch a Frisbee. It didn't make any difference. We had to pack up half the house—the bits that she used.'

‘The bits she used?'

‘Some of the furniture, things she was halfway through.'

Something snagged in Simon's mind. ‘Did your mum…make things?'

‘Yes,' said Audrey. ‘She made things from wood.'

‘Did she make the table, in the dining room?'

‘When did you go in the dining room?'

‘With Madaline. She interviewed me.'

‘Madaline?' Audrey's face darkened, then just as quickly relaxed. ‘Stephanie. That was her name. She was a sculptor. She used to make us animals, when we were littler. She was always carving.' Audrey picked up a pointed stone from the ground
and began twisting it, whittling into her palm. ‘Just because she disappeared,' said Audrey, ‘doesn't mean your mum and dad have.' She smiled, and Simon thought her smile was the small start of something good.

They walked together down to the water's edge where tall stalks of grass stuck out, mud-caked into spider's legs. ‘I don't miss her, anyway,' said Audrey. ‘I just got used to it.' She weighed the whittling stone in her right hand. Making Simon jump, she rushed her arm over her head and hurled the stone up into the sky, out across the water. ‘I don't miss her,' she said again, as the stone shrilled through the air in a high arc. It finally landed, making a pleasant white dash in the water.

‘Bet you can't do that,' she said.

Simon smiled. ‘Bet I can.'

‘Okay,' she said. ‘Furthest throw wins.'

Simon looked around and found another stone. He'd played cricket at one school. He was sure he could throw better than a girl. It would be easy.

‘Get ready to lose,' he said, like someone out of a movie. He wound up and let the stone go. As he released it, he realised his grip was too weak, and it went out too flat and wobbly, crashing into the water like a diving plane.

Audrey threw another one—small and round: a water stone—and it went even further. She laughed. ‘There's no way you can throw further than me.'

A quick anger buzzed in Simon's stomach. Just because he was lost, just because Audrey could make up the rules, that didn't mean she had to win. He had to beat her. They each threw three more times, and each time Audrey won. ‘You're not trying,' she kept saying, even though she knew he was. On the fourth go, Simon remembered the rocks in his pockets. He had forgotten about them. He thought of Pony. He reached down and got one out. Its weight felt right in his hand.

‘What's that?' said Audrey.

‘My secret weapon.' He turned the rock over in his hand, enjoying its glint, its glittering jewels. ‘I've been saving it up.' He turned it over in his hand until it nestled snugly in his grip.

‘It's too big,' said Audrey.

‘No it's not. There's no rules about that.' He turned around, stepped back and readied his arm. He knew his throw would be enormous. He could picture it sailing over the lake completely, tracing a superhuman path that would set a record. He pictured the rock hitting one of the trees on the opposite shore, lodging in halfway up its trunk. He would show Reception what he was made of.

He ran four steps, leaned back and hurled his arm forward with all his strength and all his anger and all his sadness. Just as he did, a voice rang in his head, as clear as air itself. A sideways feeling: his mother's voice:
You need to understand, but it's quite obvious you can't
. Simon felt a weight leave his fingers. His vision skewed and his body stuttered forward as he regained his balance, but when he listened again the voice was gone. His eyes settled easily on a spot on the horizon, but the sideways feeling was still there. Something wasn't right. Something wasn't where it was supposed to be.

The rock.

Simon was off-balance again, spinning his head in every direction for signs where the rock was coming down. It hadn't fallen in the water because there was no sound, no splash. He searched the sky, eyes flicking. Perhaps he
had
thrown it to the other shore. Perhaps he
had
won—but then he saw it—a dark spinning shape, a full stop falling through the air. It was too fast to follow and all he heard was a dry noise as he spun around and saw Ned falling like a shot solider, his white thermos cup, his sandwich, crashing against the ground. Ned collapsing, crumpling, his body with no apparent memory of how it was supposed to land. And then stillness: a patch of red, growing slowly, like a handprint against Ned's hair.

Audrey screamed. Not a quick shrill shout but a slow moan. Simon's body was frozen in a flashbulb pose of expressed energy: shoulders bunched, body hip-swivelled, face contorted with effort. He couldn't see the rock, only what it had done.

Ned lay on the ground in an impossible spiral shape. His arms and legs curved somehow in the same direction, as if his body was circling in on itself. But what Simon noticed most was the bright stain that was breeding red tendrils in the thatch of Ned's hair. With a self-taught trick, Simon tried to convince himself that the blood was paint that had fallen from above, descending on Ned from a puncture in some stratospheric balloon. But he knew the only thing that had fallen from the sky was the rock he had thrown.

Audrey fell silent; she turned her head to Simon. Her face showed little: except her eyes, which simply said
I fear this
. They turned together, and their bodies moved slowly forward. As they approached, Ned's body seemed to loom unevenly towards them. Neither of them could measure a response. There was nothing to compare it to.

Ned's body heaved and Simon's breath stopped in his mouth. Ned's arm dragged itself towards his head, his fingers searching out the dried blood and the gash beneath. He climbed slowly to his haunches, hair swinging before his face, grained with dust and twisted into thick dirty ribbons. Audrey held out her hand—too far away for Ned to take it—and let out what was a cry and a question.

Ned didn't seem to hear it, or perhaps he couldn't. He rose to his feet, both hands rising to his head; blood began to run down the inside of his forearms, dripping in measured doses from his elbows, making dot patterns on the bone-white rocks below. The dots followed him as he staggered forward, connecting his steps together. He looked up and met Simon's gaze, as if remembering something important. When he removed his left hand from his temple, a fresh complaint of blood spilled free.

Ned's mouth opened to speak, and what Simon heard was, ‘I remember,' though he wasn't sure if Ned was even making words. Then, with a loud exhalation and a final widening of his eyes, he collapsed again.

Audrey sprang to her father's side with the reflexive quickness of panic. She grabbed Ned's jacket, bunching it up in two little fists. She shook him, tried to pick him up. Her arms strained, but Ned remained where he was. She turned to Simon. ‘Why did you do this?' she said, her voice not wet and wavering, but so dry that her words cracked in her throat.

‘I didn't!' said Simon hopelessly, ‘I didn't do anything.' He thought of his mother's voice, how it had appeared from nowhere.

‘You threw the rock!' Audrey cried, shaking Ned's jacket. ‘It's my dad!' Then she wept, whooping sobs, sucking in air that never satisfied her breaths.

Simon grabbed at his thoughts. Here came Gin, splashing towards them in the water. He didn't want Gin to see. But what about the rest of the people, scattered all around the dam, scores of them, more than enough to help, but too far away. What was it Madaline had said? Communication…

‘The whistles!' he shouted.

‘What?' Audrey's entire face burned red.

‘Every group leader has a whistle.'

Audrey seemed to understand. ‘It's around his neck.' Simon crouched down to help, but Audrey slapped him away. She put her fingers up to Ned's throat and tried to work her hand underneath his collar. Simon made himself look into Ned's eyes. They weren't focused on him. They weren't focused on anything. His eyelids were broken blinds, sagging sadly.

Audrey was trying to force down the zipper on Ned's jacket. She had to push her hand against his chin, her fingers staining red. Eventually the zip came loose and she pulled out a small plastic whistle. Trembling, she unclipped it from its length of cord. The side of the whistle that had been resting on Ned's chest was covered in blood.

‘What do we do?' said Audrey. ‘It won't work like this.'

Simon took a deep breath and grabbed the whistle from her hand. He pulled the bottom of his T-shirt out from under his jumper and rubbed the whistle as hard as he could. When he brought it back to his face, it looked nearly clean.

‘Should I try it?' he said to Audrey.

Audrey nodded her head.

Simon put the whistle to his lips, and he could taste the smell of old money. He took a breath and blew as hard as he could. The whistle spluttered, but that was all. Simon closed his eyes. It wasn't going to be like this. It wasn't. He hit the whistle against the side of his leg, again and again. Something had to go right, eventually. He put the whistle to his mouth again and blew. And a piercing, trilling, beautiful sound shot out into the winter air, its pure echo ringing out. Simon blew it, over and over, harder each time, until he felt his last breaths leave him, the last efforts of air clawing at his lungs to remain.