Thyla (8 page)

Later, in our room, Rhiannah showed me the ‘stockpile’ of ‘tampons’ and ‘pads’ in her top drawer. Before we’d gone back to class, she’d pressed another one in my hand and instructed me to, ‘Put it in your pocket. Change it in a couple of hours, okay? It’s important. You’ll get sick if you don’t. And later we’ll get you some more.’

Now, she gestured to the boxes and parcels and said, ‘Feel free to just help yourself any time. I’ve always got a whole heap, just in case.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied, hoping she understood that I meant ‘thank you’ for more than just the items that filled her drawer.

Rhiannah had been a real friend to me, Connolly. She took me to the girls’ toilets, and she sat outside while I negotiated my way with my very first tampon. It was difficult, and it hurt at first, and I found myself yelping – from the pain and from embarrassment.

But Rhiannah never got embarrassed. Rhiannah knew just what to say, and she stayed with me until I got it right.

‘It gets easier,’ she said. ‘In a couple of days, you won’t even have to think about it.’

She never once made me feel strange or abnormal for never having done it before, or even for not
knowing
about it. It was as if she understood that the reasons were complex, and that I would tell her when I was ready.

And I knew I
would
tell her. I knew she was the right person to tell my secrets to.

Rhiannah was a real friend.

It was very nice being in our room with her, too. We did our homework together. I helped her with English, and she filled in the blanks that were in my mind in mathematics, science and history. If I didn’t know something – something that might be obvious to someone who had not lost their memory – she patiently explained it to me.

When we had finished our tasks, we sat on Rhiannah’s bed talking.

Well, Rhiannah talked. And I listened. And it was nice.

She told me about how her family were descended from the indigenous people of Tasmania, and how her mother and father were both environmental activists. She told me that she had grown up on the north-west coast of Tasmania, in a place called Wynyard, but now her family lived in a small house in a country town called Ranelagh, just south of Hobart. They grew vegetables to earn money, and they sold them at the weekend markets.

‘I miss them heaps when I’m at school,’ she said. ‘But, you know, it’s important that I’m here.’ She didn’t tell me why.

She did tell me that she had a brother who went to Valley Grammar. She said he could be a ‘pain in the arse’, but she was glad he was in Hobart with her.

When she mentioned his name, ‘Perrin’, I felt my cheeks burn. I remembered the dark-haired boy at the school gates. Deep in my pelvis, something pulsed. Angrily, I willed it away and tried to concentrate on Rhiannah’s story.

As I listened, and Rhiannah’s life opened up to me like a flower, I thought again of your daughter.

Rhiannah told me how she loved to bushwalk, because it was something her family used to do a lot back when she lived in Wynyard, in a very special forest called the Tarkine. She said going on bushwalks down here was different – it was a different kind of bush – but it still made her feel close to home. When she was in the bush it was the only time she felt truly herself.

It seemed like the right time to ask. ‘Rhiannah?’ I began, when she paused to take a sip from her water glass.

‘I was wondering … Connolly, the policewoman who found me after my accident. She had a daughter …’

‘Cat,’ said Rhiannah, nodding.

‘You knew her?’ I asked.

Rhiannah sighed and rubbed at her temples. ‘I was wondering when this would come up. I kind of fobbed you off yesterday, when you asked about my other roommate. I’m sorry. I just didn’t know what to say and I didn’t really know if I could, well, trust you.’

‘Was Cat your roommate?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.

Rhiannah nodded, and her dark eyes began to glimmer with tears. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And my friend. I don’t know what you’ve been told about her, Tess, but she wasn’t really bad. All the stories about being a big rebel … I think it was just a front. An insecurity thing. She was funny and sweet, and she’d make up silly dances to cheer me up, and we’d have mini midnight parties in here, with chips and salsa, which always got all over the doonas and got us into strife with the cleaners.’ She laughed, her eyes looking upwards as she recalled the happy memory. ‘I didn’t spend enough time with her. I wish I had. We had the best time. I really miss her.’

‘Do you know what happened to her?’ I asked. ‘I mean, how she went missing?’

Rhiannah shook her head. ‘No, not really. I mean, I have my theories, but nobody really knows. She just disappeared. I’m trying to figure it out, though.’

‘Me, too,’ I replied. ‘I promised Connolly I would.’

Rhiannah nodded, her eyebrows furrowing. ‘Okay.’

‘Maybe we can do it together,’ I suggested.

‘I don’t know if we can,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m not sure if it’s something … I just don’t know, Tessa. It could be dangerous.’

‘How?’ I asked. ‘Do you mean that the bush is dangerous? Because, I don’t know for
sure
, but I was found in the bush, so I’m guessing I’ve bushwalked before.’

Rhiannah looked at me curiously, and I could tell she wanted to ask,
‘How can you not
know
if you’ve bushwalked before?’

But she didn’t. Again, she gave me space and time. I knew I should give her time in return. But I promised you, Connolly, and I intended to keep that promise. Finding Cat was my purpose. I had to make progress on it, even if it meant being a bit
forceful
with Rhiannah.

‘Please let me come?’ I pushed.

‘Okay,’ she said, slowly. ‘I mean,
maybe
.’

‘When are you going next?’

‘Tomorrow night.’ And then her voice turned hard and adamant. ‘But tomorrow night is not the night for you to come. It’s going to be a difficult walk. When you come with me, it should be on an easier walk – just so we can assess your skills – and probably during the daytime. A night-time walk is definitely not the right kind of walk for you to start on.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Not tomorrow, then. I won’t come tomorrow.’

And at the time, I meant it.

That night, there were no monsters in my dreams. There was no darkness. There was me, alone, in a sun-dappled grove, in the middle of a forest.

I was on a bushwalk. By myself. But I was not scared.

In the corner of my vision I sensed movement, then heard a small twig break. My breath quickened, but I stilled myself. I did not want to appear as though I had seen or heard.

Then, at my ear, a warm breath. ‘What are you doing out here all alone, little girl?’ came a whisper. My face broke into a smile, and I let him run his fingers gently down my neck, down my shoulders. I let him slide his arms around my waist.

‘I love you,’ he whispered as reality pulled me, dragging my heels, to wake.

‘The Female Factory at the Cascades operated between 1828 and 1856,’ said Mr Beagle, reading from his notes. ‘The site of the factory was originally a rum distillery, run by a company called “Lowe’s”. The colonial government bought the distillery in 1827. Builders – under the direction of an architect called John Lee Archer – extended the buildings that were already there in order to make enough space for the ever-increasing numbers of female convicts imprisoned in Tasmania. At its fullest, the Factory housed twelve hundred women, who were engaged …’

‘And children,’ I whispered. The words just slipped out of my mouth. I didn’t know where they came from, and I did not call for them to emerge. They just did.

‘Sorry, what was that, Tessa?’ asked Mr Beagle, looking up from his papers. I jumped in surprise. I thought I had whispered very quietly; so quietly nobody would have been able to hear me. But Mr Beagle had.

‘I … I said “and children”, Mr Beagle,’ I replied. I wriggled in my seat uncomfortably. I could feel the eyes of my classmates burning into my back and sides. ‘There were children at the Factory too, weren’t there?’

Even though I made it into a question, I knew it to be true.

I didn’t know how I knew, though.

And I didn’t know why it suddenly seemed so important to say it, and to have Mr Beagle verify it. It just was.

Mr Beagle nodded slowly. ‘Well, yes, there were, Tessa. Children often stayed with their mothers, though most of them were sent away to orphanages and boarding schools. Well done.’

He began to read from his notes again, and the words washed over me. I didn’t hear any of them. I could still feel everybody staring at me.

I knew they talked of me. I knew Charlotte and her friends were spreading rumours about me. Rumours that I had been in an asylum before I came to school. Rumours that I was mad and dangerous. I had only been at Cascade Falls a handful of days, yet already people were beginning to think me strange.

And I was beginning to agree with them.

In the shower that morning, as I scrubbed at my back with my flannel wash-cloth, and the soap that smelled of lemon peel and roses, I noticed that my scars seemed to have raised and hardened.

Before, they had been flat to my skin, but now they made ridges down my back, like tree roots pushing up through the dirt. The feeling made me gasp, and my eyes prickled with tears. It felt as though my body was rebelling against me. First, the ‘period’, and now this.

Even though the rooms of Cascade Falls seemed to swelter with an excess of heating, I put on both my uniform shirt and my thick woollen blazer. I was scared that my scars might be seen if I wore only my shirt.

I wanted to call and tell you, Connolly. It felt like you were the only person I
could
tell. But it was nearly breakfast time, and Rhiannah was expecting me. Today she was introducing me to ‘muesli’.

And besides, I knew you were busy. I knew you had bigger worries than some misbehaving scars. Even if you did say to call any time. I would wait. I would wait until I had bigger news before I bothered you.

As I sat in Mr Beagle’s history class, not listening as he droned on about convicts and washing rooms and George Arthur and
The Rules and Regulations for the Management of the House of Correction for Females
(all subjects about which I felt I had heard many times before – probably in other history classes before my accident), all I could think about was how hot I was in my itchy jacket and how my scars must look beneath it. I wondered if they were growing still, or if they had shrunk back down again.

Perhaps it was only the hot water that had irritated them, or the lemon peel soap.

Then Mr Beagle said something that made my brain snap to attention. I don’t know which word it was that dragged me back from the depths of my mind and into the history classroom.

Perhaps it was the date, ‘1851’, or maybe the name, ‘Sir Edward Chassebury’. Or maybe it was the last word he said, the word that I understood and yet did not; the word I felt I had heard before and yet sounded like a foreign language.

‘Ipecacuanha’.

I opened my mouth to ask him, ‘What is that, Mr Beagle? What is ipecacuanha?’

The bell rang out, loud and jarring, from the black box on the wall. It made me jump, and I felt Rhiannah’s hand rush to my arm.

‘You okay?’ she whispered.

I nodded, though my heart felt as if it would beat its way out of my chest.

At the front of the classroom, Mr Beagle said, ‘Well, that’s enough for today, girls. Tomorrow, we will be talking about the founding of
The Mercury
newspaper.’

When we got out of the classroom, Rhiannah grabbed my hand and said, ‘You look really shaken up, Tessa. Are you sure you’re okay?’

A loud voice interrupted us. ‘Yo, Rin!’ echoed down the hallway.

I turned around to see Harriet sprinting towards us, tall and lithe and speedy as a brumby horse. The sun that streamed through the stained glass windows bounced off the gilded streaks in her hair.

Sara followed, pushing her glasses up her nose with her finger.

‘You ready for tonight?’ asked Harriet, punching Rhiannah on the arm. ‘You’re not too
freaked out,
are you? I mean after what Perrin –’

Behind her, Sara hissed the shortest sentence I had ever heard spring from her lips. ‘Harriet … not now … Tessa!’

I looked quickly at Rhiannah, who was already staring back at me, her face paler than ever. ‘I told them you wanted to come,’ she said, her voice smooth, contrasting with her nervous dark eyes. ‘I told them I said that it would be too dangerous. Right, Harry?’

Harriet nodded quickly. ‘Yeah, sorry, Tess. It’s just, night-time walks can be pretty full on.’

‘Was it a night-time walk when Cat went missing?’ I asked.

Harriet’s eyes widened. Behind her, I heard Sara make a little gasping-choking noise.

‘You told her about that?’ asked Harriet.

Rhiannah shrugged. ‘I thought I should. She would have found out anyway, and I thought it was probably better to hear it from me. Besides, she knows Cat’s mum, so …’

‘So, was it?’ I asked again. ‘Was it one of the dangerous night-time walks? Was that why Cat went missing?’

Rhiannah shook her head. ‘No, Tess. It wasn’t. Cat went on a night-time walk the week before, but the day she went missing, it was just an ordinary day walk. A pretty cruisy one. And it was a big group one. Everybody was there. It was part of our assessment for PE, so everybody had to come. Even Charlotte and her royal court made an appearance. They hated every minute of it, but they came, and they coped. Just.’

‘Do you remember how Amy got her stupid knee-high boot heel stuck in the mud?’ asked Harriet, giggling.

‘And Inga and Kelly and Claudia all had to pull her out, and they asked Jenna and Bridget to help them, but Bridget said “Eew, no way am I going anywhere near that”, and Amy didn’t speak to her for a week? It was pretty funny,’ said Sara.

Rhiannah nodded and smiled, but it was obvious she wasn’t thinking about Charlotte’s silly friends. ‘Nobody saw her wander off,’ she said quietly. ‘And it was a pretty safe area. The path we take for the night walks isn’t far from there – just up the mountain a bit – so Cat had done that just the week before. She knew the terrain.’ Rhiannah shook her head. ‘But it just goes to show that even experienced bushwalkers can get into trouble, on pretty simple hikes. Tess, we’ll go together one day soon. Maybe at the weekend, if you’re not going off campus? I’m staying here this weekend, so that might be a good time for us to go?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, thank you, Rhiannah. That sounds good.’

And I meant it. I thought it would be fun to go walking with Rhiannah at the weekend.

But I was also thinking of ways I could secretly go on the walk that night. Cat had been lost in that bush. It was possible that she may have moved on from there, but I had no other trail to follow. I did not care if I was disobeying Rhiannah’s wishes. I had to go.

Just as I knew, instinctively, that Cat was alive, I also knew now that going with Rhiannah and the girls out into the bush was my best chance of finding her.