Where Have You Been? (3 page)

‘Wow.' Now she is impressed. ‘And look,' says Linda, clutching a small satiny cushion. ‘Look at this.' The cushions have mirrors no bigger than a fingernail sewn into tiny pockets. ‘They're real mirrors,' Linda says. ‘Real glass.'

‘Wow.' Susan is stuck for words.

‘Judy wants to lock the door even when she isn't here,' says Linda, ‘only Mum won't let her. She's allowed to lock it when her friends come, but. Except when it's David, her boyfriend – and then they have to stay in the lounge room
at all times,
Mum says.' She opens her eyes wide. ‘That's so they can't do it.'

Susan doesn't ask what
it
is, doesn't want to reveal her ignorance, instead searches for something to compare. ‘I'm not allowed in my sister's room either,' she says finally. ‘My sister's missing and the police can't let us in because it's...' she pauses, relishing the big, important sounding word, ‘evidence.' This is no longer true, but that doesn't matter, it has the desired effect.

‘My mum says I'm not s'posed to talk about it.' Linda is suddenly far less certain.

‘It's okay. I don't mind. I'm used to it now.' Susan smiles graciously.

‘My sister says your sister's probably been murdered, that she's probably been
adducted
and cut up into hundreds of pieces with a big knife.'

Susan swallows. ‘She might've been
adducted
and murdered, but I think she'll be home soon. Next week probably.' She shrugs. ‘Anyway, that's what the police say.'

‘You're lucky, actually. Big sisters are a pain. I wish Judy would disappear.' Linda says this carelessly, her interest rapidly waning. ‘Now, let's play ABBA.' She jumps off the seat noisily, then remembers where she is. Tiptoes to the door. The two girls creep back down the hallway. ‘You can be the blonde one,' Linda offers. Susan accepts without comment: she is growing used to such generosity.

Her parents separate in late 1976, not long after the new divorce laws are enacted, just after Susan turns nine. Karen has been missing for more than a year.

Her father tries hard to explain. ‘It's not just because of what happened to Karen. It's nobody's fault. Things have been going wrong for a long time now. Your mother and I haven't really been good friends for a while, Susy. It would have happened eventually. And it's for the best, sweetheart. We'll all be happier, believe me. Even your mother. One day you'll understand. It's all for the best.'

Her dad moves into a flat in Manly, and Susan goes with him. She isn't given a choice: her mother can't cope with her, can't cope with anything, spends most of her days in a grief-fuelled drunken oblivion. The flat is big, new, and up ten storeys. There's a buzzer – an intercom – at the front entrance, and she has to learn to use the elevator – the stairs say EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY, and anyway it would take forever to climb all ten flights. There is no backyard, but there's a view of the harbour as well as the beach from the wraparound balcony. Susan is disappointed to discover that wall-to-wall carpeting doesn't actually mean carpet all the way up to the ceiling, but is thrilled with her mirrored built-in wardrobe, and the double bunk bed with its detachable wooden ladder.

Her mum stays in the house in Harbord.

‘You're not selling it, James. That's all I have left. And what if she comes back? How will she find us?'

‘She's not coming back, Helen.' Wearily. ‘I wish you'd get it out of your mind. She's dead. Or better off. She's not coming back.'

For the first few months Susan spends a night or two each week, as well as every second weekend, with her mother, while her father's away working. But visits to her mother become increasingly difficult, distressing for everyone, and it isn't long before her father is forced to organise an alternative. A babysitter. Gillian. Gillian is youngish – younger than Susan's parents anyway. She teaches art at the local tech, but it's only casual work, and she needs the extra money. She has wavy red hair that's almost down to her bum and the most enormous boobs that Susan has ever seen. She wears no make-up and, when she whirls here and there in her colourful Indian skirts, fine orange hairs glint along her shins.

On the nights that Susan's father is away, Gillian sleeps in a fold-out bed in the lounge room, though Susan offers her the top bunk.

While nobody actually tells her, it isn't long before Susan realises that Gillian is keeping her father company on the weekends when she's away visiting her mother (small signs – the particular way Gillian stacks the crockery; folds the dishcloth; her underwear, still damp, left draped over the shower-curtain rod). After a while, when her father's away, the fold-out bed stays folded up, and Gillian moves out of the lounge and into his bed. And in a few more months she's sleeping there even when he's at home.

A Friday night – her mother's access weekend. Susan is alone at the small dining table – it's a card table really; her father
claimed their old table, and her mother has yet to replace it – eating the meal that she has prepared herself. Cheese on toast and tinned tomato soup. Her mother sits slumped in front of the muted television with a tumbler of wine and her cigarettes. She does not eat with her daughter. Susan thinks perhaps she does not eat at all.

‘You know that we might never find out what's happened to your sister?' Her mother speaks quietly, her eyes not moving from the silent screen.

‘Yes.' Susan knows the questions, knows the answers, doesn't really have to listen. It's always the same conversation.

‘You know that she might be dead.'

‘Yes, Mum.'

A long pause, then: ‘You know that this has destroyed me.'

Susan makes no response; what response can she make?

‘I was a good mother, Susan. I was young and it was hard for me, but I was always a good mother to her.'

‘Yes.'

‘They can't take that away from me. Even if she's alive somewhere, even if she never comes home, they can never tell me I was a bad mother. I was hard, sometimes, but you can't always let your children have their own way, can you? You can't let them make their own decisions. Sometimes they're wrong, your kids. Wrong. Sometimes you have to be hard. But it's never for yourself. You do it all for them. Look at you. You take notice of me don't you? You listen to what I say, don't you Susy? You take notice. You're a good girl.'

She pauses, lights another cigarette, her hands tremble. Susan breaks the toast into small pieces, drops them one by one into the soup.

‘I'm a good mother to you, Susy. Say I am. A good mother?' She still hasn't turned her head towards her daughter.

Susan follows the script. ‘You're a good mother,' she speaks with difficulty, her mouth crammed with sodden toast. ‘A great mother. The best.'

It has been more than five years since her father's death, but Susan still finds it hard to believe that he's gone. He was only in his early sixties; fit and healthy – a non-smoker, a jogger. He'd suffered a massive heart attack while walking along the beach – had literally dropped dead. Gillian (who was ten years younger and with all sorts of opportunities still ahead of her) had almost immediately moved back to Adelaide, where she'd grown up. By then they'd been living together nearly fifteen years, and though Gillian had always been good to Susan, and had taken on the role of stepmother and then step-grandmother with good cheer and considerable enthusiasm, without the connection of Susan's father they'd lost contact. There's been the odd phone call, the occasional letter, photographs, an exchange of presents at Christmas, but somehow they've never made plans to visit, to meet up. Still, it's Gillian that Susan contacts now, the morning after the reading of the will. She wants to tell her about Karen: to see what she thinks; to find out what she knows.

Gillian is, as always, pleased to hear from her. Susan explains, gives a lengthy and somewhat confused account. But Gillian seems undisturbed, unsurprised by the terms of her mother's will – it seems she has known all along.

‘Why did Dad let her do it?' Susan asks, ‘What was the point? It's ridiculous. A complete waste of time and money. Karen's dead. I can understand there was no way Mum would believe it, but why did Dad let her write the will that way? He had power of...'

Gillian cuts into the shrillness of Susan's misdirected indignation. ‘Hey Suse, it's not my fault. There's no point yelling at me.' Her voice is as it always was in times of conflict – impossibly calm, generously soothing.

Susan apologises.

‘It's okay. I understand, but listen for a minute, Susan. I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this – I told your father that it wasn't fair, that you should have been told. But he – he didn't want it hanging over your head for the rest of your life. On top of the thing with your mother. He wanted to keep things ... clear for you. To give you some certainty.'

‘Dad told me she was dead. I remember that. He told me she was dead.'

‘It seemed the easiest way, the best way. And he ... well I guess at that stage he probably thought she was dead too.'

Susan's throat is dry and words are difficult. ‘At that stage? What d'you mean? Did something happen after she left? What do you mean? What happened?'

‘Jesus,' Susan hears Gillian's sharp intake of breath. ‘This is bloody hard over the phone.'

‘What's hard, Gillian?' Susan doesn't want to ask and doesn't want to hear the answer. It would be so much easier to just hang up.

‘There was some proof that Karen may have been alive, Suse. Some family friend, in Melbourne, I think, swore she'd seen her, and told your mother. Your mother hired someone, didn't tell James.'

‘And?'

‘There was nothing definite. Some people who knew someone who met someone who just might have been Karen. But this was years after she left. Most people change such a lot at that age. No one was certain.'

‘When was this? How long after she disappeared?'

‘Oh, it was years ago – just before your mother ... before she got really ill, maybe ten years after Karen disappeared. She hired this person, this private detective and of course she couldn't pay. The bill and the reports ended up coming to us.'

‘But why would she have been alive? Didn't the police...?'

‘The police file was never closed, Suse. You know that. There was no body, no evidence. Nothing conclusive either way.'

‘And the reports, you say there was no positive sighting...?'

‘No absolute positives. Look, Suse,' Gillian sounds a little impatient, as if she wants to end this conversation, or move it elsewhere. ‘I've still got those reports. I'll put them in the post in the next few days if you like. Now, tell me, how're those children of yours?'

It is not until Susan is twelve, has just started high school, that she stops believing that Karen is out there somewhere, that she will come back for her one day.

‘She's dead, isn't she?' Susan asks, out of the blue, one Saturday morning. ‘Karen's dead.'

Her father looks up, startled, from his weekend newspapers. ‘We can't ever know, sweetheart,' he says slowly, ‘not for certain – when there's ... no body. But it's probably best that we start thinking that way. No matter what your mother says.' Susan can tell that her dad is unsure about what to say, knows from experience that he is out of his depth, that such conversations make him uncomfortable, uneasy. But she needs some answers, some certainty, and she still has a naive faith in her father's assurances.

‘She would have come back if she was alive, wouldn't she? She wouldn't have stayed away all these years, would she, Dad?' Susan doesn't understand her father's agonised look at Gillian, and her stepmother's slight shake of the head in response.

‘She would have come back if she could,' he says finally, and with what seems to be complete conviction. ‘I'm sure of it.'

Susan stops wondering about Karen. She stops dreaming about her.

Stops remembering her.

In the end it takes her almost an entire day, countless drafts and redrafts, but finally she has a file on the computer labelled KAREN, containing a single document. She makes it as official looking as possible: headings in bold, double spaced, title in capitals, centred: