After the Smoke Clears, page 18
I smiled. ‘I missed you belittling me. Did you name her Charlene?’
‘Piss off.’ She kissed my cheek, then lingered. ‘It’s Ruby.’ Her eyes were closed when I opened mine, and I thought she was overwhelmed from the contact, the memories, but then she exhaled and said, ‘You reek. Go shower, I’ll settle this one, get some of Pete’s clothes for you.’
‘Nah, gross, not doing that. I’ll shower and double spray the armpits of these.’
‘That never worked, Gus.’ She smiled her two dimpled grin, and I was sixteen again. If I hadn’t known this girl since kindy, if I hadn’t shared baths, run naked in sprinklers, got my aunt to help when she had her first period, it would have been impossible to be myself again after so long. But it was Becca. Becca had seen the state of the house I grew up in. Seen me bawl like a baby after Mum died. Seen the worst of me. Even though our childhood friendship had morphed into something else around the time I started shaving, she was still Becca. I’d even forgiven her for choosing her brother over me.
‘Where is Pete? Let me guess, away?’ I was sure that bloke had a wife in every port. He didn’t deserve this one.
We met back at the kitchen table a while later, her with her arms free after dealing with her leaking issue, me with my hair dripping but feeling almost human. ‘Fancy taps. Couldn’t get the fuckers to start.’
‘They’re sensors.’
‘They’re gold.’ I gave her a look that said ‘what the fuck’ and we both laughed for a minute before remembering why I was there. Brookes. I knew he’d called her earlier from jail. I needed to know what he said.
‘I tried to keep him out of it, Becks. But they’ve still got him. They held us there two days, the bastards.’
‘I know. I’ve just come from the station.’
‘What – just now?’
‘Well, I went via your girlfriend’s room.’
‘Who?’
‘How many girls do you have? Hair like a Pantene ad. Big eyes. Long legs.’
‘Lotti’s here?’ Everything clenched.
She nodded. ‘At the pub. She introduced herself as Charlotte – how did she go from that beautiful name to Lotti?’
‘Doesn’t like Charlotte. Too traditional.’
Becca shrugged. ‘Who’d want to be traditional?’ She threw her hands in the air, gesturing to her family home, adorned with baby photos and her husband’s trophies. Her kitchen was bigger than my whole bus and looked like the cover of a home magazine, clinical and sleek and with a thousand useless appliances covering the stone bench. She assessed me, saying everything in a look like she always had, but I was distracted by the fact Lotti was here. In my patch.
‘Where’s Otto then?’ I asked.
‘With her. At the pub. She knows about him, Gus.’
I nodded. I was almost relieved. One less thing.
Becca looked down her nose at me. ‘Haven’t seen him since the funeral, thanks for keeping me in his life.’
The twist in my gut returned. ‘Jesus – that place is swarming with Harrises.’
‘I know. I told her to come stay with me. He’s safer here till you can all leave in the morning.’ She said it like I could just drive into the sunset with my woman and my kid and forget all this.
I relaxed. ‘Thank you.’ I then realised I’d have Becca and Lotti in the same room, and wasn’t sure how that would play out.
‘He’s adorable.’
My mind spun. Otto. Here. Near Joel. ‘And the spitting image of his father.’
‘He was always a version of you with thicker hair and fewer scars.’
‘And no fucking character. Thankfully the kid got the heart of his mother.’
She reached over and turned my wrist, exposing my forearm, inspecting it as if she’d dreamed it seventeen years before. She, who refused to take responsibility for it, not wanting the burden of thinking I’d permanently scarred myself for her. She dropped my wrist.
Becca’s eyes fell away as she gave a sad smile. ‘It’s weird, I took Frey for granted when I knew she was just up the range, I barely rang her, but now she’s gone for good I miss her face every day.’ Crinkles around the eyes, a new line etched along the bridge of her nose, but her thinking face was the same as it always was. ‘It’s the spaces she left – as my bridesmaid, as Ruby’s godmother, as my friend. I can’t even walk past the pub without imagining her singing, her guitar was like an extra limb.’
‘Same.’ Being home had coloured the images in my head that time had yellowed. I could see Freya clearly, multitasking with a Dolly Fiction in one hand and a slice of bread smothered in hundreds and thousands in the other. The way she’d scream out to me ‘it’s oooooon’ after the ads finished, watching Roseanne or The Henderson Kids in the TV room so I wouldn’t miss a minute. I took Becca’s hand, told myself it was all platonic, uniting in grief, but the dirty look she lobbed back said I’d gotten that wrong, and she retracted her hand. ‘You were always bad at reading a room.’
‘C’mon. I was a legend with the chicks. It was the rat’s tail that reeled them in.’ I thought I was out of practice with this banter, but I delivered it with a straight face.
‘Took me three years of flirting for you to kiss me,’ Becca said, a flush on those pale Irish cheeks.
I shrugged. ‘Yeah, maybe I am better with engines.’ I knew I shouldn’t look at her, but I couldn’t help it, and as soon as I did her eyes flicked to the floor. Pristine marble tiles, shiny and new. It represented a state of perfection that I just didn’t think existed, at least, not for people like us.
‘Lotti is lovely,’ she added, squaring her jaw. ‘You’ve got some hard yards to make up there.’
‘I know,’ I said and a silence settled between us. ‘What do I tell her?’
‘How ’bout the truth? Whose bones are they, Gus?’
I exhaled. At least she’d waited ten minutes before hitting me with it.
‘I know you know so don’t lie to me.’
I closed my eyes, certain this interrogation would be deadlier than the one with her cop cousin, this woman a better truth-serum. I couldn’t bullshit Becca. She knew me too well.
‘Please tell me those bones are some random backpacker’s, not Steph’s.’
I said nothing.
‘You and your bro-code bullshit. What is it with you two?’
‘We made a promise. It’s between me and your brother. I don’t break my promises.’
Now she was the one clamming up. She stood and walked to the adjacent benchtop, flicked on the kettle and opened a door in the cabinetry to reveal a huge hidden fridge. ‘I can’t help you if I don’t know what I’m covering up.’
‘For fuck’s sake, your cousin just held me in a tiny jail all fucking day and night with nothing but questions. I can’t take any more.’
She shook her head, almost pleased at me firing up. ‘Twenty minutes and you’re already angry.’ She put on a tone as if she was mocking me. ‘You with your plan to put a mattress in the back tray and sleep under the stars.’ She shook her head as if the idea was ludicrous. ‘If you ever wondered why I didn’t go with you, that’s why – it wasn’t Brookes at all.’
I looked her straight in the eye. ‘That true?’ She made me wait for an answer, and in that time, I felt a tremble in my chin I’d die rather than let her see. Ten seconds, still no answer. One thing was for sure, I’d never have given her marble tiles and gold taps. ‘Just tell me, are you happy, with … Pete?’ The snarl was still there, hiding between the P and the E. Boring old man. He was ten years older, bald, but rich.
She jiggled tea bags in two fancy-looking cups. I reckoned tea tasted like grass clippings, but I didn’t want to piss her off more, so I took one when she offered it, ignoring the touch of her hand on mine. ‘He’s kind to me. He provides for us. I never want for anything.’
He sounded like a father, not a husband. But who was I to judge? I turned away, scratching fingers over my three-day growth. Was that the question I came to find an answer to? I had one now. I nodded, resolved. ‘Well, you always made better choices than me.’
She sipped her tea. ‘Yeah, well, me staying didn’t really help Brookes – he’s still in trouble, never really been out of it.’
I huffed out a breath. ‘I tried to help him, told Troy if they had anything on him, he wasn’t fit for trial anyway ’cause of the –– what do they call it? Because of your mum being on the turps when she was up the duff?’
‘Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,’ Becca said, her jaw tight.
‘Reckoned that he wasn’t right in the head ’cause of it. And you know what they said? “Yeah, half the fucking jail’s got that, and a bit of everything else, he’ll fit right in.”’
Becca shook her head. ‘Have they DNA’d the bones yet?’
‘Don’t reckon so.’
Her eyes narrowed in on mine. ‘You know, after that night, you know the one I mean, when Steph never came back to school, I went past the house Steph said was hers – that nice big Queenslander with the tin flamingos. I got talking to the old lady there who was pruning her roses and she said she’d lived there her whole life, never heard of a Stephanie Lawley.’
I shrugged. ‘So? The brat probably lived in a dump and wanted to look rich.’
‘Back when it all happened Margo was worried Steph would blab about what we did. Remember the cops were asking who the anonymous caller was who reported that Brightside was on fire? Steph always said she was an exchange student at the private school but did you ever see her in uniform? She was always just ‘around’ that summer, hey. She just inserted herself into our group from thin air. Always wondered why someone would come all the way from America to hang out in Eldham. Margo said Steph wasn’t even in the school system. Your aunt never liked her much.’
‘She was a blow-in. A bullshitter. Reckon she just moved away when people started to look too hard at who she really was.’
Becca’s eyes narrowed, like they were scanning mine for the truth. ‘You and your conspiracy theories. How much history could a fifteen-year-old have?’
I’d had a bit, at that age. ‘Didn’t Tom from the Mobil reckon Steph told him she got a part in some pilot back home, saw her board a McCafferty’s heading to the big smoke?’
‘Does it sound like Steph to slip off without so much as a goodbye? No fanfare, no party in her honour or chance to skite? Convenient story.’
It hurt more than it should, and heat filled my head. ‘Convenient? You think I offed a girl to stop her snitching about a fucking fire? ’Cause from where I’m sitting, her vanishing that night is fucking inconvenient.’
‘Gus …’ Becca’s eyes were wet with tears, her baby monitor squawked, and she seemed relieved at the interruption.
‘You think I actually killed your friend? You sound like your fucking cousin. Is that what you told Lotti this is all about?’
‘No, why would I do that?’ She shook her head. ‘Does she know anything?’
I glared at her. ‘What’s it to you? You want to be in on my life, suddenly? You had your chance.’ I exhaled a long breath. ‘Thanks for the shower,’ I said. ‘I’ll find my way out.’
She harumphed, stood up quick and slid her chair back beneath the long table. ‘Gus, c’mon – I already asked Charlotte and Otto to stay. I made up the beds.’
I turned away, but she reached out to grab my arm.
‘Gus?’
I kept walking. She paced towards me with the same look on her face she’d get when she’d cornered a bully belittling her brother: pissed, and determined to make it right. Her palms flat on my chest, she kissed me hard on the lips. Perhaps it was the shock of it, the unexpected, after years of wondering, but it didn’t feel half as good as I’d imagined. It had all the nostalgia of childhood but meant nothing as adults, nothing in the here and now. And she wasn’t Lotti. All it did was muddy my mind, clocked up yet another thing to come clean about, and I wished she’d left the past in the past. She was right about one thing – I still didn’t get women. I thought I was about to get hit, not kissed.
Becca looked up and whispered, ‘Just’ – she swallowed hard – ‘look after our boy, please?’
I first thought she meant Otto, but with her it was always about Brookes. Never about me. My nostrils flared and I wanted to say, ‘When have I not?’ But we wouldn’t be in this predicament if that were true. I paused for one last thing. ‘She’s beautiful, your daughter.’
‘We named her Ruby Jude.’
I nodded, wondering what Mum would have thought of Becca’s kid with that putz being named after her, when she’d have wanted the father to be me. I did too, once. But I wasn’t that bloke anymore.
‘Wait – speaking of your mum. Did they ever find her … remains? I mean, could they somehow be …’
‘For fuck’s sake.’ I was already fired up. ‘You’ve moved on from me killing Stuck-up Steph, now I killed my own mother, dumped her in a ditch? You’re as bad as the fucking Harrises and you can all go fuck yourselves.’ I yanked free of her touch and stomped towards the front. I was back on the footpath, the buzz of insects swarming a streetlamp.
Seeing her was a mistake that only complicated things. I still had no charge in my phone, no money and no car. All I had done was confirm another woman didn’t trust me.
Chapter 19
AUGIE, 2009
As I walked through the main street of Eldham, all the reasons I hadn’t been back here since Freya’s funeral shone brightly. The library Mum had worked at. The Meals on Wheels where she and Margo had volunteered. The footy field where Mum watched every game of mine. Even when things with Mum started to break, she still turned up and sat under her sun umbrella with her blue drink decanter every Saturday morning, handing out orange quarters between halves in tiny freezer bags.
I wasn’t sure if Lotti had checked out of the pub yet to hide at Becca’s, but there was only one way to find out. Becca and Brookes’ uncle still ran the place. I wondered if he still ran the drug trade, too, along with everything else, and if Joel was still his debt collector.
There was no one I knew on the bar, and only a few Hens night girls dressed in pink tulle veils dancing near the juke box. They were murdering the REO Speedwagon hit, ‘I’m Gonna Keep on Loving You …’ as if the song list hadn’t refreshed since the eighties.
‘This track sounds like your era,’ said the pretty goth chick drying a glass behind the counter.
‘Easy on.’ I asked her if a dark-haired woman with a little boy had checked out just now and she said she hadn’t seen her – that most of the rooms were full of miners and single old farts.
‘I’m knocking off at ten though if it’s a girl you’re chasing.’
I blushed, told the woman with black lipstick that that wouldn’t help me dig myself out of trouble, but that seemed to egg her on.
I weaved out the back of the pub, past the beer garden and drive-through, and there she was, Frida the boring beige Volvo with the dodgy wiring, parked at a pitiful angle across two bays. They were still here. She’d come after me. They were right in front of me.
Every thought distilled down to them.
The door was closed but I could hear Lotti cursing from the verandah, and let my ears find her. I had to laugh – she used to flinch when I swore. ‘Get in there you piece of crap.’ She’d done her best to shut the curtains, even had pegs on the sides to keep them in place, but I could see them through the sheer orange fabric; Otto eating salt and vinegar chips, smearing oily fingers on the bedspread, Lotti failing to close her designer suitcase, billowing at the sides. That explained the temper. That had rubbed off, too.
I used my knuckles to knock. She saw my shadow and I could see her tense through the gap in the curtain, took Otto’s hand, guided him and his bag of chips into the bathroom and closed the door before returning. ‘It’s just me, Lotti.’ Everything depended on how her face arranged in that split second, but she leaned her forehead against the door as if working out how to be, what to do. When she looked up, the curtain was in the way, so I had no clue if she was about to hug me or stab me with scissors. The security chain slid.
The first look at her in days was a fragment of her face between the chain, but it floored me. She was tired, pale, worried as hell and it was all my doing. The right words wouldn’t form. I had no idea how to play this. All I knew was I had to play it right.
The door closed, the safety released, then the door opened at once and we just stood there, her eyes reaching out, telling me everything I needed to know. They were hurt, they were tired, but they weren’t turning away.
I took a risk, pressed into her, my cheek rough on her ear as I wrapped my arms around her thin waist, nuzzled my cheek into her apple-scented hair. She was non-responsive for a moment, not hugging me back and I was terrified this was it, the last time I’d ever touch her. I’d fucked this up, not just for me but for Otto too. The kid was stuck with me and, if I carked it early like the rest of my lot, soon he’d be alone in a silent world, with no one and nothing but an ever-present sense that everyone leaves.
It’d taken me too fucking long to realise she was what I needed. Not loneliness. Not Becca. Charlotte Hill was worth the risk, and I’d fucked it up.
Then I felt her long elegant arms envelop me, her chin press into my collarbone and her hands reach up to the nape of my neck. Her breath shuddered, and we both released a few ugly sobs that had been building for days and I saw with a deep sense of clarity than she was my safe place. I ached to kiss her.
It’d always been about the kiss, with us. You can chat with a mate, you can have sex with a stranger, but a good kiss? That was a rarity. It’s like it aligned us again, got us in sync. I was bone-tired, stressed off my nut, but it felt so good to have her lips on mine, and feel her want them there. ‘You don’t know how much I missed that,’ I said.
Yeah, the gush of it even surprised me, but I was so far out on a limb anyway these past days, venting raw emotion was nothing. She kissed me again, and we sank into its deep, slow familiarity, filling up the tank of good feelings that had been sucked dry, until she pushed away. My eyes snapped open.
