After the Smoke Clears, page 23
‘I’m not suggesting that. I’m just trying to work out what the police are on about.’ I was that close to confiding in Becca. Telling her that Augie basically admitted wanting to kill whoever was dumped in that bushland long ago. I just wanted to find out who it was, and why he wanted them dead. ‘It’s just, some things don’t add up – Augie has old eighties things like cricket cards, letters and photos at his place. Now I know some might be Freya’s that he inherited, or keepsakes for Otto. But wouldn’t they be gone, too?’
‘Maybe he found similar stuff at a garage sale, maybe they were in the tree house, I don’t know. But I had to pick up the pieces from those two when their mum died, and there is no way Gus was responsible for his mother’s death.’
‘Okay, I know you’re right, but based on what? I haven’t known him all my life like you, but right now he is my life, Becca – him and Otto. I just can’t sleep until I find out how bad things might have gotten. I need to know.’
Becca huffed. ‘Lotti – what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’
I exhaled, rubbed my eyes. ‘I don’t know … there’re a few contenders.’
‘Think about it and think about if you’ve shared that part of yourself with him.’ Becca yawned and seemed frustrated at me. ‘Is it really a betrayal if you haven’t, especially if that part has nothing to do with who you are now?’
‘This isn’t just a childish mistake, we’re all guilty of them. It’s – it’s who he is, I mean, what sort of person is capable of …’
‘I get it. I do. I found a whole heap of receipts for women’s lingerie, clothes, shoes, the works on our bank statements just after we had Ruby that I certainly hadn’t bought. I was hysterical – convinced my husband was a cross dresser, couldn’t eat until I knew.’
‘And was he?’
‘He’d bought me a whole new wardrobe to return to work after maternity leave. I know, not the same, but I understand how hard it is to breathe if you have any inkling the person you sleep beside at night might just be someone else entirely.’
‘Can I ask what you think the real reason is that August doesn’t have contact with Margo? You don’t think she knows, or suspected, or accused him of whatever this is?’
Becca was silent for a sec. I thought the call cut out, but then she spoke. ‘I don’t think Margo would ever believe he had, even if she suspected. That’s not how she works. She’s a devout Catholic, can be rather old fashioned, but she’s fiercely loyal and would do anything for us kids. Gus and Frey, they were like hers after Jude died. She was gutted when Gus took Otto and never looked back. He said it was about her sending him to Brightside, which was rough from what I hear, so he saw her as not having his back, said she taught him to look at people’s feet when they speak, not their mouths. But that was so long ago. It was a slow burn, him being estranged from her, but it definitely peaked with their blow-up at Freya’s funeral.’
‘Blow-up. About what?’
‘Gus lost it when Freya died. He’d never grieved his mum well, and then he had to do it all over again. He wanted someone to pay for taking away his family. He was convinced Otto’s dad was to blame for Freya’s death. Margo told him he was a small hateful man, and that he had to stop blaming others. I don’t know Gus well now, Lotti, but I knew him then. Anger was the only thing he knew what to do with.’
That part hadn’t changed. He’d never shown anger directed towards me or Otto – he was tender and kind – but towards others who crossed him, definitely. ‘That’s what scares me.’
‘Joel’s the only guy he’s hated, and he’s alive and well so that doesn’t fit, and those bones – I watch enough Homicide to know that even in the humidity we get here they’re at least a decade old. Probably two. So likely to link to that fire somehow.’
‘And Freya died here, in Eldham?’
‘Toowoomba. She studied music at USQ, had made a life for herself. That’s why it’s even weirder that Gus thinks Joel ran her down – the truckie stopped, rang the ambulance, witnesses saw it – Joel was off fruit picking then anyway, wasn’t anywhere near her, and certainly not driving a Mack truck. Anyway, it’s been a long day …’ Worry was etched in her voice.
‘Is Brookes still at the station?’
‘He hasn’t called, but probably thinks I’m asleep. As if. He’s forgotten what it’s like to have a two-year-old. But, Lotti – thanks for understanding – I was in the wrong with the snog earlier … don’t be angry with him, not for that.’
‘I’ll let you sleep.’ I hung up but feared neither of us would be getting much of that.
A headline in the Toowoomba Chronicle from 15 October 2007 urged locals to exercise caution on the range, with the town’s road toll climbing to a record high, and gave a passing mention to the fatality near the USQ campus the night of 14 October 2007. Otto would have been about to turn four. Was he at the accident? Is that why he’s obsessed with death? Another crash of grief pummelled me, like the aftermath of an insult. August expected me to care for this kid like my own without even knowing who he was, what he’d survived.
My brain pinged. There was a girl’s name Becca mentioned at Margo’s when they were hypothesising whose body might have been dumped in the bush, and from the depths of my mind I pulled it out and my fingers started typing ‘Stephanie Lawley’. I scrolled through the pages of results from the search. If she was of similar age to Becca, she’d be in her early thirties now, and pretty, from what I gathered. I put my political research skills to use and honed in on a blonde theatre actress in Sydney by the same name, who claimed to draw on a troubled past in outback Australia to inform her performances.
I left the internet nook and turned to the B&B owner, half asleep in the common room behind me with biscuit crumbs on her chin, and asked if there was a printer I could use.
The older woman shuffled over, a limp in her left leg and said, ‘Printer ink costs more than your rent, hon.’ She pulled down her glasses and peered at the monitor. ‘Why would you want a picture of that stuck-up little tramp? She was a right old cow, if I remember – thought she was better than everyone else.’
I pointed to the monitor. ‘You know this person?’
‘The younger version. She used to steal clothes from the op shop I volunteered at over in Eaton’s Flats. I’d recognise those cheekbones under an inch of makeup. Yeah, I knows her, alright,’ the owner said, locking up the front door for the night and zipping closed the venetian blinds. ‘Got into acting, I hear – always was good at bullshitting.’
‘So, this is a girl who lived around here a long time ago, and she’s still alive and well, living the dream in Sydney?’
‘Far as I know.’
At least she wasn’t the body in the bush. I felt relief.
‘Some people say she was wanted for shoplifting all over the state, left town before the cops caught her again. Saw her in New Idea – dating that arrogant tennis player. Still got tickets on herself, by the smug look on her nasty little face. Why do you care?’
‘I have no clue. Probably got it wrong.’ My head spinning, I returned to my room, slipped into the twin bed next to Otto’s, and slept.
I thought I hadn’t caught a moment of unconsciousness all night, but woke with the thin, warm spaghetti arms of a six-year-old around me in a solid choke hold. I had thought this period of intense decision-making, which I gathered was the crux of adulting, would make me better at it. But it turned out the more decisions you made, the more chance you had of making wrong ones. Perhaps remaining indecisive wasn’t such a flawed plan?
Otto woke and asked for Cars and Coco Pops before he’d had his first wee. When that was done, he moved on to repeating, ‘Can we visit Margo’s dogs again?’ My heart sank. Was that even safe? What if his real dad was casing her place, ready to pounce just to be a dick about things? I had my suspicions Margo knew more than she let on, but I was confident I could take on the old bird if I needed to.
Even though I had no idea where we’d sleep that night, we checked out of the B&B and were at Margo’s house by the empty lake, half an hour later. The front door opened before we knocked, and Otto ran into her dressing gown arms before I’d even grabbed his water bottle from the seat. Otto had a piece of bacon in his hand and was trying to keep it away from the dogs when I approached Augie’s aunt in the kitchen. She’d put that big square frypan to use, by the looks. It was now chock-a-block with eggs, bacon and mushroom.
‘How you doing, pet?’ she asked, passing me a plate stacked high with breakfast. It smelled amazing.
‘Confused. Exhausted. Hurt. Scared,’ I said.
‘So pretty much par for the course,’ Margo said in the voice I recalled from last night, distinctive in its rough edges, but now it had a melody in it too.
‘What course are we on, again?’
She laughed. ‘Life.’ It was too early to be drunk, but something had shifted in her mood.
‘You always cook all that for yourself?’ I asked.
She looked confused for a moment, as if she wasn’t sure herself why she was cooking.
‘Bev from the B&B said you’d driven back this way.’
I rolled my eyes.
‘And Gus will be hungry.’
My breath caught. ‘He’s here?’
‘He’s sleeping it off – bone-tired.’
Nerves crept in and I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t sure how I felt yet.
She smiled. I ate. It helped. With Otto setting out an obstacle course for the dogs outside, I centred my knife and fork across my breakfast plate. She picked her teeth, took off her dressing gown and started clearing dishes.
I generally avoided confrontation, but hated living in limbo. I was desperate to find answers before letting that man any closer to me or the little boy I had no right to love like my own but had started to, anyway. When the last of my tea had warmed my soul, I broached the reason I’d come. I hadn’t intended to rush my interrogation but now I knew Augie was here I had to act fast, before he woke.
I asked Margo directly about the photo album she’d dug out to show me when we met. Something didn’t add up. ‘Margo – that album – is it yours, or was it your sister’s?’
Margo didn’t answer, and I waited. She seemed tiny in her thin, cotton nightdress, a triangle of creped skin exposed at the top, hair limp instead of the scrunch-curl style from the day before. Her face appeared more weathered than yesterday, as if a night contemplating the past had sucked the life out of her. ‘Sit down,’ she said formally, gesturing to the sitting room, ‘and I’ll tell you what you need to know about Judith Nash.’
A shadow in my peripheral vision. I turned, expecting Otto had smelled food and returned upstairs.
Augie was standing, rigid, in the hall, still rubbing his eyes in sleepy haze. ‘Why are you talking about her?’
The room charged. I had no idea how to be with him, but no part of me felt scared. It was only what I could describe as feeling alive.
Awkward silence ensued, and I felt responsible for it.
‘This is my fault, Augie, I was asking about the photo album …’
‘Photo album?’ Augie asked in a quiet, unsure voice.
‘The one wrapped in a pillowcase on the top shelf of that cupboard.’ I gestured to the place Margo had taken it from last night.
His eyes met mine directly, then he made his way gingerly to the linen cupboard, grabbed the old mango box, and placed it on the kitchen bench. The photo album was still wrapped in an apricot, flower-patterned pillowcase. ‘What the fuck is this?’ He placed it on the table, fully awake, his anger recharged along with his attitude.
‘Gus,’ Margo cried. ‘You need to hear this too.’
‘That pillowcase. I remember it from Mum’s bed as a kid.’
Wrapped inside was the family album. An album full of photos I am guessing he hadn’t seen since the house fire twenty years earlier. My heart skipped a beat.
‘That’s impossible,’ August said. ‘It burned. It burned with everything else.’
Margo settled into the cracked recliner. Her voice was clear and calm when she said, ‘Let me tell you both how my sister died …’
Chapter 25
MARGO, 1988
The widely held opinion, at least among the Eldham community, was that Judith Nash died of carelessness. That the house fire started when she was reading in bed in her nightgown and left a candle burning ‘unattended’, like a child left home alone. That part made me laugh because Judith could have had a gaggle of swans in that sprawling chamferboard house and you’d never find them. But a candle was the culprit, allegedly. At least, that’s what the mongrels settled on after months of blaming faulty Christmas lights, or the electric blanket she turned on in the morning to treat her arthritis. They gossiped for months after the fire, when neighbours mingled in their Sunday best over Flo Bjelke-Petersen’s pumpkin scones, blaming everything on the heat because that was easier than admitting the real problems in this town. We even had tyre-kickers join the congregation simply to hear the rumours firsthand at the after-mass gathering.
My sister Jude was gossip-worthy even in death, despite every effort to make her unremarkable. But the truth was, Judith died in a hot-pink leotard. It was me in my nightgown, not that anyone saw – God, I would have been the talk of the town.
See, Judith Nash, and the two beautiful kids (even if they were born out of wedlock) could never be unremarkable. Out of the four of us Nash children, Jude was our parents’ favourite. She was always prettier, kinder, skinnier and, as it turned out, more fertile. Despite my lifelong jealousy, she was hard not to love, even at the end.
I had no idea how unconventional things had become until I caught her having a conversation with her microwave. I’d spoken to my GP, who thought it was either drugs or schizophrenia, but neither of those explanations fit with my Jude. She was a normal, good girl who’d never taken more than an aspirin.
She’d always been precise, which is why she loved the Dewey Decimal System. Her sheets had hospital corners. She got a special mention at Girl Guides for the perfection of her cleaning skills, was the first to be awarded the home-maker badge. Her underwear was folded neatly, organised in colour, a hair tie couldn’t touch another if it was a different colour. Our mother said her neat-freak ways would make her an excellent wife one day. And they did, for a while. But she hadn’t been the same, the months leading up to the fire. Gus even said something about her getting angry at objects before that. I was no doctor but knew she’d lost the plot.
It was when the kids’ father left that her mental health went on the blink. The first year she was depressed, chronically nostalgic for the time they spent together – even though I reckon he did her a favour by leaving as they were never happy. But she was obsessed with the idea of saving every worthless item from their time together, as if the memories they conjured up were her only source of joy. In her early forties her habit of ‘collecting’ had generalised to any useless crap, justifying keeping it cluttered in the house in case she needed it in future. As it turned out, a future was the one thing she didn’t have.
It formed a wedge between us, my interfering with her affair with ‘things’, which peaked the weekend she had to go to a course and I’d hired a skip, made a dent culling her clutter. It took a month for her to speak to me again – accusing me of being more concerned about appearances than about her. So I stopped interfering. I decided to just love her the way she was. That was probably why it was me she called the day she died. I’m still not sure if that was a blessing or a curse, but I’d give anything for another moment with her, so I guess it was a good thing.
I was cooking up the dogs’ lamb and rice when I was startled by the wall phone, grabbed it on the third ring, and held it between my shoulder and cheek as I kept stirring, distracted by trying to avoid the wooden spoon scraping the burnt bits off the bottom. I didn’t hear the strangeness in her voice to begin with.
‘Tell them it wasn’t really me, you see?’ her voice was staccato.
‘Sorry, what? The line’s breaking up, bloody Telecom.’
‘It was the disease.’
I stopped stirring and listened. ‘What disease? You mean your collecting? I know, hon, I know you can’t help it. It’s an illness, yes.’ I sat down on the orange padded seat of the telephone table, thinking it was just a bout of melancholy. God knows, I’d had a few of those myself.
‘Maggie – you know last weekend when you watched the kids …’ Jude said. The phone went silent, and I thought we’d lost connection, but then her voice came again, slow and breathless. That’s when panic took over. ‘I told you it was a day spa. I really went to town to see Bruce Hendrick. Call him. He’s on Wickham Terrace.’
‘What’s this about, Jude? You want me to call this bloke?’ I asked, wondering if I should get a pen – my memory was so shot, and it sounded so important.
‘He’ll explain me, to you. Say you will, Maggie. Say his name.’
‘Bruce Hendrick? Who on earth? But, darl, who is he?’ Her exercise tape was blaring in the background. I could barely hear her.
Jude’s voice quickened in panic, then slowed like a toy with a flat battery. ‘And look after them. You’re all they’ve got now, Mags. Tag team assemble, you’re it.’
It was a game we played on the farm. It’s the promise I’d made when she’d collapsed in awe of the prospect of raising two kids after the bozo left. You’re not alone. We’re a tag team, remember?
‘Look after them, won’t you?’
‘You’re frightening me, woman. What’s going on, Jude? Jude?’
The alarming beeps of the engaged tone. She’d hung up.
Leaving the house open, the stove on, I nearly did my back out rushing into the car and sped the twenty-minute drive out to her place in my frilly nightdress. I hadn’t been inside her place for a while. Every time I’d drop her home after Tuesday bake sessions, she’d forbidden me from crossing her threshold. ‘Let me guess, the place is a mess?’ I’d joke. It didn’t seem funny anymore. How had I let this happen?
