eighteen

I took Mrs Scott’s copy of The Female Eunuch back to her that afternoon. When she asked me if I’d enjoyed it, I had to tell the truth.

‘I didn’t really read it all,’ I confessed. ‘I mean I agree with her, but, like I said, I’m more into stories.’

We were sitting out the back of her house, looking across the smooth square of green lawn, damp and springy underfoot from the recent watering she’d given it. She had made a lemon cake and she cut me a thick slice and poured me a glass of icy cold cordial. The glass was slippery in my hands, and the tang of the cordial sharp and sour on my tongue.

In the garage at the back, Mr Scott was working. He was often out there, fixing bits of machinery or making tiny replicas of antique furniture, the kind you would put in a doll’s house, although neither he nor Mrs Scott owned one. He had been a bank manager, she once told me. He had started out as a teller and then worked his way up, staying at the same place for forty years, and hating every day of it.

She stirred the jug of cordial with a long swizzle stick and asked me what I had planned for the weekend. I found myself telling her about the police and Lyndon, my words a tumble and rush of incomplete thoughts.

My discomfort wasn’t surprising, she said. He had been as good as branded a criminal.

‘But it sounds like he did it.’

She just looked at me. ‘If he did, it’s a terrible thing.’ She squeezed my hand in her own. ‘And if he didn’t–’

Her words trailed off for a moment as she looked out across the garden, until eventually she shook her head. ‘Either way, it would be so much better for him if he just went to the police himself. He can’t hide forever. And if he’s innocent, he needs to clear his name.’

‘He probably doesn’t think anyone would believe him.’

Mrs Scott didn’t speak for a moment. She turned to me, her eyes bright in the afternoon light. ‘Something like that poor girl’s death,’ she eventually told me, ‘it ripples out. It’s a stain that spreads, touching us all.’

I came home to find Joe and Dee in the kitchen. The breakfast dishes still hadn’t been done and there was a load of shopping to be put away.

They too had been talking about Lyndon. Dee was telling Joe that he had to let her or the police know if Lyndon tried to contact him. The very fact that she was sitting still, leaning forward and focusing on him alone as she spoke made it obvious that she wanted him to understand the importance of what she was saying.

Dee turned to me.

‘I know. I know.’ I held my hand up. ‘I heard you.’

I wondered whether everyone on this small peninsula was discussing him, his name tossed and turned and battered and bruised and picked apart in each house in each street. It certainly felt that way.

She lifted one of the greengrocer’s bags onto the bench and asked us who was going to cook this evening.

I told her I was going to Sonia’s. ‘So, I guess that counts me out.’

Joe said he was going to Kate’s.

‘Not a late night I hope?’ Dee lifted his chin with her finger so that he was forced to meet her eyes.

He scowled. ‘What do you reckon? Cherry’ll probably be there. Wish she’d hang out at her own place sometimes and leave Kate and me alone.’

She told him to show a little more compassion. ‘Everyone is upset.’

‘And she’d feel pretty bad after what happened with Daniel today.’ I opened a packet of biscuits and began to eat one before Dee could stop me.

She didn’t even seem to notice. ‘What happened with Daniel?’

I told her about the fight at school, and she shook her head in sympathy. ‘I still haven’t rung Roxie to see if we could have him for dinner occasionally.’

Joe stood up. ‘You know the weirdest thing about Cherry? She’s acting like Amanda’s death affected her more than any of us. Like she and Amanda really were best friends. They only hung out for a few weeks.’ He turned to leave.

Dee put her hand on his arm. ‘You’re not going anywhere until the dishes are done and the shopping is put away.’

‘Later,’ Joe told her. ‘Just leave it for me.’ He headed to the door.

Which left me alone. ‘I’m not doing those dishes.’ The pile was threatening to topple over, the cereal dried and crusted in the bowls, the coffee a black smear of tar at the bottom of the cups, and worse still, the frypan filled with bacon fat and egg white. I turned to the shopping – five bags, each bursting at the seams.

‘All right.’ I scowled as I started running the water, turning the tap too far so that the spray splashed up and out of the sink and across the dishes. ‘But remember this next time he tries to get out of it again.’

Dee just ignored me. She was never interested in whose turn it was, and I frequently felt I was complaining to thin air.

That evening, at Sonia’s house, we lay on the lounge-room floor, the television on low in front of us as we flicked through magazines and talked. Sal was in her room and her parents were up the road, just for an hour. Sonia and Sal had refused to have a babysitter, despite Jude saying she was going to call one. They were too old, they begged, the humiliation of being looked after like kids worse than any possible fear. They would keep everything locked. They would call if anything seemed strange. Eventually Jude agreed, probably because she, like most people, assumed the police were after Lyndon because he was guilty, and there wasn’t a deranged psychopath roaming the neighbourhood after all.

‘What if it’s him?’ Sonia said when the screen door slammed in the breeze.

I knew she was talking about Lyndon.

‘I’d tell him to go to the police.’

‘As if.’ Sonia shook her head in disbelief.

I had my arms folded. ‘I would,’ I insisted. ‘Why would he hurt us?’ My words were braver and more rational than I would probably have been if it had, in fact, been him outside. ‘It’s not like he’s some kind of axe murderer. Even if he did hurt her.’ I couldn’t bring myself to utter the word ‘killed’. ‘I mean, it might just have been a terrible accident, and he’s scared.’

I knew Sonia didn’t believe me. I wasn’t even sure if I believed myself.

‘I can’t believe Cherry didn’t tell the police till now.’ Sonia shook her head, looking just like Jude as she did so. ‘God, Daniel went off at her. Poor guy. His life is ruined.’

‘Not necessarily,’ I argued.

‘Mum reckons it is,’ she protested. ‘She reckons when something like that happens to a kid, it’s more than likely he’ll become a drug addict or a delinquent.’

I rolled my eyes.

‘She seemed almost glad it’s Lyndon,’ Sonia added. ‘She reckons we won’t have to get a security system like the Jacksons now that we know there isn’t some serial killer roaming the streets.’

I didn’t even bother trying to protest that nothing had been proved. I was wasting my breath. Instead, I changed the subject to Cassie and Grant Benson. Neither of us liked him and both hoped she would come to her senses soon. As I leant across to flick the channel on the television, I glanced at my watch. It was time to get home.

I knew I should probably call Dee and tell her I was on my way, or get her to pick me up. It was dark and she’d made me promise to do one or the other.

I sat up, shaking the pins and needles out of my feet, and I told Sonia I was going to head off.

‘On your own?’

I nodded. I’d roamed these streets for as long as I could remember and I was so sick of now being scared in my own neighbourhood.

It was only as I picked up my skateboard from where I’d left it outside the back door that she remembered the news she’d been ‘busting to tell’ all night.

‘I found out who Nicky Blackwell’s girlfriend is.’

At the mention of his name, I felt my stomach sink, heavy yet hollow. I wanted to know but I also didn’t. I had tried so hard not to think of him over the last few days, although I hadn’t succeeded. I’d really only seen him once, the day before, as I arrived at school. He had shot past me, rocketing down the hill on his board and turning into the school gate with the low swoop that had first made me notice him. I kept walking, hoping he hadn’t seen me, but he called out my name.

‘How are you going?’ His long hair was still damp from his morning shower, his eyes a brilliant green against the darkness of his tan. ‘Been missing you in detention – scaring away everyone else.’

Because I wasn’t looking at him, he’d tilted his head to one side, bending low so that he could catch my eye.

‘Ah, well,’ I said, for want of a better response and I felt like a fool.

‘How’s the skating?’

I shrugged and told him it was okay, turning away as I did so.

‘You know, you are allowed to talk to me.’

I looked back for an instant to see him standing there, board at his feet, arms crossed.

‘There’s nothing stopping us hanging out or having a conversation.’

But there was. My own pride. And the hurt I felt.

Sonia was jiggling up and down on one foot, eager to tell me. ‘I can’t believe I forgot,’ she said. ‘I meant to ring you as soon as I found out and then something distracted me and then there was all that stuff with Lyndon and I guess it just slipped my mind.’

Her name was Lesley. She was at Riverview Girls. Sal knew her because they did gymnastics for the same club.

‘So you told Sal about me and Nicky?’ I looked at Sonia in dismay.

She denied it of course, telling an unconvincing lie about how she’d just asked her sister what she knew about Nicky and his girlfriend, without letting her know why she wanted the information in the first place.

‘Apparently they’ve been together for about a year. They broke up two months ago and she was devastated. He ended it. I don’t know why, but she cried through three practise sessions and then a week later came in happy as anything again. They’d made up.’

Sonia waited for a response from me.

I didn’t know what to say.

‘There’s a photo of her in our room. You know, the gymnastics team shot.’

She took me by the arm, dragging me behind her. Standing in the doorway, I watched as she rummaged through Sal’s books, finally pulling out a photo album from the bottom shelf and impatiently flicking through the plastic-coated pages.

‘There.’ She held it up triumphantly, and I took it from her.

They all stood in four neat rows. The Linley Point Gymnastics Club. I had to hold the page next to the desk light to be able to see anyone’s face. Sonia ran her finger along the second row, finally stopping at a blonde girl, third from the end. She was pretty. Her hair was pulled back from her face. Her smile was wide, her teeth white and even, her nose small and upturned, her eyes looked like they were blue. I looked at her again, not sure why I was doing this. Knowing who she was didn’t change anything. I closed the album and gave it back to Sonia.

She was looking at me, wondering whether I was going to cry or react in some dramatic way, which I didn’t.

‘Thanks for finding out.’ It was all I said. I could see she expected something and that was the best I could do. And then, because I wanted to explain myself, I told her that it had been different with him. ‘We really got on. We liked each other. It wasn’t just like some stupid crush on a boy. I liked hanging out with him. He made me laugh.’

She put her arm around my shoulder.

‘I’m not going to cry,’ I said, and I glanced across at her.

She put the album down on the desk, and told me that they’d probably break up again. ‘That’s what happens,’ she said. ‘Once there’s a crack in the bottle, the whole thing is liable to fall apart.’

I had to smile. ‘You reckon?’

‘I know.’