five

Theory: Amanda Clarke killed herself.

Sitting in my bedroom, looking out at the darkness of the Moreton Bay fig that grew in our garden, I heard the bats screech, their leathery wings a whoosh in the night as they swept down on the rotten fruit that clung in clusters to the branches.

I hated bats. Once Joe had knocked one down from where it was stretched between the telegraph lines, electrocuted. Its wings were shrivelled, cracked and crisped. He had challenged me to touch it. He had promised me his pocket money for the next month. He had even said he would do all my chores. It was one of the only times I didn’t take up a dare.

I was meant to be in bed so I had only my desk light on to see by. This was the first entry where I had moved away from facts and decided to leap straight into something larger – theories. I didn’t know whether Amanda Clarke had killed herself but it was certainly possible. We had talked about suicide in social ed. People killed themselves when they were in trouble or depressed and believed they were alone. Father Mullaney, who took the class, told us that suicide was a sin. Only God could decide when our time was up.

‘What happens if you don’t believe in God?’ I asked, and he fixed me with a cold stare.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is the problem. Lack of belief will drive any of us to despair.’

Kate thought Amanda had been strange before she died.

I didn’t know her well enough to tell whether there was a change to her. From a distance, she seemed like someone who would have had no reason to kill herself. She was Amanda – cool, perfect and untouchable. The only noteworthy event in her life at that time (that I knew of) was the fact that she had dropped Stevie, and he was the one who had seemed upset about that.

‘He’s a wreck,’ Joe had told me at the time. ‘He has no idea why.’

‘Was there someone else?’ I had to ask the question as though I didn’t care. It was the only way I ever got any information out of him.

‘If there wasn’t, there will be soon.’ And he had grinned at me, puffing out his chest.

But there was an indication that Amanda was, as Kate had said, strange, when she came to our house two days before her body was found at the waterfront.

She had been crying. Joe, who was always awkward with any show of emotion, was hugging her, holding her head against his shoulder, his long blond hair tangled into the smooth sweep of her own dark brown hair that fell, like mink, to her shoulders.

Cassie and I had almost walked in on them, but we had stopped just outside the kitchen. With her hand on my arm, Cassie’s body shook with laughter as we witnessed what we first thought was a love scene.

‘Jesus,’ Cassie mouthed. ‘She’s only just broken up with Stevie.’

Joe moved to kiss her, brushing her hair with one hand. Amanda stepped back agitated, and I didn’t want to watch any more. Tugging Cassie by the wrist, I pulled her out into the hall.

‘I’m sorry.’ Joe sounded embarrassed.

She didn’t reply.

‘It was a mistake.’

When she finally spoke she told him she thought he was her friend.

‘I am,’ he insisted.

Her reply was scornful: ‘I thought I could talk to you.’

I didn’t want to listen any more. ‘Let’s go,’ I mouthed to Cassie and when she didn’t move, I spoke loudly, wanting them to know we were there.

Joe had already stepped away from Amanda and she had wiped the tears from her eyes. He glared at me as I poured two large glasses of juice.

‘Let’s go to my room,’ Joe eventually said, not even daring to look at Amanda. ‘Away from them.’

Both Joe’s bedroom and my room are above the sunroom that Tom added to the house. It was meant to be the place where we watched TV, played games and, invariably, fought, although as we had grown we used it less and less. If you opened the window in Joe’s room, you could climb out onto the sunroom roof. It looked west, up towards the overpass and flats, baking in the afternoon heat, the tar on the roof often melting, sticky and sweet, into the soles of our thongs. This was where Joe went to smoke dope, knowing that the sickly burning smell would float away. In his room it lingered in the seagrass matting, a dead giveaway on the rare occasions that Dee went in and tried to clean up.

Cassie and I sat on my bed painting our nails, a different colour on each finger, trying to catch drifts of conversation from the roof below. I grew bored quickly, and went to put a record on, but Cassie, who’d always had a bit of a crush on Joe, wanted to keep listening.

‘Do you reckon they’d give us a smoke?’ she asked, and I rolled my eyes.

Joe was doing most of the talking. He mumbled at the best of times and it was close to impossible to make out much of what he was saying. The little we caught was dull. It involved homework, a new Slade record and then the party at Cherry Atkinson’s that weekend.

‘You going?’

Amanda sucked in the last of the joint and stubbed it out on the roof.

‘No.’ Her reply was abrupt.

‘Why not?’ There was a sizzle of a match as Joe lit a cigarette. ‘I thought you were friends.’

Joe had once told me that he felt sorry for Cherry. They only went to her house because her parents were often away, and they were able to drink as much of the Atkinsons’ alcohol as they wanted. Once Cherry’s father, Len, had come home early and discovered them all. He lost it, Joe said. More so than just getting pissed off about a party. He hauled a couple of the kids up and tried to fight them when they refused to leave. Lyndon was the only one who took up the challenge. Another time, the police were called by neighbours, and once, a kid was taken to hospital after nearly drowning in the pool. Dee and several other parents had banned Cherry’s parties unless adults were present. Joe just never told Dee that was where he was going.

Amanda said she and Cherry weren’t really friends. ‘I just hang with her at the moment. What’s so strange about that?’

‘Nothing,’ Joe assured her.

‘I don’t see why everyone goes on about it.’ She sounded irritated.

And then she told him she had to get going.

‘Already?’ I could hear the disappointment in Joe’s voice. He asked if she was all right.

Her reply was monosyllabic.

Thinking the conversation was now over and that Cassie would finally let me put a record on, I slipped the vinyl out of the sleeve and held it between my hands. Cassie was waving her nails in the heat of the afternoon breeze, the smell of the enamel acrid and sharp. Suddenly she put a finger to her lips, telling me to wait. I almost ignored her, but then I too heard Amanda’s voice as she told Joe she was a mess. It was a comment that surprised me, just as her tears had, because I couldn’t even begin to guess what someone like her had to be troubled about.

‘Everything is wrong.’ She stood up now, the loose gravel on the roof crunching under her feet. ‘Home is shit. School is shit. I’m–’

She stopped.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she told Joe.

‘I’ll walk with you.’

She refused.

He told her he had to go the shop anyway, to get stuff for dinner.

I knew it was a lie.

Amanda became agitated. ‘I need to be on my own.’

Give up, I wanted to tell Joe. Let her go. And it seemed he eventually realised that for himself.

‘God, he wants her bad,’ Cassie told me, giggling as she flicked her hair out of her eyes. Someone had recently told her that she had great hair and she never tired of reminding herself and her friends of the fact. ‘Let’s go and nick some of his dope.’

‘No way.’ I looked at her like she’d lost her mind.

She rolled her eyes. ‘He’ll never know.’

At the end of last year, Sonia, Cassie and I had tried dope together under the Gladesville Bridge. Cassie had nicked it from her mum, Karen. The three of us huddled together in the shade of the concrete pylons, the roar of the traffic overhead punctuated by regular thumps as the cars sped over the supports. The river was steely, smooth and slick in the stillness, as we all took turns drawing back on the joint. I coughed enough to cry and didn’t feel a thing. Sonia giggled and said she felt a little weird. Cassie swore she was out of it. Lying down in a bed of purple jacaranda flowers and spreading her arms overhead, she told us she was floating on a sea of mauve, all the way to heaven.

Since then, Cassie told us she’d had it a few times and it got better each time she rolled up and smoked. Now, she wanted to do it again. ‘I’ll ask him for some,’ she said, tucking her hair behind her ears.

I forbade her from going near Joe. ‘He’s not even here,’ I said, certain I’d heard the front door close, followed by the clang of the gate on its hinges.

I was right. He wasn’t home. Later, when Cassie left, I found him walking up from the waterfront with Sammy at his heels. He scooped her up in his arms and held her close, breathing in her warmth, and then seeing me, he put her down again.

‘Where’s Amanda?’ I asked him, half-wanting to stir him and then, as he stared at me, deciding against it. ‘She seemed upset.’

He told me she’d gone home ages ago.

Later, I wondered whether he’d headed out to follow her, to find out what was wrong. He’d never told me that was what he had done and so I could only guess, but I supposed it was likely. He had a crush on her. She was upset. And despite being a pain, my brother was kinder than most, he was the type to try and help.

When her body was discovered, he must have wished he’d left immediately and caught up with her in the street, getting her to talk a bit more about whatever was upsetting her. I know that whenever I thought about her, floating facedown in that water, her foot wedged in between the boulders, the tide lapping over the mud, I wished he had. His regret could only have been worse than mine.