The Vanishing Moment Read online

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispers. ‘Sorry I let you go.’ She bundles up the drawings, shoves them under the couch, but she can’t get those eyes out of her mind.

  She puts on her jacket and scarf and goes for a walk along the beach. It stretches for kilometres, the sand pale, the sea grey. There is a stillness about the beach in winter. It is as if the sand is lying fallow, waiting.

  She picks up shells, mostly broken, drops them, fingers pebbles, smooth and rounded. Apart from a couple of surfers, far away, no one is swimming, or even fishing. It’s a good time to walk into the water, pushing through the waves, and not be saved, if that’s what you want.

  She thinks of the French movie she watched the other night, Under the Sand, starring Charlotte Rampling. A woman is sleeping on the beach while her husband goes for a swim. He doesn’t come back. When his body is eventually recovered, an autopsy reveals anti-depressants in his bloodstream. His wife, that sad, sad woman, cannot, will not accept that he wanted to die.

  Jasper. Her mother will never accept that he’s not coming back. She will always be searching, waiting, wanting. There will never be an end to it. Not for her mother or Steve. Not for her.

  Marika takes off her jacket and scarf. Her sneakers, jeans, jumper. She leaves on her T-shirt and underwear. She puts the clothes in a tidy pile. She walks into the water. It is freezing, heart-stoppingly icy. Shivering uncontrollably, she walks on. Up to her knees, her waist. She dives into a wave, surfaces, tries to stroke neatly and quickly. She will swim, and keep swimming.

  ‘Hey! Hey!’ She lifts her head, glances back. A man is shouting, running towards the water. A dog hurtles into the waves, swimming strongly. It’s retrieving a stick, she thinks dully. But it’s not, it’s heading straight for her, its head bobbing above the water, its mouth open in a grin. Startled, she notices it only has one eye and one ear.

  The dog doesn’t bite her. It sinks its teeth into her T-shirt and will not let go.

  She flounders, struggles, sinks. The damned dog is going to drown her unless she gives up and goes back to shore.

  She flaps her arms, kicks her feet, hampered by the dog hanging on. At last her feet touch sand. She wades out of the water, the dog trotting beside her, teeth bared in a grin.

  The man grabs her, yanks her up the beach. She’s too exhausted to protest. He tugs off her T-shirt, rubs her down with her jeans, thrusts on her jumper and jacket. His hands are unkind. He winds the scarf around her neck.

  Only now does he speak. ‘No one drowns themselves on this beach.’

  Her lips are stiff with cold, but she manages to shiver out, ‘I wasn’t. I was just swimming.’

  Was she? She’s not sure.

  ‘Go home,’ the man says. ‘Be grateful for the life you have.’

  Numbly, she picks up her clothing and shoes, stumbles away. After a while, she looks back. The man is watching her. The dog barks.

  Marika lies in the bath, refilling it over and over with hot water, but she can’t stop shivering. She hugs her body, savouring its solidity, its strength. I’m alive, she marvels, alive. I wasn’t really going to kill myself. I’m sure I wasn’t. I just wanted to stop thinking, stop feeling.

  She wonders about the man, with his narrow face, black unkempt hair, the coat far too big for his frame. He’s the thinnest person she has ever seen. And the dog! So disfigured it looks as if it has been run over by a truck.

  ‘Go home,’ the man had said. But she cannot.

  How do you get rid of guilt? she wonders. Should you get rid of guilt? But what happens if you don’t? How do you keep on living? Someone talk to me. Tell me what to do.

  But there is no one to talk to. Her friends don’t know what to say. She doesn’t know what to say.

  She feels guilty. She is guilty. She let go of Jasper’s hand, and someone else took it. She can’t change that. She can’t turn back the clock. But can she forgive herself?

  Steve rings in the evening. He says her mother has given up on the clairvoyant, Dolores. Good, Marika thinks, but what now?

  ‘Your mum’s taking some time off work,’ Steve says. ‘Actually, her boss told her to go on sick leave. She can’t concentrate, she keeps making mistakes.’

  ‘Oh, Steve, I’m so sorry. Can I talk to her?’

  Silence. ‘Best not, for a while. She’s sleeping at the moment, anyway.’ He makes an effort. ‘How are you, Marika? All right?’

  ‘Still weeping, I’m afraid.’ She makes her voice sardonic so that he won’t pity her.

  ‘I wish your mother could cry.’ He sounds so bewildered and alone that Marika wishes she was there to help out. She wants to beg, ‘Let me come back, please.’ But her mother has to ask her to come home, and she’s not saying anything.

  16. BOB

  This he remembers:

  The class was asked to write a story about the earliest thing they recalled. The other children wrote about falling off a swing, blowing out a birthday candle, going to the zoo.

  He wrote about being born. The sensation of floating in his mother’s womb. The shock of being pushed and pulled. Dazzling white light. Noise.

  The kids laughed when he read it out. They found it wonderfully rude.

  Miss Simpson had a quiet word with him afterwards. ‘You were supposed to write about something you remembered. Something real.’

  ‘I do remember this. It was real.’

  She looked concerned. ‘Perhaps I need to talk to your mother and Dean?’

  ‘No. Please!’ He hung his head. ‘You’re right, I did make it up. Sorry.’

  ‘But why?’

  He couldn’t think of an answer.

  ‘So the children would giggle and be silly?’ Her voice was cold. ‘I’m very disappointed in you, Bob.’

  She was his favourite teacher. She’d liked him. He wanted to bash his head against the wall.

  17. ARROW

  As soon as the café opens, Arrow’s at the beachfront, getting her coffee hit, clinging like a barnacle to a table that threatens to slide down the steep pavement into the sea.

  Nearby, a thin young man, shadowed by a misshapen dog, is inching along the shopping strip – touching litter bins, signposts, benches.

  The waitress, whose silver earrings are as big as bicycle wheels, catches Arrow’s eye. She grins. ‘I call him The Early Morning Inspector.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  She taps her forehead with a bright green fingernail. ‘Checking that nuthin’s moved or changed in the night.’

  She turns around. ‘Good morning, Bob!’

  Her voice is bright, hearty, the kind of voice some people use when addressing small children, the handicapped, or the mentally ill.

  The man nods, looking amused. ‘Hello, Sheree. The usual, please.’

  He perches at a table even more sharply pitched than Arrow’s. It definitely needs testing for stability, but he hooks a leg around the centre pole, and motions to the dog to lie down. It slumps next to him, its head resting on his foot.

  It’s the most disfigured dog Arrow has ever seen. One ear, one eye, body ridged with scars. Only a few tufts of honey-brown hair suggest a former beauty.

  ‘The local kids call him Frankie, short for Frankenstein,’ the man says. ‘Wrong, of course. Frankenstein was the scientist, not the monster.’

  Arrow blushes. ‘I know. Sorry.’

  She means sorry for staring.

  ‘Oh, he’s fine now, aren’t you, old fella?’

  The dog opens its eye, and looks up at Bob, radiating such affection, such allegiance, that Arrow wonders how she ever thought it ugly.

  She sticks her nose back in her coffee, and tries not to glance at Bob and Frankie again. They’re a strange pair: the dog so maimed, the man as thin as a stick insect. He makes her feel uneasy. He seems odd, out of place. But maybe she’s the one who doesn’t belong.

  The waitress brings Bob his coffee. ‘So when is Roberto the Magnifico going to be performing again?’

  ‘Saturday night at the bowl
ing club. Coming, Sheree? Coming to be astounded and confounded?’

  She tosses her head, earrings swinging. ‘Maybe.’

  As she wiggles back inside, the man catches Arrow staring – again!

  ‘I’m a magician. Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of?’

  ‘Well, I don’t pull rabbits out of hats, or saw pretty women in half.’

  ‘So what do you do?’

  He shrugs. ‘Haven’t seen you around before. Staying long?’

  It’s Arrow’s turn to shrug.

  He frowns. He downs his coffee, slams some coins on the table, and stalks off, Frankie ambling behind him.

  Sheree comes out to clear the table and wipe it down.

  ‘I think I upset him,’ Arrow says.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry. He’s weird, that one.’

  ‘Is he really a magician?’

  ‘Yeah. And a mechanic.’ She gives a naughty grin. ‘He’s quite attractive, don’t you think?’

  Arrow laughs and pays for the coffee. She walks down to the real estate office. Overnight she’s decided that she wants to stay longer in Shelley Beach. She wants to find out what happened after the murders. How did Mrs Jackson just disappear into thin air? And what happened to her husband – that laughing man, Darling – after his children were gone?

  The real estate windows are plastered with colour photographs of houses with entertainment areas, swimming pools, games rooms, parents’ retreats. A good deal of Shelley Beach has had an expensive makeover. Arrow can’t see anything cheap to rent, but she pushes open the door and goes in to enquire.

  A middle-aged woman wearing snazzy purple-framed glasses glances up from her computer.

  ‘I’m looking for somewhere to rent. Something small, cheap, for a few weeks, or a couple of months, perhaps.’

  The woman looks doubtful. Arrow can tell she’s wondering if she’s old enough to be living on her own.

  ‘I am eighteen.’

  Arrow pulls out her driver’s licence. The woman studies it, hands it back. ‘Sit down. Let’s see what I’ve got that might suit you.’

  Ten minutes later they agree there’s nothing. Both the long-term rentals and the holiday lettings would demolish her savings very quickly.

  ‘There’s been a boom in this area. Sydney-siders like it because it’s so quiet and relatively unspoilt. Just about every house has been renovated. Have you tried the caravan parks?’

  ‘All full.’ Full of all the poor people who can no longer afford to live in their own town.

  ‘Well, good luck.’

  The woman spreads her hands out in sympathy, turns back to her computer.

  Arrow stays put. There is one place that hasn’t been mentioned. The Haunted House.

  ‘What about the empty house near the beach? On Weston Street. Is that still available?’

  The woman blinks. ‘Oh, I don’t really think…’

  ‘I know about the murders. It was so long ago, it doesn’t bother me at all.’ Arrow speaks strongly, reassuringly.

  ‘I could ring Mr Jackson, I suppose. He still owns it. He never could get anyone to want to live there.’

  ‘Well, I do. I’m sure a very low rent would be better than nothing at all.’

  The woman doesn’t look happy. ‘I’ll try to get hold of him. Can you check back in an hour or so?’

  ‘Sure, and thanks.’ Arrow starts to get up.

  ‘Shouldn’t you ask your parents about this?’

  Arrow wants to tell her to mind her own bloody business, but she needs her. ‘I’m grown up. I make my own decisions.’

  She goes out, resisting the temptation to bang the door.

  With an hour to kill, she strolls down the street and comes across a Vinnie’s shop. If she does get the house, she’ll need some second-hand furniture. A bed, table and chairs, maybe a sofa and lamp, some pots and pans, mugs, plates and cutlery. Stuff she could just abandon later, or donate back to charity.

  The front of the shop is crammed with racks of dresses, trousers, jackets, and boxes of books and bric-a-brac. The clothes smell musty, a bit seedy. Further back are the big items. Arrow roams around, examining the prices.

  No one badgers her, or asks if they can help, probably because the shop is surprisingly busy with a mixture of shoppers, old and young. Arrow guesses that not everyone here is wealthy.

  None of the beds, which are dismantled and stacked against the walls, have mattresses. Damn. Even she knows that new mattresses are expensive.

  She turns away disconsolately, and catches the eye of an old woman putting jackets on hangers.

  ‘Nothing you like?’

  The woman’s face is a mesh of wrinkles, fine as a spider web, but her eyes are a startling bright blue.

  ‘You don’t seem to have any mattresses,’ Arrow says.

  ‘Afraid it’s our policy not to accept them. For health reasons.’

  ‘I can’t afford a new one. I’ll just have to sleep on the floor.’

  ‘I’ve done that before. Most uncomfortable.’

  The woman looks Arrow up and down. ‘You’re not very big, are you? Come with me, there is something.’

  She leads Arrow down a passage to another room stacked with yet more furniture, and points to a child’s bed. ‘These items have just come in. They haven’t been priced yet.’

  Next to the bed is a mattress with a yellow teddy-bear pattern. If Arrow scrunches up her legs, she might just fit.

  ‘We accepted this as the child only slept in it once, apparently. He screamed blue murder because he wanted a car bed, can you believe it? Some parents!’

  ‘I’ll take it. If it’s cheap?’

  The woman winks. ‘For you, my dear, very cheap.’

  She extracts a pad of red stickers from her pocket, and slaps one onto the bed frame.

  Arrow explains that she’s still waiting to hear about the rental, but assures her it’s nearly one hundred per cent certain.

  ‘No worries. I’ll put it aside for you. Just let me know if you don’t want it.’

  Arrow leaves the shop, and goes into the newsagent’s to choose a postcard for Mr Watts and Lucy.

  She sits on a bench outside and scribbles a message: Hope there’s enough sea, sand and sky in the photo to satisfy your coastal yearnings. Am thinking of staying here for a few weeks. Love, Arrow. PS Give the phantom dog Killer a pat from me!

  That’ll make Mr Watts chuckle.

  18. MARIKA

  Marika hasn’t been in touch with her father for ages. Before Jasper’s disappearance there had been some talk of her going for a short holiday to New York during the next semester break. Her dad even offered to pay the airfare, which was unusual for the skinflint. But now he’s gone quiet on the offer. Marika thinks she knows why. He, or maybe his wife, the brittle Naomi, doesn’t want her around. She’s a reminder that terrible things can happen to children. Worse, that she let something terrible happen.

  Perhaps she’s doing them a disservice?

  She sends him a brief email. ‘So should I come over during the break? I’d like to spend some time with you and Naomi and the twins. Love, Marika.’

  To her surprise, he responds immediately. Not to her surprise, he writes: ‘Have to take a raincheck, I’m afraid. Naomi is flat-out at work and I’ve got to attend some conferences. The girls are fine – very busy with their music and languages. Dad.’

  She stares at the email, dumps it in the recycle bin. He didn’t even bother to ask how she and her mum were doing. Or sign off ‘with love’. But then he hasn’t for a long time.

  Instead of getting on with her assignments, she writes a vicious little story, for her eyes only.

  He left her alone in the house, he trusted her, he said.

  She threw open the windows and doors, welcomed the vandals in.

  She smiled at the once-golden walls, now obscenely scribbled and scrawled.

  She plugged the sinks, turned on the taps, let the waters run.

  She grew herself a crocodile tai
l – thick, muscular, spine-smashing – and thrashed about in the shallows, relishing her father’s home-coming.

  She saves it in her ideas folder. Already she can imagine a sculpture of the girl-crocodile: vulnerable, hurt, revengeful.

  She puts her father out of her mind, and turns to her assignments. She’d planned to write an essay on Rosalie Gascoigne’s sculptures – those fine assemblages of ‘found’ materials, such as discarded boxes, iron and road signs.

  But now she wants to do something on Rick Amor instead. His mysterious, disquieting paintings of decaying buildings, solitary watchers and shadowy figures have always fascinated her. But it is his less-examined sculptures she wants to write about.

  That maimed but valiant dog on the beach has made her think of Amor’s two-metre high, bronze sculpture of a dog that he describes as ‘a made-up dog, a survivor’. And then there is his haunting sculpture, Relic, a strange, disfigured human body without arms and with the head of a dog.

  She works steadily for three hours, drafting and redrafting, glad that she’s actually seen Relic at the McClelland sculpture trail, eerily placed among crooked tea-trees.

  She finishes the essay and leans back in the chair. It’s the first solid piece of work she’s done for ages.

  She makes a tomato and cheese sandwich, and sits in the sun, her head still full of Rick Amor. She’s fascinated by his various portrayals of dogs, sleeping, standing, chasing their tails. And she likes the way Amor left his fingermarks in the clay models – she can almost see him pushing and prodding the sculptures into life.

  She’s never tried to do a sculpture of an animal before, and she’s not sure she wants to. But the dog on the beach is still so vivid in her mind that she feels compelled to get out paper and charcoal and do some lightning sketches from memory. She draws the man, too, that attenuated Giacometti figure. He’s like a scarecrow in an ill-fitting coat.

  The drawings are not great, but they have vitality. She puts them on the floor of the dining room and walks around them, considering.