The Vanishing Moment Read online

  She’ll live with the sketches for a while, see if there’s anything she wants to do with them.

  In the afternoon, with a small drawing pad and some coloured pencils in her backpack, she goes for a walk in the national park that surrounds the town. The calls of currawongs, honeyeaters and crimson rosellas make her feel as if she’s in a concert hall. She feasts her eyes on gum trees majestic as sailing ships, their branches creaking, bellying with leaves. She revels in the textures and changing colours of bushland – smoky grey, khaki green, patches of yellow.

  Marika sketches trees festooned with long, dangling strips of bark slung over branches. She sketches spotted gums, their trunks a patchwork of grey, green and brown, like army camouflage. She fingers the needles of the she-oaks, so silky, soft and fine. The saplings are especially pretty, with zebra-striped trunks.

  She climbs up a hillside bulky with overhanging rocks. In one of the caves she sees a dome-shaped bird nest attached to the ceiling, the upper part of the nest formed out of what looks like cobwebs. She jumps onto a rock shelf for a closer look. The nest seems to be made of bark and grasses, coated with moss. It has a hooded side-entrance. It is a perfect little work of art. She longs to handle it, but it belongs to the bird.

  She follows a stream for a way. The water is greenish; polluted. A sign warns walkers not to touch it. Yet there are still tadpoles in the water, and small fish.

  All around she sees the tenacity of trees, rooted in shallow soil, in cracks; ropes of roots coiling over rocks, travelling great distances to find sustenance. These trees are resilient, enduring, recovering from droughts and bush fires; surviving, healing.

  They make her feel humble, hopeful.

  19. BOB

  This he remembers:

  He was a beach boy – cuttlebone-thin, brackish, unclaimed as driftwood, negligible as the colourless moon jelly kids poke with a stick.

  Yet this girl, this sweet-faced girl from the city, said she loved him.

  Her friends jeered. They didn’t know – hidden in his seabed tongue was a tiny silver fish that leapt into her mouth.

  After the holidays, she went home. She didn’t write; didn’t return his phone calls.

  His mother said, ‘Oh, dear, but it’s probably just as well.’

  Dean sneered. ‘What did you expect, loser?’

  His little sister, Ellie, wrapped her frail arms around him. ‘You’re not a loser, you’re not. You’re the best brother in the whole world.’

  20. ARROW

  Arrow goes back to the real estate office. Talking to the woman with the purple glasses is Mr Jackson, the children’s father. He’s still big, but he’s saggy, like a birthday balloon that has deflated, becoming wrinkly and soft.

  He stares at her. She holds out her hand and he takes it. Even his handshake is limp. ‘Do you remember me? I’m Arrow. I used to come and play with Fergus and the girls.’

  ‘Of course, Snow White! You looked like a grubby little angel, but I knew you’d grow into a beautiful princess.’

  ‘Unfortunately, you got it wrong about all the lovesick suitors pursuing me.’

  ‘What’re you doing here? Why on earth do you want to rent the house?’

  Arrow doesn’t want to talk in front of the woman. She knows what small places are like. Within hours the whole town will know her business.

  ‘Can we go and have a coffee?’

  Apart from sorting out the house, there are a lot of things she wants to ask him.

  He nods. ‘Cheers, Isabel.’

  The woman looks disappointed. ‘Bring Miko and the babe over for tea sometime,’ she says.

  ‘Will do.’ He ushers Arrow out of the door, and they go to a nearby café, order two flat whites.

  ‘Thanks for seeing me, Mr Jackson. I appreciate it.’

  ‘Call me Mike, please.’

  ‘Do you remember how Rose used to call you Darling? She insisted it was your real name.’

  ‘She was the darling. My sweet little chubby-chops.’

  ‘You’ve got a new partner and a baby?’ It’s been eight years, she thinks. Can someone really put the past behind them?

  He rubs his face. ‘Miko is Japanese. A school teacher. I met her a couple of years ago when her car broke down. For some reason she thinks I’m a nice old guy.’

  ‘And the baby?’ Arrow tries not to sound critical.

  ‘I was terrified when Miko told me she was pregnant. I didn’t think I could do it all over again…love a child, only to risk losing it…’

  His eyes are dark-ringed, mournful. ‘I’ll never forget my children. I’ll always love them. But Miko has given me the chance of another life. She’s brave enough for both of us.’

  ‘You’re happy.’ She’s glad for him.

  ‘I have moments of happiness. I’m a lucky old bugger.’

  ‘And Mrs Jackson? How did she just vanish? Don’t you need documents and stuff for everything?’

  ‘False identity…I don’t know. Maureen was, is, a clever woman.’

  ‘Why did she do it? Kill the children, I mean.’

  He flinches at her bluntness. ‘I don’t want to be rude. I know you were the one who found them that morning, but it’s a hard thing to talk about…’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I’m trying to understand.’ She looks pleadingly at him.

  ‘Well…she was a difficult woman. Moody. Sometimes she cried for hours. Once I found her curled up in a ball, begging, “Help me. Help me.” She was so sad, it scared the children…’

  He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket, blows his nose loudly. ‘She refused to see a doctor, said they couldn’t help. She was constantly afraid I would leave her and take the children. She wouldn’t believe that I loved her. I failed her. I failed them all.’

  So did I, thinks Arrow. So did I.

  ‘Do you think she’d come back here?’

  ‘Not bloody likely, though she loved this part of the coast. Black Rock was her favourite place.’

  ‘And Fergus’s,’ Arrow says softly.

  ‘I worry that she…’ He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to.

  Arrow shudders. She asks one more question. ‘Where are the children buried?’

  ‘In the cemetery overlooking the ocean. I reckoned they’d like it there.’

  Arrow knows the place he means. It’s on a hill, with green grass, lots of sea and sky all around.

  ‘So may I rent the house? I wasn’t planning to stay long, but now I think I need to.’

  ‘You know that people say the house is haunted, don’t you?’

  ‘Yep. I don’t care.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem right. A bit morbid, really.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Honestly.’

  ‘I should have knocked it down a long time ago, but it was my children’s home…Miko thinks I should turn it into a park. Maybe I will one of these days.’

  ‘Let me stay there. Please.’

  ‘What about your parents? Do they know about this?’

  ‘I’m eighteen. They trust me to make good decisions.’ Not true, of course, they hope she will do the right thing.

  ‘Well, I don’t know…’

  ‘I guess I’ll just have to sleep in the car. Freezing, though. Dangerous, too.’

  That convinces him. He mentions a tiny rent and says he’ll get the electricity connected right away.

  Arrow pays two weeks in advance, and he gives her a key. ‘We won’t bother with a rental agreement. Not worth the trouble.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll move in today if that’s all right?’

  He nods, gets up, and hands her a card: ‘Jackson’s Car Repairs and Services’.

  ‘The house’s not furnished, but the stove works okay. Get in touch if there’re any problems.’

  ‘I’ll get some furniture from Vinnie’s. They’ve got everything I need.’

  She bites her lip. She wants to say what she never had a chance to say all those years ago.

  ‘I’m so sorry about Fergus and
Rose and Daisy. I loved them. They were like my brother and sisters.’

  Mr Jackson pats her arm. ‘The pain doesn’t go away. I still think of them every day.’

  Hazel, her new friend at Vinnie’s, helps her select furniture, linen, pots and pans, and arranges for it to be delivered later in the day. When Arrow gives her the address, she raises her eyebrows, but says nothing. She’s not nosy. Arrow likes her for that.

  ‘See you at the club sometime, darl? Cheap food, not bad. Drinks half-price on Mondays and Wednesdays.’

  Ah, the bowling club.

  ‘I met Roberto the Magnifico this morning. Apparently he does some sort of act there?’

  Hazel’s face glows. ‘He’s brilliant. What a memory!’

  Arrow wants to ask her more about it, but she hurries off to make another sale. Arrow goes back to the motel, settles the bill, buys cleaning stuff and food at the supermarket, then drives to the house.

  She parks in the driveway, remembering Mrs Jackson’s blue Barina sitting right there on that long-ago day.

  She’d fled, but she’d left her car behind. She must have caught a bus or train or hitched. Fergus said once that she growled like a sick dog. Perhaps like an animal she dragged herself away into the bush to die, sickened by what she’d done. Arrow doubts it. She’s still out there, somewhere.

  Arrow tries to imagine how disturbed and desperate she must have been to have killed her own children. But she can’t feel sorry for her. She just wants Fergus and Rose and Daisy back.

  She heaves her luggage and shopping bags out of the boot, and turns the key in the front door. She expects the lock to be stiff, but the door opens easily.

  Although she’d told Mr Jackson it didn’t bother her that the house was said to be haunted, her hands are sweating. She tries to breathe slowly, deeply. Mistake. The house smells damp. There’s a sickly whiff of rotting wood.

  She blocks her nose, breathes through her mouth. Dust motes are dancing in the air. Sneezing, she walks from room to room. The parents’ bedroom is the biggest, but she doesn’t want to sleep there. She can see Mrs Jackson sitting on her bed, waiting for the sleeping pills to take effect, a big, soft pillow in her hands.

  Arrow closes that door, knowing she won’t open it again.

  She chooses Fergus’s room. Although this is where he died, it doesn’t give her the creeps. Ironically, it makes her feel safer. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, but if Fergus is around somewhere, he’ll be watching out for her.

  While she waits for the furniture to arrive, she looks in the cupboards and finds an old broom and pan. She opens the windows and sweeps the floors, scooping up some mouse droppings and dead flies and moths. Tomorrow she’ll tackle the windows. The house will be lighter with the dirt removed. There aren’t any curtains, but she’s not bothered. The overgrown shrubs make the house quite private.

  She glances at the kitchen sink and cupboards. Though she’s not fussy, they need a good scrub, as do the ancient bath and basin. As she puts on pink rubber gloves, she thinks of her mother. She’d have tears of joy in her eyes if she could see Arrow cleaning. But she’d also be appalled that she was in this house. It would be her worst nightmare.

  She’s going to have to lie to her parents by omission: tell them that she’s found somewhere cheap to rent; just not mention that it’s this particular house.

  A few minutes before five, the furniture truck arrives – and the lights come on. Already the place is beginning to feel less strange.

  Arrow locks the door, and goes for a long walk to the cemetery.

  In the area called The Children’s Lawn, she finds a marble headstone with the simple inscription: ‘Fergus, Daisy and Rose Jackson, aged ten, seven and five. Much loved. Much missed.’

  She’s glad the children were buried together. They would’ve been lonely on their own. As she pulls out a couple of small weeds and smooths down the grass, she tries to imagine what the burial would have been like. Was it raining? Was it sunny? Did the wind blow?

  She visualises the great raw hole in the ground; the coffins small and white. Who’d been there? She imagines the mourners passing the shovel from father to grandfather, aunt to uncle, cousin to cousin, friend to friend, as blankets of soil enfolded the children, tucking them up for the long night.

  She wants to say some words, but she can’t remember any prayers.

  She should’ve been at the funeral. She should’ve put in a spadeful of soil. She should’ve been given the chance to say goodbye.

  21. MARIKA

  Marika dreams that Jasper is scared. He wants to play, but the kidnapper is tired of playing. There are only so many games of Snap a person can endure. That afternoon they’d painted a big, cardboard box. Cut out a door and two windows. Jasper crawls into the box. Makes himself as small as possible…

  Marika wakes from the dream, the horror dissipating like smoke. But she cannot move. Not a finger, not an eyelash.

  She lies there, on her right side, commanding her body to struggle, to shift.

  Jeez! I’m stuck. Help me. Help.

  After a while, her body stirs, and she rolls out of bed. Fast.

  Sleep paralysis. It happens sometimes when you are waking from a dream while your body is still asleep.

  Nothing to worry about, but still.

  For the rest of the morning, she walks quickly, swings her arms, luxuriating in the suppleness, the wholeness of her body.

  She feels a stirring, an urge to sculpt. Not Echo, though. She’s abandoned back home. Something else. Another character from one of the Greek myths? Niobe? Yes. Marika wipes at her tears, laughing at the irony.

  Queen Niobe of Thebes boasted she was better than Leto as she had seven daughters and seven sons, whereas Leto only had one of each. To punish her, Apollo and Artemis killed all except two of her children. Niobe grieved so bitterly that Zeus pitied her and turned her to stone on Mount Sipylus so she could no longer suffer. But every year when melting snow ran off the mountain, the Greeks said it was Niobe’s tears.

  Niobe. Perfect.

  Marika sees sculpture as a synthesis of engineering and poetry. For her smaller pieces she makes a wire armature, so perfect, so precise, they are works of art in themselves. For her bigger pieces she erects a scaffolding, which she covers with chicken wire, and then applies layers of scrim soaked in wet plaster. Once this has dried, she can start on the poetry, the sensuous building up of clay.

  She puts on a pair of her Mum’s old gardening shoes, and goes down to the garage to scrounge around for lengths of wood and pieces of steel. The garage is not nearly as well set up as her workshop at home, but it’s adequate for preliminary ideas. Now that she has the form of Niobe firmly fixed in her mind, she is compelled to start the slow, thoughtful process of making intense grief tangible.

  In the late afternoon, Andy phones, again asking her over for dinner. ‘Just me and the babies – Emily’s gone to Bowral to visit her mother.’

  She hesitates. She’s so sick of her own company, her self-pitying misery, her never-ending tears. But at least she now has Niobe to think about.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘I’m not cooking. I’ll order in Thai. And if you’re very, very good, I’ll let you help bath the kids.’

  She smiles. ‘You know how to tempt a girl, but I’m sorry, I can’t.’

  That evening, as she sits alone in the kitchen, poking at a bowl of reheated pasta, she imagines what Andy and the children are doing.

  There he is, this young dad, alone with his two small boys. He brings in the washing, still damp, dumps it on the lounge-room floor amid a wrecker’s yard of toys, most broken, all still loved. He picks out the green bits in the fried rice for the fussy eldest child, scoops chocolate ice-cream into pink cones, wipes a runny nose, washes the dishes, pops the kids into the bath.

  Then the three of them squash up on the sofa to watch the soccer – Germany playing Paraguay. The baby, contented and cuddly in mismatched pyjamas, falls asleep in his arms, and he thinks: I a
m happy.

  That’s what she hopes. She hopes he realises now, right now, right in this moment, that he is happy.

  No stars tonight, just clouds and wind and rain. It’s a night to be snug inside, stoking the fire, watching TV, eating chocolate, but Marika feels too restless.

  She thinks of her mother, frozen, unable to cry, still wishing, still hoping. She takes a deep breath, dials the number, waits. The phone rings and rings and rings.

  She tries to read, but scrapings and scratchings of tree branches on the roof and windows make her think of ghosts sleeping rough, roaming from house to house, witchy fingernails raking, voices pleading to be let in, let in.

  Then there is a knock – a proper knock, a familiar tap-tapping of knuckles on door.

  Marika glances at the clock: it’s past midnight.

  Tightening the belt of her dressing-gown, she ventures to the front door, opens it a crack.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Embarrassingly, her voice squeaks.

  For a moment she thinks all her wild imaginings really have conjured up an apparition, but it’s only a girl – long fair hair streaming wet, a man’s blue-striped shirt plastered to her childish body.

  ‘Arrow?’

  The girl doesn’t reply. She stands motionless, her right hand raised, as if ready to knock again. Her eyes stare unseeingly, and, with shock, Marika realises she is asleep. She dithers, not knowing what to do. All she can remember is that you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker.

  Gently, she pulls Arrow into the room, shutting the door behind her. Her arm around the girl, she leads her down the passage, into her bedroom where a bedside lamp emits a soft yellow glow.

  Marika unbuttons the shirt, slipping it off the shivering body. Arrow’s face is pale and remote.

  She dabs at Arrow’s hair with a towel, and dries her face, arms and legs. The girl is as docile as a doll. Marika takes off her dressing-gown and wraps it around Arrow, then pulls back the doona, and guides her into bed.

  From the doorway, Marika waits a minute. Arrow’s breathing is quiet and even. She leaves the door ajar, and fetches some blankets from the hall cupboard. She’ll sleep on the sofa tonight, guarding the door.