‘I . . . It’s . . . Did he leave anything here? Have you found anything?’
‘Why?’
‘Are you sure? Can you have a thorough look?’
‘He left a box with photos. You came here because he forgot something?’
‘No, but I wonder if he did leave anything . . .’
‘I emptied the box, just three photo albums. Nothing else.’
How should she say it? Did he leave Noah’s bib in the box? He said he burnt it, but maybe he didn’t. Or did he leave something else of Noah’s? ‘Just . . . have another look, to check. If there’s anything odd get rid of it. Also I think everyone should know I’m a bad mother. Chloe should know he’s a bad man.’
Alexandra stood with her hands on the sink, biting her lip again, visibly angry. ‘I need to go to Chloe’s school.’ She was furious, and obviously wanted rid of Joanna.
‘But I need to explain . . .’
Alexandra was already heading to the front door. ‘I’ll point you to the tram stop.’
She was a fast walker, or she was trying her hardest to shake off this shadow. Joanna put on her baseball cap and glasses, and practically ran to keep up with her all the way to the school round the corner. The concrete playground was swarming with groups of teenagers. For a brief moment, Joanna drank it in. She missed her old life.
‘I don’t want her to see you. The tram stop’s just over there,’ Alexandra said.
Joanna wasn’t giving up, and wouldn’t leave, not yet. She stood behind the tree and hid, something she became good at during the affair. Alexandra whistled, using her fingers, and Chloe skulked over.
‘Checking up on me?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Are you okay?’
‘No.’
‘Why don’t you go sit with Blake? Look, he’s over there reading.’
‘Why don’t you mind your own business?’ She began walking away, then turned back, guilty, and added, ‘Sorry, Mum. I’m okay.’
‘I love you.’ Alexandra blew a worried kiss at her daughter and watched her walk back to her lonely bench.
Alexandra then turned to Joanna and spoke with a don’t-mess-with-me voice. The eye contact she’d yearned for was so intense and assertive she now wished Alexandra would stop looking at her. ‘Listen to me,’ Alexandra said, ‘I am going to fight for Chloe and I’m going to win but I’m not going to turn her against her father. As much as I’ve hated him these years, I’ve bitten my tongue. I’m not a politician. I don’t go for negative campaigns, dirty tactics. It’s been almost impossible sometimes. But I don’t want her growing up hating him. It’ll screw her up. Despite her behaviour in the last two weeks, she’s a happy girl. She doesn’t want to live with him – with you – and she’s mad with him for being a fucking hopeless father, but she loves him. It’s really important for her happiness that it stays that way, that he’s this fabulously successful father figure who loves her from a distance. So whatever it is you hope to do to help us, please make sure you don’t mess any further with my daughter’s image of her dad.’ She paused and lowered her voice. ‘We are not sisters-in-arms. Never contact me again.’
Before Joanna knew what was happening, Alexandra had turned and walked away, leaving Joanna and her stupid plan outside a secondary school in some place called Coburg.
*
A car whizzed by, brushing her handbag. ‘Get off the road, ya mad bitch!’ the driver yelled, tooting his horn until he disappeared round the corner. Joanna realised she shouldn’t be standing in the middle of the road. Other pedestrians were waiting for the tram on the kerb. She clutched at her bag, walked to the kerb, and stared at the tram tracks.
She’d planned to be smiling by now but her lips were so heavy she felt she’d never manage to turn their edges up. Her eyes were fixed on the tracks. After satisfying herself that Alistair had not planted any evidence to frame his ex-wife, and that Chloe was safe and thriving, she’d planned to walk left, to the police station, where she would unload her torture. She even imagined Alexandra might come with her.
She was such a fool.
Joanna stood rigid and looked right, following the straight tracks that led back to her meeting spot with Alistair. She’d ruined Chloe’s life once already. She wouldn’t do it again. She wouldn’t be the one to make a happy little girl with a fabulously successful yet distant father figure a miserable girl with a father who buried her half-brother, who lied to the police, to the world, to her.
Across the road a couple walked along the street, their little girl in between them. Holding a hand each, the couple counted to three and went
Wheee!
She remembered doing this in Queens Park with her parents. She remembered the things her mother told her after he left: that she should forget about him; that he didn’t care about her so why should she care about him; that he was a bad man, a selfish man.
Oh, it was of such tedious interest to the counsellor that Joanna fell for Alistair shortly after her mother’s death.
A tram was approaching. Joanna and her crime would get on it. They would go to the grave together. Until then she would live with Alistair Robertson and spend her days replaying the moment when she killed her son.
The Number 19 screeched to a halt in front of her. Joanna tossed her baseball cap and sunglasses in the bin, followed the other passengers onto the road in front of a queue of obediently stationary cars and got on, not caring now if people recognised her. She had a part to play, and she must play it, for the rest of her life.
*
A part to play. A role to act. A punishment to serve, person to be. A shop with lacy underwear in the window. Joanna got off the tram and walked towards it.
It was nestled in amongst the traditional Lebanese restaurants, organic cafes and slow-cooking eateries of Sydney Road. As she got closer, she saw it was called Rockabillies: vampire gear.
The tiny shop was empty bar an enthusiastic assistant wearing jeans and a black latex top with red lace. The woman pounced: ‘Beautiful day!’
She could feel her lips shuddering at the rows of bloodthirsty sex gear. She spent a month’s income on stockings, provocative pants and see-through bras when she and Alistair started dating.
Dating
:
that’s what she thought they were doing, in fact they were heading to hell. In the first months, she used to shave her pubes sitting on the edge of the bath, checking her work with a small mirror, then exfoliating and moisturising. She used to try on her new purchases in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. A couple of times, she took photos of herself to check if there were any stray hairs in the crack area and to hone her poses.
‘This would look fabulous on you!’ The shop assistant didn’t seem to care that Joanna hadn’t spoken. ‘The Vampire Vixen!’ She held up a short black dress with a high collar and absent middle except for the strings that tied it loosely from boob to pube. Joanna thought it was the least sexy thing she’d ever laid eyes on.
She noticed something on one of the racks at the back. Not the garment, but the name of it. ‘The Immortal Mistress’, she said out loud, eyeing the gaudy latex skirt and skimpy top, complete with fishnet stockings topped with red bows.
‘That’d suit you too,’ the assistant said, putting the Vixen back on the rack.
It sure would, Joanna thought. Immortal Mistress. It suited her down to the ground. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘We only have a ten. Don’t you want to try it on?’
‘No.’
*
It was 1.30 p.m. when she got off at the stop in North Melbourne: half an hour to wait. To survive this new life, she would need assistance. And there was nothing wrong with needing a little assistance, long as you’re careful not to confuse medicine bottles, long as you don’t kill your child. The corner pub was dark and grotty. She chose a glass of house red, and downed three Valium with the first gulp.
‘Hot outside?’ the barman asked when she’d finished her second glass.
‘Not sure.’ She hadn’t noticed the weather for weeks. Could be hot, could be not. She pushed the glass and nodded to order a third.
‘Hey . . . do I know you?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Yes I do. Definitely. Or do you just come here a lot?’
‘First timer!’ Joanna downed her drink, banged her glass down for another.
‘Ah, you play volleyball!’
She shook her head. Was this ever going to stop?
‘You live in Moonee Ponds?’
‘No.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Edinburgh.’
‘Edinburgh . . . So your accent . . .’
‘Is Scottish.’
‘Scottish, eh. I know you. I’m going to work this out. Scottish.’ He thought hard, scrutinised her face, then it hit him like a very sluggish tsunami. ‘Oh shit, mate. Sorry, really sorry.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said, finishing the fourth glass. ‘Why should you be sorry?’
‘Just, you know, I just am.’ The barman was so embarrassed he pretended he had something to do at the other end of the bar.
She only left without ordering another drink to save him the agony of having to talk to her again.
She fell over a crack in the concrete and bumped into a bin on the way to the meeting place. He was waiting in the car at the side of the road, tapping at his iPhone. She popped a mint in her mouth, took a deep breath, and walked as steadily as she could towards him.
‘Hey, darlin’,’ he said, putting his phone in his pocket and kissing her on the lips. ‘You have a good time?’
‘It was fine,’ she said. ‘You?’
‘Yep, but it’s going to get better!’ Alistair’s surprise was a hotel on St Kilda beach. ‘We so need to get out of Geelong,’ he said as they drove along Beaconsfield Parade. ‘Just us. Nothing else. We should really try and clear our heads and spend some time together, just for one night.’
‘Did you catch up with Phil?’ Joanna asked.
‘Left a message but he never got back. Haven’t seen Phil for seven years, can you believe that? My best mate and he hasn’t been in touch since the accident happened. Y’think he’d at least phone me back.’
Accident. So that was the word to describe the moment she killed Noah. ‘What did you do, then?’ she asked.
‘Waited for you.’
Liar. He must have done something other than wait. What? What did the arsehole do? For the rest of her life Joanna would have questions that she’d never even bother asking. That would be part of her punishment, she supposed.
*
It was a far cry from the hotels they used to meet in during the affair, when Alistair would sneak in a back entrance, Joanna entering the foyer a few minutes later. This one was five star, for a start, not the two-at-most they used to book online, using a false name and address, paying half each, in cash. Their room was on the fifth floor and had a view over the beach and across to the city’s skyscrapers. Alistair emptied his pockets onto the desk. She used to find this so cute. Now she had an overwhelming urge to check through the scrunched receipts to find out what he’d been buying and doing. He went into the bathroom for a loud piss, leaving the door open, which he never used to do, so even if she could be bothered, which she couldn’t, she wouldn’t get away with snooping through his receipts. He came back into the room, opened the bottle of champagne he’d ordered in the bar in the foyer and poured her a glass. ‘We shouldn’t feel guilty trying to be happy,’ he said, handing her the flute of bubbly. ‘Being miserable and guilty doesn’t bring him back. Noah wouldn’t have wanted it.’
She laughed. What a fuckwit.
Alistair handed her the flute of bubbly, fear on his face. Only crazy women laughed like that.
‘You think Noah wants me to get pissed and shag you?’
Alistair put his drink down and looked at her lovingly. ‘I think Noah would want you to forgive yourself.’
‘Do you forgive me, Alistair?’
‘Of course.’
Ha, caught out. If he forgave her, that meant he thought it was her fault, all her fault.
‘See, I don’t think Noah would want me to forgive myself at all. I think he’d want to be alive.’ She drank the champagne and poured another.
Alistair sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. ‘Joanna, come back,’ he said. ‘Where have you gone? I can’t take this any more. Please come back.’
Joanna gulped her glass down, refilled it, and drank another. If only she could be more like this dickwad. He was okay. He was coping. Right now, she envied him. Somehow he even managed to make her feel guilty about how he was feeling. As if she didn’t have enough to feel guilty about. ‘I’m going to get drunk.’
He lifted his head, optimistic – ‘Good idea’ – and poured her the third glass in twenty minutes. Four reds at the pub, three bubblies here. She was on her way to being proper wellied. ‘Did you get some lingerie?’
Joanna took the Rockabillies bag out of her handbag and threw it on the bed.
‘Ooh, stand in front of me!’
Joanna used to like doing as he asked, standing, stripping, touching herself, moving this way, that, while he worshipped her body.
She stumbled and fell to the floor as she took her shoe off. Neither of them giggled. She sat on the floor and ripped the rest of her clothing off in a hurry then staggered to a wobbly but upright position in front of him. The windows were open. The sun highlighted her luminous pale skin, bruised here and there from banging into pool fences and bins. She looked down and giggled at how unsexy she was. If only she’d always been this way. She wouldn’t be here now.
‘You’re gorgeous, Joanna.’ His expression did not match his words. ‘How about I order some food?’
Joanna looked down and examined her thin pale frame. Her inner thighs were concave and a fold of skin had appeared on the inner edges at the top. Her breasts had burst like balloons: tiny, floppy, weak, empty. Fine pink spider legs spiralled out from each nipple. She touched the top of her pubic hair with her finger, tracing the fire-like stretch marks round and round, following the light brown line that first appeared during pregnancy all the way up to her belly button. She put one foot on a chair and examined herself in the mirror. Hard to tell, but different, definitely.
She stood in front of the mirror and smiled. Her body was beautiful. There were signs all over it saying: ‘Noah was here.’