The Fourth Season (2 page)

Ivan had designed the group's website free of charge, and I didn't think a single member had any illusions about why he'd done so.

The day he'd come back in a foul mood, he'd been to Laila's to discuss the website. I didn't object to Ivan's generosity; but he'd broken a rule we'd made when we first set up in business, which was that no matter how worthy the cause, no matter if it was a close friend asking for a favour, we would insist on being paid. Ivan hadn't told me he was going to break our rule, much less asked my opinion.

That summer evening by the lake, Laila had reminded me of Ivan's ex-wife, Lauren. The ‘L' at the start of their names had run the two women together in my mind.

Laila had paid no attention to me. I wasn't offended by this, but grateful, believing that any attempt at friendliness would have been hypocritical on her part. Seeing her for myself made sense of the hints and signals I'd been absorbing for weeks.

When jealousy forced itself through the floor of my recollections like a thousand rotting mushrooms, I tried to reason myself out of it. I had no right to feel jealous, I instructed myself, when Ivan had learnt to live within the force field of my attachment to Brook.

Three

A man called Don Fletcher rang my landline office phone.

He introduced himself, then asked, ‘Am I speaking to Sandra Mahoney?'

I confirmed that he was. Don's voice rose against a background of traffic noise, which cleared for a moment to enable me to hear, ‘I'm a murder suspect and my marriage is falling apart.'

It sounded like a reasonable complement of woe, enough like mine to make me want to listen. Don Fletcher knew who I was and a fair bit about my history—that much was also made clear in the next couple of minutes. He wanted to pay for my services, and stressed the point that he was prepared to spend enough to make it worth my while.

I told him I'd think about his offer, knowing Ivan would be up in arms. Don suggested meeting for coffee to fill in a bit of background and help me make up my mind.

The phone call left me restless, and I decided to drive to Laila's house, telling myself that I had a right to do this much, picturing rooms where Ivan had come and gone throughout the summer, thinking about the fact that I'd never been inside before.

Tim Delaney opened the door and stared at me as though he'd forgotten who I was. Tim hadn't shaved for days and his black hair was uncombed. He looked decades older than the last time I'd seen him.

Tim seemed to understand my need to be there—at least he didn't question me about it—but when I asked which room had been Laila's, he said fussily, ‘Nobody's allowed in.'

I asked if I could look through the door.

‘I suppose so. If you must. It won't tell you anything.'

Laila's room was spartan, almost empty. A double bed base was pushed against one wall. A desk in front of the window held a few pens in a mug; a straight-backed wooden chair was pushed close underneath it, while a single bare, energy-saving light bulb hung from the ceiling by a thin black cord.

I asked Tim if the police had take Laila's computer and mattress, and he nodded.

‘What else did they take?'

‘I was told not to go in, and I haven't.'

I glanced over my shoulder at Tim, who was standing a couple of paces behind me, to one side. His insistence struck a false note. ‘What else?' I repeated.

‘Her—her weight belt.'

Tim's voice sounded as though he was choking. He looked away, refusing to meet my eyes.

I went on studying the room, wondering what else it had to tell me.

The floor was plain polished pine, cheap wood with knots in it, nailed together with no attention to the grain, and without a covering of any kind. A narrow wardrobe hid what clothes Laila had possessed, provided the police had not taken them as well. My fingers itched to open the wardrobe, to finger Laila's clothes and run my hands over them. I felt suddenly ashamed.

A scuba tank stood in one corner. From my vantage point, I could see that the window was locked. The air smelt dry and dusty. A bookshelf held cardboard file holders, labelled with the years 2002 and 2003. The current year was missing. Heavy science texts stood neatly upright. Apart from these and a Macquarie dictionary, there were no other books.

I turned to face Tim, who looked uncomfortable, but didn't move away.

‘Was it always this empty?'

Tim stared at me uncomprehendingly, and I understood that, for him, the room had been filled with Laila's presence and that this had been more than enough.

Tim walked swiftly to the front door, letting me know that he'd had enough intrusions and wanted me to leave.

He paused with his hand on the door and said sarcastically, ‘You know, Laila didn't care about that website. She was just using Ivan.'

‘I thought Ivan was doing the group a favour.'

‘Men were always doing Laila favours. It got on her nerves.'

Tim's rudeness made me stubborn. I waited while he pulled out a crumpled, dirty tissue from his pocket and wiped his nose with it, then asked the question I'd been holding back.

‘Laila brushed Ivan off,' Tim said. ‘He should have seen it coming.'

‘Brushed him off? They quarrelled?'

Tim shrugged and blinked, then blew his nose again. ‘Ask him if you want to know.'

Tim spoke in the kind of voice that made it clear he knew Ivan was hardly spending any time at home. I guessed Tim and Ivan had been crying on each other's shoulders for a good part of the last few days, and that made me angry.

Keeping control of my anger though, I asked after Phoebe, the third member of the household. Tim replied that she was staying at her cousin's.

He opened the door and almost shoved me through it, just stopping himself from grabbing hold of my shoulder in time. I glared at Tim, then left feeling annoyed with myself for getting him off-side. Yet how could I have helped it? Tim seemed weak and despicable to me at that moment, even though I knew I was off-loading some of my anger with Ivan onto him.

. . .

At a couple of minutes to three, I crossed the street in front of our house and waited for my daughter to appear.

Kat walked proudly, head high, sun catching her yellow Lyneham Primary T-shirt. Part of my daughter's pride stemmed from the fact that she was allowed to walk home from school by herself. Ever since she'd learnt to speak, Kat had complained of being so far behind her brother that she had no hope of catching up. At the start of her second year at school, she'd campaigned vigorously for the right to walk home by herself.

Her father and I had given in, but every day at three, unless Peter met her and walked home with her, I crossed the road and leant against the railing that surrounded the sports oval.

Kat knew I was waiting for her, but behaved as though I wasn't, pointedly looking from right to left, then right again, before stepping confidently forward.

Once inside the house, she became chatty, filling me in on her day, talking around a thick slice of bread and honey. She got out her pencils and the large pad she liked to use for drawing and sat at the kitchen table, alternately paying attention to the design she was working on, and watching me as I drank tea and made a half-hearted start on dinner.

After a few minutes had passed without either of us speaking, Kat asked where her father was.

‘Dad had to go out,' I replied in a neutral voice.

‘And Pete's got soccer practice.' Kat's voice was confident, but with an undertone of doubt.

‘Yes,' I said.

‘I want to play soccer.'

‘Do you?'

‘Yes,' Kat repeated, imitating my voice, knowing she was doing so, knowing as well that she had a good case to make, but unsure whether this was the right time to make it.

Kat watched me carefully while she waited to see what I would say next. Her brown eyes were wide with the understanding that trouble had descended on her family.

Peter had a different father; Derek, my first husband. Kat only had Ivan. She was hovering between asking outright what was wrong, and simply wanting whatever it was to go away.

‘When will Dad be home?'

‘I'm not sure.'

It was a bleak answer, one I hated giving. But I knew it would be worse to offer a re-assurance it was beyond my power to make good.

‘I'm going to make Dad the
best
drawing,' Kat said.

. . .

Peter came home from soccer training red-faced, clear-eyed, boots kicked off on the porch, shin guards pushing out his socks, announcing proudly that he'd kicked two goals.

I moved to hug him, but Kat was quicker, screeching and jumping to give him a high five.

‘I told Mum! I want to play soccer!'

‘You're too little,' I said.

‘No she's not,' said Peter.

Peter displayed for his admiring sister a big bruise on his thigh, already swelling like an eggplant. Kat stretched out a swift, inquisitive hand, making noises of alarm and sympathy, while Peter's eyes met mine over her black curls.

For all those forming years, from birth till ten years old, he'd been an only child, first living with parents who did not get on, then with me as a single mother. Peter had learnt to gather his own intelligence, and seldom to complain.

He withdrew gently from his sister's ministrations; but Kat wasn't having this, and followed him into his room. I heard their voices, pitched too low for me to catch the words, and, a few moments later, the sound of the shower running.

Many aspects of the meal we shared that evening reminded me of the years Peter and I had spent living alone.

Fresh from the shower, handsome in a white T-shirt, Peter grated cheese at the kitchen bench, eating it in careful fistfuls, offering the bowl to his sister, who followed his example. Just so he had, a boy of eight, helped prepare our evening meal, tasting and nibbling as he went. Just so he had, back then, learnt to ask questions with his eyes, about his absent father, and to face the fears that sprouted wings in silence.

Katya set the table, laughing when she dropped a fork and Peter called her butter-fingers. I'd cooked spaghetti and we made a mess. I didn't mind. In fact, I was glad of a homely, ordinary mess. I washed the dishes while Peter, with a look of solitary determination, set out his homework at one end of the table and Kat curled up with her pad and pencils at the other.

I bit off questions that I might have asked my son about his day, watching him apply himself, knowing he was aware of every move I made. I shut the living-room door behind me and switched on the television, keeping the sound low.

A journalist revealed that Laila had been killed with a savage blow to the head. Detective Sergeant Brideson repeated his call for public assistance. Call numbers flashed at the bottom of the screen.

I felt a soft breath at my shoulder.

‘She was a friend of Ivan's, wasn't she?'

Peter was frowning at the screen, not looking at me. I told him that yes, Laila had been a friend.

‘Will Ivan go after the killer now?'

It was a question a much younger child might have asked, but its meaning, I guessed, was very different from what it might have been had Peter asked the question at ten or twelve years old. For Ivan to ‘go after' Laila's killer might mean to my son now that he would not return, or return so changed as to be scarcely recognisable. There was no point in denying this possibility. Whatever I said to Peter, he would arrive at his own judgments, and would not respect me for attempting to gloss over events, or the dangerous emotions that they carried with them.

‘Does Kat know?'

‘I haven't told her. And she hasn't spoken to her father since it happened.'

I paused, realising that I'd responded to the simpler, superficial question—did Kat know about the murder?

‘She showed me the drawing.'

‘I hope she's not too disappointed that he isn't here to give it to.'

‘Kat knows there's to-morrow,' Peter said, as though for me to question her resilience was foolish and near-sighted.

. . .

DS Brideson knocked on the door as I was running Katya's bath.

Peter understood immediately that his role was to look after his sister, and took her back to his room after turning off the taps. I hoped that Brideson wouldn't want to question them. Since he'd come on his own, I didn't think it likely.

The detective's manner alternated between abrupt and condescending. His smile said he knew without being told that Ivan wasn't home, and that I did not know where he was.

‘How would you describe your partner's feelings for the deceased?'

I said that Ivan had been fond of Laila, attempting to look Brideson in the eye, while he obliged me to describe again what happened after Ivan had come home on Monday night. He took me through the evening step by step, as he'd done the first time he'd questioned me, waiting for me to trip myself up.

Music came from behind Peter's closed door, then Katya's voice, clear for a moment between tracks. ‘What's
that
man doing here again?'

. . .

I was still awake when Ivan came in. I'd been schooling myself to keep calm, rehearsing what I intended to say. But in spite of this, in spite of my best intentions, I burst out, ‘
Where
have you been?
Why
won't you talk to me?'

‘Sandra, I'm exhausted.'

‘Brideson's been here again. I couldn't—you don't even have an
alibi
, for God's sake.'

Ivan sighed and said he'd been walking round our suburb, and, believe it or not, that's what he'd been doing on Monday night as well. He couldn't help it if the police refused to believe him.

‘But you knew she was dead when you came in and switched the TV on. You knew!'

‘Not that it was Laila. Just that there'd been—'

‘You saw the news on your phone. You
did
have your phone on. You must have seen that I'd been trying to call you.'

Ivan didn't reply. When I asked him about his argument with Laila, he began to cry, huge wet sobs that seemed to slither down the walls.

‘Don't,' I said. ‘Please don't.'

I put my arms around Ivan, but I was sure he didn't feel them. His big hands shook as though with palsy.

He pulled away and said, ‘I'm going to get a drink.'

I had no doubt Ivan was thirsty, but he spoke as though reminding himself that some sort of conversational balance was required, as though he'd stepped so far aside from the life we shared, the years we'd come through, that each step, each phrase, had to be relearnt.

‘Did you sleep with her?' I asked when he came back to our bedroom.

‘No.'

‘Did you want to?'

‘Very much.'

The words were out at last. They left me with a plunging sense of anti-climax. I felt the unnatural heat of that March night like an ambiguous, probing, almost human presence in the house, testing for the cracks in walls, thin places where it might walk in and stake its own claim, indifferent to our comfort and our peace of mind.