Checkers (4 page)

My life seemed to fall apart so quickly. I don't suppose it was that quick really; it just felt that way. The first hint of trouble came when I was reading the paper one day in the school library. I don't often read the paper but I was skipping History and I'd told Miss Mackay, the Librarian, that I was there to do an Issues essay for English. So looking at the newspaper seemed to be the best camouflage, even if I'd just planned to read the star signs and ‘Far Side'.

But, when I got to page five, I saw the name ‘Rider' in the headline, so I stopped to have a look. It was a name I was used to seeing in the paper: usually in the financial pages, but not always. Jack kind of attracted cameras, and reporters. He didn't give a damn what anyone thought, so that meant he did some radical things. A lot of them really upset me, like the time he demolished the old house where Frank Langston used to live. Jack knocked it down before the Langston Society could take out a preservation order. Typical.

This story was about the casino, of course. An Opposition member of parliament was asking questions about Rider Group and the contract. She said that there was a sudden rise in share prices two months before the contract was announced. So she asked the minister, ‘Were the directors of Rider Group engaged in trading the company's shares in early June? Did they have prior knowledge that they had been successful in their tender for the casino? If so, how could such knowledge have been obtained?'

In reply the minister accused the member of being on a fishing expedition. He said the Government had monitored the tendering process closely from its inception and was totally satisfied with the confidentiality of the Commission. The member's attitude was typical of the Opposition, who skulked around in the shadows trying to find corpses where no corpses existed. They would serve the people of this state better if they tried to do something constructive once in a while.

And that was pretty much all the newspaper said. Most people reading it would probably have thought that was the end of the matter. Not for me, though. I felt my face go red as I sat there, and the sweat prickled my skin. It was obvious what had happened. Once they knew they'd got the contract they'd gone out and loaded up on shares. I don't know a heap about the stock market but I know that's illegal. It's called insider trading.

Still, I wasn't totally blown away about it. I knew there were always things going on that you wouldn't necessarily want to read about in the newspapers. Not just with Rider Group. It must be the same with any big company, surely. And there had been controversies with Rider Group before. I had a lot of faith in Jack being smart enough to navigate through any storm. Jack and my father.

As it turned out, though, this controversy went on a bit longer than most. The next day there was a report that the Stock Exchange had asked Rider Group to explain the rise in its share prices in June, and to provide information about any trading in company shares by its directors for that month. And, the next day, Dad issued a statement saying that all dealings by directors had at all times been honest and above board, that the company had nothing to hide, and would co-operate fully with any requests for information from the Stock Exchange.

Then it was the weekend. Saturday morning I had breakfast with Dad and he was pretty relaxed. ‘Look, it's nothing,' he said. ‘Just a backbencher trying to make a name for herself, and Leslie Croft trying to prove that he's worth all the money the Stock Exchange pays him.'

Sunday we went to Jack and Rosie's for a barbeque. Jack was even redder in the face and louder than normal, putting his arm around everyone and breathing fumes of Scotch into their faces. Everything seemed larger than life that day. The jokes were louder, the laughter longer. Everyone seemed to be shouting. Then Mark came out to the garden, from the TV room. ‘There's something going to be on TV in a minute,' he said, ‘about Rider Group.'

‘Yeah?' Jack said. ‘What?'

‘I don't know,' Mark said. ‘Something about a company in the Bahamas.'

Without a word Jack went inside. We all followed. No-one said anything. There were no kids in the TV room, just a man's face on the screen talking to the empty room.

‘. . . kind of animal would do that?' he asked. ‘Rip off an old-age pensioner by preying on her worst fears. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? Next, Laura Bailey's exclusive story about the mystery company in the Bahamas who's bought a slice of one of our biggest corporations.'

The ads ran their course, and still no-one spoke. I kept looking from Jack to Dad and back again. Dad looked nervous, but it was impossible to tell with Jack. He stood there holding his drink, glaring at the TV. I suppose his tight grip on the glass was the only clue that he was not completely relaxed.

Finally the ads finished and the man came back on. I knew the programme—it was ‘Max Locke's Spotlight', but Max must have been on holidays. I don't know who this guy was. He said something like, ‘And now a Spotlight exclusive: Laura Bailey reports on a mystery company in the Bahamas that's been buying up big in Rider Group. Who are the secret investors who already own a good slice of our newest casino?'

Then they crossed to the reporter, who was standing on a beach somewhere. It was meant to be the Bahamas but it could just as easily have been Bondi. She launched into her story. What it boiled down to was that a shelf company called Pinto, with a paid-up capital of two dollars, had bought about eight per cent of Rider—and had done it in four days in June. The company had only two directors, a Mr and Mrs Wills. There was a couple of minutes of video of a man and a woman on a veranda and then in the garden of a white mansion. You could only see blurry figures, glimpses of them through the trees. Laura Bailey's voice told us that the Wills were a British couple who had lived there for eleven years and were listed on the census forms as investors. That was all there was to it really. They'd managed to stretch thirty seconds' worth of information into a four-minute story.

When it was over Jack just shrugged. ‘Not much in that,' he said to Dad, who nodded.

‘What's it all about?' Mark asked.

‘It's a company that's bought some Rider Group shares,' Dad explained. ‘We've been wondering about them ourselves, but that story didn't tell us much that we didn't already know.'

We went back outside to the barbeque, but the party had quietened down, and everyone went home early.

So, that was how it all began. A few questions in Parliament, a story on TV. Now, as I lie here, it feels like my whole world has shrunk to this little bed. From living in the big house, where we had the pool and the court and all those downstairs rooms, to this tiny house of white, with its light blue bedspread. When I sleep, which isn't very often—even with the tablets—I get right down under the sheets, pulling them over my head. The air gets a bit stale but I feel safer, more secure, doing that. It's my white cocoon where I can be a caterpillar, a grub, never to turn into a butterfly or even a moth. It's the safest place I know. It's the only time and the only place where I can feel some peace.

No matter how hard I try, I'm still fooled by appearances. I know it's wrong but I still fall for them. Whether it's a good-looking boy who I think must be really nice, or a drunk who I cross the street to avoid, or an old lady who I take for granted must be conservative and old-fashioned . . .

I thought Esther was crazy, the way she hums to herself and walks in patterns, the way she collects bits of string and ties them together in a long rope, her endless questions to the kitchen staff about the food they're serving. Well, she may be crazy but at least she's interesting and intelligent. I realise that now, after talking to her for hours tonight. We started talking in the bathroom. When I went to wash my hands, standing next to her, I realised she was trying to slip a piece of paper under a silverfish that was scurrying around in the handbasin.

‘What are you doing?' I asked. It was the first time I've ever spoken directly to her. I don't talk to anyone here much, except Oliver.

‘Saving its life,' she said. And laughed.

‘Saving its life? Why bother?'

‘Why would I want it to die?'

I just looked at her and she laughed again. Laughter's not a sound we hear a lot in this place, and Esther's laugh is quite nice.

‘It's such a complex little creature,' she said. ‘So delicate. Imagine how long it'd take to make one, if you were a human insect-maker. You could spend your whole life working on it and still not get even one finished. And we kill them so casually. A quick squish of the finger and a moment later we've forgotten that we did it.'

I started to feel guilty. ‘Is that why you're so fussy about what you eat?'

‘Mmm.'

We got talking about everything then. I leant against the wall for a while, then gradually slid down till I was sitting on the cold white tiled floor. Opposite me, Esther did the same. When we got too cold we moved out to the corridor and went down past the staircase, where there's a little dead end with a dried-out palm in a pot. We settled there quite comfortably. Esther did most of the talking. She was very interesting. She lives in Sanford but she doesn't go to school, never has. She is a ‘home schooler', something I'd never heard of before. It means she does school by correspondence, with her parents helping. They live on a half-hectare block and grow their own vegetables organically and keep chooks and make their own bread and annoy the neighbours. I guess they would, in Sanford. It's not exactly a suburb filled with hippies—which is what they are, in some ways.

Then everything went wrong. Her mother got sick, really sick, with cancer of the uterus, and she had to spend long periods in hospital. When she wasn't in hospital she was away in the mountains, or even interstate, trying different cures, natural therapies and stuff. For about fifteen months she wasn't around much, and Esther's father couldn't cope with that, because he depended on her pretty heavily. So he spent most of his time at his mum's place in the country, having a nervous breakdown.

He wanted Esther to come with him but she wouldn't. For one thing she wanted to be able to visit her mum in hospital; for another, she felt she had to look after the chooks and the garden; for a third, she doesn't like her grandmother.

So, for weeks on end, Esther was there alone. ‘I liked it,' she said, ‘but I think I did go a bit crazy.'

‘How do you mean?' I asked. I was fascinated. There was no-one at my school who lived like this.

‘Oh well.' She looked at me for a minute, as if working out what she should say. She's very beautiful, Esther, like a gypsy, with long ringlets framing her dark face, and deep eyes. She always wears orangey-browny-earthy things, and lots of silver jewellery. I've never actually met or seen a gypsy, but I imagine that's how they look.

Finally she decided. ‘I think I have an animal in my head,' she confessed.

‘An animal?' I was shocked, but I wanted to laugh.

‘Yes. I know it's crazy—at least, I think I do—but that's why I'm in here.'

‘What kind of animal?'

‘Well . . . I'm not sure exactly. A little warm furry one, like a possum or a feather-tail glider.'

‘Um, that does sound pretty weird,' I said, immediately trying to bite the end off my tongue for saying something so dumb. I was scared that Esther would go into a frenzied fit, foaming at the mouth and trying to kill me.

But she just smiled and said, ‘Exactly!'

‘What's it like?' I asked. ‘Having it in there, I mean.'

‘It's quite nice, really. It probably sounds terrible. But I just feel that it's there, curled up all warm and nice.'

I didn't say anything. I was trying to imagine how it would be.

‘Sometimes it moves,' Esther added, ‘and I feel that, feel it wriggling around, squirming into a new position, to get more comfortable. And sometimes it makes noises.'

‘Noises?'

‘Mmm. Sort of whimpery noises. Little yelps and cries. I guess it's the noises that put me in here.'

‘They did?'

I gulped. I was scared I was getting in too deep.

‘Mmm. The neighbours heard the noises and they called the cops. You see, I guess the noises must have been coming out of my mouth.'

‘Uh-huh.'

She laughed. ‘Don't worry. I know I sound like I'm totally out of my tree, and I probably am, but you look like you're expecting me to jump up at any moment and attack you with a pair of scissors.'

It was exactly what I had been thinking.

‘What happened with your mother and the cancer?' I asked.

‘She's fine. She's in remission, has been for a while now. But Dad's still living with his mum. I don't know when he'll be coming back. I don't know if he'll be coming back at all.'

We sat there talking till Hanna came along and shooed us off to our rooms so she could turn the lights out. This place is so hung up on routine—meals, medication, Group, bedtime—everything's got to be at the exact time or the world will fall off its axis and we'll all be thrown into space.

So now I'm lying awake thinking about Esther. It was good to talk to her; easier than talking to almost anyone I can name, except maybe Oliver. I don't know why I was so relaxed. You wouldn't usually choose to have a conversation with someone who thinks she's got an animal in her head. I still didn't say much when I was with her but I felt comfortable.

I think it's because she didn't seem like she was ready to criticise, to judge me and find me guilty every chance she got. That's the way a lot of people have always seemed to me, including some of my so-called friends from school. Girls like Shon. The day I said Kylie Becker was my favourite singer—and I still do like her—God, it was like I'd committed social suicide. Shon didn't let me forget that for a month. Just because I didn't choose someone they'd decided was cool . . . It made me wonder if I was allowed to have my own opinion on anything.

I've always been like that—afraid of doing the wrong thing, of making a fool of myself—but it's been a thousand per cent worse since everything happened with Rider Group. I've written about some of that already, of course. The first things that went wrong weren't my fault, nothing to do with me. That company in the Bahamas, that was the first problem. And Mrs O'Shea, the Opposition backbencher asking questions in Parliament: she made her reputation out of Rider Group. She's a shadow minister now.

But again, that wasn't me. How could it be? I didn't know what was going on.

In fact after the TV show things quietened down again. I'd almost forgotten about it by the time the next wave came. It was a monster wave though, a dumper. I opened the paper one morning to get the TV guide. Dad had gone to work early again, Mark was having breakfast with me, Mum wasn't up yet. And all across the front page was Rider Group. We were bigger than royal divorces. I choked on my Coco Pops and suddenly couldn't eat any more. I had a horrible feeling that things were getting out of control. I read the front page and the continuation of the story on pages six and seven, trying to hide it from Mark. There were three main points. One was that over the last four months the company in the Bahamas had sent two million dollars to a company in London. And among the directors of that company were Mum, and Jack's wife Rosie.

The second point came from a document supposedly leaked from the Commission. It was a handwritten note that the newspaper said was in the Deputy Chairman's writing. It said: ‘Rudi rang again, insisted it must be R., said P. was “waiting impatiently” on our decision.'

This wouldn't have meant anything to me, but the newspaper helpfully translated it. They said Rudi was Rudi Koneckny, a researcher on the Premier's personal staff. They suggested P. was the Premier himself, and R. was Rider Group. And they made it pretty clear that if they were right about that, there would be shit flying round in a big way. The Premier had always been so definite that he wouldn't be involved in the selection process, that it had to be totally impartial, independent, honest.

The third point was that the other two main bidders for the contract were claiming that their bids were higher than Rider Group's but, as the Commission, the Government and Jack were all refusing to say how much the winning bid was, it was hard to tell whether that story was true or not.

I took the paper into Mum. Her head was somewhere under the pillows. I threw the paper at her and said, ‘There's some nice news to wake up to,' and stormed off to the bus. I felt like my life was going to become complicated and bad, and I was right on both counts.